Internet "hacktivist" group Anonymous has stepped up its game after declaring war on Sony yesterday, gathering information on Sony employees, its legal team, and their relatives. For those not keeping track, this is in retaliation for the "PS3 hacking" civil suits that Sony's leveled against various individuals.
An Anonymous sub-group, Sony Recon, is gathering the personal data, starting out with group executive Robert S. Wiesenthal and CEO Howard Stringer. One member is quoted on IRC as saying, "No one found ANY info on Stringer's kids?"
According to the group, "Sony, the judge and Sony's lawyers are all valid targets." Sony Recon claims it is not doing anything illegal -- it's gathering publicly available information in the hopes of finding something that may invalidate Sony's suits against Geohot and Graf_Chokolo.
Not quite sure how going after someone's kids is helping anybody, but then, I'm not a legal expert. Opinion is most certainly divided as to whether these guys are heroes fighting a just cause, or little more than Internet terrorists. I think I'm going to wait and see who wins before forming an opinion.
Anonymous Targets Sony Employees [Edge]
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Contest:
8:40 AM on 04.05.2011 | 
Geohot deserves what he gets anyways. What's the word on him, didn't he flee to South America like a post-WWII Nazi or something?
Don't forget.
so sony demanding personal information on EVERY SINGLE person who visited forum threats and sites with files and information about jailbreaking ps3 is illegal too, right? cause they did exactly the same.
Take it from Geohot - just do a rap battle.
I believe the idea is, quite simply, "scare the fuck out of people until they back off". It's a tactic that Anonymous has used before very successfully. Anonymous is effectively the perfect stalker, in the past able to turn up at people's workplaces, schools, churches, you name it. It scares the hell out of anyone, quite rightly, and so far it seems to have had a 100% success rate. Encyclopedia Dramatica has countless articles detailing the scarily large amount of people this has worked on.
You have a problem with Sony, fine, whatever... but employees at Sony are just people. They just work there, trying to pay their rent like everyone else. Harassing someone simply because they work for a company you don't like is pretty douchey.
That's pretty much the internet equivalent of terrorists blowing up civilians in a coffee shop because they don't have the balls to attack military targets.
If these guys want to consider themselves rebels fighting the good fight or some shit like that, they need to act like it.
All hail the hypno-toad!
The only thing they have succeeded in is giving Hackers a "cause". No they believe they are the good guys and have a righteous motivation. Now they will rally together and make virtual life miserable. Sony has pushed to the point where they are coming off as a billion dollar bully. At least they have their delusional fanboys fighting the good fight. It's just too bad they come off as uneducated morons.
Guess I won't be getting much use out of my new PSN plus account.
Personally, I wouldn't have gone about things like this. I can understand that they are pissed at Sony for being absolute cockgoblins, but attacking innocent employees is not the way to go. Even if Sony are likewise attacking innocent people.
That said, do I think it's funny that Sony is feeling that karmic backfire for being a bunch of ridiculous cunts? Fuck yes I do.
These guys don't just deserve jail, they need to be placed near the lowest end of the foodchain in the prison system if they go through with this stuff.
I'm not a fan of the fact that they're going after regular employees or the judges. If it was limited to the people who came up with the idea to do all of these court cases and lawsuits, then I could somewhat support that.
Then again, I don't really have an opinion on this at all anyways. We'll see how it turns out. Carry on gents. Just please don't ruin the lives of any of the children.
I resign. gg
After HB Gary and the Wikileaks kerfuffle, Sony sure seems like small fry tho.
I come from the Internet and I can safely say
They'll stop as soon as they're bored
the Scientology ruckus is an example