Schneier on Security

blackplans • October 3, 2013 12:09 PM

Time is a commodity I always seem to be too short on, but I would like to offer my two cents.

First off, I agree with “Oldanon”, to a point.

It has been asserted elsewhere, by others, more eruditely and succinctly than I probably will here that as an idea, a living and breathing meme, Anonymous by necessity changes over time. When enough people decided that Anonymous was an activist group, people interested in activism became involved, in doing so they made their suppositions about Anonymous a sort of reality.

Bruce himself, from his time in and around the hacker scene, will understand the weird contradictions inherent in it, in many ways Anonymous is just a larger than life example of those contradictions. We demand transparency from governments and corporations but jealously guard our own identities as a sort of last remaining true currency in this world. Something that belongs to us.

Hackers have always had the urge to boast, it is only natural in many ways, divorcing oneself from one’s ego is tough. If not for fame itself then most of us crave some form of acknowledgement, if even only from those we consider our peers. The only real thing that has changed over the years is the medium by which this “boasting” has evolved, from BBS systems in the 80s, to IRC, to website defacements themselves and now these days to Twitter and Facebook. In my mind I imagine the conflict as a sort of internal version of Rutger Hauer’s soliloquy in Bladerunner, “I’ve… seen things you people wouldn’t believe”, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody knows who felled it, does it still have significance?

KYAnonymous is an archetypal example of this duality, he achieved through Anonymous the kind of fame he would never and could never have gained through his music, but he must have wondered at times, who would ever actually know? Thus we have the unnecessary risk taking, not just because of ignorance of operational security, but because he wanted his voice heard, skype calls and phone ins to radio and TV shows, etc. This resulted in his eventual raid, the murky circumstances that surround it and the following campaigns for financial donations, This merely confirmed to me my long held view that when large sums of money become involved, things tend to go to shit.

There are a myriad of issues at play here and I am sure that is why this is just a short academic treatment, a paper in advance of the much more comprehensive book that Biella is still working on.

I guess for me the most important issue is that people realize that Anonymous cannot simply be summarized as a group of people that originated on 4chan and evolved from there. Anonymous represents currents in internet politics that are as old as the internet itself. The right to interact on our own terms on a medium that nobody should own or control. There are members of groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Masters of Deception that still look on from the sidelines, at what many consider the antics of Anonymous with vocal or grudging respect or, at the very least, a mild sympathy. Anonymous is part of a tradition, not something that popped into existence in a void.

Oh and inb4 someone points out that I am posting as “blackplans” and not “Anonymous”, I wish anyone who cares to debate with me to have that opportunity, I am easy enough (on one level) to find.

May we all consider to debate and argue, because only through tearing apart and rebuilding can anything truly ever hope to reach it’s true potential.