Ah, stupid kids...
How in THE hell does this help the ACTA act from not becoming law?!?
By hacking the site, don't you think that the government officials (who are NOT tech savvy) would push harder to MAKE it a law??

Seriously, I'm surprised how little this was thought through...

It's like the government decided to try to outlaw alcohol, then a group came into the capitol building, kill the people inside, and turn it into a bar... those that survived would now be even MORE committed to passing the law.

It's not like Anonymous is anything more than a bunch of nihilistic children with uncanny hacking skills. They're pretty much the enemy of my enemy.

Anonymous makes de-legitimatizes legitimate concerns and complaints and does a disservice to their own causes. Do you think they will ever learn?

How does Anonymous 'de-legitimize' anything through action? Who is saying "Well, I was strongly opposed to ACTA, but I don't want to be on the same side of an issue as those Anonymous troublemakers, so I've changed my mind"?

As our governments become more and more authoritarian, oppressive, and detached from the public they claim to represent, only the Anonymouses of the world will have the ability to fight back in a meaningful way. They have my moral support all the way.

@Tolstoy - There are legitimate routes for affecting change. Intentionally damaging websites and breaking the law while hiding behind a group name are not amongst them. Civil disobedience has it's place. But to do so willfully and to hide while you do it never has a place.

"Way to go, terrorists!", em, most of what i've seen them do (dDOS attacks and what not) have been akin to a sitdown protest...

they're blocking the entry to a virtual site and nobody else can enter.

Swedish kids, ahem, i mean anonymous members also hacked a minor webpage of the Irish department of foreign affairs (Irish Aid section) and posted passwords online (see http://pastebin.com/QrQqQ7ZR) on the plus side, they are doing a public service by posting passwords like 'password' and 'password1' online.

'There are legitimate routes for affecting change.' and civil disobedience is legitimate, and tends to be much more effective than lobbying.

Try including my entire quote, orathaic. I said civil disobedience has it's place. But hiding your civil disobedience in anonimity and attacking a site with enough traffic that causes other sites on the same segments to be unavailable has *no* place in a civilized world.

"@Tolstoy - There are legitimate routes for affecting change."

Like what? Writing an angry letter to my congressman to express my displeasure?

"attacking a site with enough traffic that causes other sites on the same segments to be unavailable has *no* place in a civilized world."

Remember that scene in The Longest Day where the French guy was cheering the Allied fleet as they shelled his house? Same deal. Collateral damage sucks. It would be nice if all .gov sites were on their own network so that harm from a dDoS attack to innocent third parties was minimized, but when the bad guys are hiding among the civilian population, there's not a whole lot that can be done.

And what about when the soldiers commiting their actions "in the name of good" do so incognito and act more like John Travolta in Swordfish, than Rosa Parks on a bus?

"Swedish kids, ahem, i mean anonymous members also hacked a minor webpage of the Irish department of foreign affairs (Irish Aid section) and posted passwords online (see http://pastebin.com/QrQqQ7ZR) on the plus side, they are doing a public service by posting passwords like 'password' and 'password1' online."

Here in Amerika, Anonymous has hacked into a bunch of servers for various law enforcement agencies. In one case, the hacker posted the log of his ssh session with commentary as the sysadmin was trying to kick him out - it was hilarious. They've posted gigs and gigs of email for the California Department of Justice (they're really worried about not being able to crack Truecrypt volumes) and a bunch of Sherrif's Departments in the midwest (several people found out - along with the rest of the world - their wives were having affairs with their coworkers when all of this hit the 'net). Probably a lot more that I'm forgetting about. And this is just the stuff Anonymous is bragging about publicly - God only knows what they're being quiet about doing.

"what about when the soldiers commiting their actions "in the name of good" do so incognito and act more like John Travolta in Swordfish"

How many people has anonymous killed? How many bank heists gone wrong that resulted in dozens of deaths? What Anonymous is doing looks a lot more like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Hmmm... As if I *didn't* have to see it before, now I absolutely *must* see TGwtDT.

TGwtDT actually showed SQL queries instead of the silly graphics in Swordfish for (one of) the hack scene(s)... it brought a tear to my eye. Easily the most realistic hacking movie Hollywood has produced to date (that I've seen). I didn't roll my eyes once - although I did have to put my hands over them for one scene.

Cool. Sounds better than the malformed email address in Mission: Impossible. Max@Job 3:14 Yeah right...