A Rare Look Inside Anonymous' Secret Ops
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on CNN PRESENTS, "Anonymous." They live in the shadows.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the closest thing to a global revolution that we have ever got (ph).</s>ANNOUNCER: But their message and tactics have ignited a movement around the world.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are Anonymous.</s>ANNOUNCER: A rare look inside the shadowy group's secret ops. "Toxic Schools" -</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a building that was storing chemicals that were cancer-causing agents and because of the vicinity and the children that are involved, you didn't care.</s>ANNOUNCER: These parents have every reason to be angry. Their children's school had toxic chemicals and even worse, they were the last to know. "Prescription for Cheating." They read our x-rays, but as CNN investigation reveals a disturbing question over the certification of many radiologists -</s>DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE UNIT CORRESPONDENT: Isn't that cheating?</s>ANNOUNCER: Revealing investigations, fascinating characters, stories with impact. This is CNN PRESENTS with your host tonight Brooke Baldwin and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, HOST: Good evening. We begin tonight with a rare look inside Anonymous.</s>BROOKE BALDWIN, HOST: They're this shadowy and motley group of hackers and activist who answer to no one, drawn together by love of Internet mischief.</s>GUPTA: Well, now - now they're evolving into this movement of social change, a real driving force behind the Wall Street Occupiers. No surprise, they're hated by corporate security, but also hunted by the</s>FBI. BALDWIN: And one of the questions we're asking is, who are these people and why are they taking to the streets? To get some answers, Amber Lyon stepped into the shadows.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, back up, back up, back up.</s>AMBER LYON, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS AND DOCUMENTARY UNIT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a dark and disturbing vision. A world where riot police attack with impunity.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened? What happened?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He got hit.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He got shot!</s>LYON: Where democracy is corrupted by greed and dissent is crushed. That's how Anonymous sees America and they say that's why they're fighting back.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.</s>LYON: It's a movement that defies description - leaderless, faceless, anarchic.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is our space!</s>LYON: A loose collective born on the Internet, Anonymous has no official members and no hierarchy, but within the group some individual Anons have greater standing, earned by their skills as hackers, video makers -</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To see it with my own eyes and record it myself.</s>LYON: -- and increasingly street level activists. Troy (ph), not his real name, is one of them. TROY (ph),</s>PROTESTER: This is what happens when the people have had enough. This is what happens when greed goes unchecked.</s>LYON: Troy said he was drawn to Occupy Wall Street after watching his mother struggle with medical debts. He himself is working two jobs to make ends meet, despite having a college degree.</s>TROY (ph): You lose track of days, lose track of time but it's worth it. It's all worth it.</s>LYON: We met him at the Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park.</s>TROY (ph): There's no specific person to talk to. It's move like a hive, you know, an idea is brought up and whoever agrees with it, if the overwhelming majority of people agree with it, then we go with it.</s>LYON (on camera): So we're following Troy (ph) and he's been out here policing, kind of making sure that all of these protesters are getting along with the community and not causing any problems.</s>TROY (ph): We're handling internal affairs as far as damage control within the community, making sure that everybody is respecting the local - the local small businesses around here.</s>LYON (voice-over): But he's not just watching over the protests. He's also watching the police. Part of the evolution of Anonymous from hackers to activists. Anonymous was born a decade ago in one of the weirdest and darkest corners of the Internet, an anything goes imageboard called 4chan. 4chan users post Anonymously and the name stuck.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do not forgive.</s>LYON: The group adopted a distinct identity and its own symbolism, a mask taken from the movie "V for Vendetta," a retelling of the story of the English rebel Guy Fox and his plot to blow up the House of Lords in 1605. Instead of gun powder, Anonymous uses the Internet. Anonymous attacks its targets by flooding and crashing corporate and government web sites, or digging up and publicizing highly embarrassing information. It's called trolling. They troll targets out of genuine outrage but also just for fun.</s>GABRIELLA COLEMAN, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: The LULZ - it's a kind of parallelization and bastardization of Laugh Out Loud.</s>LYON: New York University Professor Gabriella Coleman has been watching Anonymous for years.</s>COLEMAN: It's a term that kind of denotes the sort of pleasure, humor, laughter, everything from something which is quite playful, harmless to engaging in a kind of full-fledged trolling attack that humiliates.</s>LYON: Anonymous' campaigns, known as Operations or Ops can be dramatic. In late 2010, a distributed denial of service attack took down the web site of PayPal after the company cut off support for the online whistle blower site WikiLeaks.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: PayPal continues to withhold fund for WikiLeaks, the beacon of truth in these dark times.</s>LYON: Sixteen Anons were arrested by the FBI charged with conspiring to intentionally damage PayPal's computers.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a message from Anonymous to the Bay Area Rapid Transit System,</s>BART. LYON: This summer, Anonymous attacked the San Francisco Area's public transportation system BART. BART had cut cell service within the transit system as a way of disrupting antipolice brutality protests. Anonymous' reaction was devastating and vicious.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will not issue anymore warnings.</s>LYON: OPBART included the release of a naked photo of a senior BART employee.</s>COLEMAN: Sometimes it kind of makes you laugh, sometimes it makes you cringe, sometimes it makes you laugh and cringe at the same time. All of a sudden you're like, oh, my gosh, there is this, you know, dagger that's being thrown.</s>LYON (on camera): And a naked photo?</s>COLEMAN: Yes. A naked photo.</s>LYON: Do you feel like there is a fear out there of, you know, what they could possibly find or leak about a certain individual?</s>COLEMAN: Absolutely. I mean, that's what makes them who they are is that they are kind of bad boys and rude boys to some degree. There is a dual sort of fascination and horror that goes on at the same time.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be aware. Be vigilant.</s>LYON (voice-over): Anonymous was evolving, using its power to shock and disrupt to effect social change. During the Arab Spring, the collective emerged as a full fledged activist group, taking up the cause of Tunisians fighting against the repressive regime - literally saving lives.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Tunisian government has made itself an enemy of Anonymous.</s>COLEMAN: They did everything from take down government web sites. They wrote scripts to stop the phishing of passwords. They brought massive media attention to Tunisia.</s>LYON: And last fall, Anonymous broke cover here at home, stepping out from behind their secure computer screens for a new cause, Occupy Wall Street.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a revolution brewing.</s>LYON: Suddenly the symbols of Anonymous were everywhere, in flags, masks, banners.</s>CROWD: We are the 99 percent!</s>LYON: When we return, pepper spray and Anonymous strikes back. (on camera): How are they getting the personal information of these officers?</s>TROY (ph): I'd rather not say.