FBI Executes 40 Search Warrants For 'Anonymous'

CWmike writes "Police agencies worldwide are turning up the heat on a loosely organized group of WikiLeaks activists. After yesterday's news that UK police arrested five people, US authorities announced that more than 40 search warrants have been executed in the US in connection with last month's Web-based attacks against companies that had severed ties with WikiLeaks. Investigations are also ongoing in the Netherlands, Germany and France, the FBI said Thursday. Acting on information from German authorities, the FBI raided Dallas ISP Tailor Made Services last month, looking for evidence relating to one of the chat servers used by Anonymous. Another server was traced to Fremont, California's Hurricane Electric. On Thursday, a Web page used by Anonymous to coordinate this latest round of DDoS attacks was offline, and the group's Twitter and Blogspot pages were silent." Reader Ajehals contributes a link to the UK Pirate Party's explanation of how the law applies to DDoS attacks.

Re:How about the DDoS against Wikileaks?

[LBArrettAnderson]

Wikileaks is hosted in the US? When did that happen?

Re:A whole "40" ?...

[Stregano]

It was only done as a scare tactic. Technically, each attack has its own leader based on the cause. I am assuming that the DDoS stuff that made news was all a singular, planned attack. The person running the show wrote the program or had somebody write it and then gave it out. It sounds like what they are after are the ways most of these guys communicate with each other. What I don't understand is how in the hell 4chan is still up while they are doing all of this. They are raiding ISP's, Power plants for electricity all for chat logs, but 4chan is still up. Are you seriously telling me that 4chan's lawyers are so good that the FBI can't touch them? Other Child Porn sites that try and say "what the user posts I have no responsibility for" still get shut down. I know that 4chan is not all script kiddies and child porn, but if this is one of the meeting points, why keep it up unless you want to keep it up. Maybe keep it up so that you have a reason to continue pushing through these stuff.

It is so simple to stop the bigger attacks. I am guessing they use specific irc channels and 4chan to communicate. Ok, shut down that irc server until they can get their stuff together with the people making hacking channels (when I log into irc, there are way too many servers anyway, so no harm no foul for me), and shut down 4chan. That would put a HUGE dent in these attacks. Sure, based on the structure (or lack there-of) with anon, attacks will still happen, but the really big ones will be pretty much gone. But if they find out this information, how are they going to get away with raiding ISP's for chat logs? I am sorry, but that is stupid. There are better ways to go about it.

Website access is not unauthorized

[Sparr0]

The problem with calling a DDOS "unauthorized access" is that the access is implicitly authorized by the server being on the internet. The real world analogy here is getting your hundred closest friends to visit WalMart and go through the checkout lines VERY VERY SLOWLY. You have the intent to negatively impact their business, and you are acting recklessly, but that is only 2/3 (well, more like 9/10) of the criteria for violating the laws in question here. You are not using their store without authorization (they have to TELL YOU TO LEAVE before they have any legal relief for your being there).

Re:Wikileaks DDos attacks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that SD story that was revealed to be totally untrue and later retracted? Yeah, that's the one.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point. People knew they were putting themselves at risk. It was deemed to be worth the risk because joining those attacks was considered the right thing to do. Perhaps people just thought with thousands of people joining in what were the chances of them being pulled before a judge over it.

It's silly to think that people had no idea what they were doing. I don't think anyone could know so little about computers as to believe they were 'anonymous' while using LOIC.

Re:When will they learn?

[Terrasque]

Well, I can only speak for me and friends, but for us it's convenience.

After Steam, we never bother pirating games any more. The act of searching, finding a good version, hassling with cracks and all that.. Not worth it. Buy on Steam. Get instant high-speed download, install on multiple computers, automatic updates, easy to reinstall if computer borks... Pirating games? Feh, too much work (while still being much less than buying in store and mucking about with CD's and such).

Music? After Spotify, we never bother to download. Too much hassle. Spotify have almost all avaliable, streaming, easy sharing, sync to my android.. Downloading, waiting, finding the one single actually good rip? Feh, screw that.

So, the only thing left is movies and tv shows. Here in Norway the only alternative we got is Voddler, which is lower quality and less convenient (forced commercials? feh) than downloading. And DVD? "You have to see all these trailers of years-old movies and silly anti pirate ads first! Muahahaha" - Seriously.. Even when I buy DVD's, the first thing I do is to rip them to remove the crap and the reliance on the physical disk. Get a good streaming service (with MINIMUM youtube 720p quality and either own bought movies (no silly renting please) or reasonable monthly fee), and I'll stop pirating that too.

It's simple. Video content industry is getting their ass handed to them on both quality and convenience. Get something that is at least equal in those to what the pirates offer, and you'll see an uptake.