Anonymous' Stratfor Hack Reveals Anti-Occupy Spy Campaign

Information leaked by the Anonymous collective has exposed a state-sponsored spying campaign targeting the Occupy movement.

In a Pastebin post entitled "Stratfor takes on occupy wallstreet movement," published on Thursday Anonymous showcased correspondence between Texas Law Enforcement and Stratfor analysts.

As well as a continuous stream of confusion regarding the fragmented nature of the Occupy protests, the correspondence also hinted at an ongoing spying campaign being mounted by the Texas police between October to November 2011.

"I guess we could also take a more tactical slant. I've seen people talking about how this "new movement" is a terrible threat to corporations, but in reality, due to the history of anarchists, animal rights, anti-war and anti-globalization protesters, companies are well prepared for such hippy hijinks," read one email listed in Anonymous' post.

The data release is the latest in a series of Anonymous posts containing data taken during its December 2011 Stratfor cyber raid. Stratfor itself is a Texas-based company that produces analysis on international security issues. Its client list includes numerous banks, oil companies and law enforcement agencies.

Anonymous initially announced the attack on 26 December via a post on the Pastebin website. In its statement the collective claimed to have successfully bypassed Stratfor's online security, stealing roughly 50,000 credit card numbers, 87,000 email addresses and 44,000 encrypted passwords.

As well as stealing the data, Anonymous' statement went on to claim that the group had already used the stolen credit information to donate $500,000 to a number of unnamed charities.

"As we speak, his little helpers at the North Pole are readying his battle sleigh of lulz with more goodies to bring you LulzXmas joy all week long. Joy in the form of over $500,000 being expropriated from the bigshot clients of Stratfor. You didn't think we'd let 2011 end without a BANG, did you?" read Anonymous' statement.

Though Anonymous did not start the Occupy protests - it instead stemmed from a blog post in Adbusters magazine - the collective's presence and hand in the movement's evolution has been obvious.

Inspired by the Arab Spring and Spain's Democracia real YA platform, Adbusters' called for all like-minded individuals unhappy with the current global political and economic system to march on Wall Street and mount an ongoing sit-in-protest.

The post quickly captured the imagination of several groups, leading to the #occupywallstreet hashtag trending on Twitter. The movement gained significant mainstream attention outside of Adbusters' native US base when the Anonymous collective took notice and publicly voiced its support.

Since Wall Street the movement has spread to numerous cities across the world, seeing citizens pitch tents in public squares and mount sit-in-protests against the world's current political and economic systems. In all of the campaigns Anonymous has openly voiced its support for the movement, publicising its live video feeds and reporting any incidents of police violence against protesters.

The latest Stratfor documents released by Anonymous can viewed here.