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Anonymous’ flash mob targets Wall Street Journal’s Facebook pages

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Anonymous Kollektiv, a German group claiming ties to the shadowy hacker group Anonymous, signalled out the Wall Street Journal today as the target of a crowd sourced “comments” flash mob.

To be clear: No servers were brought down, the Wall Street Journal’s site didn’t go dark and no reporter’s sensitive source list was hacked.

Instead, hundreds of people posted a relatively mild paragraph in the comment section on various Facebook pages run by the Journal, suggesting that the paper was trying to stir up fear in Americans by comparing Anonymous to Al Qaeda.

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Here’s the full text of the graph:

“Dear editors of the German Wall Street Journal, You equated Anonymous with Al Quaeda in your February 2012 article and the related coverage. With this type of coverage you may be albe to stir up fear in the United States, but not in the land of poets and thinkers! With this comment, we would like to oppose the deliberate dissemination of false information and express our displeasure with your lobby journalism. We are Anonymous. We are millions. We do not forgive. We do note forget. Expect us!”

Considering the comment’s clean language and intent to “express displeasure” rather than “rage” “fury” “anger” or worse, the group might also have written, “We are polite!”

Hundreds of Facebook users posted the paragraph in the comments section on Facebook pages run by the Wall Street Journal under stories that have nothing to do with Anonymous or Al Qaeda, including ones with the headlines “Why we pair up with our emotional opposites” and “Tight ties, killer heels make fashion victims.”

The offending article, “Alert on Hacker Power Play: U.S. Official Signals Growing Concern Over Anonymous Group’s Capabilities,” details concerns expressed by the U.S. National Security Agency that Anonymous could bring about a limited power outage in the next year or two through a cyber attack.

The Wall Street Journal posted a story on the flash mob comment incident on its blog, but refused to comment further when contacted by The Times.

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