(Facebook/Anonymous UK-Ireland)
Members of Anonymous in the United Kingdom are planning a public action for November 5, 2012 that may spread to other capital cities around the world. The protest has been dubbed Operation Vendetta, or #OpVendetta, after V for Vendetta, the film that inspired much of Anonymous's ethos as well as the hacktivist collective's adoption of Guy Fawkes masks.
#OpVendetta appears to have been in the planning stages for some time and as InfoSecurity reports, it has the potential to make governments everywhere a little nervous:
Now the various Anonymous groups around the world are supporting each other "for what will be the strongest display of anonymous in the UK so far." While focused on the UK, it is intended to be a worldwide protest, both on the ground and in cyberspace. “On the 5 November 2012 the Anonymous Collective will engage in the largest orchestrated attack on the Governments of the World. The centerpiece will be the re-enactment of the Film V for Vendetta scene at the Houses of Parliament with ground and online protests across the globe," a spokesman from AnonATeam in the UK told Infosecurity.
Anonymous's talent for self-promotion can make it hard to gauge real-world support for their actions, but the Operation Vendetta Facebook page states 3,777 people plan to show on Nov. 5th. Over 1,400 more have indicated they may attend.
The U.K. #OpVendetta page links to a Facebook page for a November 5 event in America: "March on D.C." The U.S. page creators call the March a "Citizens Action" and say they "need to organize a citizens arrest of all parties involved in the various criminal acts that have put our country as well as our world in jeopardy." There could be as many as 2,000 people in attendance.
Naturally, since this is Anonymous we're talking about, the hacktivists told InfoSecurity that "quite a few online protests will be conducted" against government websites on November 5th as well.
We kind of expected that.
(Scene from V for Vendetta--the scene Anonymous U.K. plans to portray on Nov 5.)