What does it take to change the world?

 

The Hacker Wars, a documentary by Vivien Lesnik Weisman, features Barrett Brown, Joe Fionda/Subverzo, Jeremy Hammond, and essentially everyone who was anyone in the Anonymous hacktivism scene in 2013.

 

An eye-opening feature-length documentary, The Hacker Wars explores the duality of the modern-day hacker, and the government’s response to their activities. The film profiles a few of the highest profile hackers who have tackled the secretive inner workings of corporations and governmental agencies, and faced severe punishments from law enforcement as a result.

 

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h)ac(k)tivist-noun: a person who uses technology to bring about social change. The Hacker Wars – a film about the targeting of (h)ac(k)tivists, activists and journalists by the US government.There is a war going on- the war for our minds, The Hacker Wars. The government needs to control information. My film is about the information warriors who are fighting back. This film depicts the dangerous battle in which (h)ac(k)tivists fight for information freedom. Hacktivists impact the world in a new way by using the government’s information against itself to call out those in power. Meet the hacktivists: weev, Barrett Brown, Jeremy Hammond. They try to change the world and, sometimes, they go to jail.Written by Anonymous

 

Andrew Auernheimer – otherwise known as ‘weev’ – is perhaps the best known figure from this larger-than-life set of characters. A master troll who became a media darling, Auernheimer is shown on the eve of a long prison sentence at the film’s opening. His crime? Exposing the email addresses of over 114,000 AT&T customers, including public personalities like Mayor Michael Bloomberg and news anchor Diane Sawyer. In his defense, he claims that he was merely shedding light on a major security flaw in the communication company’s online operation. The FBI felt differently, and Auernheimer was eventually sentenced to over three years in prison.

 

Characterized by a tremendous aura of brash and arrogance, hacking maestro Barrett Brown is currently undergoing a sentence of over five years in federal prison for his crimes along with fellow hacktivist Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to ten years. Both are incarcerated for releasing sensitive correspondences from the email system of Stratten, a global intelligence company. Some of these emails insinuated involvements in insider trading and advanced knowledge of Bin Laden’s hide-out in Abbottabad.

 

A large segment of the public view these figures as heroes who speak necessary truth to power.

 

The film is complimented by additional interviews with the journalists who have tracked the world of the hacker with great interest, including NBC News correspondent Michael Isikoff, and Pulitzer Prize winners Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges.

 

Sharply edited at a lightning-fast pace, The Hacker Wars questions the motives of law enforcement agencies that often seem too preoccupied with policing the release of information the public has a right to know. But the central pull of the film lies in deciphering the personalities of the hackers themselves. Are they anarchists driven solely by a need to instigate havoc and chaos? Or are they activists with good intentions? The answer could often be a little of both.

 

 

What does it take to change the world?

Historically, change has usually been slow-moving and methodical, taking hundreds of years for even incremental advances to be seen. But over the past century, things have shifted, and that trend has reversed to the point where some forms of change now come at breakneck speed. Just look at our personal computing devices as an example.

ur cell phones, laptops, tablets, and other devices come out to great fanfare one day, only to be labeled as obsolete and clunky after only a few months.