Anonymous and the Arab uprisings

Anonymous and the Arab uprisings
The cyberactivists discuss their work and the broader global push for freedom of speech and freedom from oppression.
Yasmine Ryan Last Modified: 19 May 2011 18:16

Anonymous’s rapid rise from the depths of geekdom to becoming a catalyst and nerve centre for real-life revolutionaries is one that has taken even some of its own members by surprise.

The loosely-knit hive brings anonymous techies, hackers and, increasingly, activists together under a single appellation, united in their non-violent but often illegal collective action.

With high-profile campaigns, centred on “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks that knock target websites offline, it has been transformed from a fringe group of law-breaking pranksters that emerged in 2006 into an international movement that draws new recruits by their thousands.

In an interview with a group of Anons conducted on their home turf, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), they tell Al Jazeera that they are fighting, above all, for the free flow of information.
Click here to see Al Jazeera’s interactive timeline of Anonymous

“You can’t make a decision on something if you don’t know anything about it,” one Anon says.

“I’m into this because it’s a more modern and technical approach than traditional activism like protesting against [the] G8 or something like that,” another adds.

While some traditional activists have criticised the group for its methods, few would argue that its unique cocktail of anonymous civil society and collective action has proven to be powerful agents of change.

Indeed, Amnesty International, the prominent human rights NGO, chose to focus its 2011 annual report on what it describes as the “critical battle [that is] under way for control of access to information, means of communication and networking technology”.

Widney Brown, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty’s international secretariat, told Al Jazeera that Anonymous’ outrage over government and corporate pressure against WikiLeaks underlined the hotly contested power dynamics that surround information.

“The desire to be able to speak freely about what is going on in your life is something that’s always there, but what we have with social media is the ability to amplify it,” she says.

“Governments are obviously threatened by the fact that activists have become so effective at using these new technologies and social media,” she says.

Amnesty considers the use of non-conventional methods by cyberactivists in defense of these principles as justified, so long as they are not violating other people’s legitimate right to privacy and security, Brown says.

Yet for Anonymous, personal privacy is not always sacred, as the very public nailing of the HBGary security firm – the firm’s CEO’s had his email hacked and his reputation destroyed in a stinging revenge attack, after threatening to reveal the identity of leading Anons – in February demonstrated. …more