Anonymous gained attention in New Zealand last week, when it was revealed the hacking activist movement may have been responsible for breaches of an email account belonging to Foreign Affairs Minster Murray McCully. Anonymous expert GABRIELLA COLEMAN explains how the movement has morphed from a loose group of pranksters to a political force operating often in a moral grey zone.



Anonymous is a collective that often defies expectations and thus easy definition.



It is a cluster of ideas and ideals adopted by various, sometimes unconnected hackers, technologists, activists, geeks, and human rights activists, and grounded in the concept of anonymity. It is a banner for collective actions online and in the real world that have ranged from pranks to technological support for Arab revolutionaries in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya among many others.



In recent months, Anonymous has acted as an informal but stunningly effective PR wing for the Occupy movement; members have hacked with impunity humiliating global corporate giants such as Sony. And this year, after the US Department of Justice successfully had the popular file sharing site Megaupload taken down and its larger than life founder Kim Dotcom arrested here in New Zealand, Anonymous responded in flash shutting down the websites of the department, the Motion Picture Association of America, Universal Pictures, and the FBI among others.



Their actions are sometimes peaceful and legal, sometimes disruptive and illicit, often existing in a moral grey zone.



Though early Anonymous behaviour focused on pranks designed to get laughs, by the end of 2010 a new Anonymous army had arisen, and in the ensuing months AnonOps worked around the clock, working in different time zones. They enabled citizens to bypass government filtering in Malaysia, and hacked the agricultural biotech giant Monsanto in the name of environmental rights, among dozens of other campaigns.



By the end of January last year Anonymous seemed to be devoting itself entirely to activist campaigns, at the expense mischief-making. Many appeared invigorated by their contributions, however small, to the historic toppling of dictatorial regimes in the Middle East. Prompted by the Tunisian government blocking Wikileaks, Anonymous announced OpTunisia on January 2, 2011; soon after, AnonOps embarked on a series of so-called “freedom operations” to support the Arab Spring. Anonymous attacked government websites, but soon began acting more like a human-rights advocacy group, enabling citizens to circumvent censors and evade electronic surveillance.



Therefore, despite operating behind a mask, shall we declare Anonymous the new face of democratic digital politics as some have suggested? Are they providing the potent antidote to cure the world of its many political ills? Or should write them off for simply being cyber-vigilantes with not enough aim or purpose?



When it comes to assessing the political significance of Anonymous, we should resist grand and grandiose declarations and pronouncements. The work of politics and social transformation requires full multiplicity of forms and formats and we should be wary of christening any one a magic bullet.



Anonymous acts in a way that is irreverent, often destructive, occasionally vindictive, and generally disdainful of the law. These actions are unlike the work of traditional activists, who might rather urge citizens to stay within the bound of the law, to wield the law, to call their local representatives or to charter an NGO.



Anonymous stokes the hot embers of transgression, trickstersism, and irreverence—a fire long in existence and yet in perpetual need of renewal. In ancient Greece, the cynic philosopher, Diogenes masturbated in public to perform his disdain for what he saw as the artificiality of decorum. More recently the 'Yes Men' have tightly fused pranksterism and activism, in one instance presenting a three-foot-long golden penis (“employee visualization appendage”) at a World Trade Organization textile-industry conference as a means of controlling workers.



Anonymous are heirs to this tradition and in so many ways. They will will joke endlessly about a certain bodily appendage when advertising their campaigns. Anonymous enacts a less elegant version of this irreverent tradition but is more populist and participatory than anything has come before it. Transgressions, whether a hack or a bodily joke, unravel the often oppressive force of norms, conventions, and the law. To transgress is to also highlight absurdities of current political life and of course generate the kind of spectacles necessary to elicit coverage from the mainstream media.



Along with copious transgressions - while also revealing the depth and extent of a privatised security state - they also offer a compelling alternative and antithesis to the logic of constant self-publication, the desire to attain recognition or fame.



Anonymous is configured as e pluribus unum: one from many. In an era when we post the majority of our personal data online, and states and corporations collect and market the rest, there is something hopeful - one might even say necessary - in Anonymous effacement of the self, in cloaking their identities, in offering a small symbolic oasis of anonymity.



The icon most associated with Anonymous, the Guy Fawkes mask, seen at protests around the world, symbolises the trading of individualism for collectivism. Nevertheless, Anonymous is not a united front, but a hydra, a rhizome, comprising numerous different networks and working groups that are often at odds with one another.



This ethos of self-effacement however saturates their world. The revelation of self and accumulation of prestige is not only taboo, but functionally very difficult. In instances when this occurs, people are drubbed, chastised, sometimes even banned. I myself have been reminded to watch my place, to act more humbly in the face of Anonymous.



There is one web defacement in particular— one of my personal favourites—that encapsulates this ethical espirt de corp which animates Anonymous. In late May, a hacker offshoot of Anonymous, Lulzsec, hacked into the American PBS to protest what they saw as an unsympathetic portrayal of military whistle-blower Bradley Manning in their recently featured documentary. They left a message: a prominent headline announcing that two rappers thought to be dead Tupac (and Biggie Smalls) had been found alive in New Zealand.



Through its actions, Anonymous had emerged from its online sanctuary and erected a platform for individuals to act politically.



It rests on a spectacular visibility and invisibility - both everywhere and difficult to pin down. It thrives off a dynamic tension between a cool and hot, openness and secrecy, pranks and seriousness, predictability and unpredictability.



In some instances it is a place for the many to participate. At the same time there are many small caverns in operation for those with willing to break the law for political purposes.



Whatever your interpretation of their actions, it is undeniable they have catalysed and spurred public debate, demonstrating that one can use spectacular interventions to sustain a public debate.



What does Anonymous mean to you? Since it is not a singularity but a multiplicity, I am sure the answers are many but perhaps that is the point.



Gabriella Coleman researches and teaches on digital activism and the culture and politics of hacking at Canada's McGill University, where she holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy. She was a speaker at Webstock technology conference in Wellington last week. This was an extract from her speech.

EMAILS HACKED: Foreign Minister Murray McCully had his private email account hacked by activist collective Anonymous.