Anonymous member: We aim to take Westboro Baptist Church offline permanently

A nameless member of the hacker activist group "Anonymous" took credit on Wednesday for releasing a trove of information pertaining to members of the Westboro Baptist Church and claimed his group is planning to permanently wipe the hate group off the Internet.

"We're starting out with their websites," the person told progressive talk show host David Pakman. "As far as we know, the Jester -- he's an internationally known hacker himself -- has taken down 18 of the 19 Westboro Baptist Church websites permanently. The only one we know of right now is GofHatesFags.com."

Despite the claim, there appear to be 10 Westboro Baptist Church domains currently in operation, including AmericaIsDoomed.com, JewsKilledJesus.com and GodHatesIslam.com, among others.

Pakman inquired whether they believe that breaking the law to orchestrate the hack would be morally proper, and the hacker basically said yes, but admitted that they've not yet broken any laws in their campaign against the church, explaining that the earlier leak was accomplished purely with searches of publicly available information.

The hacker group has been on since they announced plans to picket the funerals of the Sandy Hook massacre victims.

Whether they can actually knock the church's properties off the Web for good remains to be seen, but members of the group have been pretty effective in causing mayhem for other targets in the past, like former HBGary CEO Aaron Barr. However, at least two people were arrested over that hack, and the company is back online today.

The group has been subject to previous online attacks, too. A member of Anonymous hacked the Westboro website in 2011 and took it offline while simultaneously appearing on a live interview with Pakman and church spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper.

This video was published to YouTube on Wednesday, December 19, 2012.

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Photo: Stephen C. Webster, creative commons licensed.