Top LulzSec hackers arrested, group leader reportedly working for FBI | Hacker News Reader

Top LulzSec hackers arrested, group leader reportedly working for FBI

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121 pointszacharye31 comments

I'd say there is quite a difference between working for the FBI and as the title says working with the FBI.

According to the article the case here seems to the latter and not as the title here make it seem the former.

In the article title it says for the FBI, but in the article itself it says with the FBI. In this case, I think its just semantics because it was a sting operation so while he was working with them, he was also working for them as well.

To add a point to the article, I think they went too far in their operations saying to "open up on any government operation". Civil Disobedience, and taking down websites is one thing, leaking sensitive information is an entirely different story. This is also Fox news, so I don't know how bias or if this story is even the truth, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt.

Colloquially speaking, "for" means the FBI is making matching contributions to his 401k, "with" means he is cooperating.

Technically speaking, either word works, but you need more than the OED to properly communicate meaning.

You also have to read an article to understand its contents. Headlines have never been, and should not be, anything more than a headline.

And, I disagree with your analysis of "for." I am an english speaker living in the northeastern United States, and hear "for" differently than you describe.

In this context, "working for" usually indicates that the person in question is under the FBI's payroll.

"Working with" usually indicates that they're a witness of some sort helping with the investigation. You wouldn't say that a murder witness is "working for the police", you would say that they were "working with the police".

I am also an English speaker living (and raised) in the northeastern United States, and I agreed with his differentiation.

I agree with the differentiation, although there's another rule not yet mentioned:

News article headlines are allowed greater latitude to break other grammatical rules.

Maybe so if they do it to shorten the headline, but not if it perverts the meaning. I'd say it's okay as long as they get the point across, but I think this is a mistake--it changes the meaning of the title and still doesn't offer much benefit (one character) in terms of brevity.

The article does have a quote using 'for.' '”They caught him and he was secretly arrested and now works for the FBI,” a unnamed source said to be close to Sabu told FoxNews.com.'

Certainly not a very credible citation, but it shows that the poster didn't generate the sensationalist title from thin air.

An NPR story earlier today said he was arrested and pled guilty, agreeing to a plea bargain with the FBI.

I'm too lazy right now to dig up the link on NPR's site though :(

Friend of friend of friend told that somebody he knows was arrested in Europe and extradited to USA with fraud charges. Initial sentence prosecutor was asking was something like 30-40 years. Recently I find out that this guy's sentence was reduced to 8 months for cooperation with FBI (and on top of it he have to reimburse some pretty significant amount of money to US government or something like that)...

So... Not that bad if you start cooperate with FBI. I would expect most of LulzSec gang to be disclosed pretty soon (except ones, who had enough wise to not disclose their private info to this guy from article)

Flagged for being blogspam of original article. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3670930

So the FBI has been waging war against the US government; interesting.

If you read the article, the leader was not a proper member of the FBI. He merely collaborated with them.

If these reports are to be believed, Sabu was working on an FBI-provided laptop with direct 24-hour FBI surveillance of everything he was doing when he hacked Stratfor and dumped their emails to Wikileaks. Other parts of Anonymous disowned Sabu afterwards (see pastebin) for attacking Stratfor, which they considered a news organization and off limits.

The Stratfor leak involved almost 1M email addresses and ~100K credit card numbers. A lot of them are said to be bigshots in DC military/security circles.

No, I can't explain it either.

I believe the word you are looking for is "incompetence".

Our law enforcement organizations spend years and millions of dollars to infiltrate, track down, and bring to justice criminals. Who do they target? Organized crime? Hostile foreign nations? Fraudsters? Nope, they go after lulzsec and IP "pirates". I don't have a ton of sympathy for either lulzsec or kim dotcom but I can't help but feel that the FBI et al are screwing the pooch here and arresting the moral equivalent of pot dealers while the true terrorists and mobsters go free.

No, the FBI is not incompetent.

Anonymous/Lulz was/is the biggest hacking group ever. They were hacking businesses, law enforcement, media, websites of the US Congress and the CIA (just to name a few).

I really doubt that one could describe a plausible ranking system of law enforcement priorities that wouldn't direct real resources at Anon/Lulz in 2011.

On the other hand, it could turn out to have been valuable practice in the event China gets really serious about cyber attacks.

Besides, I would guess there's a rather limited amount of work the FBI's cyber crime unit can do to help bring in mobsters.

Has this been confirmed? Can it be confirmed? This is Fox News, which is not a reliable source of information to me, especially not about anything related to technology. What is the chance that they just wanted a good press release on a slow news day and the FBI decided to play along?

You're welcome to take your news from whatever source you like. But on what basis do you decide that Fox News is less reliable than other MSM, e.g., ABC or NY Times?

As far as I can see, they've all got their biases. If you've convinced yourself that one is propaganda while the others are shooting straight (you didn't say that explicitly, but it seems to be implied), then I'm afraid that you're swallowing some serious propaganda as a result.

(I don't mean to defend Fox, but to indict all the MSM)

Well I think this argument would work except that you chose Fox News as your starting point. Yes the MSM all have agendas, however very few of them push it as hard a FN does theirs. Remeber, FN were the ones who went to court to protect their right to lie and not provide "news" but editorially biased content.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1262284675681492...

I think it's less a problem of bias but more a problem of continued bad journalism practices (tabloid-like mistakes). Many others are also guilty of bad journalism regardless of their political bias. But Fox News has it up to a level that it's hard to believe anything they publish without first looking for a second source.

Pretty much. Anyone who singles out Fox as any worse than any other media outlet is just showing their own ignorance.

And, anyone who blanketly equates the biases of news organizations is falling for a false equivalency.

All mass media outlets should be considered suspicious, even if you happen to mostly agree with their bias. That's not so much 'false equivalency', as an understanding that broadcasters with a large audience are inevitably going to be used by people with cash and an agenda to get their message across.

The quote was from a law enforcement official that they'd arrested the various people, here's the BBC if you'd rather: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17270822

Federal court NY District unsealed the charges this morning..as people were arrested

Has this been confirmed?

The FBI released an official document of confirmation this morning: http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2012/six-hackers-i...

So this confirms that the earlier Topiary arrest was mistaken, then?

Incorrect. Topiary was certainly arrested, this article does nothing to contradict that. You may have skimmed that last sentence and been confused. It does not state that Topiary was arrested, merely that the 5 taken in today were arrested for their involvement with the likes of Topiary.

I heard the best term for these Anonymous crackers by someone interviewed on NPR today. "Lynch mobs". Very apt. He was describing them as people who go out to lynch those they don't agree with.

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