wtf! Does she know that this is TechDirt? This will probably get its own article...

The reason that you are seeing more and more of these cases is that you live in a police-state...you just haven't realized it. The moment the American people allowed their government to openly hold people without trial and commit torture, America became a police-state. Expect to see more of the same and worse... No right to carry a firearm...even if you actually do have the right (Connecticut): www.theagitator.com/2011/08/27/ignorance-of-the-law-is-no-excuse-unless-youre-in-law-enforcement-2/ No right to resist criminal police action (Indiana): http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_ec169697-a19e-525f-a532-81b3df229697.html

When "the law" is the problem, the law cannot be the solution.

Politicians, like clever criminals, are above the law...EVERYONE knows that!

Apple has money in the bank...the US government doesn't...I would be concerned :)

I am a cynic - I believe that governments targets companies that become too uppity. (Apple should be concerned as well). I love Google, and would happily pay for their products if I had to...it saddens me that they might be distracted by this sort of action. (like Microsoft and IBM before them). It also surprises me that the American people let their government subsidize and bail-out broken industries (banks, GM, etc), while at the same time undermining the businesses that are successful. Up until now America has been lucky that they have been able to come up with the "next big thing" - I am not sure that this will always be the case.

As will some of the commentators on this blog!

They wanted to ride the pony...

Script kiddies would NOT have been able to hack: ~HB Gary Federal (Internet Security experts ... lol) ~Italian Police (the cyber crime evidence server ... lol) While it is possible that certain intelligence agencies have tools and people at the their disposal which may allow them to "see where the tunnels lead", I very much doubt that the authorities would allow these tools (if they actually exist) to be used in garden variety criminal matters and certainly would not allow these techniques to be documented in court (such techniques would have to break a few laws). I suspect that many of the arrests that have been made over the last few months are related to the use of the LOIC software as it is not really feasible to stealth the identity of machines running a DDoS tool (proxy'ing DDoS scale traffic would be difficult). As for the identity of Topiary...maybe it is kid in Scotland, or maybe a kid in Sweden...or maybe this is all just disinformation (which is what I would expect from the spokesperson of a hacker group).

The masterminds behind LulzSec and Anonymous have established that they are competent hackers. A competent hacker will access the internet from an open / hacked wifi connection / university internet lab, and route his / her handy-work through a network of rooted servers (spread around the world), with possibly a VPN (paid for with stolen credit card) and/ or TOR thrown in for good measure. If the authorities are able to trace an attack through this web to its origin (and this in itself is unlikely) the person that they will arrest will be a hapless idiot with an insecure wifi account / or rooted machine. Of course anyone of us could be that hapless idiot as the hackers have demonstrated that they are able to make "experts" from law enforcement and internet security companies look like infants.