Anonymous Versus Westboro? O Rly?

Twitter is abuzz with the news about Anonymous issuing an open letter to Westboro Baptist Church, claiming that they are going to take down their websites.

I was skeptical about it because I don’t think that Westboro relies on their cyber components for anything other than to amplify their “God Hates Fags” messages. Attacking the websites wouldn’t do anything to keep them from picketing funerals and being the asshats they are. In fact, it might make them do it even more. In response to the threats by Anonymous, Westboro released a statement: Bring It.

The idea of watching Westboro and Anonymous duke it out online sounded too good to be true, and as usual, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

According to NetWorkWorld here, Anonymous isn’t going to war, or at least as far as it knows. They go further to warn that “its a trap.”

The Jawa Report says that Megan Phelps Roper of WBC is behind the original open letter to Westboro.

Seems like several people are running around the interwebs pretending they are “Anonymous.” I recently had a troll on my site going apoplectic because I put his abusive comments into moderation and refused to allow him to link to an antiwar propaganda site. dgulley415@gmail.com entered my site to call me a ‘fag’ because I pointed out that Bradley Manning, a homosexual soldier, was in jail and will be convicted for treason. After blocking him, he tried to use a tor node to continue his attempts to circumvent the block. It didn’t work, and he promised a DDoS and claimed that he was ‘legion.’

Seems like Anonymous is quickly building a brand name that it will somehow need to figure out how to protect- bad impersonations from wannabes and brand hijacking by Westboro is bad for the rep.