Anonymous Has another Splinter Cell

The original dream of Anonymous was a collection of individuals who would gather together to complete a single goal before disbanding again. While that was true for much of its existence, in 2011 the organization fell to the voice of a few charismatic individuals.

Now, with those people gone, the unity of Anonymous has vanished again. In the grand tradition of LulzSec, the group that terrorized corporations everywhere, a new sect of Anonymous has splintered off. But this time, they hope to keep the people out of harm’s way.

MalSec aims to keep corporations and the government honest, exposing emails and practices which they might not want to be public. But they hope to keep the public out of it. That means no Gawker hacks, no Facebook password leaks, no mayhem. At least, not from them.

Said Discordian, who speaks for MalSec:

"The previous hacker groups were very hypocritical, censoring people in an effort to stop censorship. We fight for the people, not against them."

MalSec is trying to fight against censorship wherever it lays. To help with its goal, it is expanding its recruitment efforts into China, Romania, Canada and Sweden. MalSec promised to release sensitive information from each.

There is some evidence that MalSec is made from former LulzSec members who learned first-hand the damage that a negative public opinion can do. LulzSec targeted private stores of information as often as it did sensitive data from corporations, earning the ire of a public who didn’t trust them. LulzSec disbanded after some of their members were arrested.

MalSec likely hopes to avoid the same fate by winning public support. Whether they stick to their guns, though, is another question. the one thing that Anonymous has not been is consistent.

NewScientist