Anonymous Vows To Kill Facebook
The hacker/activist group Anonymous has pledged to “kill” Facebook on November 5th. Maybe.
The threat is clear, but Anonymous’ support of the attack isn’t. A viral video initially announced the attack, saying that Facebook is violating privacy rights and actively aiding the “spying” of “authoritarian governments”:
But since then, various Anonymous-affiliated Twitter accounts have released messages saying that only “some” members of the group support the attack, and even that the group will “absolutely disown” the plan called Operation Facebook.
As we noted earlier this week, Anonymous just recently hacked a San Francisco subway Web site in protest of a police shooting there.
Anonymous is…well, just that: an unknown group of independent hackers, who seem to coordinate their activities using online imageboards like 4chan and Futaba. I guess that’s one of the problems with anonymity—no one can say who is in charge.
November 5th is “Guy Fawkes Day” in England, celebrating the failure of an assassination plot against the King in the year 1605. Guy Fawkes was one of the would-be assassins who was caught and executed. Masks supposedly representing him were popularized by the Natalie Portman movie V for Vendetta (where the main character “V” finally carries out Fawkes’ plan and blows up Parliament on Nov. 5). Anonymous has since adopted these masks as one of their symbols.
