We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists Page #5

That they were sick of

this abuse that was going on.

That made us think, what have

we got ourselves 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.

We're such poor opposites,

with them being secretive

and us hating secrets

and them being so inclusive and us being,

you know, anybody can say they're anonymous

and most importantly, how

f***ing self-important they were.

They thought they were f***ing untouchable.

They thought they were like, you know,

like their own little church

mafia and sh*t, you know?

Anonymous will..,

it's like a play-toy now.

We're gonna make you

look, as stupid as sh*t.

What really kinda 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 f*** you over

in the worst possible way.

It resonated like, this

feeling of disgust within us.

That was THE big problem.

The sensorship aspect of it.

The audacity of this creepy cult,

to go into our territory

and tell us that we can't post this?

No, f*** them! No..

It's not gonna happen.

And people who knew what Anonymous

was to begin with were like,

OMG, Anonymous is gonna

go to war with scientology,

this should be really interesting.

Especially, cause it's 2 weird-ass groups

I mean, I've been an anon for a long time.

I know Anonymous is really strange.

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 sh*t goes down.

Anybody on the outside,

who's seen this, is going:

"Let's watch these two retards fight.

Both their pants are gonna fall

down, they're gonna cripple

and it's gonna hurt everybody

and it's gonna be hysterical."

And what happened was all

these people who were geared up,

the infrastracture was build

to war with other anons.

..said:
you know what? F*** it!

Everybody is gonna get together and

pound the f*** out of scientology.

And then that's when 4chan

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,

we were sharing 'em all,

every number we get,

even blank pieces of paper,

on a loop until we saw the ring.

I got to call 'em on the phone

and it's busy, busy, busy..

That's their main dianetics hotline,

their dianetics 800-number.

You can't get through, because

anons have completely clogged it

and probably saying just stupid sh*t.

The whole idea was just, you call

'em just to keep 'em on the phone.

"What's up L. Ron (Hubbard),

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 sciency really.

Computers do what you tell 'em to,

they don't all of a sudden start doing

weird stuff and if they do it's probably your fault

and I was like that, you know, 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 do this.

You started seing all the stuff in /b/

and I saw the stuff in /b/ then.

Everyone is gonna DDoS scientology,

everyone is going to bandwidth-rape them.

Anonymous members have developed a

Distributed Denial of Service attack,

to a called, Low Orbit Ion Cannon,

which is 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 the program that's free

and legal for anyone to download and use

and I followed the instructions

and I pushed "GO" and what it does is,

it tells scientology.org, in this case,

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'm actually not breaking any laws,

by using this tool

against my own computer

at 127.0.0.1,

which is a non-routeable address,

but of course if I were to attack one

of those other bigger sites out there,

I would have severely

been breaking the law

and I would have been doing it,

in a way that is quite easy to track.

You put on the site,

you see that the ip is correct,

you make sure all these settings are good

and you hit the button

and off it goes.

It felt like you were

making a difference

just you, yourself

and you didn't even

have to leave your home.

You just sat at your computer

and followed instructions

and you 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.

That was some really

crazy stuff to watch,

to be sitting there in front of

a monitor and you have information

just flying in front of you and

it's this unseeable internet war.

And one of the guys said,

we need to make a video.

We just 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

declare 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 it was gonna beat the sh*t out

of you, this is what it would look like.

That one video, really

galvanized that moment,

that moment of innovation.

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

houses anymore with impunity.

You're not gonna be able to just

issue cease-and-desist letters.

Any reporter, who wants to write some sh*t

about you, that you don't like, that's done with.

Everytime you do that,

Anonymous is gonna hit you harder.

So we made a video named,

'Call to Arms'. It said:

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