The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that a recording posted by hacktivist group Anonymous "relates" to a conference call between members of its Police Central e-crime Unit and agents from the FBI.
"We are aware of the video which relates to an FBI conference call involving a PCeU representative," a Met spokesperson said in a statement. "The matter is being investigated by the FBI. We continue to carry out a full assessment. We are not prepared to discuss further."
Anonymous posted the recording earlier on YouTube.com earlier today. The six participants on the call, two of which identify themselves as Met officers and four as FBI agents in Los Angeles, discuss the Met’s progress in prosecuting Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis, two alleged hackers arrested in connection with LulzSec’s hacking exploits last summer.
One participant, who identitfies himself as ‘Stewart’, explains how the arrests of two other hackers, named Kayla and T-Flow, have been delayed. "We’ve got our prosecution council making an application in chambers, i.e without the defence knowing, to seek a way to try and factor some time in that won’t look suspicious," ‘Stewart’ says on the call.
An FBI participant expresses their appreciation for the Met’s cooperation, to which ‘Stewart’ replies: "Hey, we’re here to help. We cocked things up in the past, we know that."
The recording is accompanied by a post of a group email discussing the time and date of the call. This information was presumably used by a member of Anonymous to listen in to the call, which took place on January 17th.
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Also discussed on the call was the breach of gaming site Steam. Garrick says that a hacker going by the moniker ‘tehwongz’ had claimed responsibility for the theft of 32,000 logins and credit card details. Garrick said that tehwongz had posted a statement on his school website after hacking it, explaining how he became a hacker and claiming credit for hacking Steam. Garrick referred to tehwongz as "a bit of an idiot".
The FBI lead on the call, ‘Thomas’, says the admission is "fantastic" and that the Baltimore office is investigating the Steam hack.
The news comes one day after the Met admitted to inadvertently disclosing the email addresses of more than 1000 crime victims to other victims. In a statement, the Met said the disclosure was the result of human error.
