Ok, I respect what Anonymous is trying to do, but this is a step too far. I'm all for civil disobedience, but this crosses the line in my opinion.
Also, they already released all the info themselves, so Barr giving it to the police would be redundant.
Regardless, poetic justice is more about fate making the good guys get their reward while still being good and the bad guys get punished as a result of their actions. This isn't a case of fate. It's a case of someone (deliberately) posting someone's social security numbers online for everyone to see. Was that the just thing to do? I suppose that's debatable. But I don't think it meets the literary definition of poetic justice.
I disagree with your definitions. I would say justice is sanctioned legally, while revenge isn't. Aside from that, they're nearly indistinguishable. And given what is and isn't legally sanctioned by countries ("torture" for example), I think the difference is even less.
Sure, justice gets twisted on a regular basis. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, as a concept, as something different from revenge.
Their goal in this case is to discourage people from messing with them. I'd say that their actions may have achieved exactly that.
A scorched earth policy regarding those who come after them is pretty much the only rational course of action, given the consequences of being positively identified as taking part in those activities. They aren't equipped (nor are most of them of the disposition), to kill, physically intimidate, or otherwise silence people that cross them or hold evidence against them, as most organized crime groups or corrupt law enforcement officers do. So, they have to take extreme actions to prevent people from wanting to gather evidence against them. Intimidation via a constant stream of uneasy feelings about how much of your life they can and will reveal is generally pretty powerful.
It's also probably important that they stick close to the side of "right" enough of the time that it is unpopular to attack them, even if they occasionally cause some actual harm to people who maybe didn't deserve that level of harm.
In this case, though, I'd say this was a funny result. A lot of "security experts" are nothing of the sort, and are deserving of ridicule at the very least. If this prevents incompetent security contractors from suckling at the government teat, I'm all for it.
> Via IRC: <MGMX> Posting his SSN number was way the hell over the line though. << Anonymous finds the line and then crosses it. #noregrets
The goal is always the lulz. That's why they actually welcome people messing with them.