Anonymous Continues Anti-Censorship Threats Despite Arrests

Anonymous, a hacker collective that uses Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to take down websites, has threatened retaliation against Turkey and an attack against Malaysia over censorship plans. The “hacktivist” group Anonymous has been actively threatening countries over promises to increase Internet censorship and surveillance. 

The collective said that it will not release the name of the websites to be attacked in Turkey but that they will not be targeting political or media outlets.

The threats to Turkey come in the wake of the arrest of 32 alleged Anonymous members yesterday, 13 in response to a threatened attack on the Supreme Elections Board site. Turkey was initially targeted by Anonymous because of a plan to implement a web-censoring system in August. Anonymous claimed that the new censoring/filtering system would allow the Turkish government to spy on the Internet activities of Turkish citizens. More information about the arrests can be found on the OpenNet Initiative’s blog.

Turkey is not the only country currently weathering a series of online attacks. Malaysia has come under fire by Anonymous because of proposed increases in censorship against file-sharing websites like the Pirate Bay, as well as claims that the government is censoring movies and television shows. Anonymous’s message, posted on pastebin, said that ““We fear that if you make further decisions to take away human freedom, we are obligated to act fast and have no mercy,” Malaysia is bracing itself for an attack against its main government portal, which is supposed to be launched at 7:30 GMT on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011. We hope Herdict users will help us track the accessibility of the website.

Other recent, non-censorship targets threatened by Anonymous include the Federal Reserve and the Spanish National police website.

About the Author: Kendra Albert

Kendra Albert is an instructional fellow at the Cyberlaw Clinic.