MAN: But right now, plenty of Anonymous actors are in hiding because of fear of reprisals by the government. I've been called many things. There's unpatriotic.

MAN 2: That we're just a bunch of children sitting in our parents' basement.

PETER FEIN: I got called a terrorist sympathizer. We've been called kids, we've been called cyberbullies, we've been called hooligans. You know sometimes those words aren't entirely unfair, but this is a serious political movement.

GREGG HOUSH: No one in the general public really seems to get it. What they don't seem to get is that the ability for Anonymous to be everything and anything is its power.

BARRETT BROWN: Anonymous is a series of relationships. Hundreds and hundreds of people who are very active in it, and who have varying skill sets, and who have varying issues they want to advance, and who are collaborating in different ways each day.

WOMAN: They're a little bit like a prism or kaleidoscope. They've got many different facets and many different sides. Of course when you spend enough time with them, you start to get a sort of feel or texture that's not just random. Yet it's very multifaceted, very rich which does span from the quite light hearted to the very, very serious.

STEVEN LEVY: Bob Dylan had a line in a song to say, to live outside the law, you must be honest. They might do something which isn't technically correct. Maybe it's not legally correct, but they're doing it for purposes, that in their minds at least, are ethical.

RICHARD THIEME: People who know what they're doing, who share ethos, who have a commitment to exposing and humiliating the man, who have a very low tolerance of lies and what they perceive as evil on the part of overweening power structures. They share information. They share tools and techniques, and they are currently having a very good time.