know not just on the internet but they're in real life trying to stake out members of the westboro baptist church so they can alert other people of. where they're going to be how they're planning on protesting what they were going to do to demonstrate and they were able to counter that before it even happened so they were doing this you know real life vigilante work not just behind a computer screen and it did receive a little bit of attention to that was something where people really looked up and said oh these guys are doing something more than just crazy internet hackery more and maybe they're doing something more than just raising alarms on there and shutting down websites and maybe they're trying to make a message with every web site that they shut down is that there's always been the case i mean if you go back and look at the old operations going back to the last several years there's been i mean there are always there for a reason you know anonymous has always been able to pull people together and say look here is a mission that i think we can all get behind let's try to do this and in som

were not just on the internet but they're in real life trying to stake out members of the westboro baptist church so they can alert other people of where they're going to be how they're planning on protesting what they were going to do to demonstrate a lot of people don't realize it because a lot of people think these are just some nerdy computer half truths that are hiding behind screens in the united states who only care about you know the walls if it where but no actually there are you know thousands upon thousands of people spread out over the course the entire world who are making sure that people still have open access to information that people are safe that people can can figure out how to get by these hardships when government regimes step in and try to censor the internet or you know like we saw in gaza to kill innocent civilians. and she's very own president asks people in new york what they think and feel about this so-called how to make. the hacking collective anonymous issued a statement warning the world to expect them in two thousand and thirteen is that a good thing this week let

here i don't know if you heard rumors circulating in the internet that the westboro baptist church would be protesting outside of outside of this funeral in the same way that they do for a lot of high profile funerals around the country at the end of the day i guess it was a little bit too cold for them to show up but i think that's for the best at the same time back to your question about anonymous not only have they been doing this sort of hacking on an mit online i did hear that report as well as a sort of tribute for erin but the amount of organisation that they put into kind of rallying people here in chicago to come out and counter protest in the event that the westboro baptist church did come out so to that end i think anonymous did play a significant role and i anticipate that they will continue to play a role in spreading aaron's message continuing to to kind of that online fight for online freedoms that. aaron's idea ideology sort of perpetuated so i anticipate to see anonymous continue to be a part of this and to continue to put pressure on the government as well as the big th

of rallying people here in chicago to come out and counter protest in the event that the westboro baptist church did come out so to that end i think anonymous did play a significant role and i anticipate that they will continue to play a role in spreading aaron's message continuing to to kind of that online fight for online freedoms that parents idea ideology sort of perpetuated so i anticipate to see anonymous continue to be a part of this and to continue to put pressure on the government as well as the big the big web thinkers out there right let's talk about the white house petition you know in light of aaron's death there was a petition calling for his prosecutor the department of justice prosecutor who is going down so hard on aaron to be removed from his position and it just reached the twenty five thousand mark which is now a necessity for the white house temp respond to how do you think they're going to respond to this. i think you know that's a very good question i don't know how the how the white house is going to respond but you're right they just reached the threshold of twenty five

the westboro baptist church, a small group known nationwide for its protests, says it expects 25 demonstratorsear third street. in all, there are five different locations for protests approved by the park service. the best known protest group is the answer coalition. it expects several thousand demonstrators on inaugural day, which also is the martin luther king holiday. >> the least among us is dr. king would say to agitate, educate, and mobilize from the bottom up, to have those voices for those who are still struggling, those who dr. king would have been standing for. >> reporter: the answer coalition will gather at 14th and pennsylvania avenue just blocks from the white house. but its protest is bigger than obama. >> it's to send a message to all the politicians. not just the president. the senator, the congressmen, all the big business people. these are the problems of ordinary working people we need to be tackling. >> reporter: tom sherwood, news 4. >>> nbc 4 is the place to watch inauguration day events from start to finish. we will be up extra early. news 4 today begins at 4:00 a.m. on

. >> and i go to the westboro baptist church. you know those haters who protest the funerals? what makes someone like that. so, i went there and did my own protest and roasted them. but not out of love. out of sort of -- [ cheers ] >> jimmy: do people get angry with you when you do it? [ scattered applause ] >> no one's ever gotten mad at me. no one's ever gotten mad at me. >> jimmy: 'cause you do a thing i love called "the roaster coaster." >> right. >> jimmy: and it's basically you on a segway with a podium, with a microphone. [ laughter ] and he just goes around the city and you just rank on people. >> i ride around, roasting people. it's like a little bit of a -- kind of a -- what do you call it? >> jimmy: a childhood dream? >> yeah. i get to say whatever i want and ambush people. and i went out on new year's day and roasted people's new year's resolutions. because people are always so annoying when they make promises they can't keep. everybody's resolution, you know? should i stop biting my nails? should i stop drinking? should i, you know, finally get that aids test? [ l

contradiction to a recent supreme court opinion which held that these awful people at the westboro baptist churchhorrible the message may be, enjoy the same rights as the rest of us. if they want to celebrate the death of the decedent at the decedent's own funeral on public property, not going in the church, private property or in the place of the funeral, the funeral home, but from a street corner, every right to do so so says the supreme court. california can't change that. stuart: you protest a funeral, got to stay from a certain distance, california says you can't protest at all. >> you can't interfere with the lawful presence of the mourners, but you can stand on the sidewalk and shout at them. you can't go on private property where you are unwanted like a church, synagogue, mosque, or funeral parlor, but if the procession is coming down on the street, can they stand on the street with signs? they can. it's not me. it's the supreme court. california can't interfere with that. >> leave aside the libertarian position, judge, turning to charles and liz, you favor the law? >> no, as a matter of

think just back to last month when he they actually published some private information of westboro baptist churchet those protesters were going to be going to new town, connecticut. it acted then. last year, it actually trarly blocked access to some web sites including the fbi, the department of justice, the motion picture association and the recording industry association. it did so because anonymous said it was upset that the doj had blocked access to a website that contained a lot of pirated media. so we have certainly seenton act in the past but the real challenge here when you're talking about anonymous is there's no one person, no really rigid group. it's made up of so many amorphous groups of activists it's hard to know how they are working together. but what the government does know, miguel, is that it potentially allows these hackers to inflict damages from a lot of different directions, not just one targeted place. >> indeed, a lot of these attacks could be coming from overseas. do you have any sense of where the investigation is right now? who controls the website and how serious was t