Edward Snowden’s decision to leak scores of top-secret U.S. government security documents in 2013 revealed that your most paranoid fantasies are true — they are indeed spying on you storing multitudes of Internet and cellphone data. Snowden’s exile facing charges of espionage and treason in the U.S. shows that where once online hackers and activists might have acted with impunity or at worst a slap on the wrist they’re now branded as terrorists.
Anonymous (identifiable by its signature Guy Fawkes mask) is the most notorious (or seductively mysterious) of online activist organizations. The group has been waging war both private and public from its humble beginnings trolling in chat rooms to attacking targets like the Church of Scientology in 2008 and aiding the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
McGill University professor Gabriella Coleman spent a few years researching the (understandably) elusive group sort of becoming one of them in the process. Besides offering a riveting inspiring and often hilarious history of online trolling and activism her new book Hacker Hoaxer Whistleblower Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous does an admirable job of an almost impossible task: giving the group with its myriad ideas tactics and members a sort of pathology. Coleman’s book is the first and most comprehensive history of Anonymous detailing its members’ transformation from trolls to activists all without losing the lulz (defined by Coleman as “a deviant style of humour and a quasi-mystical state of being”) even if said members occasionally can’t agree on exactly what the shadowy organization is supposed to do. (One thing is gospel however: nobody can seek personal recognition for his or her activities and achievements. Those who do are exiled.)
The opening chapters offer an insider view into the alternately sad funny and vicious world of online trolling from the more benign (kicking users out of chat rooms for violating a code of ever-shifting ethics) to doxing (gathering and releasing someone’s personal info i.e. social security and bank account numbers). Coleman characterizes the group as one that doesn’t typically go seeking causes to rally against instead often getting involved in operations where they’re personally provoked.
Coleman herself plays a part in the book which is a key aspect she says of her role (and profession) as an anthropologist. She also discusses how Anonymous’ candour with her was related to the degree that she was active somewhere between observer and participant. While the book feels like an academic field study at times pausing to assess and explain its autobiographical threads philosophic asides and novelistic plot make it a thrilling read all the more impressive as it’s filled with technical detail.
Unlike other wars fought with money and guns battles fought online are engaged on more equal terms to the extent that the technology whether used by a CIA agent or hacker at home is similar. But the penalties for exposing and attacking corrupt governments is getting harsher with nerds clicking away at computers getting branded as enemies of the state. As Coleman shows groups like Anonymous for all their faults offer a necessary democratic antidote. Though it always makes me wonder: if what’s online is so secret sensitive and damaging why not just pull the plug?
HACKER HOAXER WHISTLEBLOWER SPY: THE MANY FACES OF ANONYMOUS by Gabriella Coleman Verso Books (464 pp.).
