After insisting it wanted nothing to do with Westboro Baptist Church, Anonymous is pushed to hacking the controversial church's site.
During a live TV interview between an Anonymous member and Shirley Phelps-Roper from the Westboro Baptist Church, the escalating war between the two has peaked. In the 10-minute-plus interview, Phelps-Roper repeatedly blamed Anonymous for a letter released earlier this week promising to attack the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. Anonymous has been claiming since the accusation that it was not the author of the widely circulated message, and insists the entire operation was likely a ploy for attention on the congregation’s part.
During the interview, Anonymous continuously and calmly reiterated it was not responsible for the original letter, and that the church’s site had been taken down earlier by another hacktivist widely known as “th3j3st3r.” The Jester took credit for the hack via his Twitter on February 21.
But Phelps-Roper would have none of it. Between hurling insults and thanking Anonymous for the increased attention to the church’s cause (which includes degrading fallen US soldiers and homosexuals), she refused to hear out Anonymous’ defense. After nearly nine minutes of listening to her crazed diatribe, the hacktivist group took action. “I was just going to say in the time that Shirley was blabbing her religious preachings I actually did some business and I think if you check downloads.westborobaptistchurch right now you’ll see a nice message from Anonymous.”
Indeed, after insisting that no hacker could take down its controversial website, Anonymous was able to do so in a matter of moments, and seemingly without prior planning. “We just put up a nice release while Shirley was preaching there…Yeah we just, we had enough. We responded [to the original letter from Westboro Baptist] maturely…then Shirley comes on the show, [says] I’m going to hell, so we’ve given her something to look at.”
Phelps-Roper, somewhere between resilient and irate, seems to misinterpret the episode and asks, “So are you saying you did take down the websites or you did not take down the websites?”
The domain is currently inaccessible, but you can view a cached page here. It begins, “Greetings Westboro Baptist Church, if you’re reading this, it means that Anonymous has lost its patience with you, likely because you’ve threatened us again after we denied you a war.” The group also points out the organization is far and away below its standards, and that operations involving Middle Eastern countries in revolution and the HBGary controversy are more deserving of its time and effort. In addition to the message, Anonymous also included access to Westboro Baptist’s internal server.
Anonymous has established itself as a force not to be tampered with, and gained notoriety along the way. Various organizations may be willing to attach themselves to its name for publicity, or even to belittle its cause – which Westboro Baptist has obviously learned the hard way. “The world (including Anonymous) disagrees with your hateful messages, but you have the right to voice them. This does not mean you can jump onto Anonymous for attention. God hates fags: assumption. Anonymous hates leeches: fact,” concludes the letter.
Check out the video in full below.
Police outside the school shortly after arriving on scene of the shooting December 14. Hackers claiming to be associated with the internet activist group Anonymous have attacked the website belonging to the  (WBC) and hacked into the  account belonging to , the Church's spokeswoman. The attacks are part of an operation dubbed '#OpWestBor' on Twitter and is in response to the Church's decision to picket funerals of victims of the December 14 shooting at  in , Connecticut.

"Westboro will picket Sandy Hook Elementary School to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment," said Phelps in a post to her Twitter account on Saturday.

On Sunday, in a video posted on , Anonymous announced their intentions saying, "From the time you have received this message, our attack protocol has past been executed and your downfall is underway. Do not attempt to delude yourselves into thinking you can escape our reach, for we are everywhere, and all-seeing, in the same sense as God. ... We will render you obsolete. We will destroy you. We are coming." The Church's website has been unreachable for most of the day. At the time of this report, the website was unreachable. As a result of the breach, Anonymous claims to have gained access to and leaked alleged personal information such as names, home addresses and telephone numbers belonging to Church members.

Also as part of the operation, early yesterday morning, a member of Anonymous called 'CosmoTheGod' hacked the Twitter account belonging to Phelps, posting a 'tweet' saying, "This account is now being ran by @CosmoTheGod #UGNazi #oops." As of this report, Anonymous still has control of it.

This isn't the first time hackers took control of the Church's website. In 2011 the Church blamed Anonymous for circulating a letter claiming an attack on the Church's website was imminent and blamed them for taking down their website in an earlier attack, something the group denied. Shortly after the incident, user "th3j3st3r" on Twitter claimed responsibility for circulating the letter and the initial attack. When Phelps and one of the group's members were interviewed on live television shortly thereafter, she denied hackers could break into their website or take it offline. However; during the interview, Anonymous hacked into the Church's website, defaced it and took it offline.

"I was just going to say in the time that Shirley was blabbing her religious preachings I actually did some business and I think if you check downloads.westborobaptistchurch right now you’ll see a nice message from Anonymous", said Anonymous nine minutes into the interview.

On December 14, a gunman identified as 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother Nancy then went into Sandy Hook Elementary school carrying a Bushmaster  rifle and two other handguns, where he opened fire killing 26 people, 20 of them children between the ages of five and ten years old. Shortly after the incident, Lanza shot himself, committing suicide.