Who are Anonymous ?

"Hello World. We are Anonymous. What you do or do not know about us is irrelevant. We have decided to write to you, the media, and all citizens of the free world at large to inform you of the message, our intentions, potential targets, and our ongoing peaceful campaign for freedom."

So begins a recent manifesto sent to various blogs and news sources by Anonymous, talking about their support for Wikileaks. Who are these people?

Who Are Anonymous?

A loosely-organized collective of people currently seeking to assist the spread of Wikileaks' information by harassing the websites of those who refuse to cooperate with them, like Paypal, Visa and Amazon, and by spreading the Wikileaks documents themselves.

They are loosely affiliated with 4chan and other smaller "chan" boards (like 7chan, 2chan and 711chan) due to these sites' anonymous posting feature, which allows them to plan attacks without revelealing any identifying information. Chris Poole, who founded and runs 4chan, has not publicly endorsed Anonymous per se, but he seems to encourage them. Anon does not take orders from him.

They are not a group with defined leaders. Being "Anonymous" is much more a quality or a self-definition than a membership. Each project under the Anonymous banner may have a whole different set of instigators. Leadership, when it exists, is informal and carried out in chat channels, forums, IM and public calls to action online. No one's meeting in a board room.

Why are Anonymous all over the news right now?

The activities of Anonymous used to be limited to 4chan, which deletes everything posted to its boards every few hours. Then came Encyclopedia Dramatica, a NSFW wiki site that recorded a lot of the memes, language and activity that happen on 4chan and thus crystallized them. They provided destination pages for people wondering what Project Chanology was all about, for instance.

Then, Reddit, especially its 4chan subforum began to spread these ideas beyond 4chan. Bloggers and mainstream news sites often pick up information once it gets posted to Reddit. For example, this Reddit thread is how I found out about Anonymous's raid on Hot Topic. Reddit users are able to spread these memes so much more widely because working journalists can know easily browse Reddit for the latest developments on 4chan rather than slogging through threads of nonsense and garbage on 4chan itself.

This is why you see tons of news stories about Anonymous now, whereas a few years ago only a few niche blogs covered the site. Senior editor Nick Douglas was one of the first journalists to discuss Anonymous when he wrote about their Scientology raids for Gawker back in early 2008.

Whom have Anonymous targeted in the past?

Habbo Hotel
4chan users banded together under the moniker in order to harass the users of Habbo Hotel, a cartoonish social network. As early as 2006, Anonymous would "raid" Habbo, spewing racism and blocking its usual users from moving around. Then when all their black cartoon avatars got banned, they'd call Habbo racist. This was all done "for the lulz," or just for fun. At this point, Anonymous's actions had not taken on a political bent. Some members of Anon would argue it was better that way.

Hal Turner
Anonymous targeted this white supremacist with a talk radio show in December 2006. They overloaded his website, bringing it down. Some Anons seem to have a distaste for actual racism, though they express it frequently in jest. But of course you can never tell if it's the same people. "Anon is legion," they like to say.

Chris Forcand
Anonymous helped catch an internet child predator by reporting information to the police in 2007. By this time, Anonymous began to see themselves as a group of internet vigilantes fighting for assorted noble causes, rather than a band of merry pranksters.

The Church of Scientology
With these raids, Anonymous exploded into popular culture. They took to the streets, protesting outside of Scientologist churches wearing "V-masks," the disguise used by Alan Moore's vigilante comic book hero, V, originally inspired by would-be British terrorist and folk hero Guy Fawkes. When the Church tried to get embarrassing footage of Scientologist celeb Tom Cruise taken down from YouTube, Anonymous formed a splinter group called Project Chanology that dedicated itself to stopping censorship and harassing the exploitative church.