This should be retitled as "Anon successfully trolls Paul Rankin." Alex Tapanaris assuredly is not the one who wrote that document. http://pastebin.com/5dBdu3qk
If that link no longer works by the time you see this, it's one of hundreds of links where people posting as him describe in detail the degrading sexual acts they would like done to him.
The metadata has almost certainly been Admiral Ackbarred.
I don't believe you're right about that. What you're seeing is Anonymous punishing someone for making a stupid mistake, i.e. "being a newfag". The same kind of schadenfreude that lead Paul to post this to Tumblr tends to inspire a markedly more severe reaction out of Anonymous itself.
This discussion is over whether he actually wrote the press release, or whether someone else did and put his name in the metadata to make him take the flak for it.
Sorry but it seems I am talking to a bunch of stupid, here.
Here you bring two evidence that he is in fact a victim of 4chan.
1) a bunch of pastebins, ALL CREATED AFTER THE PRESS RELEASE, mocking the guy
2) a forum post, older than that date, where he mentions 4chan, using his alias t4pan.
The first one only proves 4channers are making fun of him
The latter, only shows he knows about 4chan - which he must if he wrote the press release.
Where is the evidence he didn't write. NOWHERE. And now start downvoting, then the next thread go bully this place is better than reddit.
The original comment poster thought the attacks had been taking place for awhile, he thought it look like 4chan previously had a grudge against this man. In the discussion following the comment it was figured out that the attacks started afterward. You're not talking to "a bunch of stupid, here", you could have just asked for someone to explain it to you.
Wow, I have too much faith in humanity. The follow-up replies to my comment have reversed my position on this. As is typical, I reserve my strongest belief for things I know least about.
If it is then props to him but I think the chances of that are slight to non-existent.
One of the very good reasons why you should think twice before 'anonymously' harassing people online is that you are almost never as anonymous as you think you are.
We had a guy harassing a woman on ww.com for months on end, all it took was the one time he forgot to check the headers of the proxy that he used to do it again. Being anonymous is hard work, the more you do it the bigger the chances of slipping up.
Slipping up once is enough, assuming the other side is awake and watching.
Reminds me of that DeNiro movie "Ronin." In it a woman is saying to DeNiro's character, something like: You have to escape him every time, but he just has to catch you once.
If you fake it in OpenOffice then the meta data is carried through to th PDF. As far as I know, the default meta data in OO is what your operating system username is but is changeable.
Possibly as a result of consuming too much conspiracy/crime fiction where both the bad guys and good guys love to put little word puzzles into their work, my first thought as to determining if this is a fake name or not is to run "Alex Tapanaris" through an anagram finder.
Since Anonymous is both "everyone" and no-one in particular, couldn't anyone issue releases or do things in their name and it'd be as "official" as anything else? This strikes me as a problem and leaves them open to a miscommunication campaign. Even Wikileaks, which used to be quite shadowy, ended up with Assange as an identifiable and consistent spokesman.
Guess that's what you get when you want to add fancy graphics, instead of just the text.
I hope Paul Rankin is on a flat-rate plan, the last time someone posted a phone number of an anonymous member (even with the last digit removed) that website was down for days.
The press release claimed that Anonymous didn't try to DDoS Amazon because it would be "in bad taste." That doesn't sound like the Anonymous that I know.
In Project Mayhem, we have no names.
Now, you listen to me.
This is a man and he has a name,
and it's Robert Paulsen, OK?
- Robert Paulsen.
- He's a man
and he's dead now because of us.
Do you understand that?
I understand.
In death, a member of Project Mayhem
has a name.
[all chanting] His name is Robert Paulsen.
-- Fight Club
If that link no longer works by the time you see this, it's one of hundreds of links where people posting as him describe in detail the degrading sexual acts they would like done to him.
The metadata has almost certainly been Admiral Ackbarred.