Anonops #13: Stop CISPA

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Retirement of Reckz0r

Hello world,

I am Reckz0r.

I was a former member of the hacktivist group known as Anonymous, UGNazi, and other paragons of hacking history.

I made a group known as 'SpexSecurity'.

I've realized that I am doing this shit for nothing.

I am officially..a whitehat.

I will use my intelligence for good.

I've done over 50 large hacks, and leaked many essential information, I am sorry if I harmed you, or affected your families.

This is my departure from the hacking scene.

I am no-longer a hacker, I'm a whitehat.

twitter.com/Reckz0r

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'Hacker steelt 50 GB gegevens Visa- en MasterCard-klanten'

Een hacker beweert 50 gigabyte aan gegevens van Visa- en MasterCard-klanten gestolen te hebben. Hij publiceerde al een lijst van 113 pagina's waarop hij de kaartnummers heeft weggelaten 'om de onschuldigen te beschermen'.

Een woordvoerder van Visa Europa laat intussen weten dat Visa 'samen met partners, waaronder ook de politie, de bewering onderzoekt'. Bij MasterCard konden ze het nieuws nog niet bevestigen.

Volgens de veiligheidsexperts van het gespecialiseerde blog Belsec is die hacker geen bluffer. 'Hij heeft de reputatie te doen wat hij zegt. En als hij inderdaad voor 50 gigabyte aan gegevens heeft van Visa- en MasterCard-klanten, dan is dit waarschijnlijk de hack van het jaar, vergelijkbaar met die op Sony in 2011.'

Het is nu wachten tot wanneer de hacker, die zichzelf Reckz0r noemt, meer informatie geeft. 'Voorlopig is de afkomst van die gegevens niet duidelijk', aldus Belsec. 'Waarschijnlijk komen ze van een e-commercebedrijf of een betalingsverwerker. Uit de lijst die al gelekt is, blijkt dat de data niet geëncrypteerd zijn, net zoals dat het geval was bij de gegevens die van Dexia en AGO-Interim ontvreemd werden.'

Een andere hacker, Rex Mundi, die er vorige week mee dreigde vandaag de gegevens van 10.000 AGO-Interimklanten online te zetten als het uitzendbureau geen losgeld betaalde, heeft de deadline verschoven naar de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag. 'Wij zijn niet ingegaan op hun vraag, en zullen dat ook niet doen', aldus Dirk Clarysse, advocaat van AGO-Interim.

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Google: overheden willen steeds meer censureren

Google krijgt steeds meer verzoeken van overheden wereldwijd om filmpjes van YouTube te halen die met politiek te maken hebben. Dat blijkt uit het laatste Transparency Report van Google met onder meer de verzoeken van internationale autoriteiten om materiaal te verwijderen of te overhandigen. Het aantal verzoeken die te maken hebben met kritiek op de lokale politieke is in 2011 toegenomen.

Google verzamelt deze informatie elk half jaar sinds 2010 en elke keer nemen de verzoeken toe. "Dat is niet alleen zorgwekkend vanwege de vrijheid van meningsuiting, maar ook omdat die verzoeken soms uit landen komen waarvan je het niet verwacht. Westerse landen die niet bekendstaan om censuur." Het gaat dan onder meer om Spanje en Polen.

Terrorisme
Verder hebben ze in de tweede helft van vorig jaar zo'n 640 filmpjes van YouTube gehaald omdat die terrorisme zouden promoten. Dat deden ze na klachten van de Britse politiebond. Ook verwijderden ze vijf accounts.

Het bedrijf voldeed aan meer verzoeken: zo verwijderden ze meer dan 100 filmpjes uit Thailand die beledigend zouden zijn voor de monarchie en een video met haatzaaiende inhoud uit Turkije. Google zegt dat ze aan 68 procent van de verzoeken hebben voldaan.

Wc
Maar Google haalde dus niet alles weg. Een Canadees die over z'n paspoort plast en hem vervolgens de wc spoelt, mag op YouTube blijven staan. Het Canadese paspoortbureau had om verwijdering gevraagd. We hadden je graag de video willen laten zien, maar Google zegt dat het links naar video's die ze niet verwijderd hebben niet kunnen delen, om de privacy te beschermen van de uploaders. "Immers, wij zouden in dat geval onze gebruikers ongevraagd in het midden van een publieke discussie plaatsen. Niet iedere gebruiker wil dat wij via de media communiceren dat de overheid van het land waarin zij leven, ons gevraagd heeft hun video te verwijderen", aldus Google.

Hier zie je de verzoeken per land. Nederland deed minder dan 10 verzoeken om verwijdering, maar vroeg 37 keer om gebruikersgegevens.

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'Operation Payback' accused says he has no regrets

A member of Anonymous, the group that launched a cyber-attack on some of America's biggest corporations, has defended the action saying: "I don't regret anything that I've done. I would do it all again."

Called Operation Payback, the cyber-assault was a denial of service attack intended to avenge the campaign against the WikiLeaks website and the pursuit of its founder Julian Assange.

An interview with one of the men who is alleged to have organised Operation Payback is being aired on the ABC's Four Corners program tonight.

Four Corners interviewed the man in Washington early last year as it pieced together the story of Private Bradley Manning and his alleged theft of US state secrets.

At that stage the man was concerned the interview, if it was shown, could allow US authorities to track him and charge him.

In July last year, the man was arrested and subsequently charged, together with other hacktivists in the United States and Europe. Now the interview is being shown tonight for the first time.

The man admitted to Four Corners that he had mixed thoughts about giving an interview, saying he was "actually kind of terrified" to be filmed in Washington, but he added, "If we have been identified and they decide to take action against us, they're going to attempt to silence us and the story might not even get out."

The story tells how in December 2010, nearly 8,000 hackers launched a denial of service attack on some of America's biggest corporations including Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, which were refusing to process donations to WikiLeaks.

The operation was organised on AnonOps, a focal meeting point for the worldwide group Anonymous. The AnonOps member interviewed for tonight's program says that Operation Payback was carried out in support of WikiLeaks: "They were discussing various options and the suggestion came up that since they cut off the funding, why don't we cut off theirs and it was born out of that."

The charges against those alleged to have organised Operation Payback carry possible fines of $US1 million, and 15-year jail terms.

Wikileaks saga

US soldier Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked more than 250,000 US State Department diplomatic cables and more than 500,000 US Army logs to WikiLeaks. Private Manning faces a court martial later this year on 22 charges, one of which - "aiding the enemy" - is a capital offence. However, military prosecutors have indicated that they will not be seeking the death penalty if Private Manning is convicted.

As Julian Assange fights to prevent his own extradition to Sweden to face questioning on allegations of sexual assault, speculation is mounting that a Grand Jury sitting in secret in Washington has already prepared a sealed indictment, which would allow American officials to seek his onward extradition to the United States.

Australia's Federal Government has refused to confirm this. In Question Time on May 31, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said: "At this stage we do not have any advice from the United States that there is an indictment against Mr Assange or that the United States has decided to seek his extradition."

But evidence that an indictment may have been issued comes from confidential emails hacked into last December, allegedly by members of Anonymous, and published by WikiLeaks. The emails were written by staff at the Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor, who have close ties with the US administration.

One internal email, written by Stratfor's vice president of intelligence, Fred Burton, says: "Not for pub – We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect."

Until now the company has refused to say whether this email is genuine. Stratfor chief executive George Friedman says on the company website: "Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies. Some may be authentic. We will not validate either, nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimised twice by submitting to questions about them."

But following an approach from Four Corners, Stratfor has told the ABC: "We have made the practice not to comment on stolen emails. However, given the extensive coverage of this email, we will make an exception here. The email is authentic. It represented information from a source who asked that it not be published.

"However, in our further investigation we determined the source to be unreliable and could get no further information on the subject. At this time, there are many unsubstantiated claims floating around on this subject. We therefore never published anything on it. We have no special insight on an indictment nor ever claimed to have. This email represents one of many passed around internally each day on many subjects. It was dismissed by us as unreliable information."

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FBI wants to ban new Internet protocol

With the recent unveiling of the newest Internet protocol system, trillions upon trillions of devices are being paved access to the Internet for the unforeseeable future. And right on cue, the FBI is already up in arms over IPv6.

With computing devices around the globe already switching from the current Internet protocol system, IPv4, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is predictably picking a fight with the biggest names in cyberspace to ensure that the FBI and other agencies across North America will be able to inch themselves into the personal Web surfing habits of citizens across the world. Now requests from the FBI to ready a system to easily snoop through Internet traffic has proponents of IPv6 and industry reps alike scrambling to make sense of the feds’ demands.

Under the original and quickly antiquating Internet protocol system, IPv4, only 4.3 billion computers, modems, smart phones and other wired devices can send and receive information through cyberspace. When the latest rollover to IPv6 is complete, however, 340 undecillion addresses (that’s a lot) will be able to be assigned. On the plus side, trillions of more devices will able to be delivered information over the Internet. The FBI, however, wants to make sure that they can still catch cyber criminals and suggest that they might have to insist that the private sector aids them in their future endeavors.

According to report filed this week by Cnet’s Declan McCullagh, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials have jointly asked Internet representatives that traceability features be enabled with IPv6 that will allow federal agents to identify suspected cybercriminals with the same kind of ease evident with IPv4. Given that the government is already having trouble trying to find alleged cyberterrorists over the Internet as is, though, they might seriously have their work cut out for them. That’s where McCullagh reports, “The FBI has even suggested that a new law may be necessary if the private sector doesn't do enough voluntarily.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official with the FBI clues Cnet in on just why the agency is against the next-generation Internet protocol:

“An issue may also arise around the amount of registration information that is maintained by providers and the amount of historical logging that exists. Today there are complete registries of what IPv4 addresses are ‘owned’ by an operator. Depending on how the IPv6 system is rolled out, that registry may or may not be sufficient for law enforcement to identify what device is accessing the Internet.”

If hunting for cybercriminals is comparable to searching for a needle in a haystack under IPv4, with IPv6 it will be on par with scouring the stratosphere for a single molecule of oxygen.

John Curran of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) tells Cnet, "We're looking at a problem that's about to occur," and adds that, “as service providers start to roll out V6,” that’s exactly what they’ll receive. The answer, according to the FBI, might be a whole new set of legislation that will let them scour cyberspace for the answers for federal inquiries into alleged Internet crimes.

"We're hoping through all of this you can come up with some self-regulatory method in which you can do it," FBI supervisory special agent Bobby Flaim said at an ARIN meeting earlier this year, reports Cnet . "Because otherwise, there will be other things that people are going to consider."

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Leaked Documents Show the U.N.'s Internet Power Grab...

With very low visibility, a small agency in the United Nations - the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) - might be about to quietly try and regulate the entire Internet.

The ITU has planned a meeting this upcoming December where each of the 193 member nations will vote on various proposed Internet regulations. What's striking is that the details of the proposals have been kept secret, so it was impossible to know what authoritarian governments were plotting or how the U.S. was responding.

Until now. A pair of researchers from George Mason University created a website called WCITLeaks.org in the hopes that someone with access to the secretive proposals would leak them and make them available to the public. Last Friday, that's exactly what happened. Someone leaked the 212-page planning document being used by governments to prepare for the December conference. You can read it yourself here.

What it shows is breathtaking. First, China is proposing "to give countries authority over the information and communication infrastructure within their state" and require that online companies "operating in their territory" use the Internet "in a rational way"- in short, to legitimize full government control.

Second, several proposals would give the U.N. power to regulate online content for the first time, under the guise of protecting against computer malware or spam.

Third, Russia and some Arab countries are proposing to be able to inspect private communications such as email.

Fourth, Iran and Russia are proposing new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls - essentially creating national toll booths for data.

Fifth, there is a proposal that would give the U.N. control over the Internet's Domain Name System, replacing ICANN which operates under a contract from the U.S. Commerce Department.

Take all of this in its totality and what we see are proposals that would A) grant power and authority over the very functioning of the Internet to the United Nations, and B) grant authoritarian governments the ability to censor, monitor, and more strictly control both the content of the Web itself and people's behavior on it. What's at stake is nothing less than a system based on open flows of information, as opposed to an "information world order" based on government controls.

L. Gordon Crovitz from the Wall Street Journal is right in his assessment: "Authoritarian regimes are busy lobbying a majority of the U.N. members to vote their way. The leaked documents disclose a U.S. side that has hardly begun to fight back. That's no way to win this war."

Everyone better wake up. Soon.

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Anonymous arrested? Six nabbed in Quebec cyber attacks

MONTREAL - Six people have been arrested amid a rash of cyber-attacks launched by the activist group Anonymous against Quebec government websites.

The arrests were made in different Quebec cities in an operation that involved five police forces — the RCMP, the Surete du Quebec, and three municipal forces.

Those arrested faced a variety of charges Tuesday, including mischief, conspiracy, and unlawful use of a computer. Three of them were minors. The arrests took place in Rimouski, Sherbrooke, Forestville, Montreal and Longueuil, Que.

Police offered no other clues about the case, other than to say the attacks were on "public" and "parapublic" websites. They said they did not want to jeopardize their ongoing case by sharing details, such as whether those arrested operated under the "Anonymous" name.

Cyber-activists have, under the group name "Anonymous," mounted numerous campaigns in different countries and on occasion defaced websites of organizations they oppose. A recent target has been the Quebec government because of its anti-protest law.

Self-described Anonymous activists have recently hacked into a variety of websites linked to the Quebec government — including the province's education and public-safety departments, as well as that of the provincial Liberal party.

But police Tuesday did not specifically link the arrests to Anonymous. They also did not specify what websites those arrested were accused of attacking.

"Police authorities want to indicate that they take this kind of crime very seriously," the police said in a statement. "They will use every means at their disposition to find the authors. These people expose themselves to criminal charges, regardless of whatever intention prompted their action."

Last month, hackers managed to disable more than a dozen websites, including the sites of the Education Department, the Quebec Liberal party and the Montreal police force.

The circle then appeared to broaden. In addition to Formula One car-race spectators having their information published online, footage was released from an exclusive birthday party held for a member of the powerful Desmarais family.

People claiming to operate under the name "Anonymous" sent an ominously worded email to more than 100 people who bought tickets to the Formula One Grand Prix weekend in Montreal.

"If you intend to use a car, know that your road may be barricaded," said a document described as a ‘Notice to Grand Prix Visitors.’

"If you want to stay in a hotel, know that we may enter it. If you seek to withdraw money from a bank, know that the shattering glass may sting. If you plan on watching a race, know that your view may be obscured, not by exhaust fumes but by the smoke of the fires we set. Know that the evacuation order may not come fast enough."

There were protests at a number of sites related to the June 7-10 Grand Prix, and attempts to paralyze some of them, but police acted pre-emptively. Over that weekend, they either created barriers blocking access to certain public places, or detained people suspected of planning to disrupt events.

The police reaction brought a counter-reaction from protesters and their supporters: that law enforcement violated fundamental freedoms, such as the right to free mobility and expression, by making arbitrary detentions in what amounted to "political profiling."

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ISP's moeten nieuwste adres Pirate Bay blokkeren

Anderhalve week nadat bekend werd dat The Pirate Bay het IP-adres 194.71.107.81 is gaan gebruiken, moeten de providers het gaan blokkeren, op last van de rechter. Wederom via een ex parte verbod.

Stichting BREIN neemt de handschoen van The Pirate Bay op en speelt het kat-en-muisspel om de blokkade van de torrentsite mee. Voor de tweede maal in 3 weken krijgt de piraterijbestrijder een ex parte bevel toegewezen die verordonneert dat KPN, UPC, Tele2 en T-Mobile het IP-adres 194.71.107.81 moeten blokkeren. De blokkade moet binnen 10 werkdagen effectief zijn.

Dit adres werd nog geen twee weken geleden in gebruik genomen door The Pirate Bay, als antwoord op een eerdere ex parte blokkade van 194.71.107.80. Dat adres werd geactiveerd om het vonnis van 10 mei te omzeilen, omdat toen de rechter bepaalde dat de blokkadelijst niet door BREIN zelf mag worden uitgebreid.

Te kwader trouw

"Hoewel duidelijk is dat The Pirate Bay te kwader trouw adreswijzigingen invoert, blijven de ISP's weigeren de extra adressen vrijwillig te blokkeren", aldus de stichting. Via een ex parte verbod is de uitbreiding van de blokkadelijst alsnog afgedwongen. Een ex parte is een spoedprocedure, waarbij de rechter beslist zonder dat de gedaagde partij zich kan verdedigen.

Voor Ziggo en XS4ALL hoeft BREIN niet naar de rechter te stappen. Want in het vonnis van januari bepaalde de rechtbank BREIN de blokkadelijst voor deze twee isp's wel mag uitbreiden.

Blok van 256 IP-adressen

Reservella, het schimmige postbusbedrijfje achter The Pirate Bay, beschikt over een blok van 256 IP-adressen, waarmee het BREIN provoceert. "Nu we weten dat het BREIN ontstemt gaan we natuurlijk meer IP's toevoegen. Elke keer dat zij een verbod toegewezen krijgen, voegen we een nieuwe toe, voor het komende jaar of zo."

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Telefoontaps opgeleukt

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In aanvulling op de vingerafdrukteller en CIOT-teller heb ik weer eens een nieuwe privacybewustwordingstool ontwikkeld: de Tapradar.

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U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus to slow Iranian nuclear efforts, officials say

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The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected critical intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage attacks aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware was designed to secretly map Iran’s computer networks and monitor the computers of Iranian officials, sending back a steady stream of intelligence used to enable an ongoing cyberwarfare campaign, according to the officials.

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The emerging details about Flame provide new clues about what is believed to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

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Online innovation threatened by governments, Clinton adviser warns

State department's Alec Ross tells London conference that governments will 'lash back' in bid to regain internet control

Governments that attempt to regain control of the internet pose the greatest threat to innovation online, a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton has warned.

Alec Ross, an adviser on innovation in the US state department, told a conference in London on Wednesday that governments across the globe will soon begin "lashing back" in a bid to regain control of cyberspace.

"The biggest threat to your ability to innovate actually comes from government, and I say that from Hillary Clinton's office in the state department," he told the Le Web London conference.

"What I think is going to take place – and that is of marginal awareness to the digerati right now – is I think you all need to fear governments seeking to control our networks, seeking to take away your internet freedom."

Ross said he was not just referring to autocratic regimes in the Middle East, but included the US government in his remarks.

He highlighted the US Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), which attracted fierce criticism from open internet groups, as one example where the balance of power has shifted from government to organised groups online.

"This is why what was looking like it was going to become a piece of law flopped like that and is now gone," he told the conference for internet startups.

His comments reflect a growing mood of concern among internet advocacy groups. Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, told the Guardian in April that the open internet was facing its greatest threat ever from a combination of government interference and control by private companies.

Ross said seeking to regain control of the internet through legislation or surveillance was pointless.

His pointed remarks are likely to be read with interest in Theresa May's Home Office, which is attempting to push through a bill that will allow authorities to track Britons' Facebook, Twitter, email and internet use for the first time.

Ross said: "What you an all anticipate I believe is that as movement making accelerates, as innovation increasingly makes use of connectivity technologies, as countries pour massive amounts of money into things like surveillance and still can't control the information environment, as pieces of legislation with massive corporate backing get shot in the head because the citizens set up networks, one of the things you can expect is a lashing back from government and it's something you should always be aware of."

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Indian ISPs get court relief, Torrent Sites Unblocked

After weeks of confusion and frustration with blocked websites, the mess finally looks to be clearing. Indians are all heaving a sigh of relief because their ISPs have unblocked the access to the file-sharing, video-streaming BitTorrent sites that include The Pirate Bay, Torrentz.eu, Vimeo among others.

It was in news last month that following Reliance, Airtel had also blocked torrent services and video sites after they received the ‘John Doe’ court order. Thousands of users from various states of India found the access to torrents blocked.

India's Medianama is reporting today that the Madras High Court recently limited a badly drafted April ruling on the subject. The court said in its updated ruling, according to Medianama, which obtained a copy of it, that "the interim injunction is granted only in respect of a particular URL where the infringing movie is kept and not in respect of the entire website. Further, the applicant is directed to inform about the particulars of URL where the interim movie is kept within 48 hours."

MediaNama reports that the Madras High Court, on an appeal filed by a conglomerate of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), has passed an order saying that entire websites cannot be blocked on the basis of "John Doe" orders.

Starting with the movie Singham, for which Reliance Entertainment had taken a John Doe order last year, movie studios have been consistently getting John Doe orders blocking access to file sharing, video sharing and torrenting websites.

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The Pirate Bay says BT block already breached

BT has joined other UK internet service providers (ISPs) in blocking access to The Pirate Bay, a ban the group says users have already circumvented.

TalkTalk, Sky, Virgin, O2 and Everything Everywhere have already cut off access to the site, which hosts links to pirated music and video.

A High Court ruling in April ordered ISPs to prevent users accessing the site.

BT customers attempting access receive the message: "Error - site blocked".

Boosted traffic

BT has also cut off access to other addresses, known as proxy sites, made available by The Pirate Bay.

But a representative of the UK Pirate Party - a political group that opposes the bans - told BBC News more proxy sites had been made available "within minutes".

About 10% of traffic to its proxy sites now seemed to be coming from BT customers, 30% from VirginMedia customers, 15% via Sky, 6% via TalkTalk and 3% via O2, he said.

BT declined to comment on reports the block had been circumvented.

The Pirate Party spokesman said public interest in the service following the ban had also boosted traffic to the party's website.

Democratic process

"This increased traffic isn't just about The Pirate Bay; it seems that the proxy has sparked an interest in the Pirate Party itself, and we are seeing a significant uptick in membership and people navigating the rest of the site," he said.

"The volume of emails and phone calls into the party has also increased markedly."

The spokesman added: "Blocks on Pirate Bay have effectively short-circuited the democratic process.

"Our internet policy is not being run by our elected representatives, it is being dictated by the music industry."

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Fifth EU Committee Recommends Rejection Of ACTA By European Parliament

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Another major milestone has been achieved in the push to get ACTA rejected by the EU: a fifth parliamentary committee has recommended that the European Parliament should refuse to ratify it when it is put to the vote on July 4th, effectively killing it in Europe. The other committees on legal affairs, civil liberties, industry and international development recommended rejection a few weeks ago, but today's vote by the international trade committee (INTA) was seen as the most important.

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Gaining the support of five EU committees out of five is an extraordinary achievement -- six months ago, most commentators expected ACTA to sail through the European ratification process without much trouble. European politicians themselves have said that this change of heart is entirely due to the massive wave of protests against ACTA, both on the streets and in the form of thousands of emails and phone calls.

Although the battle is not over yet, it will be hugely significant if such citizen action does succeed in stopping ACTA, since it would send a message to politicians that the views of the public cannot be ignored when it comes to such major policy decisions about the Internet. In this respect, it would complement the similar revolt over SOPA and PIPA in the US -- something that made the current string of European victories against ACTA possible.

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Anonymous Operation Ethiopia

Friday - June 22, 2012 9:45 PM ET USA

To government of Ethiopia --

For far too long you have worked effortlessly to try to stifle the voices of your own people and infringe on their basic human rights. One of the last and most resourceful voices the citizens have left in Ethiopia was the internet, even with the heavy amount of censorship the government employs. Until Now…….

The government of Ethiopia recently passed a law outlawing the use of anonymity and VOIP services such as TOR and Skype. Usage of either one of these services can now result in a 15 year prison sentence. Simply providing these services to an individual can land you in prison for up to 8 years.

Anonymous will no longer stand by and watch the people of Ethiopia lose their basic right to communicate openly and freely on the Internet or their right to use anonymity services to protect themselves from criminals or anti freedom of speech crusaders.

Ethiopia has consistently dropped in it’s ranking as a free country in recent years according to the Democracy Index report released every year. This is a trend the government in Ethiopia seems intent on continuing. The time has come for the world to fight back.

Regardless of where you live in the world, situations like these should be a concern for anyone who believes in a free and open Internet. This is a call to all fellow anons and concerned citizens across the globe, stand up and fight for and with the people of Ethiopia.

OPERATION ETHIOPIA ENGAGED. Come join us on irc at anonops in #opethiopia, email us at opethiopia@hushmail.com, and follow us on twitter @opethiopia_

We Are Anonymous
We Are Legion
We Do Not Forgive
We Do Not Forget
Ethiopia, Did You Really Not Expect Us?

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Japan Passes Jail-for-Downloaders Anti-Piracy Law

Japan’s legislature has approved a bill revising the nation’s copyright law to add criminal penalties for downloading copyrighted material or backing up content from a DVD. The penalties will come into effect in October.

The Upper House of the Japanese Diet approved the bill by a vote of 221-12, less than a week after the measure cleared the lower house with almost no opposition. Violators risk up to two years in prison or fines up to two million yen (about $25,000).

Opponents of the bill worry it will lead to unnecessary prosecutions because of the way it is written. To face charges, a person must be aware that the material is illegal to download.

“We shouldn’t risk making the general public — including youths — the subject of criminal investigations,” said Upper House member Yuko Mori, as quoted in the Japan Times.

Japanese attorney Toshimitsu Dan told IT Media that even watching a YouTube video could be grounds for arrest “if the viewer is aware that downloading [such material] is illegal.”

Unauthorized uploading and downloading of copyrighted material such as music, movies and video games have been illegal in Japan for years, but until now only uploaders were subject to criminal penalties: up to 10 years in prison or fines as much as 10 million yen ($125,000), according to the Times.

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Colombian hackers attack govt, political website to protest justice reform

Hacker collective Anonymous announced the shut-down of the Justice Ministry website on Friday evening. The website was back online Saturday morning.

The website of Cambio Radical, the political party of Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras, was hacked later Friday evening and was still showing a message saying " You have been hacked" on Saturday morning.

Anonymous said on its facebook page the Ministry's website was shut down to protest "impunity" granted to corrupt politicians by a justice reform that had been approved by Congress but was sent back to the legislative branch by President Juan Manuel Santos on Thursday because of its unconstitutionality and inconsistencies that “do not favor justice and transparency.”

Following Santos' decision to not ratify the constitutional reform, Justice Minister Juan Carlos Esguerra -- who had been defending the bill on behalf of the President -- resigned.

The constitutional reform of the judicial branch had widely been critized. The country's high courts boycotted talks leading up to the approval of the bill, claiming the reform would only increase the level of impunity in cases against politicians and public officials. Opposition party Polo Democratico called the reform "a deadly kick for the constitution."

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The Synthetic Marijuana Epidemic

Citizens of the World,

Since the middle of the 20th Century we have been deprived of access to legal cannabis, leading to many noticeable negative consequences including the increasing cases of cancer, the increase in incarcerated citizens, and the increased cost of healthcare. One of the less publicized aspects of marijuana prohibition though, is the fact that it has in no way lowered the demand by society for what this plant provides: chemical comfort.

While marijuana remains illegal, it also remains one of the least dangerous substances know to humankind. There is not a single recorded death from it in all of history, due to the fact that it is physically impossible to overdose on. However, man-made “alternatives”, although legal, cannot be said to be as safe at all.

Synthetic marijuana is sometimes sold as “legal bud” and other times under the guise of household items such as incense and bath salts. Many of these products, which go by flashy names like K2 and Spice, are labelled Not For Human Consumption, but are sold solely for that purpose anyway. These are substances are designed to create an effect similar to smoking weed, and are put out on the legal market without regulation, nor certification of safety. These substances have led to many health problems, including heart attacks and the tragic “zombification” of users, as was seen in Miami this past Memorial Day. Unfortunately, because they are legal while natural marijuana is not, they are very accessible. They can even be ordered over the internet, and are advertised for in a very misleading manner.

People who use synthetic marijuana are citizens that wish to be law-abiding, who do not deserve a detriment upon their health for doing so. The fact of the matter is that this situation shouldn’t exist at all, we should not have individuals faced with the decision of legal/harmful vs illegal/safe. It is an unfair and immoral choice to force on consumers, that completely undermines the purpose of the free market.

During Alcohol Prohibition, there existed an atmosphere conducive to crime and a general disregard for the authority of law, which exists again today. Marijuana Prohibition is why the Drug Cartels are selling a safer product than the one available in the store. Cannabis needs to be legalized, simply as a matter of public health.

- Anonijuana

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Richard O'Dwyer: living with the threat of extradition

Student who set up website posting links to TV and film content fears being used as a guinea pig by Hollywood giants

Richard O'Dwyer, a 22-year-old Sheffield undergraduate studying multimedia, rose uncharacteristically early for a student on 29 November 2010, in preparation for a lecture later that morning. So the knock on the door of his small hall of residence room before 7am didn't wake him – but he was far from prepared for what would come next.

On the other side of the door waited two officers from the City of London police, accompanied by two leather-jacketed men from the US Immigration and Customs Executive (ICE).

O'Dwyer's next two years were about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. The call would place him at the heart of the titanic running battle between the Hollywood giants – struggling to keep their beleaguered business model intact in the online era – and a new digital generation unwilling to play by the old rules.

What brought the ICE agents to O'Dwyer's door was his role in setting up a small website, TVshack.net, linking to sites where people could watch US TV and movies online. To prosecutors of New York, this made him a worthwhile target in the battle against copyright infringement.

Although several recent extradition cases to the US have attracted controversy, in none does the gap between the alleged crime and the punishment sought by US prosecutors yawn as wide. Many have been angered by the US's eight-year effort to extradite Asperger's sufferer Gary Mackinnon for allegedly hacking into Pentagon computers; O'Dwyer faces extradition and a potential sentence of up to 10 years simply for letting people in the UK find somewhere to watch Iron Man 2 before its release.

In his first big interview, O'Dwyer tells how he became the unlikely poster boy of the 21st century's culture war. "I was up early, I don't know why," he recalls. "Then policemen turned up with two American men, wearing matching Top Gun jackets.

"I was half waking-up, half-confused. When they started talking I couldn't hear what they were saying, because I was too tired, but it was something about TVShack. So I was like 'okay … bugger'."

O'Dwyer, a quiet, clean-shaven man who looks younger than his 24 years, had set up the site in 2007, at 19, at the suggestion of a friend. It was a "human-powered search engine" for people looking for places to watch films, TV, and documentaries online.

Users could post links to video content – on YouTube, the now-defunct Google Video, MegaVideo or elsewhere – that contained full TV programmes or films. O'Dwyer's site would check the link worked and add it to its search engine. The site quickly became a specialised search engine for TV and film content, plus a forum for people to discuss and review the films.

"I told a few friends, and maybe they told a few friends, and it sort of spiralled from there, and shot up fairly quickly, popularity-wise."

As the site grew, eventually reaching an audience of around 300,000 people a month, so did O'Dwyer's workload – and website hosting bills. "It's hard to maintain, with so many people [using it], I had to put adverts on to pay for the webhosting to get more servers to cope.

"Lots of advertisers seemed to email the contact address on the website. I just basically picked one out of the hat and put them on the website. And obviously, when traffic went up, so did the revenue. That's the way websites work."

Over the three years it ran, according to court documents, the site's growing audience generated more than £140,000 in advertising revenue. O'Dwyer hasn't denied the figure, but says a lot of it went on running the site. The rest didn't make for a lavish lifestyle: takeaways, pub rounds, electronics and cinema tickets, saw it dwindle away, he claims.

"I frittered it away – I haven't really got anything. I bought a computer, a few other things," he says. "[I] spent it like buying other people their things when we were at an event or something. Say at the cinema, I'd just buy everyone's cinema tickets."

O'Dwyer – perhaps ironically given his circumstances – is a cinema buff. With revenues from his site, he made four visits a week, and still visits twice a week: "it's much better to see a film in the cinema."

However, the US authorities became concerned about a site linking to content often still within copyright. To sell a counterfeit CD or DVD of a copyrighted work is an offence, as is deliberately uploading such a work to the internet.

American customs officials, after campaigning from industry bodies, contended that linking to such items on other sites (as search engines and others automatically do) would also be covered by such laws.

This is a contentious interpretation of the law, even in the US, where linking has in some court cases been regarded as protected speech under the first amendment. Part of the reason for the huge backlash against proposed copyright laws, the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Protect [Intellectual Property] Act (Pipa) was that this provision would come under attack.

O'Dwyer says he hadn't really considered the legality of his site – he didn't know much about copyright, and knew he was only posting users' links to material hosted elsewhere – but did comply with legal notices from publishers asking him to remove links, on the few occasions he received them.

ICE targeted TVShack.net in June 2010 by taking his web address, known as a domain, and replacing it with a large warning against copyright infringement.

"One day my domain just disappeared. You'd just receive a massive warning message from ICE in America. We fixed that shortly afterwards by registering another domain name. Nothing ever was emailed to me, or letters. The priority was getting it back up."

The site was quickly back up and running at a new address, tvshack.cc. All ran smoothly until the knock on the door in November 2010.

After a quick search of his room, resulting in the seizure of his computer equipment and paperwork relating to the site, O'Dwyer was taken by the City of London police to his local police station.

"I had to direct them there because they didn't know, they were from London. They said I was the most polite person they'd arrested – and for that they gifted me no handcuffs."

O'Dwyer was taken for interview. Hoping to get the process over quickly, he refused a lawyer.

"I didn't have a solicitor with me, because they told me it'd take two hours to get one. I wanted to make it to my uni lecture, so I thought I'd just get it over with. Turns out the solicitor is next door to the police station."

O'Dwyer had a 45-minute interview with the officers – missing his lecture – and was bailed for around six months to appear at a London police station. He texted his mother, Julia, to tell her he'd be heading to the family home in Bolsover, Derbyshire that evening. "Weird day," he concludes, laconically.

Unknown to O'Dwyer, his mother had been having a similar day: at 7am, a team of five police officers had turned up at her home, which was half-demolished inside owing to renovation work, and searched it for his possessions. She'd then been taken to her local police station and interviewed about her son's activities.

"It was a bit of a shock really. They came in, said they wanted to talk about Richard and his website. I knew he'd got it, I didn't know an awful lot about it. They wanted to look in Richard's bedroom. There was no stairs, we had a ladder, I said you'll have to go up there," says Ms O'Dwyer.

After taking the family computer, and documents. She did a recorded interview with police but, unlike her son, had a lawyer.

"I've seen the telly, you see. I said to them 'do I need a lawyer?', and they said 'we're not allowed to tell you that' and I said 'well, maybe I'd better have one then'."

Reunited at the end of the day, they made sure TVShack.net was taken down, PayPal accounts closed, and other email accounts shut. The site was finished.

"We just thought maybe he was going to get charged with a copyright offence," says Ms O'Dwyer. "He was a bit upset, and I said 'don't worry, we'll get a lawyer and we'll sort it out'."

It was not so simple. When O'Dwyer reported to the London police station in May 2011, he was told that the UK case against him wouldn't be pursued – but there was a sting in the tail.

"So we had a momentary sigh of relief, says Ms O'Dwyer. "Then – I'm not kidding – the next sentence is 'oh, we've got an extradition warrant for you from America instead, so you must go immediately to the court', and then the handcuffs were on, he was taken away."

O'Dwyer was presented with two US charges: criminal infringement of copyright, and conspiracy to commit criminal infringement of copyright. Each carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.Ms O'Dwyer recalls the wait in the extradition court.

"I had to sit in the courtroom, waiting for Richard's turn, and see all these people being processed by the judge for extradition to Europe. And I just thought 'Crikey! This is going to be Richard soon.' It was the most terrifying day so far."

As O'Dwyer's case wasn't to be heard that day, his hearing was simply for bail, which he says the US prosecutor opposed. Bail was agreed – with him suggesting terms to the non-technical solicitors and judge. But as O'Dwyer didn't have his passport or the £3,000 bail bond by 5pm, he spent the evening in Wandsworth prison.

"Being in prison for setting up a website was something myself, all the other inmates I talked to, and the policemen, were confused with," says O'Dwyer. "It's not something you'd expect, would you?"

When his bail was cleared the following day, the legal challenge he faced was considerably bigger than he had expected.

His extradition hearings are based solely on proving he has a case to answer in the US, that his actions, if proven, would be a crime in both countries, and other technical points. Challenging the details of the case could only be done in US courts – not in the UK. O'Dwyer finds himself baffled that it's the US that's prosecuting him: "The evidence is here, I'm here, I've never been to America since I was about 10," he says.

"There's literally no reason I can think of why it has to be heard in America … at no point was the site ever in America.

"I think they're trying to use my website as a sort of guinea pig to try to scare everyone else making linking websites."

In an attempt to give her son a relatively normal life as his case progresses, and to keep him in the UK, Ms O'Dwyer – a community nurse working with terminally-ill children – has become a campaigner against the extradition of her son and others to the US.

Having previously barely used the internet, and having never heard of Twitter or other social networking, she has raised more than 20,000 signatures on a petition for O'Dwyer, and spends a lot of her day online, starting before work and often going until 1am or later.

"I just went straight home after we got Richard the next day and started looking at the internet to find out about extradition. That was the first thing. I was just on it, full on, looking at copyright law, looking at extradition, trying to find a good barrister," she says.

"I don't think I started any campaigning until June or July. People helped me – I thought 'what do you do with Twitter?' – but people helped me and I got going."

It's an effort not lost on her son, who has continued his course in multimedia studies at Sheffield Hallam university against the background of his extradition hearings. He is working with Sheffield consultancy Rocca Creative as a year in industry.

"I don't let their extradition warrant ruin my life. Otherwise you'd fail, just sit in your room all day moaning. They'd be winning if I let it do that.

"[Julia O'Dwyer] seems to be doing it all day, I think. Non-stop. She does a lot of the actual work on things. And if she didn't … I think I'd probably be there by now. I'm very grateful for her doing that."

So far, their efforts have proved unsuccessful. Despite gaining the support of senior politicians including Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron and home affairs select committee chief Keith Vaz, O'Dwyer's extradition was approved in court, and by home secretary Theresa May, who must clear all UK/US extraditions. His appeal efforts are currently centred on a high court hearing, due later this year.

As his case continues, O'Dwyer is trying to keep his focus on his studies, and what he'd like to do afterwards. Described as an "enterprising young man" by Dominic Raab, Conservative MP for Esher and Walton, one of the MPs who have spoken in support of his case, O'Dwyer wants to continue developing websites – despite the TVShack experience.

"I like doing web development, and hope to keep making various websites. It'd be good to join a big web company I think, just for the experience, I like Twitter, Facebook. I did apply to Google for a placement once, too," he says. "But eventually I'd like to start my own project. New startup companies keep coming up all the time, don't they?"

But until his battle through the UK courts – and with the home secretary – is over, any career plans O'Dwyer wants to make for the next decade come with a hefty degree of uncertainty.

And if O'Dwyer were to be extradited, the people behind other sites which link to TV shows and films – which include Google, Bing, Reddit and many of the other sites at the heart of the web – may have their own reasons to fear for the future.

twitter:

parmy twitterde op maandag 25-06-2012 om 12:46:30 Seeing a mixture of guilty and not guilty pleas from alleged LulzSec hackers at their plea hearing in London. #Anonymous #LulzSec reageer retweet

twitter:

parmy twitterde op maandag 25-06-2012 om 12:52:58 Ryan Ackroyd, accused of being 'Kayla,' pleads not guilty to all four charges against him. #LulzSec reageer retweet

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Kabinet ondertekent omstreden ACTA-verdrag nie

Het Kabinet zal ACTA verdrag niet ondertekenen en ratificeren. Dat schrijven demissionair staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie Fred Teeven en demissionair minister van Economische Zaken Maxime Verhagen vandaag in een brief aan de Tweede Kamer.

Tweede Kamer tegen ACTA

In mei nam de Tweede Kamer twee moties aan tegen ratificatie en ondertekening van het omstreden ACTA-verdrag. Daarin stond onder meer dat ACTA ruimte laat voor “onbedoelde interpretaties met negatieve gevolgen”. Nu blijkt dat het Kabinet de moties niet naast zich neerlegt. Wel zou een volgend Kabinet anders kunnen besluiten, zo staat er in de brief:

. “De regering heeft het standpunt ingenomen niet tot ondertekening over te gaan tot onomstotelijk vaststaat dat het verdrag in lijn is met de grondrechten.”

De Europese Commissie heeft het Hof gevraagd een oordeel te vellen over de grondwettelijkheid van ACTA, nadat verschillende landen zich kritisch over het verdrag hadden uitgelaten. Dat oordeel wordt pas over ruim een jaar verwacht. De stemming van het Europees Parlement staat over een week al op de planning, op woensdag 4 juli.

Commissies verwerpen ACTA

Vorige week bleek dat de Internationale Handelscommissie het verdrag met een meerderheid verwerpt. Dat lijkt erop te wijzen dat het Parlement dit ook zal doen. Eerder stemden al vier andere adviescommissies tegen. ACTA-rapporteur David Martin adviseerde het Parlement tegen te stemmen. Eurocommissaris Neelie Kroes, met de portefeuille ICT en Telecommunicatie, zei op een conferentie te verwachten dat ACTA het niet zal halen wegens de massale protesten.

ACTA, het Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is een internationaal handelsverdrag dat auteursrechten op het internet wil beschermen. Het verdrag is omstreden omdat gevreesd wordt dat het de internetvrijheid en het recht op privacy aantast. Door het verdrag zou het internet verder kunnen worden gecontroleerd en individuele internetters worden aangepakt. De onderhandelingen voor ACTA vonden grotendeels achter gesloten deuren plaats.

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Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology

Wikipedia has banned the Church of Scientology from editing any articles. It’s a punishment for repeated and deceptive editing of articles related to the controversial religion. The landmark ruling comes from the inner circle of a site that prides itself on being open and inclusive.

In a 10-1 ruling Thursday, the site’s arbitration council voted to ban users coming from all IP addresses owned by the Church of Scientology and its associates, and further banned a number of editors by name. The story was first reported by The Register.

Self-serving Wikipedia edits are hardly new. Wired.com readers pulled in an award for discovering the most egregious Wikipedia whitewashes by corporation and government agencies, but this is the first time the site has taken such drastic actions to block those edits.

And the edits are unlikely to stop, now that the user-created encyclopedia has become one of the net’s most popular sites and is often the top result for searches on a subject. Being able to massage an entry about oneself or one’s company has proven difficult to resist, even for founder Jimmy Wales — despite Wikipedia’s official warnings to the contrary.

The Church of Scientology, founded by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1953, has had a long and bloody history on the net — dating back to Usenet groups, where critics maintain that the organization is a cult that brainwashes its members and sucks them dry financially. The Church, which teaches that humans are reincarnated and lived on other planets, says it is a legitimate religion.

The case, which began in December, centers on more than 400 articles about the ultra-secretive Church and its members. Those pages have hosted long-running, fierce edit wars that pitted organized Church of Scientology editors — using multiple accounts — against critics of Scientology who fought those changes by citing their own or one another’s self-published material. In fact, this is the fourth Wikipedia arbitration case concerning Scientology in as many years.

The committee also banned a number of editors individually, prohibiting them from editing any Scientology-related articles for at least six months. Those privileges can be reinstated afterward if they show they can play nicely by Wikipedia’s rules.

While most disputes involving the Web and Scientology in the past year have involved anti-Scientology activists who bind together under the name Anonymous, that group is largely not involved in this argument, because only registered accounts are able to edit the articles under dispute.

The Church of Scientology did not immediately return a voice message, asking for comment.

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New site Megabox from Megaupload's Kim Dotcom

Megaupload owner Kim Dotcom has announced his plans to launch a new website, despite still being under arrest.

The 38-year-old tweeted an image of Megabox, a site he said would allow recording artists to sell music directly to fans.

It is not clear when the new website will be launched.

Mr Dotcom was arrested in January in New Zealand because, alleged the FBI, his site was being used for piracy.

Speaking about his new site, Mr Dotcom tweeted: "The major record labels thought Megabox is dead. Artists rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you."

In an interview with bit torrent news site TorrentFreak.com last year, Mr Dotcom said the service would allow artists to keep 90% of earnings from their music.

Hearing set

Following his arrest, Mr Dotcom's assets were frozen and he has been placed under house arrest at his New Zealand mansion.

Prominent internet rights group the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) is taking the FBI to court over its handling of users' files, with a hearing set for 29 June.

It argues that users of the site have a right to access their files which were seized in raids prior to the arrest of Mr Dotcom and several of his team.

"We've asked the court to implement a procedure for all consumers, not just our client, to recover their data," the EFF told technology news site Ars Technica.

Among Mr Dotcom's tweets is a picture of himself with Steve Wozniak.

Mr Dotcom told TorrentFreak that the Apple co-founder was "totally supportive" of the efforts of the EFF.

The trial of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and the site's management team is due to start on 6 August.

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Washington’s cyber war - at home and abroad

After reports that the US designed the greatest cyber viruses in history with Flame and Stuxnet, Washington faces a predicament in justifying the duality in its cyber policy and defending its anti-piracy rhetoric.

While the US has repeatedly condemned cyber-attacks and hacking when aimed at itself, Washington’s involvement in the coordinated US-Israeli cyber attack on the Natanz nuclear facility raises a troubling problem for the government.

“We’re setting a precedent for other nations,” Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told RT. “And that’s where the real problem lies, because we’ve been criticizing China for allegedly attacking United States companies and the US government, while at the same time we’ve been engaging in the same conduct with other countries.”

Given the US policy of cyber-espionage, some analysts are concerned that this aggressiveness may provoke a reciprocal response.

“When you attack, for instance, Iran’s nuclear program, you provide the Iranians with your weapon, your worm, which they can then reverse-engineer, take apart, figure out how it works, turn it around, and send it your way,” said John Feffer, a co-director at Foreign Policy in Focus.

But while Washington has supposedly clandestinely been using the Flame virus to steal files, photographs, keystrokes, and video from Middle Eastern computers, it has been trumpeting internet security at home and abroad.

The US is working hard to extradite Kim Dotcom on piracy charges. Federal prosecution wants Kim Dotcom for allegedly inflicting $500 million damage in lost revenue to copyright holders, and the FBI has shut down his website Megaupload for the illegal distribution of copyrighted material via filesharing.

The US has also vigorously pursued Wikileaks’ Julian Assange while starting court martial proceedings against Bradley Manning, the US officer responsible for sharing material. Washington claimed that the leaks represented a threat to national security and the safety of its soldiers abroad.

However, not only has Washington been complaining about its own security breaches while engineering the Flame virus to essentially do the same, but the CISPA bill threatens to infringe upon the civil liberties of the American public.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a bill which would allow for the US government and certain technology and manufacturing companies to share internet information in order to prevent cyber-terrorism.

But organizations such as ACLU and Strategy for Free Press are fully aware of the risks of allowing the US government to snoop on its own citizens in the interests of national security, and have criticized the bills.

“One of the things that we’re concerned about at Free Press is that we’re fanning all of these fears about cyber-security that will cause us to over-react, to actually pass cyber-security legislation that cuts into our free speech rights as individuals, that compromises free speech on the internet in ways that would ultimately be harmful to everyone,” Tim Karr, Senior director of Strategy for Free Press told RT in an interview.

“We saw that CISPA recently went through the house… so they obviously feel that the climate is right to pass this kind of legislation. Again I think we have to be really careful because nobody really knows how significant the threat is. The fear is that Congress will overstep in ways that cut into our basic civil liberties.”