Evidence collected by the FBI about Anonymous, which attacked websites of four companies to punish them for blocking contributions to WikiLeaks, will be considered this week by a US grand jury, according to court papers and an informal spokesman for the group of activist hackers.
The federal grand jury in San Jose, California, will begin reviewing evidence tomorrow that includes computers and mobile phones seized from suspected leaders as prosecutors probe the coordinated so-called denial-of-service attacks in December, according to a federal subpoena and the spokesman, Barrett Brown. Anonymous directed activists to target payment processors MasterCard, Visa, EBay’s PayPal, and UK-based Moneybookers.com in public chat rooms.
Among the evidence seized by the FBI during multistate raids on January 27 was data taken from an individual who controls one of Anonymous’s primary servers, identified by the organisation only by his cyber-handle ‘Owen,’ Brown said.
“The FBI is breaking down people’s doors with guns drawn,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a member of the board of the National Lawyers Guild, which has talked with Anonymous organisers about their legal defence. “A group of people are engaged in a modern day electronic sit-in, and the FBI wants to treat that like it’s terrorist activity.”
Anonymous responded on February 6 by hacking a California-based security firm that it said was aiding the probe, hijacking 60,000 company e-mails and making them public on one of the organisation’s servers. The e-mails included a proposal by the company to develop a malware tracking program for the US government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), among other confidential documents.
Drawn guns
Jenny Shearer, a Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman, said the agency couldn’t comment on the probe or its targets. She said “it’s not unusual” to have drawn guns during the execution of a search warrant until “the situation is secure.”
The subpoena shows federal investigators are trying to piece together the workings of an elusive group composed of hundreds of hackers and activists stretched across several countries. Brown said about a dozen members are able to influence the direction of Anonymous.
