Project Chanology (also called Operation Chanology) was a protest movement against the practices of the Church of Scientology by members of Anonymous, a leaderless Internet-based group. "Chanology" is a portmanteau of "4chan" (the site where the project originated) and "Scientology". The project was started in response to the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove material from a highly publicized interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the Internet in January 2008.
The project was publicly launched in the form of a video posted to YouTube, "Message to Scientology", on January 21, 2008. The video states that Anonymous views Scientology's actions as Internet censorship, and asserts the group's intent to "expel the church from the Internet". This was followed by distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), and soon after, black faxes, prank calls, and other measures intended to disrupt the Church of Scientology's operations. In February 2008, the focus of the protest shifted to legal methods, including nonviolent protests and an attempt to get the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status in the United States.
Reactions from the Church of Scientology regarding the protesters' actions have varied. Initially, one spokesperson stated that members of the group "have got some wrong information" about Scientology. Another referred to them as "computer geeks". Later, the Church of Scientology started referring to Anonymous as "cyberterrorists" perpetrating "religious hate crimes" against the church.
Detractors of Scientology have also criticized the actions of Project Chanology, asserting that they merely provide the Church of Scientology with the opportunity to "play the religious persecution card". Other critics such as Mark Bunker and Tory Christman initially questioned the legality of Project Chanology's methods, but have since spoken out in support of the project as it shifted towards nonviolent protests and other legal methods.
Background
The Church of Scientology has a history of conflict with groups on the Internet. In 1995, attorneys for the Church of Scientology attempted to get the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s.) removed from Usenet. This attempt backfired and generated a significant amount of press for a.r.s. The conflict with a.r.s led the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow to declare war on the Church of Scientology. The Church of Scientology mounted a 10-year legal campaign against Dutch writer Karin Spaink and several Internet service providers after Spaink and others posted documents alleged to be secret teachings of the organization. The Church of Scientology's efforts ended in a legal defeat in a Dutch court in 2005. This series of events is often referred to as "Scientology versus the Internet".
Tom Cruise video
On January 14, 2008, a video produced by the Church of Scientology featuring an interview with the actor Tom Cruise was posted on YouTube. In the video, music from Cruise's Mission: Impossible films plays in the background, and Cruise makes various statements, including saying that Scientologists are the only people who can help after a car accident and that Scientologists are the authority on getting addicts off drugs. According to The Times, Cruise can be seen in the video "extolling the virtues of Scientology". The Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph characterized Cruise as "manic-looking", "gush[ing] about his love for Scientology".
The Church of Scientology asserted that the video material was "pirated and edited" and taken from a three-hour video produced for members of Scientology. YouTube removed the Cruise video from their site under threat of litigation. The website Gawker did not take down their copy of the Tom Cruise video, and other sites have posted the entire video. Lawyers for the Church of Scientology wrote to Gawker requesting the removal of the video, but Nick Denton of Gawker stated: "It's newsworthy and we will not be removing it."
Formation
Project Chanology was formulated by users of the English-speaking imageboards 711chan.org and 4chan, the associated partyvan.info wiki, and several Internet Relay Chat channels, all part of a group collectively known as Anonymous, on January 16, 2008, after the Church of Scientology issued a copyright violation claim against YouTube for hosting material from the Cruise video. The effort against Scientology has also been referred to by group members as "Operation Chanology". A webpage called "Project Chanology", part of a larger wiki, is maintained by Anonymous and chronicles planned, ongoing and completed actions by project participants. The website includes a list of suggested guerrilla tactics to use against the Church of Scientology. Members use other websites as well to coordinate action, including Encyclopedia Dramatica and the social networking site Facebook, where two groups associated with the movement had 3,500 members as of February 4, 2008. A member of Anonymous told the Los Angeles Times that, as of February 4, 2008, the group consisted of "a loose confederation of about 9,000 people" who post anonymously on the Internet. A security analyst told The Age that the number of people participating anonymously in Project Chanology could number in the thousands: "You can't pin it on a person or a group of people. You've thousands of people engaged to do anything they can against Scientology."
Members of Project Chanology say their main goal is "to enlighten the Church of Scientology (CoS) by any means necessary." Their website states: "This will be a game of mental warfare. It will require our talkers, not our hackers. It will require our dedicated Anon across the world to do their part." Project Chanology's stated goals include the complete removal of the Church of Scientology's presence from the Internet and to "save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing". Project Chanology participants plan to join the Church of Scientology posing as interested members in order to infiltrate the organization.
Andrea Seabrook of National Public Radio's All Things Considered reported Anonymous was previously known for "technologically sophisticated pranks" such as spamming chat rooms online and "ordering dozens of pizzas for people they don't like". Ryan Singel of Wired appeared on the program on January 27, 2008, and told Seabrook that members of Anonymous were motivated by "the tactics the Church of Scientology uses to control information about itself" rather than the "controversial nature of Scientology itself".
Activities
Internet activities
Project Chanology began its campaign by organizing and delivering a series of denial-of-service attacks against Scientology websites and flooding Scientology centers with prank calls and black faxes. The group was successful in taking down local and global Scientology websites intermittently from January 18, 2008, until at least January 25, 2008. Anonymous had early success rendering major Scientology websites inaccessible and leaking documents allegedly stolen from Scientology computers. This resulted in a large amount of coverage on social bookmarking websites.
The denial-of-service attacks on Scientology.org flooded the site with 220 megabits of traffic, a mid-range attack. Speaking with SCMagazineUS.com, a security strategist for Top Layer Networks, Ken Pappas said that he thought that botnets were involved in the Anonymous operation: "There are circles out there where you could take ownership of the bot machines that are already owned and launch a simultaneous attack against [something] like the church from 50,000 PCs, all at the same time".
In response to the attacks, on January 21, 2008, the Scientology.org site was moved to Prolexic Technologies, a company specializing in safeguarding web sites from denial-of-service attacks. Attacks against the site increased, and CNET News reported that "a major assault" took place at 6 p.m. EST on January 24, 2008. Anonymous escalated the attack on Scientology on January 25, 2008, and on January 25, 2008, the Church of Scientology's official website remained inaccessible.
On January 21, 2008, Anonymous announced its goals and intentions via a video posted to YouTube entitled "Message to Scientology", and a press release declaring "War on Scientology", against both the Church of Scientology and the Religious Technology Center. In the press release, the group stated that the attacks against the Church of Scientology would continue in order to protect freedom of speech and to end what they characterized as the financial exploitation of church members.
The Tom Cruise video is referred to specifically at the start of the Anonymous YouTube video posting, and is characterized as a "propaganda video". The video utilizes a synthesized voice and shows floating cloud images using a time lapse method as the speaker addresses the leaders of Scientology directly: "We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form[...]" The video goes on to state: "We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to be completed in a short time frame. However, you will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your choice of methods, your hypocrisy, and the general artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell. You have nowhere to hide because we are everywhere[...] We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." By January 25, 2008, only four days after its release, the video had been viewed 800,000 times, and by February 8, 2008, had been viewed over 2 million times. Author Warren Ellis called the video "creepy in and of itself" and a "manifesto, declaration of war, sharp political film".
In a different video posted to YouTube, Anonymous addresses news organizations covering the conflict and criticizes media reporting of the incident. In the video, Anonymous criticizes the media specifically for not mentioning objections by the group to certain controversial aspects of the history of the Church of Scientology, and cited past incidents including the death of Lisa McPherson: "We find it interesting that you did not mention the other objections in your news reporting. The stifling and punishment of dissent within the totalitarian organization of Scientology. The numerous, alleged human rights violations. Such as the treatment and events that led to the deaths of victims of the cult such as Lisa McPherson." Lisa McPherson was a Scientologist who died in 1995 under controversial circumstances. The Church of Scientology was held responsible and initially faced felony charges in her death. The charges were later dropped and a civil suit brought by McPherson's family was settled in 2004. This second video was removed on January 25, 2008, YouTube citing a "terms of use violation". Organizers of the February 10, 2008, Project Chanology protests against the Church of Scientology told the St. Petersburg Times the event was timed to coincide with the birthday of Lisa McPherson.