COMMANDER X THE FACE OF ANONYMOUS ｜ Full DOCUMENTARY

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00:00:00So this is where I met Commander X.

00:00:25He was sitting here, cowboy hat out,

00:00:29and he was reading, he had a thick sci-fi novel,

00:00:32and I just recently had published my first novel,

00:00:36so it seemed appropriate that I dropped two dollars in there.

00:00:40And he looked up and he had this interesting face,

00:00:43craggy, and a definite story.

00:00:46So the gut reaction of the novelist is to engage and find out more.

00:00:52But little did I know that I was about to fall into the quicksand

00:00:58of hackers, of anonymous, and the beautiful randomness of life.

00:01:05He saw me reading a book, and he said, you know what, I wrote a book.

00:01:10I was like, well, you got one of your books?

00:01:14I came and brought him a book, and he read it.

00:01:19I wanted fucking stories. I didn't, reality had become a bit too much right then.

00:01:23And it was fucking great. It's a great book.

00:01:25I didn't have an idea for six weeks who this guy was. He was just a friend on the street.

00:01:35But then he told me that he was a cyber warlord, one of the generals in Anonymous.

00:01:38Online hackers who identified as being part of Anonymous and other groups have carried out dozens of high-profile online operations.

00:01:53And that he was on the run from the FBI and had been for six years.

00:01:56Because I felt that the prosecution was political against myself, I chose to flee into exile, and I'm in Canada now.

00:02:06And there was an article that could corroborate all this, and it was in The New Yorker.

00:02:11And I should go home and read it.

00:02:13Yeah, I mean, he's polite about it. Okay, okay, cool, yeah, take a look at it tonight.

00:02:17But I knew from the look at his eyes, you know, he wasn't buying that meat without inspecting it.

00:02:22I cross-referenced the name that was in the article, Christopher Mark Doyon,

00:02:27and up popped his mugshot from when he was arrested for trying to sell large quantities of LSD at a Grateful Dead gig in Indiana.

00:02:38And when his face popped up, I got goosebumps.

00:02:41It was a life-changing moment.

00:02:45I get the same look every time I reveal myself.

00:02:48I could tell that he was just like,

00:02:51Dude.

00:02:54Dude, you really are this person.

00:03:04So let's bring us to today.

00:03:07Today?

00:03:08Today!

00:03:09Well, today they're making a fucking movie about my life.

00:03:13I've been called cyber-terrorist.

00:03:15But I have to laugh right now at the fucking very idea.

00:03:18What is an information terrorist? Please.

00:03:20I mean, can somebody help me with that?

00:03:22How can I terrorize people with the truth?

00:03:25This is the fact that I'm bad now!

00:03:28Commander X had a knack for being at the beginning of these movements, being right there.

00:03:34We're information activists just trying to make our world bigger and a little better.

00:03:38He is smart, he is articulate, and his words have power that most people do not.

00:03:45That's dangerous to the power elite.

00:03:47We fight bad guys and pirates wherever we find them.

00:03:52He was very divisive. Some people loved him, some people hated him.

00:03:56He was a distraction at best, I think, of times.

00:04:00He would type in all caps, you know what I mean?

00:04:02Like, he was a guy who commanded attention.

00:04:05There's anyone who did the most to take the edge between absurdity and awe-inspiring,

00:04:10and just fucking ram it over to the fucking absurdity part.

00:04:14It was Commander X.

00:04:15Look, this is a war. I mean, straight up, this is a war.

00:04:18I think there's, like, an entertainer in him.

00:04:21I mean, he likes to tell stories, he likes to kind of take you into a whole world,

00:04:26and sometimes you don't know how much of that is exaggeration.

00:04:29You have to put a person behind the mask. People want stories.

00:04:33So, Commander X did make a good story.

00:04:41I was talking with my editor at The New Yorker about doing a larger piece about Anonymous,

00:04:49and to me the story was how has activism moved from the streets to the internet

00:04:56and then back to the streets.

00:04:57That was, I think, fundamentally the story I was telling,

00:04:59and Commander X was really the personification of that.

00:05:03It was a profile of a contemporary American activist.

00:05:07He grew up in Maine, like on a ranch in Maine.

00:05:11But, you know, he had a difficult life. He had a difficult upbringing.

00:05:15His father was abusive.

00:05:17My parents were not very good people.

00:05:21I'm just going to end it there.

00:05:23But they were not very good people.

00:05:25And so I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house,

00:05:27and I had become fascinated with the idea of computers.

00:05:31The Industrial Revolution expanded the strength of man's muscles in the reach of his hands.

00:05:37The Information Revolution is magnifying the power of his brain,

00:05:41changing forever the way Americans work, play, travel, and even think.

00:05:47I was always quite fascinated with the computer in Star Trek, the thing fucking talked.

00:05:51So I convinced this guy who worked for my dad, he was a pharmacist assistant,

00:05:55to bring me to the local university and show me a real fucking computer.

00:05:59So he brought me down to the university, sat me down,

00:06:01and of course I immediately sit there and I was like,

00:06:03hello computer, because the only knowledge I have a computer is Star Trek,

00:06:06and it's supposed to talk, right?

00:06:08And he's like, no, no, it doesn't work like that.

00:06:10And there was a program.

00:06:11It was a very basic chat program.

00:06:13As a freaking 13-year-old kid, you're sitting there to sing shit,

00:06:17kind of start talking back to you, you're like, fuck me.

00:06:20You know, that's incredible, you know?

00:06:22Then I went to my grandmother and I said, I need a hundred bucks.

00:06:25There was no way to buy a computer back then.

00:06:27It was a kit that you bought, and then they sent it to you,

00:06:31and you had to literally solder the fucking thing together,

00:06:34and then plug it into a television and a cassette recorder,

00:06:37and the cassette recorder acted as the hard drive.

00:06:39And I said, Grandma, just sit down, please. I want to talk to you.

00:06:42I am convinced, Grandma, that these things called computers

00:06:46are going to change the world.

00:06:48And she's like, well, what does it do?

00:06:51I was like, you can use it as a calculator,

00:06:53you can balance your checkbook with it, you can play video games.

00:06:57She leaned back in the chair and she says, well,

00:07:00I'm going to spend $2 and buy you a pocket calculator,

00:07:04and then I'm going to sit you down and teach you

00:07:06how to balance your checkbook, and then if you do all that,

00:07:09I'll take you out to the video game store,

00:07:12and for $40, I'll buy you a pawn game.

00:07:15And you can just skip the $100 computer.

00:07:18And I said, Grandma, you just don't understand.

00:07:20This is going to change the world.

00:07:23It took me about a year to put the thing together.

00:07:26So you can see that coming into it from that way, in that fashion,

00:07:29just the fascination's never going to wear off.

00:07:32Now I'm like a kid in the candy store.

00:07:34I'm living my own science fiction.

00:07:36I wake up every morning, I get in front of that computer.

00:07:39I am not unhappy.

00:07:41I spend 10, 12 hours a day in front of that thing,

00:07:43and I just find it all fascinating every single fucking day I get up.

00:07:47He gets to Cambridge.

00:07:52He was sleeping on park benches.

00:07:54My understanding of it was just because he liked the mobility of it.

00:07:58He claims that he was always homeless by choice.

00:08:02And then I went to a Grateful Dead show.

00:08:06Inevitably, that was going to come into it.

00:08:08And it was in Boston.

00:08:15And I ran across an anti-apartheid protest.

00:08:19I stopped.

00:08:20I hung out with people.

00:08:21I smoked some pot.

00:08:23I was given flyers and shit.

00:08:25You know, you make friends with people that got a flyer in their hand,

00:08:28you're going to read it.

00:08:29I was so angry that there could be a system of government

00:08:33in our century, in my lifetime,

00:08:35that you had to go into a police station

00:08:38and put your hand up to a color shot,

00:08:40and based on how dark or light you were,

00:08:42that's how many rights you got.

00:08:44That is fucking ridiculous.

00:08:47And then they're like,

00:08:48yeah, well, you know,

00:08:49thanks for hanging out with us,

00:08:51and, you know, we're doing this thing fucking tomorrow.

00:08:54They got me really good

00:08:55with the whole hanging out with me and smoking some weed thing,

00:08:57because, you know, being a solitude kind of kid,

00:09:00anybody that made me feel like I was their pal,

00:09:03you know, they got the time of day.

00:09:05And, you know, of course, I had to do other things.

00:09:08I went to a lot of rock shows back then.

00:09:10I had to make a living, and I did that at rock shows.

00:09:12Not only am I not ashamed,

00:09:13but I'm somewhat proud of the fact that we sold really good LSD.

00:09:17We would go out and do a U.S. tour with the dad,

00:09:20and we would raise shit-tons of money,

00:09:22and it just gelled more is all it did.

00:09:24I went to more dad shows.

00:09:25I made more money.

00:09:26I went to more protests.

00:09:27Some dude with fucking cakey-ass dreads,

00:09:30literally down on his knees,

00:09:31would sidle up to me

00:09:32and give me maybe a little piece of paper folded up like this

00:09:35in the passing crowd.

00:09:37And it would be the next ELF action,

00:09:39or the next ALF action,

00:09:41or the next protest against anti-partime.

00:09:44That's definitely the whole texture of the cloth,

00:09:46and it just gets woven tighter and tighter,

00:09:48as I become more and more sucked into this idea

00:09:50of just permanent resistance to all this fucked up shit.

00:09:55The things like the Animal Liberation Front,

00:09:57the Earth Liberation Front,

00:09:59I did my tours of duty in both of those,

00:10:02and then eventually our little silly little hacker group

00:10:05that we called the People's Liberation Front.

00:10:07The PLF, we were more of like a little militia.

00:10:09We adopted these titles called Commander,

00:10:12and we'd all dress in camo when we went to protest and shit.

00:10:15And one day, my friend sat me down and said,

00:10:18look, we want to have a talk about something.

00:10:21A hacktivist group by the name of Anonymous

00:10:26had hacked the forums of the Epilepsy Foundation of America.

00:10:32And they had placed on the forum on the front page

00:10:36an animated gif.

00:10:38These gifs, these animated gifs,

00:10:40they stroked very brightly, they stroked very fast.

00:10:44They could take an epileptic

00:10:46and cause them to have a seizure just from looking at it.

00:10:48Four people went to the hospital across the country.

00:10:51And these people were literally harmed

00:10:54by hackers thousands of miles away,

00:10:58physically wounded.

00:11:02It sounds so funny on one level.

00:11:04I get the laws.

00:11:05I get why they did it.

00:11:07They're still fucking dickheads.

00:11:09If you're out there today watching this movie,

00:11:10you're a piece of shit.

00:11:12He was a deadhead.

00:11:13Here's a guy who would like anti-apartheid protesters.

00:11:17He got busted, supposedly,

00:11:18for selling 300 hits of acid at dead shows.

00:11:21I mean, this is what he's coming out of.

00:11:23So this idea that these punks were trying to hurt people

00:11:27was upsetting, so he didn't have a great opinion

00:11:31of this anonymous whatever it was.

00:11:35We can't let that fucking pass.

00:11:37These people need to either be brought to justice

00:11:39or at the very least fucking monitored

00:11:41to see what else they're going to fucking do.

00:11:43So I was tasked with literally infiltrating anonymous.

00:11:47I was to go in the IRC,

00:11:49spend as much time as I could, make as much contacts,

00:11:52not to get these people busted.

00:11:53This was not some sort of law enforcement thing.

00:11:55I just want to know what these fucking people are up to.

00:11:58You know?

00:11:59So that's how I get into anonymous.

00:12:06There was no founder of anonymous.

00:12:08From late 2007 on,

00:12:11there was some degree of soft power

00:12:14that in one way or another managed to corral this phenomenon

00:12:19and did so in ways that were effective,

00:12:21that allowed it to become a decisive force,

00:12:23sometimes in the history of nations.

00:12:26There was no reason to expect that that would last

00:12:29without a charter, without a structure.

00:12:32There was no reason to expect this would go on for too long.

00:12:36It is frankly shocking in retrospect that it worked

00:12:39for as long as it did.

00:12:40My name is Barrett Brown.

00:12:41I'm a journalist, an activist, and a gentleman adventurer.

00:12:44Anonymous was not founded,

00:12:45and I'm not sure if anybody would have taken responsibility for it

00:12:47had they actually found it back in the 4chan days.

00:12:50The 4chan website, the image board,

00:12:52that have been around since 2004, 2005,

00:12:55the primordial suit from which Anonymous eventually evolved.

00:12:58That was the crucible for Anonymous,

00:13:01so I don't think you can really understand Anonymous

00:13:04without understanding 4chan.

00:13:06There were message boards within 4chan.

00:13:09It was a forum for people on the internet

00:13:11to talk freely and openly about a variety of subjects.

00:13:15Then there was a board that was just the random board,

00:13:18slash B, where you could talk about anything.

00:13:21That's where it became a bit more free-form,

00:13:24and the idea was that your default handle

00:13:27was anonymous.

00:13:28That was the name you were given.

00:13:30It was kind of like this hive mind of the internet,

00:13:33and so they started to do what they called raids,

00:13:37which was sort of like,

00:13:39hey, let's do like a little field trip on the internet,

00:13:41something fun and stupid.

00:13:43So they did the, well, one of the famous ones

00:13:45was Habbo Hotel, which was this children's game,

00:13:48which they decided to infiltrate,

00:13:51you know, have all these characters with afros.

00:13:53I think there was some, like, Nazi imagery.

00:13:56It was just about shop value and fun,

00:14:00obviously offensive fun.

00:14:02I've participated in some of these things,

00:14:03like some of the Second Life raids,

00:14:05where they would don these bizarre, garish outfits

00:14:08and go around and wave giant penises,

00:14:10like at concerts they were having in Second Life,

00:14:12and bomb furry nightclubs.

00:14:15I remember thinking, like, the sort of,

00:14:18the emergent organization that's going on here.

00:14:20This is the new dynamic that the internet has made possible.

00:14:24In a world where there's no more pioneer land,

00:14:26there's no more frontier,

00:14:27suddenly it was all frontier in every direction.

00:14:30I wondered, you know, what would happen when these people realize

00:14:34what power they have,

00:14:36and what greater power they could have

00:14:38if they were to adopt some shared ideology,

00:14:42some shared enemy, even.

00:14:44And that ended up happening.

00:14:46Everyone knows that Anonymous existed,

00:14:49depending on how you look at it,

00:14:50all the way back to even late 03.

00:14:53But, in reality, that was two people on a website, you know.

00:14:57The strangest thing happens, you know.

00:14:59In January 08, it becomes this, you know,

00:15:01giant movement that the news is covering.

00:15:04And that was partially my fault,

00:15:07and definitely an accident.

00:15:09You know, I look back, and I wish I could say,

00:15:11you know, I masterminded this amazing thing on purpose.

00:15:14No, I have no idea what I was doing, dude.

00:15:17On January 14, 2008,

00:15:19up on 4chan, this video is posted

00:15:22of Tom Cruise being insane.

00:15:24Tom Cruise, Scientologist.

00:15:27Being a Scientologist,

00:15:29when you drive past an accident,

00:15:31it's not like anyone else.

00:15:33As you drive past, you know you have to do something about it,

00:15:36because you know you're the only person

00:15:38that can really help.

00:15:40And another post comes saying the video is gone.

00:15:43And everyone's like,

00:15:44well, wait, why did that get taken down?

00:15:46That's Tom Cruise being insane.

00:15:47It's fucking funny.

00:15:49We decided that we're really good at doxing people.

00:15:51We're really good at getting their information

00:15:52and hunting people down,

00:15:54and used some connections to find the person

00:15:56who had the video.

00:15:57And by we, I mean a few of us who were on IRC,

00:16:01which is a chat system,

00:16:03we went and found the person who had uploaded that video

00:16:06and got their source and we re-uploaded it.

00:16:09It was taken offline in like 30 seconds.

00:16:14Scientology at that point was watching YouTube

00:16:17for everything going by and like, got it again.

00:16:20And that actually pissed us off.

00:16:23You just don't do that.

00:16:24You don't take something off the internet.

00:16:26I remember talking to someone about this

00:16:28and they equate it to like a playground

00:16:31and somebody took their ball.

00:16:33We have fair use laws under the DMCA,

00:16:35but YouTube was still caving

00:16:37because they didn't want to fight a billion dollar behemoth

00:16:39like Scientology.

00:16:41The Church of Scientology had a long history

00:16:43ever since the internet became a thing

00:16:45of trying to control it,

00:16:47trying to censor materials from the church

00:16:50that they consider to be proprietary,

00:16:52generally things that are embarrassing

00:16:53regarding their beliefs.

00:16:54So, we decided we were going to troll Scientology

00:16:58by putting out a press release.

00:17:01Hello, leaders of Scientology.

00:17:03We are Anonymous.

00:17:05Over the years, we have been watching you,

00:17:08your campaigns of misinformation,

00:17:10your suppression of dissent,

00:17:12your litigious nature.

00:17:13It skirted the line between goofy and awe-inspiring.

00:17:17It happens to successfully veer towards awe-inspiring.

00:17:21Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization

00:17:24should be destroyed.

00:17:25This is ominous.

00:17:26Like, we're writing like,

00:17:27the internet is coming for you.

00:17:29Get ready.

00:17:30We shall proceed to expel you from the internet

00:17:32and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology

00:17:35in its present form.

00:17:37Anonymous promised an army would come

00:17:39and defeat Scientology,

00:17:41would come and bring just unprecedented chaos.

00:17:45It was about 1020 at night on the 21st of January 2008.

00:17:50I don't remember my birthday half the time.

00:17:52I don't know why this one sticks so well,

00:17:54but that we uploaded this video.

00:17:56And I think, if I'm lucky,

00:17:5820, 30 people watch this video, find it funny.

00:18:00We are Anonymous.

00:18:01We are Legion.

00:18:02We do not forgive.

00:18:03We do not forget.

00:18:05Expect us.

00:18:06I got woken up by my girlfriend at the time.

00:18:09It was like 4.30 in the morning.

00:18:10She's calling me.

00:18:11Maybe 5 is right around there.

00:18:12And she says, turn on CNN.

00:18:14And I turned on CNN,

00:18:16and the video's on CNN.

00:18:18And I'm like, what is going on?

00:18:20You have nowhere to hide,

00:18:22because we are everywhere.

00:18:23And at that point,

00:18:24we're sitting there with a million views on the video,

00:18:27news reaching out trying to get a hold of us,

00:18:29Scientology paying big money to private eyes trying to find us,

00:18:33and an army kind of in front of us

00:18:35that are all going by the name Anonymous now.

00:18:37They promised an army.

00:18:38They didn't have it.

00:18:39But by virtue of making it clear,

00:18:41making it palpable,

00:18:42people wanted this army

00:18:44that would emerge from the Internet and right wrongs.

00:18:47And so, naively, we're like,

00:18:49well, then let's plan a global worldwide protest

00:18:52in every, you know, major country on the planet.

00:18:55We're going to be those old school protest types,

00:18:57but do it like the Internet does it, so make it fun.

00:19:01We're sending Anonymous outside,

00:19:03so they better remain anonymous.

00:19:05So we're going to need to cover our faces.

00:19:07The media needs something they can show

00:19:09that's the ominous thing, right?

00:19:11So we had to give them a mask.

00:19:14It had to be available.

00:19:16So we actually spent the next about 25 hours

00:19:19calling comic shops, costume shops,

00:19:22and literally every single city we tried to call

00:19:26had Guy Fawkes masks in stock,

00:19:29sitting in back that no one was buying

00:19:31that they had discounted

00:19:33because everyone thought after the V for Vendetta movie

00:19:36that a million of these would sell,

00:19:37and none did.

00:19:38And we're like, well, great.

00:19:39Decision made.

00:19:40It's the only mask we can actually use.

00:19:42Everyone wants a romantic version of this story.

00:19:45No.

00:19:46It was because it was the only one that was available

00:19:48in every single town we were going to be in.

00:19:52It was ominous.

00:19:53It sort of created this mythology of anonymous.

00:19:57Who is anonymous?

00:19:58What are they?

00:19:59They wear these masks, you know?

00:20:00And I think that was the time

00:20:02when anonymous was really branded.

00:20:04And so having conceived of the army

00:20:06and presented the picture,

00:20:07the army came.

00:20:08They happened to be clever enough

00:20:09to organize all these thousands of people

00:20:12who saw this video they made.

00:20:14And so the army was materialized.

00:20:16The army showed up.

00:20:17This is what the internet would look like

00:20:19if it went outside.

00:20:20There were women.

00:20:22There were people of color.

00:20:23Every race.

00:20:24There were young and old.

00:20:25There was everyone.

00:20:26And we just weren't expecting that.

00:20:28We were really expecting

00:20:29the young hackerish 4chaner guys

00:20:31to all show up

00:20:32and that to be our little group of 20

00:20:34that stood on the corner for an hour.

00:20:35And instead, all these other people showed up.

00:20:38And it was great.

00:20:39And that's how anonymous first became a decisive force.

00:20:43You have a thing now.

00:20:45What do we do with this?

00:20:47It had only been built for fighting Scientology.

00:20:50In reality, its whole goal

00:20:51was actually just to screw with them for a week.

00:20:53You know, again, this being so off the cuff

00:20:55and so completely accidental,

00:20:58every step of it.

00:20:59We didn't expect this to keep going.

00:21:04The Scientology protests at that time

00:21:06was funny as hell.

00:21:08And that's what eventually sold me on them.

00:21:10They really were turned out to be people

00:21:12that were authentic.

00:21:13So I'm hanging out with these people.

00:21:15And like I said,

00:21:16the vast majority, I have to admit,

00:21:17we're good people.

00:21:20At that point in the story,

00:21:22there's just one of those cathartic moments

00:21:24that's about to happen for really everybody.

00:21:27And that was the release of the collateral murder video.

00:21:30I see all those people standing down there.

00:21:43Hotel 26, Crazy Horse 18.

00:21:45They have individuals with weapons.

00:21:47the radio.

00:21:52Anybody there's an element?

00:21:53I'll build an RPG.

00:21:54We got a guy with an RPG.

00:21:56I'm gonna fire.

00:21:57Light them all up.

00:22:04Come on, fire.

00:22:07Hey, Roger.

00:22:08within weeks of the release of that was an immediate thunderstorm of persecution

00:22:18fired off at wikileaks wikileaks picked a fight with the u.s now the u.s is fighting back

00:22:24in more ways than one american lawmakers want to see founder julian assange they want to see him

00:22:29tried under the espionage act and the wikileaks website has its own trouble this is a new news

00:22:35or paypal has announced it has suspended wikileaks account costing it a vital source of funding

00:22:42mastercard visa and paypal agreed to a behind the scenes u.s embargo against wikileaks whereby

00:22:48they all simultaneously more or less said oh we're not going to process donations wikileaks anymore

00:22:52immediately there is this fucking visceral rage because websites like the kkk or the westboro

00:22:59baptist church have paypal donation links on their fucking sites but then what but what

00:23:04was a publishing company like wikileaks just trying to get enough money to pay for their

00:23:09servers and no are you kidding me and so anonymous just left that day the data donation portals

00:23:15came down anonymous said we're coming for you supporters of the website wikileaks launching

00:23:20a sweeping cyber war this week that's right it's being called operation payback or also operation

00:23:26avenge assange and it's basically a loose affiliation of hackers that call themselves anonymous this time

00:23:32they're turning attention to what they uh consider to be the enemies of wikileaks visa mastercards are

00:23:38the big hits they've had so far this man calls himself commander x and says he's part of anonymous

00:23:44the power of anonymous is is is that we have the ability to affect change on the internet their method of choice a denial of service

00:23:55attack where hackers overwhelm websites with a huge volume of requests for information crashing the sites as commander x for a cause

00:24:03that process is is the equivalent of a virtual city i can best sum up my philosophy with the quote that i'm so famous for and

00:24:12it is i admit very fucking funny uh you only need two things in this world to be a world-class hacker

00:24:18a computer and a cool pair of sunglasses and the computer's optional you have a site online

00:24:25all of a sudden we snap our fingers and that site is gone anybody can do it you don't have to be a hacker

00:24:31to take down a website you know you can download a program and figure it out in an afternoon these are

00:24:36all various ddos weapons this would be the equivalent of a of a rifle listen now our target has been loaded

00:24:45and as we say in anonymous poo poo poo and hopefully hundreds if maybe thousands of people would download

00:24:51this same software and all of us fire so it's really about multiplication this is a weapon that's

00:24:57designed to be used by an army and we just kept going it was an incredible time because that entire

00:25:0110 days you don't even sleep you have in essence julian assange who has become a cyber messiah and

00:25:07hundreds of followers who are waking up zombie computers they're soldiers and attacking companies

00:25:13like visa mastercard and this is the first time you really begin to hear during those 10 days the fbi

00:25:21rhetoric was just over the top you know these are cyber terrorists the we're going to shut them down

00:25:27and of course we're all like yeah fuck you yeah so what it's protest motherfuckers get used to it

00:25:37in the midst of that i've been living in santa cruz and i had a cabin up in the mountains but i used

00:25:42to stay and when i was in santa cruz i didn't pay for a hotel there's places to sleep outdoors

00:25:47santa cruz doesn't just have homeless people um you have like you're mentally ill and you're addicted

00:25:53who hover around santa cruz because there's a lot of drugs there it's a surf town

00:25:59but the vast majority of people that they label homeless people are actually just

00:26:02bohemes they're just people traveling up and down the coast it's a travel corridor for backpacking

00:26:08camper living culture that exists in california

00:26:12you will not make it illegal for a man to fall asleep on the grass and give him a ticket and

00:26:25even put him in jail and when that doesn't pass muster in court you make a law against people

00:26:29covering up with a blanket at night when they're asleep literally they got a blanket law in santa

00:26:33cruz i'm not even shitting you

00:26:35these homeless people had a protest camp going called peace camp

00:26:42we were sleeping on the courthouse steps we're sleeping in protest we're sleeping literally with

00:26:48the sign next to us that said i am protesting the sleep law that's why i'm sleeping here there's

00:26:55people sleeping all over this fucking courthouse what's going on here it's peace camp 2010.

00:27:02so the camp has grown from an overnight sleep in to a 24-hour hangout

00:27:14we're stars man peace camp 2010. they can't get enough of us we are the media darlings

00:27:20i'm at the national of the santa cruz county board house where homeless activists have been protesting

00:27:24city ordinances for more than a month we have a squad of sheriffs on hand

00:27:32the santa cruz police department despised all of us professional protesters

00:27:36and attention began to grow in santa cruz very very big time

00:27:51get rid of the uncomfortable looks like you're going to arrest us

00:27:56and i'd been arrested hey chris you have a warrant out for your arrest

00:27:59somebody you go ahead and place your hands behind your back go ahead and set those down

00:28:04nobody had any clue that this scraggly guy with a long red beard and everything is like one of

00:28:10the most notorious hackers online with the name commander x i uh decided that i would harness my new

00:28:20friends that i was garnering in the anonymous collective and i said i got a plan i said i i think

00:28:27i want to take down the county website i said but i want to be super cool about it because i i'm here

00:28:33in this town so what i'd like to do is do it really ethical hacking style let's do it at on a sunday at

00:28:40noon for 30 minutes and we'll pre-announce it we'll tell them the specific time it is going to be down so

00:28:46that you know the public will know that you just just wait you know and it will come back

00:28:52i just went off and did it i sat in a coffee house and i'm churning out these attacks i'm deploying

00:29:00cyber weapons that our crew built just to d-dog shit two detectives from santa cruz sheriffs walked

00:29:06in and gave everybody a good look over and that's when i started packing up to get the out of

00:29:11there oh my god my heart is coming out of my chest a sweat pouring off me i got my pack on my back my

00:29:19laptop over my shoulder and i just fucking scoot left and walk normal as you can but anyway i make

00:29:26my way to the library put out the press release from the library and then the next morning i get up and

00:29:33the headline is on the santa cruz paper i mean in big black letters santa cruz cyber attack

00:29:39and i knew i knew i just knew it was epic and i knew that my life would never be the same again

00:29:49and the other thing i also knew was that anonymous was the most powerful force ever to be created in

00:29:56humanity so far and that no doubt they were fucking coming for us and coming for us with guns drawn

00:30:03literally cyber is the battlefield of the future and most of these attackers are going after whatever

00:30:17the hell they can in order to show you what they can do and that is very hard very frankly to defend

00:30:25against i'm uh leon panetta former director of the cia former secretary of defense and now

00:30:34chairman of the panetta institute for public policy power can be very infatuating when you know you have

00:30:42power and you can exercise that power and i think in many ways that's what happened with a group like

00:30:49anonymous and other hacking groups that suddenly realized they had their hands on a very powerful

00:30:56weapon and they weren't quite sure and i think they still remain not quite sure about just exactly

00:31:04what it means you know for something like the cia and for other intelligence agencies at least you know

00:31:11the devil that you're after but when it comes to anonymous hackers it was much more difficult to try to

00:31:18figure out what are they after what damage could they do are these just a bunch of people you know

00:31:24playing 21st century hacking games or are these people that have a motivation that could be very

00:31:34dangerous to our security i was batman and i had powers by then i was like gearing up i'm geeking up i'm

00:31:44starting to bust some i'm starting to have some fun with this because i was working very hard by that

00:31:50point i was putting in 10 12 15 hour days to this movement of anonymous i was participating to the

00:31:58fullest extent that i could do and not die commander x is who he is and you know we all know we've all

00:32:06seen his his version of uh reality but um he didn't come into my orbit until people started talking to

00:32:13me about the fact that x said he talked to you on irc and i'm like who he just kind of showed up as a

00:32:19guy who was putting up websites under the anon name and you'd look at it and the website looked

00:32:24like it was built in 1993 like one of the first drafts of a website ever that a guy who was openly

00:32:29telling us he was homeless was building so like he didn't want to just outright say uh what the

00:32:34fuck guy you wanted to say okay guys trying with very limited resources he would be you know we're doing

00:32:39his thing and obviously he was doing ddos thing he was hitting targets he was i didn't think he was

00:32:45doing too much harm and i was always kind to him because surprisingly enough i am actually

00:32:50innately a kind person by default that i just said like nice things sometimes like a sarcastic like

00:32:54go forth continue commander as i understand his story he was the kind of hippie protester who showed

00:33:01up and you know was holding signs anti-war and all that you know and that was none of us to speak the

00:33:07honest truth like i'm the 19 year old driving a car who sees a puddle and a bunch of people at a

00:33:11bus stop and hits the puddle as fast as he can i that's me at 19 i'm i'm not the good guy so from

00:33:17the very beginning there was definitely a clash of just personalities because he came at it from a

00:33:23completely different way we sort of were thrust into being activists very accidentally and that was

00:33:30just who he thought he was i did not have all access at that point to anonymous i was you know

00:33:38definitely very strong and very powerful person and had to respect even though people like barrett

00:33:44brown and and greg house and stuff like that and i remember clearly going to barrett brown and asking

00:33:50him what do you think we should do next i think he responded with just one word keep an eye on the

00:33:56middle east commander x and i did not sit there and plan the advent of op tunisia and the tunisian

00:34:02revolution the tunisian revolution began when a fruit vendor in tunis the capital

00:34:10set himself on fire in protest of the local corrupt police having taken away his assets

00:34:17for failure to pay a bribe

00:34:20that is what sparks the initial conflagration that's what started the street uprisings

00:34:26rage it provided an enzyme or a catalyst i'm not good for chemistry or much else

00:34:33provided a catalyst a center of attention for those in the country who are aware of it

00:34:38to uh rally around tunisia is is one of those interesting ones where they invited us in we

00:34:44didn't even come and talk to them they came and talked to us you know at first we all didn't think

00:34:50we could help i mean honestly strange enough commander x was the first one on that channel saying no we can

00:34:55absolutely do this and we all thought he was fucking insane i mean like who who the hell are we this

00:35:01is a dictator of an african nation some tunisian hackers came to us in anonymous and in fact they were

00:35:09more or less handed off to me because nobody knew quite what to do with them but they claimed to have

00:35:15some rather extraordinary access but needed some assistance um it's a small country with a small

00:35:21infrastructure and we have the usernames and passwords to everything you name it the water

00:35:27supply like the radio stations the servers that the president's email is on you don't have to hack

00:35:33anything we just have the passwords here you go so we were able to prove that these people were

00:35:39receiving just enormous bribes living like gods while tunisia drowned in poverty and so now these people

00:35:47are are really just furious is this right who are the people who are planning on going on the streets

00:35:52are they are they our people you know are are we helping some extremists who are going to make it

00:35:57worse so we did a lot of work with these guys and we did honestly like days of research into who the

00:36:03president was ben ali who he was you know the dictator uh you know turns out the people who were going

00:36:08the streets were really the people and uh they needed to overthrow this this dictator to the extent there

00:36:14is right and wrong and that one could point to a large group of people and say that one is mostly

00:36:18right that one is mostly wrong there was never any question that we were right and that if if this

00:36:23was to escalate further it would be a terrible thing for living involved but i would personally uh

00:36:29be enthusiastic about that

00:36:38i mean you look at it and you think what could hackers do but you'd be surprised at how important

00:36:43it is to keep communication from city to city we built this list of all the technologies they

00:36:48would block and we kind of estimated what order they would try and block them in like easiest they're

00:36:53going to just get twitter and facebook turned off in the country right so we put proxies up and fed them

00:37:00to all the people in the major cities uh as as soon as the these start working access them this way

00:37:05can we get activated satellite phones to some of the people in these towns yes we can

00:37:16it keeps going from there to like seven layers of communication so when the internet goes down then

00:37:22when the cell phones go down we can keep handing them a new way to keep in contact

00:37:27this is all unraveling in hours and days it's great next week

00:37:36i fought as we talked about earlier in the apartheid movement for 10 years

00:37:41it took 10 days to run the dictator out of tunisia

00:37:48after tunisia we're starting to help the egyptians with the same tools because now we've kind of got a

00:37:53tool kit we're really beginning to define skill sets that specifically apply to these street revolutions

00:38:03one of the things we had done there was we knew the internet was going to get cut pretty easily

00:38:08so our preparedness for that was we had gotten dial up isps old school 90s level modems mailed in to

00:38:15egypt so if the internet got completely cut but the phones were still working they could dial into the

00:38:20internet turn the internet back on in egypt three times

00:38:29those egyptians were using the internet to organize but we become the arab spring

00:38:34oh my god we are having geopolitical impact we're saying who's going to rule in this world and who isn't

00:38:43none of these were our protests when you look at any of the stuff we did during the arab spring

00:38:48none of them were our ideas this is a revolution for the sincere people of this country they're the

00:38:54ones that want to make the change they're the ones that will make the change they're the true heroes

00:39:00of this country people showed up asked for our help it turned out it was things we could do so we did it

00:39:05and then i went back to building uh some plumbers website the next day i mean i think we came out of

00:39:11the area of the area of spring pretty convinced we were all gods commander x is is definitely a victim

00:39:17of his own ego at this point was commander x on the ground in in the square in tunis in the capital

00:39:24uh getting shot at no there were people on the ground risking their lives they could have possibly

00:39:32done this without us we could not have done it without them by the time the citizen revolution

00:39:44was over by the time egypt had started the fbi raided 40 u.s households on a single day in late

00:39:50january 2011. over these ddos attacks slowed down mastercard's corporate website uh and visas

00:39:58and paypal's for a couple seconds armed raids with families being held at gunpoint in some cases

00:40:04they were gunned for us this is like war dozens of fbi agents targeted alleged members of the loose-knit

00:40:13armed with search warrants agents hit six homes in new york along with locations across the country

00:40:18seizing hard drives and computer accessories it's all at the same moment literally the same moment

00:40:23that's how they do this so that we can't get on like irc and say hey dudes they're coming

00:40:28fucking wipe your drives and run and that's so that's what they did except there's only got 39 of

00:40:34them because one was batman the reaction that they had was so needier to our attacks on paypal

00:40:44mastercard and visa visa.com went offline for a few minutes did that affect anyone's ability to buy

00:40:51anything or give anyone's info away no it did nothing their marketing piece where you could

00:40:57download a brochure was offline for a few minutes somehow 50 million dollars and damn it no dude no

00:41:03when have you as someone who has a visa card ever gone to visa.com it didn't affect anyone uh and it

00:41:10was down for five minutes but they tried to get people you know to go to prison for it mastercard's

00:41:14website was offline for a couple hours but again that was their fault their their was really badly built

00:41:19um but again very clearly nobody uses those sites to do their transactions those sites are advertising

00:41:28you know what does it take to get a case indicted these days a couple million bitcoin and extortions and

00:41:36things like that whereas you know what did it take a case to get indicted in 2010

00:41:41the low orbit ion cannon

00:41:48by nature it's a joke like the thing says pew pew on it it's a bit by nature it's a joke and you know

00:41:57a joke will get you prison in 2010. my name's jay lederman i'm a criminal defense attorney

00:42:03i do a lot of underdog work i do a lot of um stuff that people won't touch because they're worried

00:42:11it's a too high or too clandestinal level that men in you know black escalades are going to pull up

00:42:18and what have you and that doesn't happen come on don't tell them that though because then i i miss

00:42:25out on all my fun i sent out a series of tweets that i would uh represent some righteous hacktivist

00:42:33busted in my hood meaning california so in our general mailbox the next day there was a message

00:42:39from them it said i'm commander x and you know i am the commander x not just commander x i am the

00:42:47commander x and um he thought they were looking for him for the potential santa cruz ddos

00:42:56they consider that unauthorized access and he thought that things were going down very quickly

00:43:03or going to be going down very quickly for him

00:43:07i was in mountain view california and i had known that they had pretty much tracked me to mountain

00:43:13view i was seeing the crown vicks around i saw the fbi agents in the library when i was surfing on the

00:43:18internet they would have had me surrounded by at least a dozen agents at all times

00:43:25they must have really really feared me at that at that point to deploy a dozen agents rather than

00:43:32just walk up and fucking arrest me i'm going back and forth with x you know we had the meeting spot

00:43:38a range at that point i'm still using like some sort of commercial based email i'm still new and he was

00:43:47using some encrypted form of email for some reason he said to me the last email he said to me was like

00:43:55jay i'll see you at uh 10 o'clock at the such and such coffee house and i said why on earth did you say

00:44:03that he had told me the name of the place weeks before i had it i had it written down i knew where

00:44:08i was going there's a guy in bermuda shorts and that stupid lion shirt that they always make fbi

00:44:14agents wear thinking that that's somehow fucking stealthy and he's staring right at me as i'm

00:44:20walking down the street so i'm like okay so it's a game right so i'll play the game i go to the coffee

00:44:25house another fbi agent comes in sits down takes my picture with his cell phone i was like okay let's

00:44:32see if you know about the secret fucking passageway out of this coffee house because i did down the

00:44:38fucking stairs i went out the back door nadia the fib from hell she was screaming because she

00:44:46saw me bolting down this alley and couldn't get out of traffic in time to come after me ended up coming

00:44:51up the sidewalk with pedestrians literally weeping out of this woman's way as he drives up the sidewalk

00:44:58and i was just sat down in the bus stop i lit a cigarette and an fbi agent who i've come to call

00:45:05a cyber crime guy got out of the van calmed nadia the fib down made her put her gun away and just

00:45:11calmly sat there with me and waited while i finished my cigarette he asked me my name and i said dude if

00:45:16you don't know who you're about to arrest you're not doing the job right right then jay lederman drove by

00:45:21i was looking for parking and i got a call from my office that christopher doion was off yeah i called

00:45:30back the number and it was an fbi agent they were like yeah hold on he wants to talk to you

00:45:36they got him an hour before i got there at the place we had arranged to meet

00:45:44i don't know what their methods are who knows if they had like some camera planted in the little

00:45:48whatever tree x was like you know sleeping under you know looking at his computer when he's typing

00:45:54it you know i can't prove that it was on my end but it sure appears that the fbi violated attorney

00:46:01client privilege by having my emails monitored and were able to pick him up an hour before i arrived at

00:46:10the meeting at that point i went through a couple of days of uh court hearings to determine exactly

00:46:22what the fuck they were going to do with me they were alleging sixty two hundred dollars in damages

00:46:29they did what they could to make sure it was over five thousand dollars because that's what they were

00:46:34told by the united states attorney's office how do i know that even though i don't know that because

00:46:40that's what every united states attorney's office tells everyone about it they say listen you got to

00:46:45get this over five thousand dollars or this is a misdemeanor this is just some guy in a library like

00:46:51clicking enter on his computer come on man it's like what's this worth and and then that's what

00:46:57ultimately happened with paypal it was you know be good for 18 months and and we'll dismiss all of these

00:47:03of course he could have gotten 15 years

00:47:10so i was released on bail it's a mistake tactically on their part you had me and you let me go

00:47:20and so of course i went back to the war i'd like to state for the public record that this press

00:47:26conference is being held against the advice of my legal accounts x is good at giving attorneys

00:47:32ulcers me i i'm ulcer proof i i work fine this document alleges that i am the notorious hacker

00:47:42activist known to the world as commander x

00:47:47i am commander x

00:47:51well i don't know you try to tell him to shut up see how that works the indictment further alleges that i

00:47:57am in association with the global internet freedom movement known as anonymous

00:48:06and i say yes i am immensely proud humbled to the core to be a part of the idea called anonymous

00:48:17he does have the right to remain silent he chooses not to exercise it you know i am a homeless guy

00:48:23and now i'm scary smoke and despite the best efforts of the city the county and now the federal

00:48:34governments i will not be silenced the fbi is now in possession of three of my computers two

00:48:41fucking cell phones and god knows how many fucking external drives they've taken all my electronics

00:48:48they've forbidden me from using electronics well how am i going to handle this i can't go back to hacking

00:48:53but i want to keep fighting and keep fucking with them and it dawned on me what i was going to do

00:48:59i'm going to say goodbye and i'm not coming back and i began my run to the canadian border

00:49:07as far as i knew i think he was like sort of the first fugitive out of this whole movement

00:49:14i never really believed that he was in canada because it seemed too obvious you know it's like

00:49:22hiding in plain sight being in canada like i really didn't think he had gone to canada and sure as

00:49:28heck he went to canada

00:49:36if you want to call me a terrorist i've got no problem with that

00:49:39um but i would ask you who is it that's terrified and if it's the bad guys that are terrified um i'm

00:49:49really super okay with that

00:49:54the media for some reason loved talking to and about commander x i i for the life of me never got

00:50:01it but i also didn't think i had to like the things he was saying in the media while sometimes they

00:50:05were crazy most of the times they were just our talking points i went to go see him up in montreal

00:50:13whenever you heard interviews with somebody in an anonymous they treated it like you know you were

00:50:18just you were some like troll that had run out of a cave and you're all pixelated and all of that but

00:50:22like here was a guy who kind of looks like an older hippie guy and that put a face on something that had

00:50:28been faceless to a lot of people but i think it was in that moment too when he really became even more

00:50:37ostracized within the subculture of anonymous because the one thing you weren't supposed to do

00:50:43was to distinguish yourself really as an individual and put a face on something that's faceless

00:50:50a lot of accusations have been levied at him about what literally is referred to as fame whoring

00:50:55and they're not entirely wrong i mean he obviously wanted it he literally named himself commander

00:51:03his own version of the story you know very much says that he came in and was you know helping to

00:51:08make things better and um there were certainly people who just felt that commander x didn't deserve

00:51:15to have a feature in the new yorker about him it was that line in the new yorker but i forgot who said

00:51:19it was like you know i really got sick of commander x when he started comparing himself to batman

00:51:23that is a line that if it is said about you if it is written about if it is something that everyone

00:51:28agrees with if it could be uttered in in truth uh should be enough but let me go further he was an

00:51:35albatross he was an anchor an anchor on all of our necks he would claim that like actions are being

00:51:39taken that weren't being taken uh at levels that just we weren't working at at that time his alias is

00:51:45commander x and in some recent interviews he's made some startling claims he says that anonymous may very

00:51:50well be the most powerful organization on earth that the group of 50 000 members worldwide have

00:51:55access to every classified database in the u.s government people would then be like why did he

00:52:00say that i mean that just sounds stupid like we could bring small children in here and like we could

00:52:05tell them oh we have access to every classified data and like a five or six year old would suddenly

00:52:07work that out and be like well how do you know first of all you have all of them and second of all

00:52:12you know why would you say that out loud if you really did wouldn't that be a best security breach

00:52:18talk a little bit more about that well i have nothing more to say what do you want to know it

00:52:24was getting to people because he was also making the message look bad like he says this that's

00:52:29obviously insane then another and on says something that's obviously true but they're all insane several

00:52:34weeks ago i began research and experimentation on the development of a software program and kit

00:52:39that when downloaded and installed would allow the user to conduct true time travel essentially turning

00:52:45their home computer into a time machine this is literally a fucking email he wrote in 2009 i was

00:52:50taking a break from reading up on the theory behind sonic time travel and i was sitting under a tree

00:52:54that's sitting under a tree that's obnoxious i was wondering idly if i would ever crack the theory

00:52:59of time travel how could you even wonder that at that moment myself from approximately 25 years in the

00:53:06future came strolling down height street the me from the future less than 10 feet away turned and actually

00:53:12smirked at me i guess my time travel software kit works that's commander x that guy was was getting

00:53:21was was among those people who when i was not able to formulate the message bet in the background or the

00:53:29foreground with the press it was him and it was increasingly him and then when i went to prison

00:53:33it was very much him the fbi raided me on march 6 2012 uh raided my apartments first found i wasn't there

00:53:53which was by design uh then raided my mom's house and uh took my electronics computers phones uh files

00:54:01just like they had taken files and papers from my place and then six months later after i had learned

00:54:07i've been told by the prosecutor that they were going to be charging my mom as well which is a very

00:54:11common practice among the fbi charging someone's female loved ones to get them to cooperate uh and

00:54:16knowing uh myself that i would never cooperate with the fbi i made several videos laying all this out

00:54:24hi i'm bear brown again this is part three of a three-part series on why i'm angry with the fbi

00:54:31sorry i've got a case of the giggles uh my mom has not been involved in any of this at all

00:54:37was not just not did not know about the tip i received previous day didn't know i was over there

00:54:41i come over there a lot uh didn't know why i brought you know the laptops over you know didn't notice

00:54:47didn't mention i also threatened to shoot anybody that more fbi agents came to my house they know

00:54:52that i'm armed that i come from a military family that i was taught to shoot by a vietnam vet and by

00:54:57my father a master hunter and i will shoot all of them and kill them it was pretty obvious i was going

00:55:03to be dead before i was 40 or so so i wouldn't mind going out with two fbi side arms like a

00:55:08fucking egyptian barrel and so i was ready it's like super passionate about that argument

00:55:22i can't do my thing i'm fucking doing hard to get your hands out of my hands oh is there getting

00:55:32fucking raided by the lc i holy shit oh two months later i was uh charged this time with 11 counts of

00:55:42aggravated identity theft

00:55:43the charges in this case to justify it involved me copying and pasting a link from an anonymous irc

00:55:54chat room then a month later after that after those charges i was charged once more for destruction of

00:55:58justice just like my mom was for hiding laptops in her kitchen cabinet so long story short i went to

00:56:04prison if america is supposed to be the bastion of liberty around the world how do i even end up

00:56:15here in mexico how does shit like this even happen the computer fraud and abuse act is one of the

00:56:22worst punished statutes out there in that the amount of time you can get in relation to the harm caused

00:56:30is astounding yeah okay i'm criminal what i face now is 12 years in prison this is hanging over his

00:56:41head as does an absconding charge now so now on top of the 12 is added another seven so we're now

00:56:48talking about 19 years and i in prison do not have that long to live so it's a life sentence and for me

00:56:55that's still lining the sand i actually first went to toronto because of the world premiere of a

00:57:14documentary called we are legion i first met x at a um at an occupy protest in in oakland at the

00:57:31height of the occupy movement and at that point he was homeless he was uh i mean he's clearly living

00:57:36on the streets he was attracted to the movement because of uh its activist potential i have stood

00:57:42upon the mountaintop known as anonymous and looked down on a a world inflamed with revolution you know

00:57:48i saw him again when he was homeless in toronto and he was you know toronto is not an easy place

00:57:53to be homeless and uh you know he wasn't doing well he wasn't doing well no country should be allowed

00:57:59to stifle dissent to the point where people are committing suicide and people are fleeing their own

00:58:04country never to return i think about the decision i made i'm never going home

00:58:12something about the city made me feel like it would be a very awesome place for me to take a bit of a

00:58:20break and maybe blend in you know i'll settle here seems all right and so i met ian thornton when he was

00:58:30just walking down the street as a recently turned storyteller this was gold dust i mean it wasn't there

00:58:38was no master plan to do anything with it but viscerally this is the sort of thing that a storyteller

00:58:46dreams of truth being weirder than fiction this had to be investigated almost every person who i've ever

00:58:55revealed myself too while i was on the run all said the same thing why did you tell me why would you

00:59:01do something that stupid and ian too asked me why would you do that and simply because i needed help

00:59:08so this for several years was the bedroom of commander x and quite uncannily someone has been using it

00:59:19as a bedroom he slept with his laptop underneath his head he would wrap it in bubble wrap particularly

00:59:24during the winter make it watertight and then if he were disturbed during the night at least his

00:59:30laptop was under his head and he'd get up every morning he'd go to the to the coffee shop and that's

00:59:35where he'd start his electronic warfare and mischief and intrigue he helped me write the books because i

00:59:42didn't have an agent i didn't have a lawyer i didn't have a publisher you know he gave me safe houses

00:59:47whenever i needed them hotel rooms airbnbs he had a cottage out by the lake he knew what my goals were

00:59:54which was to find asylum we went through some incredible experiences where we really thought

00:59:59i was going to iceland for a minute and then it didn't pan out we thought for a moment quite

01:00:05seriously i might be going to russia and that didn't pan out thank you thank you very much everybody

01:00:15and then trump got elected sorry to keep you waiting complicated business donald trump had already made

01:00:21himself a a rabid enemy of the mexican people in the mexican government we will build a great wall along

01:00:29the southern border

01:00:34and mexico will pay for the wall

01:00:39you can use my walls we will never pay for that talking wall trump had really ratcheted up the the

01:00:46the tension between the two countries and when you're looking for asylum this is what you're

01:00:52looking for it's a political hack you're essentially looking to pit two nation states against each other

01:01:00for the sole purpose of creating a tiny bubble of freedom for yourself so mexico is looking really in

01:01:06play here the big problem of course is geography right i've got to go back into the united states of america

01:01:12and do i really want to go back from being a political dissident in exile in canada to being a

01:01:18fugitive both boots on the ground and so i produced a 30-page pdf and called ian to the coffee house

01:01:26i said so what do you think and he said you're not going to actually do this right

01:01:34and i was like yeah i think i'm going to do it

01:01:37i said i want to help and so that was born operation golden eagle golden eagle for those

01:01:46not maybe up to speed is the national bird of mexico it made a nice code name i secretly contacted

01:01:52barrett brown and i said do you want to come with me dude you want to get out when i won't go to mexico

01:01:58with you when i'm you know to leave a a country that i have uh increasingly come to despise it means i

01:02:06don't like you and don't think much of your planning ability and his decision was no how many times

01:02:10you have to flee the country i just want to do it once

01:02:22anonymous operation golden eagle is by far the weirdest human endeavor probably in human history

01:02:29so far it was the most elaborate thoughtful anonymous operation that i have ever been a part of

01:02:37100 kilometers to alatoona begins now this is a southeastern manitoba canada we knew it was hunting

01:02:46season in manitoba we knew if i was going to go through the woods in manitoba i might get shot at

01:02:51and i did one has to fucking wonder how a hacker from cambridge ends up in a place like this

01:02:58and out of altoona i will break back into my own country and guess what this is our first camp in the

01:03:09united states of america because that folks that's north dakota i'm now by my own choice

01:03:17of our full-on future wanted better alive how do you like them out i'm actually taking a cab right

01:03:27out of pembina oh straight to grand forks from grand forks i'm catching a greyhound all the way to el

01:03:36el paso all the way to what we call in this operation the exit node which is el paso that's

01:03:43el paso is the city that i'll stage my exit out of america if something's going to go wrong it's

01:03:49going to go wrong on these 15 kilometers where some cop jacks me up way the out here

01:03:53because i can't explain what the fuck i'm doing out here bullet cases

01:04:02people are out here shooting if i don't make it or if i'm killed by bandits

01:04:10or if i'm captured by united states authorities in the last one and a half kilometers to the border

01:04:17the border i want you to know i did my best but hopefully i'll make it

01:04:30so

01:04:47now i have no idea i have very little idea what's in here i had this laptop when he switched for a

01:05:01newer one a more lightweight one for his trip he wanted to be far more streamlined and and this

01:05:07was the stuff that he left oh geez look at this this is world war one stuff

01:05:17so when i hugged him at the greyhound station in september 2017 i didn't think i was going to see

01:05:25him ever again but i will be surprising him in mexico city on guy fawkes day

01:05:36people in the anonymous collective who've learned to watch my twitter very carefully

01:05:41and so i i began to tease hey guys watch me on november 5th

01:05:45because i didn't want to just announce i'm going to be at the monument ahead of time

01:05:51i'm going to do something really cool guys keep an eye out

01:05:55i have hundreds and hundreds journalists to follow my twitter account just for that reason

01:06:00well we're on our way to the million mass march in mexico city just to remind the people in power

01:06:07that we're still here we're still legion and we're still everywhere and we never forgive we never

01:06:13forget since 2013 actually we've been doing million mass marches it galvanizes everyone who thinks they

01:06:25associate with anonymous all on one day all straight all straight sort of celebrate how much we've grown

01:06:32over the last year meet other anons and if that's kind of cathartic that's a pretty big thing for an anon

01:06:40because we don't get to meet each other very often

01:06:46there's a lot going on here in latin america there's a lot of tension there are people in the

01:06:50streets of chile ecuador bolivia venezuela they are marching against their government and all of those

01:06:59protests in latin america have at least the potential of overthrowing their their government

01:07:04so if the culture is generally speaking in a revolutionary mood that's a really big sign that

01:07:11today could be good and even bigger than normal i would not be at all even marginally surprised to see

01:07:18two thousand um could be even bigger

01:07:30ha ha look at this you

01:07:35okay come on get him in the truck get him in the truck quick we gotta get out of here we gotta go

01:07:39we're talking on the way let's go god dude look at you you get her back you brought a mask right

01:07:45they took them off me at the airport they are illegal to bring them in i don't know but they

01:07:50took i had four of them they took them for me oh we better because we have our wits about us that's

01:07:54not good news actually that's concerning

01:08:04dude how do i keep ending up at all these icons of revolution like i literally live like a block away

01:08:10with a rooftop view of the fort where the entire mexican revolution began it's like a shrine and now

01:08:18completely with no input of my own here i am at the monument that revolution i mean come on dude

01:08:24today is a million must march anonymous million last march and anonymous has always support julian

01:08:46so uh all over all over the world uh julian supporters decide to show up on this day on november

01:08:535th and wear a julian mask instead of anonymous mask

01:08:57julian assange expuso corrupción de gobiernos mundialmente también expuso

01:09:05crímenes de guerra de todo el mundo también expuso las corrupciones que existen entre las corporaciones

01:09:14y por todo esto ha sido perseguido ha sido

01:09:27respeto y admiración respeto y admiración a julian y no prisión respeto y admiración respeto y admiración

01:09:34respeto y admiración a julian y no prisión

01:09:38y admiración respeto y admiración respeto y admiración respeto y admiración respeto y admiración respeto

01:09:42ok i gotta talk to my people

01:09:46all right guys this is commander x live like a million mask march you know we're few right now

01:09:52that's true maybe by other standards of other million mask marches but that can change in a heartbeat

01:09:58if you are somewhere in mexico city right now and you happen to be listening to the stream

01:10:03then you know get your shit down here we're not going anywhere and if you can't

01:10:08then just get busy and start tweeting streams other people's streams as well as my own

01:10:12make it go everywhere make everything go everywhere about million mask march let's really

01:10:17make ourselves known this year

01:10:27your life is completely used to this mine wasn't so when we started to live our adventure i was doing

01:10:38stuff that was completely foreign to me and was scary and the crescendo was when

01:10:45you cut your way into into mexico you know i started out with a great idea and then

01:10:54it was sort of like flying at a hundred miles an hour off a cliff in juarez

01:11:06i left juarez thinking this was fucked up shit i was screwed and i'm going to end up living in

01:11:11a hut in the desert in mexico eating cactuses for the rest of my life honest to god i thought i was

01:11:17completely fucked there was a point in time where i gave up hope and quit even trying and that's when

01:11:25i went and got xander hey look at you three months old

01:11:36that was the moment when i was going to just leave this mortal spear or mortal coil as they say

01:11:43this is xander's first christmas on planet earth

01:11:47oh look at the size of that fucking bone buddy

01:11:57i decided to give it one more fight with like literally the last bit of

01:12:04me left it's a weird thing and i mean thank god it turned around i guess right and i didn't

01:12:09cash out i guess really you kind of got to thank my dog for that i mean really how weird is it the

01:12:14world might end up getting saved by a fucking dog

01:12:33i'm here in guanajuato now you know having spent a couple of years almost exactly here in mexico

01:12:39you know i've moved around a lot i've met people i've i've generally tried to build a network of

01:12:47friends to help me they're the same right same size is this grande or just i like the color too i take

01:12:56that one yeah yeah and dust comes into play people like vic well i was just walking in the streets and

01:13:04then i saw this american guy who was standing all lost didn't know where to go i just saw him like

01:13:11looking one way and the other and he saw us and hey guys do you speak english and i'm like yeah hey

01:13:17where can i go to a coffee shop and i'm like okay let me let me take you there especially because of the

01:13:22streets here so we started walking and he started we started talking and then he kind of asked some

01:13:27questions to see if i kind of knew a little bit about well anonymous i'm like oh yeah i'm familiar

01:13:34with it and we talked a little bit more and he said that he was one of the founders of anonymous and

01:13:41when i whenever i got back home i searched online i was oh it's truly him and i was like damn now i

01:13:49search him online i mean and i got all paranoid right so he sent me an email and he was the high

01:13:54slept in a dumpster it's my my birthday like it was the worst birthday of my life so well i was like

01:14:03what am i gonna do maybe you can say that for a couple of months until things get i don't know good

01:14:09again i mean he became a really good friend especially because kind of nobody likes him i like broken things

01:14:24i'm like oh my god

01:14:29is

01:14:30is

01:14:30as part of our lives so we are taking care of it we are taking care of what needs to be

01:14:34if we are taking care of it we are taking care of it when you get around

01:14:36when everyone comes to you when you get around you have one hour to be talking to him and tell you

01:14:42his stories and

01:14:45i think he needs someone who hears it and can be so he takes care of it so i like to do that part

01:14:51make sure they don't get fucked up i'm broke and i needed to sell some books

01:14:59to make grocery money there it is yes

01:15:02all righty a herd of fucking stampeding turtles we're off

01:15:10most of my friends were not actually aware of any of this i was just the eccentric american

01:15:21who lives in guanajuato nobody knew anything about me and so i felt that it was incumbent upon me

01:15:27to let them know that hey actually i got the secret and i mean i tried to put myself in their

01:15:35shoes for a moment and think wow what if i found out that vic was like freaking batman you know

01:15:43that's kind of level of revelation this is you know you got a really serious secret life here

01:15:48that nobody knew about creo que estuvo bien lo que hizo en algún momento creo que fue algo

01:15:53importante y significativo para él y para otras personas pero creo que ahora él tiene como que

01:15:58hacer otro tipo de cosas no ocuparse del mismo de su perro de su vida cosas que a lo mejor no tuvo

01:16:04tiempo de hacer después y ahorita podría porque necesita

01:16:09my goal is to confront the mexican government surrender to their authority and make my case for

01:16:18asylum because in this country i have the right to do so as as a as an underground as a dissident

01:16:26i've lived amongst you and i've had a very normal life i mean i've been so fucking happy

01:16:33and that that normalcy is just a taste of what i hope that i can have if the government of mexico

01:16:42will do the right thing they will let me stay here in this country in your country

01:16:47and if fate will allow me to remain in this city that's what i want to do for the rest of my life

01:16:52is commander x on the run for a good reason um i i honestly do not know if commander x is on the

01:17:03run for any good reason i don't know that he represents a serious threat to to law enforcement

01:17:09now i mean if you if you were to take the top 1 000 or 2 000 biggest threats to our cyber security

01:17:15in the united states my guess is commander x isn't anywhere near that list

01:17:19i i've done several cases up in um san francisco and the person who was you know prosecuting his

01:17:29case initially is the head of the unit now and i it's been a couple years but i mean the last

01:17:36time i talked to him he's like you know say hey to mr doyan we you know we'll see him at some point

01:17:41and we'll get ourselves reacquainted i would have no doubt that he would be a prize trophy on some

01:17:49u.s attorney's wall

01:17:50there is so much that is inexcusable that what happens to all of us starting with that incident

01:17:59with the 40 u.s raids by the fbi 40 homes raided by armed fbi agents over a a incidence that slowed

01:18:07down a corporate website for a few seconds

01:18:10there are a lot of people especially a lot of media who have said that you know those arrests

01:18:16really led to a an end of anonymous and very much a slowdown of hacktivism but

01:18:23what it more did was drive it a little more underground here in the u.s and cause people

01:18:28to realize that they needed to uh actually you know be anonymous a little better

01:18:32i would remind any cognizant human being who considers himself a citizen of a democracy driven

01:18:41by informed consent when someone like me is targeted or someone else that whistleblower is targeted

01:18:46we are not the ultimate target the public is the ultimate target it wasn't to fuck with me

01:18:51it was to prevent you from being able to act as a citizenry which no one in this community

01:18:58intelligence community the doj fbi no one considers you and your informed consents to be a to be

01:19:05a proper thing if you don't understand that that's a subject matter here you are not a citizen

01:19:11you're part of the problem you know i i've heard all the arguments uh and and i i understand this

01:19:19is about freedom of information etc but the reality is that we're also dealing with something that

01:19:28could be very dangerous for example when the russians you know use cyber to come after our

01:19:34election systems in 2016

01:19:36did they cross a line because that was a bold attack

01:19:45we don't know the answer to that and at some point i think we need to have that dialogue

01:19:51about what are some of the rules of the game here when it comes to cyber because if we just sit back

01:19:58and say to hell with it this is we should let everybody do their own thing

01:20:02at some point we're going to pay a hell of a price

01:20:05hopefully you guys can see uh the stream okay i'll turn it back around for me

01:20:12thank you for tuning in this morning hopefully like i said everything will turn out okay

01:20:19i have my legal paperwork with me

01:20:23here i am cameras in tow and everything requesting political asylum and emergency refugee status

01:20:35i've always known that this moment would come but i also didn't want to fuck it up

01:20:40so i wanted to make sure that the moment was perfect and i believe that we're in that moment now

01:20:46you know it's the end of a long fucking run 10 fucking years

01:20:51and not at all sure that i would ever make it to this to this moment

01:20:56i bought these boots just for the journey the day i left toronto to come here to mexico

01:21:03i bought these boots those boots i traveled 10 000 kilometers 10 000 kilometers

01:21:09you make the decision then yeah of course you instantly accept the consequences and the consequences

01:21:18of this decision is i would most likely never go home except perhaps in a box

01:21:23my goal originally was to keep fighting and not get caught i'm still fighting and i'm not caught

01:21:33and i'm this close to victory and this time in a very permanent final way you're not fucking

01:21:41gonna drag me back in chains end of conversation i'm gonna get fucking asylum

01:21:47what is the purpose of your visit

01:21:54and now being 99 percent sure that we got our ducks in a row and the things are in place that

01:22:13need to be in place and i will be i believe shortly surrendering myself to the authority and

01:22:20and in the sanctuary and the safety of the mexican government

01:22:25i'm happy to report that today the government of mexico did the right thing

01:22:37officials of the inm have accepted my petition material for political asylum and have granted me

01:22:44emergency refugee status i am the first information activist in history to receive political asylum

01:22:52in a foreign country for protest actions taken under the flag of anonymous

01:22:57one of the reasons that i stuck with this process to the bitter end despite my not really having to

01:23:05was my fervent hope that i will not be the last you know the way he talks about it

01:23:11it's almost like you're talking with a vietnam veteran who's talking about his brothers in arms

01:23:16i mean he really feels it and and gets emotional

01:23:21the reality is too is that anonymous and x all these people like they've left a trail online if you

01:23:29dig hard enough you can find it and commander x will be remembered as one of these iconic figures

01:23:36divisive figures whether you believe them or not

01:23:38yeah well now that he's uh almost mexican but not speaking spanish it's gonna be very hard for him

01:23:50hi how are you hi thank you oh you have english thank you oh you have more than i have spanish

01:23:59one burrito one latte perfecto thank you so much this is gonna be a lot of fun like watching him

01:24:04like getting a job being stable having a routine like work i think it's gonna be

01:24:10even harder than getting the residency

01:24:12yeah yeah yeah look at this holy crap i'm always sort of concerned for him and about him

01:24:23but i sense there are better days ahead for him he's is now a bona fide or he feels like a bona fide

01:24:31human being again he has a piece of paper from a government with his picture on it and even for

01:24:37an anarchist and a maverick and a rebel such as he that seems to make him feel somewhat whole again

01:24:45as for him and his his activism there who knows

01:24:51i don't know like his personality is kind of like a big a big fuck the system a big i don't

01:25:05want to be part of this so he's gonna find a way he's always gonna find a way like to push

01:25:10the boundaries of the system and i think that's cool one last shot of this beautiful square here

01:25:15it's a beautiful church and this incredible historic square of san miguel de allende

01:25:22the city where i've won my freedom here in mexico thank you guys i'm gonna tune out now thank you

01:25:29guys for watching and i'll see you all later tonight on anonymous fights back look for that on twitter

01:25:35i'll be on expect me

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