"Who was the second snitch?"
The one behind the grassy knoll!
Leaked search warrants suggest Sabu wasn't the only LulzSec hacker who helped the FBI take down the infamous hacktivist group. The unredacted search warrants for Sabu and LulzSec refer to involvement of three different informants in the investigation, at least two of whom it is implied were members of the organisation. …
You may want to consider that the NSA and their other country spy counterparts probably already had enough information on these guys, however, rather than expose themselves and their methods, they found a member whom they could catch and set up as a patsy.
By this, I mean that they already knew a lot about LulzSec and any information Sabu had, they already knew. But without Sabu, they couldn't use it in court or risk exposing to the public.
Kinda makes you want to line not only your wallet with foil, but also your jacket and your hat. ;-)
And mine's the jacket already lined. ;-)
You hit upon the classic dilemma for those with secret intelligence. To act and give away the source or to somehow make it look like the source was elsewhere.
Enigma was a classic example, during the war some troops were sent to their certain death because not to do so would have given away the fact that Enigma could be routinely read by the allies and the value of enigma was ultimately that it would save many more lives. (What a horrible decision to have to make.)
Probably no-one who mattered.
Ever see the first episode of Miami Vice? Every single person who turns up to one of the drug deals in that episode (both dealers and protection) is a member of Law Enforcement. Same principle almost certainly applied- so many agencies wanted to get people into the organisation that they'd have had a good number in there. And none of those agencies talk to one another, so they've all got their own guy in.
At some point, they're the only ones left, or part of a smaller spin off- an 'interesting' group that attracts all the plants. And then God help you if you're one of the 'genuine' members.
Seriously, I have never seen a more dysfunctional group of nitwits." Yeah, it's kinda hard to understand some of the silly things Sabu and his dummy chummies got up to, but have an account with "mujahideen" in the name when you're trying to avoid the attention of the NSA and FBI!?!?!? Duh!
" As many as 60,000 credit card numbers stolen as part of the hack were used to make fraudulent donations to worthy causes. "
Does this come from a prosecution source? If so, please allow me to doubt the veracity of that statement. Especially with that "as many as" prefixing the number.
We've seen this all before: the "forty minutes" claim, that child porn clusterfuck in the UK, ...
Considering Hammond plead guilty to it, I'd say it's probably true (despite a week earlier his lawyer claiming on TV that he came in afterwards, and had nothing to do with it, despite being convicted in 06 for... hacking a political website and stealing 5000 credit card numbers and planned to make charges on)
I dealt with Hammond 2006-2010, and he was quite boastful of his actions (he boasted to me of his mob-action on the chicago olympic announcement that same night). Probably why he got the max, with the gloating and smirking during sentencing.
I guess multiple informants makes sense. We attend these annual seminars with the State Department on protecting industrial secrets and intellectual property when doing business overseas. Some of the tactics and ploys are new each year, but they always stress that if there is one State sponsored agent inside your organization there will be at least one more.
I would think that if people whose primary task is stealing information tells you that people who steal information don't work in isolation, it's a pretty good bet that always having more than one insider is a direct reflection of the policies of that entire government.
It's also a tremendously good way to create confusion. Sewing the seeds of doubt in the ranks of your enemy is a time tested tactic. Maybe there was no other informant and now anyone who hasn't been implicated is scared shitless and might do something stupid.
It sounds like the 2 mysterious informants were hooked BEFORE Sabu, not after. And after everything I've read and written, I think Sabu was the only connection the Feds had to Lulz. All the court transcripts I've read make me believe the evidence against Hammond, the Brits, etc., all came from Sabu or the accused person themself. One thing that sticks out in my mind though is that one of the main LulzSec members got away clean according to news articles and the book We Are Anonymous. Either that person was extremely smart and lucky, or he/she was the other informant.