We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (2012) - full transcript

It was 6:00 in the morning.

I got a knock on my door... a

really loud knock... and I

thought it was my dad, who had

locked himself out or something.

So I opened it, and it's the.

I.e.d. Flashlights and the

really obnoxious bullet-proof

vest and the dragging me out

into the cold when I'm in my

pajamas.



That was not fun.

They seemed pretty shocked by

the sarcastic, belligerent,

angry teenager that they dragged

out of bed that day.

I don't know if it's just that I

was 19 or that I was a girl, but

they didn't expect... This.

10,000 angry kids... whoever

they are, they scared the shit

out of some people those days.

They scared the shit out of the

powers that be, and that's why

this is being investigated.



That's why I'm under

indictment.

That's it, because between the

days of December 6th and

December 10th, 10,000 angry

people proved to the government

that their regulations, their

ideas, their view of PayPal,

their view of wikileaks, their

view of the Afghan war, and

Egypt and Tunisia and Libya...

It didn't... Matter.

Their opinion no longer mattered

because someone was out on the

Internet kicking ass.

The computer hacker group

anonymous is claiming tonight

that it took down the website of

the federal appeals court in

San Francisco this afternoon.

They took down senate. Gov

servers, they've taken down

hbgary, Sony's claiming they did

$150 million worth of damage.

So many confidential files

that tonight, because of these

hackers, can be in the hands of

anyone.

Visa, mastercard, the PayPal

situation.

The criminals who hacked into

Sarah Palin's private e-mail.

The church of scientology

says anonymous is a

cyber-terrorist group of

religious bigots.

Anonymous and this other

group called lulzsec... they

seem to be wanting to prove a

point.

Anonymous kind of was like

the big, strong, buff kid who

had low self-esteem, and then

all of a sudden, punched

somebody in the face and was

like, "holy shit, I'm really"

strong!"

And anonymous calls itself "the"

"final boss of the Internet," and

sometimes if proves to be

really fucking true.

If you are going to violate the

freedoms of the Internet, you

certainly better watch the fuck

out.

They are kind of the rude

boys of activism.

There's a real rough edge to

them, which I think also is one

reason why they garner so much

love and hate from people, too.

They represent a certain sort of

chaotic freedom.

Individual, young, nameless,

faceless folks are having

geopolitical impact.

I mean, it's both exhilarating

to realize that and terrifying

to realize that.

It kind of depends on how that

power is wielded.

We are legion.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

We stand for freedom.

We stand for freedom of speech,

the power of the people, the

ability for them to protest

against their government, to

right wrongs.

No censorship, especially online

but also in real life.

We have members throughout

society, in all stratas of it

worldwide.

Yeah, we have no leadership.

It's one voice... it's not

individual voices.

That's why we don't show our

faces, that's why we don't give

our names.

We're speaking as one.

It's a collective.

Good timing.

I got called a terrorist

sympathizer.

We've been called kids, we've

been called cyber-bullies, we've

been called hooligans, and, you

know, sometimes those words

aren't entirely unfair, but this

is a serious political movement.

No one in the general public

really seems to get it.

What they don't seem to get is

that the ability for anonymous

to be everything and anything is

it's power.

Anonymous is a series of

relationships... hundreds and

hundreds of people who are very

active in it, and who have

varying skill sets, and who have

varying issues they want to

advance and who are

collaborating in different ways

each day.

They're a little bit like a

prism or a kaleidoscope...

They're got many different

facets and many different sides.

Of course, when you spend enough

time with them, you start to get

a sort of feel or texture that's

not just random, right?

Yet it's very multifaceted,

very rich, which does span from

the quite lighthearted to the

very, very serious.

Bob Dylan had a line in his

song, to sing, "to live outside"

the law, you must be honest."

They might do something which

isn't technically correct,

maybe it's not legally correct,

but they're doing it for

purposes that, in their minds at

least, are ethical.

People who know what they're

doing, who share an ethos, who

have a commitment to exposing

and humiliating "the man," who

have a very low tolerance of

lies and what they perceive as

evil on the part of overweening

power structures.

They share information, they

share tools and techniques, and

they are currently having a very

good time.

They hacker culture, as we

know it, really sprang from one

place.

It was m.I.T., and it was

specifically the people in the

model-railroad club, the

tech-model-railroad club.

Hacking originated as

humorous pranks when the guys at

m.i.t. Put a Volkswagen up on

top of the dome of the building,

and people woke up and saw the

car up there in the morning.

Or they measured a bridge by the

body lengths of somebody, I

would say his name was Brian,

and discovered the bridge over

the Charles river was

822 Brians.

These are funny things.

That's where hacking originated,

and it migrated into engineering

and computer communities.

It's witty. It's pranks.

Basically, Microsoft and

apple both got their entire

start off computer crime.

Bill Gates stole pretty much all

of ms-dos.

Steve Jobs... he was creating

boxes to defraud the phone

company.

I always saw hacking as

implicitly political.

Hackers, whether they're

conscious about it or not,

whether they're explicit about

it or not, make a statement

about how we should treat

information.

And some years after my book

came out, one of the people I

wrote about, Richard stallman,

got very publicly and

explicitly political about

software.

And he believed that software

should be free... free as in

freedom, not free as in beer, as

he put it there.

Behind it, whether misguided or

not, there's a political

impulse.

I'm Chris wysopal, former

member of the lopht.

We don't necessarily say

"hacking group" because it makes

it sound like we're hacking, so

we used to call it

"a hacker's think tank."

"Hacktivism" was a term coined

by a group called

"the cult of the dead cow."

The lopht had an interesting

relationship with

the cult of the dead cow.

Actually, there were some

members that were in both

organizations.

And we kind of kept, like, the

serious security research that

they were doing, they would do

under the lopht name, and if

they were doing some sort of

just goofy stunt-like things,

they would do it under

the cult of the dead cow name,

because the cult of the dead cow

was really kind of sort of like

a propaganda type of

organization.

They had a guy who was the

minister of propaganda.

They're kind of merry

pranksters, like everything they

did was completely over the top.

One of the guys there coined the

term "hacktivism" because he saw

one of the things his group was

doing, which he called

"hacktivism," was writing

software that people in other

countries could use to

communicate securely, even if

their government was spying on

them.

So the principle was really

freedom of expression.

It was everyone should have

access to the Internet, everyone

should be able to communicate

and get their message out on the

Internet, even more important,

in countries where there was

repressive regimes that if you

said something against the

regime, they would come and take

you away and you weren't saying

it anymore.

"Hacktivism" has often meant

to designate a form of political

activity in which technology

assistance is used for

human-rights activism.

That's kind of the narrow sense

of the word.

It usually stays within the

purview of the law... usually,

because by providing

technological assistance, you

may be breaking a local law,

however.

And yet, other forms of digital

interventions, protest, dissent,

disobedience are clearly pushing

the boundaries of the law, are

seeking to actively break the

law in protest, or are just

merely transgressive, as well.

Just like in traditional

activism, it spans the full

gamut from sit-ins or pickets to

actually spiking trees and

pouring sand in the engines of

construction vehicles.

I mean, there's real sabotage.

The same thing does all fall

under the "hacktivism" label.

There is a spectrum.

A good place to start are

with what has often been called

virtual sit-ins, which use the

tactic of a denial of service

attack.

Denial of service has been

around for a long, long time.

The equivalent of if you, for

some reason, wanted to disrupt a

bus service, right?

You can hire a thousand extras

to all go and line up at the bus

station and get on the bus.

And so then anyone who was

really trying to get on the bus

couldn't do it.

It's as simple as that... when

you stop trying to visit,

website goes back up, no

permanent damage.

And this tactic has been used

by a number of different groups.

Probably the most famous is the

electronic disturbance theater.

Another really interesting case

happened in Germany where a

group of activists got together

who wanted to protest the fact

that the airline lufthansa...

They were using their planes to

deport immigrants.

And they would take down the

site.

And, in fact, eventually, the

German courts ruled that this

could be a legitimate form of

protest.

This sometimes has strong

anarchist flavor to it, as well.

It's resistance to authority and

those who would impose

group-think and group-behavior

on the people, which was

rightly perceived to be a

consequence of the digital

revolution as it was used by

people in power... to do

hacking on behalf of

righteousness and to redress the

grievances of the world.

Lance-lowered Don quixote on his

horse, nag though she was,

flying at the windmills of

modern life.

Anonymous grew out of what's

know as 4chan.

And essentially, this is just a

website where people can upload

images and you don't actually

give your name, it's just sort

of anonymous.

When you look at 4chan,

you're often surprised because

it looks like a site from like

1995 or something.

The idea is very simple... you

post a comment and you post a

picture, and you can post under

your name or anonymously.

And it's separated into boards

about particular topics, so

there's a topic on anime,

there's a topic on weaponry.

There's like a 4chan board

for origami and you just upload

interesting pictures of origami.

And then, there was a group

called the "/b/ board," which

essentially was for, like,

anything goes.

The first time anybody goes

on /b/, it's kind of an instant

revulsion, 'cause there's never

a time that you go on there

where you don't see something

horrible.

That instantly puts off a lot of

people.

The idea is post something

that can never be unseen.

Half of the posts on /b/ are

there specifically to make

people not want to come back to

/b/.

Have you ever read

"lord of the flies"?

4chan and especially /b/ is

"lord of the flies," except some

of them aren't 16 anymore.

They're just allowed to act 16.

It's the most vile,

disgusting, and funny thing on

the Internet.

4chan was founded by

Chris "moot" poole when he was

very young, maybe 15, in the

early 2000s.

He started 4chan because he was

a big fan of Japanese animation.

Chris "moot" poole's the

sweetest kid you've ever met in

your life.

He's small, and he's, like...

He's got these sort of like tiny

features, and he runs the most

disgusting website in the world.

What I think is really

intriguing about a community

like 4chan is just that it's

this open place.

As I said, it's raw, it's

unfiltered, and sites like it

are kind of going the way of the

dinosaur right now.

They're endangered because we're

moving towards social

networking.

We're moving towards persistent

identity.

We're moving towards, you know,

a lack of privacy, really.

The /b/ board... that's the

exact opposite of Facebook.

Facebook, you're supposed to be

who you are and there's sort of

one model, which is that you're

friends with people, right?

In 4chan, you're a totally

anonymous nobody.

And anonymous speech is... a lot

of it's ugly, but not all of it

is.

It's actually sort of a place

where people can be honest.

One of the important things

about 4chan is to have a thread

that really explodes and lasts

for a long time.

'Cause if it doesn't, then it

disappears... it's a site that's

not archived.

So it creates conditions for

anything that grabs attention,

at some level, and so humor and

grotesqueness, as a result, are

quite good for that.

I'd rather just be referred

to as anonymous, I guess, in the

interviews 'cause I have some

docs out on me.

You'll see something posted one

day, and then a week later it's

got 50,000 derivatives of it.

A lot of the great Internet

memes that we all know and love,

you know, lolcats, right, you

know, little cats doing funny

things and then they have "I can"

"has cheezburger," right?

All that stuff seems to start in

this petri dish that is 4chan,

/b/ board.

♪ Say it publicly, and

you're insane ♪

♪ Chocolate rain ♪

Name any meme from the last

about six years, and I'll bet

you, either in it's first

posting ever was on 4chan, or at

least one of it's earliest

revisions that became what it

was was on 4chan.

I can see the food situation

is so we'll be on our

way.

♪ Never gonna give you up ♪

♪ Never gonna let you down ♪

It's basically the best

breeding ground for Internet

culture, as far as I'm

concerned.

♪ With your neighborhood

insurance rates ♪

♪ Chocolate rain ♪

4chan is also very known for

acts of trolling.

For them, it's funny, that

people think the Internet is

serious business.

And if people think the Internet

is serious business, it's a

troll's job to make their life

terrible.

The idea of anonymous came

initially as a joke.

I mean, somebody suggested that,

"what if the whole site, what if"

4chan, what if /b/ was just one

person, and what if that's just

one guy called anonymous sitting

somewhere and you're just

reading all these posts by one

"guy?"

And it kind of looked like

that, from the outsider's

perspective.

I mean, there's no way to tell

the difference.

It might as well be one guy.

Fox news did a very famous

segment about it.

They call themselves

"anonymous."

They are hackers on steroids,

treating the web like a

real-life video game... sacking

websites, invading MySpace

accounts, disrupting innocent

people's lives, and if you fight

back, watch out.

Threats from a gang of

computer hackers calling

themselves "anonymous."

I've had seven different

passwords, and they've got them

all so far.

Anonymous hacked his site and

plastered it with gay-sex

pictures.

His girlfriend left him.

She thought that I was

cheating on her with guys.

As long as I can think back,

anonymous has done some pretty

off-color things in the name of

getting cheap laughs, you know?

But, I mean, that's part of the

culture.

They get what

they call "lulz."

"Lulz" is a corruption of

"lol," which stands for laugh

out loud.

Anonymous gets big "lulz" from

pulling random pranks.

For example, messing with online

children's games like

"habbo hotel."

"Habbo hotel" was this online

community where you had an

avatar and you walked around and

talked to other people.

It was kind of like an early

version of "world of warcraft"

or "second life" or any of those

virtual worlds.

What the people on /b/ did was

invade "habbo hotel," created

thousands of avatars.

They all had this one uniform of

a black guy with a big afro

wearing a black suit.

And so there would be thousands

of these people... black guys,

black suit, huge afro... walking

around this world, and they

would do things like form a

swastika out of themselves.

And I think that was a real

landmark because it was when

they were able to see that they

can use their numbers to do

something really interesting and

really disruptive.

Those kids loved that pool.

They loved the shit out of their

pool.

The goal was actually to

offend everyone, simply because

the idea that we could offend

you by drawing a little shape on

the screen was stupid to the

people involved in it.

They were like, "really?"

You're gonna get that mad over

us doing... just drawing this on

the screen?

Wow, well, you need to refocus a

little on life, 'cause this

should not be upsetting you that

"much."

Barrett brown, I'm the

director of project pm and a

former operative with anonymous.

We were targeting furries, which

meant we entered a subculture of

people, of course, who a lot of

people on 4chan find irritating

by virtue of they're being

irritating.

A furry is someone, generally a

male in his 20s, who identifies

with animals and often times has

sexual attraction to other

people dressed as animals.

We had furry infiltrators,

people trying, you know... we

had secret groups.

Mine was called the

"illuminati/I/illuminati," and

our goal was to wreak as much

havoc as possible, because it

was stupid.

There was a point when I

otherwise seemed a respectable

writer, in 2007, and my first

book had come out like that, but

I spent my evenings on

"second life," that big virtual

world riding around in a virtual

spaceship with the words

"faggory daggory do" written on

it, wearing afros, and dropping

virtual bombs on little villages

and concerts, and waving giant

penises around.

And that was the most fun time I

ever had in my life.

All these different

organizations online, whether

it's 4chan or just any website,

there's typically a community

aspect to it.

This is where people have their

social relationships.

This is where their friends are.

This is where they have a

creative outlet.

And so all those aspects are

going in to groups like

anonymous where people feel like

they're part of a bigger thing

and they're able to express

themselves within that group.

There were certain words,

certain phrases, certain ways

people respond to things,

certain images that are posted

that created a pattern, and that

pattern was, I guess, the origin

of what is now anonymous.

It's like free masons with a

sense of humor, in so much that

they have this common symbology

and one of their chief joys,

which is kind of wrapped up in

power and secrecy, was the fact

that they could recognize each

other by referencing these

symbols, referencing these

phrases... "over 9,000."

It's over 9,000!

"I lost my iPod," "mudkipz,"

anything involving mudkipz.

So you have this weird sort of

international culture developing

with people across the world,

wherever they may be.

In late '06, and into early

'07, there's a bit of a sea

change where instead of just

posting a bunch of content, or

randomly saying, "we're going to"

go over to some website and post

a bunch of dirty comments

"against someone," it becomes a

little more organized.

Welcome to

"the hal Turner show"!

They went after a guy named

hal Turner.

I am being discriminated

against because I'm white.

Hal Turner was a Neo-Nazi who

was big online and had a

podcast.

I think that the 14th

amendment was not ratified

properly, and I think,

therefore, it is still okay to

have negroes as slaves in

America.

I'm like, "yeah, screw that"

racist son of a bitch!

"Let's do this," you know?

So I joined in, and I made some

of the phone calls and I played

around on the chat thing on his

website and posted in the

threads, and whatnot.

Who are you?

Where you calling from?

Hola!

This is Pedro! From San Diego!

Spic, don't call my radio

show anymore, you filthy spic

animal!

The college that I go to has

begun an integration program

where they try and purposely

lower standards to bring more

blacks and "diversify" the

campus.

And by the end of the next five

years, they intend to bring

over 9,000.

He was just a horribly racist

radio personality who seemed to

handle it well when you called

in.

Like, he could handle being

berated by anonymous.

And that made it very

interesting.

It made it a bit of a challenge.

It wasn't some guy who just

either crumbled or stopped

answering the phone.

It was a guy who would yell

back.

I don't see really where

you're going with this.

Where I'm going is I believe

Barack Obama is genetically

incapable of exercising the

power necessary to govern the

most complicated nation on

earth.

That's where I'm going with

this.

And I think part of the reason

he's incapable of doing it is

because of racial-genetic

inferiority.

Is that clear enough for you?

No, you changed the subject

again.

Wait a second, you asked

me...

Hal Turner wasn't the first

actual person that anonymous had

caused trouble for, but the

circumstances ended up being

significant.

They ddos'd his website, stuff

like that, costing him thousands

of dollars in bandwidth fees.

And then they ended up

getting some real hackers to

help them out, like this wasn't

sort of pranks.

They actually were able to get

into hal Turner's private

servers and his mail servers and

find some interesting e-mails

that he was serving as an FBI

informant, which if you're a

right-wing Neo-Nazi is not a

good thing be.

And obviously, him being an

FBI informant, and also his

reaction... his sort of

douche-baggy reaction... to the

raids damaged his credibility

within the white nationalists

scene, which is a shame.

Hal Turner's gone.

He's been prosecuted by the feds

for threatening judges.

It wasn't supposed to be

different, but it ended up being

different.

People who observe anonymous see

this group called anonymous is

going after this white

nationalist and say, "oh, hey",

look, anonymous must be some

"kind of activist organization."

So, by virtue of those people

joining anonymous, anonymous

becomes more of an activist

organization.

What follows is a period of

confusion and anger in which the

original anonymous people... the

sort who want to keep anonymous

as this nihilist little

ridiculous group... are upset

that now the most terrible thing

on the Internet is now becoming

a force for good all of a

sudden.

Anonymous has never been

about getting media attention or

getting all of this attention

towards it.

I mean, it's a community, a

pretty sometimes insular

community that just kind of kept

to itself, made jokes and made

content.

But that was, of course, changed

completely.

It's thrown completely on its

head when chanology started.

Anonymous began to become

less just of a culture, you

know, of people who wanted to

perform pranks and more of the.

Internet's first army.

I'm Mike vitale, and my

handle's "sethdood."

Now, this is January 2008.

Anonymous is strong now.

You know, we're not a little

dinky fucking group anymore.

Like, this is, like, millions of

people worldwide, and we're

watching.

And then scientology stepped in

with a big target on its chest.

A video came out of

Tom Cruise.

It was supposed to be, like, an

internal scientology video

talking about secrets of

scientology.

Being a scientologist, when

you drive past an accident, it's

not like anyone else.

As you drive past, you know you

have to do something about it

because you know you're the only

one that can really help.

Talks about "you're the only"

one who can stop, you know, bad

"things from happening."

And so, this is kind of wildly

mocked online.

It circulated like wildfire.

There's nothing

parting a wave for me.

It's just "whoo!"

These people found it

humorous and goofy.

And the church of scientology

went into their legal mode, and

they threatened websites with

lawsuits if they didn't pull

down the video.

Instantly, the scientologists

post a dmca... digital

millennium copyright act.

And this is a way that if you

own content, you can go to video

sites, upload sites and have

your content pulled when someone

uploads it illegally.

Scientology's always at odds

with the Internet, always trying

to legally bully people out of

fucking them over on the

Internet.

They always did that.

And then here they are trying

again, but you know what?

Anonymous saw that, and they

said, "oh, you guys just fucked"

around badly.

Like, you're trying to censor

our Internet.

You know, like, are you trying

to take a joke away from

anonymous?

"Like, you don't do that."

What these people did, in

this case... gregg housh and

these other people... was, they

decided, you know, "we can"

probably harness anonymous in

this case and target

"scientology."

A few anons, a few people on

4chan posted "hey, we should"

grab that video and post it on a

"few other sites."

And I was one of the people in

that thread talking about it.

We got the original source of

the video by reaching out to the

person behind the accounts and

everything.

We start posting it.

The surprising thing was how

fast they were dmcaing them on

every site.

It looked to us like they must

have direct contact with the

lawyers and the team who

actually pulls videos at all of

these sites.

Like, it was... it was minutes

and these things were falling

down.

We're like, "holy crap."

That's messed up."

What followed was... this is

a term called the

Barbra Streisand effect... and

this video, as they're

attempting to suppress it, went

everywhere.

Like, everywhere you look on the

Internet, you were gonna stumble

upon this video.

Actually, gawker, the site

that I work for, was, I think,

the first one to put it on the

website, and we got in a huge

legal battle with scientology,

who wanted us to take it down.

A guy joins the channel, and

he says, "you should all look at"

gawker."

So, we go over to gawker, and

the strangest thing has

happened.

This big media company had the

video up on their front page and

basically had a comment

underneath of it that stated

very clearly that they were sick

of this abuse that was going on.

That made us think, "what have"

we got ourself mixed up in

"here?"

Scientology is an interesting

target, because in some ways,

it's the perfect inversion of

what geeks and hackers value.

At so many different levels...

Science fiction, intellectual

property, discourses of freedom,

science and technology.

It's very proprietary.

It's closed.

And so, in some ways, if you had

something like a cultural

inversion machine and you stuck

geeks and hackers in there,

you'd get something that looks a

lot like scientology.

So it's quite offensive, and

there's a real pleasure in

attacking your perfect Nemesis.

What really kind of dared us

and set us off about scientology

is specifically the treatment of

their critics.

Anybody who says anything bad

about scientology is

automatically some sort of

criminal, some sort of crazy

person, a drug addict.

It's just that kind of

mentality, that kind of... like,

if anybody says anything bad

about you, we're gonna fuck you

over in the worst possible way.

It's just... it resonated, like,

this feeling of disgust within

us.

That was a big problem.

That was the big problem, the

censorship aspect of it, the

audacity of this cult, this

creepy cult, to go into our

territory and tell us that we

can't post this?

No. Fuck them.

No. It's not gonna happen.

And people who knew what

anonymous was to begin with were

like, "oh, my god."

Anonymous is gonna go to war

with scientology?

This should be really

"interesting."

Especially 'cause it's two

weird-ass groups.

I mean, you know, I've been an

anon for a long fucking time.

I know anonymous is really

strange.

Like, they're weird, and the

stuff we like is weird, and it's

really not mainstream at all.

Now you have scientology... also

really weird.

A lot of crazy shit goes down.

Anybody on the outside who's

seen this is going, "let's watch"

these two retards fight.

Like, both their pants are gonna

fall down.

They're gonna trip, and it's

gonna hurt everybody, and it's

"gonna be hysterical."

And what happened was all these

people who were geared up, the

infrastructure was built to war

with other anons, said, "you"

know what... fuck it.

Everybody's gonna get together

and pound the fuck out of

"scientology."

And then that's when 4chan

kind of reared into action,

really reared into action.

And they started to troll the

church of scientology.

And this took the form of

pranking the dianetics hotline,

ordering pizzas.

Every fax number we get, and

we're sharing them all.

You know, every number we get,

we'd send black pieces of paper

on a loop until it wastes all

their ink.

I go to call them on the phone,

and it's busy, busy, busy.

You know, and that's their main

fucking dianetics hotline, their

dianetics 800-number.

You can't get through because

anons have completely fucking

clogged it and just probably

saying stupid shit.

The whole idea was just you call

them just to keep them on the

phone.

"What's an elrond?

How do I dianetics my face?"

They were not expecting that,

and they couldn't handle it.

I'm Brian mettenbrink.

I always liked anything

technical, mechanical, anything

sciencey, really.

Computers do what you tell them

to.

They don't all of a sudden start

doing weird stuff.

And if they do, it's probably

your fault, and I always like

that, you know.

They're perfect, really, in a

way.

I'd just gone to 4chan just on

pure happenstance, and I saw a

post about the scientology

thing, and I started looking up

stuff.

And I'm like, "oh, this is"

actually for a decent cause.

I think I'll, you know, do

"this."

Anonymous members have

developed a distributed

denial-of-service attack tool

called low-orbit ion Cannon,

which is a name taken from a

computer game.

Low-orbit ion Cannon is

what's called an endgame weapon

in "red alert."

All you had to do was literally

follow instructions step by

step.

I downloaded a program that's

free and legal for anyone to

download and use.

And I followed the instructions,

and I typed in

pushed "go."

And what it does is it tells

It tells them to send their

website to my computer about, I

think, it was 800,000 times in a

weekend.

And I'm pretty sure I probably

took it down myself a couple of

times.

This tool is low-orbit ion

Cannon, sometimes referred to as

"loic."

I am actually not breaking any

laws by using this tool against

my own computer, 127.0.0.1,

which is a non-routable address.

But, of course, if I were to

have attacked one of those other

bigger sites out there, I would

have severely been breaking the

law and would have been doing it

in a way that was quite easy to

track.

What you do is, you put in the

site.

You see that the I.P. Is

correct.

You make sure that all these

settings are good, and you hit

the button.

And off it goes.

It felt like you were making

a difference, you know, just you

yourself and you didn't even

have to leave your home, you

know?

You just sat at your computer

and followed instructions and

stood up for what you believe

in, so to speak.

You made your say in the world,

and hopefully it turns out

better for it.

And like I said, we need to

make a video.

We have to make a video.

Hello, leaders of

scientology.

We are anonymous.

When the video came out on

January 21st, that was one of

the first times that anonymous

as a culture started referring

to itself as "anonymous," as a

movement and declared that it

was going to take down and

destroy the church of

scientology.

That video probably changed

everything.

Knowledge is free.

We are anonymous. We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget. Expect us.

It basically looked like if a

computer was going to tell you

that he was gonna beat the shit

out of you, this is what it

would look like.

That one video, it really

galvanized that moment, that

moment of innovation that that's

exactly... like, with that

video, Internet activism, as

it's known today, was born.

What the video was saying

was, "it's over."

You're not going to be able to

follow people back to their

house anymore with impunity.

You're not going to be able to

just issue a cease-and-desist

letter to any reporter who wants

to write some shit about you

that you don't like, you know.

That's done with.

Every time you do that,

anonymous is gonna hit you

"harder."

So, we made a video named

"call to arms."

It said "we're going to the"

streets.

Every major city of the world

"has a scientology building."

Be very wary of the 10th of

February.

Anonymous invites you to join us

in an act of solidarity.

Anonymous invites you to take up

the banner of free speech, of

human rights, of family and

freedom.

Join us in protest outside of

scientology centers worldwide.

And you just see this

consensus forming that it's

going to happen.

So we made the third video, the

"code of conduct."

"Don't bring weapons."

Dress accordingly.

Cover your faces 'cause they

will try and find out who you

"are and screw with your life."

Rule number 17... cover your

face.

This will prevent your

identification from videos taken

by hostiles.

Scientology has a history of

harassing, stalking, and just

doing horrible things to its

critics.

So people needed a way to hide

their identities.

A lot of people had very

legitimate fears.

They don't want to be followed

home.

They don't want to be stalked.

They don't want to put their

families and themselves in

danger.

Everyone was going, "well",

we're gonna wear a mask.

What's the only fucking mask

that we already know or have a

"joke about?"

And it's the guy Fawkes mask.

You see the movie

"v for vendetta."

You know, the ending scene where

everyone's wearing the

guy Fawkes mask, that is very

reminiscent of what anonymous

thinks anonymous is.

We wanted to represent anonymity

in some way when it moved into

real life.

I think that the guy Fawkes mask

was one of the most natural

things to happen.

It is the idea that none of us

are as cruel as all of us.

You have this massive crowd of

people who are anonymous that is

going to fight against a bigger

thing and win.

Even after watching the

videos, like, "yeah, this is"

great, but who's actually gonna

do it?

Who's gonna step up?

Are people actually gonna get

"out of their house?"

Like... and I guess we were

really affected by the

stereotype of that whole

community, being Internet nerds.

They're too afraid to leave

their moms' basements.

I figured maybe 15 nerds from

every city somewhere might show

up and wear their masks at a

building for awhile and leave.

No one thought that they were

gonna come out.

This is me on the way there.

I haven't slept.

I'm very fucking tired.

And I remember going to the park

that day, and it's really

fucking early in the morning,

which I thought was a bad idea.

And I'm smoking a cigarette, and

I'm looking around like, "where"

the fuck is everybody?

"Like, there's nobody here."

So, here I am sitting in

Bryant park.

Waiting for the other anons to

show up.

I remember thinking like, "oh",

fuck.

Like, am I gonna be the only one

in the park?

Am I gonna walk to scientology

with fucking six or seven

people, which totally defeats

the entire purpose of this

because now they could single me

"out?"

You know, then I get up, and I

start walking around, and I see

there's a lot of green balloons

over there for some reason.

On the other side of the park,

there was like fucking 200

people.

There was guy Fawkes masks

everywhere, and I'm like, "holy"

shit, this is huge!"

There's a fucking lot of us.

That's pretty good.

I had no idea how many anons

there were until we started

moving.

Ha ha.

And it just fucking got bigger.

I remember walking through.

Times Square, and everybody in.

Times Square was an anon.

Like, you know, this is, like, a

fucking 1,000-person per, like,

fucking minute foot-traffic

area, and everywhere I'm

looking, I'm seeing fucking anon

symbols.

It was fucking wild.

It was really wild.

[ Crowd chanting

[ "don't drink the kool-aid" ]

Whoo!

Hell, yeah!

So we start getting numbers

in, and Sydney.

We're thinking that it's going

to be 50 people.

And before 10:00 A.M., before

even time, there's already 50

people there, and there are

still streams of people walking

down the streets.

A couple hours into it, you

know, 'cause I didn't go to bed

until 1:00 in the morning, you

know, you're looking at Sydney

as, "wow, there's 250 people in"

Sydney.

The cops are estimating higher

than that for their reports.

What just happened?

Adelaide, Perth, and Melbourne

happened.

And, you know, over 200 at each

of them.

We nearly broke 1,000 leaving

Australia.

Now, the next protest was.

Tel Aviv, which had actually

gotten its first scientology

building right before this.

There were Palestinians and

Israelis at this protest both

holding their flags.

And at one point, they actually

switched flags and held up each

other's flags and whatnot.

It was awesome to see.

I call our guy in London,

briternon, and I say, "hey",

what's going on there?"

And he's like, "did you just get"

out of bed?"

I said, "yeah, I haven't even"

turned on the computer.

"I just figured I'd call you."

And he said, "we got 600 people"

and the cops are really, really

"mad at me."

All the major cities were

having hundreds of people come

out.

It was massive.

Clearwater had like 300 people.

I don't think anyone beat out.

I.A.

I think I.A. had over 1,000

people.

The thing that happened was

something completely different.

Hundreds and hundreds of people

from every city just swarmed the

streets.

It was kind of overwhelming, a

little even scary, but scary in

a good way.

Soon, you know, we're at

around the 10,000 Mark, you

know, and we were joking the

whole time "over 9,000," you

know, one of those memes.

It was too surreal.

It was not believable.

And you go by what name?

We are anonymous.

It was very empowering,

especially after people saw the

thousands of people showing up.

This was it.

We owned the world at that

point.

You've got lolcats and you've

got rickrolling.

You've got all these other

things that anonymous has been

involved in.

Then, you know, take us a month

later and, you know, 10,000

people were just in the streets

and in every major country in

the world in every major city

in the world and what the hell

just happened?

What changed, you know?

Who flipped the switch?

The world looked very different

to me at that point.

We all met each other.

The idea of an anon is you're

fucking alone until you get to

4chan, you know, and then these

people think like you, you know.

Then all of a sudden, you're not

alone.

You are with fucking 500 others,

you know.

They all know the same jokes as

you.

They all have... clearly have

similar interests as you.

Here's your culture.

You meet your own people

finally.

[ Crowd chanting

[ "don't drink the kool-aid" ]

Immediately, you felt like

you were at home.

If you were an anon, you were at

home.

We all, like, spent years in the

same place, looking at the same

pictures, laughing at the same

jokes, and we pretty much were

already friends even though

we've never, every met.

It was very happy.

It's perhaps a little

surprising.

It's not just preteens or

teenagers.

There's a far more even mix of

males and females than you would

imagine otherwise.

Everyone always figured

anonymous was a very male, you

know, thing, but it wasn't like

that at all... at all.

There's some fucking hot girls

come through.

Like, there's some really...

Like, you'd be surprised.

And, you know, there were a

lot of... a lot of, you know,

these so-called guys who weren't

socially good.

They were very awkward.

They still lived at home at

23... half of them are virgins.

And I'll tell you the amount of

those people who got laid from

these protests happening is in

the thousands... that would not

have, for years probably.

And that's why those protests

were so important.

It was a chance to finally meet

other people that were

previously anonymous and

unknown, and hence it was the

moment of the end of their

anonymity.

Scientology... they kind of

fought back, so to speak.

They posted stuff online.

While claiming they are

peaceful, in less than three

weeks, anonymous members made or

encouraged 8,139 harassing or

threatening phone calls, 3.6

million malicious e-mails, 141

million hits against church

websites, 10 acts of vandalism,

22 bomb threats, and 8 death

threats against members and

officials of the church of

scientology.

They wanted to find me.

They did. They hired p.I.S.

They started taking pictures

of us, threatening to sue us.

People were getting followed.

People were getting followed

home.

It'd be a regular thing for

someone to say, "oh, I had to..."

I had to lose someone on the

subway.

I saw someone from the

scientology center, and they

"were following me."

They would follow us to our

houses, try to intimidate us,

send us cease-and-desist

letters.

These old tactics that they used

to fight the activism they faced

before the Internet were

completely ineffective against

chanology.

You know, most of the people

who received them actually

framed them and put them on

their wall.

I've seen multiple of them

framed and put on the wall.

Mine's sitting in my closet

somewhere in a box.

I did the whole low-orbit ion

Cannon stuff, and then I pretty

much just went about my life

after that for probably, let's

see, I think it's six months.

And then the FBI showed up here

at my parents' house, where I

wasn't, looking for me.

Two men got out of the car,

and took their jackets off, and

laid their guns on the front

seat, and came up to ask us if

Brian was home, and explained

that they were the FBI and they

were looking for Brian.

And I've never been so scared.

And then my parents directed

them to where I was living, and

they showed up and said, "I'd"

like to have a friendly

"conversation with you."

And I had the worst friendly

conversation of my life.

We sat down at my dining-room

table, and they just started

asking me questions.

And I'm trying to figure out

what they're here for 'cause I

have no idea.

And they eventually started

asking me questions about

anonymous.

I was scared to death.

I mean, my son is... Is looking

at five years in jail and a

$100,000 fine.

You know, I had no idea that

it was any sort of... this big

of a crime to do what I did.

I thought it was the kind of

"slap on a wrist," $200-fine

type crime.

So, I actually told them that I

did it at that point.

Then it went from there.

Yeah.

As he explained it to me at

the time, it was like pushing

the refresh button over and over

and over and over 800,000 times.

And it seems like such a little

thing.

I did the second-most damage

is what scientology said I did.

I sent the second-most out of

everybody so I got the maximum

for my category, which was one

year in prison and one year

supervised release.

I think... you know, the way I

feel is, for what I did... was

one of the most, like, lopsided

punishments I've ever, like,

read about or heard of.

Yeah, I think it's ridiculous,

especially the year supervised

release where I can't touch a

computer for a year.

I'm not sure what that's

supposed to solve, except make

my, like, life difficult.

So, that computer behind me,

back there, I could go back to

prison if I went over and

touched it, because I can't

knowingly associate with members

of anonymous.

They just made a big deal about

scientology as a religion and

that this is America and you can

believe in whatever you want to

believe.

I'm pretty sure they actually

compared me to, like, the kkk

and the Nazis and stuff in the

courtroom.

Yeah, it's... it's a

completely different issue.

I'm very proud of what he did.

He stood up for what he believed

in, but that was never, ever

mentioned.

I never would even dream of

hurting anybody, you know.

It's just... Not me.

Prior to anonymous, critics

of the church still had to be

very, very careful because of

the aggressive lawsuits that

were launched against academics,

journalists, and other critics.

I would say that era is over.

And anonymous more than any

other sort of intervention is

probably responsible for that

change.

This actually caused a decent

rift in anonymous.

There was one big group...

Significant group of people, who

would say, "this chanology"

stuff, it's cancer, it's awful,

it's bad, it's... it's just

bringing attention to us that we

"don't want."

The trolling isn't happening.

We aren't getting our jollies.

Like, now this is all really

serious and moral and somber.

And, like, "well, that's not"

what I signed up for... that

"kind of thing."

And then there are the people

who were on the other side, who

were going, "well, I only signed"

up for the serious and somber.

You guys, go away.

"This is... this is," you know.

And, you know, there became this

very fierce clash of ideologies,

and it was alien to us.

And they decided... in their

own words, which I was privy to,

'cause it was told to me...

"stop ruining our bad name."

So, to make anonymous look bad,

they go off and they post

animated gifs... animated

images... to epilepsy forums,

that are black and white, just

strobing really quickly, so any

of the epilepsy people on these

support forums see it and they

fall off their chairs, you know,

in seizure.

You start hearing this term,

"moralfag."

If you're not out there making

epileptics have seizures, then

you're doing it wrong...

So, you're a moralfag.

Which is what I am... a

moralfag, those who want to

use anonymous as, you know, a

tool for good in some sense

rather than just doing what we

used to do, which was to screw

with video games.

One anon said it well once.

"There is no leader."

Their ops have... Momentary

"leaders, de facto leaders."

Almost through meritocracy.

There's more respected or more

persistent participants.

Some people participate in a

single operation and are never

heard from again.

It might even be a housewife who

just, you know, agrees with that

political statement or that

protest.

If you had asked me all

throughout 2008 and most of

2009, "is the politics of"

anonymous always gonna be

sutured and hinged to the church

"of scientology?" I would have

said yes.

And it became unsutured,

unhinged, when a different

political wing was born in 2010.

It's our task to find secret

abusive plans and expose them

where they can be opposed before

they're implemented.

The interesting thing about

someone like assange is that he

actually also sprang from, you

know, a hacker culture.

It's a mentality of spreading

information.

Julian was mendax.

He was the greatest hacker that

ever walked the face of the

earth when I was a kid.

I mean, they rumored he could

move satellites around in space

by hacking into NASA.

I mean, you know, maybe it never

happened but, I mean, you know,

it was a myth that kept young

kids like me wanting to, like,

you know, plug a computer into a

modem and see if I can move some

satellites around.

Wikileaks is an extension of

the hackers ethos... truth wants

to be free, and we want to

liberate it.

Wikileaks released a huge

trove of diplomatic cables.

There was a lot of controversy

from every quarter of society.

The wikileaks website

released nearly 400,000 secret.

U.S. files on the Iraq war late

today.

It was the largest leak of

classified U.S. files in

history.

The diplomatic cables show

the U.S. is spying on its

allies.

Lots of things which were

understood in private and may

have been not even talked about

explicitly... suddenly they're

out there in the cold light of

day, and it's gonna make some

governments and some individuals

very uncomfortable.

There was one particular

moment that really sparked the

fire, and this was when PayPal,

mastercard, and Amazon pulled

services for wikileaks.

So, all of a sudden, there's

no way to actually, like,

process donations to wikileaks.

And then people went and found,

like, Neo-Nazi groups.

Visa and mastercard were

perfectly fine with you being

able to, like, you know, PayPal,

being able to, like, make

donations to them.

But wikileaks... no.

Anonymous very quickly moved

into an attack mode.

Cyber protests, sit-ins...

However you want to look at

it... ddos is a tool that is a

big giant... it's like driving a

finish nail in with a

sledgehammer.

The numbers of participants

were massive... massive.

And they manage over the course

of a couple of days to disable

the websites of mastercard and

PayPal.

It was like watching the hack

magician finally get a trick

right, because you're not

expecting it and then it's

magnificent.

It was beautiful.

'Cause what you had is people

finding you stood up for

something.

How long has it been since we

had a huge, really relevant

protest.

I'm not talking tea party, "I

want to bring my guns in

"public."

I'm talking... I'm talking 10,000

angry people said, "this is not"

right, and I want to do

"something about it."

Soon after, wikileaks was

blocked in Tunisia.

And anonymous got wind of that.

They then intervened... at

first, solely for the purposes

of, like, stopping the kind of

censorship that was happening.

And they did some ddosing.

And this was a time period where

they were getting involved with

what I would call

"non-internety" social

movements and building lines of

solidarity.

My name's Pete fein.

You can call me an internaut or

a hacktivist.

Telecomix is an ad hoc cluster

of volunteer net activists who

have have spent much of last

year trying to keep the Internet

running in the middle east.

During that time, we saw the

Tunisian government not only

censoring and filtering the

Internet but also doing some

kind of technical trickery to

steal people's Facebook

passwords and delete their

posts and see who was posting

what and, you know, fake

posts... stuff like that.

Some Tunisian hackers came to

us.

They were members of anonymous,

and I didn't even know we had

members of anonymous in Tunisia,

so it was a shock to me.

And they had some... they had

the keys to some parts of the

kingdom, so to speak, when it

came to the dictator in Tunisia.

We went in on behalf of those

Tunisian anons, and we helped

them get that and extract it,

and then it went to wikileaks.

The Tunisians overthrew

Ben Ali, who was kind of a

repressive dictator.

A revolution that was

facilitated by... by the

Internet, by Facebook, and by

Twitter.

Not caused by it.

I mean, 50 years of dictatorship

has caused the arab spring, but

the Internet has certainly been

helping.

The same group of hackers

that target anti-wikileaks sites

have now turned their attention

to Egypt.

In kind of the lead-up to the

Egyptian revolution, we would

tweet on people's behalf.

We'd get people from Egypt who

were unable to access Twitter on

their own, on our r.C. Network,

and we would take reports from

them and tweet them out using...

Using our account to kind of

help them get the word out about

what they were experiencing.

Some of this shit is

personal, and one of the things

about the movement as a whole

when Egypt rolled around is that

Egypt broke us emotionally.

Watching in real-time with live

feeds that we helped set up,

Egyptians getting massacred with

machine guns.

It was different, and I have

never in cyber-activism wept

before.

It's never bothered me like

that.

It's never been able to touch

me the way Egypt touched me.

It was fucked up that we were

watching people killed for no

reason other than leaving their

homes, that these people had

every right to freedom, that

they had every right to choose

their government.

And then January 27th,

January 28th rolls around and

the Egyptian government starts

shutting down the Internet.

I mean, just... for the whole

country, for the whole country.

There's this fantastic traffic

graph that you can see the

traffic coming out Egypt, and it

looks like... you know, like

this.

Just totally stops.

And we were just shocked.

We were just like, "what the"

fuck... like, what the fuck?"

To think that a country would

completely cut itself off as

much as it was able to from the

outside world was pretty

unthinkable.

You know, we know... we know bad

things go on in the dark places.

I put myself in their place,

and I found myself in a desert

of nothingness because he just

wiped out everything that my

world incorporated.

That just showed me and

everybody else that this same

thing can happen at anytime,

anywhere, in any government.

Anonymous and the people on

the Internet stood up and said,

"go fuck yourself."

You want to shut down their

Internet... fine.

The people on the Internet will

show them how to turn it back

on.

In Egypt, the care package we

put together included some kind

of rcom information, the ham

radio and dial modem details.

In total, we helped coordinate

and run about 500 dial-up modem

lines.

We also googled treatments for

tear gas and other kind of basic

medical treatment and found

folks who could translate that

into arabic... sort of put this

together in a nice one-page pdf

and fax, and off it goes.

I think the most effective

thing was shutting down

government websites.

We're taking your dictator's

web pages down.

President hosni mubarak has

decided to step down from the

office of president of the

Republic.

We had Egyptians come thank

us as we're doing this stuff,

and I said... I'm like, "look",

you guys just get our back if

"stuff goes down here."

The FBI is now investigating

anonymous... a loose collection

of rogue, tech-savvy hackers

credited with bringing down the

websites of mastercard and visa

last December.

So, over 40 raids back then,

they seize computers,

cellphones, and those kinds of

technical apparatus, sometimes

including, in the case of the

19-year-old girl living with her

family, they took her parents'

stuff, too.

There's always been a sort of

cat-and-mouse dynamic, not just

in relation to the feds but also

to these sort of groups that

have appointed themselves as

guardians of the Republic.

Suddenly on February 5th,

a financial times article comes

out that we all see.

It's quoting this guy named

Aaron barr, who's the c.E.O. Of

hbgary federal, which is an

intelligence contractor, and

Aaron barr is telling this

financial times journalist

Joseph menn that he's been

secretly monitoring the anonops

server, where all this is going

on, and has done so for several

weeks, and using his own custom

brand of information-operations

techniques has managed to

identify the alleged leadership

of anonymous, including 25

"lieutenants" of some sort.

We have to see this document.

Everyone wants to know.

We don't need to destroy him.

We don't need to destroy his

company.

We just need to see the

document, and we'll decided what

comes next after looking at the

document.

So, they get it.

It was unbelievably easy to get

into that network.

And my name was on there...

As a screen name.

And gregg housh was listed there

by his screen name.

The fact of the matter is what

he told financial times was...

Everything he told them was

demonstratively untrue and very

much hilariously so.

He had to be shut up.

It had to be proven to the world

that this guy was a retard and

that his information was in no

way valid.

And to put that in hacker

terms, anonymous is a hornet's

nest and barr said, "I'm gonna"

stick my penis in that thing."

In a mere 24 hours, he was

owned, pwned completely by a

small group of participants who

basically went on a hacking

rampage.

Faster than you can say, "get"

these hornets off my penis,"

anonymous took down barr's

website, stole his e-mail,

deleted the company's backup

data, trashed his Twitter

account, and remotely wiped his

iPad.

And he had just reached the

"ham 'em high" level on

"angry birds."

The hbgary hack brought about

70,000 e-mails.

Probably the most important

ones had to do with a proposal

that hbgary had already

formulated.

It was packaged up as a nice

powerpoint presentation.

Kind of act as privatized agent

provocateurs where they were

gonna discredit wikileaks.

Hbgary was proposing

submitting fake documents to

wikileaks and then, when

discovered as fake, the error

could be called out and it would

discredit wikileaks.

So, there's a lot of, like,

specifics I can't talk about, so

let me try to answer that,

though, in a general sense.

Well, first of all, I'm... it's

probably no surprise to anybody

I'm not a big fan of wikileaks.

I think that the broad purpose

of trying to get as much

information... proprietary or

classified information for the

government... expose that, is an

extremely destructive and

dangerous purpose.

The proposals involved

conducting information war on

wikileaks and its supporters,

creating dissension within

wikileaks, ddos attacks.

You also wanted to launch

cyber attacks on wikileaks

infrastructure to get

information on document

submitters.

One thing, I guess, I want to

make sure is clear is...

None of those activities had

actually occurred.

You know, there's... in

business, there's... You know,

when you start proposing or

thinking about an idea, there's

a brainstorming phase.

And somebody says, "well, what"

if, you know... what could we

do?

"What's theoretically possible?"

Well, still, this was an

idea.

This was proposed.

This was something that you

thought about.

Right.

They also wanted to go on a

campaign kind of targeting

Glenn greenwald, who's a

reporter for salon, who's an

outspoken kind of critic of the

government and supporter of

wikileaks.

It seems like you're trying

to attack a journalist here.

Yeah, and I, you know... I

don't want to talk too much more

about Glenn greenwald, but other

than, you know, what I

previously said is, you know...

There was never an intent to

attack... journalists.

Not on my part.

You know... I guess I should

say... I should generalize that

and to say that, you know, I

would never just outwardly

attack a journalist other than

if I felt that there was a

journalist, in my mind, that was

acting unethically.

That's a fair game for having a

public discussion about it.

They were walking a very fine

ethical line at points, and, in

many cases, the mass opinion is,

"no, they stepped well past it."

I will not support broad

theft of... of information

released to the public 'cause

that's nothing but destructive.

If somebody has information

that's been stolen from them,

and whether or not wikileaks

encouraged the theft of that or

whether or not it was just put

in their lap... still,

they're... they're threatening

to release the information that

was the private property of

another organization.

So, your choices are to just

allow that to happen or to try

to stop it.

How offensive is too offensive?

You know, we've certainly seen a

lot of strategy coming out of

governments across the world

now, saying, you know...

Publicly admitting that they

need to become... they need to

develop better offensive

strategies in cyber security,

because defense as a whole isn't

enough.

It never is enough.

In the court of public

opinion that took hbgary quickly

from being a perceived victim to

being a perceived villain

themselves.

It was becoming harder and

harder to distinguish the good

guys from the bad guys.

Hbgary changed anonymous...

As tremendously as optunisia

did.

And within essentially a month

of each other, these two events

were totally formative for the

collective.

Optunisia was where it got its

moral compass and its sense that

it could affect the world.

Hbgary is where it got its

swagger.

George hotz made it possible

for PlayStation to run

homebrewed software, which also

lets you run pirated software.

Yo! It's g.O. Hot.

And for those that don't know,

I'm getting sued by Sony.

So, Sony went after him,

claiming it was a dmca

violation.

They just kind of mass-lawyer

nastygrammed him and shut him

down and did sue him.

He settled.

And the response to that was

immediate and brutal.

Sony has confirmed that

hackers broke into its

PlayStation network, exposing

the personal information of up

to 77 million users worldwide.

Over the next six to eight

months, they were hacked over 20

times.

There's no evidence that

anonymous was anywhere near the

majority of the hacks.

One of the reasons why it

captured so much of the media

imagination when anonymous did

it, as opposed to when other

people did it, is because they

were loud and bombastic, and

they had a great image you could

throw on the top of your

article, and they made

statements that, when you're

constructing a story, you just

can't resist.

And then, kind of seemingly

out of the blue, there was

something by the name lulzsec

that sailed into the seas.

Lulzsec... it's a sort of a

group, mostly from anonymous,

who... large part of the same

people who hacked hbgary.

And they decided to form this

little group and carry on

operations outside the purview

of anonymous for awhile.

Lulzsec tried to say it

wasn't anonymous for awhile.

They tried to divide itself off.

I don't think anyone bought it

for a minute.

There was no way that lulzsec

was not anonymous, but the

majority of time, the majority

of anons were not doing anything

particularly illegal.

When they are, a huge number of

them try to do that in a very

specific political context.

For those people, what lulzsec

was doing... they were funny but

they were attacking random

targets.

They were breaking the

quasi-rules by attacking media.

There was a lot of

in-fighting about it because

their way, you know, wasn't

really our way.

We will not attack the media.

Pbs's "frontline" runs a

documentary mainly focused on

Bradley Manning, the alleged

leaker to wikileaks, and a lot

of Bradley Manning supporters

didn't like it.

They hacked the website,

putting a story that 2pac and

biggie had kind of escaped the

world of celebrity, fame, and

attention and retired quietly

and discreetly in New Zealand.

Lulzsec, when they attacked

pbs, you know, that gave me the

creeps, you know.

As a journalist, I'm not too

thrilled with the idea of

someone judging that, "we don't"

like you to write that.

We don't like your reporting, so

we're gonna shut down your

"website."

I'm uncomfortable with that.

It could be me, and I could be

writing something about a group

that they didn't like.

And I'm happy to sit and talk

with them about it, but, you

know, don't shut my website

down.

Hacktivism started to

become... sort of... I would say

almost more nasty, using, you

know, sort of more

no-holds-barred kind of

attacks... sort of more vicious

attacks.

Lulzsec adds this dimension

of bombastic lawbreaking to

anonymous.

For the people who are focused

on things like the freedomops,

who want anonymous to be a way

of standing up to the powers

that be, this is diluting and

possibly counterproductive to

their project in anonymous.

You can try to make a case

for civil disobedience and for,

you might call it, crowd-sourced

investigations using

sometimes illegal means.

It's hard to keep making that

case, it's hard to maintain that

case when you have these people

from the movement...

Fucking with people, you know,

just fucking with people.

They sort of saw themselves

as going out there and breaking

into, like, anything,

everything... government,

corporations, police

departments... largely for the

same reason that anonymous

would.

They went after Arizona for

immigration policy.

50-day run causing mayhem,

havoc... and then ended it.

The computer hacking group

lulzsecurity has announced it's

disbanding, saying it had

achieved its mission to disrupt

government and corporate

organizations for fun.

I call this whole thing the

rise of the chaotic actor.

And chaotic could be chaotic

good, neutral, or evil.

And if you go back to the old

"dungeons & dragons" charts...

And some people see it on ops

initially and will stick with

anonymous as chaotic good.

They saw operation payback or

they saw attacking scientology,

and they say, "that's good."

It's like Robin hood, right?"

Chaotic good... outside the

system but doing something good.

Other people saw anon as chaotic

evil like the joker.

They just want to see the world

burn and are doing potentially

irreparable damage.

And the truth is, yes, it's the

entire column of chaotic.

I'm actually a little less

concerned about some of the

things lulzsec has done and more

concerned about the next

generation of lulzsec, the next

turn of the crank of "who takes"

it further or is more

"aggressive?"

Whoever fights monsters, you

know, should see to it that they

don't themselves become one.

Sabu was probably the most

famous anon who managed to kind

of remain famous for awhile.

Somebody who gets famous in anon

generally gets punished very

harshly by anonymous.

But sabu managed to avoid that a

few ways.

I mean, he was a controversial

figure... incredibly

controversial figure... inside

of anonymous.

He was bombastic.

He was thuggish.

But he was also very good at

mentoring and encouraging people

and giving them permission to

try things.

And that was, I think, one of

the most pivotal things about

sabu's role.

And it also speaks to the

absolutely soul-crushing level

of betrayal... When it was

revealed that sabu was working

for the FBI.

There are still people who

cannot let go of the idea that

he was somehow on their side,

that somehow he had to have been

working against the FBI to help

them... no matter how much is

revealed.

But he had betrayed the

collective.

It devastated everyone that he

had touched.

Hugh Davies.

I'm an independent barrister.

Amongst the cases I'm working on

at the moment are the lulzsec

base prosecution.

I can't comment on sabu, but

with cyber criminals, whatever

their motivation, it may not be

personal profit, but it is a

very strong, sometimes

destructive motive simply for

those with whom they disagree.

In criminal terms, it's

vandalism.

One has to be extremely careful

that one person's exercise of

freedom of speech is not at the

expense of some other quite

legitimate organization's equal

right to have a lawful website

operating, available to the

public in a Democratic society.

And simply taking out lawful

websites 'cause you disagree

with them is an erosion of

freedom of speech rather than

extending it.

Really, as powerful as they

seem to be, lulzsec and

anonymous are really small

potatoes compared to the bigger

operations that are going on

that we don't hear about, maybe

operations funded by

governments.

The criminal hackers... this

is not some lone idiot, you

know, hunkered down like

beavis or butt-head, cackling at

midnight over his computer.

There are a few of those but

it's organized.

There are ad hoc contract

workers.

It comes out of Russia, comes

out of Romania, comes out of

Iran... comes out of wherever.

But they work on behalf of the

usual criminal enterprises

the computer-security

industry has just been growing

and growing and growing over the

last, you know, 10, 15 years.

There's $10 billion companies in

the computer-security industry.

I don't know what the total

market cap is, but it's

certainly in the billions of

dollars.

Black hat, when I first started

coming, like 15 years ago, there

was, like, 500 people.

And there's 8,500 people today.

So, every year, more and more

people come to learn about what

are the attacks.

Companies come to, you know,

sell new products.

And the government is coming,

saying, "we want to recruit"

you to come be our new cyber

"warriors."

The kind of thing that drives

people to something like

anonymous is that sense that

their government is going to

watch them every moment of the

day and, in America, our

government is kind of watching

us all the time.

Like, we now know that with the

warrantless wiretapping.

You know, we live under constant

cctvs.

We have that sense that not only

are we being tracked, but it's

about to get a lot worse.

The NSA has embraced domestic

spying.

They're building a giant

spy center in Utah.

And the only thing... the only

thing... that even gives them

pause is encryption.

Anonymous gives people a way to

exist outside of this system.

There's a certain online

culture that believes in certain

values like freedom of

expression.

They're against corruption.

They're against governments

controlling their citizens.

And when they see those values

harmed in some way by some

organization, the hacktivists

strike back.

16 people were arrested

today.

Dozens of FBI agents targeted

alleged members of a loose-knit

hacking group.

Armed with search warrants,

agents hit six homes in.

New York, along with locations

across the country.

The people arrested yesterday

were suspected of attacking.

PayPal's website after the

company shut off payments to

wikileaks.

Defenders of the hackers say

they're merely engaged in civil

protest, but FBI officials worry

the disruptive cyber attacks

could move in a more dangerous

direction.

So, the FBI shows up.

It's 6:00 in the morning, and it

was really obnoxious.

And I remember being frustrated

and angry because there was

nothing that I had done that

would have justified an FBI

search warrant.

They came and... Guns blazing

and all this other good stuff...

Busted down the door.

I immediately just dropped down

on the floor, 180.

I wasn't trying to fight nobody.

The theory of the case is

they were, you know... they

flooded... "a number of people"

flooded access to PayPal,

thereby creating economic

distress to a protected

"corporation."

End of story.

This isn't... this is not a case

involving identity theft,

involving outing e-mails,

involving violating privilege,

involving theft of services,

involving, you know, shutting

down business.

It is a pure case of Internet or

cyber sit-ins.

I think when barrack Obama gets

on television and says, "flood"

the switchboard, shut down the

Republicans, send the

"message"... that's legal.

And even if you accept what the

theory of this prosecution is,

it's no different.

This is an electronic sit-in at

its finest.

So, what I'm facing is a

felony... 15 years in federal

prison and a $250,000 fine.

If you're a pedophile, the

average is 11 years.

That's ridiculous.

I mean, you can go molest

children and get less of a

sentence than you would for

breaking into someone's phone.

If you... even if you accept

what the government is saying is

true, what is important is that

people are participating in the

process.

It is very much the process.

It is sitting in at a counter in

Selma, Alabama, 500 freedom

riders refusing to allow people

to go sit in at a segregated

lunch counter.

They write books about that

stuff.

It is demonstrating at a street

corner saying no to a war.

It's just a different... it's

just a different vehicle.

It's the same result.

You know, I would never

compare myself to people like

Gandhi or.

Dr. Martin Luther King, but they

were one person, and they were

willing to go out and change the

world.

And their messages live on every

day through everybody.

And to not take the chance of

having something like that to do

is foolish.

I only wish we had 50 million

Mercedes haefer.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable

as a guy getting towards the

tail end of his career if there

were more Mercedes.

There's always gonna be legal

consequence when you decide to

break the law.

That comes with the territory.

And it would be naive not to

expect that.

The question is whether the

punishment will be proportional

to the crime.

And I suspect it might not be.

People will be watching very

closely to see how these cases

proceed on what grounds and

whether there's any room during

the trials to think especially

of the denial-of-service attacks

as a legitimate form of protest.

So much of our lives are now

configured at least in part on

the Internet, so we better start

thinking about how we claim

parts of the Internet as spaces

that we can also protest.

This is the point in history

at which you decide whether or

not protesting is possible

online.

You can stand up, and you can

say freedom of speech extends to

online.

We have the right to not be

monitored by our government

because of our opinions.

It's up to you.

You're in the position of

huck Finn.

Do you remember huck Finn at the

end of the book?

He's told he's got to take that

slave and give it back.

Two things will happen if he

doesn't.

One... legally, he'll go to

jail, as Jim is property.

Two... he'll be damned eternally

and burn in hellfire 'cause he's

in an Evangelical environment in

Missouri.

And huck smokes his corncob pipe

all night, thinks about it.

And next morning, he says,

"well, damn it, I'll go to hell,

then."

In other words, he discovered

that in order to be an expert at

ethics, you had to transcend the

legal and sanctioned religious

appropriate truths of the day in

order to access the meta truth

of both legality and

righteousness.

Well, hackers see themselves as

huck putting down that corncob

pipe and saying, "all right",

I'll go to jail.

All right, I'll go to hell.

But I'm gonna do the right

"thing."

I suppose the question you

really want to ask is, would I

do it again?

And honestly, after thinking

about it, I felt that I did what

was right.

I had a belief... I still do...

That what I did was the right

thing.

And hopefully someone got some

good out of it.

You know, I'd love to think that

maybe I stopped someone from

joining a cult, you know.

Probably wouldn't tell on myself

next time, but, you know, I

don't think I would have changed

a single thing other than the

whole "talking to the FBI"

thing.

Just that little detail.

Yeah, just the little detail

that kind of changed everything.

Yeah.

I'm angry.

Occasionally, I have small

breakdown moments of terror.

But I haven't stopped believing

what I believe.

I haven't stopped wanting to

fight.

I haven't stopped caring.

Show me what democracy looks

like!

All: This is what democracy

looks like!

Show me what democracy looks

like!

We got sold out!

I don't think this whole

issue is a technical hacking

thing.

This is more about human

philosophy and psychology,

what's motivating us, why is

there so much unrest or

disenfranchisement or anger that

would lead people to want to

take matters into their own

hands and join them.

Whether you think it's bad or

not is irrelevant.

It's not going away.

I have stood upon the

mountaintop known as anonymous

and looked down on a world

enflamed with revolution.

What can you say?

Your spine tingles when you're

at the cusp of history.

When you're surfing, you know,

the waves of history, your spine

tingles.

Descent has a face now.

It has an aesthetic.

There's this package it can pick

up and put on anywhere in the

world for any cause it wants.

And sometimes that's gonna be

terrible, and sometimes it's

going to be wonderful.

One thing I can kind of promise

is that it's gonna be

interesting.

It's rare in history that new

things happen, but I think this

is one of them.

If you have power in real

life and you have money in real

life, you know, it doesn't

fucking matter on the Internet.

What matters on the Internet is

your actual ideas, you know, how

smart you are, the quality of

you.

And when certain organizations

that, you know... they want to

extend their real-life power

onto the Internet, it's not

gonna fucking take because of

anonymous.

I don't care if you're a

democrat or a republican or an

independent or if you like

Ron Paul or if you worship

pigeons or scientology or if

you're catholic or atheist or

methodist.

I don't care about that.

Your opinion matters.

I don't care if I disagree with

it.

I don't care if I hate your

guts.

Your opinion matters.

Is there going to be any

further action?

I mean, does anonymous intend to

prove that they can, in fact,

manipulate the westboro baptist

church network of websites?

What can we expect going

forward, anonymous?

Actually, I'm working on that

right now.

He's working on that right

now!

Oh, yay.

So, hold on.

I am getting a thumbs up from my

producer that there has been a

message posted that appears to

be from anonymous on downloads.

Anonymous, are you taking

responsibility for this?

Yep.

We just did it right now this

very second.

That is so special.

That's so special.