Anonymous Member Gets a Year in Jail

Brian Mettenbrink, of Grand Island, Nebraska is a member of the ... what shall we call it? Hate Group? Cyber Terrorist Group? I know, Yeah, let's call it the cyber terrorist and hate group Anonymous.

Two years ago he and his fellow criminals decided that they knew better than religious experts and courts and that in their infinite wisdom they were justified in breaking the law so as to harass and attack a religion they knew nothing about.

The sheer arrogance of these people is amazing.

Anyway, Mettenbrink has been caught tried and sentenced for his part in this criminal act and will be spending the next year of his life in jail. Read all about it here: Nebraska man sentenced in Scientology cyber attack.

He is the second Anonymous member to go to jail over these cyber attacks. The first was Dmitriy Guzner. Let us hope there are more to come.

Links about Anonymous

I just found a bunch of links to data on Anonymous and their attacks on the Epilepsy Foundation, the Australian Prime Minister and more.

Attack on Scientology Website Sends New Jersey Man to Jail on Felony Charges

-

Jail for Anonymous Member

A not so anonymous member of the Internet hate group that calls itself Anonymous was sentenced to a year in jail for his part in attacks on Church of Scientology web sites in Jan 2008. You can read more here: Attack on Scientology Website Sends New Jersey Man to Jail on Felony Charges.

The article includes the following data about who else Anonymous has attacked:

Anonymous is an underground hate group that, in addition to the cyber attack, targeted Churches of Scientology and members with death threats, bomb threats and fake anthrax mail. In addition to Scientology Churches and the Prime Minister of Australia , Anonymous has also targeted The Epilepsy Foundation, hip-hop music websites and others.

Anonymous is a nasty bunch of people, but they are being caught and justice is occurring.

Another (anonymous) one bites the dust

Although I feel sorry for a guy who is most likely a pawn in the criminal hand of Anonymous, he still broke the law and now has to face the consequences:

Federal Crime Charges against Anonymous

Anonymous member indicted by US State Attorney

On Wednesday, October 28, 2009, a federal Grand Jury in Los Angeles indicted Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, a member of the cyber hate group Anonymous, for his part in the January 2008 attempted destruction of Scientology websites owned by the Church of Scientology.

Mettenbrink, 20, is charged with conspiracy and “transmission of a code, information, program, or command to a protected computer.” The indictment states that he obtained a computer program from an Anonymous website and executed a “DDOS” attack from his dormitory at Iowa State University against Church computers in Los Angeles. A DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack occurs where a large amount of malicious Internet traffic is directed at a website or a set of websites, with the intent to overwhelm and shut down the websites.

Mettenbrink is the second member of Anonymous to face criminal charges relating to this attack. In May 2009, Dmitriy Guzner, then 18, pleaded guilty to computer hacking charges for his role in the attack on Church computers. He is currently awaiting sentencing.

Scientology is a worldwide religious movement with more than 8,000 Churches, Missions and groups in 165 countries. The Church and its members dedicate their time and resources to numerous humanitarian programs that Scientology has become known for around the world, including combating drug abuse, immorality, illiteracy and human rights violations.

How pathetic is Anonymous?

I just came across an article that demonstrates the criminality and twistedness of "Anonymous". The article is about how they hacked the Time.com "Most influential person" online poll.

They built auto-voting programs and modified them as the Time.com people changed the poll in an attempt to stop the hacking. Eventually when Time added a feature that stopped the auto-voting the nut-jobs of Anonymous started voting by hand. To keep the manual voters happy the masterminds of this idiocy provided porn to keep the faithful voting.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article: "To further optimize their voting they created a poll front-end that allowed you to enter votes quickly while giving you an update of the poll status (and since it is a 4chan kind of crowd), they also provided the option to stream some porn just to keep you company while you are subverting one of the largest media companies in the world."

And this: "Some of the most hardcore voters (I call them ‘devoters’) spent 40+ hours voting. At their peak, they were casting about 200 votes per minute."

It's rather pathetic if you ask me. It shows you the mentality of these people and how pointless their lives must be. Why not spend 40+ hours doing some volunteer work? There are thousands of worthwhile causes out there. But no, rather than do something to help their fellow man, the pitiful members of Anonymous prefer to mess with a pointless Internet poll.

Read the complete article: moot wins, Time Inc. loses.

Anonymous member faces 10 years jail

Thanks to my blogging pal Casperize, I found out that the first member of Anonymous ever caught has pleaded guilty to felony charges involving a series of January 2008 Distributed Denial of Service attacks on the official websites of the Church of Scientology.

You can read the full story here: Not so anonymous Dmitriy Guzner faces 10 years in prison

Here is an extract:
19-year old Dmitriy Guzner has pleaded guilty to felony charges involving a series of January 2008 Distributed Denial of Service attacks on the official websites of the Church of Scientology.

Guzner is part of the Internet hacking group Anonymous, which targets groups and individuals just for the sake of fun. This is the first time a member of Anonymous has been convicted on computer hacking charges.

Anonymous started harassing the Church of Scientology last year, not only attacking their websites, but waging real life demonstrations and stunts on the religious group.

Other victims of Anonymous have notably included Florida Republican Nancy Detert and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

New Jersey native Guzner faces 10 years in prison and is set to be sentenced on Aug. 24 in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

Sources: United States Attorney, Central District of California and CIO.com

Bigotry and Discrimination

This weekend I saw a great movie. It was released in 1947 and is called Gentleman's Agreement. It stars Gregory Peck as a journalist who decides to write his story about anti-Semitism by pretending to be Jewish for 8 weeks.

He encounters discrimination in obvious, not-so-obvious and downright subtle ways. It's a very entertaining movie that avoids preaching but gets its point across.

The main message I got from the movie is that you can't just silently sit by watching discrimination and saying to yourself "that's not okay." You have to actually do something about it or you become part of the problem.

When you hear "horror stories" about how "bad" a group is (whether religious or ethnic) you have to stand up and tell the person spreading the lies to stop. You have to make it clear that you don't agree and that you will not support their hatred in any way.

Another more subtle form of bigotry is disparaging comments or "jokes" directed against people's race or beliefs. Once again, you must not stand for this sort of covert discrimination.

If we were all a bit less reasonable about the ethnic jokes and the religious stereotypes that are promoted by bigots and the media, then this world would be a better place.

Boston "Anonymous" leader in trouble with the Law

Thanks to Louanne for bringing this to my attention. It seems a "leader" of "Anonymous" in Boston has to stay away from Church of Scientology buildings or face prosecution for "disturbing an assembly of worship and disturbing the peace."

Apparently Gregg Housh entered the Church wearing a Guy Fawkes mask "disturbing the proceedings and alarming those inside." Now, to put it in simple terms, he is sort of "on probation" for a year and has to stay away from Church buildings in Boston. For all the details:

Scientology Protester’s Case Continued Without Finding
Church of Scientology owns Boston Anonymous

One last comment. I find it abhorrent that these Anonymous guys go around violating Human Rights (specifically the right to freedom of belief) while wearing the Guy Fawkes masks worn by the hero in the movie "V for Vendetta".


In the movie, "V" fights against an oppressive government to bring rights back to the people. (One of the two rights highlighted in the movie is freedom of religion.) Anonymous on the other hand fights to take rights (and specifically freedom of religion) away from people.

In the words of Shakespeare (and as used by "V" in the movie to characterize one of the bad guys): "And thus I clothe my naked villany, With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ, And seem a saint, when most I play the devil." (From Richard III - I recommend the play to all members of Anonymous. It describes very clearly how your "leaders" are using you.)

Anonymous hacker faces up to 10 years in prison

Earlier this year the Internet entity that calls itself "Anonymous" launched attacks on Church of Scientology and related websites in an attempt to take them off the Internet. This type of attack (called a "ddos" attack) throw so much bogus traffic at a website that it can't display pages for legitimate users. These attacks originate from hijacked computers. The attacker manages to install some "trojan horse" software on someone else's computer and then uses that computer for these attacks, sending spam, etc.

So who or what is Anonymous? Its ranks range from the criminal to the immature. If you ever wondered where all that spam comes from that advertises drugs or who it is that creates viruses and spyware that forces you to install anti-virus software so your computer isn't hijacked and used for promoting drugs and porn or for launching ddos attacks, then there is a high probability the source is a member of Anonymous.

You can see that people who make their money from drugs and pornography are not going to be very happy with an organization that promotes a drug free and moral lifestyle. And that probably explains why the attacks earlier this year were not only against Church sites but included the Foundation for a Drug Free World, Youth for Human Rights, Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, The Way to Happiness Foundation, Narconon, and others similar groups.

The activities of the Church of Scientology and its members cuts into the income of these people, and they don't like it. The hard-core criminals of Anonymous recruit help from the ranks of the gullible and hateful. They spread black-propaganda against their intended victim, the gullible fall for it and the hateful see it as a great excuse to express the hatred that boils inside them.

So, what has been the outcome of these attacks? Well, all Church sites and the sites of related groups were back up and running, some within hours some within days, and the attacks, being criminal actions, are being investigated by the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

The people who carry out such attacks really believe they are "anonymous" but the apprehension of Dmitriy Guzner for his part is these attacks shows that this belief is fallacious. You can read what is happening to Dmitriy here, New Jersey Man Charged With Attacking Church Of Scientology Websites In The Name Of ‘Anonymous’ and here, Hacker Admits to Scientology DDOS Attack: Faces up to 10 Years in Federal Prison.

The investigation of these attacks is not over. I look forward to seeing more criminals apprehended.

Scientologists are not breaking any laws by following their religion, but those who attack them for their beliefs are committing crimes and will face the consequences.