5 Organizations Fighting For Your Online Freedom


#3 Anonymous

This organization has taken fight against government to curb internet freedom a notch up and is active in different parts of the world for the cause. Anonymous is group of hacktivists, it was established somewhere around 2003 and, as the name suggests, the members remain anonymous. During public demonstrations, they wear Guy Fawkes masks, which is now strongly associated with Anonymous and has become its public identity. The members of Anonymous come together and make use of several Internet forums to collaborate. The group is against Internet censorship and targets official government sites by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks or by defacing its webpages. Most prominent amongst its activities include Project Chanology – to protest against the Church of Scientology. Anonymous was irked by the Church's attempt to remove a video interview of Tom Cruise extolling the virtues of scientology. Citing it as an instance of Internet censorship, Anonymous released a warning video on YouTube in 2008 and followed it up with DDoS attacks to hinder the operations of Scientology. More recently, Anonymous made news by its activities to protest Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that brought down sites of FBI, U.S. Justice Department, Motion Pictures Association of America and many others. Anonymous also made its presence felt in India in May this year owing to Indian Governments increased attempts at Internet censorship. In the line of fire were the sites of Supreme Court of India, Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party.