Anonymous is anyone, and therefore it’s everyone.

It’s a cause, an idea, a network, a rallying point, its supporters say.

But it’s a movement that has no structure, no leader, no rules. And yet this is the group – and many of its supporters don’t even consider it a group – that gave BART a major headache last Monday when a protest organized online forced the agency to close its four downtown San Francisco stations during evening rush hour, stranding thousands of commuters.

Today, Anonymous is promising more of the same, planning a protest for 5 p.m. at Civic Center Station – the same time and place as last week’s demonstration.

As part of the Anonymous campaign known as OpBART, the group promises to keep up pressure until BART officials admit they were wrong to cut off cell-phone service in underground stations to head off an earlier planned protest, apologize to the public and fire the transit agency’s chief spokesman, who defended the cutoff and has been outspoken in his denunciation of “cyber-thugs.”

Sometimes called a proponent of “hacktivism,” Anonymous generally targets institutions its supporters consider to be suppressing free speech and Internet freedom. Earlier this year, some blamed its supporters for a sophisticated attack on Sony’s PlayStation Network over the company’s pursuit of PS3 hackers, an attack that forced the system offline.

In December, Anonymous initiated an online attack against PayPal after the company stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks. When the FBI arrested 14 Anonymous members last month in connection with the action, the group asked supporters to boycott PayPal.

Offline

In 2008, Anonymous went offline, organizing demonstrations at Scientology centers around the world. But several supporters in Anonymous chat rooms – the forum where its plans are hatched and organized – celebrated the Aug. 15 BART protest in San Francisco as one of the movement’s first strikes outside the confines of the online world.

“We’re not just

Article source: http://feeds.stateline.org/~r/StatelineorgRss-Transportation/~3/daTwa4G-9Wk/article.cgi