Anonymous Hits Westboro for Threat to Protest Newtown

Hackers from Anonymous pounced on the Westboro Baptist Church soon after the extremist group announced plans to picket Sandy Hook Elementary School to praise God for sending the gunman, Mashable reports. The online activists published the emails, phone numbers, and home addresses of Westboro members, taunted the group on Twitter about the hacking, and vowed to destroy the group for "breeding hatred."

"We have unanimously deemed your organization to be harmful to the population of The United States of America, and have therefore decided to execute an agenda of action which will progressively dismantle your institution of deceitful pretext and extreme bias, and cease when your zealotry runs dry," Anonymous warned in a YouTube video. In addition to the efforts of Anonymous, two new White House petitions are seeking to reclassify Westboro as a hate group. One petition has nearly 90,000 signatures, while the other has almost 20,000. (More Westboro Baptist Church stories.)