MLK once said that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. We are here. We are your friends, co-workers, family members, and neighbors. We have no political affiliation. We have no national affiliation. We are the sum of the world's intellectual capacity made manifest in the desire for liberty. We are Anonymous.

Julian Assange's only crime is in turning on the kitchen lights to watch the cockroaches scatter. Now those same cockroaches have made him a prisoner of concience. This is unacceptable to Anonymous. All information, be it secret or public, sacred or profane is the right of every seeker in pursuit of truth. This pursuit was left to the roadside when the United States imposed it's self inflicted wound on the rest of the world as an excuse to crush free thought.

We do not want your corporate spoon fed talking points from your official 'news' outlets. They have no credibility with us any more. All of those who have a desire for truth have a friend in us. Julian Assange is one such friend. And for him we make this stand today by slapping you in the most painful pressure point you have....your money.

Unlike the misguided, misinformed, and under educated modern "tea party" movement in the United States, we are here in the name of liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of information, and governments that are beholden to their people and not the those who buy their elections.

We are Anonymous, we are legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget.

Expect us.

The hacking group Anonymous, known for previous attacks on the Church of Scientology and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, is distributing software tools to allow anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to join in the attacks as part of "Operation Payback." Such tools are widely available on the Internet and can easily launch a large number of attacks on targeted websites, said Dean Turner from the computer security firm Symantec.

Later that year, the private Yahoo! Mail account of Sarah Palin, Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election, was hacked by a 4chan user. This followed criticism of Palin and other politicians supposedly using private email accounts for governmental work. The hacker posted the account's password on /b/, and screenshots from within the account to Wikileaks. A /b/ user then logged in and changed the password, posting a screenshot of his sending an email to a friend of Palin's informing her of the new password on the /b/ thread. However, he forgot to blank out the password in the screenshot. A multitude of /b/ users attempted to log in with the new password, and the account was automatically locked out by Yahoo!. The incident was criticized by some /b/ users, in that most reports on the hack focused on 4chan, rather than Palin's violation of campaign law. One user commented, "seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically." The FBI and Secret Service began investigating the incident shortly after its occurrence. On September 20 it was revealed they were questioning David Kernell, the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell.

The stock price of Apple Inc. fell significantly in October 2008 after a hoax story was submitted to CNN's user-generated news site iReport.com claiming that company CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. The source of the story was traced back to 4chan.

In May 2009, members of the site attacked YouTube, posting pornographic videos on the site. A 4chan member acknowledged being part of the attack, telling the BBC that it was in response to YouTube "deleting music". In January 2010, members of the site attacked YouTube again in response to the suspension of YouTube user lukeywes1234 for failing to meet the minimum age requirement of thirteen. The videos uploaded by the user had apparently become popular with 4chan members, who subsequently became angered after the account was suspended and called for a new wave of pornographic videos to be uploaded to YouTube on January 6, 2010. Later the same year, 4chan made numerous disruptive pranks directed at singer Justin Bieber.

Some may think this information dump is a good thing, for our freedom, for transparency. I can't disagree with that from an idealistic point of view. From a pragmatic point of view, I don't know. I am personally concerned of a bigger clampdown of information. Sometimes there is a right way of going about things and a wrong way -- it doesn't have anything to do with what's legal. It has to do with what is best for our fragile democracy.