In recent months there has been considerable discussion about the WikiLeaks phenomenon, and understandably so, given the volume and sensitivity of the documents the website has released. What this discussion has revealed, however, is that the media and government agencies believe there is a single protagonist to be concerned with—something of a James Bond villain, if you will—when in fact the protagonist is something altogether different: an informal network of revolutionary individuals bound by a shared ethic and culture.
According to conventional wisdom, the alleged protagonist is, of course, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the discussion of him has ranged from Raffi Khatchadourian's June portrait in The New Yorker, which makes Assange sound like a master spy in a John le Carré novel, to Tunku Varadarajan's epic ad hominem bloviation in The Daily Beast: "With his bloodless, sallow face, his lank hair drained of all color, his languorous, very un-Australian limbs, and his aura of blinding pallor that appears to admit no nuance, Assange looks every inch the amoral, uber-nerd villain."
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Showing posts with label anonymous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anonymous. Show all posts
Is it a Crime? The Transgressive Politics of Hacking in Anonymous / Biella Coleman and Michael Ralph
...As one prominent Anon put it, in response to some of the hacking operations, "Anonymous is not Unanimous."
Nor is Anonymous defined by utter randomness. We can, in fact, track and examine the rise and fall of trends, tensions in and between networks, frictions between those with technical power and those without, and contradictions in the particular strategies for social and political engagement participants routinely deployed and discontinued. That Menn fails to do so is especially troubling since the specific form of hacking that his investigative piece discusses in greatest detail--hacking-as-leaking--only became integral to the tactical political culture of the AnoOps network in late winter/early spring 2012, and even then only because of a particular set of events that had transpired on the AnonOps network.
The Dramatic Face of Wikileaks / Biella Coleman
Wikileaks: It has caused a firestorm of debate among very different sectors of the population and about different topics: from the state of journalism (is it broken is it not?); to how much secrecy is acceptable for diplomatic negotiations, the role of the leak in changing diplomacy and a question as to whether it will be good for scholarship (I think it will be but for different reasons parlayed there).
It has induced rage, growing support among Internet enthusiasts, including anonymous who have/has kicked off Operation Avenge Assange and among liberals it has caused "soul-searching" crisis and confusion as they can't fully support, nor fully decry Wikileaks. Thankfully some of commentary comes in the form of video humor and of course, one of the staples of the Internet, sad kittens.
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Hacker and Troller as Trickster / Biella Coleman
...But the most shocking (or hard to think through) element lies less in the many associations one can make, but in the following curious fact. For the most part the trickster is enshrined in myth and stories but the tricksters I am referring to are in fact full-bodied, full-blooded groups of people who are actually engaging in all sorts of acts of trickery. This is culture not in the sense of art and myth but people and practice and this of course makes an (ethical) difference. What happens when you are the recipient not of a story offered an elder, but the recipient of trickery, an act of pranking or trolling, for example? What happens when you can trace all sorts of instances of boundary re-shifting and remaking, as with the GPL? I think this, even more than the linkages, is what makes this connection so remarkable and I trying to think through what it means to have a figure that we can find and talk to, as opposed to one embodied in myth and story.
For now I am going to leave this post short and in the next installment, will start raising some of the connections between trickery and variants of hacking and trolling.
Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz / QUINN NORTON
They’ve created law enforcement excitement that’s verged on panic, given net and media pundits hyperbolic logorrhea about “cyber terrorism” and “cyber freedom”, and happily skipped between damn funny, deeply disturbing, and self-aggrandizing, depending on the mood of the hive mind at the moment.
But what is Anonymous?
NYU Professor and Anonymous researcher Biella Coleman compares Anonymous to the trickster god archetype.
“The trickster does exist across America, across Europe, really across the world and it is not in myth but in embodied in group and living practice: in that of the prankster, hacker, the phreaker, the troller (all of whom, have their own unique elements of course, but so does each trickster),” she wrote in Social Text.
Anonymous 101 Part Deux: Morals Triumph Over Lulz / QUINN NORTON
In the beginning, there were lulz, pranks and a culture of trolling just to get a rise out of anyone. But despite many original Anons best efforts, Anonymous has grown up to become the net’s immune system, striking back whenever the hive mind perceived that the institutions that run the world crossed the line into hypocrisy.
The fall and winter of 2010 started a pattern that persists; when the use of power gets suspect, people join Anonymous. But this immune response changed Anonymous as well. The lulz had to make room for righteous indignation, and not even a pretend indignation.
The voice of the hive mind, though still computer-generated, had changed its tone.
How Anonymous Picks Targets, Launches Attacks, and Takes Powerful Organizations Down / QUINN NORTON
No one but Hector Xavier Monsegur can know why or when he became Sabu, joining the strange and chaotic Internet collective known as Anonymous. But we know the moment he gave Sabu up. On June 7, 2011, federal agents came to his apartment on New York’s Lower East Side and threatened the 28-year-old with an array of charges that could add up to 124 years in prison. So Hector Monsegur, who as Sabu had become a mentor and icon to fellow members of Anonymous, surrendered his online identity to a new, equally faceless and secretive master: the FBI.
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In Flawed, Epic Anonymous Book, the Abyss Gazes Back / QUINN NORTON
It’s hard to report on Anonymous. It’s a non-organization of pranksters-turned-activists-turned-hackers-turned-hot-mess-of-law-enforcement-drama — a story that is hard to get, and hard to write. To work with a secretive and hunted group requires making many non-obvious choices. One of the unnamed but extensively quoted hackers in Forbes London bureau chief Parmy Olson’s new book on the group, titled We Are Anonymous, told me once that anons were “by nature deceptive” — and they are. (How do I know it’s the same person? I recognized their way of talking. Then I asked.) Anons lie when they have no reason to lie. They weave vast fabrications as a form of performance. Then they tell the truth at unexpected and unfortunate times, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. They are unpredictable. The nihilistic fury that Olson describes in the lifestyle of young anons goes in every direction, including inward, and it often spills over onto people like Olson and me for no obvious reason.
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Anonymous / Gabriella Coleman at TED Global
“Who is
Anonymous?” ...First of all, it’s not an organization with one or even a few
leaders at the helm. It’s a name adopted by various unrelated groups of hackers
and technologists to describe a whole range of actions, from hacks against
security firms to technical support for occupiers to those involved
in national revolutions. Subgroups such as Antisec, meanwhile, scour servers to
look for sensitive national, military or political information they can leak to
the world. What links the groups is a spirit of irreverence and disdain for the
law as it stands.
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