Anonymous

For the past several years, Anonymous has been creating chaos and mischief through a variety of mediums. They communicate in chat rooms, hack government/corporate/private websites, create memes, record videos, and stage protests/demonstrations. Despite the high magnitude of media attention anonymous has received, their motives are still unclear to the majority of the public, myself included. However, after reading Quinn Norton's "Anonymous: Beyond the Mask" series, I believe I have a clearer understanding of the group's construction, purpose, and goals. First, it's important to understand that Anonymous is not a hierarchical organization that relies on the concept of leaders and followers. Instead, Anonymous consists of individual anons that participate in equal opportunity conversations in chat rooms or through other means of communication. As a result of this loose/fluid type of organization, Anonymous's goals are constantly changing and evolving. However, one of their original and most important goals is confronting corruption, abuse of power, and hypocrisy through lulz. From the description Quinn provides, I view lulz as dark humor that draws attention to what Anonymous considers important problems. Often, lulz involves methods like prank phone calls, exposing targets' personal information on the web, and hacking/defacing websites. But, over time, Anonymous's goal changed from simply exposing the lulz through pranks into more moral/political activism, because the group wanted to find out if it could truly make a difference in the world. For instance, Anonymous has participated in revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the Occupy Wall Street movement. Their methods included providing virtual toolkits that allowed protesters/revolutionaries to fight censorship, drawing media attention to issues, and encouraging/offering advice to protesters online. I think Anonymous has succeeded in making a difference, even though their plans are not always successful. They make a difference simply by drawing attention to previously obscure issues/problems through media coverage, social networks, and their own media creations.

When examining the case of Anonymous, it appears that a certain level of anonymity is possible online, especially when participating in actions involving large numbers of people. As stated in Quinn's article, the authorities are not capable of identifying and punishing all of the millions of anons. However, they are perfectly capable of punishing a few. While many people view the concept of anonymity on the web as valuable and important, I do not believe it is completely possible. Browsers and websites constantly track web users movements, and the government/authorities can often easily find the personal information of anyone they wish. As a result, I do not think anyone should assume they will always remain safe and anonymous on the web.