An indictment filed last week in San Jose, Calif., names 14 people accused of conspiring to intentionally damage protected computers at PayPal last December in retribution for PayPal suspending WikiLeaks' account to prevent supporters from donating to the whistleblower site. The arrests were made in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio, the Justice Department said. The defendants were expected to make initial appearances throughout the day in federal courts in their areas.
In two other separate indictments, a Sarasota, Fla., man was arrested on charges of intentionally damaging a protected computer for allegedly accessing the Web site of InfraGard Tampa Bay, an FBI partner, in June. The complaint alleges that he released instructions on how to exploit the Web site.
Another man was arrested in Las Cruces, N.M., for allegedly stealing confidential business information from AT&T servers and posting it publicly in April. The defendant, who works as a customer support contractor for AT&T at outsource provider Convergys, is charged with accessing a protected computer without authorization for allegedly downloading thousands of documents, applications, and other files and then posting them on the Internet, the indictment says. The LulzSec hacking group publicized the release of those documents on June 25, according to the filing. More
