By Jerry Smith Jan 27 2011
assangewatch.blogspot.com
U.K. police have arrested five young men, between ages 15 and 26, they claim are members of 'Anonymous', and are responsible for 'Operation Payback', the DDOS attacks that crippled the websites of MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal after they refused to continue to process donations for WikiLeaks, under pressure from the United States.
Back in December, Coldblood, Anonymous's unofficial spokesman said that Operation Payback was unrelated to Julian Assange or support of the leaked diplomatic cables.
"Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any form of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with" Coldblood said.
“The arrests were related to recent ‘distributed denial of service’ (DDoS) attacks by an online group calling themselves Anonymous,” London police said in a statement.
After WikiLeaks began publishing secret military communications relating to the Iraq and Afghan wars, and the roughly 250,000 classified diplomatic cables, Visa, MasterCard Inc., PayPal Inc., and several other American companies refused to do business with the whistle-blowing site anymore.
WikiLeaks says the U.S. accusations of putting its national security at risk are just an attempt to distract from the embarrassing content.
The maximum penalty in Britain for offences of computer misuse is 10 years imprisonment and a fine of 5,000 pounds ($7,953).
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