JOURNAL: Anonymous Responds

Here's an informative and well crafted reply to the original brief on Anonymous vs. Scientology (I've promoted it from the comments and deleted the IP record).

I am a member of Anonymous and a long-time reader of this blog. There are a couple of additional points I'd like to add to John's article.

Firstly, Anonymous is an example of viral organisation - there is no centralised leadership, and although there are nodes of organisation, these are dynamic - if one goes down or is taken down, others compensate with little damage done to the utility of the network as a whole. Organisation and decisions are made through what I would term "viral consensus" - the facts, questions and opinions are disseminated throughout the network by it's users, the most successful or popular of these possible courses of action are therefore repeated more often and gain traction - mutations to the idea occur and those that are popular flourish. As such, there are no leaders to attack - whilst there may be some individuals who are more visible (such as Mark Bunker) they are not essential-, no easily-accisble points of failure. Indeed, the only thing that would severely disrupt the insurgency as a whole is internal factional problems - which are near-impossible for an outsider to predict or cause due to the shibboleths John mentions; or a total disruption of the internet as a whole.

Secondly, the initial campaign of DDOS and internet insurgency can be seen as an example of the internet as an enabling force - most members of anonymous are not hackers or computer security experts, but the information available on how to conduct operations such as DDOS attacks etc is readily available on the internet, and can be spread concisely and practically throughout the group itself through other networking tools (IRC, message boards, forums, p2p). However, the interesting thing in particular about the methodology of anonymous is that it is intensely adaptable - when the opinions of Mark Bunker that the illegal aspects of anonymous actions (DDOS etc) were tactically efficient but strategically detrimental entered the viral consciousness, the methodology drastically changed - to real life protests organised over a number of countries, and to information dissemination tactics aimed at the public.

Anonymous' actions can be seen as Effects Based Operations - they fulfill all three criteria:

• They employ systems disruption of scientology operations both online through DDOS and information dissemination, and in real life through information dissemination and protests aimed at disrupting their activites through altering their legal and public situations.
  
  
• Psychological isolation is brought about by isolation of COS views from the mainstream in highlighting cult practices and achieving widespread dissemination of such views, and by engaging in a war of opinion on the internet - colouring public perception, and preventing COS propaganda from being effectively broadcast.
  
  
• Minimal collateral damage: aside from one misguided retributive attack in the early stages, the whole operation has been marked by an astounding level of focus. With protests in over a dozen countries occuring on two occasions with over 8000 people participating, there has been only two arrests (for noise violation) and no negative actions. These are the protest equivalent of surgical strikes.

The next round of Anonymous protests will be held on the 12th of April. Codenamed Operation Reconnect we aim to reestablish communication between cult members and their families/friends.

Be watching, because we are watching you.

Comments

[alsoanonymous]

Thanks John for bringing this up and to anonymous for the very good reponse - MOAR!
What I wonder about though is the vulnerabilities of an open source group such as Anonymous. John mentions shibboleths, but by its very open source nature anonymous is easy to join, and thereby easy to infiltrate. Learning the lingo of Anonymous is not difficult, the websites and wikis Anonymous use are accessible to all and because the whole point is to remain anonymous, there is no system to verify the motives of members/participants. Because of the distributed nature of actions such as the protests, Anonymous has to in effect publish its own plan for members to use. Lurking on the message boards is enough to learn what slogans and banners to print out, what the planned activities at protests are, what the dress code is likely to be, etc.
How effective then can such a platform of guerilla conflict be? Publishing your tactics/strategy has surely got to be the strangest method of waging war in the history of military thought.
CoS are a centralised and well-funded organisation, and their propaganda video and efforts are several notches higher in quality than what Anonymous creates. In the battle for global consciousness, CoS can rely on celebrity endorsement and negative public perception of 'hackers' to undermine Anonymous.
I believe that this conflict will come down to which group will evolve to match the threat posed by the other group faster, and this is where Anonymous open-source platform will come into its own. Regardless, this promises to be at the very least a highly entertaining conflict to watch

[Anonyham]

Well, I must admit I'm somewhat honoured to have my comment promoted to article status, thank you John. Similarly, thanks for your efforts to preserve my anonymity by removing the IP logs. Although in this case it is somewhat unnecessary - as the saying goes, "on the internet nobody knows you're a dog", or rather, nobody knows who you are when you use free, acessible and easy to use programs such as TOR.

As an adjunct to my previous post, and a precursor to my response to alsoanonymous I would like to posit that Anonymous is a rather fine example of John's concept of Networked Tribes
- it is ancephalous - there are no chiefs only Indians (although some of them have bigger mouths or are more eloquent than others)
- it is by nature inherently egalitarian - for how can one anonymous voice be more important than another?
- and due to its inception on the internet is is similarly segmented and incapable of anything but distributed autonomy.

Drawing on this analysis then, alsoanonymous' comment can be addressed. Shibboleths are not a foolproof method of infiltration - this is true and not lost upon members of Anonymous. However it is not simply a matter of learning the correct codephrases as it were, and inserting them into conversation, then being accepted into the group. Anonymous is by it's very nature transparent - hence infilitration for the purposes of gathering intelligence is pointless. Also, as I previously stated: ideas, strategy and decisions are reached through viral consensus - therefore the infiltration of a small number of agents is unlikely to affect the overall outcome or direction of the group as a whole - negative ideas are weeded out naturally, and unless the movement were infiltrated to such a degree that the majority of members were in fact cult agents, drastic derailing of the tribe is unlikely to occur.

Alsoanonymous' point about public perception is also slightly off the mark. Public perception of Anonymous may indeed be that of a crew of hackers, anarchists or cyberterrorists, however this is not a mission-threatening problem to Anonymous. Publicity for Anonymous means publicity for the information Anonymous disseminates, - the propagation of which is the primary weapon of the movement. The cult of scientology depends on secrecy - as seen in numerous legal attempts to suppress its materials, deals with the IRS and unfavourable videos of it's celebrity members. Publicity of information running contrary to this agenda is then its weakness. To relate this to guerilla vs state warfare, Anonymous is attempting an attack of partial disruption - by presenting bringing the negative aspects of scientology to light Anonymous delegitimises the organisation in both public eyes and to members of the cult. It has a similar effect economically - celebrity endorsements and donations are unlikely when they will open up the celebrities to critical publicity. Similarly to people reverting to tribal loyalties when the state is disrupted so too will members of the organisation revert to previous loyalites - families and social networks. Scientology as an organisation will take the blame for their failure to contain or neutralise the threat posed to the cult by Anonymous. Publicity then is a point of Cascading System Failure for scientology, and we are well aware of this.

The final point of alsoanonymous is entirely correct, and analagous to the global situation. Failure to adapt (either by the cult of scientology or by traditional military thought) to networked, flexible and motivated tribes leads to either defeat or a costly protracted coflict. The internet is scientology's Vietnam, and public perception of them will damn them as surely as it did the US troops in Vietnam (and possibly in Iraq).

If you wish to know more about Anonymous, the following links may be useful:

The Road to February 10 - A video explaining the birth, growth and mutation of the movement: http://www.dailymotion.com/SA-Anonymous/video/7341208

Enturbulation.org - A general information site and set of forums frquented by anonymous members: www.enturbulation.org

Xenu.net - A site concerned with scientology abuses: www.xenu.net

[Duncan Kinder]

Well constructed shibboleths should be difficult to penetrate.

For example, the British aristocracy has a set which Nancy Mitford published in detail in her essay on the difference between "U" and "non-U." (E.g., British aristocrats do not go to the "bathroom," they go to the "lew." They pronounce "girl" not as "gurl" but as "gel.")

The Mitfords were a group of intelligent but impoverished aristocratic sisters who came of age during the 1930's and 1940's and who basically made a career out of disclosing upperclass shibboleths to the masses - a refined sort of exhibitionism, basically.

In spite of this, any one of us would readily be marked as an outsider at an uperclass function.

One way to get around shibboleths would be to mimic not an insider but rather an outsider who has some reason to be there. Victorian era British agents playing the Great Game used this technique. Sir Richard Burton, for example, when in India, posed as an Iraqi Shi'ite. During his famous pilgrimage to Mecca - where he went disguised as an Afghan physician - he did not proceed from Afghanistan, where he would have been readily detected. He proceeded instead from Egypt, where his behavior as a purported Afghan would have been expected to have been strange..

For more information on the Mitfords, read _Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (Oxford Language Classics) (Paperback) _

blurb:

The Great U and Non-U Debate Until Nancy Mitford wrote 'The English Aristocracy' in 1955, England was blissfully unconscious of U-Usage and its lethal implications. The phenomenon of 'Upper-Class English Usage' had, it is true, already been remarked upon by Professor Alan Ross who, in an academic paper printed in Helsinki a year earlier, claimed that the upper classes now distinguished solely by their use of language, but it was the Honourable Mrs. Peter Rodd (as she was addressed by U-speaker Evelyn Waugh, Esq.) who first let the cat out of the bag. Her article sparked off a public debate joined vigorously by Evelyn Waugh, 'Strix', and Christopher Sykes, whose counterblasts are collected here. Osbert Lancaster, caricaturist of English manners, takes the debate into the visual dimension, and John Betjeman poeticizes on the theme with characteristic charm: Phone for the fish-knives Norman As Cook is a little unnerved; You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes And I must have things daintily served. A new introduction by Ned Sherrin reveals more of the articles and correspondences that were generated by the debate, in his inimitably entertaining fashion.

About the Author
Nancy Mitford (1904-73), born in London, was the daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale. She became well known for her novels The Pursuit of Love (1945), Love in a Cold Climate (1949), The Blessing (1951), and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). After World War II she moved to France and wrote biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XVI, and Frederick the Great. As one of the essayists in and the editor of Noblesse Oblige (first published 1956) she helped to establish the 'U' (upper-class) and 'non-U' classification of linguistic usage and behaviour.

:end_of_blurb

http://www.amazon.com/Noblesse-Oblige-Identifiable-Characteristics-Aristocracy/dp/019860520X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205938191&sr=1-2

[alsoanonymous]

Great response to my post by Anonyham. Dont get me wrong, I am strongly in support of Anonymous movement against CoS. And the way Anonyham has described the movement is brilliant.
However what I am interested in is where such open-source movements have weaknesses - where viral groups are vulnerable and both how these weaknesses can be defended as well as exploited.
I would like to refine my point thus; given that the 'shibboleths' are in essence a flimsy line of defence, perhaps no defence at all, anyone can claim to be from Anonymous. It is plausible that criminal acts may be committed in the name of Anonymous, either by the CoS or its OSA, or by enemies of CoS other than Anonymous, or even by legit Anonymous members (if there is such a thing!!) who missed the forum announcement saying no more DDOS attacks, for example.
This is where I think the public perception of the two parties come in. The CoS has a well oiled, well funded PR machine. They reach out to police organisations, actively court celebrity endorsements and provide 'public' services such as counselling for NY firefighters post 9/11. As seen in one of the videos in the previous post they are already making claims of criminal activities committed by members of Anonymous. CoS can carry out its own disruption attacks, not on individual members of Anonymous but on the public image of Anonymous. The message Anonyous is trying to disseminate becomes tainted by association.
What it boils down to is if your average Joe picks up a newspaper and hears Tom Cruise or Will Smith talking about how a bunch of cyber-terrorists are attacking freedom of religion in the United States, it will be that much more difficult for Anonymous's information dissemination program to be effective. Anonymous, in opting for their open-source platform, have given up control over their public credibility. Given that this also a campaign for hearts and minds, that Anonymous' success is predicated on convincing people that CoS needs more intensive scrutiny, I believe public perception is mission-critical, and loss of credibility can be fatal. It should also be noted that smear campaigns against opponents are a CoS speciality.
Is this then a weakness unique to all Open Source campaigns? (Apologies if this is something covered in John's book. I'm waiting for Amazon to deliver it!) Is there a way to retain control of the public perception of an open source campaign?

[rick]

hanks to all for a very informative set of posts and comments. I will pass this on to others.

I wonder how suitable this methodology would be against other types of corporations and institutions. For instance, would this type of 'warfare' be effective in bringing transparency to something like the Carlyle Group, or forcing oil companies to repair environmental and ecological damage. It would seem to be dependent on the number of people and their level of skill that could be recruited to a particular tribal effort.

alsoanonymous raises the issue of credibility. This is an area that I have been analyzing for years. I am beginning to think that in the spin wars, credibility winds up being a difficult trait for anyone to defend and maintain, but it is a vital asset to any organization or individual. In fact, recent years have damaged the credibility of almost every field, including sports, the 'church', politics, government services and information, academia, business, etc. In fact, this country may reach an unsustainable level of public cynicism, to the point where it collapse under the weight of distrust in everything. Perhaps our nation state dissolves in a manner similar to the Soviet Union - due to a complete lack of integrity in the system.

[John Robb]

Great discussion. Here are some aspects of open source insurgency that are relevant to the discussion (pre-coffee thinking):

1) This isn't a popularity contest. Anonymous doesn't need to "win" broad public support. The brand "Anonymous" is only valuable in that it attracts/supports discussion/effort and generates fear/uncertainty/doubt (FUD) in the target's mind/organization.

2) A division in multiple subgroups -- clans, tribes, guilds, etc. -- is beneficial. It enables faster innovation as these groups try new methods. It prevents endless loops of discussion and keeps the effective group size small.

3) Coordinated or mass action (protest) is overrated (60's legacy thinking). While it may be valuable to attempt a larger effort, and suffer the group grooming and endless discussion to make it happen, it isn't really that necessary. An alternative process of innovation: If a subgroup tries a tactic/strategy and it works, the success will garner consensus within the group. It will be copied.

4) True anonymity, as in without making any claim, for the most aggressive tactics is paramount. Further, since the meta group generates a significant amount of noise (most "members" are just talkers), its easier for subgroups to coordinate/act unnoticed by observers/enforcement.

5) To Rick: Bigger issues garner more interest, however, the narrower the target is, the more effective the action. Regardless, for almost any target you can probably find hundreds of effectives that will rally to the cause if you can attract their attention. Even a small group can make a lot of noise and if targeted against systempunkts (which require effort to search for), they will be effective.

6) The weakest point of a hierarchy is the top. The more light shined on the top, the greater the over reaction of the target.

Sorry for the disjointed points. Much better presentation in the book.

Should probably write the entirety of my approach (there will likely be others) to open source warfare within a doctrinal format.

[Duncan Kinder]

"4) True anonymity, as in without making any claim, for the most aggressive tactics is paramount. Further, since the meta group generates a significant amount of noise (most "members" are just talkers), its easier for subgroups to coordinate/act unnoticed by observers/enforcement."

In point of fact, it is entirely possible to engage in covert operations while under the glare of public observation while being internationally well known and the object of much attention and discussion.

Example: the casino at Monte Carlo.

Despite its legendary fame, the casino at Monte Carlo is actually difficult to get to unless you know the inside rules. There are actually tourist guide books about Monte Carlo that state that - once you get there - the casino is a tremendous disappointment, that is it nothing like the scene in the James Bond movie, that all you actually see are a bunch of blue jean clad tourists with knapsacks running around pushing coins in slot machines.

Indeed, should you show up there, this would be all you would notice. But look more closely. Every now and then, an elegantly dressed couple arrive and discretely slip through a door in the wall on the side. And you can't just go through that door, you need a ticket, which costs a little bit and which you must obtain from a vendor elsewhere.

Once you go through that door, you will discover that you are "not in Kansas anymore." Elegantly clad people are playing baccarat just like you see in the James Bond movie.

But that is not all. Closer inspection will reveal that there are "red ticket tables" which cost a bit more than the "white ticket tables" and are in an inner chamber. You want to play at the red ticket tables.

All of this is implicit. Nothing is spelled out. It is not as if there is a sign that says "Oxford graduates only," or "Only dukes beyond this point!." Doubtlessly there are other filters which I am unaware of.

Yet as you can see there are layers of "meta groups" which serve to divert attention and to filter off the unwelcome. Thus the subgroups can coordinate/act unnoticed.

Yet this is how the tribe maintains itself despite enormous publicity, interest, and scrutiny.