It is perhaps a little hard to remember now, but in 2010, there seemed to be a new global superpower. A superpower that acted in unorthodox ways, which was unaccountable and yet of the people, and that was above all nameless, faceless and, as it styled itself, Anonymous.
WE ARE ANONYMOUS: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous and the Global Cyber Insurgency, by Parmy Olson. William Heinemann, 2013, 528 pp., £12.99 (paperback)
Born of the Internet, it acted most decisively and effectively when it was the Internet itself that was threatened. One of its earliest, most successful operations came a matter of days after WikiLeaks published the embassy cables and found its source of funding cut off after PayPal, Visa and MasterCard refused to take donations on its behalf.
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