Anonymous Combats Racism

The hacktivist group known as Anonymous has definitely been very busy this weekend.

There activities have included successfully attacking the Greek and Swedish governments websites and servers in response to their acceptance of ACTA.  Then there was the embarrassing hack of a conference call between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Scotland Yard where a cyber crime case was being discussed (rather ironic, don’t you think?!).

And now, now we have Anonymous fighting racism the world over.  The group targeted several websites affiliated with the white supremacist movement and stole personal information of customers and registered users of this website.

Having done so, by what the group claims is an effort to combat racism, they released all of the personal details of these people so that they were freely accessible on the Internet.

Full details on exactly what personal details were released are not yet confirmed but it is know that the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the individuals concerned have been published on the Internet which, unsurprisingly, has made them very angry and vocal on the issue.

This comes after a similar breach a couple of years ago where an insider leaked a list of British National Party members on the Internet, complete with their personal details.  Several of the people identified on this list were later dismissed from their jobs including a teacher and a police officer.  Police Officers in the UK are forbidden to be members of the British National Party.  After this leak, many people on the lists complained of receiving unwanted visits at their homes, threats through the post and nuisance phone calls.

Criticism has however been levelled at Anonymous by people who previously broadly support their cause.  They claim that some people have been included on the lists who are not white supremacists and have simply ‘possibly used some of these websites to have a look’.  These comments are however hard to believe as for their personal information such as name, address and telephone number to be stored on a server linked to these organisations, at the very least they must have ordered something or registered with the website.

Some civil liberties groups have claimed that it is a form of vigilante justice and should be discouraged.