Salon.com > sabu http://www.salon.com Sat, 18 May 2013 21:30:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Anonymous reflects on a “frantic and historic” year http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/anonymous_reflects_on_a_frantic_and_historic_year/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/anonymous_reflects_on_a_frantic_and_historic_year/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13154308 As the year draws to a close and perfunctory 2012 reviews fill the quietened news agenda, one presence seems an almost constant accompaniment to 2012's major news events. When Israel launched a military assault on Gaza in November, while the Assad regime rained airstrikes against the Syrian people, even when the Westboro Baptist Church's  planned a predictably vile response to the Newtown massacre -- Anonymous was there.

As Wired's Quinn Norton extensively detailed earlier this year, 2011 and early 2012 presented the sprawling hacker collective with challenges both practical and existential. Hector Xavier Monsegur -- best known as Sabu, a central member of LulzsSec, the arm of Anonymous responsible for the famed Stratfor hack -- was arrested last year and revealed as an FBI informant in March 2012. Dozens of "Anons" across the world were outed by Sabu and picked up by the FBI and Interpol. Sabu's flip to informant not only lost Anonymous some of their most talented hackers, but also eroded the idea of Anonymous as an unbreakable, unfathomable legion.  Other faces of Anonymous emerged alongside the cold, grinning Guy Fawkes mask; real, human, flesh-and-blood faces of young men -- like 27-year-old Jeremy Hammond, a social justice activist from Chicago who could face life in prison for his alleged involvement in the Stratfor hack.

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