Anonymous Holds Worldwide 'Million Mask March' to Protest Corruption

Members of hacktivist collective Anonymous will hold protest marches in hundreds of cities around the globe to mark Guy Fawkes Night and highlight corruption.

Beginning on tuesday in cities in Australia, New Zealand and Japan a global protest by Anonymous will gradually spread across the globe as the diverse group looks to protest issues ranging from NSA surveillance to government corruption.

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The headline Million Mask March will take place in Washington with members of Anonymous meeting at the Washington Monument before marching towards the White House. The stated goal of the march is: "To remind this world what it has forgotten, that fairness, justice and freedom are more than just words."

The Million Mask March is being held on 5 November to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day which commemorates the failed attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. Anonymous has appropriated the Guy Fawkes mask made famous in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta comic published in the early 1980s and subsequently in a 2005 film adaptation.

The mask is used by Anonymous members as a way of identifying themselves, as well as by other protest groups such as the Occupy movement.

A total of 400 cities around the globe are expected to take part in the protest, with Facebook pages set up in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Mexico, Bulgaria, Italy, Ireland, Canada, Serbia, Belize, Switzerland, Brazil and Poland.

Resist peacefully

A march is expected to take place in Trafalgar Square in London at 6pm on Tuesday with the administrator of the OpVendetta site saying the event would be "a march on Parliament, a display of our growing numbers, and a meet and greet for Anonymous activists around the world and all groups and different people from around the UK to say to the Government enough is enough."

Anonymous UK is planning the march on the parliament to be a silent one and warn those taking part to give no sign of aggression and in the event of police action to turn around and "resist peacefully."

"It is the target of Anonymous in 2013 to evolve the old traditional idea of protesting into the new. Anonymous have changed the rules by turning this morality of petition into more of a festival of ideas and new age discussion that has formed the political views of the youth of today."

The march in London will coincide with a so-called Bonfire of Austerity which is being organised by the People's Assembly and could see Westminister Bridge blocked at the same time as the Anonymous march is scheduled to take place.

Not as powerful

While Anonymous membership might still be strong worldwide, it is no longer seen as the powerful force it was just 12 months ago. Then it was on the front pages of newspapers around the world for cyber-attacks against high profile targets such as the CIA, Sony and, in the UK, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

Last July an FBI agent in New York is reported as saying the agency had effectively dismantled the hacktivist group, implying that the group was now in disarray. This came after the high-profile arrests and subsequent sentencing of members of LulzSec, an off-shoot of Anonymous whose leader, known as Sabu, had been turned by the FBI to become an informant.

In a recent interview with IBTimes UK, one prominent member of Anonymous in the UK admitted that there was a lot of infighting within the group and that it made it more difficult to be taken seriously.

READ: Anonymous Million Mask March: Images From Around the World