Anonymous has resurfaced once again, and this time the hacktivist group is targeting the primary source of controversy, the Minneapolis Police Department.
In a video released onto the official Anonymous Twitter account, a member of the group wearing the iconic Guy Fawkes mask, talks directly into the camera. The person behind the mask explains that “officers who believe they can kill people and commit other crimes need to be held accountable just like the rest of us, otherwise they will think they have a license to do whatever they want”.
Anonymous message for the American Spring.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) May 31, 2020
#Anonymous #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd #ICantBreathe #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/LY6XldgdNp
The video goes onto say that people have “had enough of this corruption and violence from an organization that promises to keep them safe”. Anonymous then begins to target the Minneapolis Police Department by saying that the officers behind the George Floyd killing need to face charges, and officer Chauvin should face murder charges. “Unfortunately, we do not trust your corrupted organization to carry out justice, so we will be exposing your many crimes to the world”.
Must likely is that in the coming days or weeks, a data leak of some sort from the Minneapolis Police Department, can be expected, revealing news that will only fuel people’s anger.
Who are Anonymous?
Allegedly, Anonymous are a group of online activists whose main aim is to target establishment hypocrisy and corruption. The group first shot to attention came in 2008 when a copyrighted Scientology video starring Tom Cruise was leaked on YouTube.
The group distributed denial-of-service attacks against Scientology websites in retaliation after the church asked for the video to be taken down. “A denial-of-service attack” is a deliberate attempt to overwhelm an online service through requests, thus rendering it unusable.
They rapidly started using online attacks as a form of nonviolent protest and by 2010 it was launching regular distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites in support of copyright.
Since then, the decentralised group has taken on a massive range of attacks including ‘Operation Ice ISIS’ where they attacked the Islamic State’s social media accounts and destroyed months of recruitment work, as well as ‘Operation KKK’ where they obtained and threatened to release the names of members of the Ku Kux Klan.
