Last year, I traveled to Canada to write a long profile of "homeless hacker" Christopher Doyon, who goes by the name "Commander X" and who is on the run from the US government. (Doyon brought down a California county's website for 30 minutes, with the help of Anonymous, as part of his protest over an "anti-sleeping" law targeting homeless people; he is under indictment in the Northern District of California and is the only known Anon who has jumped bail to live "in exile.") Doyon's life has been by turns bizarre and dramatic, but last week the online drama surrounding Anonymous proved too much even for him—and he quit.

Now, that's saying something, because Doyon—as I mentioned—has his own flair for the dramatic. Here, for instance, is how he sums up his work with both Anonymous and his own group, the People's Liberation Front (PLF):

I have been an activist for 30 years... For 28 of those years I have been what some call a "hactivist," and in the past 5 years I have been a part of the amazing idea called Anonymous. In fact, during these past 5 years I have dedicated an average of 10 hours a day to cyber-activism within the context of the PLF and Anonymous. In the course of these events, the persona of "Commander X" has developed and expanded to almost mythic proportions. In a sense the "Commander X" persona has become a bit like Batman, a sort of cyber-super hero. But like Batman, the impossible persona of "Commander X" rests upon the shoulders of a simple man. And like all men, I have frailties, weaknesses—and limits. In the past few years, in order to support this "Commmander X" persona I have sacrificed my family, my freedom, my home—and even my country. I will never regain these, I will die as a man without a family or country. I will die alone in a foreign land, my ashes spread across a foreign forest. I have no regrets in this regard, "Commander X" made a difference—he saved lives and inspired thousands to join this critical fight for the very soul of humanity.

The soul of humanity will have to do without his help, though; Doyon has simply had his will to hack trolled out of him. On two of his Twitter accounts, Doyon detailed the final indignity, some sort of attack on his websites:

PLF had ZERO financial support, ZERO support from Commanders & members. We have been betrayed externally & internally. I can take no more. Everyone has their limits. I have replaced and rebuilt the 20 or so sites we control THREE times this summer alone. The PLF has NO $$. We can't rebuild with air. And the back-up files for all 20 sites was just summarily dusted by our host the School of Privacy. The School of Privacy was our host. I BEGGED for the back up file, but they simply deleted the account and that's that. In addition those who hold the rank of PLF Commander have left me to do all the work, I can not carry the PLF alone. It's too much. So I quit. I am closing down the PLF. I have replaced all those sites three times this summer. I can take no more. I am done. Trolls win. In addition I would like to annonce [sic] that I am also quitting Anonymous. I am done, I retire. I just can't take it anymore. The trolls win.

In the end, the PLF was simply Doyon, and Doyon was simply a fiftysomething guy with a laptop who—when I met him, at least—spent his mornings panhandling before crashing at Tim Horton's or McDonald's to work for the day.

Doyon is the latest casualty of the Anonymous implosion. Though the loose-knit confederation of hackers staged high-profile hacks throughout 2011, the FBI and UK police have arrested many of the most technically talented Anons and have even taken to trolling the remnants of the group in public. As one top FBI agent involved in the cases put it last month in an interview, "The movement is still there, and they're still yacking on Twitter and posting things, but you don't hear about these guys coming forward with those large breaches. It's just not happening, and that's because of the dismantlement of the largest players."

And though Doyon disagrees vociferously with this assessment, his story seems to bear out the verdict that Anonymous has lost much of its firepower—and that its members are more often now caught up in fairly petty Internet drama.

So what's left for him? Doyon has no plans to return to America, he says. Instead, he outlines his plan to become a mad scientist robotics researcher. His future plans read like something from a Hollywood plot treatment:

Lately, here in Canada—I have been picking up some small and discrete web design and network security jobs. I have managed to be able to rent a spare, small and very plain office and furnish it with simple things like a microwave and coffee maker. It is in this space that I intend to take up once again my amateur research into the field of autonomous robotics and artificial intelligence and rebuild my laboratory. The field has progressed much since I was drawn away from it into the great global cyber-war, and I look forward to all the catching up I have to do! In addition, I will re-establish the Machine Life & Artificial Intelligence Foundation which I founded so long ago as a repository for my research...

OK then. As for his "Commander X" persona...

Commander X will now step off the stage of history, and fade into the mists of myth and legend. Hopefully his sordid and exciting story will inspire others to take up the fight for justice and freedom. As for the tiny simple man upon whose shoulders he rested, he will now spend his days in sheer delight watching the antics of his little robots, and his nights talking to computer programs that can think and dream.

Update: A representative from The School of Privacy wrote me to say that the organization did have "prolonged hosting issues" but that Doyon's hosting account had been fixed and "his PLF projects will live on after his retirement."

Update 2: Doyon has sent me an additional statement. "If my life seems to be a grand adventure story, that's because it has been. But it has nothing to do with hyperbole, which is alluded too," he wrote by e-mail. "My life has been this way because like millions of others I chose to live outside the system. I made my own rules, I did exactly what I wanted when I wanted—I wrote my own story. It only seems unusual or impossible to those who can't fathom living completely outside the 'norm' to be the captain of their own ship."