Two men arrested in Met e-crime raids

THE UK Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they have arrested two men on suspicion of computer crimes.

The arrested men, Christopher Jan Weatherhead, 20, and Ashley Rhodes were not named as members of Anonymous, as has been the case in the recent past with such arrests, but the nature of the alleged crimes has a certain ring to it.

"[The men have] been charged with Conspiracy to do an unauthorised act in relation to a computer, 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 - contrary to Sec 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977," said the Met in a statement.

Two more suspects were arrested earlier in the week, an unnamed 16 year old and Peter David Gibson, 22, a student, of Hartlepool. Both men are accused of the same crime and all four will appear on bail at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 7 September.

There have been suggestions that at least one of the arrested men was a high ranking member of the hacking groups Anonymous and Lulzsec. Sky News suggested it was Kayla, who is thought to have been behind the attacks on HBGary Federal, but the accounts of the former have stayed mute on the charges. Instead it has concentrated on arrests in the US over an earlier 'attack' against Paypal.

In a Tweet Anonyops commented, "PayPal should pay, pal," and then, "If you go to paypal.com and hit 'refresh' 100 times, is that a crime? Is it a felony? 19 were charged with felonies today for just that. Sending automated TCP packets is not technically any different at all than hitting the refresh button." µ