Anonymous Declares ‘Cyberwar’ On the IMF

WHISTLEBLOWING - SURVEILLANCE, CURRENT AFFAIRS, 6 Jun 2011

Jérôme E. Roos – ROAR Magazine

The vigilante hacktivists of Anonymous have announced an online attack on the IMF for its treatment of the Greek people.

The struggle of the Greek people against the IMF has taken a new turn recently, as Anonymous declared its intention to launch a series of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on the Fund in retaliation for the IMF’s treatment of the Greek people.

Anonymous (wiki), a loosely-knit and leaderless organization of online activists, rose to fame (or notoriety, depending on your position in the balance of power) following a series of hack attacks that took down the websites of major corporations like Visa and MasterCard after they had withdrawn their services to WikiLeaks.

Ever since the Greek crisis began, the EU and IMF have together forced Greece to accept draconian austerity measures and a fire-sale of state assets to enable it to continue servicing its major debts to large European banks like Kommerzbank and Société Générale, which greedily brought up Greek bonds in the lead-up to the crisis.

As a result, wages in Greece have fallen some 20-30 percent, while unemployment has soared to 15 percent. Suicide rates are reported to have nearly tripled. Even before the crisis, a survey showed that a third of all Greeks lived below or near the formal poverty line of 500 euros per month. IMF measures are only aggravating this human tragedy.

The people of Greece have been taking for the streets for eight consecutive days now, demanding the government stop appeasing international lenders and start listening to its own people. The international media have largely ignored the unprecedented protests, which saw 100,000 amass in Syntagma square on Sunday [29 May 2011], and another 50,000 last night [1 Jun 2011].

The Anonymous campaign is meant to help put the Greek struggle on the map of the international media by undertaking a high profile cyber-attack on the IMF’s online resources. When the attacks will take place, and whether they will be successful, remains to be seen, but the announcement certainly managed to make some headlines already.

You can help anonymous by keeping an eye on the Anonymous Operations twitterfeed.

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