

A member of the loosely organized hacker group Anonymous in Paris in January. Anonymous members often wear Guy Fawkes masks. (Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images)

Early Friday, the FBI said that hackers from the well-known collective had intercepted and released a confidential conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard.

A few hours later, Anonymous announced that it would release a massive archive of e-mails concerning the 2005 deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians during a U.S. raid in the town of Haditha.

The announcement states that Anonymous stole 2.6 gigabytes of e-mail belonging to Puckett Faraj, a law firm that represents Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who is accused of leading the group of Marines in Haditha. The Web site of Puckett Faraj is not currently loading, and Gawker is reporting that the site was hacked.

A spokeswoman for Puckett Faraj confirmed that the Web site was down but said that she could not confirm or deny whether the site had been hacked.

Wuterich last month struck a plea deal in which he will not go to prison, but will be demoted to private.

Anonymous also said the e-mails contain “detailed records, transcripts, testimony, trial evidence, and legal defense donation records” about the Haditha Case. The e-mails will allegedly be posted to Pirate Bay, a Swedish bittorrent site, soon.

Anonymous has been on a hacking spree over the last week, taking down the Web site of Brazil’s largest bank Tuesday, and posting a protest against austerity policies on Greece’s justice ministry Web site Friday.

Early Friday, Anonymous released 15 minutes of a call that portrayed government investigators as bumbling. While waiting for other investigators to join, a member of Scotland Yard jokes with an FBI agent about McDonald’s, nightclubs and Sheffield, England, which he says is “not exactly a jewel in England’s crown.”

After about four minutes, the cyber-crime investigators start talking about how to track and prosecute members of Anonymous. “Who are his little group of friends?” muses a Scotland Yard investigator about one Anonymous member, adding, “Whether they are online friends or three-dimensional friends, I’m not sure.” Listen to the call below:

The FBI said in a statement Friday that the call “was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained.” The bureau also said it was searching for those responsible.

On Thursday, the hacktivist group orchestrated its biggest attack to date — temporarily blocking access to the Web sites of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, the Copyright Office, the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Industry Association and several other sites. The attack was payback for DOJ's closing of Megaupload, a content site that shared pirated material.

More Anonymous coverage:

Anonymous takes over Boston police Web site Anonymous attacks Swedish government sites

Anonymous hacks Westboro Church

Anonymous hacks Visa, Mastercard in support of WikiLeaks