On Friday, Sandy Hook Elementary witnessed one of the worst displays of violence in our nation’s history. Since then, an outpouring of support from the nation has gone to the battered community to help them get back on their feet. The folks at the Westboro Baptist Church, however, feel that this tragedy is an example of God’s wrath, and are planning a protest at the town. Anonymous has made it clear that it’s not going to let that happen.
KYAnonymous, the Anon who targeted revenge porn magnate Hunter Moore, has now taken up a new operation called #OpWBC. Anonymous has targeted Westboro in the past, but those operations have been more about taking down the church’s Web sites and trolling its members. This operation got a little more serious as some members of Anonymous have now leaked personal information on the church’s members and even hacked one of its member’s Twitter account.
KYAnonymous sent along the following press release to announce the operation:
As you may not have acknowledged our existence, we, on the otherhand, have recognized yours. We have seen your depraved methods of disseminating your message of hate throughout The United States of America. We have witnessed you defaming the memories of those who sacrificed themselves for the security of our nation, disrupting the peace of the educational environment within high schools and universities, breeding hatred within the fragile minds of your own next of kin, desecrating the name of God by protesting in the proximity of churches and synagogues, and mangling the biblical text to conform in accordance with your malevolent cause.
Your pseudo-faith is abhorrent, and your leaders, repugnant. Your impact and cause is hazardous to the lives of millions and you fail to see the wrong in promoting the deaths of innocent people. You are self-appointed servants of God who rewrite the words of His sacred scripture to adhere to your prejudice. Your hatred supersedes your faith, and you use faith to promote your hatred.
Since your one-dimensional thought protocol will conform not to any modern logic, we will not debate, argue, or attempt to reason with you. Instead, we have unanimously deemed your organization to be harmful to the population of The United States of America, and have therefore decided to execute an agenda of action which will progressively dismantle your institution of deceitful pretext and extreme bias, and cease when your zealotry runs dry. We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to terminate in a short period of time. Attrition is our weapon, and we will waste no time, money, effort, and enjoyment, in tearing your resolve into pieces, as with exposing the incongruity of your distorted faith.
Anonymous possesses a plethora of information within our network about the many divisions of Christianity and numerous other religious doctrines. Many of us are versed in the biblical text, and we can identify each and every of your violations of scripture. You abuse the Holy Bible which you do not fully comprehend and know not of the thousands of authors to impose upon other people when you can simply coalesce with your loved ones and live in the manner you deem plausible. You engage in reciprocal fornication with another man and preach adultery as a sin. You, Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper violated Deuteronomy 5:18. As a result, your son Sam is the living, breathing proof of your act of simple loneliness. Simply put, it takes not a genius to realize an arrogant woman’s loose moral string, and its predilection to progressively wither and fray.
From the time you have received this message, our attack protocol has past been executed and your downfall is underway. Do not attempt to delude yourselves into thinking you can escape our reach, for we are everywhere, and all-seeing, in the same sense as God. We are a body of individuals who fight for a purpose higher than self, and seek to bring the malevolent intent of the malefactors to light.
We will not allow you to corrupt the minds of America with your seeds of hatred. We will not allow you to inspire aggression to the social factions which you deem inferior. We will render you obsolete. We will destroy you. We are coming.
As part of the release, KYAnonymous also dumped all the personal details of every Westboro Baptist Church member. We won’t link to the dump, but trust me when I say it’s exhaustive and includes more information than your average dox attack. It even lists all the cell phone numbers attached to each member.
Following the doxing attack, Anonymous member, @CosmoTheGod, has also hacked the personal Twitter account of @DearShirley, one of the more prominent members of the church. The last Tweet from the real @DearShirley was made about 11 hours ago, and then this was posted about three hours ago:
This account is now being ran by @CosmoTheGod#UGNazi#oops
Everyone sign this https://t.co/l32wKGql#UGNazi
The last Tweet links to a WhiteHouse.gov petition to have the Westboro Baptist Church officially recognized as a hate group. The petition now has over 94,000 signatures which means the White House must make an official statement on it as per the rules set by the administration. Since then, the Twitter account has now just been retweeting every Tweet sent its way:
@DearShirley Heh, talk about divine retribution. Bet Santa isn’t coming this year either! Well done Cosmo and happy X’mas from the UK!
@DearShirley Cosmo, thank you for taking over that bitch’s page. God’s will is done.
Props to @cosmothegod for hacking the little shit that is in westboro baptist church @dearshirley#youmadbro#fuckyouwbc
After all of this, it seems that Anonymous has quieted down somewhat. Beyond retaining control of the @DearShirley Twitter feed, there’s not much been activity. That may change as Westboro travels to Sandy Hook for its protest. Anonymous apparently already has some plans in place to stop them from getting close to the school. We’ll keep an eye on the situation and update the story if needed.
[h/t: CNET]