We got a little confused by the International Dateline and what not -- hey, you try converting Sydney time to New York and see if it doesn't leave you dizzy -- so that big story we were promising today won't be here for another 18 hours or so. In the meantime, we have this short video we pieced together from Saturday night's "raid" of the Scientology org on 46th Street near Times Square.

Four years after Anonymous launched Project Chanology and showed up outside Scientology orgs around the world, the local lunatics are still at it.

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As advertised, last night's "fancy raid" put on by the local chapter of Project Chanology (the Anonymous wing that protests Scientology) was a sartorial riot.

About 20 young Anonymous members showed up with Snidely Whiplash mustaches (even the women!) and with interesting choices in head wear. I hope this rough video I threw together gives you some sense of it. I also went into Scientology's org itself in search of a comment about the protest. More about that after the jump.

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​New York City's local Project Chanology brigade -- the branch of Anonymous that messes with Scientology -- has kept up its nearly four-year mission by turning protests into fun and comedic events.

In the summer, we wrote about NYC anons turning 46th Street into a beach party -- including 300 pounds of sand -- and it was a smart way to keep the beat going.

This Saturday's "raid" on Scientology's Times Square-adjacent org has a very different theme as the anons don formal wear and bring a touch of Victorian flair to the proceedings.

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​While the artist lofts on Kent St. in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn were buzzing with police activity this morning, their neighbors at the similar loft spaces on McKibbin St. had an unrelated run-in with the law yesterday. As part of the FBI raids that resulted in 16 arrests nationwide yesterday, a search for members of the hacker collective Anonymous brought authorities to the East Williamsburg building looking for one such online mischief-maker, but came up empty handed, Brooklyn Paper reports. "They were looking for the old tenants," Meaghan Ralph, 21, said. "They were trying to be nice when they realized I wasn't a criminal mastermind." Elsewhere, the cops were luckier, grabbing a bunch of young adults -- "Kids," says one of their attorneys -- whom the government wants to "throw under the bus."

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​With their popularity (or at least ubiquity) at an all-time high, the hacktivist group Anonymous still can't play nice with others, but it's not their fault -- at least in their own estimation. Google banned the online mischief-makers from the new social network Google+, where they had created a "Your Anon News" page, because "some of the posted content violates...Community Standards." As a result, the hackers have set out to create AnonPlus, "a new social network where there is no fear of censorship, of blackout, nor of holding back," because they're sick of being excluded.

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​The internationally feared hacktivist group Anonymous produced a new mother lode of intel today, up for download on The Pirate Bay, that they're calling "Military Meltdown Monday: Mangling Booz Allen Hamilton." The contractor Booz Allen works, in Anonymous-speak, "on behalf of the U.S. federal government, foremost on defense and homeland security matters, and limited engagements of foreign governments specific to U.S. military assistance programs," and that, to hackers, is The Enemy, so Anonymous mined their servers for information, which they claim includes "roughly 90,000 military emails and password hashes," in addition to "maps and keys for various other treasure chests buried on the islands of government agencies, federal contractors and shady whitehat companies."

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​The hot new amorphous group of internet hackers call themselves Lulz Security -- as in, we do it only for the lulz (a.k.a. laughs) -- and have already positioned themselves against the reigning mischief-making internet kings at Anonymous and 4chan, which likely beget LulzSec, at least in attitude. In the last month, their first as a public force, the squad has meddled with Sony (repeatedly), PBS, the FBI, CIA, U.S. Senate and more, rightfully earning themselves the attention they covet, albeit through illegal means or tactics not yet banned that will be one day. With the group's 1,000 tweet comes their mission statement, a sort of nihilist manifesto for the internet era about not giving "a living fuck" and who the real villains are. If you're already feeling pessimistic about the internet on this rainy Friday, why not go deeper into negativity and paranoia? They're not wrong.

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​Here a file for download containing more than 10,000 emails lifted from the government of Iran by the hacker group Anonymous. They also took down the website for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, grabbing control of the servers in the process. "It's near the election's anniversary. We had to do something," one of the hackers, an Iranian, told The Next Web.

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​The mischief-making hacker group Anonymous is out to "convince the world" that UFOs exist -- "for nothing more than the lulz," or laughs -- in a new plan meant to assert elitism over stupid people. "Operation UFO" is simple enough: at 8 p.m. on May 22, everyone in on the idea and willing is supposed to report a similar UFO sighting ("a triangle of about 8 yellow lights in the sky") to whichever sighting website or hotline they so choose. Because believers want nothing more than validation, the rash of identical reports is supposed send UFO enthusiasts into a frenzy. Anonymous, then, gets to grin and look down at those they fooled. Full flier after the jump.

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​The wild Internet message board 4chan, known for originating almost all memes and spawning the hacker/activist collective Anonymous, is plotting a prank on some unfortunately lonely fellows using OkCupid. The point, if you could call it that, is to create an "involuntary flash mob," in which a large group of people flashily take over a public space, but "involuntarily" by making a bunch of fake online dating profiles and agreeing to meet men at a specified moment in Times Square. The pranksters will know if it worked because there's a webcam pointed at the agreed upon destination.

[Updated below: The fateful day has almost arrived.]

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