UK Police Charge Suspected Anonymous Spokesman

An anonymous reader writes "Scotland Yard has tonight charged 18-year-old Jake Davis, who was arrested in the Shetland Islands last week, with five offenses including unauthorized computer access and conspiracy to carry out a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack against the SOCA (Serious Organized Crime Agency) website. When announcing his arrest on Wednesday, police said that they believed Davis used the online nickname 'Topiary' and acted as the spokesperson for the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking groups. Topiary's final twitter message said 'You can't arrest an idea' just before his arrest."

Comments

You can arrest the person

[DreamMaster]

You may not be able to arrest an idea, but it seems you can arrest the person.

Re:You can arrest the person

[mat catastrophe]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/internet-abuzz-with-claims-that-uk-police-picked-up-the-wrong-topiary.ars

It's possible that they are tossing the police ringers.

Re:You can arrest the person

[AmiMoJo]

It wouldn't be the first time. The UK police have no problem arresting people based on the flimsiest of evidence and then hoping they will crack during questioning. Unfortunately what tends to happen is that the person doesn't admit to something they didn't do and they end up dragging it out for as long as possible and then trying to bullshit their way to a conviction in court. If the defence lawyer is any good they get some experts in to refute the evidence, but unfortunately there is a tendency not to do that if the prosecution has already decided to use an expert witness because it is assumed that said witness will be impartial and objective.

Operation Ore is the most notorious example of police relying on clearly flawed evidence, but there are many others. In Operation Ore they received a large number of credit card numbers that had been used to pay for child pornography from US police and simply arrested all the card holders. They didn't bother to check if the card details had been stolen, they just rushed in and destroyed dozens of lives for a few easy headlines.

The only Omagh bombing suspect's trial collapsed because all they had was weak DNA evidence which matched him and a schoolboy in England. Barry George did several years in prison based on a single spec of gunpowder found on his clothes, which were stored in a room containing other garments with gunpowder on them.

Today's lesson

[JoshuaZ]

Today's lesson: You aren't V. Neither the British or US government is an evil fascist state which brutally subjugates the populace. This isn't to say that they are perfect. Far from it. But the basic point is clear. Moreover, if either of the governments were so bad as to deserve fighting back then the method to respond would not involve hacking every single website you can most of whom are corporations which have nothing to do with anything. Sure it is probably fun to convince yourself that you are doing good, but your just a bunch of script kiddies who aren't being helpful while real activists spend their time and sometimes lives improving the governments and saving lives.

Re:Today's lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

That does not matter.
Do you think the riots which resulted in many death in other countries were the "right way" to do it? Probably not.
The point is that no other way works. You can't spend 30 years of your life trying to get a big political party and get shot down by your own guys after those 30 years. What you can do is protest. And if you protest, it's not going to be an email or a blog post, even not a public performance.
You protest with things that everyone is going to _care_ about.

Riots. Hacking high level web sites. Whatever else. At least, they don't kill people or destroy their lives - the government does that, daily, if you haven't noticed. That the proven way to change things, so far.

What I find the most sad, is such arguments as "real activists" "saving lives". It sounds like "and also they capture pedophiles" and such crap. They don't save lives. They also don't do shit. If you haven't noticed that either, the governments, corporations haven't changed, and never do, until a revolution rise. How long do your real activists need, 100, 200, 500 years? Please, get a fucking clue.

Revolutions started by riots, and other such acts,once again. Hacking is part of that, now.

Re:Today's lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to get troll modded for this but whatever.

You agree that the governments are not brutally subjugating the populace. You agree they are far from perfect also.

Then you claim that if they were brutally subjugating the populace hacking, defacing, and dossing websites would not be the correct response.

I'm sorry but I think you just proved anons point and their methods (while claiming contrary). Anon is using defacing and dos attacks as a form of peaceful protest. I wouldn't condone them going much further at the current time but denial of service and high profile defacing in form of protest seems like the perfect response to freedoms, rights, and liberties being slowly eroded.

If you ask me, sure they are a bunch of script kiddies, but I am certain what they are doing is required with the current state of things. I also applaud taking action, now, and peacefully, before shit really hits the fan and people in the US / Britain are required to pick up arms to fight for real. (I think we all agree getting to that point would suck)

Re:Today's lesson

[DurendalMac]

Oh bullshit. This kind of skiddie hacktivism is what spineless yobs do when they're too scared to go out and try to make a difference in the real world. It's just another breed of armchair combat, and a pretty sorry one as well. If you want to make a difference then do something out in the real world. Most people can actually relate to that. Do it through a computer and far less people will give a shit. Those who think they do are deluding themselves into believing that they're actually doing something great from the basement. It's lazy self-justification. Get your ass out into your community and do something in the real world. Few people give a shit about your online community.

Re:Today's lesson

[risom]

Anarchy has never benefited a single country on the face of the planet.

I am not a fan of Anarchism as a political system, but that sentence is empirically wrong. In early 20th century europe there were at least two cases I know of, Ukraine and Spain, where Anarchism lasted for a while, and was pretty successful in economical terms. For Spain for example it's more or less proven that the anarchist period saw a sharp rise in worker productivity.
Both didn't last long in the grand scale of things, but their military defeat does not relate to them being anarchist regions - they were just small and didn't have a chance against their much more powerful enemy (Spain: The spanish fascist movement with support from other fascist movements from all over Europe; Ukraine: the Red Army).

Re:Today's lesson

[AmiMoJo]

What alternative would you suggest? I have tried writing to my MP several times and either get fobbed off or nothing changes. Peaceful protest is pointless - 2 million marched against invading Iraq but where completely ignored. The only political party offering any real reform sold out the second they got into power. Corporations are even worse.

On the other hand violence does work. The Poll Tax protests were ignored until people starting throwing things and smashing stuff up. It had to be sustained for weeks though, not just a one-off.

The only non-violent thing that works is leaking evidence, such as in the MP's expenses scandal. Since most people are not in a position to leak information then hacking to get it is somewhat legitimised. Aside from anything else it lets us know which companies have a clue about security and can be trusted, and in several cases it has exposed law-breaking (ACS:Law, HB Gary, MediaDefender etc). I can appreciate the irony of hacking to expose law-breaking but if leaking data with no criminal intent is justified by the content of said data then acquiring it by hacking is not far off.

Re:Darn kids these days

[Gadget_Guy]

Back in the day we had fun stealing cars for joy rides and doing jewlery store heists. These These days kids have fun attacking computers, much more victim less crime.

I think that Sony would disagree with you there. I doubt that the total value of your stolen cars and jewellery would add up to anywhere near what Sony has lost due to its recent hacks.

Re:Because thats how to handle things.

[bakarocket]

You really have to work on shortening your revolutionary slogan. Try something catchy like "Corruption Shmorruption!!" or "Stupid Government, We Hate You!"

Evidence suggests wrong person

[rickzor]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22280
Evidence such as previously leaked information, IRC logs, and the age, identity and location of the suspect arrested suggest that they caught the wrong person.

Re:Darn kids these days

[Tasha26]

I guess there isn't really much to do in the Shetland Islands!

Re:

[taiwanjohn]

Played up or not, it is a problem.

Re:Because thats how to handle things.

[phantomfive]

This post is exactly an example of someone who has become a parrot for the latest political memes, without doing research to find out how the world actually is.

Note the example he picks of an 'evil' oil company: BP. Of course everyone knows why, and before that the political meme was Exxon. But why do you ignore the full-on corruption, crime, and murder, of oil companies that are truly evil, like Gazprom? It's because you only have a shallow understanding of the subject.

Likewise, it is easy to get mad at Murdoch (since no one likes him anyway), but are you aware that many UK newspapers were doing the same kind of thing? The story there isn't about Murdoch, it's about a corrupt political/police system in the UK.

Re: 'You can't arrest an idea'

[ibsteve2u]

No, but you can declare that corporations are people and their wealth is free speech and drown that idea in an ocean of propaganda...