Ethics Assignment # 1

Anonymous and Tunisia

On January 2, 2011, when Tunisian government blocked Wikileaks in Tunisia, Anonymous firstly got involved to stop censorship.  At that time, Tunisia was going under an intensive campaign of civil resistance, including a series of street demonstrations. The events began on 18 December 2010, the day after the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid, and led to the ousting of longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. Anonymous collectively launched its 'Operation Tunisia' retaliatory strike in early January, With OpTunisia. Anonymous launched a series of DDoS attacks against government websites. Additionally, Anonymous provided protesters with documents required to take down the incumbent government as well as distributing a care package, among other things, including Tor, and a grease monkey script to avoid proxy interception by the government. They also aided in passing information about the protests in and out of the country. The regime eventually regained control over its various Web platforms, but its online dominion was short-lived. On January 14th, Ben Ali dissolved his government and fled the country.

In this case I think Anonymous did the right thing to support the Tunisian people against its own oppressive government. Too often, popular struggles have been suppressed by authoritarian and democratic regimes alike. Anonymous has, however, been able to assist popular movements in disabling tools of suppression and in opening channels of communication closed by ruling governments. Ben Ali’s government was suppressing its own people and they needed some external help to get their voice heard in the international media. That’s exactly what anonymous did, provide them with resources and tools to protect themselves from Tunisian cyber police. I don’t think Ben Ali’s government fled because of anything Anonymous did, but because of what the Tunisian people did. Whenever it comes down to making a choice between an oppressive government and majority of people; people will be always my choice.  That’s what I think of Anonymous involvement in Tunisia.