FBI Raids Texas ISP For Anonymous DDoS Info

jcombel writes with this link to The Smoking Gun, which says "As part of an international criminal probe into computer attacks launched this month against perceived corporate enemies of WikiLeaks, the FBI has raided a Texas business and seized a computer server that investigators believe was used to launch a massive electronic attack on PayPal." Computerworld has a story, as well.

Re:WH says DDOS is not a crime

[drinkypoo]

You have to get a license to legally make a street protest which shuts down traffic, in most places.

I wasn't around then, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the feeling we're about to see Weather Underground 2.0. FBI and friends rounding up subversives, cooking up various stories/evidence/results and both sides getting more and more serious until things go bad.

Anonymous will, I suggest, become the 21st century hippies once more and more tangential interests come aboard, and before you know it a few radical offshoot groups will take on the government in a serious way. Cyberthreats the like of government talk are bullshit, but people with technical knowhow and a bit of time can scuttle bureacracy gone bad, ala various leakings. I don't properly (beyond some scrapings of the history) know the who or what of 1969 onward and how right each side of the government-hippy fence was.. but I'm around for this fight, I'm a witnessing some disturbing trends that displease me greatly and can't say I side with the government being right.

In the cosmic irony department, the captcha for this post is "unfair".

Re:Idiots

[Threni]

Sure, it's a punishment. "If you allow this sort of thing, we're going to take your servers and hang onto them for months".

Re:Attacking financial services

[Anonymous Coward]

What could possibly go wrong?

Paypal: the "bank" that somehow gets away with not having to be regulated like a bank and treated like a bank, despite looking like a bank and acting like a bank.

DDoS attacks suck but in this case, nothing of value was lost.

patriot

[choko]

So I'm assuming that we are going to see a probe by authorities into the "patriots" behind the wikileaks DDOS attacks next?

Re:Idiots

[Miros]

To discourage others from operating infrastructure that can aid in DDoS attacks? This kind of high visibility move tends to invoke certain emotions among people who might be otherwise inclined to assist in some criminal enterprise. Whoever owned that server is probably not having a good week right now, and it's clear that simply operating some seemingly benign infrastructure that aids in a conspiracy to commit a crime is something that can get your equipment seized and your ass in hot water.

Isn't it amazing..

[Dynamoo]

Isn't it amazing that the FBI can get their arses into gear over Anonymous, while allowing thousands of other criminal operations to use US based servers without disturbance. I am constantly horrified by the number of malicious sites operating out of the mainland US that are clearly operating in plain sight.

Re:Idiots

[Hatta]

All of which amounts to the government bullying legitimate businesses for doing nothing illegal. How is this even close to acceptable?

Re:WH says DDOS is not a crime

[ScentCone]

If you have to ask the government for permission to speak out against the government, you are not free

Lucky for you, then, that you don't have to ask the government for permission to speak out against the government, right? On the other hand, it seems like a good idea to make arrangements with the people who are tasked with keeping the streets working and safe when you are setting out to prevent your fellow citizens from being able to use the streets they pay for. Or are you implying that the only way to speak out against the government is to prevent your fellow citizens from being able to use public property?

Any government that implements such a policy is nothing more than a bunch of thugs and deserves as much respect.

You've got it backwards. Any protester who thinks he has to forcibly prevent other people from using the street because otherwise he doesn't think he can express himself is a thug who should be treated as such.

Re:Isn't it amazing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Money talks... Anon starting playing with fire when they went after the credit processing industry. Most malicious servers don't go out of their way to put a big target on their back. More importantly, they don't actively disrupt commerce, something that this government takes more seriously than just about anything else.
 
Worth noting, this is the ONLY police action in the USA related to wikileaks, and it isn't really even related. What the hell does that say about all this?

Re:Attacking financial services

[ScentCone]

You mean there ARE banks which were are required to do business with

No, I don't mean that and you know it. But if you want to do business with a bank that, for example, offers you FDIC protected checking accounts, then you looking for a different sort of service provider. PayPal isn't in that line of work.

And, on your other comment ... you're confusing FDIC insurance and the accompanying regulations with being bailed out, which are completely different things.

Re:WH says DDOS is not a crime

[ScentCone]

Secondly, someone exercising freedom of Assembly is not always a protester, but of course, this would involve seeing someone else's point of view.

The fact that you are blocking a public street without making any prior arrangements to do so isn't a "point of view" thing - it's a simple are you, or aren't you doing it sort of thing.

As for linking to a Polish document about freedom of assembly? Who has said anything about interfering with freedom of assembly? The US has done more to protect and promote freedom of assembly than any other state in the history of humanity. That has nothing whatsoever to do with physically preventing fellow citizens from using the streets that serve their homes, businesses, and public services/venues.