14 DAY TRIAL // RT America has compiled a list of the 5 most influential people of 2012. It turns out that the most influential has been the Anonymous hacktivist community.
According to the publication, the decision was partly influenced by the cyberattacks launched by Anonymous after the US government took down the controversial Megaupload website.
Shortly after the news broke out, hackers from all over the world started launching massive distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against several high-profile sites, including the ones of the FBI, the US Department of Justice and the White House.
The websites of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation, France’s copyright infringement watchdog HADOPI and the US Copyright Office were also disrupted at the time.
Other individuals named as being most influential in 2012 are German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin – who was killed back in February –, Bradley Manning, and the individual who secretly filmed Mitt Romney while holding the “47% speech” to his supporters.