March 6, 2012 was a dark day for the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous.  It was the day that the world learned the identity of “Sabu”, a leader of LulzSec whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, and that he was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an informant which led to the arrest of five others.  Members of anonymous were outraged rather than frightened, and that led to various cyber attacks such as the defacement of Panda Security’s website, taking down of the Vatican website, and the unleashing of Symantec’s Norton Anivirus 2006 source code.

As unreal as finding out that Sabu is an FBI informant, Anonymous members appeared at the South by Southwest event on Tuesday to talk about Anonymous, the arrest of some of their members, and the revelation of Sabu’s identity and the part he played in the cause they are fighting for.

Gregg Housh, one of the few members of Anonymous not afraid of speaking publicly and using his real identity, appeared in a panel with Brian Knappenberger, director of the documentary “We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists”, and two other Anonymous members, one who spoke via Web chat, wearing the movement’s trademark “Guy Fawkes mask” and white gloves.

Housh stated that Sabu had always been “vocal,” “angry” and “a complete ass,” and that he suspected something was amiss when he disappeared from the Web for a while, then returned more animated and aggressive than ever.

“I watched, and some of these people who did these hacks would not have gotten arrested [except for the fact that] he taught them how to do the hacks,” Housh said.

While Housh talked about Sabu, Anonymous 9000, one of the men wearing the Guy Fawkes mask, stated how the openness of Anonymous was both a blessing and a curse.

“That’s the double-edged sword of Anonymous,” said Anonymous 9000. “Anyone can claim the name of Anonymous and do whatever they want. If anyone wants to make Anonymous look bad … it’s easy to do.”

He cited that many “Anons” disagreed with Sabu’s tactics of posting private data, including credit-card and Social Security numbers, of Web users and launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against media sites who posted stories they didn’t like.

“When I got into this, I felt Anonymous was a group of groups who fight for the users,” Anonymous 9000 said. “To see people getting DDOSed .. there’s a pretty good argument that’s a form of censorship.”

Anonymous is famous for targeting governments that suppress the freedom of their citizens to access information about what’s happening in their country, taking down child pornography websites, and their strong opposition for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Protect IP Act (POPI), and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).  Clearly, they want to bring justice to those who are oppressing the people but because they have no clear leadership and some of them even go to the extent of tarnishing the name of Anonymous, Anonymous 9000 was right to say that their anonymity and openness is both a blessing and a curse.  In a group of people, there will always be opposing ideas or beliefs, and with no clear leader to guide them, it could lead to chaos.