Salon.com > Douglas Thomas http://www.salon.com Thu, 23 May 2013 15:34:05 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 What if Anonymous targeted you? http://www.salon.com/2011/08/15/what_if_anonymous_targeted_you/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/15/what_if_anonymous_targeted_you/#comments Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:40:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2011/08/15/what_if_anonymous_targeted_you As new technologies emerge, the hacker subculture evolves with them -- as it has with the "big data dump," where a single individual or group of hackers uncovers a massive amount of information and makes it public.

The two most prominent examples, of course, are the cases of the collective Anonymous releasing more than 10 gigabytes of data from local sheriffs' departments last week and WikiLeaks, specifically Julian Assange's publication of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables in November 2010.

It appears to be a new movement -- releasing huge collections of sensitive data with the goal of rendering government actions transparent to the public, or simply in retaliation for a policy the hackers disagree with. On Sunday, Anonymous hacked into computers for the San Francisco metro service Bay Area Rapid Transit and released personal data belonging to more than 2,000 customers. That was in response to BART shutting down mobile phone service on trains one day last week to prevent protesters from organizing. (Don't blame us, Anonymous said. Blame BART for not keeping the information hack-proof.)

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/15/what_if_anonymous_targeted_you/feed/ 49