Skip to main content

Anonymous: We didn’t threaten Westboro Baptist Church

westboro-baptist-church-anonymousWestboro Baptist Church (WBC) is not a target of Anonymous, according to a new press release by the elusive hacker group. In fact, says Anonymous, the open letter that targeted Westboro Baptist was actually written by the church itself — not Anonymous — in order to gain publicity.

To recap: Late last week, an open letter addressed to WBC appeared on the Anonymous website AnonNews.org declaring all-out war on the Kansas-based congregation for their homophobic and hate-fueled protests, which often target the funerals of homosexuals and fallen US soldiers.

“We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism,” the letter reads. “We have always regarded you and your ilk as an assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists & religious zealots, however benign, who act out for the sake of attention & in the name of religion.”

The letter goes on to declare all-out war on WBC, saying that if the church does not comply to demands to shut down their websites and fully cease and desist operations, Anonymous will incur “irreversible” damage to WBC and its congregation.

Westboro Baptist quickly responded to the letter posted on AnonNews with their own, surprisingly hilarious, open letter, telling the hackers to “bring it.”

“A puddle of pimple-faced nerds organized under the cowardly banner of ‘Anonymous’ claim they plan to hack Wesboro’s Websites,” the WBC letter says. “…Bad miscalculation, girls!”

As you might guess, the letter goes on to say, “God will defeat your council; your efforts will fail,” etc, etc…

Problem is, Anonymous apparently didn’t write the original letter threatening WBC. According to an Anonymous press release posted to AnonNews on February 20, the “Operation Westboro” letter was actually written and posted by WBC in an attempt to draw more attention to itself.

Anonymous — which has successfully waged cyber-attacks against Visa and Master Card, as well as the governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen — goes on to warn fellow members not to attack Westboro Baptist’s web properties because it’s just “a trap.” To the media (us), Anonymous says that, “just because it was posted on AnonNews” doesn’t automatically mean it’s Anonymous-sanctioned.

While the hackers deny declaring this attack, they do leave the option of a future battle open for consideration:

“We are not BAWWWING sissies, nor are we afraid of your false god; we’re just really busy,” says the press release. “Stay tuned, and we’ll come back to play another day. We promise.”

Andrew Couts
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…
Can you use the Surface Pen with the Surface Laptop Studio 2?
New Surface Laptop Studio 2 with a Surface Pen.

The Surface Pen is an excellent accessory for the Surface Laptop Studio 2, and yes, it works well with it. You can use the Surface Pen on the Surface Laptop Studio 2 for all kinds of tasks, from note-taking to doodlin, and sketching. The screen of the next-gen Surface Laptop Studio might be the same as the last one, but it still really lends itself to that sort of nuanced interaction, letting you get pixel-perfect drawing and writing from the Surface Pen.

Th Pen is still magnetic too, so it's always on hand when you need it.

Read more
Microsoft Bing and Edge are getting a big DALL-E 3 upgrade
Microsoft Copilot comes to Bing and Edge.

Microsoft Copilot is coming to Bing and Edge Microsoft

You'll soon be hearing more about Microsoft Copilot and Bing Image Creator as these innovative technologies come to Microsoft Edge and Bing. The news of their arrival was delivered at Microsoft's Surface Event, along with several more AI and hardware announcements.

Read more
I tested Nvidia’s DLSS 3.5, and it transforms ray tracing (for a select few)
Reflections on the street in Cyberpunk 2077.

Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is getting a huge boost. The new DLSS 3.5 update adds a feature called Ray Reconstruction to the suite, and it promises to make ray tracing more realistic than ever before. I've tested it, and Nvidia was telling the truth.

Ray Reconstruction brings ray tracing to new heights of realism, and it's a fantastic addition to the DLSS suite. Even better, it works across all RTX graphics cards, unlike Nvidia's DLSS Frame Generation. However, there could be a problem with support as we see more games release with the feature. Ray Reconstruction may work with any RTX GPU, but it could be a feature that's only realistic for intensive ray tracing that requires one of the latest and greatest GPUs.
What ray tracing should be

Read more