EDIT: After posting this article, Sabu clarified that his tweet did not, in fact, mean that he had stolen from the accounts of 90,000 law enforcement agents, journalists, intelligence community members, and whitehats. The part about journalists was actually shorthand for “corporate media executives,” and of the 90,000 accounts mentioned, only a few were stolen from on Christmas.
In the past, attacks on the media have been one of the few taboos among hackers in the Anonymous collective. And rightly so, as Anonymous generally stands firm on the issue of freedom of information and especially freedom of the press. With the exception of relatively harmless LulzSec defacements of NPR and The Sun, this has been one of the unspoken rules followed by the collective. That is, until now.
Merry Christmas! Unless, of course, you happen to be a journalist for a corporate “white hat” news outlet. In other words, an enemy of “the people” as defined by dear leader Sabu. Sabu tweeted out his Robin Hood hit-and-run on Christmas Eve, a present to all who follow his glorious command. That’s right, the bank accounts of journalists were raided to help make a million dollar donation to Sabu’s unnamed charity of choice. Possibly Hamas, as his Twitter avatar suggests. Only the Grinch steals on Christmas, doing it all for the lulz. Maybe Sabu’s just trolling us all for teh Lulz, too. He’ll come riding down the mountain with all the presents and all the little Who reporters will get their Christmas back.
This is, in effect, the same tactic employed by Mastercard and Paypal to punish WikiLeaks for publishing the cablegate documents leaked by Bradley Manning. If you disagree with what someone says, punish them financially – to hell with the freedom of press! As bankers, CEO’s, and other white collar criminals rob everyone blind, Sabu has decided to rob what he calls “white hat corporate journalists” because they have big ol’ corporate accounts and they aren’t starving or anything.
This move is so blindly stupid, so incalculably bad, so patently dumb, the only logical conclusion is that Sabu and his crew are working for the government to make the nebulous Anonymous collective look bad and help hasten SOPA and the oncoming forced Facebookization of the internet.
Merry Christmas! Anonymous is now fully integrated into the hate machine of one country or another and Sabu’s manning the helm, steering for ultimate destruction of the Fourth Estate. Does he work for Iran, the US, or Hamas? No one knows! What’s clear is that he obviously doesn’t work for Anonymous.
