Even as the FBI was conducting its ongoing campaign of surveillance and armed raids against those of us involved in the Anonymous activist collective, that and other "law enforcement" agencies was simultaneously providing resources and work opportunities to a collection of federal contractors which were themselves engaged in a variety of lawless and unethical activties to which they are now being held to account by the press, if not the government. Anyone who had written up such a situation as fiction would be rightfully thrown out of any publisher's office for having produced such a ham-fisted and sacharrine story replete with scrappy, well-intentioned heroes who are nonetheless viewed as villains opposite hypocritical suits with every sort of power at their command but who are nonetheless defeated in convenient Hollywood fashion. The powers that be have provided the setting for a bad movie, and Anonymous has provided the plot. Cyberwar is hell.

On the Saturday before last, an article appeared in Financial Times in which a certain Aaron Barr, head of U.S. federal contractor HBGary Federal, claimed to have identifed by name what he claimed to be Anonymous' "leadership." We responded with a press release conceeding defeat. The next day, our hackers infiltrated Barr's personal data as well as that of HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary, thereafter releasing tens of thousands of company e-mails as well as the very document that Barr had planned to sell to the FBI - a document that turned out to be hilariously inaccurate and not-so-hilariously destined to get some undetermined number of innocents raided by various government agents despite them not having any connection to Anonymous whatsoever. We then released all of these materials ourselves, and in doing so revealed a set of coinciding conspiracies by a number of companies more "respectable" than our own entity; these included plans to collect information on the family members of political opponents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as a proposal to attack Wikileaks as well as key supporter Glenn Greenwald by way of a range of unethical and possibly illegal tactics that are now being reported on by media outlets around the world.

Through

Let me note that had Anonymous not done what it did, these insidious and frankly incompetent campaigns would most likely have gone forward in some form or another.

they must keep their methods secret lest they be exposed for what they are; we show our methods to all comers so that the truth will be known of what it is that we do. When they have setbacks, they cut off ties and begin pointing fingers; when we have setbacks, we scramble to support those of us who are in trouble and assemble whatever legal resources we can for their benefit.