Earlier today, Anonymous released a confidential conference call between the FBI and law enforcement officers in the UK. The 16-minute call discusses ongoing investigations into hackers associated with Anonymous, AntiSec, and LulzSec.

From all appearances, Anonymous retrieved the sensitive access code information and a list of attendees from an FBI email account. The group released a roughly 15-minute-long recording of what appears to be a Jan. 17 conference call devoted to tracking and prosecuting members of the loose-knit hacking group.

The email, titled “Anon-Lulz International Coordination Call”, was published on pastebin earlier today. The email with details for accessing the call was sent to law enforcement officials in Britain, France, the Netherlands and others but the only people who identify themselves on the call are from the FBI and Scotland Yard.In a message on Twitter, Anonymous posted links to the audio recording and said the FBI “might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.”

The initial link to the conference call was for an mp3 download, but it was also made available to stream on YouTube.

The FBI and Scotland Yard have now confirmed that their internal conference call describing their investigation into Anonymous hackers was illegally intercepted, as was the email containing the conference call details. The Metropolitan Police also confirmed it, saying:“We are aware of the video which relates to an FBI conference call involving a PCeU representative. The matter is being investigated by the FBI. We continue to carry out a full assessment. We are not prepared to discuss further.”

Karen Todner, a lawyer for Cleary, said that the recording could be “incredibly sensitive” and warned that such data breaches had the potential to derail the police’s work.“If they haven’t secured their email it could potentially prejudice the investigation,” she told. Following a spate of arrests across the world, the group and its various offshoots have focused their attention on law enforcement agencies in general and the FBI in particular.

Hacktivist group Anonymous have compiled and published a dossier containing personal information about employees of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and US Democratic party leaders and their families.

The hacking group released a document listing the websites they planned to attack along with the names of US Democratic Party leaders and MPAA employees and their families.

The details included property values, work and home phone numbers and addresses as well as the names, ages and schools of the member’s children.

The group – who go by @YourAnonNews on Twitter – took credit for shutting down the Bureau’s official website FBI.gov earlier today, which as of 4.25pm AEST continues to display an error message.

They said the attack is in retaliation for the FBI shutting down popular file-sharing website Megaupload.com and charging the founders for online piracy.

Megaupload Limited and sister company Vestor Limited generated “more than $175 million in criminal proceeds” and caused “more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners” through the piracy of “numerous types of copyrighted works,” the US Justice Department and FBI said in a joint statement.

The founder of the file-sharing websites 37-year-old Kim Schmitz, also known as Kim Dotcom and three others faced a New Zealand court today and said the group had “nothing to hide”.

But Anonymous hit back shutting down the websites of the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group.

“The government takes down #Megaupload? 15 minutes later #Anonymous takes down government & record label sites,” they wrote on Twitter.

“We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn’t think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us,” they wrote on website Pastebin.

New Zealand’s police website police.govt.nz has also allegedly been targeted by the group after as Dotcom, Batato and two others were arrested in Auckland by New Zealand authorities carrying out warrants on behalf of the US for pirate material.