Anonymous has been very active, posting videos via Youtube in order to attain a more just and positive world. All viral campaigns are aimed to encourage people to step up and make a difference in today’s unequal society.

On July 16, Internet hacking group Anonymous released a two-minute long video, plotting against Facebook. Their bone to pick with Facebook is its deception of users, regarding privacy on Facebook.

Facebook has legally maneuvered its terms and conditions so that it allows them to sell users’ private information with consent. Facebook has records of users’ logs and has access to said information, which is a breach of privacy. They know more about users than the people we come into contact with every day.

In order to send a message to Facebook and its users, as a result of its misappropriation of rights, Anonymous announced that on November 5 Facebook will illegally be shut down. The name Guy Fawkes was a trending topic on Twitter on August 10.

This date was not chosen at random; it is connected with their identity and is the idea behind the mask. The idea was inspired by Guy Fawkes, a man who is known for taking part in a failed plot to bring down King James in 1605.

Recent updates show that members of Anonymous are in a sort of civil war; the entire group is not in agreement with the idea of bringing Facebook down. In a Twitter post they say “#OpFacebook is being organized by some Anons.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that all of #anonymous agrees with it.” The message of the campaign is to bring awareness to the lack of privacy Facebook grants users when they agree to its terms and conditions upon joining.

Anonymous is not enthused about the gross violation of privacy put upon people, in order to provide advertisers with personal information, which makes the spamming of pages possible.

The message spread so quick that it inspired them to release a new video pertaining to the London riots that took place earlier this month. The operation is known as Operation Britain. The message was to motivate protestors to speak up for their rights on October 15 and to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner.

They do not condone “thuggery” but support the reasoning for the actions that took place in London. In their message they say “The riots that we have witnessed over the last week, whilst violent and misguided are a product of decades of neglect inflicted on your country by various governments.

We do not condone mindless thuggery, but that does not stop us from seeing the reality behind it,”

Later in the video, Anonymous said, “Saturday October 15, 2011 will be your opportunity for rebellion. We call on Britain to unite and organise peacefully. Unions, anti-cuts groups, community organisations, students, activists, citizens: you know your political system is not fit for purpose,”

There is no definitive answer as to whether what Anonymous is doing is right

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An environmental activist was shot and killed in Brazil. Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, an activist that sought to protect the Amazon rain forest from loggers, was killed just hours before Brazil’s lower house of Congress passed legislation that environmentalists fear will increase deforestation in the region.

Da Silva and his wife were attacked by gunmen on Tuesday in an interior city in the jungle state of Para in northern Brazil, police said. Authorities were investigating the crime and no arrests had been made.  The Catholic Land Pastoral (CPT), a group that tracks violence against environmental activists, said more than 1,150 activists, small farmers, judges, priests and other rural workers have been killed in disputes over preserving land since the 1988 murder of Brazil’s renowned rain forest protector Chico Mendes.

According to the CPT, most of the murders go unpunished.  In the Amazon region, local governments are easily swayed by big industry loggers and ranchers that illegally clear forest to allow more farming.  Federal prosecutors believe that the violence is ordered by rich producers who contract gunmen to kill anyone standing in their way.

In the most recent case, the CPT said that the gunmen cut off Silva’s ear, likely to use it as proof to whoever hired them that they indeed killed the activist. “The state will not tolerate this type of violence in our territory,” Para state Public Safety Secretary Luiz Fernandes Rocha said in a statement. “We’ve mobilized a team to investigate what happened and detain those responsible for the crime.”

Silva, 52, had fought with loggers before. The CPT said Silva and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, were tenacious Amazon defenders and were active against loggers who pressured rubber tappers in the region. The group said in a statement that the couple went out of their way to block roads, stop logging trucks and denounce illegal loggers to Brazil’s environmental agency and the government, all despite knowing they were putting their lives in danger. “In past years they received several death threats from loggers and farmers,” the statement said. “Last year, they escaped an ambush when gunmen went looking for them at their house.”

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