Operation Malaysia

Just got a text "Malaysia braces for threatened cyber attack on govt website by internet vigilante group Anonymous - REUTERS". Read the star front-page on the purported security threat by Anonymous.

To me, this threat by Anonymous represents a bigger shift in geo-politics. No longer is the world subject to formal laws, but to actions by International vigilantes who, by all account, remain above and beyond the reach of the law. "Cyber-nation" has no rules, no set demographics, no population but instead exist like a collective consciousness of Internet users. It will be a growing threat, which I believe will one day bring down an entire government. The problem is, the basic premise of such organizations is its anonymity making it susceptible to infiltration by foreign elements.

Who can say for certain that there are no foreign government operatives infiltrating the Anonymous rank, and even to the point of leading its leaderless brethren, to perform attacks and hacktivism supposedly for Internet freedom but with an underlying political intention? Who can say for certain that criminals are not masquerading as Anonymous members? Recently Sony's gaming site was hacked and millions of credit card and personal details were exposed. The hack was attributed to Anonymous, but as Anonymous could include anyone, could criminals have access to our accounts?

And now Anonymous is threatening a sovereign government, Malaysia, for its decision to request ISPs to ban bittorrent and file-sharing websites. This is not the first time they've done so. Australia was marked last year because of its decision to start filtering child pornography sites.

Malaysians quickly supports the Anonymous cause because (1) they want their free music (2) it's against the Malaysian government.

My thought on this is simple:

1. Do you believe downloads of music and movies and TV shows for free are illegal? If you don't, then you're an idiot and there's no point in going any further (surprisingly quite a number of people actually think that downloading music and such is legal. Guess KRU's cartoon on piracy failed)

2. Knowing that it's illegal, do you still do it? Yes, I do. We all do. It's part of life. Been downloading since the days of Napster. What other illegal things that you know is illegal but you still do? Let me give you a simple example - speeding. We all have breached the statutory speed limit, some more than others. We all know if we get caught that we have no excuse. It's illegal, and we must be punished.

But we still speed don't we? We just become a bit more aware of where the cops normally do their roadblocks. We monitor #kltu on twitter. We install those sensors that can detect police speed-guns.Or we just speed knowing that the probability of getting caught every time is less than the probability of me hooking up with Giselle Bunchen.

3. So accepting that downloads are illegal, why is it a problem if the police or enforcers or the government take steps to prevent an illegal act? Wouldn't they NOT be doing their jobs if they don't take action?

4. Yes, it'll hurt us for a bit. It'll hurt me and my attempt to build an all-time greatest hits compilation. But we will move on and survive. Every time they put up roadblocks, we find another road to use, don't we?

5. It's more dangerous that we accept foreign intervention on our sovereignty. It's even more dangerous when we cannot identify who these people are.

I know this is an unpopular post, but popularity often masked ineptness. I've learned that on twitter. Plenty of idiots with thousands of followers make me believe that the world is really going down the shit hole. LOL