By Michael J. Smith on Monday December 6, 2010 05:48 PM
It always makes me happy, wildly giddily happy, when people fight back with whatever
modest means are at their disposal:
Anonymous
attacks PayPal in 'Operation Avenge Assange'
Anonymous has launched a broad-ranging campaign in support of Wikileaks, starting with a DDoS assault on a PayPal website.
The denial of service attack lasted for eight hours and resulted in numerous service disruptions, Panda Security reports [1]. The group [2], spawned from anarchic message board 4chan, first came to prominence with a long running campaign against the church of Scientology... [Anonymous] said on its website:
While we don’t have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons. We want transparency and we counter censorship. The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we can not say what we think and are unable to express our opinions and ideas....Operation Avenge Assange [3] will incorporate a combination of political lobbying (writing to MPs etc), a consumer boycott of PayPal as well as practical support (mirroring) and advocacy for Wikileaks. The traditional denial of service attacks will also come into play with an assault against the ThePayPalblog.com. ® Okay, okay, all you Grinches out there, I hear ya. This sort of thing is utterly futile -- until suddenly it isn't. Robin Hood didn't bring down the Plantagenet monarchy, either. But we still remember him.
Comments (13)
I understand the intent, but I'm also sympathetic to this argument:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/12/the_amazon_boyc.html
Obviously this is about Amazon, not PayPal, but I believe the circumstances were similar.
Posted by Vinnie | December 6, 2010 6:39 PM
Posted on December 6, 2010 18:39
Even the futile should be undertaken. The enemy only has so many pieces on the board.
Posted by Jack Crow | December 6, 2010 7:07 PM
Posted on December 6, 2010 19:07
It's political theater, or counter-Spectacle! Like marching nude and holding up the Cuban flag in a 4th of July parade. It pisses people off, and that's the joy of it.
Posted by senecal | December 6, 2010 8:22 PM
Posted on December 6, 2010 20:22
It warms my heart. Thanks, /b/.
Posted by Save the Oocytes | December 7, 2010 2:14 AM
Posted on December 7, 2010 02:14
Did that just happen? Did someone actually post a link to econlog on SMBIVA, and not as a joke?
Posted by FB | December 7, 2010 9:09 AM
Posted on December 7, 2010 09:09
Yes. Wonders never cease.
Posted by MJS | December 7, 2010 10:56 AM
Posted on December 7, 2010 10:56
The econlog guy is very confused. He kicks off his argument with the apparent assumption that Amazon was hosting Wikileaks out of altruism. He seems to be unaware that Amazon has any revenue streams or business divisions other than its bookstore. He also seems to be unaware of the DMCA provisions protecting ISPs like Amazon from liability for things their customers do on the Internet.
Posted by Picador | December 7, 2010 11:15 AM
Posted on December 7, 2010 11:15
Econlog is great and all, but I much prefer Caplan's personal homepage:
http://www.bcaplan.com/
Posted by FB | December 7, 2010 11:22 AM
Posted on December 7, 2010 11:22
Was that so wrong? It seemed relevant to the matter at hand. Excuse me if I'm green to the SMBIVA social mores. Yeesh.
Posted by Vinnie | December 7, 2010 12:37 PM
Posted on December 7, 2010 12:37
No, no, not wrong at all. Just a little off the beaten track for us.
Posted by MJS | December 7, 2010 1:06 PM
Posted on December 7, 2010 13:06
DDoS is slowly gaining the same meaning as 'unfriend'
Posted by hapa | December 7, 2010 3:37 PM
Posted on December 7, 2010 15:37
It looks like they brought down the Swiss bank site they went after (postfinance.ch). It's been down for several hours. From what I understand they need more firepower for Paypal which was something of a bust on the first go. Considering that WL mirrors went from 100+ to over 800 in a very short time, surely the DDoS army is growing too. We may well see some giants taken down, if only for a few hours.
This Anonymous person(s) seems like a first class organizer.
Posted by diamonddog | December 7, 2010 5:36 PM
Posted on December 7, 2010 17:36
I can has governmental transparency?
Posted by AlanSmithee | December 8, 2010 3:22 PM
Posted on December 8, 2010 15:22