UWB Computing Technology and Public Policy: Topic-2 Wiki Post-2 Group-11

Hacktivism Attacks ( 2000 - Present )
Project Chanology

Project Chanology is the longest-running Anonymous project ever, marked Anonymous's first major protest against anything, and remains its largest real world action. Project Chanology was a series of protest movements launched by members of Anonymous against Church of Scientology's Fair Game policy, which specifically targeted enemies of the Church and said they could use any means necessary to silence their enemies. Project Chanology was started in response to the Church of Scientology’s attempts to remove video clips from a highly publicized interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the Internet in January 2008.

Background

In January 2008 a Church of Scientology in-house video meant for internal distribution among Scientology churches was leaked onto YouTube. The video consist of an interview with celebrity scientologist Tom Cruise. In the video, Cruise makes various statements including saying that Scientologists are the only people who can help after a car accident. According to news reports, the video featured Cruise “extolling the virtues of Scientology”. Cruise also made wild claims such as, "Scientologists are the authorities on getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind. We are the authorities on improving conditions… We can rehabilitate criminals. We can bring peace and unite cultures.” After the video was leaked, the Church of Scientology attorneys quickly succeeded in getting the video removed from YouTube as a copyright violation and claimed the video was taken out of context from a supposed 3 hour version.

On January 16th, 2008 after the Church of Scientology took legal action to issue a copyright violation claim against YouTube; Anonymous sites took notice of Scientology's attempt to stamp out this video from public view and considered it an attack on free speech on the Internet.4chan part of Anonymous decided that they were frustrated with the way the Church of Scientology has handled itself as an organization. They decided to try to do something about this frustration and pulled out the digital battle. On January 21st an anonymous poster uploaded a video to YouTube which ominously listed Anonymous' complaints and announced an Internet led "war" on the Church of Scientology; a computer-generated voice speaks over a rolling cloudscape, effectively putting the Church of Scientology on notice in the video. The video had the 2 million + views in first week indicating the huge audience.

The highly-interconnected nature of Anonymous and the fluid trade of information the Anonymous network enabled them to quickly conduct further research on Scientology’s activities. Members of Anonymous began researching Scientology’s history of copyright litigation and became infuriated at Scientology’s repeated attempts to censor information online. Anonymous then banded together and began launching internet attacks against Scientology websites with the stated purpose of getting the world’s attention. The attack was launched and a detailed plan was given on the “Anonymous" website. The "History" section of the site explains, in a satirical fashion, that the incident was prompted by the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove a promotional video featuring Scientologist Tom Cruise from YouTube.

The Attack

Anonymous launched Project Chanology, in a planned detailed fashion on a wiki-style Web Site which anyone can edit. The plan claims to have tactics more likely to annoy than destroy: such as phone, fax and e-mail spamming, "Google bombing", flooding the news aggregator Digg.com with anti-Scientology articles and launching "distributed denial of service attacks”. Also other measures like black faxes, prank calls, intended to disrupt the Church of Scientology's operations.The media slowly caught on attention to this attack, and a storm of reporting about Anonymous’ new cause hit the airwaves.

In February 2008, the focus of the protest shifted to legal methods, including nonviolent protests and an attempt to get the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Church of Scientology's tax exempt status in the United States. A new video, “A Call to Action", was released, espousing the need for non-violent legal protests. Anonymous then allied with long-time Scientology critics and ex-members, and stormed the gates with a series of world-wide protests at Scientology centers on Feb. 10, 2008. Protests were planned throughout the day in 14 countries and over 50 different cities. This was the first protest by Project Chanology which occurred at Churches of Scientology around the world. An estimated 7000 people appeared with “V for Vendetta” masks or scarves on to hide their identity. This was the first “IRL” i.e. In Real Life action by Anonymous.

Recently there was a demonstrations held by Anonymous in in Manchester and London on the 9th and 10th of February 2013 to mark the fifth Anniversary of Project Chanology.

Scientology’s reaction to Anonymous

Scientology has been largely silent, with the exception of issuing a press release calling Anonymous cyber-terrorists, communists, Fascists, Nazis, religious bigots and KKK members, which was released in the St. Petersburg Times.When the February 10, 2008 protests took place, many Los Angeles churches closed their doors, locked up, shuttered the windows and urged members to stay home.

After several days of Internet attacks; the Church of Scientology has responded with a comment about the posting of one of its videos. They announced that the pirated and edited excerpts of Mr. Cruise were contained in an official Church event in 2004, an event attended by 5,000 Scientologists and their guests and further available for viewing in any Church of Scientology world over.

Having presented these out-of-context excerpts with the intent of creating both controversy and ridicule, resulted in people searching for and visiting Church of Scientology Web sites as evidenced by "most searched for" lists of various search engines.

Legality

Project Chanology was the first real life protest by Anonymous and in more than 14 countries hence the legality for all these attacks various over each country. Still the distributed denial of service attacks are the illegal practice as it uses networks of computers to bombard the church's various Web sites and servers with bogus requests for data, causing them to crash. In US distributed denial of service attacks can be considered a serious federal crime under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
In 2009 Dmitriy Guzner, 19, of New Jersey was sentenced for his role in the distributed denial of service attack against Scientology websites, which made the church websites unavailable to users for more than 24 hours, with attacks.
Further another Anonymous follower, Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, 20, for his role in the same attack on Scientology websites, for conspiracy and “transmission of a code, information, program, or command to a protected computer. Was sentenced in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, The indictment states he got a program from an Anonymous website and executed a DDoS attack from his dorm room at Iowa State University against the church computers in Los Angeles.
Apart from the DDOS attack some of the anonymous members were arrested for unethical protest against Church of Scientology .one of them was Mahoud Samed Almahadin, aka Matt Connor was pleaded guilty to criminal mischief. A shirtless Mahoud Samed Almahadin, covered in Vaseline and toenail clippings entered a Manhattan-based Church of Scientology and proceeded to throw around books and smear petroleum jelly onto objects. His actions were videotaped by another Anonymous member and later broadcast on YouTube. He was prohibited from going near the Church of Scientology for five years. He was also sentenced to pay the damages caused by his acts and to perform substantial community service as further restitution for the crime.Over the years many other anonymous members were arrested for the DDos attacks and the protest in project Chanology.