At some point, there’s going to be a massive, mainstream media-friendly bust where a bunch of 20-somethings are led away for the world to see, with FBI officials holding press conferences claiming the scourge of the Anonymous hacker group has been eliminated. Until that time, however, sit back and enjoy the ride as Anonymous takes down yet another site, all in an effort to speak out against SOPA, PIPA, and, of course, ACTA.

Anonymous’ latest round of victims included websites serving the Federal Trade Commission (business.ftc.gov), as well as the follow FTC consumer protection sites, Consumer.gov and NCPW.gov, which highlights National Consumer Protection Week. As of this posting, all of the sites are still down. As is normally the case, Anonymous boasted about the takedowns on their social media communication outlet of choice, Twitter:

This is about as close we’ll get to a press conference from the jaded Anonymous group, so for those of you who want to delve into the subject in order to find out what motivates this group, you should probably go the Twitter route and use direct messages. Besides, it’s pretty clear what pushes Anonymous into action — dissatisfaction with the establishment and their attempts to regulate the Internet, among other things.

The group also posted a manifesto of sorts over at Pastebin.com, which begins eloquently enough with the following greeting, “Dear Fuctarded Troglodyte Clusterfuck (FTC).” From there, the fun really begins:

Even more bothersome than your complete lack of competence in maintaining your own fucking websites and serving the citizens you are supposed to be protecting, is the US federal government’s support of ACTA. You really want to empower copyright holders to demand that users who violate IP rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated? You really want to allow a country with an oppressive Internet censorship regime to demand under the treaty that an ISP in another country remove site content? Well, we have a critical warning for you, and we suggest you read the next few paragraphs very, very closely.

If ACTA is signed by all participating negotiating countries, you can rest assured that Antisec will bring a fucking mega-uber-awesome war that rain torrential hellfire down on all enemies of free speech, privacy and internet freedom. We will systematically knock all evil corporations and governments off of our internet.

While this does go on for a few more paragraphs, the closing of the previous tells you everything you need to know about the mindset of Anonymous and those who are outspoken against the infamous Internet regulation bills and treaties. They, like many in the 20-something generation, feel the Internet does indeed belong to them.

Is this way of thinking wrong?

The group also posted a video during their takedowns, which also does a good job of relaying their message:

While the video is fun, the fact that it does feature a commercial at the beginning is humorous. The revolution may not be televised, but it does need to be monetized, apparently.In light of these latest Anonymous shenanigans, what are your thoughts?

Are their actions counterproductive or just the kind of message the U.S. government needs to see?