How FBI Informant Sabu Helped Anonymous Hack Brazil
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
A few years ago (during the height of the anonymous media frenzy), I was working for a hosting company in Iceland, which among other things hosted websites of a large government ministry. One day, I was called into a meeting with a couple of my bosses and other technicians. The reason for the meeting was that we had received a tip-off from the Icelandic police, which they said came from the FBI, that anonymous was planning to attack Icelandic government sites in the next couple of days. They wanted us to make sure the sites were ready, and to monitor for signs of attack.
I thought the whole thing was really strange, how did the Icelandic police have this knowledge? And why did they know with such certainty that there would be an attack in the next two days, when they could not provide us with any other information on the attack vector?
Anyway, we decided to just make a static HTML dump of the site and serve it with thttpd for the time being (the site didn't really have any dynamic content anyway).
Now, several years later, with this and other leaks related to Sabu and Hammond, I wonder: was I used as a pawn in the FBI's game to entrap anonymous? Did the FBI encourage anonymous to attack Icelandic government servers?
Does it really matter? You've been used as a pawn in governmental games ever since you were born.
It is not uncommon for such information exchanges and warnings to actually be readiness tests. Except you don't know it's intended as a test of your resources / ability to handle such an attack.
When was the last time you saw any government agency get into trouble for break the law in the USA?
IANAL, but typically in order to use entrapment as a defense, you have to show that the defendant would have not committed the crime otherwise. Since these were supposedly active members in the "hacking" community, I doubt that would apply in this case unless there was some funny business going on, like blackmail.
It's the same thing they do with muslim groups by egging on the crazy loner to do stuff (checkout Radiolab).
It's like a microcosm of the bigger problem in our society. The government help give guns to crazy people, and then throw a fit when they shoot up schools.
That's why Sabu's handlers should be named and shamed. Only when this kind of case becomes a liability to the careers of the people behind it will it stop.