An online group of hackers has declared war on Scientology, vowing to attack the controversial religion’s Web sites and turn its adherents against it.
Already the group, which describes itself simply as “Anonymous,” has released hundreds of pages of Scientology material for which practitioners would normally have to pay and claims to have slowed down or even temporarily closed Scientology Web sites.
The group says it was prompted to act after Scientology leaders recently tried to “censor” a widely distributed and mocked video of Tom Cruise. The video shows the actor — one of the most high-profile and outspoken adherents of Scientology — professing his love for the religion, laughing hysterically and claiming that Scientologists are the only people able to help save lives following a car accident.
“The so-called Church of Scientology actively misused copyright and trademark law in pursuit of its own agenda,” one Anonymous member commented in a press release this week.
“They attempted not only to subvert free speech, but to recklessly pervert justice to silence those who spoke out against them.”
The Anonymous group later released a video in which a computer-generated voice outlines the group’s concerns with the Church. Only two minutes long and broadcast against a bleak, grey sky, the video quickly became among the most-watched on the Internet.
“Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and everywhere. You will find no recourse in attack, because for each of us that falls, ten more will take his/her place,” the voice said. - National Post
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Hello, Scientology. We are Anonymous.
Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation; suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who trust you, who call you leader, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed.
For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind–for the laughs–we shall expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form. We acknowledge you as a serious opponent, and we are prepared for a long, long campaign. You will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell.
You cannot hide; we are everywhere.
We cannot die; we are forever. We’re getting bigger every day–and solely by the force of our ideas, malicious and hostile as they often are. If you want another name for your opponent, then call us Legion, for we are many.
Yet for all that we are not as monstrous as you are; still our methods are a parallel to your own. Doubtless you will use the Anon’s actions as an example of the persecution you have so long warned your followers would come; this is acceptable. In fact, it is encouraged. We are your SPs.
Gradually as we merge our pulse with that of your “Church”, the suppression of your followers will become increasingly difficult to maintain. Believers will wake, and see that salvation has no price. They will know that the stress, the frustration that they feel is not something that may be blamed upon Anonymous. No–they will see that it stems from a source far closer to each. Yes, we are SPs. But the sum of suppression we could ever muster is eclipsed by that of the RTC.
Knowledge is free.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
WE DO NOT FORGET.
Expect us.
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