Friday, January 28, 2011

Anonymous Playing a Role in Egypt/Tunisia?

Well, now, THIS I hadn't expected. But, according to the Guardian, the notorious "hacktivist" group Anonymous are playing a role in the Tunisian/Egyptian/Algerian crises, by providing anonymization tools to in-country protesters and unleashing DDoS attacks on various governmental networks and websites. There's more detail here.

It reminds me a bit of the problem (and promise) of WikiLeaks. The organization is far from perfect, and governments are constantly complaining that the very organizations that demand their transparency are utterly secretive and anonymous themselves. But, honestly, they kind of have to be. Egypt's riots aside, there is still an enormous difference in power between regular people and the state. Anonymity and secrecy may be the only way that any sort of check on state power can possibly function.

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