Anonymous hacks Australian Government in response to Internet censorship

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/operation-titstorm-hackers-bring-down-government-websites-20100210-nqku.html

by go37pi • 16 years ago

58 46 16 years ago

smh.com.au

tdm9112• 16 years ago

whilst i agree with their protesting of our governments unnecessary proposals on censoring australia, their methods are not helping.

a ddos attack on the government only gives the government more ammunition to paint the average protester as a criminal or someone who is trying to harm the government. a peaceful protest is far more effective.

itistoday5• 16 years ago

The notion that peaceful protest is always better than violent protest is simply historically bankrupt. There's a time and a place for both. To be honest, what they're doing, at least by revolutionary terms, might as well be considered "peaceful protest."

tdm9112• 16 years ago

the issue i have is that the government will tell the uniformed voting public that 'we', (those who protest these moves), are trying to harm the government through these hacking attempts.

to mrs and mrs family voter, this makes those who protest look bad and can sway their opinions on the censorship.

electromagnetic• 16 years ago

If they DDOS'd the server by massive amounts of complaints I'd consider it different. However, a straight out attack isn't going to do anything.

nzmsv• 16 years ago

Is there anyone on the net who thinks this filter is a good idea? Pretty much the only people who do are the ones who don't even use the Web, and just keep shouting that it's inherently evil. Oh, and the ones with the government contract to implement the filter.

When no one will listen to the people who will actually be affected by this, what other options are left?

jstevens85• 16 years ago

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/01/2433845.htm?si...

This is probably the only article I've read that is pro-filter.

"Oh, and the ones with the government contract to implement the filter."

The government body ACMA will maintain a list of blacklisted websites (which already occurs, although pointless at this stage). I understand it will be the responsibility of the individual ISPs to choose how to block those websites.

cabalamat• 16 years ago

> a peaceful protest is far more effective

Voting for these people would seem a good protest -- http://www.pirateparty.org.au/

esonica2• 16 years ago

I thinks its only a matter of time before Anonymous gets labelled a terrorist organisation to increase the counter measures / invasive laws that can be used against them.

Disrupting Goverment sites and services would be considered as an attack as per the Australian Terrorism definition:

(e) seriously interferes with, seriously disrupts, or destroys, an electronic system including, but not limited to

(i) an information system; or

(ii) a telecommunications system; or

(iii) a financial system; or

(iv) a system used for the delivery of essential government services; or

(v) a system used for, or by, an essential public utility; or

(vi) a system used for, or by, a transport system.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/slaa200245...

astrec• 16 years ago

No doubt, but the government has thus far proven itself inept with respect to technology let alone counter measures and risk mitigation.

A political assault is far more likely: "Anonymous are terrorists, therefore all who protest against government censorship are terrorists or supporters of terrorism."

Given we've already been declared pedophiles or supporters of pedophilia this is a bow barely drawn.

dirtbox2• 16 years ago

It wouldn't make any difference. Anonymous isn't a set group of hackers, it's quite literally anyone and everyone that wants to get involved at any moment for any cause whether for fun, such as sabotaging Time's most influential people list, to objecting en-mass to outlandish proposals such as these censorship laws.

Labelling Anonymous as terrorists is essentially labelling the general public as terrorists.

esonica2• 16 years ago

I feel it would. Imagine a script kiddie in Australia decides to join the DDOS attack on the government site.

He is easily traced by IP, and the Australian Federal Police come to visit.

His new 'rights', now that he is part of a terror group include:

Being held for up to nine days in detention without being formally charged.

Warrantless searches

The seizure of any objects associated with the terrorist act (this is quite a wide open definition, basically anything you own is up for grabs)

Also the AFP have some quite invasive computer techniques that are used to go wandering through your system before they knock on the door.

dtf• 16 years ago

So I guess Anonymous is more like a "brand name" for unconnected groups that perform terrorist actions and have a loosely shared ideology, rather than the title of any distinct, traditional faction having a centralised control and command. Yet it does seem that governments and certain sections of the media like to perpetuate the idea that there is a single shadowy entity called "Anonymous" responsible for all these actions. Anyone know the arabic word for anonymous?

sorbus• 16 years ago

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.

jonny_noog2• 16 years ago

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.

jdietrich2• 16 years ago

"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.

wendroid3• 16 years ago

>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...

vaksel• 16 years ago

To me anon is like the guys from fight club. If someone starts fighting them seriously, it's only a matter of time before they get cornered in a bathroom and given the whole "we are everyone..don't fuck with us" speech

pyre4• 16 years ago

They may have the whole 'we are everyone' thing going on, but there is no mastermind or organization. There are countless ideas such as this floated, but the only ones that actually happen are the ones that get a critical mass of people interested enough in them to participate and recruit others to participate.

Besides, the whole "we are everyone, don't fuck with us" thing was unrealistic. Do you really think that a government official wouldn't just notify the authorities in such a case?

pmccool• 16 years ago

I disagree. The list you mention is part of the definition of "terrorist act". The definition of "terrorist act" starts by saying:

terrorist act" means an action or threat of action where: (a) the action falls within subsection (2) and does not fall within subsection (2A)...

The list of things you cite is from subsection (2). However, subsection (2A) reads: (2A) Action falls within this subsection if it: (a) is advocacy, protest, dissent or industrial action; and (b) is not intended: (i) to cause serious harm that is physical harm to a person; or (ii) to cause a person's death; or (iii) to endanger the life of a person, other than the person taking the action; or (iv) to create a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public.

It's pretty clear to me that this sort of action falls within both subsection (2) (as you pointed out) and subsection (2A). The latter means it wouldn't be within the definition of "terrorist act".

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

http://www.aph.gov.au/

The Parliament of Australia site is down.

njharman• 16 years ago

This is so awesome. It's like I'm living in near future cyberpunk novel. With vigilante hacker groups fighting the evil and oppressive corpora^H^H^H^H^H^Hgovernment.

celoyd• 16 years ago

I was just thinking about Google v. China and PayPal v. India.

This kind of stuff is not necessarily new: think of the banana republics, the royal charter companies, Hearst and the Spanish-American War, and so on. Heck, the Boston Tea Party is comparable: a trollish, grandstanding intervention in government business.

What seems new is just how open it is: that Google, for example, appeals directly to the public when it argues with China. A hundred years ago, similar things might have happened, but I think only a few thousand people would have had such a clear view as everyone who reads a general-interest news site does now. It’s a lot harder to idealize power plays with our post-Watergate (if that’s the line) popular love of reliable muckraking.

joeyo• 16 years ago

William Gibson's prescience continues to frighten me. Unless the causality goes the other way, then it frightens me even more.

"Chaos, Mr. Who," Lupus Yonderboy said. "That is our mode and modus. That is our central kick."

Or, in the parlance of our times, they do it for the lulz.

teej• 16 years ago

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

monkeygrinder• 16 years ago

As an expat Aussie, the direction the government has taken has saddened, but not shocked me. This is a country famous for having what the Register used to call 'The world's biggest Luddite' Richard Alston appointed as Minister of the Digital Economy. There has been a change of government since those times, but not much seems to have changed.

While the idea of censoring certain content types like child porn may be seen as a good things, the issue is that the Net could become a tool of the government. The laws could extend to discrimination of minority groups - and Australia would become like China.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2008/gb2008...

This article points out that questions remain: there is a lack of detail on what will constitute illegal content, how decisions will be made, and how the filtering technology itself will work. It also said Australia is not the only Western democratic country to look at web filtering - Scandinavia and UK have web filtering. The Oz govt just failed to stem the tide of outrage and bad press.

I'm also against getting rid of anonymity on the net, ie forcing everyone to use their full name, for the simple reason that some rogue governments in some countries are persecuting groups and the internet can be a powerful tool for them. Imagine if Mandela and the ANC had the net in the 50s.

It's a hugely sticky issue though.

Anonymous hacks Australian Government in response to Internet censorship

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