Widespread hacktivism didn’t die with the disbandment of LulzSec. In fact, LulzSec doesn’t seem to have gone down at all with hacktivist collective Anonymous running wild on the Internet. The collective’s recent mischief included shutting down train operation and publishing personal information of BART police in San Francisco last week. Twitter handle OpBart announced a follow-up protest on August 22 in the same venue.

One would consider it an ordeal to point out who exactly was responsible for the mess. For one, Anonymous doesn’t have a leader, thus, it exists in the uncertainty of decentralization and frail structure. Though we’ve always relied on Twitter accounts @AnonyOps and @AnonOps for news about the collective’s current activities, none of them are official. There are a number of other Anonymous Twitter accounts as well such as @AnonymousIRC, @anonymouSabu, and @Anonymous Press. Though these accounts tweet each other, it’s evident that they are presenting ideas under varying lights. To put it simply, the group is not united. “There is no hierarchy, there is no one voice,” @AnonyOps spilled to VentureBeat.

Anonymous is not unanimous. You can choose to associate yourself with Anonymous without agreeing to the methods of other members. A majority of its members see Anonymous as more of an idea than a collective. It is very likely that when you join the group, you won’t even know majority of the members. AnonyOps revealed that they don’t even know the ground people during the BART incident. The group’s anonymity is its strongest point and at the same time, its greatest weakness. You can choose to associate yourself with it and no one can tell you otherwise.

“The problem Anonymous has is that we, being leaderless, can’t say who is and who isn’t Anonymous,” AnonyOps said. “There’s no one at the helm. There are only the few with a bullhorn, like me.”

Anonymous is pretty damn peppy publishing private details about governments, private businesses and just about any sector that irritates them. However, AnonyOps still valiantly said “Anonymous is all about privacy.” The collective’s actions from inception to date are probably not even in the least private. However, while AnonyOps is part of Anonymous, it doesn’t believe in exposing personal details to get messages across. This highlights the groups decentralized nature.

“We can’t control what people do in the name of Anonymous,” AnonyOps said. “It was completely irresponsible of people to take private information and make it available. It shouldn’t have happened.”

There’s also a rumor of a Facebook assault to happen on November 5 which majority of the collective’s members denied. Sabu, a reputable Anonymous member tweeted: “ATTN Media: Don’t get trolled by trolls pushing for #opFacebook. It simply does not exist. Even if we get 100,000,000 people to delete accts.”

Other roguish undertakings by Anonymous in the recent months include defacing 74 websites Turkish websites, some of which are are government sites. Turkey is an especially favorite target of LulzSec because of its unconstitutional suppression of information, even to the extent of blocking internet access in the name of “protecting its people.” Anonymous also spoiled 51 Malaysian government websites because of the country blocking access to The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks, as well as movies and television shows, and consequently doing what Anonymous terms as “taking away basic human rights.” Anonymous also defaced Syrian’s Ministry of Defense to rise against the violent regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

In the social media side of things, Anonymous has been shouting loud on Twitter about matters this and that but it’s a pity they were kicked off Google+. Instead of going troll rage over the issue, their response to the situation is rather amusing as they decided to build their own social network. They branded it AnonPlus–“where there is no fear of censorship, of blackout, nor of holding back.”