The Hacker Wars (2014) - full transcript

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Anonymous

Cyber attack

A new kind of warfare

Hackers and activists

Security leaks

Computer hackers

Hackers

Hacktivists.

Anonymous has struck
again, with a warning,

this is just the beginning.

Anonymous is a collective
known for recent attacks



on government and
corporate websites.

The internet is a
powerful new medium

where just a handful of
people in small groups,

just by shifting data around
in the right directions,

can make big changes
and big damage.

The more you said, the
more frightening it was.

The Pentagon is now
singling out Anonymous

as an example of the
serious new cyber-threats

facing the country.

The fundamental unit here
is information warfare.

We're gaining back the freedoms
that the forefathers assured us

through technology, and we
can't we can't allow these

freedoms to be taken away.

I will put my body on the altar of
liberty again and again and again.



Information is the weapon.

And information properly
understood and properly used

in an honest way is more
effective than anything else

in the world.

If you've got your eye on
Boeing, yeah, please go for it.

I'd like to see those
fuckers go down.

Dial the code, modify
the code just a bid.

Bombard the Pentagon.

You're either with us,
or you're against us.

You have 15 minutes

available for this call.

Hello?

Uh.

Andrew, are you there?

It's not scary to
be going to prison?

No, I never was scared
to be going to prison.

There's all these
cool people, and I'm

learning all these cool things.

And I'm making lifelong future
friends and future business

partners, certainly.

Embarrassing people, I enjoy it.

It's viscerally fun.

He's an instigator.

The most lovable little pest

on the internet.

His ability

to make other people so angry
is the talent that he has.

Almost 90% of the articles
that come out for Weev, they

all start out with, he's
a dick, he's an asshole.

Little Weev is going to troll
the fuck out of Apple and AT&T.

How do I plan on keeping my
corn bread safe in prison?

I will stab a
nigger that dares

reach across my plate.

I am the Bruce Lee of regexp.

I didn't get caught.

I put my name on what I did.

I'm not here to play
nice with AT&T. I'm here

to comment and criticize.

There was a URL on
an AT&T web server

with a number at the end.

And if you add one
to this number,

like you could have typed it
in the iPad web browser over

and over again, you would see the
next iPad 3G user's email address.

Here's AT&T handing
out a complete target

list of their customers.

I was morally required to come
forward and sort of put them

over the coals for this.

It was, like, 114,000
email addresses.

And it's quite a list.

"New York Times"
CEO Janet Robinson.

White House Chief

of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Diane Sawyer.

Not to mention

the US Army and Congress.

And it doesn't get
much more high profile

than Mayor Michael
Bloomberg of New York City.

Mayor Bloomberg was like,
this isn't a big deal.

It's not like people can't
find my email address.

I'm aggregating
public data and using

it to criticize people
whose politics I dislike.

The FBI is combing
through people's emails,

grossly violating their
constitutional rights.

I think I have moral
superiority here.

NSA and FBI are
both walking here.

And they're looking
at the computers.

And they're like, oh
my god, these red dots,

they're converging.

They hit a button, renh, renh.

No black SUV.

There's been black SUVs outside
the past couple of days.

All the red dots are in
the same room right now.

There's going to
be even more later.

Magic fucking genie.

You're actually in power.

You're in charge.

The most drastic improvements
that need to be made

are in the education system.

We need to give people the kind
of classical Western education

that they used to have.

We need a curriculum
that embraces,

you know, like, Keats and Byron.

It doesn't sound
revolutionary.

It's absolutely revolutionary.

We have people in power
that have explicitly

engineered our education
system to make people dumb,

obedient, and uncreative.

Getting them out of fucking
power and remaking it

so people can be free-thinking,
well-educated, sensible,

non-reactionary people, this
is a revolutionary thing.

And it's probably
going to require

a whole lot of bloodshed.

Why has the FBI targeted you?

They have,
by their own admission,

been surveilling me
since I was 15 years old.

That was in the
search warrant they

used to kick in my door in 2010.

And why?

They wanted me to it inform
on hackers on the internet.

They've tried to get me
to do that many times.

There is a congruence between
whistleblowing and hacktivism

and hacktivists.

The similarity is speaking
truth to and of power,

revealing the power structure
whether it's corporate,

whether it's
government, or both.

I was a senior executive at
the National Security Agency.

And I served there for
about six and a half years.

I blew the whistle on the
secret surveillance programs

called Stellar Wind, which were
the foundational surveillance

programs that ultimately
Edward Snowden, 12 years later,

is now disclosing through
reporters and journalists.

The government went
ahead and prosecuted me

under the Espionage Act.

It was a 10 felony
count indictment.

I faced 35 years in prison.

Hackers are
important in the sense

that they have the
capacity to expose

the secret or the inner
workings of the state, which

is why they are
terrified of hackers,

and they are going after them
with phenomenal vengeance.

We are looking at
increased transparency.

Unprecedented transparency.

He called the former
head of the NSA

at home on a weekly basis
for a couple of months,

trying to get him
to talk to him.

Barrett was speaking
in that language

of real adversarial journalism,
that the purpose of journalism

is not to please those in power
but to report the truth, even

when it makes those in power
uncomfortable or reflects poorly on them.

29 years old,
a cocky college dropout,

a self-described
anarchist, Brown

proclaims he is
policing wrongdoing.

He was brash, he was
cocky, he was arrogant.

He was fucking full of himself.

He's awfully narcissistic.

He held court, so to speak,
from his bathtub.

Fucking around on Tinychat.

The take of NBC
brass was Barrett

was not a very
appealing character.

He was not somebody that...

they wanted to tout
as in any way

heroic or doing an
admirable thing.

Barrett was
somebody who was very

open about his own struggles
with substance abuse.

He was on a maintenance
drug, like a methadone.

He was on Suboxone.

At least he was trying
to stay off hard drugs,

to be on at least a medicine.

Who are the members
of Anonymous?

Who are they?

They're everyone.

I mean, you'd be amazed.

There's obviously
a lot of people

who are hackers who
just working in IT.

They work for major
corporations in some cases.

There's journalists,
writers of all kinds, people

who work at gas stations.

What is Anonymous?

It's basically the power

of an absolutely massive group
of people coming together.

Anonymous are your
brothers and sisters,

your sons and daughters, your
parents and your friends.

Anonymous is you.

Anonymous cannot and
will not stand idly while

people are being denied
their basic rights and human

liberties.

Understand that something

is horribly wrong
with this world.

The Tunisian government

has made itself an
enemy of Anonymous.

The Egyptian government has
revealed itself to be criminal.

For the good of mankind
and for our own enjoyment.

To end the corruption,
we must expose it.

If you

are working for a corrupt
company, leak the data.

If you are working for a corrupt
government, leak the documents.

Think for yourself.

Question authority.

Join us in this battle

for freedom of
information worldwide.

Remember, we are you.

Anonymous is you.

And you are Anonymous.

You are fighting for
yourself, the web,

and for the next
step in evolution.

It's a very interesting
relationship

Barrett has with Anonymous.

Barrett's Anonymous.

He's their spokesperson.

Barrett's not Anonymous.

He's not their spokesperson.

Is Barrett really Anonymous?

Because he doesn't hack,
and he doesn't really

have computer skills.

Well, does he have
a Guy Fawkes mask?

He was fulfilling a very
valuable and important

function, which was
to give anonymous

the legitimacy it needed.

He was the person who was
willing to go on record.

It's an open brand.

Like, anyone can sort of label
what they're doing Anonymous.

If you're doing something
that people don't approve,

then Anonymous will
turn in on itself

and sort of eliminate that.

Like, whatever it is
that doesn't fit in

with the truth-seeking,
justice-seeking ideology.

Are you not worried that
even an informal involvement

with Anonymous is going to
end up with you targeted,

with you potentially
going to jail for this?

He was interacting
with other hackers.

A couple times, he wanted to
make the point that he was not

a hacker, that he
was of the community.

Anonymous members try to hack
into people's personal accounts

and attempt to expose
personal information.

And if we did, we wouldn't
go around bragging about it

beforehand.

We would wait
until we were done.

This article is also poorly
written, and I object to that.

He wasn't able to just
try to do anything cleanly

without people giving
him a hard time about it.

My actual title is
Cobra Commander.

Hiss, hiss.

Hiss.

So that's how I need to be
acknowledged, I think, further.

I also go by faggot now.

These use that
non-pejorative fag.

He's an ego-fag and a moral-fag
and a leader-fag and just about

everything but a
fag-fag, as you know,

leave it to the internet to
have to repeat themselves.

What happened today
is certainly illegal.

Why are you willing
to show your face?

Barrett being a named
person was his own doing.

He did not show up as Anonymous.

He showed up as Barrett Brown.

There's a new world
being born here.

At least, that's the
perspective of the people in it.

And I think Barrett really
reflected that and gave voice

to this emerging world view.

Whether it's valid or
not is another question.

And we do not

Forget.

Sabu spoke about
things in terms of this

being a movement for
revolution, and everybody

was his comrade or his brother.

He had kind of built himself
up within Anonymous

and had this
reputation of a like,

doesn't give a fuck
freedom fighter.

There's de facto leadership,
de facto organizer.

Someone had to have the idea
and start bringing people in.

So for a little while, they're
going to listen to this guy.

They're going to say,
what are we doing here?

Why are we doing it?

There are two types of hackers.

There's a ghost hacker,
who constantly changes

his identity, so
nobody knows who he is

or even how to really
get ahold of him.

And then there are people with
permanent fixed identities.

Sabu had a permanent identity.

He made it pretty clear what his
philosophy, his politics were.

I find him to be
incredibly annoying.

He uses words like
what's up, niggy.

And like, he's a
very, like to me,

I'm very annoyed by
everything he says.

Like I don't like his
terms and the way he talks.

He was the king of
the hacking world,

doing it like a "sir," in fact.

Friends around the globe,
we are LOL at security.

LulzSec came from
Anonymous, and they

enjoyed what each other did.

Laughing out loud at
security LulzSec.

Greetings from Anonymous.

For the past decade,
the government

has tried to take
control of our internet.

The Lulz boat was just
sailing the infinite seas

of hacking excellence, hacking
the shit out of everybody.

Topiary,
is everything all right?

Are you dead?

Are you OK?

Remember you tweeted my
fucking phone number, said,

-512-560-26 Here's the
leader of the LulzSec.

Call him now.

You threw it on the
fucking LulzSec Twitter?

Barrett Brown is the
leader of Lulzec!

Give him a call now!

I got 200 calls

Hurry up.

Get the sign.

Do you have it?

Oh, my god.

Oh my god.

You did it.

Oh my god.

Oh my you did it, man.

No, I'm watching it.

I'm standing here watching it.

You did it. It's
working. It's totally working.

If I was working
in a cubicle, I'd

be like, oh, what are those
Lulzsec guys doing today?

You know those
"God hates fags"

morons that protests
soldiers funerals and stomp

on American flags
because they've

got a problem with gay people.

God hates fags.

What part of that don't
you understand, girl?

I don't fucking understand
why God hates fags.

Because he can.

We can sometimes take over the
websites themselves, put messages up,

as we did today with Westboro.

If you check downloads.westborobaptistchurch
right now,

you'll see a nice
message from Anonymous.

The hacks got bigger
and bigger and bigger.

I'm like, oh shit.

What a hacktivist can do and
does all the time is embarrass

the power elite in a way that
boots on the ground can't.

So you can go and sit in
the front of a building,

you can circle the Pentagon.

That doesn't really
embarrass anyone.

If you hack the
website of the CIA,

you've embarrassed the power
structure of the nation state.

You've embarrassed the Pentagon.

You've embarrassed the
United States of America.

You've embarrassed
it by puncturing

the illusion of their power.

You made us look bad.

You taunted us.

We don't take to kindly to that.

You embarrassed me.

So when someone comes
along like a hacker

and exposes the dark
underbelly of this beast,

that beast...

it's not just
tickling the beast.

They're going to take
some swipes at you.

One of the most
notorious hacking

groups of all time has
had its head chopped off.

Return

to the government crackdown
on a loose, large network

of politically-inspired
hacktivists.

A 19-year-old

who goes by the nickname
Topiari was arrested

in Scotland's Shetland Islands.

The FBI will pull in
some 17, 20-year-old kid

and threaten them with
100 years in prison,

just to get them to
inform on people.

There were at least
three snitches

involved in the
takedown of LolzSec.

This was a domino effect.

People were taken into custody
that folded on their comrades.

On September 17, 2011,
Sabu comes back on Twitter

from his, like,
month-long absence.

And he's like,
rise up, my fellas.

The next thing I know, it's
like, 18 chat rooms are linked

together, and everybody's
working in this Occupy Wall

Street chan.

And like, holy shit.

All right, so let's get to work.

I grew up in a normal family.

I'm from Arkansas.

I'm a high school dropout.

There's nothing particularly
special about me.

And there's nothing particularly
special about any of us.

But together we can
form a movement.

I am the 99%.

Get off the street.

Get onto the sidewalk.

The cops tricked us into
going down a one-way street.

And then they kettled us because
we were on a one-way street.

They were really mean
and kinda violent.

Were you wearing your
Anonymous mask

when you got arrested?

I was.

I was too.

I don't want to hide my
face, but sometimes I

feel like I have to.

People are dismissing

you guys as anarchists.

Anarchy.

Thousands of occupy protesters
flooded the streets.

The sinister mask,

fashion on Guy Fawkes,
the revolutionary who

attempted to blow up the British
parliament buildings more

than 400 years ago, has
become a worldwide symbol

of anarchy and revolution.

They are terrorists.

The other side, the rich
motherfuckers portraying us

all as destructive, mindless
anarchists and so forth,

have really exposed
how reactionary

and how inherently violent
the police state really is.

I am a journalist!

I am also a protester.

This guy was just arrested,

didn't do anything illegal.

This guy was just
standing around too.

We can't see the
story from over here.

Remember the press?

How are we supposed to do
our job if you kick us out

of the park?

The Jews fooled the Germans,
because they got to Germany,

and they were very
serious, rigid people.

And the Germans were like,
oh, they're just like us.

And so they got this
great success in Germany.

And then the
Germans figured out,

oh, they took over
our banks, and it's

hyper-inflated our currency.

Fuck these people.

And perhaps the punishment was
disproportionate to the crime.

Maybe.

But the Jews were the
criminal people in Germany,

and they did have
something coming to them.

Just a little.

Oh my god.

Perhaps not the Holocaust.

I certainly don't blame
you for walking away.

It's a good thing
you're a troll.

You can always pull
that kind of troll card.

He's obviously a
troll and by all

accounts an asshole and highly
offensive and of dubious

moral fiber and
dubious moral standing.

He is an internet troll.

And for the uninitiated,
that's someone

who just likes to
mess with people

for the sake of
messing with people.

Trolling is a rhetorical style
that exposes somebody else's

personality flaws by eliciting
a reaction from them that

shows the true nature
of their character.

He pinpoints your
vulnerability,

and he immediately
starts to exploit it.

But for higher cause, to show
that you're hypocritical,

to show that you have misogyny,
to show that you yourself

are racist while you're yelling
at him for being racist.

Trolling is in the
Socratic tradition

of questioning everything and
driving people nuts until they

question their assumptions.

And that's basically what a
good troll will aspire to do.

If I were to name parties
that I think were great trolls,

I'd say Giordano
Bruno, Zeno of Elea,

Jesus Christ, Joseph
Smith, Brigham Young,

I'd definitely name
some parties who

used a very combative
style of rhetoric

but probably nobody alive.

You meet Weev in
person, and he's

the nicest guy in the world.

He'll hold the
door open for you.

He'll grab you a
soda if you ask him.

And if you meet
him online, he'll

spew a whole bunch
of anti-Semitic crap

and he'll be really mean.

I like to think of trolling
as a way of expressing

working-class discontent.

I recall recently that Gina
Rinehart called the working

class people of Australia
lazy and without self-control.

Trolling is the
right of said people

to respond by telling her to
perhaps stop eating and get

on a treadmill.

You say that trolling is
about creating something

that expresses the true
nature of the character.

I wonder how what you
said about Gina Rinehart

exposes the true nature
of the character,

if you're just talking
about her weight.

When she has inherited wealth
from her father, a bunch

of mines, and she runs around
calling the people that

pull the minerals out of the
ground for her lazy and stupid,

it's disgusting.

It's a level of
decadence and gluttony

that I think speaks not
only through her weight

but her general demeanor.

She's a loud-mouth,
obnoxious idiot.

I'm not a bigot, except by the
original definition of bigot,

I air my opinion very
loudly without the concern

for others' fucking
cries of help about,

oh, he's saying something
that we don't like to hear.

That's actually the initial
definition of bigot,

before it was associated
with a racist somebody who

loudly airs their opinion.

And it says something
stark now that bigot

is a pejorative term.

There's a quote from Voltaire.

It says, to find
out who rules you,

find the people you
may not criticize.

Why do we all have to
agree with each other?

That's what freedom is about.

I can call you a
disgusting kike,

and we can still live in
the fucking same society.

He actually is trying to shove
this down everyone's throat.

Freedom of speech at all costs,
as hardcore as I can make it.

He's a crazy fucker.

But, you know he's,
he's a...

our crazy fucker, I think.

What was it,
the Gay Nigger Society?

Oh, crap.

I can't say that
on camera, can I?

I should probably, probably
not put that on camera.

The Gay Nigger Association
has been around,

I think, probably since 2000.

It is a very old
troll organization.

I was elected president
of it in 2010.

The name

is based on a Danish
short film called

"Gayniggers from Outer Space. "

The gay niggers

come from the planet
Anus, and they are much,

much more intelligent than any
other creature in the universe.

When Hurricane Sandy
swept through New York,

they posed a bunch of
pictures on Twitter

of black people, like,
looting and stuff.

And #SANDYLOOTCREW is what
they called it, the hashtag.

Tons of media
outlets picked it up.

If people were tweeting
pictures of white people

in suits doing TVs, the
media would actually

investigate it and
be like, all right,

this is bullshit, instead of
just reporting that nonsense

without any forethought.

Trolls in trouble
computer hackers

find themselves on the
wrong side of the law

after breaching AT&T's security.

I mean, I guess there's a
blurry line between Goatse

Security, was it a
troll or was it a hack?

But I mean, the
name Goatse Security

invokes that terrible image
of, that ruined my childhood.

He named his company
Goatse Security.

So if you know what
Goatse is G-O-A-T-S-E

I'm not going to explain it.

Hey, there's this gaping
security flaw here.

Goatse Security,
who are these guys?

And they're Googling
Goatse, and they're

getting the goatse picture.

They're called Goatse Security?

Am I pronouncing that correctly?

Yeah, that's right.

We're analyzing coverage
from Bloomberg, Goatse,

The Register, and Forbes.

Goatse Security would expose
the gaping security holes

in your systems.

A corporation like AT&T
and Apple, the only way

you could really get
to them was literally

to send it to the
media and make a,

a gaping asshole
mockery of it.

We're here today to announce
that our office has filed

criminal charges against
Andrew Auernheimer.

I never understood.

The picture that the press
has painted of me is unfair,

and I'd love to have a
discussion, a fair discussion.

Truth triumphs in the end.

Would you say you've
done anything wrong?

I don't believe I've
done anything wrong, no.

What happens when a hacktivist
comes some kid like Weev

comes along and punctures the
invincibility of the United

States government or AT&T?

You minimize the power of these
institutions by doing that.

That's why these kids
have to be stopped.

Too late.

My time has come.

Sends shivers down my spine,
bodies aching all the time.

Goodbye, everybody.

I've got to go,

gotta leave you all
behind and face the truth.

Mama

Come on, everybody.

Everybody, we're going.

Can you can you
whistle the "Ode to Joy?"

It's been good knowing you.

I hope to see you all again.

If not, write me shit
and keep causing trouble.

Cause as much trouble
as you can in my stead.

That was classic.
Of course.

You're not coming in?

No, I'm coming in.

I just don't know how fast
they're gonna take you.

In my country,
there's a problem.

And that problem is the feds.

They take everybody's freedom,
and they never give it back.

I'm going to prison
for arithmetic.

I added one to a fucking
number on a public web server,

and I aggregated this
data, and I gave it

to a fucking journalist
at that man's publication.

And this is why I am going
to prison, is arithmetic.

Fuck this country.

America's priorities

are our priorities.

We are developing solutions

that prevent cyber-threats
from becoming cyber-attacks.

Because at Northrup Grumman,

values are what
enable us to perform

at the very highest levels.

Because we know that
what we do affects

the security of our nation and
other nations around the globe.

- Northrup Grumman.
- CACI.

- Lockheed Martin.
- Booz Allen Hamilton.

- Abraxas.
- Palantir.

Stratfor,
leader in global intelligence.

Even people who are paying
close attention to it,

like me, had never really
focused on those players

before until Barrett
started doing

the journalism
that he was doing.

There's always
been contractors.

We had contractors during
the American Revolution.

Let's be real in
terms of history.

We've never had
what were defined

as inherently
governmental functions,

including the centerpiece
functions of the intelligence

system, the most secret
being turned over

for profit to corporations.

If you have that kind of
control because of the accesses

you're granted and the
government giving you

the deep state intelligence,
the deep state data, guess what.

You get to serve the state.

You get to justify its
continued existence.

You're going to
color the world...

with the mentality
of the state

which is, the world's
a dangerous place.

There's lots of
threats out there.

It's a target-rich environment.

These are people that are
in this to enrich themselves.

They're the people
in the government,

and they're the people
in this business.

And they don't care that
it's not helping anyone.

These are not patriots.

These are people that maybe
have military background.

They might think of
themselves as patriots,

but they are not patriots.

We can meet and surpass

shareholders' expectations,
branch into adjacent markets,

and pursue billions of dollars
in unconstrained growth

opportunities.

They're invested in
the security theater.

Hundreds and hundreds
of billions of dollars

have been spent on
national security,

ostensibly to practice
I can actually

say it's actually
in the trillions,

the total amount of money.

I would argue it's the largest
redistribution of wealth

in the history of
the United States.

Wars are not meant to be won,
they're meant to be continuous.

And if you want to
hold a continuous war,

whether in real life
or on the internet,

then you need an enemy
that can't be destroyed.

And Anonymous is impervious
to really being destroyed,

because it's decentralized.

It's everywhere.

And it doesn't
even have to exist.

I mean, they could just say
it exists, and then it would.

And it's sort of
just like terrorism.

Terrorists are everywhere.

Terrorists your neighbor
may be a terrorist.

So we have to remain vigilant.

And that's the same thing that's
basically happening online.

Right now I've
got Barrett Brown.

Founder of Project PM.

And one of our cyber experts

Barrett Brown

Joins us now to
break it all down.

So is this an
official declaration

of war against Booz Allen
Hamilton and possibly

other contractors?

I still collaborate with some
Anonymous participants

within my own group, Project
PM, acquiring more information

and bringing attention to
what's called the intelligence

contracting industry.

So he has this initiative
called Project PM, which

was a crowdsource wiki that
is supposed to investigate

the mushrooming cyber-security
industrial complex.

It's a collaborative
research project.

You're tapping into the
collective consciousness

of the world, which is always
an incredibly powerful thing

to do.

That is going to be the
future model of journalism.

The collusion in part with
press, mainstream press,

was, we're just going to
sort of look the other way.

We're not going to
actually use the powers

we have available to us.

He was building
up this database

of who was doing what with who,
what intelligence firms are

working for what government
entities, what outside ones are

working together, what
contracts have they

landed that we don't like you
know, all that type of stuff,

stuff they don't want
the public to know about.

There were these hacks
going on that we're expected,

these data dumps.

Shit's about to start getting
crazy, if you know what I mean.

Going through
thousands of emails

is kind of a huge undertaking.

It's a lot of reading.

Did you do that, go through
hundreds of emails?

Can I say that?

These people were
contributing to what

they believed was a
journalistic project.

They were contributing
anonymously,

they thought, to help
the cause of journalism.

Obviously Barrett was
onto something, otherwise

there wouldn't have been
this type of reaction.

41 months, three years'
supervised release, one drug

test within 15 days.

Computer monitoring,
mental health evaluation,

$73,000 restitution to US
Treasury to be given to AT&T.

He reached for his phone.

He reached for something.

They fucking tackled
him, handcuffed him,

took him out for,
like, 15 minutes.

He came back not just in, like,
handcuffs but with the thing

around his waist, the
big chain, laughing.

He's seriously walking
around the courtroom,

just going, like

Like that.

I gave him the thumbs up.

How dare you be skillful?

How dare you utilize
your knowledge?

It's fucking absurd.

And of course
it's AT&T's fault.

They are responsible.

How can you say that the company
that designed the website

is not responsible for
their security flaws?

So the federal prosecutor
said during Weev's trial

that just because he
has a special skill,

he shouldn't have power
over other people.

That's how they view it.

And it's not incorrect
to say that people

who understand
computers have power.

It's just, I don't think
the answer is coming down

on our prodigies
and our geniuses.

I'll put it this way.

There was a time when
you hacked a company,

and the company hired you.

Now it's you hack a
company, and they come

and they beat the
shit out of you.

Hackers, hacktivists in prison,
by virutally pointing out

weaknesses in the
very structures

that we depend on
as a common good.

When we weaken the
common good, for what?

We're turning on ourselves.

And any time a country
empire turns on itself

and begins to find
threats from within, well,

that should tell you
how far gone we are.

Howdy, internet.

My internet blogging must
have pissed somebody off.

They have cut off my
fucking TrulinX access

because, of course, we live
in a country with a childishly

authoritarian government
that can't handle anybody

saying anything mean
about it on the internet.

I miss you.

I really do.

There are so many of you that
I can't hopefully I see you

in a couple or years.

I wish I could call each
and every one of you.

I'm still in prison.

I've been denied access
to both sunlight and food.

I can't tweet via the
normal means any longer,

but I will still read
everybody's responses.

They will be snail-mailed to me.

Fucking barbarism!

Keep up the good fight, and
make trouble while I'm gone.

You guys gotta carry the
internet-ruin torch, I suppose.

Oh, god.

We've that was one of
his better communiques.

I was outside grabbing
a cup, and I get a call

from an unavailable number.

And it's like, do you want
to accept this toll-free call

from Andrew, from
federal prison?

And I was like,
oh god, it's Weev.

I could barely make
out what he was saying.

But he's like, set
up an Asterisk box

so I can upload
things to SoundCloud.

And I was like, OK, whatever.

He had email access for a month.

Then they took it away,
because they figured out

that he was sending messages
to another person, who

was tweeting them
out from his account.

He and someone else had,
like, code words set up.

So if I said, like, say this to
my mom, or something like that,

then the next line
would be a tweet.

They were trying
to shut him down,

and we found a
way to subvert it.

The more that they try to make
this go away, the government,

it keeps coming back.

And it'll bring more
attention on Weev.

It took him a couple of years
to garner 5,000 followers.

And then as soon as he
goes to jail, in a month,

he gets 5,000 more.

It took them a
month to figure out

that we were uploading
to Soundcloud,

even though there was, like,
news articles about it.

And just a few days ago,
we looked at the caller ID,

because we had two
mysterious phone calls.

One of them was from US
Government, all capitals.

And the other one was from
Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Ever since then, we
haven't heard from him.

Out of kind of the
ashes of LolzSec,

Sabu wants a new
thing, a new group,

a new cause going forward.

And this becomes Antisec.

With the visuals
of machine guns,

this was no longer
a laughing matter.

And they were not
playing games anymore.

He was training people to
attack government websites

and attack large
corporations and businesses.

Greetings, pirates.

And welcome to another exciting
Fuck FBI Friday release.

For Fuck FBI Friday,

we are releasing one gigabyte
of private emails and documents.

It was asking for
trouble, and trouble

came in a way
that like, nobody

could have even written this.

Antisec culminated in Christmas
of 2011 with the Stratfor hack.

I remember, like, being home
with my family on Christmas,

glued to my computer,
like, looking over, trying

to interact with my family,
right at the same time,

you know, the Stratfor
stuff's going on.

And I guess there's
that glee that happens,

the glee that happens whenever
like, oh, this happened,

this big hack.

And some people are just
hanging out, you know,

because it's like, I'm a
devotee to train wrecks.

And other people are, like,
seeking out knowledge.

Stratfor is a private
intelligence contractor.

They act as an outsourced,
private version of the CIA.

The National Security
Journalist Joshua Foust

or Foast or Fost
or Faust, maybe, he

said that Stratfor's
no different

than a private investigator.

But PIs don't have
the sort of clientele

that Stratfor had Hunt Oil,
National Oilwell Varco, Emerson

Electric, Dell Computers, and
Northrup Grumman, Lockheed

Martin, Department
of Homeland Security,

Defense Intelligence
Agency, US Marines.

And they don't have
the sort of informants

that Stratfor has Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu, Mexican
Diplomat Fernando

de la Mora Salcedo, DEA pilot
and sometime supervisor William

F. Dionne, giving
them information

off of JWICS' top secret
classified computer network.

So that's not the
PI that you would

hire to see if your
spouse is cheating on you.

That's Stratfor.

Cyber thieves made off
with the personal details

of hundreds of thousands
of subscribers.

They work up to
find that they'd

given an unexpected Christmas
present, the $50,000

between them, to numerous
high-profile charities.

To take an ex-FBI agents
and use their credit card

to make a donation to the
Red Cross on Christmas Day,

I guess that it's criminal.

But it's also wonderful
in its own way.

The Stratfor
hack, it's claimed,

also contains
email conversations

between Stratfor
employees and officials

in their own government.

Every week a
company or an agency,

is this going to get worse?

I think so.

People broke into something
and, wow, criminals.

Well, OK.

Even if you want to
call them criminals,

they're coming up with
this information that

looks a lot like
criminal activity.

The day that
"WikiLeaks" published

the global intelligence
files, which

is what it calls
the Stratfor Leak,

"The Atlantic" wrote an article
titled, Stratfor is a joke,

and so is WikiLeaks for
taking it seriously.

And that was the
very day of the leak,

so surely they didn't
read the 5 million emails

that I've spent more
than a year researching.

The 5 million emails
have just been published.

The most important
revelations are still unknown.

Infamous Anonymous hacker

Jeremy Hammond, number one
on the FBI cybercrime list,

pled guilty to
Christmas Hacking Spree.

Known as the electronic
Robin Hood.

Jeremy Hammond.

Computer hacker
Jeremy Hammond

has been sentenced to
10 years in prison.

As a former journalist,
a former investigative reporter

for "The New York
Times," I'm stunned

that the rest of my colleagues
well, I mean, frankly I'm

not that stunned are not here.

Jeremy's going to
jail for 10 years.

I don't think a lot of
people in this country

are going to find out about it if
"The New York Times" doesn't cover it.

That's just the way that the
media is set up right now.

There's a lot of people
outside supporting him.

He's gotten a lot of letters.

So, you know

Hammond's actions are
acts of civil disobedience

fundamentally.

In hacking Stratfor,
Jeremy Hammond

achieved some degree
of transparency.

It opened our eyes to things
that we needed to see.

25 years after Bhopal,

after a gas tank
released toxic gas

into the city
surrounding the factory,

they were monitoring
dissent and demonstrations

against Dow Chemical.

Data wants to be free
is the hacker credo.

The real questions
we need to be asking

is, when this data is
shared with people,

who is it benefiting,
and who is it hurting?

Jeremy's apartment,
you know, is just

books scattered about the
floor, books on the shelves.

What could be more
dangerous than books?

The internet...

you know, which is really just
one giant book about all

of us being written
in real time.

Stop projecting this.

We love you!

We love you!

We all love you, Jeremy.

Jeremy, flash your light.

Jeremy, flash your light.

Your mom is here!

Your mom is here!

She loves you!

And I'm proud of
you too, boy.

My name is Barrett
Brown, and I've

been waiting for this
day for about six months.

In a way, I've been
waiting for this day

since I was seven years old.

On March 5, I
received communication

from a certain
individual saying that I

was going to be raided
the next day at my home.

They go to his house,
his apartment.

And he had spent the
night at his mom's house.

You know, I go
to my mom's house

and sleep over there sometimes.

We've been very close.

Next morning, I woke
up at 6:30 by my mom's.

She's scared.

I go downstairs.

There's two FBI agents.

One is named Robert Smith.

He is a FBI cyber-crime fellow.

They say, OK, we've raided
your house, your apartment.

Do you have any laptops
here you'd like to give us?

So they get another warrant
for his mother's house

and find the laptop.

Then they charge his mother
with obstruction of justice.

When I was seven years old,
I first heard the term FBI.

My parents were fighting a lot.

And my dad would sometimes
get angry and throw things

at my mom.

And part of the
reason for that was

because my dad was being
indicted by the FBI.

And I went from living in a
nice house in Highland Park, one

of the nicest
communities in America,

to living in a two-bedroom
apartment with my mom

and grandma and sharing
a bed with my mom

over the next year, when
I was in third grade.

They'd gone after his father
and bankrupted his father.

And his father was
eventually found innocent

and apologized to by the court.

So basically, the FBI
ruined his family.

It was after that day I
realized I'm a bad guy,

and I had no idea beforehand.

And even now, I still
have trouble really

sort of internalizing that.

But if the FBI says
it, it must be true.

And from now on,
I am the bad guy.

So it's kind of like a quad,
and everybody in the apartment

complex can hear this man
ranting against the FBI

on the balcony.

And I'm getting a
little bit concerned,

but I also want
him to have his

because he's Barrett Brown.

He says crazy stuff.

In the evening, we sit in the
Tinychat, just joking around.

Whoa, is Barrett getting
fucking raided by the FBI?

Holy shit!

If you're in the place
getting raided,

OK, you don't know anything,
because all of a sudden,

your utilities go out.

And the utilities go
out, because the concern

is that the concussion
grenades might start a fire.

So they don't want the gas
or electricity running, OK.

And none of the stuff you
see on television, where

they hit the door with
a battering ram no,

that door comes down
in one blow, OK?

And you're down on the floor
with one of these macho jerks

pointing an assault rifle at
your head, swearing at you

and telling you
to freeze, or he's

going to blow your
fucking brains out.

The second agent came around
in his camo with his gun,

and he looked at
me as if he didn't

know there would
be a girl there.

Barrett's mother came over.

She sees Barrett
Brown V, and then

the ampersand over and over
and over again on Twitter.

Barrett Brown V& is a way
that people communicate that

somebody has been arrested.

He's talking shit.

There's no crime
against talking shit.

But maybe there is now.

What kind of threat ends with
how do you like them apples?

It's like it's like, from,
like, 1840 or something

like that.

If it was just
threatening the agent

and that's all he was
being charged with,

I wouldn't even care
about this case.

Let him and Special Agent Robert
Smith go out back and duke it

out, or let Special
Agent Smith beat him up

or whatever he has to do.

The second indictment
comes, and then it's

like a fucking kick in the gut.

All these guys
are doing is trying to

put the fear in him, trying
to pressure him to flip.

Barrett's such a
stubborn asshole,

that he's never going to flip.

Their claim is that he
took a link, copied it

it's journalistically important
to get the client list pasted

it into the Project PM chat
room, and in that one move,

produced criminal
exposure for himself.

The Barrett Brown
case is another one

of these seminal cases,
and the government

wants to send a very
chilling message.

It's fundamentally a
First Amendment case.

How dare you hold
up the mirror to us?

They called Project PM
a criminal organization.

And that's what people
freaked out about,

because there were a whole
bunch of people on that server

editing that wiki, and like,
wait, there's a criminal

I think they're after
who, who anyone else?

Any other names to put on
our list of people to watch?

The tingly feelings
of, like, paranoia

are crawling up my
spine like a spider.

They're there for a reason.

Just because you're
paranoid doesn't

mean they're not after you.

So Jeremy Hammond
did the hack.

10 years at this point.

Who's the guy that's looking
at 105 years at this point?

It's Barrett Brown.

And what's the difference?

He's disseminating
the information.

He's doing something more
dangerous than what Jeremy did.

Here's the message is
sends, from the government

to the hacktivists, who
are getting great coverage

and are becoming folk
heroes through the press.

Don't talk to the
press, because we're

going to get their
computers and we're

going to get their
sources and we're

going to get you through that.

To the press who are
covering the hacktivists,

don't cover these hacktivists,
because we're going to get you.

I guess what I want, one,
I'm no longer your bitch.

Two, all of my
charges are dropped.

Three, all of Barrett
Brown's charges are dropped.

That's up to the US Attorney.

Figure it out.

Hector Xavier Monsegur

was responsible for the
arrest of Jeremy Hammond

and other Anonymous
and LulzSec members.

Sources

say he began cooperating
with the FBI.

It like, I felt like my
brains had been blown out,

like it was the last
scene of "The Departed. "

The FBI arrests Sabu, and
they turn him within a day.

And they have him back on
the internet within two days.

This isn't like...

some guy going undercover
in the Gambino crime

family in person for years.

None of us had ever
met him before.

He was just this guy we
knew from the internet.

He talks the talk
so forcefully,

with that kind of New York
personality you know,

we are doing the right
thing for the people.

We are building this
anew from the ground up.

We are taking down the ugly,

evil, capitalist, imperial

machinery, and we are building
it back up with our own hands.

My brother, he says.

Looking at Sabu's interactions
with reporters during the time

that he was an FBI
informant, Sabu

could have easily just
told the reporter,

like, no, I don't want
to talk to you, go away.

But that's not what he did.

He engaged in, like, an hour
and a half long conversation

and then screen-capped it and handed
that information over to the FBI.

That's not a free press.

The government has journalists
under surveillance.

Do you think the government's
targeting you?

I hope not.

I hope I'm not.

Shit.

Everybody's paranoia is just
through the fucking roof.

Wait a sec.

If he was working for the
FBI from that moment in June

to this moment now, they
didn't delete his timeline,

they didn't try to
hide any of that stuff.

Want to speak to me?

Want to join the fight?

Go to Wall Street and protest.

Sabu and Jeremy were
partners in crime.

They were the digital Bonnie
and Clyde, if you will.

Except one of them is working
for the FBI the whole time.

The FBI is operating...

in sort of a new theater,
which is online.

The government likes to
use these hyperbolic terms

referring to cyber-warfare,
cyber-weapons.

The feds, by
proxy through Sabu,

were giving Jeremy the zero-days
to get into these websites.

In order to, say,
entrap a terrorist,

they would sell him
fake explosives.

But instead of giving him fake
explosives, the zero-days are real.

In the hacker world, you either
get in or you don't get in.

There's no fake hack.

It wouldn't be a crime
if it was a fake hack.

Ugh.

That's the only way I
could describe it dude.

She fellated him.

The amount of cooperation
was truly extraordinary.

And it was just amaz she just
kept saying it over and over.

It was truly extraordinary.

You know and I
gotta say too, I

don't know what I would
have done in his position.

I really don't.

You have to walk a mile in
his shoes to understand.

There's a lot of people that
are going to be mad, though,

the amount of truly
extraordinary cooperation

that he gave.

This was the first time
anybody had ever seen him,

at least publicly.

Like, this was real.

This was finally
coming to a close.

And he was facing
the guideline

was between 21 and 26 years.

He walked out of...

the Manhattan court
complex... a free man.

Yeah.

He immediately cooperated with
the FBI when they arrested him.

And the judge said
that that was probably

the most significant
aspect of the case,

was that Sabu flipped so
quickly, which enabled

the FBI to sort of become
a part of Anonymous

over a nine-month period.

They were apparently sitting at
the computer with him at times.

He had a camera in
his apartment or house

that was videotaping
him every day.

He was debriefed
regularly by the FBI.

Judge Preska said, and
I quote, I salute you.

The prosecution and the
defense sort of built him up

to be this sort of
conservative folk hero,

like the model FBI
informant, the person who

every informant should
live up to be, to the point

where it made it impossible
for them to give him jail time.

It would have been
it would've been

bad for the informant
program for him

to have worked that
long, to work three years

and then be sentenced to prison.

Sabu pretty much
neutralized Anonymous.

Yeah.

Completely
neutralized Anonymous.

And after he went
down, everyone's

afraid of following any leader.

And they're also afraid of starting
an operation on their own.

In general, nobody
trusts anyone.

If you go onto any IRC chat,
they're all just talking about,

you know, like...

- "Who's the fed?"
- You're the fed.

At the end of the day,
he's just a hacker

getting used by the government.

Sabu is the big snitch.

Like, the ninth circle of
Hell is reserved for Sabu.

Him and Cain and, like, Judas
will be there with Satan.

There's been an
unfortunate deficit

in what people have read
and what people have written

about an issue that is of
extraordinary importance...

TrapWire.

Barrett sort of shines
the light of this stuff.

He's like, oh my god,
it's actually happening.

You've got the
emails right there.

He stumbles across this.

He stumbles across it,
starts talking about it.

TrapWire is software that can
match surveillance data taken

from multiple closed
circuit cameras

from across the country.

Video feeds are fed into
a centralized system that

analyzes them for patterns
of suspicious behavior.

To understand
TrapWire, you have

to understand the
larger context,

because TrapWire is a critical
piece of the surveillance

apparatus.

This is actually doing
very large swath,

persistent surveillance.

In 2007, TrapWire
costs about $1.7 million

to operate in Los
Angeles County.

What we know about
how it functions

is largely gleaned
from those emails.

TrapWire has been
deployed in Seattle,

in Los Angeles, in DC.

According to a
Stratfor email, there's

500 cameras in this
New York City subway

system equipped with TrapWire.

"The New York Times"

said that TrapWire
was only used on 15

cameras in the entire country,
and that the DHS wrote it off

as a failure.

That's a complete lie.

We had gone to 38th Street
Station to troll TrapWire.

And so what troll TrapWire
was for us was essentially

acting out these things that
the security researcher, Justin,

and other people
had said, this might

work to trigger
TrapWire's alarms.

Sitting their holding my
laptop and looking around,

a little bit.

You were live-tweeting
the video.

And you were being ridiculous
about the whole thing.

Obvious, yeah.

We ate with a senior official in
the Philadelphia Police Department.

During this, a homeland security
unit for Philadelphia police

had come to him and said, Dustin
Slaughter and Kenneth Lipp

are at 30th Street
Station, and they're

worried that they were
going to smash cameras,

that we have something
terrorist in mind.

It blew our minds
when we found out.

My god, they were
monitoring this.

They actually were paying attention
and freaked out about it.

They're doing what
everyone's worried about.

Anarchists are running all
over the place and smashing,

burning, looting.

Coverage of TrapWire
in the US,

the whole story was
smothered in its crib

by "The New York Times. "

It's an open secret that
the mainstream media

has special access to
the halls of power.

There was a phrase I
used to hear at NSA

we're going to tell them
what we want them to hear,

not what they need to know.

What we want them to hear.

That's pure manipulation.

That is CYOP Info Op.

You're saying, because
you can, you're

controlling the narrative.

Hail victory!

Go, go, go, go, go.

What?

Yeah, dude.

And my magazines and my
newspapers and my mail.

I spent the majority
of my time in the SHU.

They were like, if you continue,
we're going to force-feed you.

And I'm like, well, you're
gonna force-feed me.

But hey, I ain't
backing down, you know?

The infamous computer
hacker known by his alias

Weev is a free man after
more than a year behind bars.

An appeals court has now
overturned his conviction.

Time behind bars has made Weev
even more outspoken than before.

I can't watch my society rot
when a bunch of federal scum

just want to throw
anybody that they

disagree with in a prison cell.

It's the end of
the West right now,

and we've got to fight for it.

Somebody has to.

You have no instincts to flee,
like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange?

I'm not running.
This is my country.

So this case is at
every step of the way

from the initial
criminal complaint

to my time in prison has
always been about my speech.

And they've wanted
to silence me.

They further
punished me in prison

and subjected me to conditions
above and beyond any

of the other prisoners at my
facility because of my speech.

They wanted me to disappear
from public view and memory.

It was inside the SHU, like...

inside the SHU...

There's an author,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

He was one of the
few authors that

kept writing after Stalin
told all the authors that they

weren't allowed to write any literature
that was compelling anymore.

And he ended up in a prison
system called the Gulag.

And he describes there
the steps that they

do to try to break you down.

And I kept checking off the
bullet points that he listed.

He has, like, a 30
bullet point list

of all the various
interrogatory methods

that they used in Soviet Russia.

Temperature extremes
are one of them,

and they'll turn up the AC
to freezing temperatures

while he was sleeping.

And then they'll pump up
the heat during the day.

And they come and
like, I couldn't

sleep because they would bang on
the door every once in a while.

And they'll shine the
flashlight in your eyes

and keep waking you up at night.

They'll put you on a bunk, and
then you can't even sit up.

And there's a light
right next to your head.

And it's pretty terrible.

No doubt about it,
it's pretty terrible.

The surveillance
state's already here.

It's already here.

We're constantly on camera.

Like, we can't put
that back in the box.

Like, we can fret about
it and say, oh gosh,

we need more controls.

That infrastructure is there,
and it's not going away.

They can watch us
through our webcams.

They can listen
through our phones.

There's no privacy
left, virtually.

We are the most watched,
surveilled, monitored,

eavesdropped population in
the history of the human race.

If you have nothing to hide,
as justification for violating

your rights, then you have
nothing to worry about.

You know where that
phrase came from?

Goebbels from the Nazi era.

Nothing to hide?

That means there is no privacy.

I left Iran to come here,
and now I

can't have security or privacy?

All we want is just
fucking live our lives.

Half of us, we don't
even give a shit,

if we could all be left alone.

It's my right by
birth to have privacy.

They want to own you.

That's a power relationship
superior, inferior.

If I know every single thing
about you, about what you

think, how you reason,
what your fears are,

what you're planning,
what you're doing,

and you know nothing
about me, because I'm

shielding my behavior
behind a wall of secrecy,

I have incredible
power over you.

The power imbalance
between us is immense,

because I can now manipulate
you, I can threaten you,

I can alter your behavior
in all sorts of ways,

I can anticipate your
behavior, I can prevent you

from doing things
that you're planning,

I can prepare in defense
of what you're doing,

I can always stay many
steps ahead of you.

This mentality is pathological.

You have to understand
the mindset.

You have to understand
the psychology

behind those who want
to know everything.

That means anything
hidden, anything private,

anything sovereign
is a direct threat

to the surveillance state.

The capacity of this
agency to spy on people

and to know everything
that they do

is so extreme and awesome, at
any moment pure totalitarianism

could be imposed, and
the American people

would have no place to hide.

Security and surveillance
state is put into place

in order to keep a
population captive.

And they now have
all the mechanisms

to do it absolute
iron control,

over-arrestive
population, should

the population become restive?

The United States
unchained itself fully

from the Constitution.

People still don't
fully appreciate it.

We talk about mass
surveillance, all

this stuff- no,
they've unchained.

This is an alien
form of government.

It's completely
anathema to democracy.

It's completely anathema, but
obviously the government's

not going to come out
and say, hey, guess what?

We're under national
emergency conditions.

I'm going to continue
hitting large companies

and institutional powers.

I'm not going to take
no shit from nobody.

Fuck them if they
can't take a joke.

I was not going to sit
still and remain silent,

because if I had
remained silent, I

myself would have been complicit
in the conduct of a crime

against the sovereignty
of who we are as people.

That's We the People, capital
W and capital P, We the People.

You can just sign off.

Like, you don't have to
be a victim of trolling.

Like, you can just
turn off the internet.

Sabu got off.

Judge Preska and the
attorneys and the defenders

got on their knees
and fellated him.

That's, like, a
lot more sex than I

remember going on
in the courtroom.

Don't limit your activism
to just the mere world

of computers.

Take it to the streets.

We need more foot soldiers in
the streets to fuck up shit.

"Dallas, Texas, native Mr.
Brown joins other infamous

Texans who fought
the government,

such as Branch Davidians
at Waco, Texas. "

Fucking really?

Really?

The Branch Davidians?
Really?

Fuck you.