We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists

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