At least 14 people have been arrested as part of an ongoing operation targeting the notorious hacking collective known as Anonymous, a federal government official said Tuesday.
The arrests have taken place in locations including Florida, the San Francisco area in California and New Jersey, the official said.
Earlier, a senior federal law enforcement official said up to 15 total arrests are expected following the execution of more than 15 search warrants.
The warrants were being executed in New York and several other states Tuesday by the FBI as part of the investigation, according to the federal government official.
FBI agents spread out to about a half dozen locations on Long Island, in Brooklyn and in the Bronx, where they seized computers and other records, according to the federal government official, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the investigation.
In the past, Anonymous has launched attacks on websites belonging to the Church of Scientology, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.
However, the hacker collective vaulted to worldwide fame in December, when it disabled or disrupted the websites of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal in what the group said was retaliation for the companies' cutting ties to the WikiLeaks website following the arrest of Julian Assange. Assange founded WikiLeaks, which facilitates the release of secret information. He is currently out on bail in England and is fighting extradition to Sweden, where he faces sex crime charges.
In addition, Anonymous is suspected of being linked to cyber attacks against Sony, Fox News, the Arizona Department of Corrections and a well-known consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, among others.
The group is implicated in denial-of-service attacks, in which large amounts of traffic are directed to a website, overloading it and, in effect, shutting it down.
The FBI in New York refused to confirm Tuesday's actions involved Anonymous. "These search warrants are being executed in connection with an ongoing FBI investigation," said FBI spokesman Peter Donald.


COMMENT: I think is very bad that people try to harm the things of another people. I also think that is very good that the FBI investigated because if they leave it like that, maybe they will continue doing it