Joshua Hitz
freshman from
Staunton, Ill.
Without the Internet, the world would be very different and, depending on your personal view, this is a good or bad thing. Many people believe there is too much information on the Internet, most being conspiracy theorists, while others use this power of the Internet and computers to fight for justice, one of the prime examples being the movement in Libya all those months ago.
Yes, we all know that Facebook and Wikileaks had a huge place in the liberation, but what if I were to tell you that Facebook was threatened, mortally threatened, back in August and by who else, our old internet vigilantes Anonymous.
For those of you who don’t know who this alleged “Anonymous” is, a brief back-story is in order. Simply put, Anonymous is, as it states, an unknown group of Internet hackers now called Internet vigilantes, who have been the cause of multiple different government and business website hacks, including events code named Operation Orlando, 2009 Iranian election protests, and the 2006 and 2007 Habo raids.
If this were a lecture course I would go into detail about what those events are, but I’m sure it would be more fun for all you readers to check on the details yourselves. What I will talk about are the threats against Facebook that I promised as well as the group’s threat against the drug Zeta’s drug cartel.
Back in August, a viral YouTube video allegedly from Anonymous had a “Microsoft Sam” program state that was time to “kill Facebook” on Nov. 5. You didn’t read wrong, last weekend, Facebook was supposed to die thanks to Anonymous, but for those of you who haven’t checked your pages in the past week, it’s still going strong.
The video states that your personal information was being sent to Syria and Egypt, rather than being kept private as we all would have hoped.
The video clearly states that on the fifth of November, the group would kill Facebook, this date used most likely as a reference to the comic and movie the persona of the group is based on, “V” or “V for Vendetta.”
As time came closer to November, another message, this time on Twitter, stated that Anonymous did not mean they would end Facebook, rather they were sending a message to the public to cancel their accounts in protest, but this is a hypocritical gesture from their parts, as they say in their video that “Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook, regardless of your privacy settings and deleting your account is impossible. All your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time…” So whether it was a cop out, or a hoax, Anonymous never went through with the attack on Facebook, and to my disappointment it still runs today. When I say this, I don’t mean I hate Facebook, far from it. I use Facebook, granted not as often as other people and not as often as I used to, but with such a grand claim as to kill the multimillion or billion making website, defiantly intrigued me to the point of saying to myself, “Will they go through with it?” So while this attack was a letdown, their other attack on the drug cartel was not all talk.
On Oct. 6, an alleged member of Anonymous was kidnapped by the Zeta drug lords, and the group threatened the drug cartel to release him/her or they would post personal information dealing with the drug lords.
In due time information was released, though it is untold whether arrests have been made, and even the name of Gustavo Rosario Torres, a former Tabasco state prosecutor, has been tarnished due to the alleged involvement with the Zetas.
To sum up these events, I do believe Anonymous, despite their wimping out on Facebook, is a force to be reckoned with. Love them or hate them, they’re here, and if you’re the government or a big business, they’re coming for you. “Remember, remember the fifth of November.”