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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.
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.
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.
Of course, if they got pinched, it begs the question of how they were "anonymous" to begin with.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Open letter from Anonymous to the UK Government
I am sure that the US is pursuing those who DDoSed WikiLeaks with equal energy.
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).
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.
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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yep, he was previously know as Bobby Tables