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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.
Please allow me to re-iterate this silly argument that I've heard before:
Anonymous cannot be destroyed by prosecuting its individual members. In order to charge someone, the prosecution must first de-anonymize that person, which immediately voids their membership in Anonymous.
Maybe they do realize but don't care? Their goal here is not to "take down anonymous" it's to prosecute the specific people who broke the law by organizing the DDoS attacks. Whether that means arresting all of anonymous or 1/10000 of it is irrelevant. Note that their warrant did not come from some generic anonymous IRC channel, but the logs of the actual coordination of the 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.
You're exactly right, and that's why they hate Anonymous so much. Most other terror organizations can be destroyed merely by taking out their head men. Anon doesn't work that way. Arrest the LOICers, Anon gets pissed off and LOICs. Arrest Moot, Anon gets pissed off and LOICs. Do nothing, Anon gets pissed off and LOICs. They have no control over them, and that's why they can't stand them.
Anonymous is literally any group of people online willing to work together on a common action. That's impossible to end because it's woven into the very fabric of social interaction of which the internet is but a subset. The internet just created a critical mass effect by allowing an effectively limitless number of people to agree to do things together virtually instaneously. Anonymous is the power of people realizing that they don't need organizations to accomplish simple goals, just people willing to agree to do something once.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
It's more of a "movement" than a "group" no?
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.
Open letter from Anonymous to the UK Government
I am sure that the US is pursuing those who DDoSed WikiLeaks with equal energy.
Yeah, that sure has slowed down piracy, lulz.
It's difficult, maybe impossible, to draw a direct correlation, but the popularity of legitimate media sources has been increasing dramatically. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, etc. are all doing quite well. Were the civil lawsuits an influencer? Maybe, maybe not. I sure as hell don't know, but it's interesting to consider.
Cops know that most people speed, but they also know that if they don't write any traffic tickets then everyone will speed.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Any news on those involved in the DDoS attacks against wikileaks? No arrest yet?
Yeah, I'm sure Wikileaks is cooperating with law enforcement by giving them their data logs. Yup, that's certainly taking place.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Actually I am relatively unfamiliar with the LOIC operation, and I said jack-all about 'social networking' because even though that's what worries governments, that's the exact opposite of Anonymous. Sounds more like you don't know what Anonymous is and you're projecting your ignorance on me. Here's a hint newfag, I used to hang on #insub before there was an ED, was reading SA when JeffK was a new feature, been on 4chan since teh Rei, and literally partied hard with Jason Fortuny (who makes fine burgers, you'd be surprised to know). The only people who have more net cred than me were around before Endless September, but thanks for giving me an excuse to whip out my e-peen.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
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.
The world is how you make it
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).
You mean that SD story that was revealed to be totally untrue and later retracted? Yeah, that's the one.
Don't be a useful idiot. Don't take your marching orders from people on the interet who don't give a fuck about you. A DDOS attack like the one 4-chan (let's call them what they are) did, could have actually been anonymous had the morons actually been hackers. This is what it looks like when one pseudo-hacker can write a DDOS program, and a bunch of tech-illiterate morons run it on their network without actually knowing what it's doing, or how to mask their identity.
Can't we just save the effort and convict 'Anonymous' in absentia? It'd be much more efficient.
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.
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.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
There for a minute I read the headline as "FBI Executes 40 Search Warrants For 'Anonymous Coward'", which is why I logged in to make this post.
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Piracy is far, far more widespread than 4chan chucklefuckery.
I think the point that law enforcement is trying to make is that finding you is easier than you think. Win-Win for both sides because the FBI gets to look savvy and Anonymous is required to step up their game.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
yep, he was previously know as Bobby Tables
It's one thing if the search warrant is "search one specific individual's home looking for his PC and trying to get log information on it." It's quite another if the search warrant is "order Comcast to produce all the information they have on the following list of 45000 IP addresses." Sometimes the Feds tell you one kind of number, sometimes they tell you another. (For instance, the numbers of legal wiretaps they'll admit to are usually quite small, obfuscating the broad scope of some of those wiretaps, but sometimes they're giving you numbers of a quality similar to the "street value of the drug seizure" type to inflate how macho they are.)
Also, realistically, while "Anonymous" might be everybody who's read /b/ at one time or another, but the actual number of people who organized the DDOS attacks and asked for volunteers to run LOIC is probably fairly small, and if they didn't do a good enough job of anonymization, it's possible that they might really be punishing the key players and making clear that they know how to do it on future attacks. On the other hand, if they're just picking a random 40 easy targets who ran LOIC, charging them with conspiracy to commit [crimes defined in ways to make them felonies], and threatening to fine them each for the amount of damage that was done to Paypal et. al's business, that could discourage future participants.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks