Culture and Society - Online civil disobedience and political activists

After researching Anonymous and Lulzsec it's clear to see a difference between the two. Lulzsec hack into different websites and systems just for the fun. They want to show people that they can do it and that their site's are not as secure as they would like to think they are. There is no meaning behind what they are doing just purely the fact that they can do it. They are responsible for high profile hackings such as Sony, Nintendo and the CIA website. They claim to have 7 members with one as the leader. They don't hack for profit but just for fun. They even opened a telephone request line so fan could request potential targets. 

Whereas with Anonymous they have political reasons for what they do. They are trying to protect users freedom online and free speech. Anonymous defended Wikileaks as a way of defending free speech but they also hacked into the accounts of Amazon, Paypal and Mastercard. To me, hacking into these accounts doesn't make sense in defending free speech so I think that in a way they also do it because they can but they want to be seen as doing good. I think that they do have good intentions and when they hack into these accounts they don't release any of the information but a lot of the time they aren't doing good for the general public. They contradict themselves by shutting down websites in the name of free speech.  They protest against things that they are passionate about and obtain private information of people who may not be passionate about the same cause as them. Although the other side of this is that by hacking into these large corporations they are showing a flaw in their security and therefore people loose trust in these companies resulting in them losing money and some control. Anonymous is not a specific group of people it is a mass of people all existing separately or some together. 

I understand the fun aspect of it coming from Lulzsec. If they can do it why not point out the flaws in national security systems. In the long run they are probably helping these systems iron out the bugs in their security. I don't agree with taking personal information of account holders though. With Anonymous they seem to have a good cause that I also agree with which is freedom online and I think that they are good at creating awareness. I also like the whole mystery aspect as who these people are. I think they both have good intentions but don't always end up doing good. You're never going to get everyone to believe in your cause anyway. 

I don't think that I could be convinced to become politically active through targeted social media. For me it's not about the means in which you are targeted but it's if you are targeted for something that you are actually interested in or passionate about. I have no interest what so ever in the politics of this country. I choose to ignore it and not watch the news and live in my on little bubble because it's just depressing otherwise. So if there was a social media political campaign I would swiftly ignore it and move on to doing something even more useless with my time. My own little world is a happier place this way.

Information

http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/are_online_attacks_civil_disob.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13787229