Well Deserved Praise

Too much of everything

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Does Hacker Wars want to add to the debate over hacktivism's role in checking state and corporate power? Or does it just want to be a love letter to its characters? Either way, when the closing credits roll atop the bro-step beats, the audience will likely be left wondering about the hacktivists who don't appear in films and are even now trying to dig up corporate secrets while trying to avoid being caught. Hacker Wars has nothing to say about them.

It's ridiculous how grandiose and narcissistic these neckbeards in this documentary are. They by their own admission are committing crimes, stealing emails, giving protected emails to the public, and committing espionage, and then they are getting upset when the government arrests them.The documentary focuses mostly on Weev, an internet troll, who even blames the Jews all the time just to be controversial and obnoxious, who was arrested because he hacked AT&T by "just doing arithmetic" which revealed some email addresses. The problem is that he thinks he was arrested for free speech or arithmetic. When in fact, he was arrested because he hacked a list of emails and gave it to the public, trying to expose and embarrass AT&T and government in essence VIOLATING THE PRIVACY of individuals working for government. It's hilarious how hypocritically they defend privacy rights while violating privacy rights of others using hacks.None of these hackers contacted the company to say "hey you have a security flaw here, let me help you." They all hacked, embarrassed, and publicly showed off their hacks to others. It's criminal.Ironically, they say things like "this government is oppressing me and all I do is speak out using 1st amendment." When in fact, they are literally encouraging people to commit crimes against the US. They are labeled the enemy of the state, because they literally admit to being the enemy of the state. They are literally attacking and hacking the United States... And then pretending like they are only doing free speech and being persecuted unfairly.PRO-TIP: IF YOU ARE ATTACKING A COUNTRY, ITS GOVERNMENT, ITS CORPORATIONS, YOU ARE THE ENEMY OF THAT COUNTRY AND THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROSECUTE YOU.

In today's world, it's incredibly important to know just how anonymous (pun intended) people really aren't when online. Whether you oppose these proclaimed "hacktivists", or admire their creative way to resolve a felt injustice, there's a lot of quality info here. It's an easy and engaging watch. Working in fraud, I couldn't be more surprised for how many people are so careless on the internet.The viewpoint is fairly biased, but there's nothing to suggest a significant revolution just by watching the film. The only truly horrifying part is how many hipsters are present in this documentary. Kidding of course.

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.