Anonymous

O presente artigo busca contribuir com as análises sobre as manifestações que ocorreram no Brasil nos meses de junho e julho de 2013, cujo estopim foi o aumento dos preços da passagem em São Paulo. Inicialmente com um caráter econômico as mobilizações sofreram rápida mudança assumindo aspectos diversos em diferentes regiões, prevalecendo, no geral, uma lógica moral nas reivindicações e a utilização da internet como meio de agitação e organização, processo que só pode ser entendido se situado no quadro histórico de modernização capitalista vivida pelo país na última década. O espontaneísmo das massas que foram às ruas surpreendeu até mesmo os agentes históricos tradicionalmente envolvidos com fenômenos do tipo, como sindicatos e partidos de esquerda, o que demonstra a necessidade dos mesmos inovarem não só suas políticas, mas também os métodos de ação para que se coloquem à altura dos desafios da luta de classes no século XXI, sem, no entanto, abdicarem das ricas contribuições herdadas dos séculos XIX e XX, como o marxismo-leninismo.

The past five years have seen a global flourishing of political initiatives in which tech-minded actors of different kinds (geeks, hackers, bloggers, online journalists, citizen politicians, etc.) have played prominent roles. From whistleblowing to online protests, from occupied squares to anti-establishment parties, these ‘freedom technologists’ can no longer be dismissed, particularly after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the surveillance abuses of America’s NSA and allied agencies. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork, Gabriella Coleman’s Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, is a riveting account of one these new collective actors: Anonymous.

The Guy Fawkes mask has become a symbol of the internet group Anonymous. This paper seeks to understand why this happened. The Guy Fawkes Mask takes us back to a 17th Century Catholic renegade, a 1980s graphic novel, a millennial movie based on the graphic novel, social media visual communication practicing internet memes on 4chan and YouTube, and physical demonstrations in public space. It will show how the Guy Fawkes Mask changed meaning during this process, and how this symbol works as a meaningful signifier in a digital age.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/279418299/The-Guy-Fawkes-Mask-as-Visual-Communication-of-the-Internet-Group-Anonymous

http://research.crocels.com/research/1564/the-guy-fawkes-mask-as-visual-communication-of-the-internet-group-anonymous-lars-konzack/

Uma das mais importantes potencialidades da Web 2.0 é permitir a difusão de ideias em comum, unindo pessoas que defendam as mesmas causas, consilidando o ciberativismo nos últimos anos. No Brasil um dos maiores exemplos foram os movimentos de junho de 2013, que ainda ressoam pela Internet e faz com que grupos ativistas tentem novas formas de mobilização tão efeitvas quanto a do ano anterior. O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar as publicações que possuam tons de humor (baseados no princípio do lulz, característico dos coletivos Anonymous mundialmente), realizadas no site de rede social Facebook próximo a jogos do Brasil na Copa do Mundo, a partir de quatro fan pages dos anons: AnonymousBrasil, Anonymous Brasil, AnonymousBr e Anonymous Rio.

The loosely organized hacktivist group “Anonymous” first appeared in major news outlets in 2008 after it targeted the Church of Scientology (Olson 2012). Anonymous is a set of individuals who engage in a diverse repertoire of collective action that uses the internet to combat those they believe are damaging the common good (Coleman 2013). This chapter looks at the formation and growth of Anonymous. The group’s tactics and involvement with various political issues, including the Arab Spring and the 2016 U.S. presidential election will be discussed. Yet preliminary analysis done seems to indicate that Anonymous is not a Social Movement Organization (SMO).

The present dissertation explores the collective identity of the Anonymous movement. This movement is characterised by the heterogeneity of its activities, from meme-crafting to pranks to activist actions, with a wide range of goals and tactics. Such heterogeneity raises the question as to why such a diverse group of people makes the decision to act under the same name. To answer this question, the concept of collective identity is applied, which describes how participants collectively construct the definition of their group.

Au cœur des marchés informels d’objets de récupération qui ont émergé sur les trottoirs du nord ouest de Paris depuis 2009, des inconnus parviennent à stabiliser suffisamment de confiance pour échanger. Ces échanges nouent des liens d’une étonnante plasticité que cet article propose d’analyser. Nous verrons que l’anonymat ouvre un espace de communication plus qu’il ne l’interdit, autorise une combinaison de registres relationnels que nous avons coutume de distinguer. Après une présentation des marchés et des différents tours qu’y jouent les échanges de paroles -comment la circulation des mots crée de la valeur- j’examine la complexité des liens qui se nouent au fil de ces conversations de trottoir et analyse enfin ce que font et défont les petites histoires que les gens racontent sur eux-mêmes en situation d’anonymat. Nous verrons ainsi comment s’improvisent des formes de régulation sociale en marge de l’institution dans lesquelles les récits joue un rôle clef.

This new edition of Tilly's excellent book is much more than a simple update. Castañeda very helpfully combines the historical and theoretical complexity of Tilly's original monograph with the accessibility of an undergraduate textbook to produce in one small space almost everything a course on social movements needs. The addition of new contemporary case studies-thoughtfully chosen and analyzed here and written collaboratively with Castañeda's students-brings to life Tilly's conceptual framework and provides a ready-made lesson plan to teach this framework for social movement analysis to graduate and undergraduate students. The cases are international in scope and include a focus on the role of social media and the internet where these new technologies have played important roles in movement mobilization. This new edition has also expanded the original chapter discussion questions and added a whole new set of research questions for the case studies that are guaranteed to generate good classroom discussions and interesting essays. Highly recommended! Rebecca Overmyer-Velázquez, Whittier College Charles Tilly (1929-2008) was one of our most insightful and imaginative analysts of social movements and related forms of political contention. His remarkable knowledge of contentious politics spanned centuries and continents. This accessible volume introduces readers to Tilly's ideas about the historical invention and global spread of social movements. And in this edition, Tilly's students (and their students) bring the story right up to the present, drawing on Tilly's concepts to make sense of collective protest in the twenty-first century, including the immigrant rights movement, the Indignados and Occupy movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement. This volume will interest readers new to social movements as well as practiced scholars. Jeff Goodwin, New York University This new edition of Social Movements builds on Charles Tilly and Lesley J. Wood's now-classic work. Tilly's position on what social movements are, how they operate, and why-and crucially, how they relate to other kinds of political action and what social movements are not-as ever provides needed clarity in an otherwise often-muddy field. Through a case-study approach, Ernesto Castañeda now builds a new story onto the already-impressive edifice: a guide for contemporary students to how Tilly's approach can help us to make sense of what's going on in contemporary movements, and also to see what might be changing in the landscape of contentious politics. John Krinsky

Anonymous è una ricerca nata durante il mio progetto di tesi triennale.
L'obiettivo progettuale era di creare una nuova identità visiva per il gruppo hacker che ha scelto l'anonimato come forma di protesta e protezione.

Il saggio che accompagna il progetto pratico è una ricerca sul movimento, dalla nascita del verbo "to hack" fino alla campagne più famose dei gruppi Anon,
La ricerca vuole mettere in luce i principi del movimento, l'etica e le realtà parallele a questo mondo, attraverso un fenomeno più grande come l'hacktivismo, opere e performance nel ramo della Net Art, passando per temi come il concetto di anonimato, al grande movimento Open source.

Problematizing mainstream depictions of hacktivists and Anonymous as ‘vigilante heroes’, ‘malicious pranksters’, and ‘global threats’ (Klein, 2014), as well as incumbent securitization responses to activism online, the present study aims to develop an articulate and in-depth understanding of (h)activist identities online by examining hacktivist’s use of ‘alternative media’ (Lievrouw, 2011). As an explorative analysis, this research focuses on one Anonymous affiliated community, utilizing six in-depth interviews and a qualitative content analysis of 96 blog posts. Ultimately, the findings indicate that two types of blog posts are generated by the community, those that denote, sustain, and mobilize hacktivist actions, and those that supplement these posts through educative elements: ‘direct action’ and ‘meta-action’, respectively. Within these categories, participant’s experiences and existing literature indicate the community’s nuanced identity draws similarities to prevailing research on hacking, hacktivism, Anonymous, and activists over-all, yet differences which reflect contextual factors and broader trends. In conclusion, the author details four succinct and indispensable qualities of the community surrounding the collective and individual’s revolutionary capacities, conscientious yet leery tendencies, and ironically, the notion of a ‘structured swarm’. These explorative conclusions ultimately demand more comprehensible studies which appreciate the geo-cultural and language differences within these communities, and the relationship of these numerous identities to other marginalized communities worldwide.

This course explores the ethical issues inherent in our use of digital and online media. We will engage a range of current issues and topics through the application of important moral theories, attending to how new technologies often challenge what we know about morality, virtue, and the good life. We will use the analysis of case studies to encourage reflection and discussion over contemporary issues in digital ethics. Topics to be covered include the ethics of hacking, Anonymous operations, online privacy, blogging ethics, online shaming and activism, revenge pornography, online free speech, trolling, social media and virtue, WikiLeaks and issues in online journalism, as well as other contemporary topics dealing with digital media.

• Provides a multidisciplinary approach to Cyber Warfare analyzing the information technology, military, policy, social, and scientific issues that are in play.
• Presents detailed case studies of cyber-attack including inter-state cyber-conflict (Russia-Estonia), cyber-attack as an element of an information operations strategy (Israel-Hezbollah,) and cyber-attack as a tool against dissidents within a state (Russia, Iran)
• Explores cyber-attack conducted by large, powerful, non-state hacking organizations such as Anonymous and LulzSec
• Covers cyber-attacks directed against infrastructure such including but not limited to water treatment plants, power-grid and a detailed account on Stuxent"""

Twitter is a common tool in the hacktivism of Anonymous operatives seeking to reduce the amount of evil in the world. This chapter examines two Anonymous operations to elucidate the uncertain terrain of Twitter ethics: "OpAntiBully," a concerted effort to harass and shame alleged online bullies, and "OpPedoFear," an operation to identify (through civilian online sting operations) and publicly shame putative pedophiles. These two cases are interesting for those studying communication ethics because they take advantage of Twitter’s incredibly responsive and interconnected forms of communication. Furthermore, both cases employ “ doxing ” (d0xing), the revealing of private identifying information of online selves that are accused of nefarious online and offline conduct, as a means for pursuing offline revenge.

The Disputation between the Body and the Worms is a 15th century example of debate poetry. It showcases a debate, a dialectical jousting between two entities that are on two opposite sides of a same issue. Here, it is obviously the body and the worms. The first one is depicted as dead, ugly, in full decay. The second are responsible for this change, as they recklessly eat the body, while boasting about their own virtues. More generally speaking, this is how the text takes shape. We first find a framing narrative, displaying a leading character – probably a man – going on a rural retreat, away from mankind and the corruption of the city. He finds a church, goes in there to pray, and then finds himself in the middle of a dream sequence. That sequence is the debate in itself. The text then ends on the framing narrative again, the narrator telling us about his encounter with an old but holy man that has told him to write all of this down for people to read.
The layers are thus multiple, through the framing narrative, that takes place in a set and definite time, and the framed narrative, that takes place at an uncertain, blurry moment in time. More than that, the characters are numerous, especially considering their duality: body and soul. This will thus be of interest to us. We plan on taking a look at the journey that the characters – mainly the pilgrim from the start, as well as the dead lady – embark on among this text, and to closely analyze their various paths of change and moral maturation. Because their growth cannot be overstated: the man, “he who saw the vision ”, as a witness, will now be converted to a virtuous life; the woman, through her own experience of Death, goes from initial fear and disgust towards acceptance and lasting change.

In this working bibliography I bring together a large set of (mostly academic) references on a specific category of political actor that I am calling ‘freedom technologists’, namely those tech-minded individuals, groups and organisations who have a keen interest in the democratic and emancipatory potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In other words, freedom technologists combine technological and political notions and skills to pursue greater Internet and democratic freedoms, which they regard as being inextricably entwined (Postill 2014). Far from being techno-utopians or deluded ‘slacktivists’ (Morozov, 2013, Skoric, 2012), in my experience most freedom technologists are in fact techno-pragmatists, that is, people who take a very practical view of the limits and possibilities of new technologies for political change. This working bibliography is part of current research towards my forthcoming book Freedom Technologists: Digital Activism and Political Change in the 21st Century (working title). Further suggestions are always welcome via email or via the comments section.

This dissertation wishes to contribute to the sociological debate on protest movements by developing the notion of ‘contentious branding’ as a reflection emerging from the digital exploration of two empirical cases that challenge social movement theory: Occupy and Anonymous. The research was orientated by three interrelated questions operating at a methodological, empirical and theoretical level: How can digital research remediate the study of social movements? What sort of assemblages are articulated around the contentious brands Occupy and Anonymous? How does a branding perspective add to or amend traditional theories of social movements? The argument is built on a complexity-orientated epistemological background, interweaving insights derived from assemblage theory, actor-network theory, socio-semiotics and second-order cybernetics. The empirical research has been undertaken by means of digital techniques: Application Programming Interfaces of popular social media (mostly, Twitter and Facebook) have been pulled for data; the #Occupy and #Anonymous hashtags have been employed as research devices to set the limit of the analysis; and the datasets have been explored mostly by means of network analysis and computer-assisted content analysis techniques. The core contribution of the dissertation is to introduce and develop, within the field of social movement theory, the notion of ‘contentious branding’, to cope with the theoretical challenges highlighted by the empirical sections. A branding perspective on social movements not only fits these specific cases better: it intends to provide an epistemological and methodological device, to sustain a non-essentialist understanding of social movements, especially in the cases of digitalization of empirical phenomena and research methods.

Full text:
http://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=a293284c-257a-43d2-a26d-e5cb3eaa4e8d

Ensayo Palabras clave:
1. Hacker 2.Hacking 3.Hacktivismo 4. Democracia 5.Libertad de expresión

Resumen: En este ensayo se abordará la importancia del grupo de hacktivistas Anonymous, en un contexto globalizado y donde las nuevas tecnologías y el internet se hacen parte de nuestra cotidianidad. Se abordará de forma descriptiva los diferentes tipos de Hackers, su concepción, los fundamentos ideológicos de sus acciones, los ciclos de protesta, la fase latente del movimiento, sus oportunidades políticas, así como también los repertorios que se han visto durante sus diferentes apariciones en el medio internacional.

Abstract In this essay the importance of the group Anonymous hacktivistas be addressed in a global context where new technologies and the Internet become part of our daily lives. Will be addressed in a descriptive way the different types of Hackers, its conception, the ideological foundations of their actions , cycles of protest, the latent phase of the movement, its political opportunities , as well as the codes that have been seen during his various appearances the international environment.

Bridging gaps among the history of the labor movement, cinema studies, art history, media activism, and hacking, Improper Names examines the contentious politics and the struggles for the control of a shared alias from the early nineteenth century to the age of networks.

This thesis examines the extent to which new practices of principled acts of illegal resistance that involve the use of digital technologies can fruitfully be interpreted as new forms of civil disobedience. The study focuses on three kinds of digital acts: whistleblowing, anonymous hacktivism, and radical initiatives to open access to academic publications. Through a detailed reconstruction of Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, some of Anonymous’ distributed denial of service (DDoS) actions, and Sci-Hub’s and LibGen’s academic piracy, the thesis interrogates a large variety of positions from traditional liberal theories to more recent radical democratic accounts of civil disobedience. The investigation centers on the problems of whether civil disobedience can take place within and against private organizations such as corporations, if it necessarily excludes anonymous actions, and if property damage and other forms of somewhat violent actions are unavoidably incompatible with civility. The author offers an interpretation of the ‘civil’ of civil disobedience not as decorum, reasonableness, or respect for the law, but as the enactment of a broadly construed citizenship that is not limited to those officially recognized as citizens of a state. The notion of performative citizenship is proposed as a non-substantive essentially pluralist notion of civility that, together with the conditions of non-militarism and self-restraint, makes the radical democratic minimal definition of civil disobedience better-suited to account for ongoing transformations of the practices of contestation due to their increasing globalization and digitalization.

¿Hasta qué nivel le es posible al ser humano esconder un secreto dentro de la Gran Telaraña Mundial? El centinela digital cuenta una historia atrapante, en la que la intriga, el suspenso y los acontecimientos inesperados son los actores principales. Un documento ultrasecreto es descubierto dentro de un sitio web privado y revela que el gobierno, a través de la misteriosa organización MIRAR (acrónimo de una oscura frase), controla el ciento por ciento de lo que ocurre en Internet.A partir de entonces comienza, por medio de elaborados acertijos y mensajes ocultos, una guerra cibernética entre dos organizaciones antagonistas. Lo que está en juego no es ni más ni menos que la posibilidad de la libertad, la independencia y la neutralidad en la red de redes.En el medio, la supercomputadora ATENEA, construida con técnicas de computación cuántica e inteligencia artificial, juega un papel determinante en la gestación de una conciencia colectiva.

Mi página de autor en Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nelson-Javier-Ressio/e/B07LDM8V9P

Todas mis publicaciones en ScriBD.com: https://es.scribd.com/user/983076/Nelson-J-Ressio

A kötet szerzője Juhász Péter, aki számos, őstörténeti témájú tanulmánya, illetve könyve után egyik legfontosabb hazai történeti forrásunkat vonta vizsgálat alá. A könyv Anonymus honfoglalás-történetének a legújabb kutatási eredményeken alapuló, újszerű értelmezését nyújtja. A két Álmos dux (fejedelem, illetve herceg) fiainak „honfoglalása” tárul az olvasó elé, egy 12. századi elitváltásnak a 9. század végi honalapítás fiktív történetével elmesélt históriája. Részletesen bemutatásra kerülnek a mű 1160-70-es években aktuális bel- és külpolitikai összefüggései és szintén e korra jellemző európai irodalmi kontextusai is. A szerző javaslatot tesz a Gesta írójának régóta keresett személyére is. A témában érdekelt kutatók mellett a medievisztikával foglalkozó egyetemisták, de a téma iránt érdeklődő nem szakmabeli olvasó közönség is haszonnal forgathatja.

The main task of this paper is to analyze the online collective known as Anonymous as a case study using the theoretical framework of traditional social movement studies. I outline this framework in the literature review section of this paper as nine distinct characteristics, each pertaining to a different aspect of social movement research. My purpose in doing so is to argue that Anonymous is part of a larger new social movement, which I call the Freedom of Information movement, as well as to show how its unique characteristics which have resulted from globalization and new digital technologies are making it necessary for sociologists to update and expand upon our existing theories and concepts of social movements. Some of this work has already begun. There have been several, though not many, studies of online networks, cyberactivism, hacktivism, digital repertoires of contention, cyber diffusion, and decentralized organizational forms of online movements. Through a combination of historical and qualitative content analyses of news articles and archival materials associated with Anonymous, I am attempting to build upon and expand this new and growing paradigm concerning online social movements and digital forms of contention.

This article offers a reading of internet-based activism or 'hacktivism' as a phenomenon that cannot be confined to the instrumental use of information technologies. It focuses on a subset of hacktivism – the distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack for political ends – that aims at making an internet host unavailable to its intended users. Since the early 2000s these attacks have been increasingly conducted by means of botnets – networks of infected computers that send bogus requests to a target website without the consent of their users. The capacity of botnets to engender a more-than-human politics is analyzed from two distinct theoretical angles. First, drawing from Deleuze and Guattari, the hacktivist DDoS is discussed as an assemblage of signifying and a-signifying components, voluntary and involuntary actions. Second, Gilbert Simondon's notions of transindividuation and transduction allow for a conceptualization of hacktivism as a sociotechnical assemblage with a high degree of indetermination.

Applied rigorously, philosophical conceptions of subversion call the very possibility of politically subversive Blockbuster cinema into question. For political theorist Johannes Agnoli, for example, subversion entails a critical reflection about oppressive social orders as much as an emancipatory political practice directed towards their transformation. While the commercial orientation and mass address of mainstream Hollywood film render the existence of politically subversive blockbusters in this narrow sense highly unlikely (as subversive films would not only need to tell stories about political subversion, but also actively participate in social conflicts), 2006’s V for Vendetta , which adapts Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s 1980s graphic novel of the same name, represents an interesting counterexample. Operating within the commercial framework of blockbuster cinema, the film relates the protagonist’s fight against the fascist government of a near-future Britain and, by doing so, promotes an (problematic) idea of theatrical performance as a model of subversive political activity. Beyond these thematic concerns, however, the film produced a lasting impact on the iconography of anti-authoritarian protest movements worldwide by disseminating and popularizing the image of the ‘Guy Fawkes mask’ as a symbol of political activism, which, in the years after the film’s release, came to be used by the ‘hacktivist’ collective Anonymous, activists of the Occupy movement, and street protesters at Istanbul’s Gezi Park (to name only a few). This paper explores  V for Vendetta’s function for the spread of the Guy Fawkes image and argues that the film’s depiction of subversive activity, along with the iconic staging of its masked protagonist, made the image available to activists and started a process of ‘viral’ serialization in which it was spread across different media over an extended period of time. This serialization followed and continued a series of earlier incarnations of the same image, and derived its power from the mask’s stylized and immediately recognizable character, i.e. from an iconicity that lends itself both to commercial logics of branding and to a use within the context of political activism.

This is an investigation into the case of Mitchell Henderson seen in the light of heroes and villains. The MySpace page commemorating Hendersons suicide was subject to a form of activity known as “trolling”, of such intensity that Henderson became an iconic figure, a “meme” in the troll community known as “Anonymous.” Examination of this singular event leads eventually to a wider discussion of  what it means to be a hero and whether or not Anonymous should be considered villains, heroes, tricksters or vigilantes. Furthermore, it attempts an understanding of what  Anonymous are, how they operate, and insight into their distinctive Internet culture.

http://research.crocels.com/research/1555/an-hero-and-the-trolls-lars-konzack/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/279418300/An-Hero-and-the-Trolls#scribd

The Anonymous hacktivist movement began in earnest in 2008 with Operation Chanology. Over the years and through various operations and through various factions, Anonymous has espoused freedom of information and become an advocate for individuals’ rights and protections. In late 2012, an Anonymous member KY Anonymous began a series of operations under the banner of KnightSec. These Justice Operations went after many individuals and groups but culminated with operations in support of a victim of a rape and against the rapists from Steubenville, Ohio. Using Case Study analysis of collected news articles, blogs, social media accounts and such, an analysis of the KnightSec movement was conducted. Though the movement eventually collapsed, valuable lessons of social media use by many participatory parties were concluded. Social media, an integral part of all actors in the events, was the facilitator for nearly all communications as well as archivist for all actions, legal, illegal and those in between.

This paper discusses the ways in which affect and the political aesthetics of Anonymous can be linked to possibilities of arousing affect, create unity and mobilise resistance; invite public participation in public affairs. In the culture of Anonymous, political resistance is not considered as limited to rational tactics nor in accordance with the principles of intellectual/cognitive “reason” (alone), but interplayed with “the lulz” – a specific kind of political passion – that works as an affective political force; capable of inspiring an alternative (radical) imaginary. In this context, the “lulz” and the aesthetics of Anonymous are reflected in strategies of engagement deployed to challenge the hegemonic discourses promoted by political economy. Following Mouffe (2013), we argue that there is no political equality (plurality) without conflict and without conflict no constructive political dialogue. In this line of argument, we are also influenced by the Spinozan perspective on affect as ability for action and change.

Keywords: Anonymous, Affect, Aesthetics, Hacktivism, Passion, Lulz, Social Media, Power, Surveillance, Resistance

Ferrada Stoehrel, Rodrigo and Simon Lindgren. 2014. For the Lulz: Anonymous, Aesthetics and Affect. TripleC - Communication, Capitalism & Critique: Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 12 (1): 238-264.

The internet has provided individuals alienated from the democratic system with a new means for political participation. Such online engagement takes the form of cyberactivism or e-activism. This thesis contributes to the wider academic understanding of cyberactivism through an analysis of the decentralised virtual community, Anonymous. Anonymous possesses a number of characteristics which serve to differentiate it from similar activist communities: a collective identity, anonymity in interaction, no registration process, no overarching hierarchy or authoritative body, horizontal communications, and a memetic cultural base. The thesis presents the first scholarly conceptualisation of Anonymous’s development, a significant element in contextualising the community’s political behaviour. Ultimately the thesis argues that Anonymous engages politically by exhibiting and facilitating multiple political forms. When analysed in combination which the relevant literature, the research points to a distinct relationship between Anonymous’s participant base and the corresponding political approach.

This chapter aims to take a closer look at the issue of user control online, through the prism of anonymity and responsibility. It does so by examining the recent events which were part of “operation payback”, initiated by the online organization/collective/gathering “Anonymous”. In response to several companies’ perceived transgressions, Anonymous has commenced an attack on their public domain servers. In addition, they provided sympathetic web users with a free and easy to use DDoS tool to facilitate the attacks. This paper draws the distinction between Anonymous and hackers, and compares the relation of the two groups with the powers that be.  The aim is to show how multitude of varying factors have led to increased resistance to Anonymous because they are not hackers, and how they in fact may contribute to limiting user control online rather than empower it.