British police on Sunday charged an 18-year-old man on suspicion of being a spokesman for the Lulz Security and Anonymous computer hacking groups, Scotland Yard said. Officers from a London-based cybercrime unit detained Jake Davis on Wednesday in a "pre-planned intelligence-led operation" on the Shetland Islands, off the north-east coast of Scotland, before taking him to London for questioning.
Davis is accused of gaining unauthorised access to a computer system, encouraging or assisting offences and two counts of conspiracy to commit offences.
The teenager will also have to answer a charge of conspiring to carry out a distributed denial of service attack, an action which crashes a website by flooding it with traffic.
Police said Wednesday they believed Davis was "linked to an ongoing international investigation into the criminal activity of the so-called 'hacktivist' groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and uses the online nickname 'Topiary' which is presented as the spokesperson for the groups." Police also searched a residential address in Lincolnshire, eastern England, and a 17-year-old male was interviewed in connection with the inquiry although he had not been arrested, police said. Davis is due to appear in custody at London's City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday.
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