INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPERS
PAPER NO. 3 — SEPTEMBER 2013
Anonymous in Context:
The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman
INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPERS
PAPER NO. 3 — SEPTEMBER 2013
Anonymous in Context:
The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman
57 Erb Street West
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Copyright © 2013 by The Centre for International Governance Innovation
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do
not necessarily reflect the views of The Centre for International Governance
Innovation or its Operating Board of Directors or International Board of
Governors.
This work was carried out with the support of The Centre for
International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
(www.cigionline.org). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution — Non-commercial — No Derivatives License. To view
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CIGI gratefully acknowledges the support of the Copyright Collective of
Canada.
The author would like to thank Mark Raymond, Christopher Prince, Darin
Barney and Maya Richman for their generous and valuable comments.
CONTENTS
About Organized Chaos: Reimagining the Internet Project	 1
About the Author	 1
Executive Summary	 2
Introduction	2
The Formation and Mutations of Anonymous	 4
2005–2010: From Trolling to Irreverent Activism	 4
2010–2012: The Explosion of Digital Direct Action 	 5
The Logics of Anonymous	
	12
Weapons of the Geek	 14
Conclusion 	 18
Works Cited	 21
About CIGI	 22
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 1 CIGIONLINE.ORG
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gabriella Coleman is the Wolfe Chair in Scientific
and Technological Literacy at McGill University.
Trained as an anthropologist, she teaches, writes
and researches on the ethics of computer hacking,
with a focus on open source software and the digital
protest ensemble Anonymous. She is the author of
Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking
(published in 2012 by Princeton University Press) and
is currently working on a second book onAnonymous.
ABOUT ORGANIZED CHAOS:
REIMAGINING THE INTERNET
PROJECT
Historically, Internet governance has been
accomplished en passant. It has emerged largely from
the actions of computer scientists and engineers,
in interaction with domestic legal and regulatory
systems. Beginning at least with the 2003–2005
World Summit on the Information Society process,
however, there has been an explicit rule-making
agenda at the international level. This strategic
agenda is increasingly driven by a coalition of states
— including Russia, China and the Arab states — that
is organized and has a clear, more state-controlled
and monetary vision for the Internet. Advanced
industrial democracies and other states committed
to existing multi-stakeholder mechanisms have a
different view — they regard Internet governance as
important, but generally lack coherent strategies for
Internet governance — especially at the international
level. Given the Internet’s constant evolution and its
economic, political and social importance as a public
good, this situation is clearly untenable.
A coherent strategy is needed to ensure that difficult
trade-offs between competing interests, as well as
between distinct public values, are managed in a
consistent, transparent and accountable manner that
accurately reflects public priorities. Guided by these
considerations, CIGI researchers believe they can play
a constructive role in creating a strategy for states
committed to multi-stakeholder models of Internet
governance.
Inaimingtodevelopthisstrategy,theprojectmembers
will consider what kind of Internet the world wants
in 2020, and will lay the analytical groundwork for
future Internet governance discussions, most notably
the upcoming decennial review of the World Summit
on the Information Society.This project was launched
in 2012. The Internet Governance Paper series will
result in the publication of a book in early 2014.
ACRONYMS
ACTA	 Anti-CounterfeitingTrade Agreement
BART	 Bay Area RapidTransit
DDoS	 distributed denial of service
EDT	 Electronic DisturbanceTheatre
EFF	 Electronic Frontier Foundation
IRC	 Internet Relay Chat
LOIC	 Low Orbit Ion Cannon
NSA	 National Security Agency
PR	 public relations
SOPA	 Stop Online Piracy Act
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 2 CIGIONLINE.ORG
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Since 2010, digital direct action, including leaks,
hacking and mass protest, has become a regular
feature of political life on the Internet. This paper
considers the source, strengths and weakness
of this activity through an in-depth analysis of
Anonymous, the protest ensemble that has been
adept at magnifying issues, boosting existing —
usually oppositional — movements and converting
amorphous discontent into a tangible form. It has
been remarkably effective, despite lacking the
human and financial resources to engage in longterm
strategic thinking or planning. Anonymous has
neither the steady income nor the fiscal sponsorship
to support a dedicated team tasked with recruiting
individuals, coordinating activities and developing
sophisticated software. Wherein, therefore, lies the
power of Anonymous? How has it managed to
strike such fear into corporations, governments and
other groups?This paper answers these questions by
examining the intersecting elements that contribute
to Anonymous’ contemporary geopolitical power:
its ability to land media attention, its bold and
recognizable aesthetics, its participatory openness,
the misinformation that surrounds it and, in
particular, its unpredictability. Anonymous signals
the growing importance of what I call“weapons of
the geek,”a modality of politics exercised by a class
of privileged and visible actors who are often at the
centre of economic life. Among geeks and hackers,
political activities are rooted in concrete experiences
of their craft — administering a server or editing
videos — skills channelled toward bolstering civil
liberties, such as privacy.
INTRODUCTION
In 2012, Obama’s re-election campaign team
assembled a talented and dedicated group
of programmers, system administrators,
mathematicians and data scientists to develop
software that would help the incumbent president
secure a second term. Used for fundraising and voter
targeting, the system also crunched and analyzed
data to fine-tune voter targeting with the hope of
giving the campaign a critical edge over Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Amid much
fanfare after Obama’s victory, journalists praised his
star-studded technology team, detailing members’
hard work, success and travails — heralding the
system a stellar success.
One of the team’s major concerns, however, was
not reported in the media. At all costs, the Obama
team wanted to avoid attracting the attention of
Anonymous, a banner used by individuals and
groups to organize diverse forms of collective action,
ranging from street protests to distributed denial of
service (DDoS) campaigns to hacking. The Obama
campaign team treated Anonymous as (potentially)
being even more of a nuisance than the foreign state
hackers who had infiltrated the McCain and Obama
campaigns in 2008.1
If Anonymous had successfully
accessed servers or DDoS-ed the campaign website,
it would have ignited media attention and potentially
battered the campaign’s reputation. Although this
alone would not likely have jeopardized Obama’s
chances for re-election (since his team was confident
that there was no controversial information to leak),
a visit from Anonymous was considered a real
possibility and liability.
Unlike Anonymous, many hackers work
surreptitiously. Organizations that have been hacked
usually get to decide whether or not to disclose
their situations to the public. This was the case, for
example, with The New York Times, which made the
1	 See Brian Todd (2008),“Computers at the Headquarters of
the Obama and McCain Campaigns Were Hacked CNN Confirms,”
CNN, November 6, available at: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/
2008/11/06/computers-of-obama-mccain-campaigns-hacked.
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 3 CIGIONLINE.ORG
decision to go public after allegedly being targeted
by Chinese state hackers for months. Anonymous,
on the other hand, seeks publicity before and after
every successful action.
There is a paradox at work here: state-supported
hacking is generally much better organized and
funded and, in some respects, far more powerful
than actions undertaken by Anonymous. Stuxnet
is a perfect example. Developed by the Israeli
and American governments, this state-of-theart
malware was used to disable Iran’s capacity to
produce enriched uranium. While Anonymous once
claimed to have created Stuxnet, its statement was
immediately identified as a hoax. Anonymous lacks
the human and financial resources to engage in the
long-term strategic thinking or planning required
to code military-grade software. It has neither the
steady income nor the fiscal sponsorship to support
a dedicated team tasked with recruiting individuals,
coordinating activities and developing sophisticated
software.
Anonymous is difficult to pin down. Some “Anons”
work independently, while others work in small
teams or join a swarm of demonstrators during a
large-scale campaign. Anonymous tends to ride and
amplify the wave of existing events or causes. Even
if it magnifies and extends the scope of an event —
sometimes so significantly as to alter its nature or
significance — the campaign eventually ends as the
wave hits the shore. Sometimes Anonymous misses
the wave, especially when the mainstream media
fails to jump on board to report on its operations.
Wherein, therefore, lies the power of Anonymous?
How has it managed to strike such fear into
corporations, governments and other groups, such
as the Obama campaign team, and accomplish its
objectives?
This paper showcases various intersecting elements
that contribute to Anonymous’ contemporary
geopolitical power: its ability to land media attention,
its bold and recognizable aesthetics, its participatory
openness and the misinformation that surrounds it.
One feature stands out:Anonymous’unpredictability.
Take, for example, its birth as an activist endeavour.
Before 2008, the name Anonymous was deployed
almost exclusively for “trolling,” which in Internet
parlance means pulling pranks targeting people and
organizations, desecrating reputations and revealing
humiliating or personal information. Trolling was
coordinated on the Internet, often on the image
board 4chan.org, for the sake of “the lulz,” that is,
“the laughs.” Anonymous accidentally — although
dramatically — enlarged its repertoire of tactics
in 2008, when it sprouted an activist sensibility
during a full-fledged pranking campaign against
the Church of Scientology. By 2010, distinct and
stable activist nodes of Anonymous had emerged.
The name Anonymous was increasingly being used
to herald activist actions, often in ways that defied
expectations.
Mutability and dynamism continue to be a staple of
Anonymous’ activism and historical development.
As a result, it is difficult to forecast when or why
Anonymous will strike, when a new node will
appear, whether a campaign will be successful and
how Anonymous might change direction or tactics
during the course of an operation. A by-product of
the Internet, Anonymous rises up most forcefully
and shores up the most support when defending
values associated with this global communication
platform, such as free speech. As one Anonymous
participant phrased it during an interview, “free
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 4 CIGIONLINE.ORG
speech is non-negotiable.”2
But Anonymous has
repeatedly demonstrated that it is not bound to this
or any other imperative. Over the last five years,
Anonymous has contributed to an astonishing array
of causes, from publicizing rape cases in small-town
Ohio and in Halifax to aiding in the Arab and African
Spring of 2011.This growth, circulation and ongoing
metamorphosis make their next steps difficult to
ascertain.
Despite media reports to the contrary, Anonymous,
although it may be nimble, flexible and emergent, is
not random, shadowy or chaotic. Anonymous may
be devilishly unpredictable and difficult to study,
but it still evinces core features. These attributes are
discussed in this paper.
Further contextualizing Anonymous in light of
global currents over the last few years, it is rather
unsurprising that a fiery protest movement, often
wedded to the Internet, has arisen at this time
and in this particular form. As indicated by its
name, Anonymous dramatizes the importance of
anonymity and privacy in an era when both are
rapidly eroding for citizens, and when government
secrecy and systematic surveillance are on the rise,
especially in the United States. Anonymous has
also roared and soared in a tumultuous period of
global unrest and discontent, evident in the largescale
popular uprisings: the 15-M movement in
Spain,3
the Arab and African Spring and the Occupy
movement. Over the last two years, sharp economic
inequalities the world over have been met by a tide
of protest activity. While distinct, Anonymous is part
and parcel of these trends, symbolically showcasing
2	 Unless otherwise indicated, quotes from Anonymous derive
from interviews conducted with participants during anthropological
research carried out between 2008 and 2013.
3	 The 15-M movement refers to a series of demonstrations over
the economic crisis in Spain launched on May 15, 2011.
the ideal for privacy and acting as the popular face
of unrest across these movements. Anonymous thus
demonstrates the power of symbolic engagement as
a subspecies of direct social action.
This paper is divided into three sections. The first
provides a fairly straightforward narrative account
of Anonymous from 2005 to 2012, honing in on
major events and turning points in its constitution
and evolution. This chronology is necessary given
Anonymous’chameleon nature and the high degree
of misinformation surrounding it.The second section
briefly considers the core features of Anonymous,
which shed light on its political significance. Section
three focusses on the strengths and weaknesses of
Anonymous as a protest movement.
THE FORMATION AND
MUTATIONS OF ANONYMOUS
2005–2010: FromTrolling to Irreverent
Activism
Anonymous’ ancestry lies in the often obnoxious,
occasionally humorous and at times terrifying world
of Internet trolling, where pranking abounds.Trolling
can be within the purview of a single individual,
anonymous crowds or tight-knit trolling associations
with offensive and racist names like “Gay Niggers
Association of America.” Whether lighthearted
or gruesome, propelled by a horde or delicately
masterminded by a few individuals, trolling almost
always entails an unpredictable combination of
trickery, defilement and deception.
By 2007, Anonymous was so well known for trolling
that Fox News anointed it the “Internet hate
machine”(Fox News, 2009). Anonymous mockingly
embraced this hyperbolic title, no doubt enjoying
having gotten under the media’s skin. Soon after,
someone used the name Anonymous to release a
video, a grim parody drawing on Hollywood slasher
flicks. The video proclaimed Anonymous as “the
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 5 CIGIONLINE.ORG
face of chaos” that “laughs at the face of tragedy”
(Anonymous, 2007) and captured trolling’s terrifying
potential, especially for those who are not in on
the joke.
Six months after being labelled the “Internet hate
machine,” other individuals, largely from 4chan,
used the name Anonymous and its associated
iconography (headless men in black suits) to
troll and subsequently organize earnest street
demonstrations. Trolling against the Church of
Scientology began in January 2008, catalyzed by the
infamous internal recruitment video of Tom Cruise
praising the church’s efforts to“create new and better
realities.”The video, leaked by critics of the church,
promptly went viral.
When the Church of Scientology threatened Web
publishers such as Gawker with legal action if they
did not remove the video, Anonymous initiated
what even today is considered by Anonymous to
be one of their most legendary raids. Impelled by
the lulz, Anonymous launched DDoS attacks to
jam Scientology websites, ordered unpaid pizzas
and escorts for Scientology churches across North
America, faxed images of nude body parts to
churches and relentlessly phone pranked the church,
in particular the Dianetics hotline (where callers can
get advice about the“first truly workable technology
of the mind”).Within a matter of weeks, trolling gave
way to Project Chanology, a prolonged and earnest
political campaign against the Church of Scientology,
which continues to this day.
Various forces and factors unexpectedly converged
to ignite this metamorphosis. One inspiration was
a viral video calling for the“systematic dismantling
of the Church of Scientology” (Anonymous, 2008).
Although the video was intended as a joke (that is,
for the lulz), it prompted a debate about whether
Anonymous should more purposively protest
the church or remain faithful to its madcap roots.
Enough individuals were willing to move forward
with the proposed experiment, and on February 10,
2008, over 7,000 individuals protested in 127 cities.
Many demonstrators sported plastic Guy Fawkes
masks in order to conceal their identities. Since then,
the mask has remained Anonymous’signature icon.
Although the protests were well organized and
hailed as a triumph by participants, many of them
knew very little about the Church of Scientology and
its abuses, at least outside of pop culture references.
A combination of mischief and exploration drove
many of them to streets. Since the image board
4chan is anonymous and discourages even the use of
pseudonyms (persistent nicknames and identities),
many Anons went for the rare opportunity to
meet their brethren with no intention of engaging
in further activism. Nevertheless, a large enough
number of rabble-rousers carried on with the
demonstrations to constitute Anonymous as an
activist enterprise; copious media coverage (which is
a common feature in the history of Anonymous) also
secured the ongoing life of Anonymous as a medium
for directed political organizing.
Although many participants, especially trolls,
contested Anonymous’ newfound political will,
enough Anons stayed on to sustain a nascent
political movement. The seeds of unpredictability,
irreverence and deviance had also been sown
among these politically minded Anons. Some
degree of pranking and trickery has played a part in
Anonymous’political operations ever since.
2010–2012:The Explosion of Digital Direct
Action
In 2009 and 2010, Anonymous’actions were centred
on Project Chanology and trolling. Some people
participated in Project Chanology solely online,
engaging in boisterous discussion on the popular
web forum Why We Protest. Others, especially
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 6 CIGIONLINE.ORG
those living in or close to major cities across North
America and Europe, showed up at monthly street
protests rain or shine (or snow) to mock Scientology
adherents and air the documented human rights
abuses of the church. They were supported by a
small cadre of committed Scientology defectors,
some of whom started to identify as Anonymous.
Some of these defectors hail Anonymous as the
“game changer” that enabled them to be open
and public about their ordeals with the church
(Christman, 2012).
During this period, Anonymous branched out
politically. For instance, some individuals who
were active in Chanology contributed to Iran’s
fervent (though unsuccessful) green revolution. In
2009, denizens of 4chan were still using the name
Anonymous for notorious trolling escapades.Trolling
began to wane in 2010, when Anonymous’ political
portfolio diversified considerably. At the time of this
writing, pure trolling under the name Anonymous
had largely ceased. There is, however, nothing
preventing its resurrection.
In February 2010, individuals coordinated
“Operation Titstorm,” a DDoS attack on the
Australian government to protest legislation aimed
at curbing pornography by requiring Internet service
providers to use filters.“No government should have
the right to refuse its citizens access to information
solely because they perceive it to be unwanted,”
declared Anonymous in an email sent to the press.
“The Australian government will learn that one does
not mess with our porn. No one messes with our
access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any
reason”(quoted in Cheng, 2010).
The political use of a DDoS attack placed
Anonymous in a camp alongside “hacktivists” like
the Electronic Disturbance Theatre (EDT), which
had hosted“virtual sit-ins”in the late 1990s. In 1997,
for instance, the EDT flooded Mexican government
websites to support the Zapatistas’ struggles for
autonomy. While Anonymous had initially deployed
DDoS attacks during their first trolling raid against
the Church of Scientology, Project Chanology
abandoned this tactic. It never approved of nor relied
much on hacking. To this day, Project Chanology
opposes the use of DDoS attacks and tends to dismiss
the networks that deploy them. To acknowledge
its internal feuds and sectarianism, Anonymous
eventually adopted the refrain “Anonymous is not
unanimous.” This message has yet to penetrate
public consciousness — the mainstream media
still tends to describe participants only as hackers,
technological actors already freighted with simplistic
and pejorative associations.
In September 2010, seven months after “Operation
Titstorm” (and two years after venturing into the
world of political activism), a new node hatched
following a rift over protest styles. Organizing in
the name of Internet freedom, a group of Anons
had set their eyes on protesting the multilateral
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)
through legal channels alone. A handful of the
group clamoured for direct action tactics, which
included“black fax, emails, phone calls, pizzas called
to the office, a full on classic Anon assault,”as one
participant described it to me. In the minority, they
were banned from a particular Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) server, but naturally could still use the name.
So they did, and proceeded to “blitz these guys
[copyright industry] into paying attention”by DDoSing
pro-copyright associations such as the Motion
Picture Association of America in defence of piracy
and file sharing.
This group eventually managed to attract a sizable
street team of participants and supporters. After
roaming from one IRC network to another, these
participants eventually established a dedicated IRC
server named AnonOps in November 2010. This
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 7 CIGIONLINE.ORG
network, known by the name of its IRC server,
would come to boldly embrace DDoS tactics and
eventually endorse hacking as a political weapon,
thus becoming one of the biggest and most
controversial media sensations.
By early December 2010, however, AnonOps IRC
chat rooms, once bustling with life, had come to a
standstill. Core AnonOps participants — system
administrators, organizers, media makers and
hackers — were concerned by its dwindling number
of supporters.Then on December 9,2010,the number
of supporters skyrocketed.AnonOps managed to tap
into, channel and thus render visible the collective
furor over what its supporters deemed to be a wholly
inappropriate act of censorship against the whistleblowing
organization WikiLeaks, which had caused
a firestorm of controversy after releasing a trove of
leaked classified diplomatic cables. Anonymous,
specifically AnonOps, launched a DDoS campaign
aimed at PayPal, MasterCard andVisa in response to
their refusal to accept donations for WikiLeaks’front
man, Julian Assange.
The technical work of jamming website access was
coordinated by a select number of participants using
botnets(alargenetworkofcompromisedcomputers).
Many other individuals contributed using a tool
known as Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC). An open
source application available for download on the
Internet, LOIC allows users to contribute to a DDoS
campaign.LOIC lacked privacy protections,however,
and participants were not consistently informed that
they would be put at legal risk unless they took extra
precautions to hide their IP addresses. (Eventually,
14 individuals, now known as the PayPal 14, would
be arrested in the United States in mid-July 2011
over alleged participation in these events.) This
mass participation may not have been technically
necessary, and it was certainly ethically dubious.
Nevertheless, it revealed to the world at large the
level and scope of supporters’ disenchantment with
what they saw as unacceptable corporate censorship.
This gathering was also one of the first large-scale
spontaneous online demonstrations.The outpouring
of support even surprised AnonOps. Numbers on
the IRC channel jumped from 70 individuals to 7,000
in a couple of days (a fraction were also bots).As one
participant explained, this left AnonOps “stunned
and a little frightened.”The targeting of WikiLeaks
was yet another catalyst for politicizing Anonymous;
some key participants and organizers active today
jumped aboard at a momentous time.
By 2011, both Anonymous and WikiLeaks were
recognized as staunch — albeit controversial —
advocates for free speech. Both were ready to pounce
into action, in distinct ways, in the face of censorship.
Prompted by the Tunisian government’s blocking of
WikiLeaks, on January 2, 2011, AnonOps released
a video launching OpTunisia. The campaign was
initially spearheaded by one person, who corralled
a group of participants, some of whom became
moderators (they helped“keep order”on the public
IRC channel by keeping the conversation on-topic
and kicking trolls off the channel). A technical team
of hackers attacked Tunisian government websites
and undermined software the dictatorial regime
was using to spy on citizens. Many others aided
by translating information, writing manifestos and
crafting publicity videos.
Although Anonymous initially intervened to stamp
out censorship, the same team continued to lend a
helping hand as country after country in the region
underwent revolution. Individuals organized in a
dedicated AnonOps chat room, and the operations
became collectively known as the “Freedom Ops.”
For several months, they teamed up with local
activists and hackers in Libya, Egypt, Algeria and
Syria. Although many participants have since moved
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 8 CIGIONLINE.ORG
on or simply vanished, some forged relationships
and connections that continue to this day.
By this time, Anonymous had become
multitudinous, prolific and unpredictable. In
January 2011, AnonOps was buzzing with activity,
making it impossible for one person to stay abreast
of all the developments. The IRC network housed
dozens of distinct chat channels for other ongoing
operations to support the environment, student
movements in Latin America and WikiLeaks, among
other causes.
Then, early in February 2011, an impromptu
operation — targeting the corporate security
firm HBGary — fundamentally and dramatically
reconfigured the political culture of AnonOps.
Participants transitioned from covert to public
forms of hacking, such as Web defacing. Hacking,
always a tool but often used more clandestinely,
became a public act, wielded for multiple purposes:
vengeance, turf protection, technological assistance,
theatrics, exposing security vulnerabilities, searching
for information to leak and for the lulz.
Much like the formation of Chanology, this
transition wasn’t planned. It was a spontaneous act
of revenge prompted by the actions of Aaron Barr,
CEO of HBGary. Barr boasted that his firm had
compromised Anonymous, claiming to a reporter
that it had allegedly discovered the real identities
of top operatives and was ready to hand them over
to the FBI; a spreadsheet of names had been found
and circulated online. In response, an AnonOps crew
took the initiative to locate security vulnerabilities
on HBGary servers and search for information to
leak. A small group of hackers commandeered
Barr’s Twitter account. They hacked HBGary servers,
downloaded 70,000 emails and deleted files. They
purportedly wiped out Barr’s iPhone and iPad, and
then published the company’s data alongside Barr’s
private communications. They sent the following
cocky rationale to a reporter for theTech Herald, who
had covered their actions for many months:
Let us teach you a lesson you’ll
never forget: you don’t mess with
Anonymous. You especially don’t
mess with Anonymous simply
because you want to jump on a trend
for public attention.You have blindly
charged into the Anonymous hive, a
hive from which you’ve tried to steal
honey. Did you think the bees would
not defend it? Well here we are.
You’ve angered the hive, and now
you are being stung. It would appear
that security experts are not expertly
secured. (quoted in Ragan, 2011)
Anonymous unearthed a damning document
entitled “The WikiLeaks Threat,” which outlined
how HBGary, in conjunction with the US Chamber
of Commerce, the Bank of America, Palantir
Technologies and other security companies, could
undermine WikiLeaks by submitting fake documents
to the organization. Anons also found evidence
of plans to tarnish the reputations of WikiLeaks
supporters, including journalists such as Glenn
Greenwald. Celebrated by Anonymous at large for
restocking the lulz, this operation inspired a team
of technological elites to break away and devote
themselves to the pursuit of mischief,unambiguously
proclaimed in their choice of name: LulzSec.
“When you get over nine thousand PM’s [private
messages on IRC] asking to help in some random
‘op’”explained one member, “it’s a case of ‘the hell
with this, I want to go have some fun.’”Although the
press usually equated LulzSec with Anonymous, the
hacker crew attempted to distance itself from the
larger collective due to their freewheeling attitude
and their indiscriminate choice of targets. In contrast
to Anonymous, for instance, LulzSec went after the
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 9 CIGIONLINE.ORG
press, who had been totally off limits, even among
the networks such as AnonOps that favoured illegal
direct action tactics.
It is likely for this reason that the infamous Sony
PlayStation hack, executed between April 17 and
19, 2011, was often retroactively (and, as far as we
know, incorrectly) attributed to LulzSec and, at the
time of the hack, to Anonymous, as LulzSec had yet
to come into being. The massive breach forced Sony
to shut down the network for a prolonged period of
time, leading to significant financial loss and scores
of irate gamers around the world.To this day, while a
handful of LulzSec members have been prosecuted
for hacking, including against Sony Pictures, no
one has been either indicted or prosecuted for the
PlayStation Network outage.4
With constant news coverage detailing their 50day
spree, hackers and hacking groups became the
public (and notorious) face of Anonymous, even if
other operations were ongoing and LulzSec had, for
the time being, proclaimed its independence from
Anonymous. On May 13, 2011, LulzSec declared
on Twitter: “Must say again: we’re not AnonOps,
Anonymous, a splinter group of Anonymous, or
even an affiliate of Anonymous. We are #Lulzsec :D”
(LulzSec, 2011). The team provoked a measure of
controversy among Anons for being such a loose
cannon. Although LulzSec and Anonymous shared
common principles, a common culture and even
some personnel, there was still enough ideological
distance between the two that many Anons, along
with security professionals, geeks, activists and
hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, either
seemed to genuinely enjoy their antics and support
them, or were at least compelled enough to watch
4	 See Charles Arthur (2013), “LulzSec: The Unanswered
Questions,” The Guardian, May 16, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/
technology/2013/may/16/lulzsec-unanswered-questions.
the wild show LulzSec put on as it targeted PBS, Fox
News, Sony Pictures and EVE Online, along with
dozens more.
This small crew of hackers, embroiled in their own
dramas, eventually retired on June 25, 2011, but
many of the same individuals subsequently banded
under “Operation Antisec.” Unlike LulzSec, Antisec
loudly and proudly branded itself as an Anonymous
operation. While not forsaking deviant humour
(which had been a core feature of LulzSec’s public
persona), Antisec adopted a more militant tone.
This was largely attributable to two hackers: Jeremy
Hammond, a political radical who is currently in jail
awaiting sentencing, and Hector Xavier Monsegur,
known as “Sabu,” who worked with Anonymous,
LulzSec and Antisec. Soon after being arrested on
June 7, 2011, Sabu also cooperated with law
enforcement as a FBI informant. Soon after, he
became the public face of Antisec through his
popular Twitter account, where he specialized in
140-character tirades against the group’s main
targets: the government, security firms, the police
and corporations.
While Antisec was busy at work over the summer
of 2011, several stable and distinct entities were
operating simultaneously: AnonOps; Chanology;
Cabin Cr3w (a small team that had formed, in part,
to poke fun at Antisec, but conducted its own legal
and illegal operations); a new network known as
VoxAnon (which initially formed in opposition to
AnonOps); as well as regional networks in Brazil,
India and elsewhere. With few exceptions, media
accounts of Anonymous have tended to focus on
hacking, which has now become a convenient
shorthand to describe Anonymous’ activities;
however, many of Anonymous’operations, past and
present, have little to do with hacking. Anonymous’
effectiveness stems, in part, from its tactical diversity.
Operation BART (OpBart) provides a striking case.
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 10 CIGIONLINE.ORG
Once again, Anonymous took action in response
to an act of censorship: In August 2011, the San
Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) decided to
disable mobile phone reception on station platforms
in order to thwart planned protests against police
brutality. Anonymous naturally publicized the wellattended
street demonstrations they helped organize.
A couple of individuals also hacked into BART’s
computers and released customer data in order to
garner media attention. An illicit, semi-nude photo
of BART’s official spokesperson, Linton Johnson,
was republished on the “bartlulz” website, with the
following brazen rationalization:“If you are going to
be a dick to the public, then I’m sure you don’t mind
showing your dick to the public”(Bartlulz, 2011).
Soon after OpBart, activity on AnonOps once again
came to a halt.Its IRC network was often taken offline
by a rogue hacker’s DDoS attack.VoxAnon provided
another home base, but it often came under attack as
well, and it had yet to pull off a major operation. In
the fall of 2011, many Anons turned their attention
to the Occupy protests sweeping North America
and Europe. Even before Occupy officially began on
September 17, 2011, Anonymous had churned out
many videos and images, essentially acting as an
informal — but vital — public relations (PR) wing
of the movement and drumming up support. Some
Anons chose to encamp with the protesters, while
others provided technological assistance. At the
camps, individuals without any prior connection
to Anonymous’ Internet-based networks sported
plastic Guy Fawkes masks.
In the winter of 2011-2012, Anonymous’ online
activity roared again. In late December, Antisec
announced that it had hacked the global intelligence
firm Stratfor. It initially used customers’ credit cards
to donate to charities — à la Robin Hood — in
honour of “Lulzxmas,” and eventually handed off
company emails toWikiLeaks.By this time,a number
of Twitter accounts, such asYour Anonymous News,
AnonyOps and AnonymousIRC, had amassed
hundreds of thousands of followers.The largest,Your
Anonymous News, currently has over one million
subscribers and roughly 25 individual contributors.
This trend demonstrates that while Anonymous
relies on the media to amplify its actions and amass
support, it is not wholly dependent on corporate
media to get word out or issue calls to action.
The Stratfor affair was followed by a flurry of
widespread participatory protest activity between
January and March 2012. This activity largely
emanated out of AnonOps andVoxAnon, with wide
support on Twitter and other forums. First, there
were protests against a looming copyright bill, the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the passage of
which unravelled due to a massive and elaborate
outpouring of dissent. The linchpin was a“blackout
day,”a Web-based protest of unprecedented scale. By
raising awareness about SOPA and publicizing the
blackout day, Anonymous’contribution was notable.
On January 17, 2012, non-profits, some prominent
Web companies, public interest groups and
thousands of individuals temporarily removed their
websites from the Internet to voice their opposition
to the bill. Thousands of citizens called or emailed
their political representatives to voice their concerns.
The next day, federal authorities orchestrated
the takedown of the popular file-sharing site
MegaUpload. The company’s controversial founder,
Kim Dotcom, was arrested. Anonymous activists
were outraged at the government’s pre-emptive
takedown of this popular website: it seemed to
confirm that if bills like SOPA became law, Internet
censorship would become commonplace. Although
Kim Dotcom had not yet been found guilty of piracy,
his property was confiscated and his website shut
down.
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 11 CIGIONLINE.ORG
In the wake of these events,Anonymous coordinated
its largest DDoS campaign to date. This time, it did
not reach out to the public at large to take part; it
relied on its own (or rented) botnets. Anonymous
targeted a slew of websites,including the homepages
of Universal Music, the FBI, the US Copyright Office,
the Recording Industry Association of America and
the Motion Picture Association of America, all of
which experienced downtime.
Anonymous reappeared in Europe a few weeks later,
as massive on- and offline demonstrations were
unfolding to protest ACTA, another international
copyright law. After the Polish government agreed
to ratify ACTA, Anonymous took down a slew of
government websites and publicized the street
protests that were sweeping Krakow. Soon after,
as part of a self-conscious publicity stunt and with
no connection to Anonymous groups, members
of the left-leaning Palikot’s Movement political
party concealed their faces with paper-cut-out Guy
Fawkes masks during a parliamentary session to
protest ACTA. The European Union scrapped ACTA
in July 2012.
According to a Wall Street Journal article from
February 21, 2012, weeks after the flurry of protests,
the US National Security Agency (NSA) labelled
Anonymous an imminent threat to national security,
claiming that Anonymous “could have the ability
within the next year or two to bring about a limited
power outage through a cyber attack” (Gorman,
2012). Subsequent news reports quoted Anonymous
activists and security experts who dismissed the
NSA’s claims as fear mongering.5
For all of its legal
and illegal tactics, to date, Anonymous had never
5	 See Sam Biddle (2012), “No, Idiots, Anonymous Isn’t
Going to Destroy the Power Grid,” February 21, available at:
http://gizmodo.com/5886995/no-idiots-anonymous-isnt-going-to-
destroy-the-power-grid.
publicly called for such an attack, and there is no
evidence to suggest that it had even considered
doing so.
On March 5, 2012, one of the core Antisec hackers,
Jeremy Hammond, was arrested by the FBI.The next
day, Fox News broke the story that one of the most
prominent Anonymous hackers, Sabu, had been
working as an FBI informant subsequent to his arrest
in June 2011. This confirmed the long-standing
suspicion that informants had infiltratedAnonymous
and thatAntisec had been at least partly manipulated
by government interests. Mistrust, which had always
hung over the Anonymous networks, began to give
way to a bleaker, ominous paranoia. Many wondered
whether this would put an end to Anonymous.
Antisec’s hacking activity subsided for a period of
time, but in March 2012, hackers and others helped
erect a new leaking platform, Par:AnoIA (Potentially
Alarming Research). Hackers have expressed the
need to re-shift internal security practices in order
to protect individuals from ongoing government
infiltration.
Anonymous-led activity picked up again over the
summer of 2012 with a flurry of international ops.
OpQuebec,which defaced provincial police websites,
gained momentum in May 2012 after the passage of
Bill 78, a law curtailing protest activity. Organized in
June 2012, OpIndia rallied on the streets; activists
took down a state-owned Internet service provider
website for blocking file-sharing sites.
In early 2013, Anonymous hackers launched
Operation Last Resort and once again initiated a
string of Web defacements and hacks, this time in
memory of the activist and hacker Aaron Swartz.
Many believe that Swartz committed suicide due
to his ongoing legal battles with the American
Department of Justice and the prospect of facing
decades in jail for downloading a large cache of
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 12 CIGIONLINE.ORG
academic journal articles from JSTOR, the scholarly
archive.
The Logics of Anonymous	
Relying on a fairly predictable script, most
commentators — including journalists and
academics alike — usually introduce Anonymous
as an evasive and shadowy group of hackers. This
description distorts sociological reality. Although
Anonymous is certainly a home to hackers, a great
many Anons are neither hackers nor difficult to find.
If you want to talk with some participants, simply log
onto one of their IRC networks.
Invented in 1989, IRC is still used by geeks and
hackers to develop software and (as its name
suggests) to chat. IRC is unlike other media we
are familiar with today — it is entirely text-based,
generally free of candy-coloured icons or cute noises
and conducted with its own mix of text commands
and norms of communication. By today’s standards,
IRC provides bare-bones functionality, but its staying
power and appeal likely lies in this simplicity. Ideal
for real-time communication and coordinating
operations, many Anons settle onto various stable
IRC networks, where they converse on public or
private channels. In many regards, it functions like
an online social club open 24 hours a day. This is
where lulzy humour flourishes and intimate bonds
of fellowship are formed. Anons aren’t required to
use IRC, though; some prefer to act alone, while
others turn to Web forums,Twitter and/or other chat
protocols. Illegal activities are orchestrated on invite
only, encrypted communication channels.
Nevertheless, compared to spheres of hacker activity
where contributions (and often respect) require
technical skills, Anonymous is more participatory,
which sustains its dynamism and flexibility. In order
to be part of Anonymous, one need simply selfidentify
as Anonymous. No particular abilities are
required.To be sure,hackers (including programmers,
security researchers and system administrators) are
essential to Anonymous’ networks. They erect and
maintaincommunicationinfrastructure,andinfiltrate
servers to expose weak security or in their hunt for
information to leak. Given the mass media’s frenzied
obsession with hackers, their actions invariably nab
a majority of the headlines. While hackers obviously
wield more technical power and their opinions carry
weight, they don’t erect entrance barriers nor control
the evolution of Anonymous. Individuals without
technical skills can participate by collectively writing
press communiqués, giving media interviews on
IRC, designing propaganda posters, editing videos
and mining information that is publicly available
but difficult to access. To get the word out and
attract new volunteers, participants have developed
best practices. Back in 2010 and for much of 2011,
it was common for a small dedicated team to
constantly flood 4chan with propaganda material
to recruit participants. Today individuals running
large Anonymous Twitter accounts coordinate to
spark a “Twitter storm” with established hash tags
to publicize an issue in the hopes it will trend.
Organizers thus emerge to advise, inspire and corral
troops, and some even broker between different
groups and networks; brokering is vital for the
formation of inter-network ad hoc teams.
No single group or individual can dictate the use of
the name or iconography of Anonymous, much less
claim legal ownership of its names,icons and actions.
It has now become the quintessential anti-brand
brand. Naturally, this has helped Anonymous spread
across the globe.Although Anonymous may at times
appear to be chaotic, participants rarely choose
targets randomly. Operations tend to be reactive;
existing local, regional and international events
and causes can trigger action from Anonymous.
Leaking and exposing security vulnerabilities are
two common proactive interventions.
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 13 CIGIONLINE.ORG
All types of operations can usually be linked to a
particular IRC network, such as AnonOps, AnonNet
or Voxanon or a Twitter account dedicated to the
operation, such as @OpLastResort. Although
individuals on these networks generally take credit
for their operations, they sometimes deny their
participation. Naturally, regional issues command
the attention of regional networks.To date, and with
a few exceptions, regional operations have garnered
scant academic or media attention; they may prove
impossible to study retrospectively.
Only a handful of actions performed under the
banner of Anonymous have been atypical, such as
the lone anti-abortion hacker who targeted Britain’s
largest abortion clinic.6
While predictions of chaos
unleashed by evil or maladjusted hackers loom
large in the state’s anxieties about Anonymous, they
remain largely unrealized. To date, no Anonymous
operation has been diabolical and no existing node
has ever expressed the desire to do something as
rash as taking down the power grid (as the NSA once
predicted). That’s not to say that all of Anonymous’
operations are laudable,or effective.Indeed,since the
character and tactics of each Anonymous operation
are distinct, blanket moral judgments are hard to
make and tend to be overly simplistic. In some cases,
targeted individuals and organizations have suffered
some combination of harm to their reputation and
finances. (From Anonymous’ point of view, this is
the desired outcome.) Given its unpredictability,
past actions are no basis for predicting the future.
Still, reckless operations meant to endanger lives
have, thus far, never been part of Anonymous’moral
calculus or tactical repertoire.
6	 See Ben Quinn (2012), “Anti-abortion activism escalating,
warns clinic targeted by vigil,” March 13, The Guardian, available at:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/13/anti-abortion-activism-clinic-
vigil.
The majority of individual Anons never break the
law; however, since Anonymous can’t generally
police participants, it’s possible that some may.
Certain factions have certainly done so (and over
100 individuals across the globe have been arrested
for their alleged participation). Any vulnerability will
be exploited, any advantage generally leveraged. A
handful of Anons have used tactics such as doxing,
thatis,leakingsomeone’sSocialSecuritynumberand
home address or other personal information. This
tactic was used against BART’s official spokesperson
and against numerous police officers who peppersprayed
Occupy protesters.
Journalists highlight these controversial acts, which
invariably boosts Anonymous’ profile. Unlike
criminal groups who want to remain hidden,
Anonymous seeks the limelight. Partly because
of its maverick image and transgressive antics,
Anonymous has attracted significant attention,
sometimes admiration and sometimes fear. As an
entity though, Anonymous is often slippery, evasive
and invisible. Its organizing principle — anonymity
(or technically pseudonymity) — makes it difficult
to tell how many people are involved overall.
Although core participants exist and chat channels
are dedicated to reporters,Anonymous has a shifting
cast of characters. Some individuals routinely change
their online nicknames. If a participant leaves for a
few months, catching up can prove frustrating and
certainly time consuming, even more so for an
observer.
Misinformation about Anonymous abounds. Some
of it is self-sown, but some has been foisted upon
the movement. Journalists, even those reporting for
reputable news outlets, have at times incorrectly cast
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 14 CIGIONLINE.ORG
DDoS campaigns as a subspecies of hacking.7
In fact,
the servers that bear the brunt of DDoS attacks are
not hacked into and do not suffer any permanent
damage or data loss. A successful DDoS blocks
access to an Internet domain (often a very large
one), but it does not affect an organization’s internal
computer system. If companies follow basic security
best practices, their financial payment processing,
trading networks and other core infrastructure won’t
be sitting wide open on the Internet, vulnerable to
an attack. DDoS tactics are political stunts. The sites
that are the most vulnerable to these attacks tend
to be symbols of important infrastructure, not the
infrastructure itself.
To disguise itself further,Anonymous also seeds false
information, thereby pulling the wool over the eyes
of the media, and even confounding participants.
As one organizer put it,“so much of Anon[ymous]
relies on smoke and mirror tactics.”For example, an
Anonymous-based group may take credit for a hack,
actually given to them by some other hacker or team;
Anonymous relies on botnets to knock a website
offline, but it won’t advertise this in its press releases.
It can be hard, at times, to distinguish fib from fact,
truth from lies.This obfuscation adds to Anonymous’
mystique and, thus, to its power.
WEAPONS OF THE GEEK
While certainly unique in its bombast and
capriciousness, Anonymous is part of a wellspring of
hackers and geeks taking political matters into their
own hands to make their voices heard, to orchestrate
7	 For example, in March 2013, an article in the Los Angeles
Times issued a correction after incorrectly stating in a post that an
indictment charged Anonymous with what amounted to hacking.
See Matt Pearce (2013), “Wisconsin man indicted in Anonymous
attack of Koch Industries,” Los Angeles Times, March 27 Available at:
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/27/nation/la-na-nn-anonymouskoch-hack-20130327.The
correction appears near the end of the article.
protests over a range of issues, in particular
civil liberties, and to transform policy and law.
Anonymous signals the growing importance of what
I call“weapons of the geek,”in contrast to“weapons
of the weak”— the term anthropologist James Scott
(1985) uses to capture the unique, clandestine nature
of peasant politics. While weapons of the weak
is a modality of politics among disenfranchised,
economically marginalized populations who engage
in small-scale illicit acts — such as foot dragging
and minor acts of sabotage — that don’t appear on
the surface to be political, weapons of the geek is a
modality of politics exercised by a class of privileged
and visible actors who often lie at the centre of
economic life. Among geeks and hackers, political
activities are rooted in concrete experiences of their
craft — administering a server or editing videos —
skills channelled toward bolstering civil liberties,
such as privacy. Unlike peasants, who seek to remain
inconspicuous and anonymous, geeks and hackers,
even Anonymous, indisputably call attention to
themselves via their volatile, usually controversial,
legal and transgressive political acts.They are testing
new possibilities and legal limits for digital civil
disobedience.
Hackers and geeks, diverse in skills, political
sensibilities and national backgrounds, are naturally
intervening in equally diverse ways. For instance,
hackers have crafted a legal mechanism to side-step
traditional copyright regulations: copyleft, a class of
licenses that can be applied to software to render
it open source. Since the early 1990s, hackers have
coded and used privacy and encryption tools such
as Pretty Good Privacy and Tor (originally short for
The Onion Router) to provide technical protection
from state and corporate snooping. Dozens of other
examples of geeks engaging in diverse genres of
collective action come to mind, from the chartering
of new political parties such as the Pirate Party in
Europe, to the astonishing proliferation of informal
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 15 CIGIONLINE.ORG
workshops, such as hacker labs and spaces, around
the world, to the rise of policy geeks educating
politicians and staff technologists advising lawyers
in advocacy groups.
Hackers and technologists have also been at the
forefront of the dramatic resurgence of whistleblowing.These
activities are, in part, the result of the
efforts of Julian Assange, who chartered WikiLeaks
in 2006, and US solider Chelsea Manning (formerly
Bradley Manning),8
who provided WikiLeaks with
its most explosive material. Anonymous would
eventually take the baton of leaking by targeting
security firms and governments. To date, the most
significant leak has come from Edward Snowden,
an ex-NSA employee and system administrator. In
June 2013, he confirmed what Anonymous, privacy
activists and journalists have been claiming for years:
the NSA not only has vast capabilities to intercept,
store and analyze the digital traces and footprints
of citizens and foreigners alike, but in so doing has
broken numerous laws and lied to Congress.
Within this diverse and expanding ecology of
hacker-based activity — one might even view it as an
emerging digital environmentalism — Anonymous
specializes in acts of disobedience, defiance and
protest. It is adept at magnifying issues, boosting
existing (and usually oppositional) movements and
converting amorphous discontent into a tangible
form. Individuals who live at great distances from
each other, without hefty financial resources, band
together under recognizable names and symbols
to direct attention on and thus judge — often quite
swiftly — the actions of individuals, corporations and
governments.To do so, they often exploit a feature of
our collective digital predicament: corporations and
governments have collected and stored a vast sea of
8	 On August 22, 2013, Chelsea Manning announced that she
considers herself a woman and had changed her name.
digital data, often insecurely on unencrypted servers,
which can at times be legally accessed, and in other
cases illegally procured, but once leaked, is nearly
impossible to contain and sequester.9
Since Anonymous’forte is publicity, it can create a PR
nightmare for its targets. This reflects an important
aspect of the contemporary media and information
environment: the reputations of institutions or
individuals are now more vulnerable to credible
critiques and leaks, as well as false smear campaigns.
Even if information is not featured on the evening
news, it may still spread like wildfire if enough
individuals circulate it on social media.
Still, Anonymous stands apart for the unparalleled
degree to which it injects suspense, drama and
intrigue into existing or self-generated events.
Sometimes it merely pens a manifesto, other times
it ignites a large-scale protest. Each intervention is
distinct, but all benefit from Anonymous’formidable
PR machine. The machine churns out homemade
videos, manifestos and images via Twitter, IRC
channels or Web forums, usually generating some
degree of spectacle. In a more general register, its
iconography — Guy Fawkes masks and headless
suited men — symbolically and spectacularly asserts
the idea of anonymity, which they embody in deed
and words. Anonymous’particular elixir of spectacle
is especially nourished by its aforementioned
unpredictability and mystery: Who exactly are
the men and women behind the mask? What will
they do next? How will police react to their calls
for justice and their threats to release the names
of alleged perpetrators? It thus works to air and
9	 See “35% of Companies Worldwide Don’t Use Encryption
to Safeguard Business Data”(2013), Kaspersky Lab, March 14, available
at: www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2013/35_of_companies_
worldwide_dont_use_encryption_to_safeguard_business_data.
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 16 CIGIONLINE.ORG
dramatize a panoply of issues that might otherwise
have remained hidden, elusive or underreported.
Anonymous, already infamous, is hard to sully
further,especiallyduetoitsrelativelyminimalfunding
requirements. Unlike WikiLeaks,Anonymous has no
salaries to dole out or rent to pay. Costs are largely
confined to hosting IRC servers and renting botnets.
As a result, Anonymous, as an entity, has little to
lose and, combined with no allegiance to a master
plan or set of goals, this affords them tremendous
experimental freedom in thought and action.
Even if shielded from shocking or degrading
information about its participants or operations,
charges of terrorism or overly deviant and reckless
behaviour have, on occasion, been levelled against
the group by government officials and journalists.
These attempts to discredit Anonymous have
neither stuck as a dominant narrative, nor become
prevalent, likely because they strike as hyperbolic
because these activists have not engaged in violent
terroristic behaviours.
The bottomless appetite the press has for
sensationalism has made Anonymous’ notoriety an
ideal subject for coverage. Fuelling the fire of media
hype, as Anonymous often does, may be celebrated,
denounced or (fatalistically) accepted, depending
on one’s views about the hotly debated nature of
journalism. Should the media strive for cool and
contained objectivity? Or for a public that is already
accustomed to some degree of entertainment with its
news, might an element of fantasy, intrigue, humour
and gravitas captivate more attention? Whatever
one’s opinion, Anonymous has become a central
fixture in the media because it aligns so well with the
prevailing journalistic culture of sensationalism.
One might justifiably ask ifAnonymous’provocations
and publicity, whether self-generated or delivered
via the media, can lead to large-scale structural
change or policy reform. While many of Anonymous’
operationssolelygeneratepublicity,manyothershave
focussed on yielding other outcomes, although often
coupled with a savvy media strategy of engagement.
For example, during the Arab Spring, Anonymous
provided technological assistance to activists on the
ground; many of its leaks have given a rare glimpse
into the inner workings of private security companies
seeking to land coveted government contracts for
surveillance or propaganda.Anonymous has exposed
grave human rights abuses, for example, in Burma
with OpRohingya, and has instigated numerous
street demonstrations. However, Anonymous is illequipped
for self-directed policy reform or targeted
engagement with Internet governance.If participants
were to unmask,“clean up”their act and come out to
state or national capitals to pitch their causes, they
would no longer be recognizable as Anonymous.
Nevertheless, Anonymous was so notable in the
anti-SOPA demonstrations that I received a call from
a famous venture capitalist involved with organizing
these protests. He wanted to learn whether its
participants could be harnessed a little more directly,
for the purposes of rallying around Internet reform.
The beauty and frustration of Anonymous lies in
its unruly and unpredictable spontaneity — as its
members like to boast, with a commonly stated
refrain, “We are not your personal army.” This
inability to harness Anonymous directly prevents
their assimilation and neutralization by established
institutional actors. But the venture capitalist’s
intuition — that Anonymous is an important part
of the mix — was correct. Some Internet advocacy
employees have also told me they cannot publicly
support nor work with Anonymous, but are cheering
them on from the sidelines (many hackers are less
than enthused, seeing Anonymous as too juvenile or
irrational for their taste). A number of Anons have
also had numerous behind the scenes discussions
with more traditional activists and advocates over
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 17 CIGIONLINE.ORG
Internet governance and other policy issues. There
are, nevertheless, limits to Anonymous’ ability to
intervene in policy reform and it is best viewed as a
multifaceted protest ensemble.
Still, the broader effectiveness and success of
Anonymous is contingent on the vibrancy and
diversity of its wider political milieu. Anonymous is
a niche in a broader ecosystem of geek- and hackeroriented
activism, which includes policy reform,
participation in Internet governance and whistleblowing.
Social change requires a diverse tool kit,
including fine-tuned interventions targeting policy
to rowdy and subversive tactics. In the fight for
digital rights and civil liberties online, Anonymous
exists alongside, although not directly working
with, advocacy organizations such as the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Distinct modalities need not compete or be mutually
exclusive; they can and do cross-pollinate to form
a broad-based, internally diverse movement.
A functioning democracy requires investigative
journalists who spend years piecing difficult puzzles
together, advocacy groups with lawyers and policy
specialists who strategize for legal reform, whistleblowers
who take on individual risk and protest
movements open to the citizenry at large.
Some predict that Anonymous’ wily, irreverent and
at times illegal tactics (such as DDoS campaigns
and hacking) may lead governments to restrict the
civil liberties that Anons have so passionately been
clamouring to protect. Government officials and
law enforcement may be quick to paint Anonymous
as imaginary goblins to paraphrase the American
journalist H. L. Mencken (2008) who famously
quipped “the whole aim of practical politics is to
keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to
be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” However,
this prediction loses its legs when one contextualizes
Anonymous historically. Long before Anonymous
rose to prominence, national governments around
the world aspired to control the Internet, and
implemented statutes eroding civil liberties. Indeed,
state secrecy and surveillance are so well entrenched
that even if Anonymous were to vanish tomorrow, or
if it had never existed in the first place, it is unlikely
the expansion of the surveillance state and the post-
9/11 curtailment of civil liberties in the United States
would be deterred. Although Anonymous’ actions
will likely be used to justify further restrictions on
liberty, Anonymous should be seen as a reaction to
these trends, not simplified as a primary cause.
In the face of trends like increasing state surveillance
and secrecy, silence and inaction from the public
mightactuallybemoredangerousthananylegislation
justified in the name of Anonymous’ actions.
Anonymous counters political disengagement and
passivity, acting as a gateway for some individuals to
engage in direct action. Spectators can join in, follow
along and get their daily dose of news. Organizations
like the EFF have a narrowly defined set of
opportunities for participation: financial support,
reading and circulating weekly email alerts, political
campaign advocacy and attending yearly benefit
events. Anonymous, on the other hand, provides
individuals with avenues for personal and collective
participation. While Anonymous might not appeal
to everyone — no political movement ever can or will
— it functions as a wide-open platform for discrete
microprotests. Participants need not fill out forms,
make donations, or in this case, even provide their
legal names. By participating, individuals become
a part of something larger than themselves. They
acquire diverse skills. Some will likely dedicate years
of their lives to activism.
Anonymous has awoken and cultivated political
sensibilities for some citizens. Dissent of the sort
Anonymous specializes in allows citizens to exercise
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 18 CIGIONLINE.ORG
their rights and demonstrate on behalf of the causes
they embrace. This lesson was reinforced through
a recent conversation with one young European
participant, a talented and prolific video editor. In
February 2013, he revealed how fundamentally he
had been transformed by Anonymous:
Well Anonymous changed a fkg lot
in my life, it changed 99 [percent] of
my life…before Anonymous, I was
a regular student at school, doing
stuff like playing pc games. I viewed
the USA as a dream land, especially
because Obama pulled back soldiers
from Afghanistan...My dream was to
become a architect or policemen, a
doctor.But ever since I got involved in
Anonymous, and accessed different
types of information from reading
twitter news, I saw how governments
“saw” justice, I started to see things
from another perspective. Everyday I
see the value of free speech. I work
with people I didn’t even know and
work with them for people who can’t
always speak for themselves.
Early in May 2013, this Anon completed a video for
Operation Guantanamo. Opening with a montage
of news clips featuring President Obama’s repeated
promises to close down the prison on Guantanamo
Bay, the video highlights the hypocrisy of a president
who ran a campaign on a promise that he has thus
far failed to keep.This young Anon has already made
over 90 videos for Anonymous. In May 2013, he
finished high school.
CONCLUSION
In 1996, a group of RAND researchers published
a seminal book on netwar. They defined it as “an
emerging mode of conflict (and crime)” in which
actors rely on small teams and flexible networked
organizational forms lacking a “precise central
command” or a rigid hierarchy (Arquilla and
Ronfeld, 1996). Although netwar is often identified
with criminal activity or digital networked politics,
the RAND authors emphasized its diversity. Netwar
can emerge online or offline. It can be initiated for
criminal, religious, ethnic or civil society purposes.
Many of the authors’ insights still ring true today.
However, several examples heralded as flexible, ad
hoc, peer-to-peer and non-institutional formations,
from MoveOn.org to open source production,
are now fairly stable formations with fleshed-out
strategies and doctrines; over time, they routinized
and became institutions in their own right.
Anonymous, on the other hand, has steadfastly
resisted routinization. With its flexibility, dynamism
and ad hoc autonomous groups, Anonymous
may epitomize netwar even to the extent that
protagonists celebrate and theorize its core features.
Still, it is worth noting that a few of Anonymous’
tactics, notably hacking and DDoS campaigns, rely
on a logic of command and control. For instance,
although an Anonymous DDoS attack may be
widely participatory and its target may be chosen by
consensus, the majority of the actual network traffic
required to perform the attack is controlled by a
smaller group. These elite participants must possess
the technical skills to wield botnets. This reveals an
element of a more traditional top-down hierarchy. In
fact, a private channel on one of Anonymous’biggest
IRC networks, where targets were chosen and hacks
discussed in secret, was actually called“#command.”
Nevertheless, the simultaneous existence of
different types of operations as well as multiple
backroom cabals, some at war with each other, many
experiencing internal feuds, prevents a calcified and
stable seat of concentrated power from forming.
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 19 CIGIONLINE.ORG
Networked and flexible forms of online activism
and dissent like Anonymous have arisen in lockstep
with the vast collection of information and software
that can algorithmically harvest data for real-time
surveillance and behaviour prediction. With a great
degree of accuracy and sophistication, this data
can forecast consumer preferences, map social
relationships, predict sexual orientation based on
one’s friends online and potentially even warn
military or commercial institutions that a staff
member is“likely”to become a whistle-blower and
leak sensitive information to the public.10
Anonymous is all the more interesting for its ability
to escape the orbit of big data analysis, inquiry often
marshalled for the purpose of anticipating behaviour
patterns. Even basic sociological treatment of
Anonymous is difficult, although not impossible.
This elusive entity is devilishly hard to track and
predict. Significant time and resources are required
simply to follow the arc of a single Anonymous
operation, let alone the social life and history of an
IRC network such as AnonOps. Its symbolism is
pervasive, yet much of Anonymous remains opaque
and undecipherable — an increasingly rare state of
existence today; thus, it acts as a vital counterweight
to the state of surveillance.
The inability to divine its future, much less form a
consistentandcomprehensiveaccountofAnonymous
at present, is most likely what is so unsettling and
threatening to governments and corporations
alike. Nevertheless, law enforcement has poured
significant resources into finding and apprehending
hacker suspects. In the United States, two LulzSec
hackers have been sentenced. Antisec hacker Jeremy
10	 See Ryan Gallagher (2013),“Software that Tracks People on
Social Media Created by Defence Firm,” The Guardian, February 10.
available at: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/10/software-tracks-
social-media-defence.
Hammond plead guilty in September 2013 to nine
acts of hacking, including the Stratfor hack, and
is awaiting sentencing. In the United Kingdom,
four individuals involved with Anonymous were
sentenced in May 2013 and received punishments
ranging from community service to 20 to 32 months
in jail. Earlier in January 2013, two men in the United
Kingdom were sentenced to jail, one for seven
months, the other for 18 months for their role in
the DDoS campaign against PayPal. In Ireland, two
young men pleaded guilty to defacing a website of
the Fine Gael, an Irish political party, for which the
judge noted the only harm was embarrassment. She
fined them 5,000 euros each and has ordered them
to complete a restorative justice program and to
return to court in October 2013.
So far, judges on both sides of the Atlantic have
treated these activities as purely criminal, unwilling
to entertain the idea that the actions may have be
principled dissent. One key difference between
sentencing in Europe and the United States is
that in the United States, punishments are usually
accompanied by astronomical fines. Both LulzSec
hackers in the United States were fined over
US$600,000, while no one in the United Kingdom
was fined and in Ireland the largest fine has, thus far,
not exceeded 5,000 euros.
Due to its lack of transparency, labyrinthine
sociology and bountiful secrecy, Anonymous may
not be the best model for democracy; in a few
instances, operations creep uncomfortably close to
vigilantism. It has, however, also revealed current
impasses and limits to democracy, the sort of critique
offered by Anonymous is an essential feature of
the democratic process. While Anonymous has not
proposed a programmatic plan to topple institutions
or change unjust laws, it has made evading laws and
institutions seem desirable. It has enabled action at
a time when many feel that existing channels for
Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 20 CIGIONLINE.ORG
change are either beyond their reach or too corrupt.
One core organizer captured this sentiment after I
asked him why he joined the more militant wing
of Anonymous, Anonops: “I was sold on the raids
[DdoS, black faxes, etc.] because I’d been an activist
for years before I got involved in Anon, like about
four-five years, and I’d just experienced that once
vested interests have made a government decision,
lobbying by ordinary people won’t get it changed
back without scaring them a little.”By unpredictably
fusing conventional activism with transgression and
tricksterism, Anonymous has captured the attention
of a diverse cornucopia of admirers and skeptics.
Many are watching, recognizing the power of the
mask as a potential force to unmask corruption,
hypocrisy, and state and corporate secrecy.
Anonymous in Context: The Politics and Power behind the Mask
Gabriella Coleman 21 CIGIONLINE.ORG
WORKS CITED
Anonymous (2007). “Dear Fox News.” YouTube
video. Available at: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=RFjU8bZR19A.
——— (2008). “Message to Scientology.” YouTube
video, January 21. Available at: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ.
Arquilla, John and David Ronfeld (1996). The Advent of
Netwar. RAND Corporation.
Bartlulz (2011). “Linton Johnson — The Face of BART.”
August 24.
Cheng, Jacqui (2010). “Anonymous Targets Australian
Government Over Porn Filters.” Arts Technica.
February 10. Available at: http://arstechnica.com/
tech-policy/2010/02/anonymous-targets-australian-
government-over-porn-filters/.
Christman, Tory (2012).“Tory Christman ex Scientologist
and Declared SP Shares Her Experiences @ Dublin
Offline.” YouTube video, August 15. Available at:
www.youtube.com/watch.
Fox News (2009).“4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly
of the Internet,”April 8. Available at: www.foxnews.
com/story/0,2933,512957,00.html.
Gorman, Siobhan (2012). “Alert on Hacker Power Play,”
The Wall Street Journal, February 21. Available at:
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059804577229390105521090.html.?v=SZzQUV6JUr0
&list=PLC311FA5229AC4B73&index=9.
LulzSec (2011). Available at: https://twitter.com/LulzSec/
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Mencken, H. L. (2008). In Defense of Women. Rockville,
MD: Arc Manor. First published 1918 by Philip
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Ragan, Steve (2011). Report: HBGary Used as an Object
Lesson by Anonymous. February 7. Available at:
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used-as-an-object-lesson-by-Anonymous/12723/.
Scott, James (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms
of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University
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Internet Governance Papers: Paper No. 3
Gabriella Coleman 22 CIGIONLINE.ORG
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