[sorbus]

It would be like punching mist. Hell, if someone gets in jail for being part of anonymous (or, more accurately, for participating in a DDoS advocated by people under the banner of anonymous, or even more likely for having their wifi used by someone to participate in such a DDoS), it will just make all the others more angry. Fighting them would be like fighting tor, or bittorrent; highly distributed, highly decentralized, with no real command structure, and no allegiance to any single website (if one goes down or is monitored, they can always move elsewhere). It's not even an organization, in the old sense; you might as well say that slashdot or HN are organizations[1]. On the upside? Most of them, most of the time, don't care - except when someone makes them angry, they seem fairly passive, more interested in their own amusement than anything else (yes, I occasionally lurk on 4chan) - and even then, there are probably only a few thousand who actually participate in things like this [not that I have actual numbers to support this, but still - someone who's more interested could start lurking on IRC channels mentioned in image macros (such as the one in the article) and keep track of how many unique individuals show up].

Or you could always kill them off by destroying anonymity in the internet - force everyone to use their real names everywhere, to provide concrete linkages to real personalities. That's the only way to stop people from taking advantage of anonymity.

I'm sorry that this turned into a rant; it was originally going to be a lot shorter. I just kept on thinking of things to add, you see ... and I haven't ranted for a while.

[1] Lots of like-minded people, who read content on sites, post content, and occasionally take action/respond to that content, when it means something to them, or is so easy that there's no reason not to.

[jdietrich]

"It would be like punching mist."

Or, as Anonymous likes to put it -

"Trolling /b/ is like pissing into an ocean of piss"

/b/tards only have two real motivations, lulz and rage. The only intelligent response is to ignore them and hope they'll go away. It's like a bully who is stronger than you, anything you do in response will only enrage them or gratify them. The basic skillset anon has is the ability to hide behind proxies and withstand disruptions to their preferred comms channels. They're not particularly good at either, but their sheer numbers more than make up for it. Anon is just good enough at hiding to make it very laborious to hunt them down. When LEA resources are already completely inadequate to deal with terrorism and paedophilia, anon just isn't on the hit list. As regards deterrent, there are a number of /b/tards currently being prosecuted for their involvement in raids, but nobody really gives a shit. Most /b/tards just view them as dumbfucks who shouldn't have been so stupid as to get caught.

[itistoday]

The most amusing element of this story is how seriously it's being taken. That's because no one in the media discussing it knows or understands who these "/b/tards" are.

To see someone call them the "internet superheroes" is hilarious. If that is at all an accurate description, this is probably what their costume looks like:

http://bayimg.com/NAKiIaaCf

[jonny_noog]

I'm not wishing to argue that labeling Anonymous as a terrorist orgainsation would be a good thing (it would be monumentally retarded, which is why I also think there's a good chance it will happen at some point, I have little faith in government common sense these days) but this problem of how to handle these distributed non-orgnaisations that we see today is quite relevant to the way governments were/are trying to handle terrorism. I remember watching a documentary - I think it was called The Power of Nightmares - that stated amongst other things that after 9/11 the US Government basically began using laws originally designed to combat organised crime (Mafia et al) and applying them to these new, relatively flat, loosely organised and decentralised groups with very little success, primarily because there was no command structure similar what they had been used to dealing with.

Governments are still wrestling with what to do about this issue I think. It seems that the best solution they have so far come up with is reducing civil liberty and surveilling everyone. Not ideal from my POV.

Not to mention that as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

[ytinas]

Kudos for watching The Power of Nightmares, but did you miss the part where they pointed out [b]that these organizations are largely fictional and used as a tool by governments to appear more necessary than they are[/b]? The government isn't working on how to deal with fictional "flat, loosely organized and decentralized groups", it's working on how to make it look like we need government protection from the ultimate boogie man.

[jonny_noog]

No, I watched it all, just a long time ago and had forgotten most of it, to be honest. But I had not forgotten the overall thrust of the programme.

To try and clarify my view a bit, IMO the terrorist "groups" we hear about today are more like Anonymous than they are like the fictional villainous organisations one might see in a James Bond movie, i.e. they're not even really organisations at all, they're just individuals or tiny groups, barely associated with each other at best, who happen to have similar positions on certain issues. But I wanted to make this point without sounding like I thought Anonymous should be branded as terrorists, because I don't.

I get that after 9/11, the entire western world's governments went well overboard, amazingly allowing the military industrial complex to write their own cheques, using scare tactics to allow this to continue. I knew this full well long before I saw The Power of Nightmares. Before I say what else I have to say, I again don't wish my position to be misconstrued, I'm not advocating for the usual government policies, I'm aware of how insignificant the threat of terrorism is when compared to other threats of the day that face our society and I usually find myself pretty firmly on the social-libertarian side of just about any debate. As you say: "these organizations are largely fictional" (emphasis added) and I totally agree. I cannot reconcile any view that we do not need some degree of vigilance when it comes to (the no doubt few and far between) individuals and small groups that are out there and do wish to perpetrate terrorist acts.

So following on from this, yes, terrorism is an overinflated menace and it continues to be overinflated for numerous reasons, most of which revolve around certain areas of government and private industry partners who have vested interests in keeping the public scared in order to maintain power and profit. But some part of the overreaction to terrorism does come from a place of honestly thinking they're doing the right thing, misguided though they may be. Some very small part of the usual government reaction to terrorism is - in my mind - sanctioned and required because terrorism while a largely overinflated boogie man, does none the less still exist. I don't wish to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[Quarrelsome]

Yes it was, by Adam Curtis. Watch his other stuff too. The Trap is particularly good.

[wendroid]

>It would be like punching mist.

Ask Dmitriy Guzner his opinion on that, though you'll have to wait until he's released from prison. You might help him with his $37,500 fine too.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/17/scientology_ddos_gui... http://www.scribd.com/doc/23263853/Dmitriy-Guzner-Sentencing...

[ThinkWriteMute]

Yeah. One person.

[wendroid]

> if someone gets in jail for being part of anonymous ....

one is all it takes apparently