(MintPress) – The online hacker collective known as Anonymous struck again this week, dumping names and contact information of U.S. State Department employees on the Internet. The move is part of Operation Last Resort, a series of ongoing attacks against U.S. government websites designed to combat what internet hacktivists see as overly restrictive copyright laws and rules of service on the Internet.
Anonymous claims to have hacked the U.S. State Department website and captured a database which has now been published on the Internet.
The group boasted that the data dump was relatively easy, posting, “F.Y.I all of this data is viewable using a few terminal commands, it’s just sad that ANY part of the database basically can be publicly viewed by anyone. Information is free, as we always say.”
The decision is seen as retribution for a government witch hunt against Aaron Schwartz, an internet activist charged with 13 felony counts relating to the illegal downloading of millions of academic articles from subscription database JSTOR.
Anonymous planned the attack to also defend members of LulzSec, an internet hacker group based in Britain. LulzSec members are serving sentences as long as 25 years after pleading guilty to plotting attacks against computers of international firms, law enforcement bodies and government agencies in 2012.
“Our reasons for this attack are very simple. You’ve imprisoned or either censored our people. We will not tolerate things as such. You don’t see us going around censoring everything that is inappropriate or we do not like. Basically, you tried to put an end to us and you got owned, there’s nothing more you can say or do,” Anonymous posted following the attack.
If convicted, Schwartz would have faced more than 10 years in jail and up to a $1 million fine. The 26-year-old was found dead in his New York apartment after committing suicide in January. “Aaron Swartz this is for you, this is for Operation Last Resort,” Anonymous added.
Schwartz was facing what Anonymous and others see as a set of unjust, disproportionate set of charges for sharing copyright protected academic articles on the Internet.
Formed in 2006, the Anonymous hacker group has organized other major cyberattacks against government websites.
The group was behind cyberattacks against the The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in January 2012 after authorities shut down the Megaupload file-sharing website.
Previously, Anonymous attacked government websites in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt as a means to assist the hundreds of thousands of Arab Spring protesters attempting to overthrow corrupt, unaccountable regimes.
Anonymous members have appeared at Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 donning masks to keep their identities hidden.