Media Ethics       Babs Hessing

Summary: Anonymous, we are legion.

We are legion is a documentary about the uprising about a hacktivist hacker group known as anonymous. They have been in the news several times and they have done some incredible things. They started to become an unity on the online platform 4chan. Where they first started as those annoying people who bothered people who in their opinion was awful. They didn’t target people they didn’t like, but people who were generally saying bad things and were intolerant towards other people. They made sure a neo Nazi couldn’t fund his radio show anymore, by ordering expensive things in his name. This was the start of a group that would get more power than they at first could’ve ever imagined. Along the line they recruit actual hackers and more turbulent things happen. They get into an online war with the church of scientology, and they are discovering with how many people they actually are. They call to protest and people in big countries and cities go onto the street, they learn they are not with few hundreds, but at least thousands. They do not stand alone in the fight against oppression. Even though the church of scientology retaliated they suffered severe wounds regarding their credibility. Which I think is really good, because the church of scientology is a dangerous cult. Anonymous starts developing and becomes more organized.

At one point anonymous people separate from the hacktivist group and start their own group where they are way more extreme. Anonymous does not agree with them and did not support them. Lulzsecs. They went about in a way where they were invading the privacy of innocent people. They hacked private accounts and brought that out to the public. Their goal was to reach havoc and chaos. They wanted to make the big companies of America pee their pants, and let them lose their sense of control. And even though anonymous doesn’t agree with their methods they acknowledge that they succeeded in disrupting companies. After a while Lulzsecs stopped and resigned from the internet. After this, anonymous started to target the American government and they succeeded, kind off. They disclosed information which the public had a right to know, however the American government isn’t too keen on people disclosing their secrets. So they hunted a few down and prosecuted them. Some even did jail time. The punishment they got was way too severe than the crime they had committed, and this in a way also shows how unfair some governments act.

In conclusion, anonymous is a large group which is always growing. With every passing year they become more organized and they will take down oppression. They even had a lot to do with the freedom of Tunisia and Egypt. The countries even thanked them in videos. They will continue to fight for what they believe is right. They are anonymous, they do not forgive, they do not forget.