http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/04/4chan-201104
At 11 on a December morning, Gregg Housh, a 34-year-old computer engineer from Boston and an Internet activist associated with Anonymous—the loosely affiliated organization of hackers whom the media has variously called “domestic terrorists,” “an Internet hate machine,” and “the dark heart of the Web”—takes my call as he is preparing to make an appearance on CNN. “You’re the 35th media person to call me this morning!” Housh booms in jubilant tones, noting I am not from “England or Australia,” like many of the others. Though Housh disavows any illegal activity himself, he expresses surprise that he hasn’t heard from the F.B.I., which is currently looking to capture patriotic and well-intentioned Internet heroes such as he—ones who might have knowledge of how, exactly, the Web sites of MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal were brought down after they shut off any donations to WikiLeaks processed through their organizations. “The government knows where I am if they want to find me,” he says. “I’m here!” That’s more than can be said for most members of Anonymous, who are, appropriately enough, staying anonymous, hiding their I.P. addresses in Internet Relay Chat rooms and posting under deadpanned handles like Coldblood and Tux, the latter a possible shorthand for the group’s logo, which features a man in a tuxedo, sans head.
In the past couple of months, though, this group—previously best known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks and cavorting to techno music in front of Scientology churches while holding up signs that say things like honk if you are driving a car and don’t worry, we’re from the internet—has become very famous indeed. The “hacktivist” drama would end, or at least pause, with an international manhunt for 40 teenagers and twenty-somethings by the F.B.I. and the London Metropolitan Police at the end of January, with search warrants executed and computers seized. But before Christmas, they were just trying to defend Julian Assange, their brother in “haxx,” who was in jail in England awaiting extradition on possibly trumped-up charges of sex crimes (women’s rights, in this group, not being a prime subject), while several companies had shut off the nutrients WikiLeaks needs for survival—not only financial ones but also server space and domains. (WikiLeaks had to register on the Web with the Swiss Pirate Party.)
That was not cool. Anonymous needed to take care of that. “Corporations should not bow to government pressure,” explains Housh. “Government is supposed to be there to do simple things to make people happy, and that’s all.” Bam! On December 8 they shut down MasterCard for 37 hours. Blam! Visa down, for 12 hours. Zop! PayPal … well, it didn’t go down except for the blog, but at least Anonymous’s attacks made the site run a lot slower. They also shut down the sites of a Swiss bank, Senator Joe Lieberman (after he prodded Amazon to kick WikiLeaks off its system), and the Swedish prosecutor investigating Assange’s alleged sex crimes. “Freedom of expression is priceless,” Anonymous crowed on their Twitter page. “For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”