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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.
Do they not realize the dynamic structure of anonymous? That an activist involved in one campaign might not be involved, or indeed care about, the next?
The hint is in the article: "loosely organized".
This isn't about punishment, it's about deterrence. Remove the sense of anonymous invulnerability and some will think twice about engaging in the activity, even if they got away with it before. It moves from a mindset of "there can't be consequences" to a mindset of "there could be consequences". It's the same tactic the RIAA uses.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
It's nice to know that when corporate interests are threatened, the US Government is more than willing to come to the rescue and do their bidding. Of course, when Goldman Sachs lies, cheats, and defrauds the American people, the US government looks the other way.
I am sure that the US is pursuing those who DDoSed WikiLeaks with equal energy.