Anonymous Update: Interception of FBI and Scotland Yard Communications

Since I wrote the article on Anonymous for the Connecticut Law Tribune, the group has perpetrated perhaps its most audacious act yet. It intercepted a telephone conference between FBI officials and Scotland Yard and posted the contents online. The conference call topic was how to deal with specific suspected members of the group. See a rough transcript of the conversation here: RAW DATA Anonymous Transcript and an audio recording here: Anonymous Intercept FBI & Scotland Yard Call

Of course the issue isn’t the contents of the conversation between the law enforcement agencies. The ISSUE is that a telephone conference was intercepted by a rogue group of nerdy bad boyz and girlz. Coverage of the incident didn’t seem to be as extensive in the United States as it was in the United Kingdom. I can’t figure if it’s because the media in the US is too afraid to cover it or that they just don’t understand the enormity of this threat. It is huge.

As a technology matter, what they did wasn't a big deal. The conference call code was probably gained through monitoring someone's email via a Trojan or keylogger (just a guess) and then someone just called in and recorded the conversation.

Worse, and more likely, is that there's an internal security breach within the FBI and/or Scotland Yard that's sympathetic to the Anonymous cause. It doesn't have to be a law enforcement agent. Any disgruntled employee or ex-wife/husband will do. (Some very, very cynical folks say that law enforcement would never make any narcotics arrests if it weren't for women scorned by dealers and, of course, lucky patrol officers.) Actually intercepting a telephone or voice over IP call is much more difficult. That doesn't mean Anonymous operatives couldn't do that. They just didn't do that in this instance.

But don't let me minimize the magnitude of this event. No one has EVER done this. Intercepting law enforcement communications is a big deal. They’re supposed to be secure. It’s bad enough that the US Department of Justice website was taken down in January. Now the FBI has had its live communications intercepted. What does that mean?

It means that our government basically sucks at security and Anonymous is exploiting that fact. For all of their puffed up blow-hardery (I made that word up. . . do you like it?), the feds have got nothing. That’s the point. That’s what Anonymous is doing. They’re hacking the feds and laughing their asses off. They’re posting their exploits to show that not only did they do it, but they spanked the feds hard.

Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction of the feds will be to spend more money and expend more resources tracking down the impossible. As an example, CNN reported that the feds are getting more secure phones. They’ll want to ‘bring the Anonymous threat to justice.’ And, predictably, they will fail and Anonymous will respond with more and more outrageous exploits that will make the DOJ and Homeland Security look like absolute dopes. So, how best to deal with it?

My two cents? Partner with them. Ask their advice. Give them some sort of clemency under a shroud of privacy. Hitting this threat head on is only going to escalate it. And, the more it’s escalated, the better Anonymous looks and the worse the US government and all the collateral governments, corporations and institutions look.

No. I know what you’re thinking. This is definitely not the same thing as negotiating with terrorists. The reason is that terrorists are looking to break us down and replace the government with something else. Anonymous has a completely different motivation. Find the common interests and work from there. They like the Bill of Rights, the government (is supposed to) likes the Bill of Rights. You get the picture.