Recently, after the raids of several homes conducted by the FBI, LulzSec and Anonymous released a joint statement saying that the threats by the FBI against them does not sway them and that they are “not going anywhere”.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
A few days ago now, there were a series of raids conducted by the FBI on alleged Anonymous members across the United States. More than a dozen arrests were made and several homes were raided. The news splashed across the media briefly and seemed to disappear right after like a fleeting memory for some. The reason the story may have disappeared so quickly for some may be the fact that the significance of the raids may have wound up being negligible beyond material for a press release.
Moments after the raids were conducted, the image of the great hacker crackdown quickly unraveled as most of the hacker groups being targeted continued posting like it was business as usual. Compounding the deflating atmosphere for the FBI was the emerging details of who was arrested – namely someone who happened to blog about the Infragard vulnerabilities to give one example. That had readers here on ZeroPaid speculate that the other arrested individuals may have been merely running applications that would assist in DDOS attacks and not really the masterminds or even any higher ups in these hacking groups.
In the midst of the image of the FBI raid perhaps transition from an act to stop Anonymous in its tracks to an act of desperation, LulzSec and Anonymous has issued a statement saying that the threats made by the FBI will not deter them from carrying out their activities. The joint LulzSec and Anonymous statement was posted to PasteBin where they cite various comments made by the FBI.
After the FBI commented that it was criminal to break in to the sites that were hacked in the first place, the statement counters by saying that the government hasn’t exactly been behaving perfectly either. More from the statement:
These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.
We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our mission to help these people and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – you can possibly to do make us stop.
The statement also engaged the FBI on another point:
“The Internet has become so important to so many people that we have to ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West.”
Let me ask you, good sir, when was the Internet not the Wild Wild West? Do you really believe you were in control of it at any point? You were not.
That does not mean that everyone behaves like an outlaw. You see, most people do not behave like bandits if they have no reason to. We become bandits on the Internet because you have forced our hand. The Anonymous bitchslap rings through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We’re back – and we’re not going anywhere. Expect us.
Not hard to see that neither side will be likely to back down any time soon.
Really, unless the FBI can make some serious inroads in to these hacking groups, it’s going to be very difficult to maintain the idea that the FBI is fully capable of stopping these groups. What would be more damaging to the FBI is the idea that the FBI is desperate enough to arrest anyone that might seem like someone from Anonymous. The last thing the FBI should hope to find themselves in is some sort of global witch hunt while these hacking groups continue to ridicule their efforts from wherever the members happen to be. Yet, judging by how well the recent raids went so far, there is the risk that the FBI could wind up in that sort of situation. At this time, I’ll be generous and say it’s a remote chance, but I don’t think one could make a convincing case to say that this is impossible at this stage.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
