Anonymous (group)

"In the past few months, our collective has been organizing the operation known as Operation Blackout. Part of the operation's purpose was to alert the people of the coming bill that was to be called the Stop Online Piracy Act."

"This Act would give Congress the power to censor any internet website they wish without consent from the Citizens of the United States. This act would've also had the power to jail any person who infringed on its new copyright law for an equivalence of five years. This copyright law would've had the power to destroy social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Video gameplay and free movies would cease to exist."

"However, Operation Blackout was a success. As a collective, we've managed to spread the word and alert the masses. Internet giants such as Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit became hand-in-hand with us as we all managed to make an impact on the decisions of our, "free government". But as we've seen with Megaupload, the government may not need a bill to be passed to get their way. Other operations we've conducted over this time period have awaken the people to the nightmare that is the United States Government. Sections 1031 and 1032 of the National Defense Authorization Act have been ratified. Yet we face new threats."

"The United States Government is seeking to pass the Cyber Security Act of 2012. This act is as Orwellian as it sounds; it will endanger our collective and we will not stand by and watch while this government of lies prepares to take away our freedoms. The National Security Agency insists on labeling us as a leaderless, terrorist organization. The question is, "who do we terrorize?". Can it possibly be that the United States government is truly scared of us? Nevertheless, The time for action is now."

"Our collective has realized, along with many United States citizens, that the current government is no longer functional. Our economy is unstable, our representatives uncooperative, and our system, destroyed."

"We are not calling upon the collective to deface or use a distributed denial of service attack on a United States government agency website or affiliate. We are not calling upon the people to occupy a city or protest in front of a local building. This has not brought on us any legislative change or alternate law. It has only brought us bloodshed and false criticism. For the last 12 years, voting was useless. Corporations and lobbyists are the true leaders of this country and are the ones with the power to control our lives. To rebuild our government, we must first destroy it'."

"Our time for democracy is here."

"Our time for real change is here."

"This is America's time, to have its own revolution."

"Therefore, 'Anonymous has decided to openly declare war on the United States government. This is a call to arms. We call upon the Citizens of the United States to stand beside us in overthrowing this corrupted body and call upon a new era. Our allegiance is to the American people, because they are us, and we are them."

"Operation V, engaged."

"We are Americans."

"'We never Forgive."

"'We never Forget'."

"To the United States government, it's too late to expect us."

"Citizens of the world, Anonymous has observed for some time now the trajectory of justice in the United States with growing concern. We have marked the departure of this system from the noble ideals in which it was born and enshrined. We have seen the erosion of due process, the dilution of constitutional rights, the usurpation of the rightful authority of courts by the "discretion" of prosecutors. We have seen how the law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control, authority and power in the interests of oppression or personal gain. We have been watching, and waiting. Two weeks ago today, a line was crossed. Two weeks ago today, Aaron Swartz was killed. Killed because he faced an impossible choice. Killed because he was forced into playing a game he could"

"We are #Anonymous We are involved in the biggest Anonymous op ever seen. That being said, we are worried that some governments will indeed see us as a threat and create some scenario to make us look bad (false flag). We only want peace, not war. We've been in the limelight before. We've made the news plenty of times, but never anything like what we are experiencing right now. We obviously know governments around the globe are watching what we are doing. Many of these governments have experienced our shenanigans. We abhor violence. We are anti-war. We are against police brutality. We have raised our fists in the air to stand against aggressor's time and time again. We would never choose to hurt anyone physically. Understand this and know this if any government says otherwise. Remember us when various powers turn their attention towards us, because it will happen. We can change the world for the better. That has always been the idea. Ideas are bulletproof."

"Amid the chaos, a hacktivist that hadn’t been seen in years made a return: Anonymous. The decentralised hacktivist collective known for their operations against the Church of Scientology, ISIS and during the Arab Spring has seemingly re-emerged, issuing a video message to the Minneapolis Police Department. In the video, released using the traditional imagery associated with Anonymous—a Guy Fawkes mask in the style of the film V for Vendetta and a distorted voice reading out the message... "This week’s brutal killing of George Floyd... is just the tip of the iceberg in a long list of high profile cases of wrongful deaths at the hands of officers in your state..." the message read."

"Anonymous is back in the headlines with claims that another attack on a U.S. police website is linked to the hactivist group. In the weeks since Anonymous hackers threatened Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), that it would “expose your many crimes to the world,” speculation has been rife as to whether the group has returned, or is it just others corralling the “brand.” That speculation will now intensify with these new claims that it has struck again. The target this time appears to be the Atlanta Police Department, with local media reports on Sunday that its website had been taken offline following the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks...June 12... after he had fallen asleep in a Wendy’s drive through lane..."

""It's been the better part of a decade since the hacktivist group Anonymous rampaged across the internet, stealing and leaking millions of secret files from dozens of US organizations. Now, amid the global protests following the killing of George Floyd, Anonymous is back—and it's returned with a dump of hundreds of gigabytes of law enforcement files and internal communications. On Friday of last week, the Juneteenth holiday, a leak-focused activist group known as Distributed Denial of Secrets published a 269-gigabyte collection of police data that includes emails, audio, video, and intelligence documents, with more than a million files in total."

"It's the largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies," Emma Best, cofounder of DDOSecrets, wrote in a series of text messages. "It provides the closest inside look at the state, local, and federal agencies tasked with protecting the public, including [the] government response to COVID and the BLM protests... Due to the size of the dataset, we probably missed things," Best concedes. "I wish we could have done more, but I'm pleased with what we did and that we continue to learn." Best adds that the group pruned more than 50 gigabytes of data out of the files before publication out of what they describe as an abundance of caution, and will continue to scour that data for anything in the public interest that the group may publish later. Best notes, however, that DDOSecrets published the financial information knowingly, arguing that it could be correlated with other information to further expose police behavior in ways that serve the public interest. "The potential of the data, especially in the long run and when correlated with other datasets, outweighs any downsides to allowing the public to examine it," Best argues. They also have no qualms about publishing the personally identifiable information of police officers. "The public has an interest in the identities of public servants," they write."

"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was hit with a new federal indictment on Wednesday accusing him of conspiring with hackers, including the group “Anonymous.”"

"Neat labels elude those commentators who have sought to categorize Anonymous as an entity. With little consistency, commentators have referred to Anonymous as hackers, activists, vigilantes, a movement, etc. Perhaps then, Anonymous itself is the best authority on what Anonymous is. On its website, Anonymous describes itself as “an internet gathering” rather than a “group.” Moreover, Anonymous states that it has “a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives.” “Very loose” might be an understatement. The group is open to anyone and is often rife with dissent over its messages and operations, which is unsurprising given that Anonymous does not utilize formal procedures for conducting its operations. In August 2011, an Anonymous member spoke to the media about this process:"

"In one sense the actions of Anonymous are themselves, anonymously and unaccountably, censoring websites in response to positions with which they disagree. The goals of many Anonymous activists are a free and open internet, but the regular and blanket denial-of-service campaigns could easily be counter-productive if pro-Sopa and pro-Pipa advocates can portray these actions as representative of those who are against this legislation."

"In the UAE it is now illegal to wear a Guy Fawkes mask, the iconic symbol of the international hacktivist collective known as Anonymous. The clear implication of the new law is that the UAE government fears the power of the mask, and the Anonymous collective the mask represents."