Anonymous and LulzSec taunt FBI amid NATO and News International leaks

Hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec have released a taunting message to the FBI, challenging the law enforcement agency in the aftermath of recent arrests of supposed members of the groups. "Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea" the joint statement says. "Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir." Meanwhile, both groups claim to have fresh caches of information, including documents supposedly from NATO.Anonymous claims to have "about one Gigabyte of data from NATO now" though says "most of [it] we cannot publish as it would be irresponsible." However, the group has shared what's described as a NATO restricted document titled "Outsourcing CIS in Kosovo" dating back to 2008.

Meanwhile, LulzSec says it is "currently working with certain media outlets" to share some of the emails reportedly taken from News International's now-closed newspaper News of the World, which was recently found to have used phone hacking to monitor the voicemails of murder victims and 9/11 families. Earlier this month the group posted a fake obituary to newspaper The Sun, also a News International property.

LulzSec/Anonymous statement:

Hello thar FBI and international law authorities,

We recently stumbled across the following article with amazement and a certain amount of amusement:

The statements made by deputy assistant FBI director Steve Chabinsky in this

article clearly seem to be directed at Anonymous and Lulz Security, and we are

happy to provide you with a response.

You state:

"We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable,

[even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely

unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."

Now let us be clear here, Mr. Chabinsky, while we understand that you and

your colleagues may find breaking into websites unacceptable, let us tell

you what WE find unacceptable:

* 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.

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 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.