HiQ Magazine | Anonymous by HiQ-Media

How the internet should be used and by whom are questions that have been debated for a long time. Those who call themselves net activists want an internet that is free from regulation, censorship and control. But some are prepared to go further than others to achieve this aim. In recent years the international Anonymous network has attracted a great deal of attention. Who are they and what are their aims? HiQ Magazine has taken a closer look at the collective behind the Guy Fawkes mask.

POLITICAL HACKING IS NOT NEW Back in 1989 NASA’s computers were subjected to a virus attack after nuclear power was used in a space project. Hundreds of computers were infected with a wormlike virus that spread the message “WANK: Worms Against Nuclear Killers”.

nonymous has declared war on IS, hacked into the racist Ku Klux Klan’s Twitter account and helped protesters combat repressive regimes. Yet its representatives have also closed down corporate websites and the homepages of western governments. They have been dubbed net activists and the defenders of free speech. But they have also been branded as cyber terrorists and “hackers on steroids”. How are we to understand a phenomenon such as Anonymous? And who are the people behind the Guy Fawkes grin? The second question is obviously impossible to answer – anonymity is at the very core of the concept. Activists range from teenage hackers and unemployed youngsters to well-established programmers and human rights activists. They are “everybody and anybody”. “Neither hackers nor net activists constitute a homogeneous group. Their numbers include both libertarians and left-wing extremists, as well as everything in between. What unites them is the conviction that the internet should be open and free,” says Martin Fällman, a digital security expert with Civil Rights Defenders. Martin was a net activist himself for many years, part of the Telecomix cluster that restored internet connectivity in Egypt and released details of internet surveillance operations in Tunisia and Syria during the Arab Spring. In recent years he has worked to build opinion against net surveillance and taught digital security to authorities, journalists and activists. He is eager to point out that net activism takes different forms. “The kind of activism that I’m involved in is about fighting for a free internet by putting forward your arguments, bringing about change and making politicians accountable for their actions. It’s a sort of lobbying activity that makes full use of the potential of the internet. The net activism that Anonymous practises is more like hacking. Its members also want to see political change, but their method of achieving this is to short-circuit the political processes. The last thing a hacker wants to do is to sit down and reason with someone. A hacker prefers direct action.” Anonymous emerged in the early 2000s out of discussions on the now infamous 4Chan bulletin board. There anyone could upload pictures and submit content about everything under the sun. No registration was required to use the forum and everyone who wrote anything without being logged in was tagged as “Anonymous”. “That gave rise to the evolution of a unique and particularly brutal forum culture

where people could in principle post anything at all. Anonymity provided an opportunity for self-assertion and social criticism that people could not otherwise give vent to in their dayto-day lives,” says Fällman, who was himself active on 4Chan at times. He compares it to the book and film Fight Club, where malcontents from different backgrounds and different social classes find companionship in illegal recreational fighting. "NEITHER HACKERS NOR NET ACTIVISTS CONSTITUTE A HOMOGENEOUS GROUP. THEIR NUMBERS INCLUDE BOTH LIBERTARIANS AND LEFT-WING EXTREMISTS, AS WELL AS EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN." “That’s the best way to understand how Anonymous came into being. A whole bunch of people who were angry about different things and vented their anger on the net.” The fact that so many people expressed their views under the “Anonymous” tag meant that Anonymous said one thing here and another there. The overall impression was muddled to say the least. However, as journalists Linus Larsson and Daniel Goldberg write in their book Svenska hackare – En berättelse från nätets skuggsida (“Swedish Hackers – A Story from the Dark Side of the Net”): “When Anonymous reaches a consensus, when the thousands of participants in the dialogue begin to work towards a common, albeit vaguely defined goal, the phenomenon suddenly becomes a force to be reckoned with.”

nitially most of what Anonymous did could be dismissed as mere pranks. For example, clubbing together to create thousands of identical avatars in online games for children and then placing the avatars on top of one another so that they formed different symbols. In 2006, however, at the time of the raids on The Pirate Bay, the hackers became more political in their motives. In their book Larsson and Goldberg describe how the Swedish file-sharing site had become an international symbol for a free internet. When the authorities closed down the site, supporters worldwide joined forces to exact their revenge. Just a day after the raid the National Police Board became aware that something strange was taking place on the website polisen.se. Unprecedented numbers of users seemed to be accessing the site simultaneously. Soon the entire website had collapsed and the police could no longer use email to communicate

owever, it was not until 2008, when Anonymous declared war on the Church of Scientology, that the movement attracted international attention. Anonymous disapproved strongly of the Scientologists’ introversion on the internet and reacted strongly when the church attempted to censor a YouTube video that featured Tom Cruise. Anonymous activists uploaded hundreds of copies of the video, overwhelmed the church websites with information requests and gathered in person to demonstrate around the world. They also prank-called Scientology offices and uploaded videos poking fun at the church’s representatives. That approach is the hallmark of Anonymous activities. Although the underlying message is serious, the methods adopted are almost invariably tempered with humour designed to ridicule the network’s opponents. In a documentary on Anonymous’s own official

combining their efforts to help the opposition to spread information through anonymity sites and on websites critical of the regime. Net activists subsequently repeated such actions in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. When the Egyptian government barred internet access, Telecomix made sure that the people of Egypt could connect via modems in France. And when local activists were ordered to delete anti-regime videos from their blogs under threat of violence, Telecomix copied the films and uploaded them on other sites. “Anonymous was involved in setting up proxy servers so that internet traffic could be channelled out of Tunisia. But the movement also hacked into the regime’s own websites,” says Martin Fällman. While this was taking place Wikileaks was also revealing that the US military had concealed the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news sent shockwaves through the political establishment but was applauded by Anonymous, not necessarily for the nature of the revelations themselves, but rather for the ambition to spread information and make it widely available. When politicians and large corporations attempted to stifle Wikileaks, for example by blocking financial donations, Anonymous once again sought revenge. All the companies and agents of the state that had actively

Photo: Isabel Gustafsson

with the general public. Two days later the government’s site regeringen.se crashed under the pressure of a similar attack. Hackers had crippled government websites before, but this attack was different: what had caused the servers to overload was not the work of a single individual but of a large network of like-minded people. The hackers had teamed up and created a political movement.

MARTIN FÄLLMAN Digital security expert. Works with Civil Rights Defenders. THREE DIFFERENT KINDS OF INTERNET ACTIVISM 1. Social activism works to achieve a desired effect by using the net as a tool for spreading messages. 2. Technological activism fights for a free internet by making politicians accountable for their actions. 3. Technical interventions and internet hacking also fight for a free internet, but do so by short-circuiting political processes.

»I constantly have to enter into discussions in defence of internet activism« YouTube channel, a number of people claim that this distinctive humour is one reason why so many people are fascinated and provoked by the movement. It was in conjunction with the antiScientology demonstrations that Anonymous supporters began to hide their faces. To do so they chose the Guy Fawkes mask made famous by the film V for Vendetta. Today the mask has become almost synonymous with the movement and is a key component of the movement’s distinctive aesthetic identity. In 2009 activists turned their attention to the Middle East. The Iranian presidential elections in June of that year saw the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, re-elected despite accusations of vote-rigging. As thousands of Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate, the Iranian authorities tried to silence the protests, employing internet censorship as one of the weapons in their arsenal. Net activists worldwide retaliated,

opposed Wikileaks were declared to be legitimate targets and subjected to concerted internet attacks. Some Swedish companies and government agencies were among those affected. In 2012 the Swedish police acted to close down a server used by Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay (and, incidentally, also by users sharing child pornography images). Supporters of Anonymous in Sweden responded by attacking the websites of a number of banks and Swedish government agencies including the Security Service, the Armed Forces, the National Board of Health & Welfare and the National Courts Administration. “An investigation into the attacks revealed that most of them were launched by Swedish teenagers and tech-savvy adolescents, the kind of young people who often believe that file-sharing should be legal,” says Chief Inspector Anders Ahlqvist, a specialist with Sweden’s National IT Crime Unit.

THE EMBLEM OF ANONYMOUS: A HEADLESS SUIT The emblem symbolises anonymity and a leaderless organisation. To conceal their identity members wear a mask made popular by the film V for Vendetta. The mask is based on a likeness of Guy Fawkes, a historical English rebel who planned to blow up parliament in London.

RISK OF IMPRISONMENT In Sweden someone convicted of hacking can be sentenced to a maximum of 2 years in prison. The punishment for aggravated hacking is up to 6 years in prison. To date no one affiliated to Anonymous has been sentenced in Sweden.

One of those responsible for the attacks, an 18-year-old from a small Swedish town, told the Aftonbladet newspaper, “It’s just not right to close down our torrent sites! That’s why we’re so angry. We want a proper internet. No child pornography, of course, but otherwise everything should be free.” In answer to the question of how the decision to launch an assault is actually made, the 18-year-old explained that people in a chat room discuss how to attack and who is to be the victim: “We have no leaders – just a bunch of people who lend a hand. Some are Swedes, others live abroad.” GOOD OR BAD? People's views on Anonymous differ.

he common denominator of all the targets attacked by Anonymous is their various attempts to limit the flow of information and prevent people from communicating via the net. Fighting for freedom of speech and a free internet is the platform for everything that Anonymous does. Also the movement often stands on the side of the oppressed, against the powers that be. In recent years Anonymous has helped LGBT activists in Uganda, closed down child pornography sites and conducted a Twitter campaign encouraging North Koreans to rise up against their government. After the terror attacks in Paris in Novem-

activism. They just make my job harder. The reason for this is something I’ve already mentioned – that anyone at all can do anything at all and sign it ‘Anonymous’.” When Anonymous declares war on IS, this can be a call to action that is supported by the entire movement – or the work of just one 14-year-old at home in his or her bedroom. “The result is that there are an awful lot of half-baked ideas floating around. Lots of unnecessary and unwinnable conflicts are provoked in the name of Anonymous.”

develop among the more technically adept participants. These people aren’t members of an organisation. They simply feel the need to become involved in a specific issue. Some are probably ideologically motivated, others are there simply because it’s fun,” he says. Martin Fällman agrees. He says that, deep down, hackers are rarely politically motivated. “Motivation probably comes from being part of a really cool hack. Ascribing a political dimension is often just an afterthought. It’s like graffiti artists. Sure, they can spray a

»Lots of unnecessary and unwinnable conflicts are provoked in the name of Anonymous« ber 2015 Anonymous announced that it was declaring war on IS. It did not take long before they had hacked a number of IS websites, closed 3,000 Twitter accounts with links to IS and published an online guide for everyone who was willing to take part in sabotaging the IS presence on the net. The movement’s unrelenting campaign for democracy and openness has caused many former critics of Anonymous to reconsider their opinions. The various courses of action are not always legal, but many people – not least, the activists themselves – believe that they have right on their side. “I’m absolutely convinced that most of those who are affiliated to Anonymous want a better world,” says Martin Fällman. “The problem is that they often cause more problems than they solve. For those of us working with internet activism and trying to build up something positive, Anonymous can be like an irritating little brother who keeps tripping us up. Their actions mean that I constantly have to enter into discussions in defence of internet

As a consequence of this, some Anonymous supporters have publicly disassociated themselves from the actions of their fellow activists. When Anonymous declared war on US presidential candidate Donald Trump because of his racist remarks, others within the movement pointed out that political censorship runs contrary to the movement’s own ideology. The Swedish chapter of Anonymous has also reacted to the fact that some operations have failed in their aims and been hijacked by racists: “In such instances it is imperative that other elements in the collective make their voices heard and show that they are critical,” it wrote in a press release some years ago. It has been a long time since Anonymous attacked any Swedish targets. The National IT Crime Unit’s Anders Ahlqvist says this is because of the absence of a cause to rally around in recent years. “Our impression is that when the media write a lot about an issue relating to, let’s say, file-sharing, youngsters talk about this in a chat room and a certain mood begins to

political message on Stockholm underground carriages, but what drives them to do it is more likely to be the thought of their work being seen all the way from the southern suburbs to those in the north.” Even so, Anonymous does have an important role to play in the growth of internet activism. Many of those who are now engaged in more serious work to create a free internet were once hackers. Today they are hotly sought after as experts by western governments and authorities. How has such a change come about? “Those of us who were there at the start are no longer teenagers. Today we have families, jobs, research posts – but also a genuine interest in politics. That means we no longer see the point of hacking into polisen.se. It’s a bit like throwing stones at policemen, an expression of frustration rather than a deep-felt desire to instigate change. If you really want to make a difference, there are better ways to do it.”