8 Things That Anonymous, The Hacker ‘Terrorist’ Group, Has Done For Good

What is Anonymous?

For those of you who aren’t aware, Anonymous is a loosely associated hacktivist group. It originated in 2003, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. They’ve been referred to as a hacker ‘terrorist’ group, and it’s easy to think of them as a group of punk troublemakers, raising hell online.
Some have even debated whether their extra-legal protests should be labeled terrorist acts.
But, that would overlook some of the genuinely good deeds the group – whose members identify themselves with the Vendetta mask – has done.
Whether it’s retaliating against kiddie porn sites, helping to identify Chinese military cyber-attacks, or targeting the digital properties of various hate groups, Anonymous can sometimes be a force for good.

8 Things Anonymous Has Done For Good

1. In December 2006, Anonymous took down the website of white supremacist radio show host Hal Turner. The attach ended up with Turner paying some very expensive bandwidth bills, and dropping a lawsuit a year later.

2. Beginning of January 2008, Anonymous kicked off “Project Chanology”, its attack on the Church of Scientoly, a cult-like religion which allegedly imprisons its dissident members. They launched denial of service attacks against the organization’s websites, gamed the link-sharing site Digg to more prominently display anti-Scientology pages, and even physically protested – showing up in person – many church events.

3. Anonymous released user information from a major hacking forum in February 2011, and security firm Mandiant was able to use this data to link the Chinese military to cyber-attacks against the U.S. this year.

4. The Westboro Baptist Church is notoriously hateful and intolerant. Anonymous successfully took down the Westboro Baptist Church’s website in February 2011 in protest.

5. Operation DarkNet was the group’s campaign against child pornography in October 2011. Because pornographers were incredibly effective at using technology to hide themselves, Anonymous used technology to put them out of business.

6. On August 13, 2012, tensions were rising in Uganda as the country’s laws were increasingly intolerant on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues. Anonymous defaced two Ugandan government sites in protest.

7. The Steubenville rape case — in which images of the high school victim were disseminated in social media — obviously got a lot of attention earlier this year. Anonymous released incriminating video, tweets, and emails belonging to accused players on the school’s football team.

8. Just this month, Anonymous began “Operation Free Korea.” It’s the group’s effort to get “controversial leader Kim Jong-un to resign,” “install free democracy,” “abandon nuclear ambition,” and grant “uncensored internet access” to its citizens. On April 3, Anonymous released all 15,000 usernames and passwords for the government’s web services and threatened to wipe its data.