Anonymous is planning something and this time it isn’t exclusively a hacking attack. The group is putting together a “Day of Vengeance” on Saturday, September 24. The particular type of vengeance they are talking about will include a series of peaceful protests in a number of cities across the United States in addition to web attacks focused on “various targets, including Wall Street, Corrupt Banking Institutions, and the New York City Police Department."
Anonymous, or at least a few people claiming to be a part of the collective, posted a statement on Pastebin announcing the attacks and protests on September 24. The statement did not detail which cities the protests will take place in but one can imagine New York City will be included in the mayhem.
Anonymous planning this Day of Vengeance appears to be related to a recent demonstration in New York City called, “Occupy Wall Street.” This demonstration happened last week and included approximately 1,000 people across a number of groups, going to Lower Manhattan to protest the close relationship between corporate America and American politics. The directions from the “Occupy Wall Street” organizers told protesters to, “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months."
Anonymous was really displeased with how police handled those protesters saying they, “faced phalanxes of heavily armed paramilitary police officers from local and federal jurisdictions.” The real deal breaker for the hacking group came Tuesday when organizers of the Wall Street movement put out a release claiming police used, "excessive force against and arresting innocent peaceful protesters, several of whom were abused and injured."
Anonymous responded to this claim directly in their statement saying, "Anonymous & the other cyber liberation groups around the world together with all the freedom loving people in the USA will NOT stand for this. We will peacefully yet forcefully resist the abuses of the NYC Police Department."
The problem is the data doesn’t seem to match up with the “Occupy Wall Street” organizers claim. The Wall Street Journal has reported that only 20 of the protesters were actually arrested this week.
Regardless, Anonymous is getting involved and the results should be interesting. Anonymous has recently seen 14 members try to plead not guilty to charges of hacking and conspiracy with the results of their cases still to be determined. The peaceful protests are one thing but more cyber attacks may just lead to more arrests and more law enforcement power being leveraged at the group. Time will tell if this strategy is worth it or if Anonymous will see more harm done to their organization than they accomplish with this Day of Vengeance.
