Revealed As Black Ops (Updated)

Updated at bottom…
The amorphous hacker collective “Anonymous” can now be regarded as controlled opposition.
When it was just a matter of information and cracking servers, that was simply part of the Internet. I’ve always said, if you digitize information, you might as well give it away to the public, and you are evil for thinking you can keep it secret or private. Nobody in their right minds would put secure information on a machine connected to the Internet. Up to the point of simple penetration and information divulgence, I was more or less neutral.
Using stolen credit card information is crossing the line. Regardless what you call it in technical terms, the effect on the victim is theft — “Thou shalt not steal” regardless how it’s used. Not that there’s anything I can do about it, but let’s at least clarify the morality of the issue. This is too obviously “thus saith the Lord.”
Further, it shows this is surely carried out on behalf of someone with a vested interest. If there is anything they could have done which helps to justify SOPA and PIPA, this would be it. Since they are too politically savvy to not know that, we can conclude they are working for the Dark Side. That is, someone involved is a pro-government thug, someone who stands to gain by making the proposed Internet crackdowns look reasonable and necessary.
Barring some kind of disavowal, I would say we can no longer pretend “Anonymous” is just amoral activists. They are not working for the good of the Net or the Netizen/Geek community, but are the enemy.
Update: We have a disavowal. The problem is, we no longer have any reliable way of trusting either the original claims nor the disavowal as truly representative of “the real Anonymous.” I’m left having to go back and review what I have seen over the past few years. I conclude my original analysis is correct except for associating it with Anonymous. It’s not their style or signature, so far as I know.
Update 2: The term “Anonymous” has never really been defined, and that is by intent. When you see the likes of Barrett Brown speaking for Anonymous, bring your salt shaker; he has a vested interest. You’ll have to make up your own mind about Anonymous, squabbles and divisions within whatever it is, and so forth. What we do know is the business of cracking into Statfor does not work out for the good of the rest of us.