Anonymous
and Occupy are launching a new operation encouraging people to vote in
the November elections. (Credit: Anonymous/Occupy Movement)
Anonymous continues its transition to digital revolutionaries, partnering with the Occupy movement to urge people to vote in the November elections.
The activist group has announced a new joint effort to hold politicians accountable to the people.
“Last year, many of our elected officials let us down by giving in to deep-pocketed lobbyists and passing laws meant to boost corporate profits at the expense of individual liberty,” the groups said in an online flyer. “Our Senators and Representatives showed how little they cared about personal freedoms when they voted overwhelmingly to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).”
The NDAA allows for the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, even U.S. citizens, without trial and expands the use of U.S. military in this country. Civil libertarians allege that the law violates due process and other constitutional rights and gives the military authority to engage in civilian law enforcement.
And then there’s the proposed SOPA/PIPA (Stop Online Piracy Act/Protect IP Act) measures, which have been in limbo since Wikipedia, Google and other sites staged blackouts and other actions to protest the legislation. Anonymous, and other opponents, argue such a measure would give authorities broad power to shut down Web sites for the mere accusation that they had pirated content on them.
Anonymous launched denial-of-service attacks on the Web sites of the Justice Department, the FBI, Universal Music, the Motion Picture Association of America and others in an anti-SOPA protest after the arrest of the founder of the file-hosting site MegaUpload for alleged piracy.
“Even if the goal was to merely regulate pirated content, the ambiguous wording demonstrates that the authors and supporters of SOPA and PIPA have little-to-no understanding of the Internet’s architecture or the frightening implications of the legislation,” Anonymous writes.
The collective urges people to hold elected officials accountable for supporting NDAA, SOPA and PIPA. (The activists have also been actie in opposing the European anti-piracy law called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). More
