Hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec have issued a joint statement in response to recent FBI arrests of suspected Anonymous members thought to have carried out a cyberattack against PayPal in 2010.
In their release, the hackers addressed a statement made to NPR by Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant FBI director. "We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable," Chabinsky told NPR. "[Even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."
The hacker collectives responded with a list of what they define as "unacceptable" practices:
* Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.
* Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for federal contracts we all know they can't fulfil.
* Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change.
With regards to the arrests of alleged members of Anonymous by the FBI, the hackers wrote, "Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. [...] [T]here is nothing - absolutely nothing - you can possibly to do make us stop."
According to the AP, the FBI on Tuesday arrested 14 people across the United States and confiscated computers in connection with the PayPal attack. Another two were arrested for unrelated activities. In addition, Britain's Scotland Yard took into custody one person, and the Dutch National Police Agency arrested four.
Seemingly undeterred, Anonymous on Thursday claimed to have bypassed NATO's online security and swiped "restricted" files. According to a tweet from @AnonymousIRC, "We are sitting on about one Gigabyte of data from NATO now, most of which we cannot publish as it would be irresponsible. But Oh NATO...."
Assistant New York University professor Gabriella Coleman, who has been studying the Anonymous hackers, recently told The Huffington Post that these arrests would not stop the hacktivists' efforts. "Some people surely will get scared off," said Coleman. "Others will feel more emboldened to fight the fight [...] But I don't think at the moment it's going to slow things down."