The 17-minute long phone call was first posted on YouTube and has now spread across various sites. In the call, both sides are heard discussing how to co-ordinate their current investigation of Anonymous.
It appears that the group first got access to an email that an FBI official sent to his colleagues and other intelligence officials in U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden and Netherlands. The email contained the phone number to call in and the access code needed to be a participant in a conference call scheduled on January 17. Anonymous also called in and recorded the entire conversation.
The conversation involves intelligence officials discussing key suspects in several recent hacks carried out by Anonymous and most of the names have been bleeped out by Anonymous to protect its own.
Experts in the intelligence community have pointed out that the FBI should not have been using unencrypted and unsecured communications to discuss such sensitive issues. They point out that it could have been terrorists listening in on the conversation. The FBI and Scotland Yard; both have tried to downplay the damage done.
FBI has released a statement which says that the recording was legitimate, but it was not obtained by breaching any of the agency’s systems. Scotland Yard has also said that it is aware of the recording and the matter was being looked into by the FBI.