Ripped from international headlines, The Hacker Wars takes you to the front lines of the high-stakes battle over the fate of the Internet, freedom and privacy". Get ready to be shuttled between story lines at lightning speed mirroring the disjointed lives of the protagonists and life on the Internet. The Hacker Wars- a film about the targeting of (h)ac(k)tivists and journalists by the US government. Hacktivists are either terrorists or freedom fighters depending on ones perspective on who should control information. Meet weev, infamous hacker; Barrett Brown, journalist and propagandist for the hacktivist collective, Anonymous; and Jeremy Hammond, aka Anarchaos, number one on the FBI's cyber-criminal list. The fourth character is Sabu, the uber-hacker turned FBI informant who ran the FBI's cyber unit for 9 months and is responsible for many arrests. He is the shadowy protagonist in a high-stakes game of espionage and betrayal in the age of the Internet. Barrett Brown, American journalist, is facing 105 years in prison for publicizing information revealed through Jeremy Hammond's epic hacks. Hammond himself has just begun a 10-year prison term. Andrew Auernheimer, known by his hacker handle weev embarrasses large corporations. He was sentenced to 41 months for hacking AT&T, but his conviction was just overturned. He vows to continue doing what landed him in prison in the first place. These hacktivists are the rock stars of the Internetmodern-day folk heroes. Glenn Greenwald (Snowdon Leaks), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and others explain why these anti-heroes exposing the security surveillance state are essential to a functioning democracy.

More than twenty-five years after the world wide web was created, it is now caught in the greatest controversy of its existence: surveillance. With many concerned that governments and corporations can monitor our every move, we wil meet the hackers and scientists whose technology is fighting back". It is a controversial technology, and some law enforcement officers believe it is leading to 'risk-free crime' on the 'dark web' - a place where almost anything can be bought, from guns and drugs to credit card details. Featuring interviews with the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and the co-founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, we delve inside the 'dark web'.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer monetary system in which all transaction records are public. Participants can use its open-source software to transfer virtual currency to one another as easily as they might send an email. Bitcoin opens an uncharted world of new possibilities to explore. We'll follow the stories of entrepreneurs and startups that are helping shape the new financial frontier. We'll look at the competitive mining market and the various subcultures within the Bitcoin community." You'll encounter a variety of characters and opinions as we examine the social and political impact of an open-source digital currency. Will the rise of Bitcoin bring a monetary paradigm shift that will forever change the world? Supposedly invented by a mysterious Japanese man named Satoshi Nakamoto (whose current whereabouts are unknown). Because it is designed to have an absolute ceiling of 21 million Bitcoins in circulation (not anticipated until 2040), and the system has no central depository or administrative authority, it has great appeal to libertarians and others who seek alternatives to a perceived corrupt, manipulative banking infrastructure and excessive government regulations. Its low processing fees compared with those of mainstream credit-card companies also hold considerable allure for merchants.

Technology is opening up new possibilities for physical, sexual and romantic relationships with astonishing speed. But is seeking human connection virtually a positive step forward or are we stunting our intimate lives? In the first episode of this series, meet a cyber BDSM couple who use tracking technology to fulfill their master slave relationship; an eligible bachelor in Japan who has fallen in love with a virtual girlfriend; and a revenge porn victim whose life was upended when her private naked photos were published online.

The Internet is an uncontrollable labyrinth of content and imagery that operates under loose laws and partial anonymity - a new frontier where people can do anything and see anything, whether they should or not. In this lawless landscape, who's in control? The protectors? The abusers? In this episode meet the content moderators who watch the worst of the Internet so you don't have to; a convicted hacker whose punishment was the virtual prison of the unplugged; plus, a blackhat hacker who encrypts and holds computer files hostage.

We all project images of ourselves online - a curated identity that defines how we want to be perceived. But what temptations exist to embellish and what are the dark implications? In this episode, enter the world of Cyberbanging, where inner city youth are using social media to brag, conspire and incite violence; two African-American women bloggers who have turned the table on the trolls who threaten them; and the creator of Abdullah X, an online character who's trying to keep Muslim kids from falling under the spell of Islamic extremists.