FBI Executes Nationwide Raid of Anonymous Members 343
Nominei and suraj.sun write in with news about a nationwide raid of Anonymous members. CBS reports that raids occurred in California, New Jersey, Florida, and New York. At least 12 arrests were made with 15 warrants executed. Surely this has nothing at all to do with their recent infiltration of a certain company.
How about no (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely this has nothing at all to do with their recent infiltration of a certain company.
I doubt there was 12 hackers working on it or that they would had busted them all within 24 hours. How about it's all the other bullshit "Anonymous" has been causing within one year, like the countless amount of DDoS against various companies and governments.
Couldn't have waited? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the script kiddies. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to wonder just how many people are going to have to be arrested until the grunts get the picture and bail.
Anon "We are a Hydra chop off a head and two grows back" == You are expendable. Grunts are cheap and made by unskilled labor.
AKA it sucks for you if you are the head that gets chopped off.
No, Nothing To Do With The Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymous has been hacking into enough of the right kind of computers that it was a given they were going to get Federal attention. It takes a while to pull together a coordinated series of raids, so it's extremely unlikely the Sun (newspaper) exploit had any bearing on these arrests.
word! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Couldn't have waited? (Score:5, Insightful)
That they are even tangentially related gives the feds an opportunity to make big headlines about raids to show that they are 'doing something' (TM) and they aren't incompetent and/or impotent by skill or distance/jurisdiction respectively.
Re:word! (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation from Law Speak (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymous member = IRC server owner who may not have anything to do with Anonymous
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile, In America... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, they can also investigate DVD licensing violations and track the cars of unsuspecting college kids. Multitasking FTW.
Re:Meanwhile, In America... (Score:5, Insightful)
The laws, however, are subject to the highest bidder....
Re:Meanwhile, In America... (Score:5, Insightful)
> You get what you vote for.
I wish that were true but sadly, I seem to keep getting what politicians' campaign sponsors want instead.
Re:Couldn't have waited? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo!
Dumb little fake anarchist kiddies that wear trenchcoats... I wanna be a part of the revolution... Ohh I can download this app and be a part of it! SCHWEET!!!!
Thanks for installing trojan-zombie 3.42r7 Dimitri in Slanovia now uses your computer.
Re:Couldn't have waited? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about the script kiddies. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really believe in a cause it doesn't matter how many "examples" are made, in fact as Syria is finding out, the more "examples" you make the more martyrs the people have to avenge.
While the stakes of Anon as a political movement are not as high as the suppression of dissidents in totalitarian states, Anon has become undeniably a political movement, and there are idealists willing to sacrifice themselves for political ends born every minute. Let me tell you something as a former young idealist: it isn't real until it happens to you. You imagine that the purity of your principles makes you invincible until the establishment turns its gaze on you and actually does something.
However once an idea gains enough momentum and there enough people involved, actually acting against them becomes politically more difficult in Western democracies generally. At a certain threshold law breaking becomes civil disobedience, and if you end up fighting masses of people in the streets you've already lost. It will be only a few election cycles before those chickens come home to roost.
I'm not saying this is necessarily going to happen, but I do challenge your interpretation of the situation as overly simplistic and in denial of historical scenarios of similar sociological pressures.
Re:What about the script kiddies. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet, thousands die in wars all the time. All the grunts there know they're expendable too.
Re:Nationwide crackdown of 12? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eeh, typical Newsie hyperbole. I heard an NPR story this morning about Somali kids from Minneapolis going off to join Al-Shabab that described them as "leaving in droves," then went off to say there were 24 of them. I thought to myself, "That is one drove, max."
Re:Meanwhile, In America... (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep voting for the candidates who promise not to murder any innocent people. They don't seem to win the elections, though -- not above the municipal level, anyway.
Re:Translation from Law Speak (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people may find this strange, but society generally doesn't like it if you harbor criminals. Hopefully the FBI has the brains to realize the IRC owners are not always the hackers, but that doesn't mean that the IRC owners are in the clear.
Re:What about the script kiddies. (Score:5, Insightful)
A slap on the wrist and a few weeks jail time can mean you don't get a lot of jobs.
In the current US economy, I think this is becoming increasingly moot. You don't get a lot of jobs regardless.
You can't fight conspiracy theories. (Score:5, Insightful)
Conspiracy theorists are impossible to argue with. No matter what evidence you show to the kooks they will just rationalise it away. Conspiracy theory derives from an inability to accept the chaotic nature of reality, that "random" events outside the control of any central power can utterly destroy someone's life. The belief in conspiracy theory is a belief that SOMETHING is actually in control: THE GOVERNMENT!
And if THE GOVERNMENT could just have its secrets revealed, or if it was destroyed, then all would be right with the world and peace and justice would reign.
Re:What about the script kiddies. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no there there. It's not a political movement, except for the possibility of the idiots who have been arrested being classical "useful idiots" in the service of someone else who has preyed upon their boring existence and broadband connection to use them as weak-willed meatbots who make the mistake of thinking they're being cool. You are way over analyzing things. It really is for the lulz, as it turns out. These are just your basic punks. Vandals who think they're impacting The Man, or at least say so, because that babelicious Goth girl in their algebra class seems to nod her head when she hears tales of angsty rebellion from nerds using Mom's FiOS pipe as meat puppets for lefty activists.
Re:What about the script kiddies. (Score:5, Insightful)
Political Targets + Political Reasons = Political Movement, like it or not.
Re:word! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Couldn't have waited? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, they'll finger someone; because sometime soon, there will be a paper handed to them, across a desk in a dark room, and it'll have names on it, of people and aliases of those who this particular individual may or may not have interacted with... But it won't matter. The truth never does, during a witch hunt. A lawyer will urge his client to sign it; because it's either a slap of the hand, or utter ruination of your life when you deal with these sort of folk, and the men with guns who act in their stead.
Re:Couldn't have waited? (Score:5, Insightful)
But to clarify the expected result of this raid, I thought it might be valuable for those unfamiliar with Anonymous to know that the group is entirely anonymous, even among members. The people who were captured would probably love to roll on others in order to avoid jail time. That is not a choice for them, however. This makes it an attractive mob to manipulate.
The feds will relish a day or two capturing headlines, pretending that "something" has been done to curtail these nefarious hackers. It's exactly as theatrical as the war on terror. At most they'll charge these individuals with possession of child pornography, as their browser cache is undoubtedly filled with thumbnails of illegal content inadvertently picked up while trawling 4chan. It's quite doubtful the FBI has captured anyone of significance.
Seth