A grand jury will begin looking through mobile phones, computer hard drives, and other items seized by the FBI in connection with Anonymous, the cyber vigilantes accused of launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on companies that had severed ties to WikiLeaks.
According to various reports, the federal grand jury in San Jose, California will examine the evidence on Thursday, February 10.
The items were seized during an FBI raid on January 27, during which five men were arrested in connection with the DDoS attacks on sites that had publicly withdrawn support to WikiLeaks such as Visa, MasterCard, Amazon, and PayPal.
Last Sunday, Anonymous hacked into numerous online accounts tied to HBGary Federal, a security firm that claimed to know the identities of the hackers. Anonymous defaced the CEO's Twitter account (pictured) and corporate homepage, and posted around 60,000 company e-mails on Pirate Bay.
"The FBI is breaking down people's doors with guns drawn," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a member of the board of the National Lawyers Guild, which is aiding Anonymous members with their legal defense, told Bloomberg. "A group of people are engaged in a modern day electronic sit-in, and the FBI wants to treat that like it's terrorist activity."