The members of Anonymous and LulzSec say they won't back down in the face of the FBI's recent efforts to shut them down. In a letter published Thursday on Pastebin, the affiliated hacking groups vowed to "continue to fight" the "governments and corporations [which] are our enemy."
The letter, posted by "AnonymousIRC," was a response to comments made by deputy assistant FBI director Steve Chabinsky in an interview with NPR. AnonymousIRC is a handle that has been associated with purported LulzSec co-founder "Sabu."
The FBI and Dutch authorities this week arrested 20 people alleged to have participated in Anonymous hacking and website takedown operations, while British police arrested a 16-year-old Londoner reportedly associated with LulzSec, an AnonOps splinter group that seems to have folded itself back into Anonymous following a 50-day hacking and website defacement spree.
In the letter, AnonymousIRC specifically objects to Chabinsky's statement that, "We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable. [Even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."
The letter-writer counters that Anonymous and Lulz Security (LulzSec) find various tyrannical and profiteering actions by government, corporations, and lobbyists to be equally "unacceptable."
Despite the recent arrests, Anonymous and LulzSec, which have teamed up on the wide-ranging "AntiSecurity" project to expose government and corporate secrets, "are not scared anymore," according to the letter.
"Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea," the letter goes on to say. "Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our mission to help these people and there is nothing—absolutely nothing—you can possibly to do make us stop."
The letter also addresses Chabinsky's statement that the FBI is obligated to "ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West."
"Let me ask you, good sir, when was the Internet not the Wild Wild West?" the letter-writer asks. "Do you really believe you were in control of it at any point? You were not.
"That does not mean that everyone behaves like an outlaw. You see, most people do not behave like bandits if they have no reason to. We become bandits on the Internet because you have forced our hand. The Anonymous b****slap rings through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We're back—and we're not going anywhere. Expect us."