We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

the show got plenty of online attention by posting links on popular forums like Reddit and Digg.
“Good job,” someone on #InternetFeds said when Topiary came back into the chat room and reported that the group had a forthcoming
appearance on the Pakman show, giving them the chance to do a live hack and deface of the Westboro sites. He asked around to see if
anyone else wanted to do the live call, since he’d already thrown his voice around on TV news network Russia Today. But people wanted to
hear Topiary versus Shirley. Many on AnonOps thought he was good at public speaking, even though his speech could deteriorate into
stuttered sentences and what he considered a goofy British accent.
Resigned to his part in the verbal showdown, Topiary started writing a deface message for the Westboro website. Then he noticed
something odd: most of Westboro’s main sites were already down. Not defaced—just offline. It looked like someone had noticed the buzz
around the fake Anonymous threat and taken the sites down himself. Topiary realized it was The Jester. He hopped over to Jester’s chat
room, approached the hacktivist, and asked if he could let the sites back up for at least a couple of hours. He didn’t give Jester any times or
say that it was for a radio show, just in case someone from his crew tried to sabotage it. He stayed vague.
Jester confirmed his involvement by refusing, adding mysteriously that he was “under extreme pressure to keep them down.” A little
bewildered and irritated, Topiary gave up and went back to #InternetFeds. They would have to make do with an attack on a minor web page.
He set to work writing up a defacement message in the simple program Notepad++, the same way he had done all ten deface messages for
Anonymous in the last month or so. After writing the release he’d paste it into a text box on Pastehtml and write the HTML code around it.
All the deface pages were plain text on a white background. Topiary had tried more complicated layouts but they never had as much impact
as stark black and white, a complete contrast from the busily designed websites that were supposed to be there. Often he would explore the
different chat rooms on AnonOps IRC and note down any philosophical things people said about Anonymous or the world in general, and
then he’d try to incorporate them into his messages. Anons were already starting to realize their opinions mattered, as journalists quoted
random comments made in AnonOps chat rooms.
Topiary was doing this partly for his own good. Leading up to Westboro and particularly after the Pakman show, his nickname became
more public. “I didn’t want all that attention,” he later said. Deep down he didn’t want his “voice” in text and audio to become familiar to the
public and authorities. When he wrote a press release, he took to posting it on Pirate Pad and imploring other supporters and Philosoraptors to
edit it. “I’d leave it for 10 minutes and no one would touch it,” he said. “People kept saying, no it’s fine. I don’t know if they were nervous or
didn’t want to tell me it was a bit wrong.”
The next day, just before the show, Topiary asked a friend on AnonOps how he should handle the Westboro Baptist spokeswoman.
“Just let her ramble,” the friend replied. “You don’t need to make her look bad. She’s going to make herself look bad.” Topiary then spent
a few minutes listening to music to try to calm his nerves, a song by the mellow techno artist World’s End Girlfriend. It always left him more
relaxed. Thirty seconds before the show was to start, Pakman called Topiary, who could hear Shirley Phelps-Roper in the background,
grumbling in a southern drawl about camera issues.
Pakman immediately recognized Topiary’s voice from the interviews he had done with Russia Today and from the Tom Hartman
program. At the eleventh hour, Pakman breathed a quiet sigh of relief that he was speaking to a genuine spokesperson for Anonymous.
Soon enough, Phelps-Roper was on the line too, and the video segment showed three images: Pakman in a black blazer with his
microphone; Shirley with a home printer and bookshelf in the background, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and her eyes ablaze; and a
picture of a giant shark being attacked by Batman wielding a light saber—that was Topiary. Whenever Topiary spoke, his own picture
glowed blue.
“Well, today we have everybody here,” Pakman said, introducing Topiary as a “source within Anonymous” and then referring to him as
simply “Anonymous.” Did Anonymous issue a threat to Westboro Baptist Church? he asked.
“No, there was no talk of it, uh…” Topiary’s deep baritone voice almost growled out onto the airwaves. He had an unusual accent—a
Scottish lilt blended with a Nordic twang. He’d set his laptop on a table and turned away from it. Every prank call had been like this—he
looked at simple focal points, like the ceiling or a book spine, or out the window.
“Shirley, is it your belief that Anonymous cannot harm the Westboro websites in any way?” Pakman asked.
“No one can shut these words that are…ROARING out of Mount Zion!” she cried. “I mean I’m talking to a little guy who’s a Jew.”
David looked over at his producer and smiled.
“OK.” Pakman suddenly grew serious. “So, Anonymous, can you address that? I mean, aren’t all of Shirley’s websites down right now?”
Shirley let out a surprised laugh.
“Yeah right now,” replied Topiary. “Um, GodHatesFags.com is down, YourPastorIsAWhore.com is down.” He listed several more
snappily named sites and explained, disappointed, that credit had to go to The Jester and not, technically, to Anonymous.
“Potatoe, potahto!” Phelps-Roper said, drowning him out for a moment. “You’re all a bunch of criminals, and thugs.…And you’re ALL
facing your imminent destruction.”
“Anonymous,” David ventured, “is this riling you up to the point where you will actually take action?”
“Please do,” Phelps-Roper deadpanned.
“Well…” said Topiary
“Hold on, Shirley,” said Pakman.
“Our response to the ‘cry-baby hackers’ letter was mature,” Topiary said. “Our response was we don’t want to go to war with you—”
Phelps-Roper’s eyes widened. “Did you just call criminals and thugs… ‘MATURE’?”
Topiary balked and decided to switch tacks.
“You say the Internet was invented just for the Westboro Baptist Church to get its message across, right?” he asked.
“Exactly,” she said.
“Well, then how come God allowed gay-dating websites?”
“Psh. Silly.” Phelps-Roper laughed. “That’s called your proving ground.”
“Am I going to hell?”
Phelps-Roper suddenly looked concerned. “Well, hon, I only know what I’m hearing because you’re”—she raised her eyebrows
—“Anonymous…and…you sound like a guy who’s headed to hell I’m just sayin.’”
“Well in my lifetime I’ve performed over 9,000 sins,” Topiary said. “So…”