Hey guys, and we're back with more We Are Anonymous. This time, we're going to look more into the world of the almost-uncovered identity of Topiary. In this chapter, Topiary will try his best to cover his identity from the public, in fear of having his identity compromised and his hacking organization leaked. It won't be easy, though; He will be hounded by media moguls and eager reporters, but will he manage to send off these people in the other direction? Or will they instead manage to leak his identity to the world? Let's find out, shall we?
The chapter starts off with Topiary not exactly being in top condition after what happened to him earlier in the previous chapter (for those of you who didn't read chapter 12, Topiary went to an interview where he spoke to the interviewers via a kind of "speaker" that was used so the interviewers wouldn't see his face. However, he didn't alter his voice or change it in any way, which has been haunting him lately because of the fact that his voice may be discerned as Jake Davis, his alter ego), and the only way he could distract himself from the discomforting thoughts was by looking at Aaron Barr's e-mails although the other Anonymous members had moved onto something else.
It turned out that Topiary's sudden interest in Barr's e-mails was caused by a 29-year old freelance writer named Barrett Brown, who was interested in the business of exposing government corruption. As a matter of fact, Brown was also interested in Barr's corrupted e-mails, downloading a batch (23,000 e-mails) of the infected files from the Internet, eager to investigate a wider case of corruption, if any. Topiary was also interested in the infected e-mails as well, causing him to form quite a close relationship to Brown, joining the reporter on Skype chats about how the investigation on the e-mails were going so far. Topiary was so obsessed in the chats that he'd keep it on for a few days straight.
Brown was also interested in the Anons' new method in hacking (encouraged by Topiary's own hacking techniques that had made him so popular in the last few chapters); Anonymous didn't want hacking to just be a typical raid any longer; they also want the assault on the website to be fun and exciting, which was what caught Brown's attention in the hacking group. The reporter wanted to get Anonymous involved in the long-term research of the organization. Even worse, Brown even tried to get the members of Anonymous ON THE EVENING NEWS, which made things a lot harder.
In no time, the name "Barrett Brown" was passed around the journalists who covered Anonymous as their research subjects (or maybe, being the reporters they are, article subjects) for his daring feats on the organization. And about Brown's request for the Anons to appear on the evening news? Amazingly, the Anons approved of their appearances on the news (although they didn't appear IN PERSON and not EVERY member of the Anons joined, at least they appeared on camera (no faces shown, of course) with a few representatives speaking for their bigger group).
You may be wondering what was the reason for Anonymous's relent to the media. According to Topiary, Brown "deserved a chance" and "isn't so bad and might be worth it in the end". Although not much is told about Anonymous's appearance on the evening news, we DO know that afterwards, Topiary and his Anon friends were given acces to more of Brown's (and HIS friends') leads on Barr's corrupted e-mails. With these e-mails, Anonymous just joined the many sides that were investigating on Aaron Barr's corrupted mail. Little did Anonymous know, the authorities just used the interview with Anonymous on the evening news to get more leads on the hackers.
As of late, Topiary has been in conflict with both sides of the law. On one hand, he was eager to divulge his inner feelings about his hacking life to the media. On the other hand, he also has a sense of secrecy for the organization he hacked for. At this time, he wasn't really sure which side to choose. What will happen in the next chapter, I wonder?
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