Alex: I read them more as free speech hippies, but that's not far from becoming a modern-day troll.

David: They might be slightly more focused than that; Anonymous rather than 4Chan in general. Like, there's a political agenda there, unfocused though it may be.

Alex: That's true! Very Assange-esque, wanting to "stick it to the bastards."

Nate: Right. But sticking it to the bastards because they're doing "evil" things, or sticking it to the bastards because... they're the phone company? I don't think there's anything especially "noble" about the phreakers (as described here.)

Alex: True, but it's their experimentation that eventually led to the codification of hacker techniques on every BBS. If they hadn't been rooting around in Ma Bell's innards for the hell of it, I think hacker culture would have developed significantly slower.