16 alleged Anonymous hackers arrested by FBI in symbolic move; real battle still rages on

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

The “lulz” get so much less enjoyable when in solitary confinement in a federal penitentiary. Unfortunately, for 16 suspected Anonymous members, this is likely to be their reality for years to come.

However, the real battle against Internet freedom is not going to end any time soon, at least until China-style legislation in the vein of the PROTECT IP Act is pushed through into law.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations carried out several search warrants in multiple states this morning, raiding the homes of alleged hackers supposedly affiliated with Anonymous. Not surprisingly, all of these individuals were in their early 20s or late teen years.

According to a Fox News exclusive report, 30-40 search warrants were issued in this operation.

A single indictment resulted in the arrest of 14 while two separate charges were responsible for the arrests of the other suspects.

This is the first large-scale arrest of suspected Anonymous members in the United States after British police arrested 19-year-old alleged hacker affiliated with LulzSec and Anonymous, Ryan Cleary.

Cleary is now facing the real possibility of being extradited to the United States where he could be sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for the LulzSec attacks on the CIA and Senate’s public domains.

I would love to ask those who actually end up getting arrested for these so-called operations if they really think it was worth it. Sure, the people who didn’t get caught are happy to say that Anonymous can’t be stopped and that they are winning and whatnot, but would those who actually have to spend the time locked away in a cement hole for decades agree?

After all, what exactly have any of these operations accomplished, other than providing plenty of cases for anti-Internet freedom advocates like Senator Leahy to point to?

Orlando’s  brave activist group, Food Not Bombs, has been fighting the ludicrous city ordinance that requires permits and limits the amount  of times a group can feed hungry homeless citizens by actually going out and feeding people in defiance of the law.

These courageous men and women have been willingly arrested for committing the crime of charity while Anonymous has pretended to be helping the fight by attacking Orlando city government websites and allegedly threatening the city’s Mayor.

Food Not Bombs called these actions distractions in an exclusive Raw Story interview. Who exactly does Anonymous think they are helping when those who are actually on the front lines are telling them to stop their juvenile attacks?

One must realize that those who actually get caught by the FBI are likely not the core, expert members of Anonymous. The 16 individuals who were busted today are likely what are referred to as “script kiddies” who essentially use the work of other, more skilled hackers to carry out basic attacks.

Paul Moriarty, CEO of a company that tracks botnet activity called Umbra Data, told TechNewsWorld that the arrests were, at best, symbolic. He also said, “These groups have a core cadre of experts that are excellent at covering their tracks. The rest are hanger-ons, or back in the day, what we called script kiddies.”

Moriarty points out that those at the fringes of these groups usually do not know what they are actually doing. This perfectly reflects the main support of my hypothesis that these most recent operations, especially those of LulzSec, could be a government red cell operation.

As I have pointed out in the past, there need only be a small select group at the core actually aware of the purposes of the operations.

Then all one needs is a skilled writer to bathe their works in colorful, romantic rhetoric so no one is thinking about the future consequences of their short-sighted operations.

With the core, skilled hackers that fight under the Anonymous banner still at large and likely to continue to be, we can expect these incidents to continue regardless of the petty arrests made by the FBI.

To me it seems that one of the few remedies the government could sell at this point is a system like the PROTECT IP Act or an Internet ID system. Both of these proposals would end the Internet as we know it, turning it into an even more highly tracked and controlled forum than it already is.

Already every single page you visit that uses Google Analytics or Google’s AdSense advertising platform tracks all of your behavior across that page (along with every other page you visit) while collating the data with their search engine data all tied to your IP and cookie.

The Pentagon is already controlling social networks with sophisticated propaganda software. Can you imagine what the Internet would be like if what shred of privacy and freedom we have left was stripped away?

I would rather not imagine this grim future, but unfortunately it seems like more of a real possibility as these attacks continue unabated.

The PROTECT IP Act has many powerful supporters, not the least of which is the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA,) and now the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce as well. The MPAA is comprised of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLC, and Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.

They justify their support of this absurdist legislation by saying that it is the only thing that can protect the Jurassic entertainment industry and their outdated business models.

The above linked MPAA blog is replete with laughably blatant doublespeak and disinformation including this article that attempts to trump the expert and highly qualified opinion of over 90 law professors.

This attempted rebuttal was written by Michael O’Leary, the Executive Vice President of Government Affairs for the MPAA. No evidence or credentials are presented that qualify the statements by Mr. O’Leary or even begin to bring into question the validity of the argument of the 90 law professors.

O’Leary derides the experts who have pointed out that this legislation is actually worse than China’s Internet control system as it would enforce U.S. law on sovereign nations and their domain registries by saying, “how on earth is it censorship if the government protects the products of free speech from being stolen?”

Well, Mr. O’Leary, as the professors and experts have pointed out, the legislation allows copyright holders in the United States to demand that websites hosted in foreign countries subject to foreign laws with no more a physical presence in America than the tooth fairy be removed from international search results. They can also demand that the domain name stop pointing to the IP of the website.

O’Leary argues that because the Act would require notice to a domain name owner by post, e-mail, and “in any other such form as the court finds necessary” there isn’t need to worry. O’Leary claims that because of this small clause, it is guaranteed that a fair court approval process would take place before any action is taken.

O’Leary then goes on to claim that the 90 professors actually didn’t even understand the point of the bill at all.

The condescending attitude displayed by O’Leary throughout the piece is nothing short of astonishing given that he is a representative of an industry lobbying group and nothing more who is attempting to refute the expert legal opinions of 90 law professors.

O’Leary even has the gall to directly contradict the bill he is cheerleading for by claiming that, in fact, the PROTECT IP Act would not affect any websites or search engines outside of the United States.

O’Leary is either being willingly deceitful, or he is a complete and total imbecile. I think it is the former, as one does not usually get to those kinds of positions without having the ability to read.

He fails to address the concerns raised by technical experts who have shown that the PROTECT IP Act could actually “break” the DNS system by simply brushing them off as “disingenuous.”

I fail to see why an engineer who does not profit off of pirating and likely works to fight it on behalf of their contractors would peddle disinformation on this issue? What do they have to gain?

We all know what the MPAA and other industry lobby groups like the RIAA have to gain from this legislation. It also doesn’t take a genius to see what the federal government would gain from being able to shut down domain names and block search results on a whim.

However, O’Leary and the rest of the China-style cheerleaders fail to explain what exactly those, like myself, who are fighting against this legislation have to gain from it failing? Do they honestly think we are all profiting off of pirated material, or do not purchase any music, films, or games?

This notion is nothing short of absurd and helps to show that the industry lobbies and government are trying to control dissent and protect an archaic, failing business model instead of trying to move forward into the future and innovate new ways to keep intellectual property and government infrastructure safe.