People in hundreds of cities across the world are taking part in mass rallies planned by the global protest group - Anonymous. The day of action is called the Million Mask March - it's uniting those, protesting against the violation of online privacy, as well as corporate greed and corrupt governments. Protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks - are demonstrating their allegiance with the Anonymous hacktivist group - infamous for its online anti-government actions.
Members and supporters of hacktivist collective Anonymous are marking Guy Fawkes Day with a global ‘Million Mask March’ to protest against government corruption, corporate malfeasance and the expanding surveillance state. Cities in Japan, Australia, and New Zealand have already started their local events. Activists in Europe and US are expected to join soon. Event organizers have planned rallies and marches at 450 locations around the world, although the majority of the events have thus far attracted between several dozen people or a couple of hundred people.
Demonstrators hope that one million masked activists will descend on Washington, DC next month to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day with a mass rally to remind the world “That fairness, justice and freedom are more than just words.” That’s the mission statement of the “Million Mask March,” an event scheduled for November 5 in the nation’s capital that’s being arranged by affiliates of the hacktivism movement Anonymous, an international group of activists who’ve adopted the image of the infamous Englishman who unsuccessfully plotted to blow up Parliament in the early 1600s.
Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous collective have leaked a US Department of Defense memo relating to the PRISM program, revealing that the National Security Agency has secretly gathered intelligence on millions of Americans for years. The hacktivists, who have long sought complete transparency online and elsewhere, published a total of thirteen documents, one of which outlines the US government’s “NetOps Strategic Vision” for monitoring the Internet.
The documents are mostly pulled from 2008, just after when the government reportedly began using PRISM to mine servers at technology companies including Microsoft and Yahoo. An NSA slideshow published Thursday by the Guardian and the Washington Post reveals the intelligence community first gained access to Google in January of 2009 and Facebook in June of the same year.
Turkish government networks were hacked on Wednesday, compromising the private information of staffers in PM Tayyip Erdogan's office, a source in PM's office confirmed to Reuters. The attack was in support of the ongoing anti-government protests.
Staff email accounts were reportedly accessed after a phishing attack, and those affected were cut off from the network, a source said. Anonymous hacked the Prime Minister’s official website (basbakanlik.gov.tr) and gained access to staff email addresses, passwords and phone numbers, the group said in a press release.
Hackers from the Anonymous collective claimed to have infiltrated the website for the biotech giant Monsanto, which has been the subject of recent international protests.
The cyber-attack was carried out as part of #OpMonsanto, an attempt to demonstrate against Monsanto’s reach into every aspect of the food industry, from nature to farmers to consumers. The corporation’s main website, Monstanto.com, appeared to have been briefly disabled Wednesday night.