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British student charged for January cyber attacks

Peter David Gibson is charged as the Met continues its crackdown on computer-related offences.

By Tom Brewster, 26 Aug 2011 at 12:17

A 22-year-old British student has been charged following police investigations into Anonymous attacks in January on big name sites including PayPal.

Hartlepool resident Peter David Gibson was charged with conspiracy to carry out an unauthorised act, “with intent to impair the operation of any computer or prevent or hinder access to any programme or data held in a computer or to impair the operation of any such programme or the reliability of such data.”

Failure to comply with these demands will result in dramatically increased hostilities against authorities currently holding any members of Anonymous worldwide.

Gibson is due to appear on bail at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 7 September.

In July, an FBI-run operation led to the arrests of 20 individuals in the US, the UK and the Netherlands as part of an investigation into attacks on PayPal. It was believed a UK teenager was arrested on suspicion of involvement in Anonymous.

Anonymous recently started a campaign calling for people to ditch their PayPal accounts, taking a less illegal strategy in their protests.

Yesterday, Anonymous posted a message to law enforcement bodies, including the Metropolitan Police, calling for the release of people suspected of involvement in the hacktivist group.

It called for the release of Jake Davis, who was arrested in July. It is believed Davis is Topiary - a key figure of LulzSec.

“Failure to comply with these demands will result in dramatically increased hostilities against authorities currently holding any members of Anonymous worldwide,” the message, from an Anonymous member known as Bree, on Pastebin read.

“You cannot arrest an idea, nor can you stop one as powerful as the one Anonymous, Anti-Sec, and LulzSec are championing. We are not afraid anymore.”

Meanwhile, the Met’s Police Central e-Crime Unit confirmed it had arrested a man in connection into malicious threats made to Louise Mensch MP via email and social networking sites.

A 61-year-old was arrested at an address in the Gloucester and remains in custody.

Mensch had publicly claimed Anonymous and LulzSec had sent threats against her children. “Had some morons from Anonymous/Lulzsec threaten my children via email,” the Conservative MP tweeted.

Anonymous subsequently denied its involvement.

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2 comments

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Anonymous bites the dust. Anonymous bites the dust. An' another one gone, an' another one gone...

Sic semper criminalus.

(Apologies if my Latin declensions are rusty.)

By BenthamMills on Wednesday Aug 31

@BenthamMills

This is a mere setback for Anonymous. Once you've let Pandora out of her box, you can't put her back in.

Most of these guys will get a slap on the wrist, a fine and probably a small sentence (1-2 years).

I can assure you, they will hide their tracks much better next time, and so will every one else in these hacktivists groups.

As someone else pointed out, when are the FBI going to investigate the attacks on Wikileaks? I hope they are going to pursue the same determination they have done with the Visa, MC, and PP investigations.

The law has to be applied equally. Not when it suites the politicians.

By RJD123 on Friday Sep 2

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