Operation Payback is Becoming a Miserable Failure

[undertakerlives]

I know I posted an article defending it yesterday, and I still do - however, watching their actions in their IRC chat made me realize that it's becoming nothing more than an unorganized mess.

http://thesop.org/story/20101210/operation-payback-is-becoming-a-complete-failure.html

I'm sorry that I had to write this, but it's the plain truth.

[snot]

1. I think he's largely right about the factual situation, but I don't understand

his emotional response. Yesterday he supported their noble cause; today he dumps them because they're losers?

If what they were attempting was right yesterday, it's still right today.

Yes, I suspect most of these people have never before faced the task of trying to coordinate opinion and action among 44,000 other people, most recruited within the last week. Moreover, I suspect many of them are fiercely independent, even anarchistically-inclined in their beliefs.

Despite these challenges, reports not just from the Anons but others as well suggest they succeeded in fully or partially disabling the websites of the Swiss Post Office bank, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Sarah Palin, Joe Lieberman, and the Swedish government.

And bear in mind, their big targets would almost certainly prefer to understate the Anons' successes, in the hope of discouraging such attacks in the future.

Maybe the writer quoted in the OP is feeling cowed by the RW media's onslaught of propaganda characterizing the Anons as terrorists, ineffective rabble, or both.

But I think, under the circumstances, the Anons have been FAR from a "miserable failure."

[undertakerlives]

2. Well,

Yes to Paypal, MC and Visa, no to the others. They took a vote as to who the next target should be, and no one could agree or else they were all too busy doing their own thing and failing.

I'm not saying that the cause isn't right today, I'm saying the cause is essentially failing because of poor communication and lack of planning. I just can't lie to myself and say it's doing well.

[aquart]

3. Could you identify with proper nouns instead of pronouns?

Not everyone is in the clique.

[undertakerlives]

4. What do you need explained? n/t

[bemildred]

5. The war is over, Wikileaks won. nt

[snot]

6. As of this a.m.,

For what it's worth, the MasterCard site is down again: "The attack was due to begin at 2pm and within five minutes MasterCard's site was down. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/10/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates ).

[undertakerlives]

7. Works fine for me. Media throwing up red herrings.

[Fokker Trip]

8. It doesn't seem like a failure to me..

Ultimately all of the infrastructure is controlled by corporate players, so they can't ever really "win" in the long term if winning means keeping big websites down for a long time.

The fact that they are shutting down these sites for even short periods of time is getting the message out there and that's a win in my book, and its random so that just multiplies the effect.

The quote about the internet treating any blockage or filtering as a malfunction and routing around it cuts both ways.

Also don't forget that any interruption in a financial websites' ability to function is likely to mess up any transactions going on at that time and that can cost a LOT of money and headache as it all has to get sorted out later on. Customers get mad and that has a big impact on the confidence in the corporations ability to function online. I'd guess that the uncertainty will cause people to think twice before using any of these websites.

[MedicalAdmin]

10. and keep this in mind.

The corporations are paying big money in terms of infrastucture costs, staffing and consultants to get and keep their websites back up. The 4chan is just playing a game while surfing and file exchanging. Their costs are zero.

This is a loss for the banks,, etc. Keep up the good work 4chan.

[Fokker Trip]

9. also...

Also, the disorganized nature of the loose coalition of people doing this makes it much harder for the authorities to predict or react effectively to what they are doing.

Random happenings are hard to get a grip on, like a random electrical fault in a cars wiring. Very hard to diagnose and fix.

[undertakerlives]

11. Yes, but

What you're forgetting is that all of these randomly scattered people aren't making a lick of difference in terms of stressing the bandwith. The reason Mastercard came down is because everyone was FOCUSED on one target - no one was going rogue like they are now.