We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists Page #11

Private citizens were being dox'd or,

your credit cards numbers

could have been redacted.

You can still make your point, without

actually giving up people's personal details.

So the quarter public opinions,

swayed, that LulzSec had crosed lines,

that, maybe, the previous

manifestation had not.

Collateral damage, such as the release of dox

and people's personal information who are

just caught in the crossfire of an Anonymous confrontation

is something that a lot of Anons don't really support.

There's a lot of

in-fighting about it because,

their way, 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 as for all of Bradley Manning's

supporters, they didn't like it.

They thought it was a

little too psychologising.

It was like looking a little bit

more at his personal life, than at

why it is, you leaked the documents

and what the documents actually meant.

They hacked a website, putting a

story that Tupac and Biggie had escaped

the world of celebrity fame and attention and

retired quietly and discreetly in New Zealand.

LulzSec, when they attacked PBS,

that gave me the creeps, you know?

As a journalist, I'm not too thrilled

with the idea of someone judging:

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 writting something

about a group, that they didn't like.

I'm happy to sit and talk

with them about it but,

don't shut my website down.

This is obviously about freedom of speech

so attacking the press would be...

would sort of be a bit of a contradiction.

So people have said, well, we shouldn't do that

and obviously LulzSec had a completely different agenda

so they had no problem with it.

"X-Factor" contestant database hacked.

They sort of saw themselves, as going out there,

breaking into, like, anything and everything,

governments, corporations, police departments.

Largely for the same

reasons Anonymous would.

They went after Arizona

for immigration policy.

A 50-day run, causing mayhem, havoc..

..and then ended it.

The computer hacking group Lulz-Security,

has announced it's disbanding,

saying, it's had achieved it's mission, to

disrupt governments and corporate organizations,

for fun..

I call this whole thing,

"the rise of the chaotic actor".

It's not like the first

time we had hacktivism,

but we're definitely seeing,

like a renaissance in it

and chaotic, could be

chaotic good, neutral or evil,

if you go back to deal with

Dungeons and Dragons terms

and some people see Anon Ops, initially and

they'll 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,

that just wanna see the world burn

and potentially doing irreparable damage

and the truth is, yes, it's

the entire column of chaotic.

The Anonymous 16

Dozens of FBI agents targeted alleged

members of a loose-knit hacking group.

Armed with search warrants, agents hit 6 homes

in New York alone, 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 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 at 6 in the

morning and it was really abnoxious

and I remember being

frustrated and angry because,

there was nothing, that I had done, that

would've justified an FBI search warrant.

They came, and guns blazing

at us and all that stuff,

bashing down the door, and they

just dropped me down the floor, 180..

I weren'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 is not a case involving identity theft, outing e-mails,

violating privilege, theft of services, shutting down business.

It is a pure case of

internet or cyber sit-ins.

I think when Barack Obama

gets on television and says,

flood the switchboard, shutdown

the Republicans, send a 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 it's finest.

If you're a pedophile,

the average is 11 years,

if you're a computer

hacker, the average is 15.

I think that's ridiculous.

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.

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, in a

counter in Selma, Alabama.

to go and sit-in at a segregated lunch counter.

They write books about that stuff.

It is demonstrating in a street

corner, saying, 'no more war'.

It's just a different vehicle.

It's the same results.

For 9 months I ran

from my indictment,

but they busted me, I went

to jail, I bond it out

and then I held a news

conference because,

as risky as that was and

against my lawyer's advice,

I wanted the world, to know some

f***ing things, about what's going on.

I didn't want the feds to have

the only voice in the dialog.

This document alleges,

that, I'm the notorious hacker activist,

known to the world, as Commander-X.

I am, Commander-X.

The indictment further alleges,

that I'm in association with the

global internet freedom movement,

known as Anonymous.

I say yes,

I am immensely proud

and humbled to the core,

to be a part of the

idea called, Anonymous.

I would never compare myself to people

like Ghandi 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,

I'd feel a lot more comfortable as a guy,

gettings towards the tail end of his career,

if there were more Mercedes.

There's always gonna

be legal consequences,

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.

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