The group of Internet activists who previously attacked the Scientology website took to the streets to protest against the Church of Scientology. They organized a global day of demonstrations against the controversial organization. Picketers rallied in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Toronto, Britain, Australia and other locations around the world.

The protests were apparently peaceful, accompanied by music and chanting.

"We want to set off a government investigation into how [Scientology] got tax-exempt status," said in Los Angeles a masked spokesman for the Anonymous group, quoted by the LA Times. The same publication reports that protester and former Scientology member Lynn Fountain Campbell, who told them she had been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore. They try to make people shut up," she said, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

The first Church of Scientology was established in December 1953 by American speculative fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. The organization managed to get tax-exempt status in 1993, following a long battle with the United States Internal Revenue Service, which previously said, like most similar regulators around the world, that the Church of Scientology is a business and cannot be categorized as a tax-exempt Church.

The “Anonymous” group of Internet vigilantes has declared war to the controversial Church of Scientology by launching an online attack on January 19, with three purposes: "save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing, cause current Scientologists to doubt their 'religion' (cult) and obtain epic and memorable lulz," the group wrote on their website.

At the base of this online war was the censorship the Church of Scientology is practicing when it comes to videos regarding their members, and that was the case of the Tom Cruise video that linked on YouTube in which the movie star is convinced that Scientologists "can bring peace and unite cultures" and that "if you’re a Scientologist, you see things the way they are, in all their glory, in all their complexity…"

The nine-minute video featuring an enthused Tom Cruise extolling the brilliance of Scientology has been leaked on the Internet, angering the Church of Scientology which has struggled to delete it. Tom Cruise apparently held the speech some four years ago when he accepted an award at an International Association of Scientologists event.

The video leaked just days after author Andrew Morton published a controversial book in the U. S., "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography," in which he claims Cruise is in fact second in command of the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous' Project Chanology, how it has been called, is a "covert" plan, "the main goal of which is to enlighten the Church of Scientology by any means necessary. This will be a game of mental warfare. It will require our talkers, not our hacker," Anonymous’ web site says, in other words, a plan to bring down the Church of Scientology.

Recently, the Scientology web site has been subjected to multiple DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks with 220Mbps of traffic, using 168Mbps of bandwidth, which has been qualified as a middle sized attack. Soon after the attacks, the Church of Scientology’s web site has been moved to a new server, hosted by Prolexic Technologies, which specializes in protecting the companies from DDOS attacks.

The German government recently pushed to ban the organization in their country after top security officials said they consider the goals of the Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the nation's constitution. The decade-long law enforcement observation on the organization has concluded that it "threatens the peaceful democratic order" of the country.

"From a number of sources, some of them not available to the public, it has been determined that (the Church of Scientology) seeks to limit or rescind basic and human rights, such as the right to develop one's personality and the right to be treated equally," the German report said in December.