![]() Those words are heads on pikes, warning you that deeper in it gets much worse. The language is there to keep out the straights. Terms like nigger and faggot are common, but not because of racism and bigotry-though racism and bigotry are easily found on the /b/ board. Nearly any appetite is acceptable, and nearly any weakness, technical or human, is exploited. "/b/tards," as denizens of the board call themselves, create incest porn and fantasize about beating women even as they also discuss data visualization strategies and trade coding tips. To be noticed, you have to be as shocking as possible, and with the notable exception of child porn, anything goes. On /b/, posts have no named authors, and nothing is ever archived. In particular, the group rose up out of 4chan's /b/ board, the one reserved for "random" discussions. The story of Anonymous starts on 4chan, an enormously popular site for sharing images and talking about them. To understand that unlikely transformation, and Anonymous' peculiar method of (non)organization, it is necessary to start at the very beginning. It started as a gang of nihilists but somehow evolved into a fervent group of believers. In the beginning, Anonymous was just about self-amusement, the "lulz," but somehow, over the course of the past few years, it grew up to become a sort of self-appointed immune system for the Internet, striking back at anyone the hive mind perceived as an enemy of freedom, online or offline. ![]() Anonymous became dangerous to governments and corporations not just because of its skills (lots of hackers have those) or its scale but because of the fury of its convictions. What's harder to comprehend-but just as important, if you want to grasp the future of Anonymous after the arrests-is the radical political consciousness that seized this innumerable throng of Internet misfits. There's no one to grant permission, no promise of praise or credit, so every action must be its own reward. As the term implies, that means rule by sheer doing: Individuals propose actions, others join in (or not), and then the Anonymous flag is flown over the result. Anonymous is a classic "do-ocracy," to use a phrase that's popular in the open source movement. In fact, the success of Anonymous without leaders is pretty easy to understand-if you forget everything you think you know about how organizations work. Anons were, they liked to claim, united as one and divided by zero-undefined and indefinable. To hear the group and its defenders talk, the leaderless nature of Anonymous makes it a mystical, almost supernatural force, impossible not just to stop but to even comprehend. Its wild string of brilliant hacks and protests seemed impossible in the absence of some kind of defined organization. The possibility that Anonymous might be telling the truth-that it couldn't be shut down by jailing or flipping or bribing key participants-was why it became such a terrifying force to powerful institutions worldwide, from governments to corporations to nonprofits. In 2011, Anonymous figured out how to infiltrate anything, to mobilize not just machines but bodies. Now, with these arrests, Anonymous' whole self-conception was being put to the test. For years, when anyone tried to claim they had uncovered the leader, or leaders, of Anonymous, the group's members would belittle them online and then sometimes hack them for good measure. Presumably the anons arrested on the evidence he helped gather were talented hackers, too. No one could deny he had served as a crucial force in many of 2011's most spectacular hacking campaigns. But in Sabu the FBI had nabbed an anon who was not easy to replace. Or, more accurately: its claim that it did not organize itself, that it had no leaders and yet boasted participants so innumerable ("We are Legion," as one of its popular slogans blares) that no ten or hundred or thousand arrests could ever stop it. Was it really just a speed bump? It was impossible to say for sure, because Sabu's arrest cut to the heart of what Anonymous claimed to be, of how it claimed to organize itself. It was merely a speed bump for the collective but a massive emotional bitchslap for individuals Another summed up the general feeling among the anons about Sabu's cooperation with the FBI: One anon wrote plaintively about getting programming advice from Sabu. The mood on the IRC channels, which at Christmas had been cocky and defiant, modulated to a genuine sadness. ![]() Soon five more arrests were made, one from AntiSec and four from LulzSec, another hacker arm of the collective. In February, Interpol rounded up 25 more alleged participants worldwide, and a few days later the FBI revealed Monsegur's cooperation to the news media. But Sabu hadn't survived the first rounds of the raids, and thanks to the evidence he helped the Feds gather, more anons wouldn't survive the next round. ![]()
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