To that I would add that Sabu was found because (according to what I read) he once signed into a Lulzsec IRC channel without masking his residential IP. So yes, there was a slip, which led to Sabu's cooperation.
There was a slip which led to his capture. Instead of paying the unfettered price for the crimes he committed, he ratted out his friends in a blatant abuse of the system in order to lessen his punishment.
The lesson for today kids, is never commit a crime alone, so you have someone to rat out on for that plea deal!
Agreed. I'd rather see all of them go down with lessened punishment than one go down while the rest are off the hook. Although I don't like plea bargains which let the squealer off the hook.
That's the point. If they were doing their job and interrogating well as well as investigating well they'd catch them all just like Sabu. Unfortunately they're not and it's easier to offer a plea deal after a short period of intimidation so they do that. I think they should all pay, but this way they just abuse something built into the system that was made as an incentive for people they didn't think they COULD catch otherwise.
With Sabu, they caught him on mere chance. He connected directly to IRC from his home address, without proxies or going to a wifi hotspot to hide himself. Not everyone will make that mistake, and then it becomes infinitely harder to find them. It's about resource management.
> If they were doing their job and interrogating well
> as well as investigating well they'd catch them all
> just like Sabu.
They used the fact that Sabu had their trust. The idea that they would be able to plant someone in LulzSec and take then down from the insider within 7 months seems laughable.