The Hacker Wars (2014)

Ripped from international headlines, The Hacker Wars takes you to the front lines of the high-stakes battle over the fate of the Internet, freedom and privacy.

Directors:

Vivien Lesnik Weisman, Vivien Lesnik Weisman

Writers:

Vivien Lesnik Weisman, Meredith Raithel Perry

Stars:

Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer, Andrew Blake, Barrett Brown

1 win.

Cast

Credited cast:
Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer	...	Himself
Andrew Blake	...	Himself
Barrett Brown	...	Himself
Jaime 'asshurtmacfags' Cochran	...	Himself
Thomas Drake	...	Himself
Joe 'subverzo' Fionda	...	Himself
Glenn Greenwald	...	Himself
Jeremy Hammond	...	Himself - Anarchaos
Christopher Hedges	...	Himself
Gregg Housh	...	Himself
Michael Isikoff	...	Himself
Sara Jafary	...	Herself
Gary Johnson	...	Gats00
G. Johnstone	...	Gatso0 (as Gary C. Johnson)
Jenna Kerouac	...	Herself

Storyline

(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. The film follows the information warriors who are fighting back, and it 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.

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Plot Keywords:

f rated | 

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Genres:

Documentary | Crime

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 October 2014 (USA)

Also Known As:

Хакерские войны

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$2,958, 17 October 2014, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$2,958, 17 October 2014

Company Credits

Production Co:

Over 9000 Pictures, Over 9000 Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

91 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Did You Know?

Soundtracks

Here Comes Santa
Written and Performed by Christopher Lord and Meredith Raithel Perry
Under License from Epic Wave Studios

User Reviews

A flawed overview of the battle over Internet freedom

The documentary follows the exploits of Weev, an annoying "good troll" who fights on the Internet for freedom of speech and action. While many of the things described and said are totally true, the failure of the film stands in the presentation. A clone after any nutcase documentary out there, it does nothing to make you empathize with the characters or even understand what is going on, it just rants. Frankly, I feel less for poor Weev after watching the film than before when I was acquainted with just the facts!

Worse, it is made by members of a small community about members of this community and for members of this community. I don't see anyone outside the tiny group of hacktivists "switching sides" because they watched the film, I highly doubt they will even consider watching it. Therefore I can only consider this documentary a failure.

I rated the film so highly because if someone does pay attention, there are a lot of things there that need to be made known. What I am talking about is the vast gap between how an offence is perceived in "real life" and how in the "virtual world". Pay extra attention to the part where it says corporations and state have been humiliated, therefore they had to react like the big bullies they are. The bit when the FBI accused the mother of a young hacker of obstructing justice because the son had an incriminating laptop in the house made me sick, even if I already knew about it.

It is too bad that most of the documentary was an apology for Weev's action and less a well argued discussion on what went wrong with the entire arrest. In short, he was arrested for giving to a journalist the data collected from a really badly designed web page that allowed access to the information of other logged users. We have to ask ourselves if the same would have applied to someone entering a house with no door and reading the papers left on the table.