This film from 2012 was made when the loose hacktivist group that became known as Anonymous was at their peak and making headlines around the world.
It starts by looking at the formation of the ideas that was later come to be characteristic of the group on the anonymous 4chan.com boards, especially the notorious /b/ board.
It talks to some of the main actors in the early period about how what was essentially a group of pranksters with no defined structure, started to organise to call out the Church of Scientology, as the latter started taking various members to court.
They later moved on to more serious matters with their involvement in supporting WikiLeaks, and their revelations coming from around the same time; and also the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, helping keeping people online, when their governments were trying to stop their voices being heard.
The group LulzSec and AntiSec sprung from their midst and started attacking randomly seemingly without motive, any and everything they could bring down. And that gave the authorities the excuse they needed to take mass action against the wider grouping, arresting and imprisoning anyone they could identify.
It is not clear whether the group still exists – if indeed it ever did – as an organisation, and there has been much less activity since its peak in 2011-13. It is certainly clear to me that we need this sort of activism in the world again today, when dissidents like Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are once again under attack from the state.
