An original member of the international hacktivist gang Anonymous has blown the lid on the highly secretive group for the first time in a newly released documentary.
Gregg Housh described the organization’s rise from a trolling online chat room to a vigilante group exposing neo-Nazis and taking on the Church of Scientology.
What started as a small online trolling group of just 10 people in the US and grew to an international organization of thousands of members, some of whom are ‘now in positions of power’ from state representatives to government advisors.
Anonymous is famous for their masks and secrecy when carrying out high-profile attacks that are often motivated by social or political issues. The organization started in an online chatroom in 2006
Gregg Housh, the original member of the international hacking gang Anonymous has blown the lid on the highly secretive group for the first time in a newly released documentary
Anonymous is famous for their masks and secrecy when carrying out high-profile attacks that are often motivated by social or political issues.
‘Given how secretive the movement has been historically, our documentary team was shocked at how much of an open book Gregg was,’ Joshua Tanner Murphy, the documentary’s producer told DailyMail.com.
Housh started the group in an online chatroom from his basement in 2006 and intended it to be solely used as an online tech forum where every person had to be anonymous.
For about a year it was just users trolling on each other, years before trolling was mainstream, until they went up against someone they believed deserved to threatened – Hal Turner.
Turner was a neo-Nazi radio host who once held up a noose on a CNN interview and said: ‘This is a symbol of justice and you’re going to see a lot more of this in the United States.’
They targeted Turner because he was the type of person you could goad into responding, but an Anonymous member broke into his emails and found out Turner was a cooperating informant for the FBI and was turning in other neo-Nazis to keep himself out of jail.
At this point, more people started joining the cause. ‘They didn’t feel bad about joining’ because this was a bad person they were going after, Housh said.
In June 2009, Turner was sentenced to 33 months in jail for threatening to assault and murder three federal judges over a handgun decision.
The organization’s first major segue into hacktivism came in its war against the religion Scientology, after a video of Tom Cruise promoting the group was posted online in 2008
Global protests surged around the world as thousands of Anons (Anonymous members) planned to stand before Scientology buildings at 9 a.m. local time
Anonymous went through its early years, trying ‘to figure out what power we have, the same thing a teenager goes through in life.’
This led to the cybergroup finding its way into hacktivism by using hacking techniques to support a cause or make a statement.
The organization’s first major segue into hacktivism came in its war against the religion Scientology, after a video of Tom Cruise promoting the group was posted online in 2008.
The video was quickly taken down, but Anonymous found the video and re-posted it online.
One person with the handle Dojo commented on Anonymous’ site, saying that them reposting the video was costing the Scientology organization a lot of money and the media wanted to report on it.
‘So we were asked to write a press release,’ Housh said.
Anonymous made a video message to Scientology that went live on January 21, 2009 at 10:20 p.m.
Before Housh knew it, the video was spread on the news and Anonymous went from a couple hundred users to 10,000 in 42 countries and across 143 cities.
Suddenly, Housh remembered thinking: ‘We’ve got an army. What do we do with it?’
Pictured: Gregg Housh leading Anonymous against Scientology in 2009
One day, Housh was watching the news and saw Tory Magoo – a former Scientology member-turned-critic – dancing and singing in front of the Scientology building in Boston and making anti-Scientology comments.
He re-posted the video on the Anonymous site, writing: ‘This is what it would look like if everyone went outside.’
His comment sparked a global protest as thousands of Anons (Anonymous members) planned to stand before Scientology buildings all over the globe at 9 a.m. local time.
Housh called costume shops to find the cheapest mask that people around the world could buy to protect their anonymity and found they all had one in common – Guy Fawkes from the film ‘Fifth of November.’
Thousands of people showed up in their masks to protest outside of scientology buildings and prevent the organization from recruiting members. Eventually, Scientology buildings were forced to shut down.
Housh called costume shops to find the cheapest mask that people around the world could buy to protect their anonymity and found they all had one in common – Guy Fawkes from the film ‘Fifth of November
A year later, an Australian logged onto the Anon chat to ask for the organization’s help against the local Senate which was planning to pass a censorship law to make pornography illegal on the premise that small-breasted women would cause men to become pedophiles.
Within hours, Housh received a call from an unnamed senator asking him what they need to do to stop Anonymous from releasing their emails.
He claimed he didn’t threaten the senator when he told him that they wouldn’t leak the emails as long as the bill didn’t pass.
The following day, the vote didn’t go through and Housh received a call from the senator thanking him for not releasing the emails.
But it wasn’t until Aaron Barr, who worked for HB Gary Federal, claimed he had a list of Anonymous user names with names and phone numbers attached to the organization’s leaders that the organization really took off.
HB Gary is an IT security company which helped protect the US government, but when Anon hackers accessed the system, they realized the names weren’t Anon members, but was the data of innocent people who had never been part of the group.
HB Gary’s emails revealed it was creating VPNs for the US Air Force to make fake social media profiles in other countries to ‘sway people’s views of America.’
‘That’s really the big start of all-out hacktivism,’ Housh said.
‘They’re in state houses as state representatives and aides in Congress, some even running for congressional seats.
‘They’re in positions of power at corporations. They’re journalists all over the place.
‘… So the answer to ‘who is anonymous today’ is it’s anyone who says they are. We are literally everywhere.’
