A few years later, I asked some Anons why—given creeping suspicions that he was an informant—Sabu was not only tolerated but actually advanced as AntiSec’s public-facing persona. For O’Cearbhaill, one of the other AntiSec Anons, his charisma did the trick. Like no one else he was able to rouse public passion with his clarion calls for uprising. Another plausible explanation was advanced by numerous other participants: another figure, Yettie (not his real pseudonym), was himself, for much of the time, a target of copious snitching accusations, which drew attention away from Sabu. At least a dozen core participants had shared with me their fears about Yettie. He had managed to gain access to countless IRC servers and was known for playing with many people’s minds—including, I felt, my own. Even Hammond, momentarily operating under the handle “crediblethreat,” called him to the mat in an uncommon public display of internal strife in the fall of 2011:
[…]
To this day no one can definitely say whether Yettie is an informant (or merely creepy). Many others were also accused. Rumors like these are endlessly analyzed in light of what is deemed odd behavior and the scant factual information available to participants. For instance, leaked law-enforcement documents name a “CW-2” (confidential witness 2), implying that there were at least two informants milling around.36 Many participants also asked why some hackers and participants embedded in the secret channels were never raided or questioned once they decided to go public. These rumors and uncertainties propel the stormy and disorienting atmospherics of paranoia so common in the context of leftist or progressive political movements. Once the fog of fear and confusion settles, it makes it “difficult to sort out paranoia from reality, imaginary enemies from perfectly real ones,” in the words of Ruth Rosen, who chronicled FBI-induced fear in the 1960s women’s liberation movement.37
Sabu’s outing also functioned as a test, pushing Anonymous into a period of introspection. For weeks, as Anons wailed, raged, assessed, reassessed, and freaked out on Twitter and various IRC networks, they wondered what future—if any—remained for Anonymous after such a blow. Would it come to pass, to quote an anonymous government official featured in Winter’s Fox News article, that “when people in the hacking community realize their God has actually been cooperation [sic] with the government, it’ll be sheer terror”?
Knock Knock, We’re Here
While the Sabutage fanned the flames of paranoia, it did not spell the end of Anonymous—or even really cultivate a substantial amount of terror. Even if Anonymous could never replicate the high participant levels of its LulzSec/AntiSec days (back when Fox News’ description of them as “hackers on steroids” was apt), Anonymous carried along just fine through 2012 and much of 2013, executing major hacks and attacks across the world. Its formidable reputation is best illustrated by an anecdote from the highest echelons of US officialdom.
In 2012, Barack Obama’s reelection campaign team assembled a group of programmers, system administrators, mathematicians, and data scientists to fine-tune voter targeting. Journalists praised Obama’s star-studded and maverick technology team, detailing its members’ hard work, success, and travails, and ultimately heralding the system as a success. These articles, however, failed to report one of the team’s big concerns. Throughout the campaign, the technologists had treated Anonymous as a potentially even bigger nuisance than the foreign state hackers who had infiltrated the McCain and Obama campaigns in 2008.38
In late November 2012, Asher Wolf, a geek crusader who acted as a sometimes-informal adviser to Anonymous, noticed that Harper Reed, the chief technologist for Obama’s reelection tech team, followed @AnonyOps on Twitter. Much like a trickster, Wolf pointed this out to AnonyOps, suggesting, “let’s play with that and see what we can do.”39
AnonyOps sent Reed a private Twitter message. “Hi. The next few months are big. I thought we should maybe chat.” Reed read the message and his “heart sank,” as he explained it to me in an interview. He reached out to his boss, the chief information officer, and the head of security for the Obama campaign. They hammered out a variety of possible 140 character replies. Finally, they hit on this bit of genius: “Hey. What’s on your mind?” As Harper was about to send the message, the chief information officer, who had been speaking with senior lawyers for the campaign, bolted over to Harper’s desk to stop him. They had changed their mind. The best response, they determined, was no response at all. He came seconds too late.
Had Reed known what I did, he would have been spared a day or two of anxiety. AnonyOps was simply interested in initiating a conversation with an influential political figure. Reflecting back on the event during an interview with me, Wolf recalled that
it was amusing, because we were like kids, playing with boundaries … with the world’s superpower. We’d been through 2010 when the screens poured with rage as the administration went after WikiLeaks and we’d gone through Occupy … We’d seen people be jailed, disappear … Maybe, just maybe we were a little fatalistic. And maybe it felt good once, just once to wander up close to the administration that drones small children and flick a cigarette butt in their faces.
As this incident shows, Anonymous had become a specter; its influence had grown so far-reaching that it didn’t even have to do anything to have an effect. It is understandable why Obama’s reelection team felt perturbed by this ambiguous knock on its digital door. In the two months following Hammond’s arrest, Anonymous hacked into hundreds of Chinese government websites; knocked the website for Formula One racing offline after the repressive government of Bahrain, set to host the next Formula One race, had detained and imprisoned protesters; and hacked into the website of the Greek finance ministry, drawing attention to the government’s plan to track citizens’ bank information in an effort to curtail tax fraud. Over the summer of 2012, Anonymous launched another major hack (again) against the Formula One website, this time coinciding with the Montreal Grand Prix; this was done to protest Bill 78, a controversial measure passed in Quebec to curtail protest activity, which had soared after proposed tuition hikes. Quebec’s Human Rights Commission issued a fifty-six page report condemning the bill for its flagrant violation of the province’s own human rights charter, notably for the provision that threatened to fine protesters thousands of dollars if they failed to notify authorities at least eight hours in advance of the itinerary of any protest involving fifty or more people.40 Later that month in India, after a Supreme Court order mandated that local ISPs block torrent websites, file-sharing websites, and even some video-sharing websites, Anonymous retaliated by DDoSing the Indian Supreme Court, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Department of Telecommunications, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Indian National Congress. Like many Anons, AnonOpsIndia took to Twitter to make its views heard: “We will become a #PAIN in the #ASS for the government until they stop #censoring our #INTERNET[.] IT BELONGS TO US!”41
Anonymous continued unabated in 2013, remaining committed to ongoing issues, as in #OpLastResort, a series of retributive hacks carried out against the websites of MIT, the US Department of Justice, and the US Sentencing Commission following the suicide of Internet pioneer and activist Aaron Swartz. His family and many admirers felt that his suicide at age twenty-six was a political act borne out of a sense of desperation fueled by his impending trial. Swartz faced thirty-five years in jail and $1 million in fines—simply for downloading a cache of academic journal articles he never released. “Aaron’s death … is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach,” wrote his family and partner.42 In the video accompanying their hacks and website defacements, Anonymous echoed this assessmen
t:
Two weeks ago today, a line was crossed. Two weeks ago today, Aaron Swartz was killed. Killed because he faced an impossible choice. Killed because he was forced into playing a game he could not win—a twisted and distorted perversion of justice—a game where the only winning move was not to play.43
While initially receiving scant media attention, a trio of North American ops focusing on a recent spate of sexual assault and rape allegations hooked American news-makers. Suddenly, Anonymous was back on center stage. Once again in its preferred position, Anonymous managed to stimulate public debate on an issue too often treated as a mere tantalizing spectacle.
The first case, originating in Steubenville, Ohio, concerned two members of a high school football team facing trial for raping a classmate. The night of the assault, other team members snapped photos of and filmed the unconscious woman, promptly sharing them on social media with sickening celebratory statements. One video, eventually sent to Anonymous, featured a classmate boasting that “they raped her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction … That’s how you know she’s dead, because someone pissed on her.”44
In December of 2012, while local Steubenville activist Michelle McKee asserted that a fair trial was impossible in a town that treated the football players as demigods, she reached out to Anonymous and they swooped in. An Anon who had recently taken up the handle “KYAnonymous” (his real name is Deric Lostutter) was at work exposing the identities of posters on revenge porn forums. Reading about the Steubenville case incensed him, and he expressed as much on Twitter. McKee sent him some incriminating material that had circulated with social media accounts of individuals linked to the event. KYAnonymous sprung into action, first releasing an ominous video warning. David Kushner memorably described it for Rolling Stone:
Like a deft poker player, Lostutter amped up his manifesto with a bluff. He claimed that Anonymous had already doxed “everyone involved” with the cover-up and crime—parents, teachers, and kids—and were going to release their private information online “unless all accused parties come forward by New Years Day and issue a public apology to the girl and her family.”45
By the next day, a hacker named Noah McHugh, who went by “BatCat,” allegedly gained access to RollRedRoll.com, the school’s sports web portal (named after its buff, red, devil-like stallion mascot), and accessed team emails. KYAnonymous tweeted nonstop while celebrities like Roseanne Barr added their network effect to the cause. Then, on December 29, a cold wintry day, Anonymous’s call for a street demonstration in Steubenville was answered by a throng of a thousand demonstrators—with a now-requisite smattering of Guy Fawkes masks. “In a dramatic turn, some of them spoke of their own sexual assaults and rapes, removing their masks to show themselves to the crowd,” wrote Kushner.
Anonymous remained hyperactively involved with the Steubenville assault on Twitter, until two teenagers were found guilty of rape in May 2013. One defendant received the minimum sentence: one year in a juvenile correctional facility. The other was sentenced to two years. In November 2013, four Steubenville residents, including the school superintendent, were subsequently charged for covering up evidence of another, earlier rape case, according to the New York Times.46 The FBI raided Lostutter in June 2013, and he is facing indictment under the CFAA; Noah McHugh was allegedly arrested earlier in February. If convicted, they face much longer prison sentences than the rapists.
In April 2013, Anonymous got wind of the case of Rehtaeh Parsons, a straight-A student who had ended her life after what appears to have been a sexual assault at an alcoholfueled party in Halifax, Canada. The failure to prosecute any of the accused boys, Anonymous charged, was due to inappropriate handling by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Anons helped raise awareness of the case with a video and a press release demanding Nova Scotia RCMP take immediate legal action against the individuals. Leah Parsons, Rehtaeh’s mother, asked for justice to be brought by the authorities, rather than online vigilantes. The Anons behind #OpJustice4Rehtaeh respected this wish by making clear in a subsequent statement that
We do not approve of vigilante justice as the media claims. That would mean we approve of violent actions against these rapists at the hands of an unruly mob. What we want is justice. And that’s your job. So do it. The names of the rapists will be kept until it is apparent you have no intention of providing justice to Retaeh’s family. Please be aware that there are other groups of Anons also attempting to uncover this information and they may not to wish to wait at all. Better act fast.47
The RCMP reopened the case but downplayed Anonymous’s role, insisting the new evidence “did not come from an online source.”48Anonymous participants, along with some commentators, felt the masked activists had made a decisive difference: “It’s entirely clear that the online pressure mattered a great deal in this case,”49 noted Emily Bazelon of Slate. Parsons, initially ambivalent, was eventually thankful Anonymous had intervened. In late August 2013, the RCMP charged the two accused men with making and distributing child pornography (the case is still pending).
The final of the three cases was another incident that never went to trial because the prosecutors deemed there to be insufficient evidence. This case involved a party in Maryville, Missouri, after which seventeen-year-old Matthew Barnett dropped off fourteen-year-old Daisy Coleman outside her home, barely conscious, in a T-shirt and sweatpants, where she passed out in sub-freezing weather. Two in-depth local investigative articles strongly suggested that there was actually more than sufficient evidence to charge Barnett. Comparing the situation to Steubenville, a piece by Peggy Lowe and Monica Sanreckzi for Kansas City Public Media cited the local sheriff: “Did a crime occur? Hell yes, it occurred. Was it a horrible crime? Yes, it was a horrible crime. And did these boys need to be punished for it? Absolutely.”50 When these articles were brought to Anonymous’s attention, the group made a lot of noise, in turn bringing the incident to the nation’s attention. Eventually, a special prosecutor formally filed a criminal charge against Matthew Barnett—a single count of misdemeanor child endangerment.
Anonymous’s interventions in these three cases triggered searing but divided responses. Citizens, journalists, and feminists disagreed over whether Anonymous’s interventions had helped or hurt sexual abuse victims. Ariel Levy, in a scathing New Yorker article, came down hard against the Anonymous (and other online activists), asserting that the appeal of the group was rooted in the public’s naive embrace of a simple archetype: “modern-day Peter Parkers—computer nerds who put on a costume and were transformed into superhero vigilantes.”51 Other responses were more nuanced, going beyond the vigilante argument. During a Huffington Post Live video interview, feminist author Jaclyn Friedman reflected on the “double-edged sword” of Internet activism:
The victim get victimized once, but they get revictimized when those images and videos are circulated among their peers. But that can in some cases, as we saw with Steubenville—with the help of Anonymous covering those videos—become evidence, so that it is more likely that there will be justice.52
Anonymous ignited a desperately needed national conversation about rape culture in the United States and Canada. In an absorbing New York Times Magazine article, Bazelon identified a pattern in these three “white-knight ops,” a pattern that also applies to a broader sample of Anonymous’s political operations, even those that steer clear of vigilantism: when Anonymous jumps into the fray, it is typically due to the group’s perception that justice is not being done; in many cases, this turns out to be true.53 In a follow-up interview the New York Times conducted with her about researching Anonymous, Bazelon added,
I think each operation, or op, needs to be judged individually. Ones that have really responsible people working on them are probably on balance a good thing. I think that is true of Maryville and probably also of the one about Rehtaeh Parsons, although that one is more fraught, because there was an innocent person accused. Others really go off the rails.
&n
bsp; Indeed, Steubenville, which sparked the most media attention, was in many respects the most poorly executed of the three ops. Among other problems, the victim herself was doxed by Anons, and locals were harassed. Many Anons were furious at Lostutter for releasing the video (and, once outed, the fury only intensified as he was seen to be behaving in a way deemed as flagrantly self-promotional).
Two qualifications merit addition reflection. If vigilante justice is rightly deemed problematic for skirting the legal process, it arises because existing channels for serving justice are weak or nonexistent. All too often, critics point a finger at the “vigilantes,” while ignoring or downplaying the more systemic conditions that in many ways give rise to them. Second, teams are capable of adjustment. I witnessed this dynamic at least a dozen times; after the mistakes made in the Steubenville op, subsequent Anonymous engagements in rape cases were approached with more delicacy, oversight, and care. Of course, such responsiveness is itself fragile—working groups within Anonymous are prone to dissolution. They might function well for three to six months, and then break up following volcanic levels of internal feuding. (Bazelon covers in detail the stormy bickering leading to the dissolution of one such team.) They might then reconstitute later with new members who have not internalized the same hard-learned lessons.
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