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Thursday, 27 January 2011

No Longer Anonymous

Anonymous
With Julian Assange’s trial set for February the 7th authorities have began to act upon potential Wikileaks ‘hacktivists’. As of this morning the police have arrested 5 people who they believe are behind a string of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on various websites on behalf of online group ‘Anonymous’. It is hoped that these arrests will discourage people from joining anonymous.

The accused consist of 3 teenagers and 2 men in their early twenties from London, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey and the West Midlands. All men have been charged in accordance with the ‘Computer Misuse Act’ and as such will have to remain in custody at their local police stations until approved safe for release.

Anonymous have always maintained that they are not formed of hackers, but instead of average internet using citizens who feel they have to do what the can to act out against perceived injustice. Police may also be making these arrest in regards to the alleged support Anonymous gave in regards to the violent Egyptian anti-government protests earlier this week.

- What are your thoughts on this?
- Will these arrests cause discourage members of Anonymous?
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8 comments:

  1. temptation27 January 2011 at 11:29

    i am not really sure about this whole thing...these people caused a damage and if there is a law that prohibit such acts it is right to arrest them.
    Do you know something about the fine they have to estimate

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  2. Rondariel27 January 2011 at 11:41

    Hm. Yes there is a law about this but really I think Police should have something better to do than arrest practically harmless teenagers who have done the internet equivalent of protesting.

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  3. Mais Tuhod27 January 2011 at 11:46

    looks like church of scientology has reached up to egypt lol

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  4. Obi-wan Mikenobi27 January 2011 at 11:48

    I'm not sure how they intend to proscute under the 'Computer Misuse Act' as I had to do a little research on this for work.

    The Computer Misuse Act is split into 3 distinct levels:

    1- The unauthorised access to a computing system
    2- Accessing a computer with the intent of causing further offences under the computer owners name
    3- Unauthorised modification of hard/software.

    I'm not sure which the police plan on claiming they have done, but level 1 is a maximum fine of £5000 whereas 2&3 equal up to 5 years imprisonment.

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  5. Al Frances27 January 2011 at 16:07

    Obi-wan has a point. The computer misuse act mainly refers to gaining unauthorised access to another machine. In a DDOS, the idea is to get authorised access to public information, but to do so en masse and repeatedly, to overload the system and/or cause the owner of the website bandwidth issues.

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  6. Obi-wan Mikenobi28 January 2011 at 02:49

    Exactly, the idea of being able to prosecute 1 or even 5 individuals for a stream of DDoS attacks is redundant.

    Surely you can not prosecute somebody for becoming part of a hive mind? I doubt the police will find anything in which to charge them with, I think it is all just scare tactics.

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  7. Anonymous30 January 2011 at 12:11

    I doubt it will discourage Anonymous.

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  8. World of Zero7 February 2011 at 10:35

    It will not beat anon, 5 people will hardly scare them. However anon does not help their case by attacking these sites.

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