Reads like an Anonymous PR piece, though more mature. If only Barrett Brown could write in a non-douchey way like this. It strikes me as odd that Anonymous doesn't seem to work with the EFF on critical issues... they have a lot of support and manpower that could be really useful in working to fight things like SOPA (instead of attacking websites, committing fraud, releasing personal information of random individuals and generally vandalizing systems & networks). Let's see where they are in 10 years.
You (and many others) fail to realize that Anonymous isn't an organization. It's an anarchistic collective with an extremely loosely defined set of common goals and values which anybody can consider themselves member of[1]. Anonymous doesn't have official positions, affiliations or representatives[2]. Each member acts on their own, and on many occasions they form groups and cooperate to start projects or operations, which sometimes become big (like Operation Payback for example).
In other words, I can assure you that members of Anonymous are working with or for the EFF. But Anonymous isn't something you can just declare to be supportive of the EFF. Nobody can.
[1] Member is actually a bad word for this, but I can't really think of a better term. There's no "membership" for Anonymous technically, there's just people considering themselves part of Anonymous.
[2] Neither are there some ominous "masterminds" behind Anonymous, as some people wrongfully assume.
Wouldn't an anarchistic collective imply that they all follow a specific political philosophy? I've never seen a wholly-accepted political agenda centered around anarchism that came from Anonymous. Do you have a source for this?
Anonymous is an autonomous or 'leaderless' collective. Yes, you're right that they have no 'official' positions, similar to the Occupy movement. But who organizes? Who makes press releases? Who builds network infrastructure? Who issues commands to the rest of the group? And who follows those plans, uses that network and executes the commands?
All you need is one strong personality that articulates the general urges of the group into a specific action they can all agree with and poof, you have yourself a leader and goals which can be worked toward. Every single 'operation' is essentially this. You can quibble over different factions or timing or independent values all you want but it's the same as how terrorist cells and abortion-clinic bombers work, though spread out over the internet and bombing websites instead. So don't tell me Anonymous can or can't declare or deny support (which it has many times in the past). This is the very fabric that Anonymous is built on: collective reasoning.
>Wouldn't an anarchistic collective imply that they all follow a specific political philosophy?
No, by no means. You confuse the organizational state of anarchy with the political philosophy of anarchism, which is basically the mistrust or disbelief into authority. Anonymous is the former, but its "members" are not necessarily the latter. There are all sorts of ideologies in Anonymous. If you want to name a single, shared point of belief in Anonymous, your best bet is probably "For the Lulz", and even that is debatable.
>All you need is one strong personality that articulates the general urges of the group into a specific action they can all agree with and poof, you have yourself a leader and goals which can be worked toward.
That's quite right (besides the "strong personality" bit, you really only need a person with a good idea and the ability to articulate it), but that still doesn't mean Anonymous has leaders. You completely fail to differentiate between the collective Anonymous and operations or projects which operate under the banner of Anonymous[1]. The relation between the two is one-sided - the latter affiliates with the former, not vice versa.
>but it's the same as how terrorist cells and abortion-clinic bombers work, though spread out over the internet and bombing websites instead.
Ho, are we falling back to guilt-by-association fallacies now? It is certainly true that operations affiliated with Anonymous have a tendency to operate very far inside the grey areas of legality and often even far beyond that. So are many grass-root or civil right movements. Declaring Anonymous as a whole equivalent to a terrorist cell because they break the law and use similar organizational methods as established enemy stereotypes is ignoring the aforementioned points. It's equally as low as declaring the Occupy movement as domestic terrorism because you disagree with them.
>So don't tell me Anonymous can or can't declare or deny support (which it has many times in the past).
No, it didn't. Persons, projects or operations affiliated with Anonymous did. Anonymous as a whole does not, nor will it ever have official support or opposition of anything, be it ideological positions, organizations or specific persons.
Besides, don't you tell me what Anonymous can or can't do - I've participated in or observed first hand a few projects and operations directly or indirectly affiliated with Anonymous myself over the last two years, and have been involved with the culture typically associated with them. I've seen live and in action what I am talking about. Do you?
[1] Which anything and everybody can, that's the whole point.
I'm a little too tired right now to comment on the rest but the comparison to abortion-clinic bombers is accurate. They basically pioneered the use of leaderless resistance in the United States (i'm not very familiar with historical use in the rest of the world). I wasn't making the suggestion that Anonymous hates abortion doctors if that's what you're inferring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance#Internet_...
The way you talk about 'Anonymous as a whole' is ridiculous. They don't do anything as a whole by definition. You have to consider their rhetoric in general and whether or not they accept actions taken by members of the group. If one guy says 'we hate Scientology' and the majority of people who identify with Anonymous agree with that guy in principle, guess what? The group has just made an implicit collective declaration. You can't identify as a member of a group and be an active participant in it and then claim no responsibility for the group's actions just because there's supposedly no leader or official stance on anything. You are an accomplice, or if you prefer, a willing participant by association. This wouldn't be the case if the entire idea of the group weren't that there is no central decision-making; you can distance yourself from a voice which no longer represents the majority, but you cannot distance yourself from that which cannot be identified unless you step outside of the ether entirely.
Which actions do you mean? The botnets, sqli sweeps, social engineering or meaningless skirmishes with the jester and other pseudo-blackhat douchebags? I never really paid attention to the early stuff due to a loathing for anything from 4chan. I'm no expert, but one doesn't need to be a scholar to watch kids at play.
