British student charged for January cyber attacks

A 22-year-old British student has been charged following police investigations into Anonymous attacks in January on big name sites including PayPal.

Hartlepool resident Peter David Gibson was charged with conspiracy to carry out an unauthorised act, "with intent to impair the operation of any computer or prevent or hinder access to any programme or data held in a computer or to impair the operation of any such programme or the reliability of such data."

Failure to comply with these demands will result in dramatically increased hostilities against authorities currently holding any members of Anonymous worldwide.

Gibson is due to appear on bail at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 7 September.

In July, an FBI-run operation led to the arrests of 20 individuals in the US, the UK and the Netherlands as part of an investigation into attacks on PayPal. It was believed a UK teenager was arrested on suspicion of involvement in Anonymous.

Anonymous recently started a campaign calling for people to ditch their PayPal accounts, taking a less illegal strategy in their protests.

Yesterday, Anonymous posted a message to law enforcement bodies, including the Metropolitan Police, calling for the release of people suspected of involvement in the hacktivist group.

It called for the release of Jake Davis, who was arrested in July. It is believed Davis is Topiary - a key figure of LulzSec.

"Failure to comply with these demands will result in dramatically increased hostilities against authorities currently holding any members of Anonymous worldwide," the message, from an Anonymous member known as Bree, on Pastebin read.

"You cannot arrest an idea, nor can you stop one as powerful as the one Anonymous, Anti-Sec, and LulzSec are championing. We are not afraid anymore."

Meanwhile, the Met's Police Central e-Crime Unit confirmed it had arrested a man in connection into malicious threats made to Louise Mensch MP via email and social networking sites.

A 61-year-old was arrested at an address in the Gloucester and remains in custody.

Mensch had publicly claimed Anonymous and LulzSec had sent threats against her children. "Had some morons from Anonymous/Lulzsec threaten my children via email," the Conservative MP tweeted.

Anonymous subsequently denied its involvement.