November 24, 2015 • 45 mins
Anonymous is an amorphous group of hacktivists with no single leader or power structure. Some call them heroes, others call them criminals. Can they be both?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know friend House Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Knowles over there.
So this stuff you should know. Yeah, the Web edition. Yeah,
(00:24):
we've heard of the web Uh huh. I want to
point out there's a work party going on. This is
how dedicated we are. Right outside our door, people are
out there drinking and eating and having a good time
and drinking alcohol. We're just in here working free alcohol. Yep.
Even Knolls over there eating right in front of us. Yes,
thanks for that because it's making a lot easier. So um, Chuck, Yes,
(00:49):
have you heard of Anonymous? I have? Indeed, I have
heard of Anonymous as well, because you know, I read
the newspaper and things like that. You're a hip, happening guy.
Super um. But I didn't understand really in any way
how Anonymous actually worked until researching this episode. Very interesting.
I think we should say we're not experts here, probably
(01:11):
going to get some stuff wrong. Let's just hope it's
a little like mostly right rather than maybe like the
Sun episode. We're sorry and advance Anonymous right, So take
take your ire out on us. I think we're in
good shape. Actually, I read one of their key characteristics
(01:32):
is that they don't talk about the group, they don't
disclose their own identity, and they don't attack the media.
Typically they don't. There was actually an attack carried out
by an anonymous offshoot named wool sec that, um, I
guess you could call it an attack of the front
Line PBSS frontline website. Yeah, they posted a fake news
(01:55):
story that said Tupac was alive and well in New Zealand.
I don't know if that really constitutes an attack. I
guess technically it does, but that that did get some
people in the media a little little nervous, like, oh,
is the media now fair game? But I think yeah,
for the most part, we're media. If we're anything right,
I think a we have some listeners who are a
(02:16):
nons which is what anonymous members are called. You think
so absolutely, You're probably right, not a doubt in my mind.
And I think they're gonna love this because they like press,
they like you know, headlines, and they like for people
to know what they're doing. Even though they are in
the shadows as far as their identities they are, they
(02:36):
fully claim what they do and stand behind what they do,
you know. Yeah, And then I mean, I think it's
pretty smart to keep their identities anonymous because there are
a lot of federalities after anybody who does any kind
of computer crime these days, and the laws are really
draconian and really strict and really disproportionately um tough. Yes,
(03:01):
And the government uses some of the same tactics that
Anonymous uses to go after people an anonymous, which which
as we'll see, really ticks Anonymous off. Yeah. They think
they're big fat hypocrites basically, and they have a pretty
decent case in a lot of cases. So chuckers, Um,
I guess let's start at the beginning. Yeah, I don't
(03:22):
want to do that deal where people like you never
even said what Anonymous was, right. So, Anonymous is a
group of activists, hacker activists. That term was coined I
think in either six by a Cult of the Dead
Cow member, which was an early hackers group. They really
kind of set the stage in the eighties and nineties
(03:42):
of what computer hackers and actually telephone hackers initially are
meant to do. And and the idea is that um,
freedom of speech and in the freedom of information is
sacro sanct should not be messed with, and people who
do mess with it deserve to be messed with themselves.
But even that contains real Yeah, and they are. They've
been described as everything from a collective um to a uh,
(04:08):
shape shifting subculture, so that Miko kipon En called them
or Bear Brown, a Texas journalist, said, uh, they're what
they really are as a series of relationships. Yeah, so
it's you know, it's all very secretive. It's not and
we'll get into this more, but it's not an organization
and where they go and meet every week with a
president and of treasurer and they wear their guy Fox
(04:32):
masks and they get together and decide what to do next. Right,
which makes them really, really really difficult to take on
if you're a centralized body like the US federal government,
because really, and what Anonymous is is an idea and
a concept and there's an ever shifting group of people
that come in and out of it. And the whole
(04:52):
idea is pretty simple. If somebody sees a wrong going
on somewhere in the world, and the person and carrying
out that wrong can be gotten to via the Internet,
then they go and they try to rally the troops,
and if enough people say, you know what, you're right,
that is messed up and we should do something about it,
they that that idea will have enough support that what
(05:16):
happens is Anonymous that ends up carrying out an op
an operation against that target, and there you go. Those
people may never join together again for another operation, that
that operation may end up becoming an even larger operation.
It's totally unpredictable and it's completely fluid, and that means
that if you bust some people, which the US government
(05:36):
has done plenty of times, there's gonna be tons of
other people to come take their place. Yeah, you can't
kill Anonymous, uh, And what might happen is everything from
something a little more lighthearted like taking over your website
and replacing the banners with your own messages, to completely
disabling your website altogether so no one can even access it.
(06:00):
The writer named Brian Kelly said there are three key
characteristics of the group. One an unrelenting moral stance on
issues and rights, regardless of direct provocations. In other words,
it's not like someone's messing with Anonymous, so they're gonna
fight back. In fact, it rarely is. It's usually you know,
like Westberg Baptist Church or Scientology. Uh, and that's I
(06:22):
don't I know that that's that covers all of Anonymous.
There's long almost from the beginning, there's long been fractures
in the group between people who just want lulls, which
is like entertaining yourself at other people's expense, basically trolling people,
just a mess with them for last whatever, and others
who say, no, we've got a really powerful weapon here.
(06:42):
The Internet is serious business and we need to go um,
we need to use it for like moral crusades. Basically
uh number two, a physical presence that accompanies the online hacking.
So don't just stop it like disabling someone's website, but
get out in the streets with those Guy Fox masks.
(07:03):
If you've seen the movie V for Fvendetta, or you
know anything about the fifth of November, you know the
mask that I'm referring to. Yeah. Um, And actually that
mask being used by Anonymous goes back even beyond V
for Vendetta. Actually there was a meme called um fail
I think epic fail guy Yeah, and he was the meme.
(07:24):
It was like a stick figure wearing the Guy Fox
mask and everywhere he went. He just screwed everything up.
It's cool mask. Yeah, so they were like, we'll use
that mask. And number three a distinctive brand, which you
know is that guy Fox mask. I mean they're great
at branding. Yeah, you know that. In the in the
suit and tie with a question mark in place of
(07:45):
a head is one of their logos, which is great logo.
And what is there? What is there their logline? We
are Anonymous, we are legion. We do not forgive, we
do not forget, expect us a little creepy. It is
a little creepy. They're scaring. Uh, they're scaring people who
(08:07):
and I'm not scared, but if you're doing something wrong,
then you should be scared, you know what I'm saying. Yes,
And a lot of people will say, well, no, actually
there's um you know, Anonymous will come after you even
if you didn't do anything really wrong. Um, that's not
necessarily true. There are like offshoots to have you know,
come and gone that that do believe much more in
(08:29):
mayhem and stuff like that. But when you think of
Anonymous these days, typically you do think of there is
some sort of moral aspect tomension to the thing that's
being carried out. And it depends on what your definition
of right and wrong is too be there. Clearly a
lot of people think that there anarchists that should be
jailed and throw away the key. There's other people who think, no,
(08:49):
you know what they're they're taking on the immoral corporate giants,
not just corporate giants that are doing really bad things
behind closed doors. Pretty interesting, Oh, it's super interesting. Should
we take a break? Sure? All right, let's take a
break and we'll dig in a little bit more right
after this. Hey, everybody out there in podcast land, we
(09:20):
want to alert your to what we're gonna call a
podcasting event, an event like the moon landing, but for podcasting. Basically,
that's right. It's a new podcast from ge Podcast Theater
and Panopally called The Message. It's an eight episode series
that's pretty much gonna blow your scientific mind. Yep. The
Message follows the story of Nicki Tomlin, a PhD in
linguistics from the University of Chicago, who follows a team
(09:42):
of cryptologists at a research think tank called Cipher. These
researchers are trying to decode a message that was received
from outer space seventy years ago. It's gonna be pretty awesome, man,
that's amazing. And if you want to subscribe, and you
should just go to iTunes look it up or wherever
you get your podcasts. Yeah, we'll be you and that
won't we That's right available now wherever you get podcast
(10:02):
including iTunes, g E, podcast theaters. The message. So, Chuck,
let's go back to the beginning, shall we be? This
whole idea of like, you know, we are legion, we
(10:23):
do not forget, we do not forgive, expect us. That's
a pretty far cry from how Anonymous ended up starting, right. Yeah.
So there's this site um called four chan. Four Chan
has all sorts of what are called image boards, right yeah.
It was created in two thousand three by a fifteen
year old and Christopher Pool. And Christopher Pool's whole thing
(10:43):
was like, I want to have a place on the
Internet that's totally censer free and anonymous. Yes self, no
self censorship. No, there's nobody in charge, there's no rules,
there's no nothing like that. Um, it is just whatever
you want to post, whatever you want to say, you
want to troll somebody troll them, and it's it's it's all.
(11:04):
Let's just not take things too seriously, shall we? But
let's also see how far we can push other people
to take things seriously. And um so four chan attracted
a certain kind of um net is in I guess
pretty quickly off the bat and this one, this one
image board in particular um b slash b slash. It's like, uh,
(11:27):
four chan dot org slash b slashes, it's the random board,
it's whatever. Um people started kind of congregating there and
finding that um, they they all shared this kind of
like desire to mess with people. Yeah, and then Anonymous
sort of evolved out of that because there were some
(11:48):
people saying, you know what, let's step this up a
notch and let's not just goof off and have fun.
Let's actually let's like actually trying to accomplish something for good. Yeah,
and again that caused that caused a riff, like right
from the beginning because some of the people were like, no, originally,
we're doing this for fun. There was this thing called
the Hebo Hotel, which is basically like a kind of
(12:10):
a weird second life hang out that they went and
infiltrated and just populated UM with characters that would like
block the pool or basically just like shut down the site,
take it over, just to mess with people, and it
was fun. They were having fun doing it, just screwing
with people, and other people said, um, no, let's use
(12:33):
this for good. And that actually kind of came accidentally
out of messing with a guy named Hal Turner. Have
you heard of him? Uh? Hal Turner? Right? So Hal
Turner was this um extraordinarily racist radio host and he
UM got pranked by some of the original four Chun
(12:53):
message board members, right Uh. He was getting like prank
calls or whatever, and he recorded the calls and some
how got the data and UM published it on his
site or released it to his fans and said, hey,
why don't you guys go figure out who these people are?
And they figured out some of them, including some underage
message board members whose parents addresses were posted now on
(13:14):
this virulently racist radio hosts UM website. And so the
people from Fortune said take that down, and he said no,
and they said, okay, well that was your one warning
and they went to town on this guy. And by
the time they were done with Hal Turner, UM, he
was off the air. He was off the air, UM
(13:35):
and in prison for I think a couple of years,
threatening federal judges. They basically went and found like all
these emails and stuff and just published everything, including like
his home address, all this stuff. They took like his
tactic and just turned it on him a million times over.
And that was the one where people said, hey, we
just did something really good. We just got a racist
(13:59):
radio host off air that was thrilling. We should use
our stuff for good. And again some people said no,
we're just in it for the lulls. Other people said no,
we should do this morally. And then even other people said, well,
wait a minute, wait a minute, what are you guys doing,
Like that guy had a right to free speech and
you just drove him off the air. How can you
possibly be proud of that? The prong that said no,
there was some good moral dimension to what we just
(14:21):
did using our computing skills for good. What we determine
is good, um, is that's the direction we should go.
And it kind of took off from there. It was
supported by the Operation against Scientology. Yeah, that came along
in the two thousand and eight. That was one of
their first big ops. It's called the Channeology And basically
(14:42):
what they came across was a video UM that we've well,
I was about say, we've all seen everybody obsessed with Scientology,
but to the famous Tom Cruise video where he's um, oh,
he's sort of just rambling and he seems a little
crazy and cookie and talking about Scientology, and it got
out there and Scientology said, um, not very smartly, like,
(15:06):
we want to remove this from the Internet, which is impossible.
I can't do that because it's two thousand eight at
the time, but they were doing a pretty good job
of it. Apparently, Yeah, I saw it, and this was
before the channelogy op so they were trying to get
it down and UM anonymous basically city you know it. Now,
(15:26):
what we're gonna do is, we're gonna we're gonna attack
your website. We're gonna get your everything about Scientology off
the internet. We're gonna um what's it called a di
DOS attack, right, a distributed denial of service attack, which
is kind of key to an anonymous op um. They
attacked Google um with a google bomb for Scientology, So
(15:47):
if you typed in dangerous cult, it directed you to
the Scientology website. They had hundreds and hundreds of pizzas
ordered and sent to Scientology offices worldwide, have you heard
of black faxes. Yeah, they sent them jet black facts
so they would just run out of the ink right
over and over again. Yeah, which all you know, those
are all pretty silly, little harmless um pranks. The Scientologists
(16:12):
didn't take it that way. No, they weren't happy. In fact,
I think they went to the FBI. They did, you
need to look into these people, right, and so we
have to we have to pause her for a second
and point something out. One um. With both the hell
Turner oup and Project Channology, a lot of people say, like,
oh man, they went after this um, this racist uh
radio host and got him off the air. So they
(16:34):
went after Scientology, which is a roundly hated cult and
and tried to drive them out of business. And the
idea is it just stops there. But if you go
a little further, both of those operations were based on
infractions by the offending parties against the Internet. Hell Turner
posted underage four chain users parents addresses on his website.
(16:56):
Wouldn't take it down. That's a rule broken. That's why
they went an after him. Scientology. They tried to censor
the Internet, and Anonymous thinks of the Internet is like
their Internet they're the cops of the Internet as far
as they're concerned, and the Internet is not to be
messed with, and they protected like that. UM. And so
when Scientology tried to take that video down and was
trying to sue people who kept it up, that was
(17:19):
that was censorship ship of the Internet. That's why Anonymous
went after the Internet. But again, just like the Hall
Trener operation, the the Project Channology thing took on this
moral dimension and Anonymous was called upon just by UM
a guy named Mark Bunker, who was already an ardent
critic of Scientologists, and he said, why don't you guys
(17:39):
like use your your your what you're doing for legal
productive ways, And so Anonymous called for actual physical protests
of Scientology's churches around the world. Yeah, and I think
now that's that's become one of their hallmarks. That's why
they want to pair the activist activity with a physical
presence and a YouTube video which says have you ever
(18:02):
seen those? Yeah, they're creepy and awesome they are. They're
really well done. It looks it's it's just the whole
thing is like very Mr robot esque, right, And with
every with every video that they released, with every operation,
they release a video ahead of time saying what's gonna happen,
what's going down? Right? Yeah, exactly. And it's very smart
to do that because number one, um, they're they're taking
(18:22):
account they're showing that they're accountable for their actions. They're
taking accountability for it. But also it keeps them from
being scapegoated, and it keeps other people from claiming uh
their work, you know. Yeah. In two thousand ten, with
Operation Payback, UM, they realized they found out that MasterCard, Visa,
and PayPal said we're gonna stop. You won't be able
(18:45):
to donate to wiki leaks using our services anymore. We're
gonna shut that down, which in and of itself they
figured was bad, but as evidence they went and found like,
um skinhead websites that you could still donate to using
those three mechanisms, but you couldn't donate to wiki leaks.
They were like, okay, that's messed up. Yeah, so they said,
(19:06):
you know what we're gonna do, Um, We're gonna shut
you guys down. And they did. It was a cyber attack,
and they disabled the home pages of Visa, master Card,
and PayPal and um, you know, gloated they had their
own special little smarmie messages back like U. There are
some things Wiki leaks can't do. For everything else, there's
operation payback. Yeah, And so like I said before, with UM,
(19:29):
with an anonymous ops like that, people may disband and
never worked together in another one, or your operation may
grow to include even more stuff. An operation payback is
a really good example of the ladder of those two.
It started out because UM at some point the United
States government hired an Indian firm, an Indian software firm
UM to launch d d o S attacks on these
(19:53):
two sites, Mega Upload and pirates Bay, and UM shut
them down basically. And both of those are file sharing sites,
typically illegal file sharing sites. And so the US government
was using the same tactics d d o S attacks
that they were also prosecuting the hackers and an Anonymous
(20:14):
for using. But they were using it with impunity, and
that really ticked Anonymous off. And we should also say
what a d d o S is, right, So Chuck,
it's basically it's taking when you contact a website. When
you go to a website, you're contacting its server to
request all the information on the page. If a bunch
of people do that at once, the server becomes overloaded
(20:34):
and the people who legitimately want to use the site
can't get in, or the server becomes so overloaded the
site crashes down right. So one of anonymous is key
tactics is to do a distributed anallyis service where a
bunch of people are doing that all at once, hitting
the site to overload it. And then there's even software
called the low orbit Ion Cannon which anybody can go
(20:55):
download and use and you type in a U r
L and this thing like really hits a site like
it's like a bunch of people all at once hitting
it with just this one computer. Um, we should say
that you can be prosecuted, and many people have been
prosecuted in says, to jail just for using that. Yeah,
not unless you're the U. S. Government. Again, but that's
what set off Operation Payback was that the government was
(21:17):
using these the same tactic that they were prosecuting other
people for. Yeah, and uh, because they didn't want any confusion, um,
and for people to say, oh, yeah, well they clearly
just want to download movies for free and stuff like that.
They have their YouTube video where they're like, no, that's
not why we're doing this, right, We're doing that because
you guys are using the same taxics tactics that you're
(21:38):
prosecuting us for for other people for exactly, and so
Operation Payback. Then at about that time they found out
about the Wiki League stop payment from UM PayPal and
MasterCard and Visa, and they extended it even further. PayPal
said it costs them five and a half million bucks. Yeah,
which is a small dent and PayPal, but still it's
(21:58):
you know, no, it is substantial. The idea though. UM.
There's this really great UH documentary that's that's available for
free on Anonymous official YouTube channel. I haven't seen that
when this one's called the Story of Anonymous UM and
it's it's pretty good. It's very straightforward, and it's got
(22:18):
a lot of the people who were involved in the
early days UM. And I think he goes up to
like two thousand eleven or twelve UM, but it's definitely
worth watching. But it interviews this kid who downloaded the
low orbit ion cannon and engaged in UM project channelogy
against scientology, right, and the FBI came to his door
(22:38):
and arrested him, and he got like he's he I
think he got like time served, so he didn't actually
have to serve prison time, but he was um like
he wasn't allowed near a computer for twelve months or
else he would be arrested. Um And it was really
bizarre punishment considering that he was just requesting the Church
(22:59):
of Science Atology's website for its information to it to
the nth degree. But that was it. He didn't make
any threats, he didn't order any pizzas, he didn't do anything.
And when you when you think of the other term
for d d O S attacks, they're called virtual sit ins.
It really kind of drives home the idea that this
is a form of protest that's being harshly, harshly punished
(23:22):
by the federal government in the US, which is really strange.
Like there's a Wired article written by a guy named
Tore Ecklin who's a very famous lawyer for these kinds
of cases, and um, it's called America must end its
paranoid war on hackers, And he really kind of lays
it out there, like here's what's going on. Like most
(23:43):
people don't realize this, but there's a there's an untoward
amount of punishment being leveled at people who are protesting
stuff legitimately by using things like d d O S
attacks And they're going to prison for like ten years
for this stuff, and that's messed up, it says, and
I agree, I agree to. Uh. Some of the other
(24:05):
things they've done. We mentioned Westboro Baptist Church UM, which
a lot of people just say as a hate group
in disguise as a church. I think it's labeled by
by the government as such. Well, they would like take
over their website and put messages of peace and tolerance.
Probably really rankled them. Uh. They would pose as uh
(24:27):
young girls online to Laura in sexual predators and then
send that information to the police to expose pedophiles. Uh.
What else have they done? Well, they were instrumental in
the Arab spring. Yeah, they basically had a pretty large
hand Anonymous did in um overthrowing the Egyptian government. Yeah,
(24:47):
they like to top of dictators. Yes. And the reason why,
specifically in Egypt that really ticked them off was Mubarik
shut off the Internet. And again, just like with hal Turner,
just like with scientology, just like with the government, you
don't mess with the Internet if you don't want to
excite uh, Anonymous, as I are right, UM, and so
they they helped Egyptian dissidents by UM basically instructing them
(25:13):
on how to get the internet back online there, how
to set up like virtual networks UM that couldn't be
shut down by the government. Some of them went to
the point of just communicating with these people and then
turning those communications into tweets for them, and then they
also disseminated video of the government UM carrying out violence
(25:34):
against protesters and spread it out to the world. They
had a huge hand in the Arab spring, not just
in Egypt and in Tunisia as well. Yeah, they've they've
also had their hand in the the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, UM,
Occupy Wall Street, UM, untold amounts of like police brutality
cases or a police cover ups. Stupenville rape case, that
(25:57):
was a big one. Yeah, in two thousand twelve, sixteen
year old girl sixteen year old girl was sexually assaulted
and they found out, you know what, there's a cover
up going on here. So there was an offshoot called
night KAY and I g h D SEC and they
launched a crusade that said, you know what, here's what's
going on here. There's a cover up going on. Uh,
(26:18):
And they finally uncovered and publicized the names of two
star players in the high school football team that allegedly
committed this assault. That we're being covered up. So it
was a big deal, they basically and and it was.
That's a perfect example of an anonymous op. Right, there's
an injustice in this little tiny corner of the world
where Ohio meets West Virginia that no one else had
(26:39):
ever heard about. That somebody got onto the four cham
board and tell told everybody about this, and people started
saying enough, people started saying we should do something about this.
And um, they they left the message board, hit the
I r C Internet relay chat channels right and started
communicating with one another and figuring out how to launch
(27:00):
this attack and what to do and who to attack.
And then they attacked and and in the real world
there were repercussions. And that's that's anonymous. This whole jam
is they go do something, get a bunch of headlines.
And then not only did anonymous do this, Why did
Anonymous do this? Who did they do it too? Oh,
we should go look at that. And now all of
(27:20):
a sudden, this little tiny corner of where Ohio, West Virginia.
Everybody's heard of and everybody's heard about it in the absolute, wet,
worse terms. That's an anonymous operation. And then all the
people who who were part of it disbanded. But on
the other hand, UM, the data dump that Anonymous had
about about Steubenville, the rape case UM contain a lot
(27:44):
of unvetted facts and things like that, and a lot
of people were unfairly treated, targeted from the docks thing
that resulted. So, I mean, I guess the point is
that Stephenville is a good example of how anonymous UM,
even when herring out some sort of moral justice, also
has a there's an amoral dimension to it, and that
(28:05):
there's a lot of innocent people who can become casualties
as a result too. There's actually a really good Gawker
article about UM stuben Ville a year later. I think
it was UM the town that was torn apart by
what two people did or something like that. Alright, so
let's uh, let's take a quick break here and we'll
come back and we'll talk about who Anonymous is and uh,
(28:26):
how you can become a member right after this. Alright,
(28:51):
So Anonymous is UM. It's tough to define it's stuff
to pinpoint because they are hiding in plain sight. There's
not You can't go to anonymous dot com and and
sign up for their newsletter and buy your mask in
the in the store and um, say I want to
become a member, just fill out this application. Uh, it
(29:13):
doesn't work that way. You should probably not accept applications
to be a part of anonymous because it's probably a setup. Yes, exactly.
But there is something called a non news which does
post information about ops. Uh, you're probably not gonna you're
not gonna learn too much inside real information as a
casual Internet browser. No. And it's more like, um, if
(29:37):
you follow a non news on Twitter, say you may
like for operation payback. Um, I think they listed like
the visa site or something and they said fire at will,
and um, it was a link to the low orbit
ion cannon and the visa website that you post that
you r l in and it was a way to
(29:57):
just get anybody involved in the d D O S thing.
The problem is is that that's that is that can
be very dangerous if you're just a casual person downloading
low or a bit ion canon and you're just doing
this because you're having fun helping Anonymous and you're not
covering your trucks in any way, shape or form. In
the FBI comes and knocks on your door, you may
be facing several years in jail because they're looking to
(30:19):
make an example out of you. Absolutely no, you gotta
do a lot of work in fact to even get
in there. Uh. And once you find yourself um in
one of these forums where there's real information being discussed,
you sort of need to prove your worth uh with
either ideas or specific skill or knowledge you might have.
And then you may be invited to participate in one
(30:40):
way or another as an ANON. And again, even if
you are at the top of your game at at
what anybody in the media would think of as like
a member of Anonymous, like one of the true um,
the long term members who's done a lot of ops. Um,
you can still get busted. A guy named Jeremy Hammond
was busted and got years or some stuff. Named Barrett
(31:02):
Brown was busted and got five years for some stuff.
And all again, all of this is just computer crime
we're talking about. So again, if this is really like
cranking your case, just there's a there's a lot of
repercussions to this. Yeah, there's there's a misconception to that.
(31:22):
UM it is Uh, it's a bunch of brilliant UM
code writers and hackers. Apparently only about a fifth of
ANNs or true hackers. UM. Who who said that? Um,
there's an anthropologist, Gabriella Coleman. Actually, UM, she is an
expert at Anonymous and has written several books and is
(31:45):
in that documentary I was talking about. So only a
fifth or are hackers and the rest are quote geets
and protesters. But UM, apparently you don't have to be
some brilliant hacker. They will call on you if you
have some other skill, if you have good ideas, if
you're a graphics signer, if you're have if you're a
good writer, you can help put together a press release,
(32:05):
if you're a filmmaker and you want to do these
YouTube videos. There's all sorts of ways that UM, you
can contribute if you want to contribute and being ANN
aside from being a coder. UM and the idea that
they're completely what's put out there is that they have
no hierarchy whatsoever, that everyone's equal, everyone has equal footing,
There is no leader whatsoever. UM. It is just this
(32:28):
big amorphous group of a non's that isn't entirely accurate. Um,
they may not have a president and vice president per
se or a treasurer, but um, supposedly they do have uh,
four or five people who are really good at doing
what they do. So they sort of take turns emerging
(32:48):
as the leader of a specific op maybe because then
the fall of the background in another perhaps and you
become a leader whether you want to be or not,
based on your skills as an organizer. Yeah. Um, if
you are just naturally somebody who can rally the troops,
then your ops are going to be the most successful
because you're gonna attract the most people, and um, you're
(33:11):
going to attract the guy who wants to put out
like a good video for it. You're gonna get the
most results. You're gonna get the most information, the biggest
data dumps. Just naturally, that's how it happens. And people
follow like, Commander X does it did a really great
job on that ops, so let's listen and hear what
he does next, right, But then other people are like, well,
Commander X, you need to shut your mouth because you
(33:31):
talk to the media and even though you've been you know,
in in the hacker culture since the eighties or whatever.
You Um, you have a loud mouth, and that's not
cool for this. So on on a message board, he
could be getting deferential respect. Commander X is a real person,
by the way, UM, and he could be being called
(33:52):
opposer at the same time, and both of those comments
have equal weight on the message board no matter how
long Commander X has been doing this. Yeah, there's a
lot of duality with anonymous UM. Some people look at
him as a as a beacon of light for those
who don't have a voice. UM. Attorney General UH Eric
Holder in two thousand thirteen said they are a steadily
(34:13):
increasing threat to America's economy and national security interests. Uh.
People uh A, nons will say, you know what, I
don't say that because we're not We're not stealing money,
we're not robbing h banks digitally, we're not after financial
gain at all. UM. We're out to expose people that
(34:33):
are doing bad things for the most part. And but
like you said earlier, though, when they're offshoots, there's always
gonna be bad apples. I guess, yeah, there are. I mean, like,
for example, the Westboro Baptist Church. They did, um, they doxed.
It's where you get the person's personal information, home address,
phone number, all that stuff and post it out to
the masses. That's tricky and dangerous, it is, but it's
(34:57):
Fred Phelps, so nobody really shed a tear the problem
as they also did that the Libby Phelps, who was
Fred Phelps, his granddaughter who had very publicly distanced herself
from the church and denounced it and said, I don't
agree with what my grandfather des ert says. She's still
got docs out there and my personal information exactly. So
so yeah, there's a lot of like lull sec is
another another example they they were They were this group
(35:21):
I think of like six or seven people, um, who
carried out what's commonly called fifty Days of Mayhem where
they just went crazy. They just hit whoever they wanted.
The Uh. This this business called Magnets dot com got
hit because they called their customer service reps and asked
them how magnets work, and the customer service reps couldn't
tell them, so they launched an operation against them. They
(35:43):
should have told them listen to our podcast on Max
totally should have I assume that our podcast probably spurred
that phone call to begin with. But um, so, yeah,
there are groups that do this. But then overall, if
you think about Anonymous, it is they do the ones
that get the most pressed, the ops they could most press,
usually have the most moral to mention, it makes Anonymous
seem the most robin hoodie. Like the Ku Klux Klan dump, Yeah,
(36:07):
that just happened within the past couple of weeks, and
they went after the clan and um got doses on
several hundred members. And I don't think there were any
huge revelations necessarily, and there there were a few, Okay,
so there were some. But the point is they went
after the clan and they basically shined a light on
the idea that the clan is still very much around. Yeah,
(36:29):
but there were also people, I think there was a
senator or congress person or something that was exposed that
were like, I have never been involved in the clan.
So there was there was a separate dump that occurred
before the actual one that Anonymous came. Because they can
communicate with the media, they're able to do this and
they said, that wasn't us, that's not our research. We
can't vouch for that interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean,
(36:53):
like I said, that's that's tricky business. When you're exposing people,
those are real lives. Um, you better make sure you've
done your homework and you've gotten it right, you know
what I mean. And I think Anonymous thinks they're getting
it right. Yeah. I think they tend to think that. Sure,
Like I don't think they're just generally going about their
(37:14):
business willy nilly because they want to be effective to
not get a bad rap. They don't want to have
anything that people can use against them, you know, to
say like, well look what they did here. They were
completely wrong. Yeah. At the same time, though, there is
definitely a thread of you know, appreciating Mayhem for Mayhem's sake,
and with some people who who work under the anonymous
(37:35):
banner as well well, which is what you're gonna get
when you're not a well defined like group with boundaries.
When you're this a morphous everyone is anonymous type of thing,
you know you're gonna have that happen. But I think
it is kind of a pretty astounding that despite no
central authority whatsoever, it isn't just more like crazy and
frenetic and just way more Mayhem centric that it actually
(37:57):
does carry out these ops that do have like repercussions
that the average person can look at and say, I
kind of agree with that, Like I agree with the
outcome of this. I think somebody got there due who
had it coming anything else I do. There's one last thing,
so that the name anonymous came from four Chan. If
you log into four chan, you can post anonymously, like
(38:18):
you said I think early on. The whole reason why
it's because that just helps the keep people from self
censoring because you're posting anonymously. But then the this joke
kind of developed on four Chan that Anonymous all these
people with the thing that the anonymous handle, we're really
just one omnipresent person. And that's where the using that
(38:39):
term for these ops, this group, this collective group came from.
Did you ever go to Fortune? Did you check it out?
I've never felt so old than when but even Reddit
does that to me. I just go to Yeah, read
it's definitely look like that, and I'm just like I
don't even know where to look, you know, I feel
like an old man for sure. Yeah, And I'm like
(39:00):
I don't understand what this means. I'm sure it's hilarious,
but I don't understand it. Some of it's funny on
its face, for sure, but others just like, yeah, I
spent a little time on four Chune earlier today just
sort of looking around and yeah, it's not my bag.
But people are into it. They definitely are. Yes, Uh,
you got anything else, dude? No. I thought I enjoyed
(39:22):
this and I thought it was good. Oh we left
out the HP Gary thing. What's that? So? So in
a few years back, this security company named HB Gary.
The CEO named Aaron Barr came out to the Financial
Times and said, I've infiltrated Anonymous. I know who all
the top guys are, and I'm going to the FBI
with it. So some people in Anonymous, so let's go
(39:43):
see what this guy's talking about. Cracked into their website,
found out he was totally full of it, but found
a presentation that's that had all these dirty tricks for
undermining Anonymous and wiki leaks and like getting people to
turn on one another all that. So they're like, we're
gonna go after this guy because he was He was
publicly boasting too that he was going to take down Anonymous,
and that is not a smart thing to do. No,
(40:04):
And there's actually in that Anonymous UM documentary. Uh, there's
some hilarious clips from Stephen Colbert explaining what this guy
did and equated it too. He put his penis into
a hornet's nest and this is gonna turn out about
the same way and it did physical reaction. Yeah. Image,
So the guy the CEO ends up stepping down a
(40:24):
CEO and like drops out of public. They totally just
really got the guy and and really I think they Yeah,
it was that was a dumb thing to do on
his part, But not only was it dumb for him personally,
it also gave Anonymous a really great opportunity to show
just how you don't mess with Anonymous. You know, that
was it. That's Anonymous. If you want to know more, seriously,
(40:48):
go check out that UM. Well, every documentary you can
see that's over an hour and a half long is
probably pretty good. And then also there's this UM there's
a presy by a person named Choi Ju Hook called
Copy of Anonymous, which is a really great basic explainer
on Anonymous and how it works and functions. By it
sounds like somebody who's at least hung out with members
(41:10):
if if isn't one himself for herself, I bet you
you've hung out with a member of Anonymous. We may
have one or two in this office. You never know
my bunnies on Ben Bowlin sure stuff, but he's such
an obvious choice. It's got to be somebody wouldn't think
they don't want you to know? Yeah, Like is it you, Chuck?
It's yeah, it's like it's a Holly from stuff you
(41:32):
mis't right, Yeah, she loves star wars and activists. If
you want to know more about Anonymous, also, you can
go type that word into the search part how stuffworks
dot com instance, they said search parts time for listener mail. Yeah,
and speaking of mail, if you are an Anonymous member,
right us because I want to know something. I don't
(41:55):
know if I'm gonna buy it though somebody's like, I'm
an Anonymous dear Josh and Chuck. Yeah, love Arey from
Gary Jones at No. But if I get some weird
and cryptic thing, uh, I don't know. I think we'll
mem what if we like posted video to YouTube and
be awesome unless it's saying like we're coming after you
guys know, did we do a good job? Um? All
(42:18):
right listener mail, what is this? Um, I'm just gonna
call it from an English listener. Hey, guys, I'm just
an eighteen year old from the UK, but you have
my most sincere congratulations for running the bets podcast out there.
And I've listened to Cereal right. Your flowing conversation style
works so well and it's always a pleasure listening to you. Uh.
(42:38):
And you guys have to compete with British radio voices,
so that's saying something. It really is because they are class.
Having burned through eight hundred two episodes and seven months,
I finally ended in a wonderful, spooky spectacular. You have
been there with me through break up, six flights, eight
long distance trains, three A levels, which is some sort
(43:00):
of education thing in England. Oh, I think that's um
like exams finals, four new jobs, one bite crash, one
results day. All of this in six months, uh, seven months,
an InterRail trip around Europe and a very lonely night
in Brighton train station. Four jobs in seven months? Is
this guy? Hit man? You have four new jobs? Huh? Interesting?
(43:23):
It's been a crazy time in my life, sounds like it,
and you've been the constant that's kept me saying so big,
thanks to all of you. That's awesome. I show no favoritism.
You've made it, Barrel, I think you're saying, like between us, Yeah,
you run an awesome podcast. Keep it up, look forward
to the next eight hundred. Do you have one question?
Do you guys get along when the mic is off?
Fantastic chemistry and I've always wondered if it overcomes from
(43:45):
your friendship or if you two are just the most
professional people ever. I've gone on too long. All the best,
Hector Leech Clay. Thanks. Oh that's a British name. Uh,
you guys better come to the UK for a live show.
We are yes, and of course we get along off
the air. We would not you've seen our TV show.
You know we're not actors. We would not be able
to take our way through this. Check has been gazing
(44:07):
into my eyes this whole episode. Yeah, if it was
this not some Sunshine Boys situation? Was that? Um? Is
that George Burns? Just feel google at people Sunshine Boys.
That'll it'll all become clear. Nice good reference. Thanks Hector
Leech Clay Esquire the third Yeah, or he's Hector Leech
(44:29):
from Clay. I don't know it's Clay at place? Is
it Leech hyphen clay because that would be his last name,
but that they know, they do that a lot over there,
big on that. Yeah, um, well thanks a lot, Hector.
We appreciate that, and thank you for not playing flavors.
Isn't that the ideal human somebody who appreciates us both equally? Sure?
Sure so um. If you want to get in touch
(44:50):
with us, you can tweet to us at s y
s K podcast tweet. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, book book, You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, us to
how stuff Works dot com type type, and as always,
joined us at at home on the web Stuff you
Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
(45:13):
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.
Yah
Welcome to you stuff you should know friend House Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Knowles over there.
So this stuff you should know. Yeah, the Web edition. Yeah,
(00:24):
we've heard of the web Uh huh. I want to
point out there's a work party going on. This is
how dedicated we are. Right outside our door, people are
out there drinking and eating and having a good time
and drinking alcohol. We're just in here working free alcohol. Yep.
Even Knolls over there eating right in front of us. Yes,
thanks for that because it's making a lot easier. So um, Chuck, Yes,
(00:49):
have you heard of Anonymous? I have? Indeed, I have
heard of Anonymous as well, because you know, I read
the newspaper and things like that. You're a hip, happening guy.
Super um. But I didn't understand really in any way
how Anonymous actually worked until researching this episode. Very interesting.
I think we should say we're not experts here, probably
(01:11):
going to get some stuff wrong. Let's just hope it's
a little like mostly right rather than maybe like the
Sun episode. We're sorry and advance Anonymous right, So take
take your ire out on us. I think we're in
good shape. Actually, I read one of their key characteristics
(01:32):
is that they don't talk about the group, they don't
disclose their own identity, and they don't attack the media.
Typically they don't. There was actually an attack carried out
by an anonymous offshoot named wool sec that, um, I
guess you could call it an attack of the front
Line PBSS frontline website. Yeah, they posted a fake news
(01:55):
story that said Tupac was alive and well in New Zealand.
I don't know if that really constitutes an attack. I
guess technically it does, but that that did get some
people in the media a little little nervous, like, oh,
is the media now fair game? But I think yeah,
for the most part, we're media. If we're anything right,
I think a we have some listeners who are a
(02:16):
nons which is what anonymous members are called. You think
so absolutely, You're probably right, not a doubt in my mind.
And I think they're gonna love this because they like press,
they like you know, headlines, and they like for people
to know what they're doing. Even though they are in
the shadows as far as their identities they are, they
(02:36):
fully claim what they do and stand behind what they do,
you know. Yeah, And then I mean, I think it's
pretty smart to keep their identities anonymous because there are
a lot of federalities after anybody who does any kind
of computer crime these days, and the laws are really
draconian and really strict and really disproportionately um tough. Yes,
(03:01):
And the government uses some of the same tactics that
Anonymous uses to go after people an anonymous, which which
as we'll see, really ticks Anonymous off. Yeah. They think
they're big fat hypocrites basically, and they have a pretty
decent case in a lot of cases. So chuckers, Um,
I guess let's start at the beginning. Yeah, I don't
(03:22):
want to do that deal where people like you never
even said what Anonymous was, right. So, Anonymous is a
group of activists, hacker activists. That term was coined I
think in either six by a Cult of the Dead
Cow member, which was an early hackers group. They really
kind of set the stage in the eighties and nineties
(03:42):
of what computer hackers and actually telephone hackers initially are
meant to do. And and the idea is that um,
freedom of speech and in the freedom of information is
sacro sanct should not be messed with, and people who
do mess with it deserve to be messed with themselves.
But even that contains real Yeah, and they are. They've
been described as everything from a collective um to a uh,
(04:08):
shape shifting subculture, so that Miko kipon En called them
or Bear Brown, a Texas journalist, said, uh, they're what
they really are as a series of relationships. Yeah, so
it's you know, it's all very secretive. It's not and
we'll get into this more, but it's not an organization
and where they go and meet every week with a
president and of treasurer and they wear their guy Fox
(04:32):
masks and they get together and decide what to do next. Right,
which makes them really, really really difficult to take on
if you're a centralized body like the US federal government,
because really, and what Anonymous is is an idea and
a concept and there's an ever shifting group of people
that come in and out of it. And the whole
(04:52):
idea is pretty simple. If somebody sees a wrong going
on somewhere in the world, and the person and carrying
out that wrong can be gotten to via the Internet,
then they go and they try to rally the troops,
and if enough people say, you know what, you're right,
that is messed up and we should do something about it,
they that that idea will have enough support that what
(05:16):
happens is Anonymous that ends up carrying out an op
an operation against that target, and there you go. Those
people may never join together again for another operation, that
that operation may end up becoming an even larger operation.
It's totally unpredictable and it's completely fluid, and that means
that if you bust some people, which the US government
(05:36):
has done plenty of times, there's gonna be tons of
other people to come take their place. Yeah, you can't
kill Anonymous, uh, And what might happen is everything from
something a little more lighthearted like taking over your website
and replacing the banners with your own messages, to completely
disabling your website altogether so no one can even access it.
(06:00):
The writer named Brian Kelly said there are three key
characteristics of the group. One an unrelenting moral stance on
issues and rights, regardless of direct provocations. In other words,
it's not like someone's messing with Anonymous, so they're gonna
fight back. In fact, it rarely is. It's usually you know,
like Westberg Baptist Church or Scientology. Uh, and that's I
(06:22):
don't I know that that's that covers all of Anonymous.
There's long almost from the beginning, there's long been fractures
in the group between people who just want lulls, which
is like entertaining yourself at other people's expense, basically trolling people,
just a mess with them for last whatever, and others
who say, no, we've got a really powerful weapon here.
(06:42):
The Internet is serious business and we need to go um,
we need to use it for like moral crusades. Basically
uh number two, a physical presence that accompanies the online hacking.
So don't just stop it like disabling someone's website, but
get out in the streets with those Guy Fox masks.
(07:03):
If you've seen the movie V for Fvendetta, or you
know anything about the fifth of November, you know the
mask that I'm referring to. Yeah. Um, And actually that
mask being used by Anonymous goes back even beyond V
for Vendetta. Actually there was a meme called um fail
I think epic fail guy Yeah, and he was the meme.
(07:24):
It was like a stick figure wearing the Guy Fox
mask and everywhere he went. He just screwed everything up.
It's cool mask. Yeah, so they were like, we'll use
that mask. And number three a distinctive brand, which you
know is that guy Fox mask. I mean they're great
at branding. Yeah, you know that. In the in the
suit and tie with a question mark in place of
(07:45):
a head is one of their logos, which is great logo.
And what is there? What is there their logline? We
are Anonymous, we are legion. We do not forgive, we
do not forget, expect us a little creepy. It is
a little creepy. They're scaring. Uh, they're scaring people who
(08:07):
and I'm not scared, but if you're doing something wrong,
then you should be scared, you know what I'm saying. Yes,
And a lot of people will say, well, no, actually
there's um you know, Anonymous will come after you even
if you didn't do anything really wrong. Um, that's not
necessarily true. There are like offshoots to have you know,
come and gone that that do believe much more in
(08:29):
mayhem and stuff like that. But when you think of
Anonymous these days, typically you do think of there is
some sort of moral aspect tomension to the thing that's
being carried out. And it depends on what your definition
of right and wrong is too be there. Clearly a
lot of people think that there anarchists that should be
jailed and throw away the key. There's other people who think, no,
(08:49):
you know what they're they're taking on the immoral corporate giants,
not just corporate giants that are doing really bad things
behind closed doors. Pretty interesting, Oh, it's super interesting. Should
we take a break? Sure? All right, let's take a
break and we'll dig in a little bit more right
after this. Hey, everybody out there in podcast land, we
(09:20):
want to alert your to what we're gonna call a
podcasting event, an event like the moon landing, but for podcasting. Basically,
that's right. It's a new podcast from ge Podcast Theater
and Panopally called The Message. It's an eight episode series
that's pretty much gonna blow your scientific mind. Yep. The
Message follows the story of Nicki Tomlin, a PhD in
linguistics from the University of Chicago, who follows a team
(09:42):
of cryptologists at a research think tank called Cipher. These
researchers are trying to decode a message that was received
from outer space seventy years ago. It's gonna be pretty awesome, man,
that's amazing. And if you want to subscribe, and you
should just go to iTunes look it up or wherever
you get your podcasts. Yeah, we'll be you and that
won't we That's right available now wherever you get podcast
(10:02):
including iTunes, g E, podcast theaters. The message. So, Chuck,
let's go back to the beginning, shall we be? This
whole idea of like, you know, we are legion, we
(10:23):
do not forget, we do not forgive, expect us. That's
a pretty far cry from how Anonymous ended up starting, right. Yeah.
So there's this site um called four chan. Four Chan
has all sorts of what are called image boards, right yeah.
It was created in two thousand three by a fifteen
year old and Christopher Pool. And Christopher Pool's whole thing
(10:43):
was like, I want to have a place on the
Internet that's totally censer free and anonymous. Yes self, no
self censorship. No, there's nobody in charge, there's no rules,
there's no nothing like that. Um, it is just whatever
you want to post, whatever you want to say, you
want to troll somebody troll them, and it's it's it's all.
(11:04):
Let's just not take things too seriously, shall we? But
let's also see how far we can push other people
to take things seriously. And um so four chan attracted
a certain kind of um net is in I guess
pretty quickly off the bat and this one, this one
image board in particular um b slash b slash. It's like, uh,
(11:27):
four chan dot org slash b slashes, it's the random board,
it's whatever. Um people started kind of congregating there and
finding that um, they they all shared this kind of
like desire to mess with people. Yeah, and then Anonymous
sort of evolved out of that because there were some
(11:48):
people saying, you know what, let's step this up a
notch and let's not just goof off and have fun.
Let's actually let's like actually trying to accomplish something for good. Yeah,
and again that caused that caused a riff, like right
from the beginning because some of the people were like, no, originally,
we're doing this for fun. There was this thing called
the Hebo Hotel, which is basically like a kind of
(12:10):
a weird second life hang out that they went and
infiltrated and just populated UM with characters that would like
block the pool or basically just like shut down the site,
take it over, just to mess with people, and it
was fun. They were having fun doing it, just screwing
with people, and other people said, um, no, let's use
(12:33):
this for good. And that actually kind of came accidentally
out of messing with a guy named Hal Turner. Have
you heard of him? Uh? Hal Turner? Right? So Hal
Turner was this um extraordinarily racist radio host and he
UM got pranked by some of the original four Chun
(12:53):
message board members, right Uh. He was getting like prank
calls or whatever, and he recorded the calls and some
how got the data and UM published it on his
site or released it to his fans and said, hey,
why don't you guys go figure out who these people are?
And they figured out some of them, including some underage
message board members whose parents addresses were posted now on
(13:14):
this virulently racist radio hosts UM website. And so the
people from Fortune said take that down, and he said no,
and they said, okay, well that was your one warning
and they went to town on this guy. And by
the time they were done with Hal Turner, UM, he
was off the air. He was off the air, UM
(13:35):
and in prison for I think a couple of years,
threatening federal judges. They basically went and found like all
these emails and stuff and just published everything, including like
his home address, all this stuff. They took like his
tactic and just turned it on him a million times over.
And that was the one where people said, hey, we
just did something really good. We just got a racist
(13:59):
radio host off air that was thrilling. We should use
our stuff for good. And again some people said no,
we're just in it for the lulls. Other people said no,
we should do this morally. And then even other people said, well,
wait a minute, wait a minute, what are you guys doing,
Like that guy had a right to free speech and
you just drove him off the air. How can you
possibly be proud of that? The prong that said no,
there was some good moral dimension to what we just
(14:21):
did using our computing skills for good. What we determine
is good, um, is that's the direction we should go.
And it kind of took off from there. It was
supported by the Operation against Scientology. Yeah, that came along
in the two thousand and eight. That was one of
their first big ops. It's called the Channeology And basically
(14:42):
what they came across was a video UM that we've well,
I was about say, we've all seen everybody obsessed with Scientology,
but to the famous Tom Cruise video where he's um, oh,
he's sort of just rambling and he seems a little
crazy and cookie and talking about Scientology, and it got
out there and Scientology said, um, not very smartly, like,
(15:06):
we want to remove this from the Internet, which is impossible.
I can't do that because it's two thousand eight at
the time, but they were doing a pretty good job
of it. Apparently, Yeah, I saw it, and this was
before the channelogy op so they were trying to get
it down and UM anonymous basically city you know it. Now,
(15:26):
what we're gonna do is, we're gonna we're gonna attack
your website. We're gonna get your everything about Scientology off
the internet. We're gonna um what's it called a di
DOS attack, right, a distributed denial of service attack, which
is kind of key to an anonymous op um. They
attacked Google um with a google bomb for Scientology, So
(15:47):
if you typed in dangerous cult, it directed you to
the Scientology website. They had hundreds and hundreds of pizzas
ordered and sent to Scientology offices worldwide, have you heard
of black faxes. Yeah, they sent them jet black facts
so they would just run out of the ink right
over and over again. Yeah, which all you know, those
are all pretty silly, little harmless um pranks. The Scientologists
(16:12):
didn't take it that way. No, they weren't happy. In fact,
I think they went to the FBI. They did, you
need to look into these people, right, and so we
have to we have to pause her for a second
and point something out. One um. With both the hell
Turner oup and Project Channology, a lot of people say, like,
oh man, they went after this um, this racist uh
radio host and got him off the air. So they
(16:34):
went after Scientology, which is a roundly hated cult and
and tried to drive them out of business. And the
idea is it just stops there. But if you go
a little further, both of those operations were based on
infractions by the offending parties against the Internet. Hell Turner
posted underage four chain users parents addresses on his website.
(16:56):
Wouldn't take it down. That's a rule broken. That's why
they went an after him. Scientology. They tried to censor
the Internet, and Anonymous thinks of the Internet is like
their Internet they're the cops of the Internet as far
as they're concerned, and the Internet is not to be
messed with, and they protected like that. UM. And so
when Scientology tried to take that video down and was
trying to sue people who kept it up, that was
(17:19):
that was censorship ship of the Internet. That's why Anonymous
went after the Internet. But again, just like the Hall
Trener operation, the the Project Channology thing took on this
moral dimension and Anonymous was called upon just by UM
a guy named Mark Bunker, who was already an ardent
critic of Scientologists, and he said, why don't you guys
(17:39):
like use your your your what you're doing for legal
productive ways, And so Anonymous called for actual physical protests
of Scientology's churches around the world. Yeah, and I think
now that's that's become one of their hallmarks. That's why
they want to pair the activist activity with a physical
presence and a YouTube video which says have you ever
(18:02):
seen those? Yeah, they're creepy and awesome they are. They're
really well done. It looks it's it's just the whole
thing is like very Mr robot esque, right, And with
every with every video that they released, with every operation,
they release a video ahead of time saying what's gonna happen,
what's going down? Right? Yeah, exactly. And it's very smart
to do that because number one, um, they're they're taking
(18:22):
account they're showing that they're accountable for their actions. They're
taking accountability for it. But also it keeps them from
being scapegoated, and it keeps other people from claiming uh
their work, you know. Yeah. In two thousand ten, with
Operation Payback, UM, they realized they found out that MasterCard, Visa,
and PayPal said we're gonna stop. You won't be able
(18:45):
to donate to wiki leaks using our services anymore. We're
gonna shut that down, which in and of itself they
figured was bad, but as evidence they went and found like,
um skinhead websites that you could still donate to using
those three mechanisms, but you couldn't donate to wiki leaks.
They were like, okay, that's messed up. Yeah, so they said,
(19:06):
you know what we're gonna do, Um, We're gonna shut
you guys down. And they did. It was a cyber attack,
and they disabled the home pages of Visa, master Card,
and PayPal and um, you know, gloated they had their
own special little smarmie messages back like U. There are
some things Wiki leaks can't do. For everything else, there's
operation payback. Yeah, And so like I said before, with UM,
(19:29):
with an anonymous ops like that, people may disband and
never worked together in another one, or your operation may
grow to include even more stuff. An operation payback is
a really good example of the ladder of those two.
It started out because UM at some point the United
States government hired an Indian firm, an Indian software firm
UM to launch d d o S attacks on these
(19:53):
two sites, Mega Upload and pirates Bay, and UM shut
them down basically. And both of those are file sharing sites,
typically illegal file sharing sites. And so the US government
was using the same tactics d d o S attacks
that they were also prosecuting the hackers and an Anonymous
(20:14):
for using. But they were using it with impunity, and
that really ticked Anonymous off. And we should also say
what a d d o S is, right, So Chuck,
it's basically it's taking when you contact a website. When
you go to a website, you're contacting its server to
request all the information on the page. If a bunch
of people do that at once, the server becomes overloaded
(20:34):
and the people who legitimately want to use the site
can't get in, or the server becomes so overloaded the
site crashes down right. So one of anonymous is key
tactics is to do a distributed anallyis service where a
bunch of people are doing that all at once, hitting
the site to overload it. And then there's even software
called the low orbit Ion Cannon which anybody can go
(20:55):
download and use and you type in a U r
L and this thing like really hits a site like
it's like a bunch of people all at once hitting
it with just this one computer. Um, we should say
that you can be prosecuted, and many people have been
prosecuted in says, to jail just for using that. Yeah,
not unless you're the U. S. Government. Again, but that's
what set off Operation Payback was that the government was
(21:17):
using these the same tactic that they were prosecuting other
people for. Yeah, and uh, because they didn't want any confusion, um,
and for people to say, oh, yeah, well they clearly
just want to download movies for free and stuff like that.
They have their YouTube video where they're like, no, that's
not why we're doing this, right, We're doing that because
you guys are using the same taxics tactics that you're
(21:38):
prosecuting us for for other people for exactly, and so
Operation Payback. Then at about that time they found out
about the Wiki League stop payment from UM PayPal and
MasterCard and Visa, and they extended it even further. PayPal
said it costs them five and a half million bucks. Yeah,
which is a small dent and PayPal, but still it's
(21:58):
you know, no, it is substantial. The idea though. UM.
There's this really great UH documentary that's that's available for
free on Anonymous official YouTube channel. I haven't seen that
when this one's called the Story of Anonymous UM and
it's it's pretty good. It's very straightforward, and it's got
(22:18):
a lot of the people who were involved in the
early days UM. And I think he goes up to
like two thousand eleven or twelve UM, but it's definitely
worth watching. But it interviews this kid who downloaded the
low orbit ion cannon and engaged in UM project channelogy
against scientology, right, and the FBI came to his door
(22:38):
and arrested him, and he got like he's he I
think he got like time served, so he didn't actually
have to serve prison time, but he was um like
he wasn't allowed near a computer for twelve months or
else he would be arrested. Um And it was really
bizarre punishment considering that he was just requesting the Church
(22:59):
of Science Atology's website for its information to it to
the nth degree. But that was it. He didn't make
any threats, he didn't order any pizzas, he didn't do anything.
And when you when you think of the other term
for d d O S attacks, they're called virtual sit ins.
It really kind of drives home the idea that this
is a form of protest that's being harshly, harshly punished
(23:22):
by the federal government in the US, which is really strange.
Like there's a Wired article written by a guy named
Tore Ecklin who's a very famous lawyer for these kinds
of cases, and um, it's called America must end its
paranoid war on hackers, And he really kind of lays
it out there, like here's what's going on. Like most
(23:43):
people don't realize this, but there's a there's an untoward
amount of punishment being leveled at people who are protesting
stuff legitimately by using things like d d O S
attacks And they're going to prison for like ten years
for this stuff, and that's messed up, it says, and
I agree, I agree to. Uh. Some of the other
(24:05):
things they've done. We mentioned Westboro Baptist Church UM, which
a lot of people just say as a hate group
in disguise as a church. I think it's labeled by
by the government as such. Well, they would like take
over their website and put messages of peace and tolerance.
Probably really rankled them. Uh. They would pose as uh
(24:27):
young girls online to Laura in sexual predators and then
send that information to the police to expose pedophiles. Uh.
What else have they done? Well, they were instrumental in
the Arab spring. Yeah, they basically had a pretty large
hand Anonymous did in um overthrowing the Egyptian government. Yeah,
(24:47):
they like to top of dictators. Yes. And the reason why,
specifically in Egypt that really ticked them off was Mubarik
shut off the Internet. And again, just like with hal Turner,
just like with scientology, just like with the government, you
don't mess with the Internet if you don't want to
excite uh, Anonymous, as I are right, UM, and so
they they helped Egyptian dissidents by UM basically instructing them
(25:13):
on how to get the internet back online there, how
to set up like virtual networks UM that couldn't be
shut down by the government. Some of them went to
the point of just communicating with these people and then
turning those communications into tweets for them, and then they
also disseminated video of the government UM carrying out violence
(25:34):
against protesters and spread it out to the world. They
had a huge hand in the Arab spring, not just
in Egypt and in Tunisia as well. Yeah, they've they've
also had their hand in the the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, UM,
Occupy Wall Street, UM, untold amounts of like police brutality
cases or a police cover ups. Stupenville rape case, that
(25:57):
was a big one. Yeah, in two thousand twelve, sixteen
year old girl sixteen year old girl was sexually assaulted
and they found out, you know what, there's a cover
up going on here. So there was an offshoot called
night KAY and I g h D SEC and they
launched a crusade that said, you know what, here's what's
going on here. There's a cover up going on. Uh,
(26:18):
And they finally uncovered and publicized the names of two
star players in the high school football team that allegedly
committed this assault. That we're being covered up. So it
was a big deal, they basically and and it was.
That's a perfect example of an anonymous op. Right, there's
an injustice in this little tiny corner of the world
where Ohio meets West Virginia that no one else had
(26:39):
ever heard about. That somebody got onto the four cham
board and tell told everybody about this, and people started
saying enough, people started saying we should do something about this.
And um, they they left the message board, hit the
I r C Internet relay chat channels right and started
communicating with one another and figuring out how to launch
(27:00):
this attack and what to do and who to attack.
And then they attacked and and in the real world
there were repercussions. And that's that's anonymous. This whole jam
is they go do something, get a bunch of headlines.
And then not only did anonymous do this, Why did
Anonymous do this? Who did they do it too? Oh,
we should go look at that. And now all of
(27:20):
a sudden, this little tiny corner of where Ohio, West Virginia.
Everybody's heard of and everybody's heard about it in the absolute, wet,
worse terms. That's an anonymous operation. And then all the
people who who were part of it disbanded. But on
the other hand, UM, the data dump that Anonymous had
about about Steubenville, the rape case UM contain a lot
(27:44):
of unvetted facts and things like that, and a lot
of people were unfairly treated, targeted from the docks thing
that resulted. So, I mean, I guess the point is
that Stephenville is a good example of how anonymous UM,
even when herring out some sort of moral justice, also
has a there's an amoral dimension to it, and that
(28:05):
there's a lot of innocent people who can become casualties
as a result too. There's actually a really good Gawker
article about UM stuben Ville a year later. I think
it was UM the town that was torn apart by
what two people did or something like that. Alright, so
let's uh, let's take a quick break here and we'll
come back and we'll talk about who Anonymous is and uh,
(28:26):
how you can become a member right after this. Alright,
(28:51):
So Anonymous is UM. It's tough to define it's stuff
to pinpoint because they are hiding in plain sight. There's
not You can't go to anonymous dot com and and
sign up for their newsletter and buy your mask in
the in the store and um, say I want to
become a member, just fill out this application. Uh, it
(29:13):
doesn't work that way. You should probably not accept applications
to be a part of anonymous because it's probably a setup. Yes, exactly.
But there is something called a non news which does
post information about ops. Uh, you're probably not gonna you're
not gonna learn too much inside real information as a
casual Internet browser. No. And it's more like, um, if
(29:37):
you follow a non news on Twitter, say you may
like for operation payback. Um, I think they listed like
the visa site or something and they said fire at will,
and um, it was a link to the low orbit
ion cannon and the visa website that you post that
you r l in and it was a way to
(29:57):
just get anybody involved in the d D O S thing.
The problem is is that that's that is that can
be very dangerous if you're just a casual person downloading
low or a bit ion canon and you're just doing
this because you're having fun helping Anonymous and you're not
covering your trucks in any way, shape or form. In
the FBI comes and knocks on your door, you may
be facing several years in jail because they're looking to
(30:19):
make an example out of you. Absolutely no, you gotta
do a lot of work in fact to even get
in there. Uh. And once you find yourself um in
one of these forums where there's real information being discussed,
you sort of need to prove your worth uh with
either ideas or specific skill or knowledge you might have.
And then you may be invited to participate in one
(30:40):
way or another as an ANON. And again, even if
you are at the top of your game at at
what anybody in the media would think of as like
a member of Anonymous, like one of the true um,
the long term members who's done a lot of ops. Um,
you can still get busted. A guy named Jeremy Hammond
was busted and got years or some stuff. Named Barrett
(31:02):
Brown was busted and got five years for some stuff.
And all again, all of this is just computer crime
we're talking about. So again, if this is really like
cranking your case, just there's a there's a lot of
repercussions to this. Yeah, there's there's a misconception to that.
(31:22):
UM it is Uh, it's a bunch of brilliant UM
code writers and hackers. Apparently only about a fifth of
ANNs or true hackers. UM. Who who said that? Um,
there's an anthropologist, Gabriella Coleman. Actually, UM, she is an
expert at Anonymous and has written several books and is
(31:45):
in that documentary I was talking about. So only a
fifth or are hackers and the rest are quote geets
and protesters. But UM, apparently you don't have to be
some brilliant hacker. They will call on you if you
have some other skill, if you have good ideas, if
you're a graphics signer, if you're have if you're a
good writer, you can help put together a press release,
(32:05):
if you're a filmmaker and you want to do these
YouTube videos. There's all sorts of ways that UM, you
can contribute if you want to contribute and being ANN
aside from being a coder. UM and the idea that
they're completely what's put out there is that they have
no hierarchy whatsoever, that everyone's equal, everyone has equal footing,
There is no leader whatsoever. UM. It is just this
(32:28):
big amorphous group of a non's that isn't entirely accurate. Um,
they may not have a president and vice president per
se or a treasurer, but um, supposedly they do have uh,
four or five people who are really good at doing
what they do. So they sort of take turns emerging
(32:48):
as the leader of a specific op maybe because then
the fall of the background in another perhaps and you
become a leader whether you want to be or not,
based on your skills as an organizer. Yeah. Um, if
you are just naturally somebody who can rally the troops,
then your ops are going to be the most successful
because you're gonna attract the most people, and um, you're
(33:11):
going to attract the guy who wants to put out
like a good video for it. You're gonna get the
most results. You're gonna get the most information, the biggest
data dumps. Just naturally, that's how it happens. And people
follow like, Commander X does it did a really great
job on that ops, so let's listen and hear what
he does next, right, But then other people are like, well,
Commander X, you need to shut your mouth because you
(33:31):
talk to the media and even though you've been you know,
in in the hacker culture since the eighties or whatever.
You Um, you have a loud mouth, and that's not
cool for this. So on on a message board, he
could be getting deferential respect. Commander X is a real person,
by the way, UM, and he could be being called
(33:52):
opposer at the same time, and both of those comments
have equal weight on the message board no matter how
long Commander X has been doing this. Yeah, there's a
lot of duality with anonymous UM. Some people look at
him as a as a beacon of light for those
who don't have a voice. UM. Attorney General UH Eric
Holder in two thousand thirteen said they are a steadily
(34:13):
increasing threat to America's economy and national security interests. Uh.
People uh A, nons will say, you know what, I
don't say that because we're not We're not stealing money,
we're not robbing h banks digitally, we're not after financial
gain at all. UM. We're out to expose people that
(34:33):
are doing bad things for the most part. And but
like you said earlier, though, when they're offshoots, there's always
gonna be bad apples. I guess, yeah, there are. I mean, like,
for example, the Westboro Baptist Church. They did, um, they doxed.
It's where you get the person's personal information, home address,
phone number, all that stuff and post it out to
the masses. That's tricky and dangerous, it is, but it's
(34:57):
Fred Phelps, so nobody really shed a tear the problem
as they also did that the Libby Phelps, who was
Fred Phelps, his granddaughter who had very publicly distanced herself
from the church and denounced it and said, I don't
agree with what my grandfather des ert says. She's still
got docs out there and my personal information exactly. So
so yeah, there's a lot of like lull sec is
another another example they they were They were this group
(35:21):
I think of like six or seven people, um, who
carried out what's commonly called fifty Days of Mayhem where
they just went crazy. They just hit whoever they wanted.
The Uh. This this business called Magnets dot com got
hit because they called their customer service reps and asked
them how magnets work, and the customer service reps couldn't
tell them, so they launched an operation against them. They
(35:43):
should have told them listen to our podcast on Max
totally should have I assume that our podcast probably spurred
that phone call to begin with. But um, so, yeah,
there are groups that do this. But then overall, if
you think about Anonymous, it is they do the ones
that get the most pressed, the ops they could most press,
usually have the most moral to mention, it makes Anonymous
seem the most robin hoodie. Like the Ku Klux Klan dump, Yeah,
(36:07):
that just happened within the past couple of weeks, and
they went after the clan and um got doses on
several hundred members. And I don't think there were any
huge revelations necessarily, and there there were a few, Okay,
so there were some. But the point is they went
after the clan and they basically shined a light on
the idea that the clan is still very much around. Yeah,
(36:29):
but there were also people, I think there was a
senator or congress person or something that was exposed that
were like, I have never been involved in the clan.
So there was there was a separate dump that occurred
before the actual one that Anonymous came. Because they can
communicate with the media, they're able to do this and
they said, that wasn't us, that's not our research. We
can't vouch for that interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean,
(36:53):
like I said, that's that's tricky business. When you're exposing people,
those are real lives. Um, you better make sure you've
done your homework and you've gotten it right, you know
what I mean. And I think Anonymous thinks they're getting
it right. Yeah. I think they tend to think that. Sure,
Like I don't think they're just generally going about their
(37:14):
business willy nilly because they want to be effective to
not get a bad rap. They don't want to have
anything that people can use against them, you know, to
say like, well look what they did here. They were
completely wrong. Yeah. At the same time, though, there is
definitely a thread of you know, appreciating Mayhem for Mayhem's sake,
and with some people who who work under the anonymous
(37:35):
banner as well well, which is what you're gonna get
when you're not a well defined like group with boundaries.
When you're this a morphous everyone is anonymous type of thing,
you know you're gonna have that happen. But I think
it is kind of a pretty astounding that despite no
central authority whatsoever, it isn't just more like crazy and
frenetic and just way more Mayhem centric that it actually
(37:57):
does carry out these ops that do have like repercussions
that the average person can look at and say, I
kind of agree with that, Like I agree with the
outcome of this. I think somebody got there due who
had it coming anything else I do. There's one last thing,
so that the name anonymous came from four Chan. If
you log into four chan, you can post anonymously, like
(38:18):
you said I think early on. The whole reason why
it's because that just helps the keep people from self
censoring because you're posting anonymously. But then the this joke
kind of developed on four Chan that Anonymous all these
people with the thing that the anonymous handle, we're really
just one omnipresent person. And that's where the using that
(38:39):
term for these ops, this group, this collective group came from.
Did you ever go to Fortune? Did you check it out?
I've never felt so old than when but even Reddit
does that to me. I just go to Yeah, read
it's definitely look like that, and I'm just like I
don't even know where to look, you know, I feel
like an old man for sure. Yeah, And I'm like
(39:00):
I don't understand what this means. I'm sure it's hilarious,
but I don't understand it. Some of it's funny on
its face, for sure, but others just like, yeah, I
spent a little time on four Chune earlier today just
sort of looking around and yeah, it's not my bag.
But people are into it. They definitely are. Yes, Uh,
you got anything else, dude? No. I thought I enjoyed
(39:22):
this and I thought it was good. Oh we left
out the HP Gary thing. What's that? So? So in
a few years back, this security company named HB Gary.
The CEO named Aaron Barr came out to the Financial
Times and said, I've infiltrated Anonymous. I know who all
the top guys are, and I'm going to the FBI
with it. So some people in Anonymous, so let's go
(39:43):
see what this guy's talking about. Cracked into their website,
found out he was totally full of it, but found
a presentation that's that had all these dirty tricks for
undermining Anonymous and wiki leaks and like getting people to
turn on one another all that. So they're like, we're
gonna go after this guy because he was He was
publicly boasting too that he was going to take down Anonymous,
and that is not a smart thing to do. No,
(40:04):
And there's actually in that Anonymous UM documentary. Uh, there's
some hilarious clips from Stephen Colbert explaining what this guy
did and equated it too. He put his penis into
a hornet's nest and this is gonna turn out about
the same way and it did physical reaction. Yeah. Image,
So the guy the CEO ends up stepping down a
(40:24):
CEO and like drops out of public. They totally just
really got the guy and and really I think they Yeah,
it was that was a dumb thing to do on
his part, But not only was it dumb for him personally,
it also gave Anonymous a really great opportunity to show
just how you don't mess with Anonymous. You know, that
was it. That's Anonymous. If you want to know more, seriously,
(40:48):
go check out that UM. Well, every documentary you can
see that's over an hour and a half long is
probably pretty good. And then also there's this UM there's
a presy by a person named Choi Ju Hook called
Copy of Anonymous, which is a really great basic explainer
on Anonymous and how it works and functions. By it
sounds like somebody who's at least hung out with members
(41:10):
if if isn't one himself for herself, I bet you
you've hung out with a member of Anonymous. We may
have one or two in this office. You never know
my bunnies on Ben Bowlin sure stuff, but he's such
an obvious choice. It's got to be somebody wouldn't think
they don't want you to know? Yeah, Like is it you, Chuck?
It's yeah, it's like it's a Holly from stuff you
(41:32):
mis't right, Yeah, she loves star wars and activists. If
you want to know more about Anonymous, also, you can
go type that word into the search part how stuffworks
dot com instance, they said search parts time for listener mail. Yeah,
and speaking of mail, if you are an Anonymous member,
right us because I want to know something. I don't
(41:55):
know if I'm gonna buy it though somebody's like, I'm
an Anonymous dear Josh and Chuck. Yeah, love Arey from
Gary Jones at No. But if I get some weird
and cryptic thing, uh, I don't know. I think we'll
mem what if we like posted video to YouTube and
be awesome unless it's saying like we're coming after you
guys know, did we do a good job? Um? All
(42:18):
right listener mail, what is this? Um, I'm just gonna
call it from an English listener. Hey, guys, I'm just
an eighteen year old from the UK, but you have
my most sincere congratulations for running the bets podcast out there.
And I've listened to Cereal right. Your flowing conversation style
works so well and it's always a pleasure listening to you. Uh.
(42:38):
And you guys have to compete with British radio voices,
so that's saying something. It really is because they are class.
Having burned through eight hundred two episodes and seven months,
I finally ended in a wonderful, spooky spectacular. You have
been there with me through break up, six flights, eight
long distance trains, three A levels, which is some sort
(43:00):
of education thing in England. Oh, I think that's um
like exams finals, four new jobs, one bite crash, one
results day. All of this in six months, uh, seven months,
an InterRail trip around Europe and a very lonely night
in Brighton train station. Four jobs in seven months? Is
this guy? Hit man? You have four new jobs? Huh? Interesting?
(43:23):
It's been a crazy time in my life, sounds like it,
and you've been the constant that's kept me saying so big,
thanks to all of you. That's awesome. I show no favoritism.
You've made it, Barrel, I think you're saying, like between us, Yeah,
you run an awesome podcast. Keep it up, look forward
to the next eight hundred. Do you have one question?
Do you guys get along when the mic is off?
Fantastic chemistry and I've always wondered if it overcomes from
(43:45):
your friendship or if you two are just the most
professional people ever. I've gone on too long. All the best,
Hector Leech Clay. Thanks. Oh that's a British name. Uh,
you guys better come to the UK for a live show.
We are yes, and of course we get along off
the air. We would not you've seen our TV show.
You know we're not actors. We would not be able
to take our way through this. Check has been gazing
(44:07):
into my eyes this whole episode. Yeah, if it was
this not some Sunshine Boys situation? Was that? Um? Is
that George Burns? Just feel google at people Sunshine Boys.
That'll it'll all become clear. Nice good reference. Thanks Hector
Leech Clay Esquire the third Yeah, or he's Hector Leech
(44:29):
from Clay. I don't know it's Clay at place? Is
it Leech hyphen clay because that would be his last name,
but that they know, they do that a lot over there,
big on that. Yeah, um, well thanks a lot, Hector.
We appreciate that, and thank you for not playing flavors.
Isn't that the ideal human somebody who appreciates us both equally? Sure?
Sure so um. If you want to get in touch
(44:50):
with us, you can tweet to us at s y
s K podcast tweet. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, book book, You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, us to
how stuff Works dot com type type, and as always,
joined us at at home on the web Stuff you
Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
(45:13):
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.
Yah
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!