{"id":1033,"date":"2011-10-26T10:28:02","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T14:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:25:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:25:46","slug":"anonymous-attacks-internet-child-porn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/10\/26\/anonymous-attacks-internet-child-porn\/","title":{"rendered":"Anonymous attacks Internet child porn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #505050\"><em>Marshall Thompson<span style=\"font-weight: bold\">\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #505050\">Anonymous, one of the foremost hacktivist groups around, decided to\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/blog\/violetblue\/anonymous-attacks-child-porn-websites-and-publish-user-names\/757\" target=\"_blank\">clean up the Internet<\/a>\u00a0a bit last week by attacking websites and servers that either distribute or support the distribution of child porn. The loosely organized group of hackers has always had a soft spot for vulnerable groups of people and a feeling that they own the Internet, so this latest target makes sense.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #505050\">In the past Anonymous has grabbed headlines for hacking\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/hlpronline.com\/2011\/07\/wikileaks-is-mainstream-compared-to-lulzsec\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bank of America<\/a>,\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/blog-post\/2010\/12\/mastercardcom_hacked_by_wikile.html\" target=\"_blank\">Visa<\/a>,\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/blog-post\/2010\/12\/mastercardcom_hacked_by_wikile.html\" target=\"_blank\">Mastercard<\/a>, the\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/hlpronline.com\/2011\/05\/pirates-attack\/\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Chamber of Commerce<\/a>, and even the occasional troublesome online<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/technology\/2011\/feb\/07\/anonymous-attacks-us-security-company-hbgary\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0\u201csecurity expert.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0They\u2019ve paid the price as well. In July, the\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/scitech\/2011\/07\/19\/exclusive-fbi-search-warrants-nationwide-hunt-anonymous\/\" target=\"_blank\">FBI arrested<\/a>\u00a0sixteen suspected members of Anonymous.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #505050\">But the target this time is not a fine, upstanding financial institution like Bank of America. It\u2019s just pedophiles and child pornographers. Given the \u201cvictims\u201d here, I wonder how quick the Department of Justice will be to jump on this. The techniques Anonymous used were probably illegal and apparently\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/blog\/violetblue\/anonymous-attacks-child-porn-websites-and-publish-user-names\/757\" target=\"_blank\">more sophisticated<\/a>than their previous exploits. They also\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: inherit;color: #3f6dcf\" href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20111028034414\/http:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/blog\/violetblue\/anonymous-attacks-child-porn-websites-and-publish-user-names\/757\" target=\"_blank\">released the identities<\/a>\u00a0of about 1,500 people connected with child porn on the Internet. On the other hand, they were achieving the same policy goals as the DOJ, perhaps even more effectively.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #505050\">Vigilantism on the Internet is probably less likely to result in physical violence than vigilantism in real life. Does that make it more acceptable? In any case, I wouldn\u2019t blame the DOJ one bit if they wanted to drag their feet on this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marshall Thompson\u00a0 Anonymous, one of the foremost hacktivist groups around, decided to\u00a0clean up the Internet\u00a0a bit last week by attacking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-gF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}