Following the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy, the Westboro Baptist Church is unsurprisingly stirring up controversy by doing one of the things they do best: being assholes and picketing funerals. Your friendly, faceless, neighborhood hacking group Anonymous has responded by doing what they do best: publishing private information, in this case, about the members of the Westboro Baptist Church .


Anonymous has now published a list of Westboro Baptist Church members along with plenty of personal information such as home addresses, emails, and phone numbers. On the more legal end of the activism spectrum, the group is also pushing a petition to legally recognize the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group. And what do you know, it's already gotten the required number of signatures.


Anonymous also released a video, explaining—with characteristic Anonymous flair—the group's beef with the church:

"Since your one-dimensional thought protocol will conform not to any modern logic, we will not debate, argue, or attempt to reason with you. Instead, we have unanimously deemed your organization to be harmful to the population of The United States of America, and have therefore decided to execute an agenda of action which will progressively dismantle your institution of deceitful pretext and extreme bias, and cease when your zealotry runs dry. We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to terminate in a short period of time. Attrition is our weapon, and we will waste no time, money, effort, and enjoyment, in tearing your resolve into pieces, as with exposing the incongruity of your distorted faith."

It's on. [BetaBeat via Salon]

Image by AP