Anonymous Reportedly Threatens To Hack State Of The Union Address; Will The Hacker Group Really Attack The SOTU?

Anonymous will hack President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, a report at The Sparrow Project claims.

The Sparrow Project describes itself as a provider of "publicity and creative direction for grassroots activists."

Anonymous, the infamous hacker group, is upset with a pending Web security bill. According to Anonymous and other Internet freedom activists, if the CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Information Act) is passed it will infringe on online privacy and freedom.

In 2012, Anonymous joined the crusade against SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and helped defeat it.

The CISPA bill is designed to deter cyberattacks from foreign countries like China and Russia, but it also makes it easier to share information and data with the Department of Homeland Security.

The Sparrow project posted the following on its homepage:

“At approximately 10:22am EST an email address assigned to a Sparrow Project volunteer received a communique by a party identifying itself as the decentralized hacker collective, Anonymous. The communique details a planned effort by the group’s affiliates online to disrupt the online streaming and syndication of the President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, scheduled for 9pm EST.”

Anonymous has an active Twitter presence, with a history of nearly 50,000 posts.

The hacker group, whose slogan is, “We are Anonymous, We are legion, We never forgive, We never forget, Expect us. As official accounts do not exist, we're an Anonymous account amongst many” has not said anything about hacking the SOTU on its Twitter feed.

Instead, the group has been focusing on the Christopher Dorner shootout in California since that news broke earlier Tuesday.

Anonymous has taken responsibility for hacking a wide range of American sites like the U.S. Justice Department site and the Pentagon’s website, in addition to targeting websites in other countries like several in the U.K., which were targeted as a protest of the British government’s extradition and surveillance policies. The group simply described the British efforts via Twitter as being "for your draconian surveillance proposals.”