The Masked Avengers Summary

In the article, The Masked Avengers, by David Kushner, Kushner describes and goes into detail about the life of a man named, Christopher Doyon. Kushner starts his article with the childhood of Doyon and how he became involved with hacking groups early in his life. Doyon’s mother passed away when he was a child and he grew up with an abusive father. At fourteen years old, Doyon left his abusive home and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he joined his first hacker group called the Tech Model Railroad Club. Although Doyon was very into computers and hacking groups, he was not a skilled coder. He felt that he was more of an activist and that using computers and technology was his way to get his point across.
Trying to make some money at a Grateful Dead concert, Doyon sold acid to an undercover officer, resulting in him being sentenced to twelve years in a correctional facility, where he served five years. When he arrived back to Cambridge and his hacktivist group, the Peoples Liberation Front (P.L.F.), Doyon said that the technological difference in that five year gap, “was gigantic--it was the difference between sending up smoke

signals and being able to telegraph someone”. Going by the alias, Commander X, Doyon first created this name when he joined the P.L.F. The leader of the P.L.F. claimed to be a military veteran, who went by the alias Commander Adama.
In 1999, a file sharing company named Napster, was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America and was eventually shut down in 2001.

Feeling the need to protect free internet, Doyon and the P.L.F. shut down the R.I.A.A website by flooding their servers with data. This method is called a Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS. This was just one of many attacks that Doyon and the P.L.F. pulled off. At the P.L.F.’s basement apartment, Doyon and Commander Adama met. It was at this meeting Adama showed Doyon the Epilepsy Foundation website. A certain link would take the user to a page that had flashing colored lights. This was a problem because strobing lights can trigger seizures in some epileptics. Enraged by this, Doyon asked Adama who was responsible for this. To which Adama said, “Ever hear of a group called

Anonymous?”
Many people involved with Anonymous deemed themselves, “crusaders for justice”. One example of their ways to help society was that they posed as underage girls, in order to lure pedophiles. Once they had the pedophiles information they then sent it to the police. In 2008, online media company, Gawker Media uploaded a video of Tom Cruise boasting the advantages of Scientology. The video was later taken down by the Church of Scientology. Seeing this as an attempt to censor the internet, members of Anonymous sprang into action. Much like the P.L.F.’s attack on the R.I.A.A’s website, Anonymous attacked the Church of Scientology’s website using DDoS attacks causing it to shut down. In addition to the DDoS attacks, some members of Anonymous created what is called a “Google bomb”. This resulted in the main Scientology website appearing at the top of the search results when someone searched for “dangerous cult” on Google. Less harsh attacks included: sending pizzas to a Scientology center and also sending all-black faxes to their headquarters, causing them to waste their black ink.
Doyon moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Santa Cruz, California in 2010. It was here where he joined as an activist in a group called Peace Camp. At this time, the Peace Camp activists were protesting a Santa Cruz homelessness law by sleeping on the city’s property. At meetings, Doyon suggested that they take their protest online. Doyon gloated his hacking skills to Kelley Landaker, an expert coder and member of Peace Camp. Although Landaker did not buy into Doyon’s hacking skills, Landaker did believe Doyon could positively help Peace Camp. Recalling a conversation with Doyon, Landaker said, “He created more media attention for the issue than anyone I’ve seen, and I’ve been doing this for twenty years.”
Back in Cambridge, Adama instructed Doyon through e-mail, to watch Anonymous closely. Specifically, Adama wanted Doyon to recruit Anonymous members to the P.L.F. Skeptical, because of Anonymous stunt with the Epilepsy Foundation, Adama convinced Doyon that the mischievous hackers within Anonymous were a very small portion. Doyon found that joining an Anonymous Internet Relay Chat was easy because it did not require a password. He eventually found smaller chats where there were more dedicated members of Anonymous.
Towards the end of 2010, the Peace Camp protests started to come to an end without a change to the law. Still wanting to make a change, Doyon believed that he could use the tactics from Anonymous to rejuvenate the movement. Reminiscing back to that period, Doyon remembers thinking, “I could wield Anonymous against this tiny little city government and they would just be fucking wrecked.”