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 the entirety of this cinematic nonsense, our opponents have been caught engaging in an additional round of dishonesty on top of what has already been explained by ourselves and the press. Shortly after the attack I spoke to Barr via phone, during which conversation the clearance-possessing federal contractor repeatedly lied to me about his intentions in collecting information about members of a group that were meanwhile heavily involved in providing assistance to Tunisians, Egyptians, and other populations; later, as we and reporters went through the acquired e-mails and other date, we began to discover the full extent of the lies, of the secret and amoral plans to target journalists for destruction and children for surveillance, and altogether the sickness that plagues the institutions that nonetheless spend millions on public relations lest they be considered on their merits rather than on the soft dishonesty of "strategic" advertising.
As the story continues to unfold, Anonymous will continue to conduct the investigation that in a more perfect world would be immediately pursued by "law enforcement." Anonymous will likewise continue to work with the press and other observers to reveal the truth of what U.S. taxpayer dollars and corporate "emergency response" funds actually go to produce. Meanwhile, our opponents and antagonists will continue to lie to you. All we ask is that you compare our words and actions with theirs, and in doing so decide which of these two factions your conscience would prompt you to support.