Bureau recommends: US hackers recruited as secret service informants
An investigation by the Guardian has found that the underground world of computer hackers is being infiltrated in the US by the FBI and the secret service.
The study suggests that up to a quarter of online hackers are secretly informing on their peers when faced with lengthy custodial sentences on conviction, giving the government access to networks dealing with stolen data,
The best known example of the trend is Adrian Lamo a convicted hacker who informed on Bradley Manning – the 23 year old who is suspect of passing on information abut US operations in Iraq to the website Wikileaks.
So widespread is the FBI presence, say hackers, that their community is now riddles with paranoia and mistrust.
A spokesman for the ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous told the Guardian: “The FBI are always there. They are always watching, always in the chatrooms. You don’t know who is an informant and who isn’t.”
