Archive for the ‘Sociology’ Category
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Exo-Nationals and The Digital Lord of The Flies
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Digital Natives
Last week Josh Corman was at a conference and live tweeting commentary and thoughts online about INFOSEC and around the ideas of Cyberwar. At one point he mentioned the idea of “Digital Natives” against the backdrop of nation states and it struck me again as something I needed to expand upon. Though Josh had said he wanted a chance to explain further to me his ideas before I posted I don’t feel like I think that differently than he does about the topic. Though perhaps I do, I am not sure as I have yet to hear his ideas in full but I wanted to get this out of my head now so here it is.
Digital natives as a term has been around since 2001 when Marc Prensky coined the term in his work “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” was published. In this article he explains the basis of the idea that since kids from 2000 on (I would say earlier for some of us) have grown up with computers and the internet as a ubiquitous appliance/medium they tend to be greatly different in thinking, acting, and general attitudes than their parents and older generations. These people who did not grow up with the technology always around them and used by them are termed to be “Digital Migrants” and have emigrated to the use of the Internet and technologies. As such, these immigrants are often seen as foreigners in the digital world with antiquated ideas on how things should work and methods of doing things. The article (see below link) also goes into some detail on the cognitive differences as well as social differences that Presnky was seeing in the studies he was conducting.
Prensky; Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
Prensky; The Emerging Online Life of Digital Natives
Another paper that Prensky wrote was on the emerging online lives of these “digital natives” in that you could see the emergent behaviors progressing as online life (Web2.0 and Social Media for example) expanded to allow for more connectivity and social malleability. In both though the idea is put forth that we now have a generation or a couple really, that are inherently living their lives in a completely different way than their parents and all of it predicated on rapidly changing technology. This idea lends itself to the problems we face today as INFOSEC ptactitioners, governments, law enforcement agencies, and as parents to children who on the face of it are cognitively different than we are. Add to this the problem that much of our lives are now greatly affected by these technologies (banks, power, credit, reputations etc) that this generation or two now can control at very young ages for good or for ill and we have a problem that we must understand in order to manage.
Digital Immigrants
Moving on we have the Digital Immigrants, those who have moved into the digital space with smart phones, PC’s, Laptops, Ipads, and the like. Many do not leverage these devices in the ways that the natives do and in fact do not understand them on the whole. Outside of the people in the business of creating these wonders and creating their infrastructure the bulk of the populace older than 30 on average have little cognition of how things really work. I know this is a gross generality but just go with me on this and let’s not quibble ok? So, we have all these people who still use paper books and write things on pads and the natives think on the whole that they are a foreign species according to Prensky.
What really shakes out for me is that on the whole the LEA’s, the Gov, The Generals, and corporate execs of the world are all pretty much on the whole not of the Z or iGeneration (Natives) This means that they are all immigrants and by the terms of the idea not really connected to the ideals, attitudes, and cognitive changes that the iGen’s have in place. Add to this that aforementioned inability to really understand the technology itself nor how it could be leveraged and we have a pretty big problem with the world don’t we? Look at all this talk over cyberwar today and the outmoded modalities that are being used to try and grapple with the problems. How many times have you had the experience gentle reader with your boss or some other person as you try to explain to them the security problems with technology just to get a blank look back? …You get my point…
So we have the digital natives on average running circles around the immigrants (kids vs. parents, iGen vs. those in power) and friction occurs. All you really need look to are the cases of Aaron Swartz and Weev to see it play out in the media and the courthouse. What we commonly see as nothing really wrong the immigrants see as abhorrent, illegal, and immoral. The fact that say Weev just wrote a script to enumerate pages to us is nothing while in the eyes of the corporate types and the law it is an offense worthy of going to jail for 3.5 years and a lot of money in recompense to the corporation that was enumerated. Until such time as the immigrants are all gone and only the natives inhabit the net and the meatspace we will not have substantive cognition of the new generations mores and means of living with the technologies and how the laws can be changed to make a little more sense about offenses online as well as problems like cyber-warfare. It will take a at least another generation until parity is reached.
Digital Exo Nationals
While I think that the ideas of Digital Natives and Immigrants was what Josh had in mind as the core to his statement I also think he was alluding to those natives as being their own state. This is an idea that has been brought about by Anonymous and I think could be termed as “Digital Exo-Nationals” Those out there who feel that the net is a stateless space where no one state rules them (nation) nor do the mores of meatspace apply within the electronic world they live in. A group like Anonymous can claim to be truly stateless and on the face of it they can be on one level, but I think that on the whole anyone who is not persistently living just online (meaning they reside inside of a computer network) is in fact affected greatly by where they were raised, by whom, and are the product of their upbringing. This fact will always color people’s reactions and there will always be some form of nationalism to them as they interact online or take up arms in defense of some ideal.
With that said though I think it is nominally an idea that has merit. I believe in many ways the deizens of the net (i.e. the iGen/Natives) think of themselves as apart from the “real world’ that they physically inhabit when they are online, which today is pretty persistent at a connectivity level. This cognitive dissonance creates quite the dichotomy of perceptions for the natives. Once offline they must generally adhere to the structures of the “old world” as opposed to the pretty much wild west of the Internet and on average they manage to separate the two lives much like the quote from “The Matrix” by Agent Smith;
Agent Smith: It seems that you’ve been living two lives. One life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you… help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias “Neo” and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.
This is pretty much the perception for the immigrants right? While on the other side Neo would consider himself a freedom fighter or a seeker looking for a basic truth that the old system (i.e. The Matrix) is trying to prevent him from seeing. Think about this idea for a minute while reflecting on Anonymous today in the Wikileaks age. I think you will see the parable here and this is a core issue between Immigrant culture versus the new Native one. It is interesting to note though, that in the case of the Matrix, the natives are in fact both Neo and Smith in one sense but only Neo resides in a corporeal way… But I digress into philosophy here and before I break out my copy of “Simulacra and Simulation” on you I will stop.
Ok back to the issue at hand. We have digital natives now that perceive themselves as “Exo-Nationals” the net is their country and it is outside of the corporeal world. Their rules are not the rules of the real world and their mores are different. Their culture is one that is new and evolving and unfortunately the world they inhabit is not really theirs to control. Since the backbone of the infrastructure is owned by corporations and governments they’re really only renting if not actually squatting in their exo-national domain. This fact however does not stop them from trying to control the networks and in many ways they are able to through hacking and the use of good OPSEC. You see, in reality the natives who consider themselves Exo-Nationals are in fact guerrilla’s for the most part to my thinking.
The Digital Lord of The Flies
No matter the dialectic, there are issues to the dichotomy between the natives and the immigrants that can beget darker things. Since on average the common kid today can bypass most protections a parent my try to purchase for their home computers, that is if they are even cognizant enough to try, we have a generation that pretty much can run amok online. Without oversight the digital natives pretty much run the show. This has been touched upon by sociologists studying 4chan and Anonymous in the past and is quite valid a point. The mores of the natives are greatly different within the online world than those that we would teach them in the offline one. All of this is really predicated on the idea that once online the native is “anonymous” by use of technological means in the extreme or just the perception thereof by those who do not cognitively understand it (younger natives still learning)
Generally though the natives learn quickly that they can do many more things online that parents and others would find frightful offline and in public. It is this “disinhibition effect” through percieved or technical anonymity that allows for this behavior to evolve and thus gives rise to what I call the “Digital Lord of The Flies” effect. In essence the children have been left to their own devices on a digital island and those more powerful take over and rule rather mercilessly. In the last few days I got a first hand view of this effect with regard to teens and twenty somethings in the gamer/Xbox verse. Where gaming had become banal some of these “crews” or “Teams” began upping the ante by hacking, carding, and what they call GT (gamer tag) “Jacking” All criminal activities that are perceived by these kids as ok because they are not doing these things to people in reality (and by reality I mean in person in front of them)
There seems to be a disconnect within the psyche for these kids where their actions are just not real because it happens online. Some of these kids that I tracked online due to recent events with the attacks on Brian Krebs that leads me to believe some of them may in fact be on the road to sociopathy. This though is not the case for all of them of course so one has to ask how is it that they feel so moved to carry out these deeds online and not feel the least bit of remorse about them? It is this disconnect that fascinates me really and I will be looking further at it in the future. As more and more generations move into the natives category being born into a world with prevalent technologies we will only see more of these problems until that parity I spoke of happens. When the parents of all these kids are just as savvy about the net as their kids are, then we will be able to teach them.. Of course in thinking about this it comes to me that perhaps that will only shift to natives teaching natives the same behaviors…
Sigh…
Time will tell I guess.
K.
It’s The 90’s All Over Again.. Except This Time Online: Political Correctness and Human Nature
Remember The 90’s and The PC Movement?
Ahh the 90’s… A time when things were good. The economy was booming, terrorism was, well, starting again having been in a lull since the 70’s, and we all were just zippidy doo da about life! Well most of us were. Others though, well, they were fretting over our collective moral souls because we were an inch from perdition’s flame from vulgar behavior and attitudes! That’s right kids, for those of you who were too young to remember, this is the time when the government started to think that they should control (but in the end label) the lyrics of songs or records because they could be harmful to children and much more insidious things ensued. Step into the Wayback machine kids… Political Correctness The “Culture Wars” Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter Pat “Fuckin” Buchanan *shudder* It was a scary time kids, but then again, so were the 70’s and 80’s as well if you were around for them and cognizant of what was going on. It was this landscape though, the 90’s that really bears the most on the conversation I want to have with you all though. The 90’s where the technology today (internet) began to be prevalent and also a scary scary thing to the powers that be. Just as the times were changing socially, artistically, and most of all to me, musically, the technology also gave people an outlet as well as to some, a means of control, just remember the clipper chip and you’ll know what I mean.
In other areas though, there seemed to be this movement toward “right behavior” and conforming to norms that, well, rankled me and I am sure many others. At the time we had people like Tipper Gore trying to get things labeled as (R) or (Mature) because they could not outright ban it (re rap music/gangsta rap lyrics) I remember her and certain people throwing a kanipchen fit over the images and lyrics to Guns-N-Roses Appetite for Destruction as well. I mean, I listened to it and I am just fine… Right? So why all the need to censor things? Was it perhaps that too many people were not, oh, say, watching their kids and dealing with them? Perhaps letting the TV raise them? Heh. Well, many jumped on board and it made the 90’s a hell of a fun time. I had thought we had gotten past all this claptrap, but, it seems its all coming back and now, it’s all about “online” content too! Of course, there are those looking to do the old fashioned route again like Middleborough Mass, where they decided to put out an ordinance against swearing in public. You read that right, they will fine your ass $20.00 for swearing! Morons.
Being “Sensitive”
The other day I had to endure a “sensitivity training” I will not go into the reasons why we were being trained but I will extrapolate for you all the reason why I think we were there. The real reason we were there was to 1) CYA for the company and 2) because far too many people are not raised to be accepting whatsoever of anyone being different in our collective cultures. It is my contention that if you are unable to be tolerant of others differences now at adulthood, then you are the product of a poor upbringing and failed to learn anything in Kindergarten. It’s really as simple as that. However, because of the legal system and because of the overblown nature of what is considered PC corporate behavior today, people have to go through the basics of “Don’t be an asshole” training. Now, for me, this also extends to the laws being drafted today about cyber bullying. Granted, people are bullied (kids and adults) and some do in fact take their lives over it. This is sad and I really wish it upon no one, but, is it not the job of the parents or the person to just realize that these people are assholes and get over it? I mean, it’s the internet for God’s sake! We are ALL ASSHOLES and we had better learn this from a young age.
We all need to develop coping mechanisms and much of this should stem from good parenting. Instead I fear, we have all abdicated the parenting to the beige box and the intertubes as opposed to sitting with your kids and having real discourse and bonding. Regardless, now it seems that the Nanny state needs to get in on the act and create law to help sort it all out. It’s one thing to make something criminal, and another to attempt to force behavioral modifications on us all that may yet infringe on our first amendment speech rights in this country. I think we are at the tipping point here and with all the cyber hubbub over warfare and criminality, the congress critters have taken the reigns in their oft ill conceived ways and will likely fuck us all in the end with their swift pens of “justice”
Laws On Online Behavior, or Making Free Speech Criminal
The re-birth it seems of the PC attitudes of the past now has begun to spill into the internet and its “Wild West” of cussing and bad behavior. Once again, people are starting to stir up rhetoric to speed congress toward action against those horrible people who inhabit the internet. Once again, it’s certainly not the parents job to control their children online and certainly not the individual’s right to be as vulgar or maybe say, buy a exceedingly large soda in NYC it seems. No! We need the Nanny State to come along and control what we do for our own good! Meanwhile that same group of people is allowing “Cyberwar” to be pre-emptively acted upon even though we have no fucking clue as to how to defend against such attacks on our own feeble infrastructure.
Lately I have been hearing stories of people being told to remove their blogs because they have offended someone, case in point today came from some child blogging on how bad her cafeteria was at school! Holy WTF?! What the hell is going on here? Is this not free speech? Are we not in America? Oh, wait, SHE was in Scotland.. Ok, so the daily haggis was not to her liking, but trying to stifle the creativity and the opinion of the child was just ok? NO, it was and IS not! Nor should it be even thought of as acceptable that this happen in the first place. It was even worse that a governmental body tried to pull this crap, and this is what I fear here in the states as well. How long til we have “free speech zones” on the internet one wonders?
Meanwhile, back to bad behavior and the internet. Like I have said before, its the “internet” and the intonation there is that “who the fuck cares?” No one should take it seriously. If someone says something bad about you to the world, well, say that it isn’t true. If it isn’t true and you get fired or something happens and you have a case, sue their asses. Otherwise, all this claptrap about lil johnny’s feelings being hurt should just stop. There are already laws about harassment on the books and those should be used or amended for use to arrest someone on stalking etc. However with all of the rush to get legislation on the books, it seems that other areas are being exposed to piteously stupid law making around freedom of speech globally. Now, I realize that it is a global community and many places do not allow free speech, but, I am only here to ring the warning bell.
DING DING DING!
Pay attention to what the Congress Critters are up to or soon enough you will find yourself having to deal with some bogus charge of swearing in public or online.
FUCK! ASS!
K.
Anonymous, Not So Headless, Not So Resilient To Insider Threats
Owen -> SmilingDevil: we lost a numbe rof servers last night SmilingDevil -> owen: 😛 we need some more security. Owen -> SmilingDevil: dude Owen -> SmilingDevil: it forcved level3 to stop announing a /24 Owen -> SmilingDevil: it was in the gbps range Owen -> SmilingDevil: doom alone got hit with 1 gb SmilingDevil -> owen: gigabit or gigabyte? Owen -> SmilingDevil: all leafs went down Owen -> SmilingDevil: add it all up Owen -> SmilingDevil: yeah huge SmilingDevil -> owen: 😛 we need a hidden irc server for the admins. SmilingDevil -> owen: that only they know about Owen -> SmilingDevil: um thats called the hub Owen -> SmilingDevil: 🙂 SmilingDevil -> owen: did they take that too? Owen -> SmilingDevil: but anyhow Owen -> SmilingDevil: we suffered alot of damage
Hello, My name is Hubris:
Well, it seems that the leaderless hive was actually co-opted by a small band of ‘leaders’ who were, by the account of one of their own (Ryan) power and fame hungry.
You don’t say!
The events that transpired last weekend with the ‘coup de tat’ as Anonymous called it, do not surprise me whatsoever. Ryan’s taking over of the servers with a small band of followers just proves out my theories about Anonymous not being a truly headless organisation. In fact, the further fact that a small group has in fact taken over, shows that no action, whether it be militant or social can be carried out effectively by a disparate group of individuals. Every putsch needs a set of leaders and followers.
Anonymous and those who run it either are too naive to understand this, or, they just want to deny it to get people to buy into the propaganda that they are truly an autonomous swarm and are self empowered. The truth of the matter seems to be playing itself out now for the world to see with this takeover. As the articles out there state, and I have said in the past, there will always be people with keys to the kingdom such as Ryan. An operations manager or admin has to run the systems and maintain them. These people and those who they work with/for are definitely the biggest insider threats as Ryan has shown. In his case though, he leveraged his knowledge and access he had to overtake other systems, lock them, and effectively damage the Anon network from operating.
It seems that the actual hacks on Sony and the general tone of late from the “collective” (i.e. the core group who pulled off the HBGary hack) had become too much for Ryan and thus he pulled the plug. Frankly, I too have felt that Anonymous had become too big for its own britches of late and was waiting for more federal warrants to ‘van’ the kiddies. In the end though, it took one of their own to bring them down.. Which, seems to me I said before that all it will take is one of the core group to be ‘vanned’ and then become a CI for the Feds to bring the rest of them down. I mean, no one really looks forward to a federal case against them and perhaps pound me in the ass prison do they?
Given the choices, I am sure someone would easily go turncoat and give up names and data to save their own bacon. Perhaps its just a testament to the ineptness on the part of the Feds to not have gotten someone in the box and sweated it out of em.
The King is dead! Long live the King!
So, here we are, Anonymous has declared a DOX war on Ryan as of today and Ryan has effectively locked them out and shown them that no one should be trusted with the keys to the kingdom. The insider threat is the highest one.
Always.
While Anonymous’ core group re-groups, one wonders what will happen to this new splinter group that Ryan is setting up. Odds are in my book, that they too will also fall into the same behaviour eventually that Ryan and his pal’s decided they did not like. After all, most of these people are still kids. Kids with powerful tools and ideas that certainly have changed the game in many ways for corporations and individuals the world over. However, as kids, they lack the experience to adroitly handle all this power that they wield. They take on childish manners and slang, act out, and eventually start the backbiting as seen this weekend.
So how long will it be before thinq_ goes down the same path as Darth Vader as well?
Social Dynamics:
This is all a grand social experiment that is being played out on the Internet for all to see. No matter how many times the groups and their leaders may claim that they are leaderless and a collective, Anonymous will by their very human and social natures, gravitate toward a leadership modality. We are social animals who for thousands of years have had kings, strong men, and others who lead us. Hell, look at our society today, half the world just went ape over the marriage of royalty in Britain. Clearly, we have some inherent need or desire to be lead. Look as well as the cult of celebrity today. These people are ‘leaders’ if not by thought (because many are dullards) but by style or cool factors (perceived)
Hell, for that matter, we still have a ‘president’ here in the states. A king by any other name really. Sure there are limits to their power, but just take a look at what GWB did during his 8 years and tell me that wasn’t mighty king like. He was after all, “The Decider” Nope, no matter how many times you beat your collective chests and bleat out that you are a swarm, you are all still subject to human nature.
Face it kids.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat:
In the end, I predict that more ‘autonomous’ groups will arise. Each will be a faction unto themselves with de facto leaders that will either start the trend or will emerge later on. Thought leaders, action leaders, charismatic leaders. All of them will have their own agenda’s and eventually, will fall like every king or queen throughout history.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
K.
Virtual Arkham: Explaining Anonymous, Lulzsec, and Antisec Animus in Our Digital Gotham City
with 12 comments
Personae Dramatis: The Rogues Gallery
In this post I would like to show you what I have been seeing with regard to Anonymous the other groups that have spawned from it. Increasingly over the last year or two I have been seeing analogies both literally, and figuratively between the forces at play and I feel that all of it is directly affected by the comic book world of Batman. The analogies that I am making come from observing not only the actions of the parties but also the methods that they use (down to the imagery in word and graphical) to get that message out to the masses.
In the case of Anonymous and their spin off groups, I have observed a shift in personalities that could be termed an evolution in motivations and thought. Generally though, the game plan seems to be just a general way for the groups to sow anarchy while feeding their narcissistic needs through media attention. This is the crux of the issue I think as the core groups don’t seem to be solely motivated by ethical or political change. Instead, it all seems to be focused on a few drivers;
Equating this with the world of the Batman has been in the back of my mind for some time, especially since my dealings with Jester. His logo and his persona of the “joker” from the last Dark Knight film set the stage for me to start to think in this vein. A more recent video by the History Channel solidified all of this for me. The video, “Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight” struck me as not only as being the zeitgeist of this article, but, also seemed to show a generation of comic book and movie goers that are internet denizens that want to emulate this last iteration of “The Joker” specifically.
The Heath Ledger portrayal of Joker seems to have been the catalyst to me, of many an internet anarchist. The media surrounding this being his last role as well as the way the character was re-written in this story arc, hit a common nerve with the masses. So much so, that seemingly, the Joker became the more emulated and lauded character in the story over its real hero, Batman. It is from this realisation that I derive the rest of the analogies made here. Of course these are gross generalities, but, I tend to think that given the recent activities (riots in the UK and flash mob thievery in the US as well as all the lulz) there is a strong correlation to be made.
First though, lets look at the Rogues Gallery that end up in Arkham Asylum…
Ra’s Al Ghul and The Shadow Assassins
Ra’s is a control freak. His agenda is to have order but his means to get that order mean subjugation of the masses and removal of anyone that does not conform to his sense of right and wrong. This order that he wishes to impose comes from his shadow assassins and their lethality without question.
The Riddler
The Riddler is a pure narcissistic criminal genius. His narcissism though, is usually his undoing as he cannot perpetrate any crime without leaving overt clues in an attention seeking pathology. It is this pathology, the need for the attention that drives him altogether and is his undoing.
The Penguin & The Joker or PenguiJoker
The Penguin (Societal and Governmental corruption) and The Joker (pure anarchy) are two rogues that have become one in this scenario. Within the world of Batman though, each attacks the order seeking to destroy it for their own ends. In the Penguin we have someone looking to corrupt the system. Meanwhile, the Joker, is pure anarchy diametrically opposed to the order (aka Batman) Joker’s need is fuelled by a nihilistic world view twisted with a good deal of insanity.
All of the Batman wannabes in hockey suits
Lastly, we have the Bat-men, the would be vigilante’s who want to be the Bat, but, don’t have the tools to really be of use. This character set was added from the last film (The Dark Knight) and I generally attribute to one player in the real world (if you call it that) version of Gotham Knights being played out on the internet. That individual(the afore mentioned jester) oddly enough aligns himself visually much of the time with “The Joker” but, he is more like the hockey suit wearing would be Batman.
Now that I have laid down the Batman’s Rogues Gallery, I will move on to the real world players and their motives aligned with my premise.
Anima & Animus:
According to Jung and even Freud, the darker side of the psyche can drive our actions solely by the shadow self. One can see hints of their theories in the actions of each of the groups we are talking about here. Even the subtle connections made from overt symbolism can be made through the icon of Antisec itself. As seen at the top of the page, the connections are there to be made between the characters of Penguin, Joker, and Riddler, even if the original core image came from another source altogether (V for Vendetta) I believe that the collective unconscious here latched on to the images of Riddler/Joker/Penguin and co-opten them, if they didn’t actually do so overtly and with forethought.
So, with all of this said, I will make the claim now that I believe the movements and the players have been created out of vainglorious motives and have not changed at all since taking on the mantle of ethical and political change through civil disobedience. To that end, here are the players aligned to their characters from the world of Gotham as well as their psychological underpinnings.
Anonymous: Ra’s Al Ghul and The Shadow Assassins
Anonymous started out as a group of people who inhabited the 4chan group but wanted to do something different for ‘entertainment’ This loose idea was co-opted when they began to commit civil disobedience for their own purposes either political or for the aforementioned entertainment value. Either way, their animus is wholly about the control which they can wield over others. This should never be forgotten, that the core of the group ethos has nothing to do with change or moral/ethical betterment. It is in fact all for their own enjoyment.
Lulzsec: The Riddler
Lulzsec came into being because they felt that the ethos and moral constructs of Anonymous were too weak and they wanted to escalate the ‘lulz’ for their own enjoyment. The take away here is that just being pranksters was not enough, instead they wanted to show everyone they were smarter than everyone else AND that they could do so and get away with it. All the while, they performed these acts in an exceedingly narcissistic way. A key player in this that has been caught would be Topiary. It seems that even in the face of prosecution he thumbs his nose at authorities as well as seems to be enjoying the limelight (philosophical book in hand for the cameras)
Antisec: The Penguin & The Joker or PenguiJoker
The love child of Anonymous and LulzSec are #Antisec. This agenda or perhaps subgroup (I tend to think there are cells of Antisec) has chosen a logo that decidedly shows the melding of at least two of the Batman Rogues Gallery (Joker and Penguin as you can see at the top of this article) This too follows into their attitudes about what they are doing and why they are doing it. They really have no rhyme or reason for what they do other than their own entertainment and attention. This is a classical narcissist behaviour and by all communiqués laid out by LulzSec, they fully enjoyed their ‘voyage’ in the lulz sea.
Antisec also has a Penguin side to them too. By using the system against itself (i.e. using the governments lack of network and system security) they poke them in the eye by subverting their own data to shame them. This is a lesser characteristic as I see it, but it is still important to note as well as point out the imagery (homage) to the Penguin in their logo whether it was overtly done or by proxy of some unconscious connection made by the designer.
th3j35t3r: All of the Batman wannabes in hockey suits
Finally, we have the jester. A character who wants to be the Batman, but fails to actually affect any kind of real change in the battle. For all of the attempts made, the efforts fall flat and to date, nothing has been attributed to him that substantially made a difference against the Anonymous/Lulzsec movement. I believe he does this as well as his other DDOS actions out of a self described sense of helplessness. Jester makes the claim that he had to do something as he saw his comrades dying at the hands of Jihadists. He made similar remarks about why he was attacking Anonymous, as they were outing data that could harm those in the field of battle.
Either way, his motivations seem to be tainted with a bit of narcissism as well, seeking the attention of the media as he has in the past makes him part and parcel to the overall problem.
Escalation:
And so it goes on… The Anon movement has begat others who have agenda’s of their own (or perhaps pathos is a better word) As the movements lose interest in the day to day grind of operations, they will increasingly seek to up the ante. As the media winds down on them, they will need to seek even bigger targets and outcomes to end up back on the top of the news, all the while feeding their collective need to be the centre of attention. The flip side of this will be that the authorities, unable to cope easily with the problem at hand, will create new and more stringent laws that will harm us all. Though this will not matter to the groups.. Because this is unimportant to their end goal of satisfying their needs. It will keep going round and round and the outcomes are likely not to be good. There will be a lot of collateral damage and in the end, no one will have profited at all from it all.
End Game:
So what is the end game here? Will there be any good outcome from this?
Not if it keeps going the way it has been. More indiscriminate hits against targets without showing anything for it along the lines of showing corruption or malfeasance will only lead to more knee jerk reactions by authorities. I imagine some will be caught and tried for their actions, others will escape and perhaps go on to other things… Overall though, it will not make a better world. It will only have fulfilled the dsires temporarily of the ones perpetrating the acts against.. Well anyone and everyone.. Until they get put into Arkham.
K.
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Written by Krypt3ia
2011/08/19 at 17:36
Posted in .gov, A New Paradigm, Anonymous, AntiSec, Commentary, Dystopian Nightmares, FauxSec, Forensic Psych, Forensic Psychology, Infosec, Infowar, Insurgency, Jokey, Lulz, LulzSec, Night Watch, Profiling, Sociology