Amid the mild media (and police) frenzy that has gathered in trying to identify members of the Anonymous group (goal: maximise available lulz and information available to all, apart from names of Anonymous members), there was a report that Alex Tapanaris, a graphic designer based in Greece, had been arrested in Greece.
We've been in touch with Tapanaris, who assures us that that is not the case: he has not been arrested, by Greek or any other police.
Tapanaris's details appeared on a PDF released last week that was authored by Anonymous, the loose online collective (though with more structure than it appears: see Anonymous hierarchy emerges).
That does not, of course, mean that Tapanaris necessarily did it. However, the appearance of his name in the context of Anonymous meant that he was apparently judged to have broken the first rule of Anonymous.
They therefore descended on Pastebin, nominally a site for sharing code snippets but which is also popular for swapping insults, and made his name mud there. Go and see for yourself what appears if you search for his name on it.
"I appreciate your being a proper journalist, unlike some people who report everything they read on pastebin," Tapanaris told us when we sought confirmation of his "arrest" (given in one Pastebin posting.) "The only comment I can make right now is that I haven't been arrested."
We'll see whether this stems the tide. Though we think the cause may be lost for some of the Pastebin users.
