Project Chanology

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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.