5th of November trended on Twitter as hacktivist group Anonymous defaced several websites in the name of a V for Vendetta reference to the Gunpowder Plot

Text: Shah Salimat

Microblogging site Twitter went into overdrive yesterday as the annual commemoration of Guy Fawkes Day took place on November 5^th. The day was held in importance on social media due to a reference in the 2005 movie V for Vendetta about an anarchist who intends to take down a fascist British government.

Guy Fawkes was well known for being part of the 17^th-century Gunpowder Plot to explode the British Parliament’s House of Lords. Hacktivists linked to the Anonymous group went on a hacking spree that day by dumping data they claimed to steal from government and company websites, in protest of governments trampling over citizen digital privacy rights.

A select group also took to the streets for Operation Big Brother, a protest against surveillance over government usage of systems such as TrapWire and INDECT to monitor citizen movement via location trackers, data mining and facial recognition. Here is a summary of what transpired within those 24 hours and reactions from the public towards the group’s activities.