A splinter group from ‘Anonymous’, known as ‘Sony Recon’ are trying to discover information on Sony employees. The group is gathering the personal information of ‘useful targets’ including Robert S. Wiesenthal, a group executive at Sony Corp as well as the Judge and legal team in the current Geohot case.
Sony Recon founder ‘Randomtask’ apparently posted ‘Sony, the judge and Sony’s lawyers are all valid targets.’
The group PlayStation LifeStyle are suggesting numerous uses for the information including creating personal adverts for ‘erotic services’ on Craigslist and spamming the addresses with hundreds of free UPS boxes. They also suggest the following:
STD Postcards – send one of these e-postcards notifying the target that one of their previous sexual partners has a STD. Makes for an uncomfortable wait for them. Alternatively call an AIDS hotline and ask them to anonymously tell the target they could have HIV, that’s a 6 month wait until the test comes back.
Since the postings on the Sony Recon channel went public, PS3 Hacker ‘Kakarotoks’ has tweeted:
No attacks on people and no plans to, ONLY *recon*, gathering information that is already publicly available, in the hopes of finding something incriminating to help in the lawsuit. Anonymous is against violence or threatening/attacking people.
He says nothing illegal is being done, and news sites are reporting the information wrong.
Hopefully he is correct and Sony Recon will back down.
Update: After further research into this it seems we need to point out a little more strongly that the comment concerning “Stringer’s kids” was an isolated comment and has not been endorsed by any of the leadership of either Anonymous or SonyRecon (such that they are). The headline and content has been altered to reflect this.
Source: PlayStation Lifestyle / Twitter
rht992
Well thats it i’m swayed to side with sony on this one now. I doubt they’ll have much support now. This is just too low
3shirts
See what you are doing though is taking Anonymous to all be the same cause. It’s not, it’s different groups of individuals. The people targeting this information are entirely different to the ones DDoSing Sony sites.
It’s like being anti-Muslim because some terrorists have been found to be Muslim.
Tuffcub
Actually one of Recon has claimed he took down the Sony lawyers site today, so it’s the same people who are doing to DDosing.
Boomshanks
But how can we ‘side’ with Anonymous is people from within their group are doing this? Going after employees is a low thing to do, but employees’s kids. That is crossing the line and because of this small group Anonymous has just lost nearly all the support they were going to get. I understand their arguments but don’t condone their messages.
Boomshanks
methods*
jayjay119
I understand what you’re saying 3shirts but it’s not the same thing, Muslims don’t exist solely to get back at people, just a few rogue extremists. This organisation, no matter what faction you are talking about exist to incovenience Sony, whow severely they do it isn’t in questing, it makes no difference. They have no right to do anything, that’s the principle of it. You can’t support one section of the group more than the other because one is a little more extreme. It’s all wrong.
3shirts
Not so. Anonymous has existed for many years and done all sorts in that time. It’s only this recent group of Anonymous working against Sony.
Sure there may be members who are in more than one subset but there are also members who are nothing to do with any of this.
colmshan1990
Indeed.
Up until now, I think Anonymous’ most famous attack on the entertainment industry was Operation Payback.
It was similar enough to this case as well, when you consider that they attack anti-piracy activists, law firms (confidential data was leaked online), copyright offices, etc.
3shirts
Payback did some genuinely good work. Law firms like ACS:Law and Davenport Lyons were playing fast and loose with accusations of piracy and genuinely threatening and upsetting innocent people.
colmshan1990
It has, but that was a side-effect, and not the target.
This is shown again and again: a pro-piracy movement, right down to the piratebay appeal, as organised by Operation Payback.
It did help moderate it though,which was both important and needed.
I don’t see a reason for the same actions to apply here though- Sony haven’t done anything to infringe on the common users rights yet. Anonymous has responded to fear-mongering.
3shirts
Well it wasn’t really a side-effect so much as a side-campaign but I take your point.
I agree too that the action here is disproportionate to the supposed cause. I might be more inclined to agree with it if George Hotz wasn’t quite such a dickpiece
dazluss
When this goes into the main press it won’t matter what Anonymous stand for or Sony Recon or who belongs to who it’ll be presented so that every member of these groups are internet terrorists depsite what their beliefs are.
Any protest no matter what the intentions at the start will be remembered for any violence or unlawful action and be measured against that.
As soon as you start looking for information on someones kids and declaring this to the world you probably deserve every negative comment and action coming your way.
Paranoimia
I wouldn’t mind so much if they had a valid reason.
If they really want to do something about the removal of OtherOS etc., then they should be hunting down GeoHot, not supporting him. After all, his actions are the single reason that the functionality was removed.
Aquastyle
That’s utterly disgusting.
I don’t see how anyone can support these guys when they’re using such pathetic methods to try to achieve their goal.
TSBonyman
I don’t think it’s accurate to say they are targeting children based on one member’s comment. TSA doesn’t always share the same opinions that are posted here by it’s members and i’m sure that is true for the core members of Anonymous.
Even so, targeting indivduals like in the manner suggested is nasty and it will only serve to make whatever contribution they believe they can make seem unreliable.
GTRsannin
This is disgusting and it goes waaaaay over the line
hazelam
attacking sony’s services is one thing, but this.
if this is what they are planning, and it seems clear some of them are, this they’re definitely going too far.
in fact some of the things they’re doing are verging on terrorism, they may not be using physical violence but they’re attacking innocents who have nothing to do with this, just in prusuit of their own agenda.
no doubt they would paint themselves as the heroes, fighting the good fight, but they go after people’s families while hiding behind some pseudonym on the internet?
they’re no heroes.
Harinero
Wait a minute. Someone in a forum (4chan of all places) casually asked if somebody had come across any info on Stringer’s kids… and that’s it? Holy headline material, Batman…
heywoodstock
I hope they do back down, they’ll be breaking the law eventually. This is truly disgusting stuff, sickens me.
stylishkev1
Too far IMO.
If you attack single people you loose the support of people and you start looking like a bully yourself instead of the companies you are trying to see sense.
Whichever way you look at the Geohot case, for or against, Sony is being perfectly legal, and is protecting it’s rights as a manufacturer, to protect it’s PRODUCT.
That doesn’t mean you attack individuals because you disagree.