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Anonymous Posts Audio of Intercepted FBI Conference Call
DrDevil writes "A member of the computer hacking group Anonymous has hacked into a telephone conference between the FBI and Scotland Yard (London Police) and posted it on the internet. The Daily Telegraph has a comprehensive article on the hack. The audio of the call can be heard here." Reader eldavojohn snips as well from the AP's story as carried by Google: "Those on the call talk about what legal strategy to pursue in the cases of Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis — two British suspects linked to Anonymous — and discuss details of the evidence gathered against other suspects."
If Anonymous can listen to FBI calls then they'll certainly know when the FBI will be coming to kick down their door.
This will really piss off the FBI and it will be the political motivation for the FBI to pull out all the stops to find members of Anonymous.
Seems to me a clever FBI/Scotland Yard, could take advantage of that to find their listeners.
If nothing else I expect they'll be a bit more careful now, which could be a good thing. Anonymous likes to brag about accomplishments .. more insidious people have no desire to make it known they are tapping in.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If the government can listen to our calls (without a warrant) then why can't we listen to theirs?
Based on the vague discussion details and how the FBI sent out an email with the conference call number and password, it sounds more likely to be a setup by the FBI to lure Anon into the call so they could glean more location data off of them.
Anonymous aren't heroes. They're the worst type of vigilantes, who in their own minds are drunk with power. They're the internet equivalent of a mob of Molotov-cocktail tossing anarchists who burn things down because it's fun to do. They rationalize their behavior any way they can, and I imagine the replies to this comment will be to do the same. Now they're being apprehended and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them?
...as some idiot climbs the fence to the bear exhibit so they can cuddle with the huge teddy tear. You just know it's not going to end well.
Anon can't stay one step ahead forever.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
After all, if what amounts to a few script-kiddies can get this deep into confidential material, how much more material can a determined, knowledgeable, and well-funded adversary get?
And that's why I always insist that we use the cone of silence.
The gun is mightier than the keyboard, my friend
"Anonymous is a dangerous threat to national security. They can even listen in on phone calls on secure lines. We must have mandatory validated identification of all users of the Internet and an end to anonymity to protect our secret operations."
In public, government is angry, vengeful, and "determined" to "fix" the issue. Behind the curtains, they are celebrating a new justification for yet even more revenue and yet even more power over the people.
These situations are assets to the business of government, not liabilities.
You're not in the business of government, are you?
It's sure as hell not mightier than the public, though.
I don't know....I have a Model M.
This just shows what a bunch of clueless morons Anonymous is.
They perform a brilliant bit of counter-intel and gained an upper-hand by finding a way to exploit the FBI and eavesdrop on their conversations.
And what do they do with this victory? Do they send the FBI tripping over itself on an internal mole-hunt by going to the media with a tiny bit of this info explained as "information leaked by a source within the FBI?". Do they patiently sit and gather more intel, maybe useful information to help them evade arrest or gather bits of public interest in other cases for later use?
No, they broadcast it to the world with details on how they did it, all but going to the FBI and closing the weakness themselves.
These jerkoffs have shown once and for all that they are just a bunch of egotistical little shits who are indeed just in it for the lulz and "street cred".
I doubt we'll see anything come of Anonymous aside from more LOIC attacks, credit card thefts and web page vandalism.
They've shown all the intelligence and finesse of a group of anarchistic thugs.
The military disagrees. That is why they invest so much is disinformation and digital propaganda campaigns. Type the right things on a keyboard in the right places and you can have thousands of people who don't even know you exist independently choose to use guns in a way that serves your agenda.
I understand the, sometimes essential, role of authoritarian revenge fantasies in the masturbatory process of a certain sort of person; but are you seriously suggesting that the overt use of extrajudicial violence is actually a sensible response to a group motivated by the position that the powers-that-be are unaccountable and deeply corrupt?
There isn't the slightest question about where the 'real power' lies; but surely dealing with suspected violators of various computer crime laws, against which you have evidence, and toward which the public doesn't have much sympathy, should be about the easiest place to get the desired result and keep the moral high ground, no?
When Anonymous does it: good. When News Corp does it: bad.
Selective outrage certainly is a useful propaganda tool, isn't it?
Love the big brass ones that these guys have. I don't agree with much of their agenda, but really have to admire their tenacity in the face of serious opposition. Impressive stunt.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
Is Hooray. What a dump for the Hoover's and Peel's plonkers.
Secret policemen are the enemy of Democracy and Liberty. Freedom cannot be defended by means of surreptious authority.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
imagine someone intercepting the calls of some industry execs doing shitty dealings with government and posting them online.
imagine hollywood goons pushing government bureaucrats or representatives/senators to do shitty stuff for them for their expense in a backroom, in all the dirty, non politically correct language those backrooms tend to have, and post them online.
imagine this happened before sopa was killed........ there wouldnt even be a day of protest needed to kill sopa.
or, nuclear industry pressuring government to play with statistics to keep dangerous old plants running........ ..........
see, this is why they want to censor internet. and, they would do this regardless of what we, as the people did. because, it was certain that, someone (anonymous or not, or even a single dutiful citizen or some repenting low level govt. bureaucrat) could post these online some day.
thats why they have been running all kinds of schemes to censor internet. and how they would not stop if there wasnt anyone (leave aside anon) doing these. they NEED internet censored so such things can be averted.
these stuff, should be happening through the hands of the government itself. transparency, remember? where is it ? NOWHERE. and those who attempt to provide that transparency, are now 'terrorists'. ........
we are fighting a very battle for the soul of the internet, free speech, and transparency. and it is happening here and now. we should do everything in our power to prevent censorship, sopa, acta, pipa, schmogga, whatever. its a 'we should fight in the landing grounds, and in the hills' situation. we should never surrender.
this is not the fight of anonymous. this is our fight, which we have not been fighting yet. we must fight it, to not lose what we hold dear ; internet.
Read radical news here
It's sure as hell not mightier than the public, though.
As long as double cheeseburgers are 99 cents, I don't think most of the public can be motivated to do much of anything.
Evidience? Sources? Cites? Or does talking out of your ass feel good?
They're apparently much smarter than you are.
The FBI is what it is because it outwardly appears to operate effectively. If you can demonstrate well enough that it is not effective it will be dismantled either through staffing changes or actual full-on dismantling.
You don't try to tie up the FBI's time, because it will just cost the tax payer more money. You throw egg in it's face as often as you possibly can until it's a laughing stock and must be replaced/removed in order to save face.
Again, clearly much smarter than you
future guns are controlled by keyboards
my sig pwns your sig
It is poor tradecraft to reveal an adversary's weakness if you plan to continue to exploit it.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Better anarchistic thugs than authoritarian thugs.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It amuses me how conspiracy theorists and other anti-government figures claim that current governments are always just one step away from martial law or fascism (or, more often, how they've already been there for centuries), about how they're gleefully abusing our rights, mistreating us on an inhumane scale, or the usual overused go-to phrase, "raping us all in the ass". They always say that the government are bloodthirsty, amoral, self-indulging quasi-human entities that wouldn't think twice about "disappearing" us to further their own political goals and how they're getting more and more brash in their actions, like they don't care what we think at all.
And then they turn around and claim that "the public" saying mean things about them on a computer will somehow stop all this from happening. That a well-armed, apparently cartoonishly evil government would, for some as-yet-unexplained reason, suddenly give up if the public whines about them, and not, say, just start slaughtering all detractors and anyone else in their apartment complex/neighborhood as a means of controlling dissent. That writing strongly-worded (STRONGLY-worded, mind you) letters would stop the bombs and bullets headed towards the public and restore peace and tranquility and then Jesus would come back or something.
And people wonder why it's so fun to troll places like these. Carry on! Suuuuure, the gun is mightier than the public, buddy! Keep on believing that your evil evil evil government will arbitrarily stop exactly short of your passive-aggressive revolution ideas!
You like hyperbole, eh?
Please read about what the Schutzstaffel did, in real life, to a great many real people, instead of casually throwing around accusations of Naziism or would-be Nazi sympathizing. Equating the FBI and Scotland Yard with the SS is not only an insult to the victims of the SS, it's Peter crying wolf and will prevent warnings from being taken seriously when it really is time to start talking SS/Gestapo. This applies equally to parent and GP.
Once you understand what the Nazis were responsible for, you'll understand that Godwin's Law is a short way of saying "I don't want to waste my time conversing with someone unwilling to see things in perspective without over the top hyperbole."
"You are anonymous"
I am not Anonymous.
I'm not even a squad, let alone a Legion.
It may look like I forgive.
But really I just forget.
Don't expect me because I'll probably oversleep.
Better anarchistic thugs than authoritarian thugs.
No, not really. That's a false choice. How about "Neither"?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Or, it's brilliant.
Let's say Anon managed to through some one-time gap (ie a sympathetic insider, perhaps) managed to get the login details to this one conference. It's meaningless, because they can't repeat the success.
However, if they leak it:
- heads roll at the FBI
- everyone's walking on eggshells because of management fury
- everyone's required to use full-secure protocols and resources for the stupidest trivial conversations
- FBI still doesn't know who leaked it, so begins witchhunt which consumes resources, and makes everyone nervous.
I think it's probably a one-off, parlayed into a fairly clever bit of system-attack.
You know, like a single coordinated unrepeatable multiplane hijacking could theoretically cause an entire country to be consumed by paroxysms of paranoia for more than a decade, leading to absurd legislation, efficiency costs for hundreds of millions of people, as well as actual TRILLIONS of dollars of waste.
Right?
-Styopa
Maybe that's why the call was so boring.
"Okay, Mike, get on the line with Martin from the Yard, just keep talking about boring shit for two hours... Uh, take this file, it's the legal briefing for case 345-12A. Read it out."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah, some fucking hackers got the credentials for the conference call, we want to see what they'd do with the intel."
"Fine, but you're buying donuts for the meeting on Friday."
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I'd say most people these days don't have the slightest idea exactly how terrible real Nazis were.
Or that any differences between the Nazis and us are purely cultural, and not inborn. Believe it or not, sixty years is not enough to for evolution to breed whatever caused WWII and the Holocaust out of the human genome.
It can happen here, folks. You can be an idiot and pretend it can't, or you can remain vigilant, and make sure it doesn't. Yammering about "Godwin's Law" at every opportunity adds no signal to the conversation, only noise.