Anonymous Argument

Anonymous Argument

Is Anonymous helping or destroying the world? Anonymous never changes their purpose. They keep the same goals throughout their battles against the government. Anonymous gives the Unites States a tumultuous battle. Organizing countless protests for Occupy Wall Street has made America irritated. Anonymous has a good side that people can ignore. In December 2012 Anonymous fought against the WestBoro Baptist Church for making threats against the Newtown tragedy. It still seems as if Anonymous’ bad situations shine over the good situations. Anonymous is destroying the world because Anonymous gives the United States a bad connotation, they hacked our government websites, Anonymous accessed people’s information with relative ease, and Anonymous coordinated protests such as occupy Wall Street movements.

Anonymous is known as a group of “Hacktivists”. Anonymous had an unofficial origin of the website 4chan. 4chan was a website that was known for making memes. Memes can be cat videos, troll faces, and a lot of other things centered on memes (Wired). Anonymous targeted the church of scientology because of their specific believes. In 2008, Anonymous posted a video on YouTube towards the Church of Scientology accusing them of being hypocrites. Anonymous were hugely associated with WikiLeaks a website that leaked out information on people and organization (Wired). They are well known with the Occupy Wall Street movements. There have been horrible things at these movements such as riots and rapes. Anonymous can confuse millions of different people.

Anonymous has performed many things against America. The action that could have started it all was the hacking of government websites. The CIA website was hacked on the 10th of February 2012. However, it wasn’t only CIA that was attacked. The FBI, Foxconn, and many others were said to have been hacked before this (Thier). This gives Anonymous a title of power, the idea that they can do whatever they want. According to BBC news twitter is the place that Anonymous admitted to the attacks. The CIA website was not compromised, but this does make America look bad. 

Anonymous has not only targeted the United States for the government. In Finland Anonymous attacked the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre. Anonymous Finland claimed the responsibility via Twitter about these attacks (AFP 1). They stated they would keep the CIAPC website as long as they want. This shows that Anonymous has an interesting power. Anonymous performs very well at controlling this interesting power. They have a will and a reason for their actions. 

The AFP news article continues to state that there were legality issues with the Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay is a piracy website that gives programs for free. Countries such as Finland and many others have attempted to block The Pirate Bay (AFP 1). This website is greatly appreciated by Anonymous. In October it was under court order to block access to the Pirate Bay or they would face a 100,000 euro fine (AFP 1). Anonymous was attacking CIAPC for this website alone. It has been the goal of Anonymous to promote no internet censorship. They feel society should have more rights for their internet use.

In 2012, the popular file sharing website MegaUpload was shut down by the FBI. Anonymous became very mad over this takedown. Anonymous showed this anger by posted this statement on Twitter: “Megaupload was taken down w/out SOPA being law. Now imagine what will happen if it passes. The Internet as we know it will end. FIGHT BACK.” (Gohring). Gohring goes on to state that this Twitter message was connected to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Anonymous was right about the internet being taken down by this bill. The bill had power, however it never made it through government. MegaUpload is still down till this day and nothing is going to change the ban. 

Anonymous retaliated by also attacking the websites at their source. Anonymous is known for performing DDoS attacks. DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service attack. This is when multiple amounts of people flood a website all at once. This flood causes the server of the website to overload from all the traffic and temporarily crash (Segall). What makes this method of attacks so affective is that it does not require a breach or invasion of security (Segall). Anonymous celebrated this attack on Twitter that same afternoon.

The most recent story reported about anonymous is about Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay is located in the southeastern end of Cuba. The United States have received a lot of criticism from the treatment of the inmates at the main prison there (Wheatley). Anonymous threatened in early May of 2013 to make Guantanamo Bay go offline. The United States responded by shutting off the Wi-Fi. “In any case, the fact that Guantanamo chiefs decided to take the base offline themselves gives Anonymous a victory of sorts…” (Wheatley). They did achieve what they aimed for. Some Americans believe that the treatment there can be too harsh. I think Anonymous is still confusing about whether or not they are for the good or the bad.

Anonymous is known by people for many things. They have retaliated from unbelievable things in the world. These unbelievable things can be both good, and bad. The Guantanamo Bay case can be a good thing towards Americans perspective. Not everyone is the same when it comes to Anonymous. For example my friend they are always right in what they do, while my mother thinks they could be better. That is the type of group Anonymous can be. You can they are two faced monster, or a one faced leader. Anonymous will always stay the same no matter what people say. Anonymous will be a hacktivist group willing to fight for what they believe in. As states, We are Anonymous, We are Legion, We do not forgive, We do not forget, Expect us!