Cybercrime: Is Anonymous ethical?
Lance Truesdell
CIS 109
Dr. Yeates
Strayer University Online
May 2, 2014

The group known as Anonymous began on the chat boards of 4chan in 2003 as a group of like minded individuals working as a sort of anarchic group. In the intervening eleven years, they have been responsible for several attacks on different websites, groups and governments. Their attacks have been seen as both an act of concerned citizenry, in the cases of child pornography sites, and as a cyber-lynch mob. While most of their activities are illegal, and go against the laws of several governments, the question of their ethicality has been brought up as well. We also use different words to describe their actions, from cyberterrorism to hacktivism. I would like to isolate my examples only to the group activities of Anonymous, but the questions raised would affect any person or group embarking in hactivism. Is it ethical to use hacking, is it a form of first amendment speech, or is it a malicious attack on another entity? As an example, let’s take a look at the attacks of Anonymous against another controversial group, the Church of Scientology. In 2008, a video was leaked of actor Tom Cruise extolling the virtues of Scientology. The Church immediately claimed that showing this video violated it’s copyright, and sent cease and desist requests to the websites hosting it to have them taken down. According to Fox News, in response, Anonymous “set up a web site to coordinate a string of attacks using phone, internet, and fax methods, which it called ‘Project Chanology’.” Anonymous would encourage it’s members to act as a denial-of-service attack, in an effort to bring down Scientology web sites. They would also exploit vulnerabilities in the site using hacking techniques. They would also use “black faxes” or fax sheets of black paper, to use up ink. Also, ‘Google bombing’, where the word “Scientology” is linked to other terms such as “Cult” and “Dangerous” was done, so that people searching for Scientology get very skewed results. (Fox News, 2008) In a related article, C-Net described the video that accompanied the attack. A computer generated voice speaks over a cloudscape, the video is quoted as saying “"With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed, for the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment. We shall proceed to expel you from the internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in it’s present form. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” (Vamosi, 2008) Shorty after, The Church of Scientology would release a prepared statement denouncing the attacks, and predicting, correctly, that more would be coming. Released by the Tampa Bay Times, it reads in part “"Anonymous" is perpetrating religious hate crimes against churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry. "Anonymous" initially justified its attacks by claiming that the church's requests to some Web sites to remove a stolen video of an internal church event somehow constituted an affront to free speech. In fact, the church, as would any copyright owner, had simply sent notices that the video constituted a copyright violation. Similar notices are sent daily by the television and recording industries, as well as the media to those who display pirated, copyrighted works.” (Tampa Bay Times) So the Church defends its prior actions by showing that they are only defending themselves in one way, and was attacked in another. Further attacks on the Church by Anonymous would continue almost to the present day. So we have two controversial groups, both arguing on points of principle. One of which acts within the law, and uses the law as a tool, the other is more sympathetic, but uses illegal methods. Who is right, ethically? The Associaton For Computing Machinery, or ACM, keeps a code of ethics as a guide. (Machinery, 1992) I’ll use this as a guide to go over the major points of ethics usually used to judge morality.
The first point is to Contribute to Society and Human well-being. Anonymous argues that it’s contribution to society is that it is working to eliminate a cult. They also believed that the church had used several social injustices as well “They attempted not only to subvert free speech, but to recklessly pervert justice to silence those who spoke against them,” one member of Anonymous said in online comments. However, this view is not shared by everyone. There is no consensus that the church is evil, or must be eliminated. So this point certainly does not stand.
The second point is Avoid harm to others. The ACM goes on to describe this as “’Harm’ means injury or negative consequences, such as undesirable loss of information, loss of property, property damage or unwanted environmental impacts.” The entire point of the attacks was to harm the Church of Scientology. It was a stated goal to dismantle the church. Harm included several hours of downtime for the websites, as well as damage to the Church’s reputation and goals. It would be very hard to argue that this is ethical.
The third point is Be honest and trustworthy. Anonymous made what it believed was honest decisions and statements regarding the church. It had evidence released to back up it’s claims. However, as we are talking about a religious institution, however controversial, the lines between belief and fact would be veiled in it’s doctrine, which is part of what was leaked. It is very hard to be honest in matters of opinion.
The fourth point is Be fair and take action not to discriminate. Given that the whole point of the attack was to discriminate against one religious group, again, this point fails in review.
The last four points don’t really apply to this specific case, but should be noted as they are important in other scenarios. They are to Honor property rights, Give proper credit for intellectual property, Respect the privacy of others, and Honor confidentiality.
So as we can see from our points above, the attacks in question are not just illegal, but also unethical. Several of the people responsible for the attacks have been arrested and given jail time for the crimes. The first, Dmitriy Guzner, agreed to plead guilty to a single felony charge, paying 37,500$ in damages, According to IT News. (Thomsom, 2008) The second arrest was in 2010, and the person responsible was ordered to pay 20,000$ in restitution and would be jailed for a year, according to Naked Security. (Cluley, 2010) Costs for other forms of hacktivism are typically very high as well. To date, this has been the legal response to internet crime. Given that several hackers have gotten away by masking their IP address, or using proxy servers, this is sometimes not sufficient. Other methods of addressing DDoS attacks must be utilized. Overprovisioning for the amount of traffic that you may expect amd making sure to have monitoring in place are good first steps to take for any IT officer.
While the law cannot be our only guide, ethics should be used as well to determine our best course of action. The law may be incorrect, and frequently it does not keep up with current technology fast enough to be a guide. Ethical use of the computer will usually steer us in a manner that can be constructive, educational, and fair for all parties. If one party is doing something improper, even if they are doing it for the right reasons, it can fail. Graham Cluley, writer for Naked Security, brought this up succinctly. “The anti-Scientology movement does itself a disservice, and harm to its arguments, if they engage in cyberwarfare. There’s enough crime on the internet as it is, we don’t need people taking the law into their own hands.” (Cluley, 2010)