Gabriella Coleman (2014)

Hi,

There are three words I like to use to describe Anonymous: prolific, multitudinous, and unpredictable. They are decentralized but there are poolings of power in various ways and this is one of the issues I address quite a bit in the book. Many of the hackers have stabilized into teams. There are those who run the infastructure. So yes, there is a hierarchy but there are multiple ones so there is no single point of control and command. I like to describe Anonymous as a hydra to get at is social organization. And yes, there are informal rules and norms that guide behavior, the most notable of these being an anti-celebrity ethic.. But there otherwise it is a very permissive culture and since there is no single mandate, Anonymous has gotten involved in many distinct types of political ops.

Out of all the legal cases, Barrett Brown's is the MOST disturbing and shocking. I simply cannot believe he has been in jail for over 2 years for sharing a link, cavorting with the hackers, and threatening an FBI agent. I expected him to be put in jail for a few weeks and released on bail until a trial that would have found him guilt of threatening the agent but with a minor punishment. This is totally excessive and frightening and all journalists and activist along with the public should be concerned. Let's hope he gets time served.

Woah a Paul Tag appears! Well first, the fact that Anonymous became an activist force in the world was durnnnn surprising given the business of trolling they were into--though with some time it makes sense.

I was surprised that the hackers in specific and Anonymous is more diverse than people assume. A lot less middle class folks, a lot of Europeans, and ethnically quite diverse as well. I think that to me was a big surprise. It is more diverse than say open source software development.

Naww. He ain't a hax0r.

My student Molly Sauter has written an awesome book about this very topic which really provides the best answer http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Swarm-Hacktivism-Disobedience/dp/1623564565

But generally there is so much fear and misunderstandings about DDoS it is frightening. One of my students this year likened a DDoS to setting a hotel on fire--even after a few lectures about it! I had to remind the student that while it is ok to disagree with its use and it does cost companies $ and resources, the fire analogy does not work and is rather alarming. So one big step would be just get people to understand what happens during a DDoS attack/campaign.

Thanks! I don't think every Anonymous op has been squeaky clean: that is mistakes were made but the same sort of mistakes (misidentifying people for instance) has occurred with journalist (like with the Newsweek Satoshi story). But generally, they have for the most part made a positive difference in so many different operations and given how so many folks are apathetic or cynical, it is great that some folks are deciding to get off their asses and do something.. That is what I find most hopeful about Anonymous.

They are hugely important. Every CS major should take some sort of ethics class but not in a moralizing way but more in a "look software is implicated in everything in our lives so lets think about its effects sort of way." Ed Felten among a few others is the CS prof who rocks the ethical house in this department.

So I am not so into the business of predicting but I do on occasion like to throw a few ones out there. Soon after the craziness spurt of hacking at the hands of lulzsec and anticsec in 2011 and 2012, I figured we would be seeing more of these types of public acts of sabotage/hacks at the hands of various hackers and Sony is case in point. I am still rather perplexed as is much of the world as to WHO is doing it.. Government hackers? Hactivists? It seems really hard to tell but we will be seeing more of these types of hacks in the future given the shitty state of Internet security.

I have thought a lot about this question and have come to the conclusion that Anonymous/anonymous online organizing is better equipped to deal with snitches compared to offline kinds. Take the instance of Michael Kennedy (http://www.theguardian.com/uk/undercover-with-paul-lewis-and-rob-evans/gallery/2013/jun/24/undercover-police-spies-unmasked-in-pictures) an undercover cop who freaken had a BABBBY with an activist while informing for the government. Holy Gross. How are you ever supposed to question a person when they are making babies with you? It is rather hard. At least in Anonymous you never get to that point or you should not. In the end, you actually don't need to trust anyone but your own operations security. It is damn hard but possible to be militant about it and avoid getting caught which is impossible offline. And while Sabu helped round up numerous hackers, many who had weak security, many never got caught and I believe folks are far more careful today.

If I told you I would have to... you know.. :)

Well I don't own a cell phone, I use Linux, and for sensitive emails I use PGP. I encrypt my computer as well.

Thanks and no problem about your question. It is spot on. There were at times some questions and rumors about him but he was brimming with such a revolutionary attitude it was so hard to see him as anything but dedicated to the cause. I also think the fact that another person was accused much of the time deflected a lot of the attention of him... He was also super adept at manipulation and he rather careful about not being pushy, which I think helped keep the heat off of him.

Intrigued: harm in what way?

Sure thing. But people have to be aware and it is a bit sad, in some ways, that you get so close to folks, and you can't trust them. It is a big internal problem in all movements and why I find snitching so troublesome. It tears of the fabric of human trust.

These are great points: about "limiting" the ops. I think you can become friendly but you just have to be militant about keeping your life out if and I agree, leaving for periods of time is also smart.

So this might be a cheating a bit but here is a definition I recently sent off to the author of the wonderful book Hackers by Steven Levy

"Hacking in its different manifestations is where craft and craftiness
converge: building a 3-D printer that can replicate itself; stealing a
botnet—an army of zombie computers—to blast a website for a political
DDoS campaign; inventing a license, the copyleft, that uses the logic
inherent to copyright itself to instead guarantee openness of
distribution; showcasing a robot that mixes cocktails at a
scientific-geek festival devoted entirely to, well, the art of cocktail
robotics; inventing a programming language called Brainfuck which, as
you might guess, is primarily designed to humorously mess with people's
heads; and the list goes on. The alignment of craft and craftiness is
perhaps the best location to find a unifying thread which runs
throughout the diverse technical and ethical worlds of hacking. You can see some cool definitions here https://medium.com/backchannel/what-is-a-hacker-51257cad8b54

The first Anonymous political wing, Chanology, was not secretive as they engaged in street protests. I was able to get to know folks and I started to give talks about the collective. When the more militant wing came into being and I joined up, secrecy was everywhere and basically some folks had seen my talks and liked what they saw and that helped. I was also put to work and taught many journalists who to find Anonymous and when you help out you tend to be more accepted. Finally, time. Lots and lots of time. I think the book gives a good sense of these dynamics but in the end there was still a lot I never accessed which is why the master metaphor of the book is a maze.

So the revolusec info was included as I knew the chatlogs from Hammond's case were leaked and going to be reported on (http://www.dailydot.com/politics/hammond-sabu-fbi-stratfor-hack/). However, I said very little about them and my relationship was pretty minimal as I knew only a few of the folks. There is still a lot of mystery around them.

I thought of doing a graphic novel based on my book which many would hit more of a pre-teen market... I have never thought of a children's book but now that you mention it, that could be quite a cool project.

Damn tough question.

Yummm Kips of Mud!

I am permanently on IRC. I don't think you can study geeks and hackers unless you love that medium. I have been on one IRC channel now for 14 years in fact! I am still on some open source chans, some Anonymous channels, and some random ones. That said, I simply cannot keep up with all of them like I once did. In fact I am so behind with work right now so I should should should log off all social media and IRC. But I will likely be an aged shriveled granny on IRC :)

Salut. Social media can be an enabler in certain situations and also change the way journalist cover an issue as well. I think we saw that dynamic quite vividly with the Palestine/Israel conflict over the summer of 2014. Palestine has not receive much coverage in the mainstream western press but after the flood of social media accounts and pictures, they were forced to. Obviously, this social media presence won't lead to the second coming of democracy but generally has been a good leverage point.

Hackers have long work with street activists so it is a binary I don't buy into. Indymedia was started by hackers who were street activists and a lot of Anonymous' ops were also in conjunction with street activists as well. That said, there are moments and times when their operations will solely be online but they do often intersect with street and social movements more generally.

For the activist wings today, there is much less of a link but the stalwart anti-celebrity ethic was really indebted to 4chan and many of cultural codes and offensive senses of humor come from there as well. But the political ops branched off pretty significantly from there sometime in 2011 but there is no reason they can merge once again in the future.

I was living in NYC then and I did Occupy. It is in the book in some detail. I generally thought it was an important movement that was cut short after the police crackdown but am thrilled to see it live on in the Rolling Jubilee...

Statistics are really hard to come by but here are some guesstimates. First among the hackers there were no females but this is not all that surprising. In 15 years of studying hackers, I have never met a female blackhat, that is a hacker who intrudes and owns systems. I am sure they exist but there are not many of them. In the wider Anonymous arena, there are quite a few woman and I would put the number at 25% which again is a total guess given who I know. It is a higher percentage than many other hacker spheres.

In terms of the age, it seems like most are in their 20s but there are some who were in their teens, and definitely those in their 30-50s. It attracted folks too from pretty diverse class backgrounds as well.

Since studying Anonymous amounts to a full time job and since I have to work I can't follow them as closely any more. I am also going to move onto a different project that is not as event based.

I don't think Lee Knuttila did any of that. He read posts and analyzed them. It is standard humanities research in his case.

I never saw that show but it influenced House of Cards directly and know of a few other pop culture artifacts in the work that were influenced by Anonymous.

GG is a damn Gordian knot.. that is really tough to untangle. I thought it was actually going to be a time when trolls upset that the name Anonymous was used for activism were going to reclaim the name and was shocked when that never happened. I don't know as much about game journalism but given the general state of journalism, I am sure there are some ethical issues that need to be called out and discussed. It is too bad that those interested in ethics did not change the name as Fruzsina Eördögh had suggested. The name had become too polluted and associated with the harassment of women--harassment that seemed to be both genuine and then also fanned by trolling groups seeking to cause a shit storm.

Thanks, nice to hear!

I would love to go but I am teaching in Jan so it will be tough to make it down under!

freenode, anonops and some others.