Jazz Biscuit just got sent a few photos of the Anonymous vs. Scientology protest this morning in Dublin by a friend:
Hey, I was cycling through town and I caught the tale end of the anon protest thing. This was at about 2.30, and if as your site says it was on at 12 then I guess people were probably mostly gone when I was there. looked like the lads doin it were enjoying it though.
On Wikipedia, this subject is now grouped under the name Project Chanology, and documents a group formed out of various online forums to undermine and attack the Church of Scientology. They started with internet-based attacks, but are now planning a coordinated world-wide protest on February 10th. This post concerns the alleged Irish protest.
Disclaimer: I’m not involved or affiliated in any of this, I’m merely interested in following this story as it emerges.
One of the posters there points to this link, where there are apparent details of the Irish protest.
There is also a set of rules for the protests, which is good, as they advocate peaceful demonstration and lots of documentation of the event.
The image on the left is taken from the same page that the details of the protests all over the world are on.
At post number #41 on the boards.ie thread, it gets interesting with “Anonymous_IRL” posting the following:
Unfortunatley it has come to our attention that none of you really know what this is about, you do not understand the work of anonymous, also post #15 we severley doubt you know the person organising it, as the very idea of these actions is to remain anonymous, you simply know a child who would like to think they have involvment,
this raid is not simply a 2-3 minute flashmob arrangment, infact there are no arrangments as of yet aside from the time, date, and place. the time and date to co-encide with the UK raid.
all who wish to join our legions the information is available, go seek for yourselves,
We are Anonymous
We are Legion
We are Everyone
We are No-one
We are coming
Expect Us…….
There’s a couple more posts from him/her as the thread progresses. There’s a lot of crap to wade through, but there’s also some interesting asides along the lines of pontificating on whether the protest is warranted when Irish people should be protesting much more prevalent, relevant domestic issues and the like.
This is the kind of internet story that those of us who live and work here die for: it has everything.
Mystery: We don’t know who anonymous are - we have an idea, we know their script kiddies of some kind, and there’s various mentions of the message boards they might come from, but the idea that this might be just a bunch of internet kids doing it for fun makes it even more compelling; it’s so robin hood it’s hilarious.
War: Not just conflict, but internet based conflict. Hacker stuff, geek cool. Stuff that is out bounds for the normal internet user, but everyone is aware of it. It’s the misty grey internet that’s portrayed over-theatrically in films - the impossible hacks - but this is real, and these guys are actually doing it.
An obvious bad guy: Scientology appears almost over the top in it’s pure evil: take a look at the BBC Panorama video.
Questionable morals and ethics: You’ve got an anonymous group partaking in illegal activity to take down a group that are alleged by many to engage in questionable or even illegal activity. Official long established anti-scientology campaigners have said, predictably, that the anonymous group are illegal and not condoned. But it’s still that robin hood aspect. Digg users are digging it for lulz all over the place.
Originality: This has never happened before. It’s exciting and completely unkown territory. I’m well aware of scammers threatening Denial of Service attacks on popular web sites as a means of extracting ransoms; but this is different; this is an organisation with no other objective other than the destruction of the other.
Bizarrely different super-powers between the two sides: On Scientology’s side, we have a threatening weapon: litigation and prosecution - they also have the rule of law with them, at least where malicious web based attacks are concerned. And on Anonymous’s side, you’ve got internet based attacks.You’ve got traditional denial of service, you’ve got massive spam-bot attacks, you’ve got fax machines printing out endless blank pages and phone numbers bombarded by infinite calls. It couldn’t be two more different offensive postures if it tried. Incredible!
This is fascinating stuff: I have so many questions:
Will Anonymous, if it is made up of young people, not just loose interest and move onto something else? Have they any hope of maintaining a sustained attack on scientology?
And most importantly: Can they have any real impact? They’ve already achieved quite a bit of media success, and been featured on Sky News, NBC and many others. Digg is going nuts at the moment, take a look at the search result for Scientology. But how much damage can they actually do? How much real world action will be taken; how many demonstrations will draw big crowds? How much can an internet based attack affect the organisation as a whole?
There’s a bunch of links up at http://calloftheday.com/ (That link is from the second alleged address by anonymous) - I’ve no idea if this is an official resource for Anonymous.
Their first address; the declaration of war by Anonymous. Gorgeously corny:
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The image on the left is taken from the 