I'll use that as an excuse to provide a few more updates that have come up since the last post.
There are, or were, a few blogs that were dedicated to "intelligence" (to use the term loosely) about ED and its activities. The difference between these and the usual machinations of those targeted by ED was that they provided what seemed to be reliable, sourced facts about ED and it's users, or more accurately, DeGrippo and her admins. One blog, "
Criminal Intelligence", is written by a fellow named Nicholas Castor who seems to have his own fun little basket of issues, but nonetheless had substantive posts about DeGrippo and ED. When this whole thing hit he took down all the posts and in their stead posted some potshots at people looking for "dox" on ED and seemed to do a little victory dance.
More interesting at this point is
a blogspot under the moniker "josephevers", which is (was) the name of the fictitious owner of ED. It's most
recent post said that the "new" ED is hosted by a Dutch teenager (based on whois info). That post has since been updated to include the address of a separate individual in the UK who claims to own the site. The Dutch teenager is now said to own only the domain. The "new" ED is working off of the wiki markup provided by the Web Ecology Project (see below). The domain is Swiss (.ch) but I gather the hosting is still U.S. They are collecting DMCAs and posting them, Pirate Bay style, but so far it seems that they have been able to stay in business without any noticeable downtime. Not sure how long that will last though.
A Google search for the kid's name reveals him to be a "web developer" who has a few abandoned/failed projects behind him, notably a "non profit" social network (?). ED.ch is asking for donations via Google Checkout, or more sketchily, an outfit called BitCoin that bills itself as a "P2P currency".
So we have these sort of dealings plus the PSN hacking as the activities of the new "Anonymous". Say what you will about Anonymous, but it's pretty clear from recent events that they're now far shadier than teenage anime fans with too much time and an Internet connection.
Update: So instead of wondering about the Web Ecology project as I posted originally, I looked at their
Contact Page. "Web Ecology Project" seems to suggest a university research initiative of some kind, however if they are associated with any kind of institution of higher learning, they are not advertising it. Rather, visitors to the page above are given an e-mail address for press inquiries as well as "business/consulting [inquiries]". Additionally, a contact phone number for their CEO is given. So whatever the story is behind this, and it's surely tangential to the whole ED saga, it's fairly clear that their use of term "researchers" is a bit loose here and there seems to be an attempt at, shall we say, perception management here.
Update 2: This just keeps getting better. Looking through their
people page is interesting. I note they go out of their way to mention academic credentials of the people involved, but no one in the group has an actual CS degree. Several B.As in English and History, and this guy:
Tim Hwang is the Director of the Web Ecology Project and an analyst with The Barbarian Group — where he works on issues of group dynamics and web influence. He is interested in building a science around measuring the system-wide flows of content and patterns of community formation online. He is also the founder of ROFLCon, a series of conferences celebrating and examining internet culture and celebrity. He currently Twitters @timhwang, blogs at BrosephStalin, and is in the process of watching every homemade flamethrower video on YouTube.
I also recognize at this point this post is waaaay out of our usual, uh, scope of coverage so I think I'll stop now.
