The campaign of Anonymous to free Japan from the bondage of unduly harsh copyright law has got off to a less than auspicious start after the group bumblingly hacked the wrong site, thinking it was humiliating the central government by defacing their site only to find it had instead ruined the site of a river works office in Ibaraki.

Along with various political and official websites loosely connected to the law (for some reason Japan’s recording industry mafia group JASRAC has been spared), Anonymous defaced the site of the Kasumigaura river management office, a governmental body primarily concerned with flood control and water management in eastern Kanto.

It is believed that they actually thought they were targeting Kasumigaseki, a region in central Tokyo full of government offices and also a euphemism for these government departments:

<ho> my friend has a question that is anon was mistaken about Kasumi-gaura http://www.kasumi.ktr.mlit.go.jp/ and Kasumi-gaseki <&Juzzy> What do you mean Anon was mistaken? <c0ug4r> tell me about kasumi

The site itself has been restored along with a terse message from the department affected saying how regrettable it is and how they will try not to let it happen again.

This has not done the reputation of the super-hackers much good in Japan:

“Sad!” “How lame!!!!!!” “That’s just cute.” “Anonymous is so cute.” “What a mistake…” “Dojikko Anon.” “Dojikko moe!” “Get some members who actually know something about Japan.” “The poor people of Ibaraki prefecture…” “They targeted a river management authority?” “They don’t even know any Japanese, what a useless bunch of incompetents.” “And they had such a good image…” “My prefecture’s lakes!” “Oh, and this time they didn’t just knock it offline, they replaced it?” “They could just replace Kasumigaura’s site with that of Kasumigaseki, problem solved!”