Anonops #14: All about control

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AnonOpsSweden writes debate article

On November 24th our twitter account was suspended by twitters support. On November 27th, the day Swedish media wrote about this event, we got the first email from twitter in response to our suspension. Their answer to the reason for our suspension is confusing to say the least. They refer to a tweet whereby we shared a link to a hacked website. The twitter account which tipped us off about the hack has also been suspended.
What we do is report to our followers about injustices in the World. We spread news about the Anonymous collective and other related news that may be of interest. We have done this and it is now also why we have been suspended.

The alleged breach of contract is to have shared information from a third party, in this case, a link to a hacked Spanish right-wing website. This can be compared to when the Swedish newspaper Expressen published the article, "Sweden Democrats website hacked again" (2010-09-18). If this were to result in the same kind of treatment that Twitter have applied, then Expressen would lose the right to publish anything at all as a result of this single newspaper article. The only thing that was done was to forward events from a third party, which reasonably is covered by the right to freely notify media, or equivalent in each country with good journalistic practice.

The problem is not that we have been suspended, but the incredible power that Twitter has on the public debate. Sure, we have accepted twitter TOC but when a private company has such power over the public debate another part of society has failed. Twitter has proven to be a very good platform for the dissemination of news around the World and the subsequent debate. This is something we strongly support, but as the owner of this platform, they must take the responsibility that comes with it and ensure any reports of abuse are handled in a reasonable manner and within a reasonable time frame. It should be mentioned that other accounts have had time to be both disabled and re-enabled before we got information about the reason for our suspension, and therefore we have not been able to defend against it.

See also, "UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights' Article 9, paragraph 2", which guarantees that, if arrested, you are to be immediately informed of the reason for this. Suspension from internet platforms such as Twitter, in that they now have to be considered as part of the public sphere is essentially the same results as an arrest as well as arbitrary censorship. No one can reasonably consider it too much to ask that someone accused and even punished for something also must be told what they are accused of and given a reasonable opportunity to respond to the charge within a reasonable time. This has also given the opportunity for others to attempt identity theft.

The fact that even our backup account was blocked with no links to hacked websites published is reminiscent of censorship. Certainly there is the possibility of mistakes committed but then we demand that these be corrected immediately. Twitter has the ball on their half of the pitch and it is time for them to start playing fair.

We are Anonymous,
We are legion,
We do not forgive,
We do not forget.
Expect us!

twitter:

redbull304 twitterde op woensdag 28-11-2012 om 18:52:04 Welcome back @AnonOpsSweden We missed you! <3 #Anonymous reageer retweet

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Syrian Internet Is Off The Air

Starting at 10:26 UTC (12:26pm in Damascus), Syria's international Internet connectivity shut down. In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet.

We are investigating the dynamics of the outage and will post updates as they become available.

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https://petitions.whiteho(...)tm_campaign=shorturl

we petition the obama administration to:

Declare Anonymous as a domestic terrorist organization.

Anonymous should be declared a domestic terrorist organization for repeated First Amendment violations, threats, bullying and cyber-terrorism acts. Distributed denial of service attacks negatively affect businesses and should in no way be considered a "sit in" or a form of speech.

Their continued support of hacks against law enforcement agencies and foreign governments must be ended.

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Syria Files, Wikileaks, Anonymous and dirty affairs

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Big outcry on Wikileaks that last week has published more that 2.4 million emails allegedly obtained from continuous hack against Syrian government and organizations connected to the regime.

The correspondence of “Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies” between August 2006 and March 2012 has been defined embarrassing for the government of Damascus and its allies, but the email also reveal uncomfortable truths on the West governments actions.

It’s the case of Finmeccanica affiliate Selex Elsag that sold to Syria its Tetra network for encrypted communications. The deal was made in 2008, before the beginning of the Arab Spring, but some emails leaked show ongoing relationship between the regime and the Italian company.

The email demonstrate the intermediary role of Greek company Intracom, an email dated February 2nd, 2012 discusses ”the arrival of Selex engineers in Damascus to train Intracom Syria technicians on Tetra technology, including at helicopter terminals. The email does not specify whether they are police or military helicopters,”

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Anonymous declares war on Syrian government Web sites

Online hacktivist group blames Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the Internet blackout blanketing the country and vows retaliation.

Concluding that the Syrian government was responsible for the country's Internet blackout, the online hacktivist group Anonymous has announced a campaign against Syrian government Web sites hosted outside the country.

The Middle Eastern country began experiencing an Internet outage earlier today, and many people on Twitter reported that phone lines are down as well. All 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet, according to Renesys, which operates a real-time grid that continuously monitors Internet routing data.

Anonymous said it had conducted an "exhaustive analysis" of the blackout and determined that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had severed fiber-optic and coaxial cables going into Syria.

"Essentially, they have physically 'pulled the plug out of the wall,'" Anonymous said in a press release. "As we discovered in Egypt, where the dictator Mubarak did something similar -- this is not damage that can be easily or quickly repaired."

Characterizing the outage as a "desperate move by a dying regime," Anonymous said it would begin a campaign at 6 p.m. PT dubbed "Operation Syria" to remove all Web assets belonging to Assad's government hosted outside the country. The group said its first target would be servers for all Syrian embassies, beginning with the embassy in China.

The hacker collective has ratcheted up its online attacks against Middle East governments in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the group launched a hacking blitz on Israel in retaliation for air strikes on Gaza. The hacking spree also targeted retail and business sites, allegedly resulting in the defacement or shutdown of hundreds of sites. Israel's government said its Web sites logged more than 44 million hacking attempts in just a few days.

"By turning off the Internet in Syria, the butcher Assad has shown that the time has come for Anonymous to remove the last vestiges of his evil government from the Internet," Anonymous said.

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Raided for running a Tor exit

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Yes, it happened to me now as well - Yesterday i got raided for someone sharing child pornography over one of my Tor exits.
I'm good so far, not in jail, but all my computers and hardware have been confiscated.
(20 computers, 100TB+ storage, My Tablets/Consoles/Phones)

If convicted i could face up to 10 years in jail (min. 6 years), of course i do not want that and i also want to try to set a legal base for running Tor exit nodes in Austria or even the EU.

Sadly we have nothing like the EFF here that could help me in this case by legal assistance, so i'm on my own and require a good lawyer.
Thus i'm accepting donations for my legal expenses which i expect to be around 5000-10000 EUR.
If you can i would appreciate if you could donate a bit (every amount helps, even the smallest) either by PayPal (any currency is ok):

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Justice For Jeremy Part II. You Hear Us Yet?

Just as important as recent revelations regarding the circumstances surrounding Jeremy Hammond’s case, such as the fact that Thomas Kavaler was a client of Stratfor, is that Kavaler’s firm, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, has represented victims of the Statfor hack. According to public documents belonging to Cahill Gordon & Reindel, in 2006 the law firm brokered a $600,000,000 credit agreement between multiple clients of Stratfor. Again, in 2007, Cahill Gordon & Reindel represented Merrill Lynch, a Stratfor client, in connection with a 1.4 billion dollar loan. These claims are supported by Stratfor’s “master client list,” published by Wikileaks and available at http://wikileaks.org/gifi(...)ient-list-2-23-.html, and together the documents show that Cahill Gordon & Reindel has a history of representing Stratfor clients.

Merrill Lynch is a long-term and important client of Cahill Gordon & Reindel who has overseen hundreds of millions of dollars in Merrill’s investment banking arrangements. For example, the relationship between Cahill and Merrill is evidenced by a $600,000,000 credit agreement dated in 2006, in which CHR LLP acted as special counsel to Merrill Lynch, in their capacity as Administrative Agent, on an investment banking arrangement with another Stratfor client AES Corporation. This document, http://www.scribd.com/doc(...)-20090807-EXHIBIT-10, shows that Cahill Gordon & Reindel oversaw the execution of the aforementioned agreement. The relationship between Cahill and Merrill continues into the present and is further referenced in the firm’s legal news briefs.

In a note on another investment banking deal, http://www.cahill.com/news/legal_news/101542, orchestrated, on Merrill’s behalf, by CGR:

. Cahill represented BofA Merrill Lynch as sole book-running manager and BMO Capital Markets, CIBC, HSBC, RBC Capital Markets, Scotiabank, and TD Securities as co-managers in connection with the Rule 144A/Reg S offering of $350,000,000 aggregate principal amount of 7.5% Senior Secured Notes due 2017 by Ainsworth Lumber Co. Ltd., a Canadian company. Proceeds from the offering and a concurrent rights offering will be used to refinance existing indebtedness.

This, we believe, shows that Kavaler and Preska, through her husband, have a strong financial interest in maintaining a favorable relationship with Stratfor clients.

There are few safeguards to ensure that Preska, either through conscious or unconscious bias, would not retaliate against a defendant based upon an interest in protecting her own financial livelihood, as Merrill Lynch generates substantial fees for CGR. As a partner of the firm, Kavaler is a direct beneficiary of those fees. As supporters of Jeremy Hammond we demand that these concerns be addressed, immediately! Our investigations show that many of the companies Cahill Gordon & Reindel has represented, having been clients of Stratfor, were victimized by the very act that Jeremy Hammond is being prosecuted for and that Cahill Gordon & Reindel, having represented these companies, stand to benefit from the prosecution of Jeremy Hammond. We demand a fair trial! We demand justice for Jeremy!

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Is Russia Running a Secret Supply Route to Arm Syria’s Assad?

On Nov. 27, a clip appeared on YouTube of a Russian-made Syrian military helicopter apparently being hit by Syrian rebels using a surface-to-air missile. The footage of the gunship, smoking as it turns and flies away, suddenly made the most effective killing machines in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s military look very vulnerable, as the brutal war between the Syrian government and anti-Assad rebels continues. Luckily for Assad, help appears to be on the way.

One day before the clip appeared, hackers from the group Anonymous leaked what they claim is a cache of documents stolen from the Syrian Foreign Ministry. As first reported by the non-profit investigative news organization, ProPublica, one set appears to detail shipments from Moscow to Damascus of 240 tons of newly printed Syrian money, which the Russian government has publicly acknowledged printing for the Assad regime. Another document looks to be a flight plan for four shipments of refurbished helicopters, also going from Moscow to Syria. The shipments, whose cargo the document lists in English as “old copter after overhauling,” include one delivery on Nov. 21, a second one on Nov. 28, and two more planned for the first week of December. According to the document, the payment for these shipments was made “in cash,” and their circuitous route through the skies above Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan would circumvent the airspace of all the countries that have imposed a weapons embargo on Syria.

(PHOTOS: Inside Syria’s Slow-Motion Civil War)

“It’s getting to Syria by the back door,” says Hugh Griffiths, an arms trafficking expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which operates an air-trafficking surveillance project on behalf of the European Union. Griffiths, who says the leaked flight plan appears to be genuine, sees it as the latest step in Russia’s effort to repair and then deliver Assad’s fixed-up helicopters by any means necessary. This effort has already come up against some major hurdles, with the U.S., the E.U. and Turkey making extensive efforts to stop such deliveries from crossing their airspace or territorial waters.

In June, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Russia for shipping attack helicopters to Syria; a week later, after British officials joined her calls for the shipments to stop, the Russian ship that was making the delivery—the Alaed—was forced to turn back after its British insurance company pulled its coverage. The Alaed reportedly made another attempt to fulfill the shipment in July, this time in the company of a flotilla of Russian warships. Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly warned Russian counterparts over the pattern of their arm sales to the Syrian regime.

According to the documents leaked by Anonymous, Russia has since begun transporting Syria’s patched-up helicopters by air. TIME emailed copies of the documents to the spokesman of Russia’s state arms dealer, Rosoboronexport, who declined to comment on them. But the company has previously said that it is repairing helicopter gunships for Syria under an old contract, which it says it is legally obligated to carry out regardless of the sanctions imposed by the U.S., E.U. and various Arab states. “None of these events will influence our relationships with our traditional markets in any way,” the head of Rosoboronexport, Anatoly Isaykin, told TIME in June.

And under international law, there is nothing to stop them. Russia and China have used their veto power three times in the U.N. Security Council to block sanctions against Syria over the past two years. Russia’s helicopter deliveries to Syria may be politically sensitive but they are perfectly legal.

According to the hacked documents, the helicopters were picked up from Ramenskoe airport, also known as Zhukovsky, a military facility outside Moscow that houses the fleet of Russia’s secret police, the FSB. That is the same airfield that hosts the biennial Russian arms bazaar, where TIME found and photographed Syrian officials shopping for weapons this summer

(MORE: Russian Realpolitik: Inside the Arms Trade with Syria)

The Syrian Airlines plane that is apparently ferrying the helicopters to Syria is registered under the code YK-ATA and has been on SIPRI’s watch list for two years, Griffiths says, ever since it started flying refurbished helicopter gunships to Syria. During one such shipment in 2010, Griffiths says, the government of Lithuania, an EU member, learned the nature of the plane’s cargo and refused to allow it into Lithuanian airspace. Since then, the E.U. and Turkey have banned all Syrian aircraft from flying over their territory. In October, that led to a diplomatic spat between Ankara and Moscow when Turkish fighter jets forced down a Syrian airliner flying from Moscow to Damascus. Turkish authorities searched the plane for weapons, and Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they had found munitions and “military tools” inside. The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that the plane was carrying radar equipment, not military hardware.

Still, Turkey’s vigilance seems to have forced Russia to cobble together a new route for the helicopter gunships, says Peter Danssaert, an expert at the International Peace Information Service, an Antwerp-based organization that tracks the weapons trade. He also says the flight plan released by Anonymous looks genuine. “It looks like [Syria and Russia] are trying to avoid a repeat of the Turkish situation,” Danssaert says. “It’s a classic example of clandestine arms movement,” says SIPRI’s Griffiths. “The avoidance of more rigorously monitored airspace in favor of Iraq and [Syria’s] regional ally Iran.”

But these shipments seem a lot less clandestine after the leak of the documents, which may create new problems for both Russia and Syria. The U.S. could put pressure on Iraq, for example, to refuse overflight clearance for the Russian shipments, and that would again force Russia to scramble for a new route to Damascus. Given the determination it has shown so far, it is unlikely that Moscow will give up on its helicopter contracts with Syria altogether. So even as the Syrian rebels learn to shoot the Russian-made choppers down, Moscow will likely be there to patch them up again.

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REPORT: Anonymous Hacks Top Nuclear Watchdog Again To Force Investigation Of Israel

It appears the hacking collective Anonymous has compromised the internal computer systems of the world's top nuclear watchdog for the second time in two weeks, Adam Kredo of The Washington Free Beacon reports.

The hackers claim to have seized “highly sensitive” nuclear data and satellite imagery from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and threaten to publish the confidential information if the IAEA does not investigate Israel's unofficially acknowledged nuclear program.

The group, called Parastoo (Farsi for bird), declared that it obtained documents from the IAEA's internal “nuclear data section”—including " Confidential ‘SafeGuard’ Documents, Satellite Images, Official letters, [and] Presentations”—and published a couple of satellite images, screenshots of the IAEA's internal system, an internal IAEA letter as well as the names and emails of IAEA judges and IAEA auditors.

"IAEA cannot just keep us away by turning off their Servers (either old or new ones!)," the group said in a statement, which also lists parts of the IAEA system it says is under its control. "There are plenty more of where this information came from but we guarantee that these information will stay in a very safe place with us. This information only released to open eyes of IAEA and independent media to real threat of world peace, Israel."

Last week IAEA chief Yukiya Amano recognized the first hack—which led to the publication of personal information of hundreds of IAEA scientists—but suggested that no sensitive information about Iran's atomic activities had been stolen.

The newest statement from the hackers ends with Anonymous' tagline and a question:

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.

Your next move, what is it going to be?

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Op maandag 3 december 2012 13:17 schreef heartz het volgende:
We zitten in december.
Hoeveel arrestaties zouden er dit jaar wereldwijd gedaan zijn op 'Anonymous hackers'?

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Beacons of freedom: The changing face of Anonymous

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^{03 Dec 2012}

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since summer 2011, over 100 alleged participants have been arrested around the globe, from Romania, Turkey, Italy, the UK, the US, Chile and Germany.

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Since 2008, when individuals started to organise diverse collective actions under the banner of Anonymous, a living model was created, demonstrating to the world what a radical politics of dissent on the internet looks like. Even if Anonymous was to vanish, its history, exploits and propaganda material are here to stay; there will likely be others in different forms and with distinct twists who will take its place.

What is a little less clear is what will eventually become of freedom of expression online, given the increasing capabilities for surveillance, censorship and control all over the world. Is Anonymous merely the party at the funeral of online freedom? Or does it represent the irreverent clowns, rabble rousers, and tricksters who are keeping the reaper at bay and enabling others, from protesters on the street to elected representatives in parliament, to join the raucous political carnival and challenge threats to personal privacy and freedom?

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Stop the Madness: An #Anonymous Counterproposal to the #ITU

In one way, this could be summed up as "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But there's actually much more to this. The reality is that our sentiments are completely oppposed to the statist model that is represented by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and many of the "member states'" proposals that address the Internet at the WCIT. It's not enough for us simply to say "Don't fix it." We understand a need for a counterproposal to the nation and state-driven model of voting by governments on Internet as a "solution."

Even if governments in such a statist model opened the (ITU) system fully to a true multistakeholder system of comment and input, it would be an unwelcome system which we would reject. A 'representative' system in which governments hold full voting power over policies governing network using justifications such as "cybersecurity," "spam," while all the while using the system to conduct surveillance, deep packet inspection, and banning of specific types of software such as TOR and services including VPNs, all is unacceptable to us.

Aside from this, even if by some miracle none of these proposals (all of which we have seen through leaks coming out of the ITU) were to ever be approved, the notion of "one government, one vote" which the ITU currently utilizes inside of its own secretive halls (which have only recently been forced out slightly into the open by incessant pounding from a combination coordinated action of technology thought leaders and civil society groups, inclusive of #Anonymous collective(s)) is a pointless, antiquated notion. Not only does the concept of "one government, one vote" in essence ensure that (in today's age) successful and advanced governments that provision internet services freely to the people are marginalized, it means that oppressive governments (of which there is now a majority in the world, especially if we look at the WCIT participants) will dominate the course of such proceedings. Even if no concurrences or even if no high level principles for ITRs on the internet are agreed to at the WCIT due to the concurrence and voting provisions of the ITU, the worst and most oppressive governments (which again, are in the majority) come away having had the opportunity of a convention at which they have deliberated and agreed about the policy that they will set for their internet future. The ITU's introduction of the discussion of internet at the WCIT proceedings has caused a great deal of harm even before the beginning of WCIT12, for example, as the Russian Federation has already made plans to outlaw TOR software on the basis of its actions within the context of ITU / WCIT. The Netherlands raised this as a concern very early in the process of WCIT review.

What, then, is the #Anonymous counterproposal?

If it is the insistence of statist organizations such as the ITU and what it refers to as "member states" (a term which we object to, since it implies a concept of belonging that the ITU has no right or privelege to claim) that there be some concurrence on ITRs and that the so-called "member states" should have the ability (not granted by the rest of us in the world, that much is certain) to mystically ordain through some arcane ITU ritual, some new Internet principles in your ITRs or TD64 documents, REMEMBER: that there are only 190 or something of you who are voting or reaching concurrence on it, and there are over 7.056 billion people in the world, and so basically you do not count for shit if you are one of the "member state" voting representatives, sorry to say ~ this is particularly true if you are one of those state representatives proposing to trace, filter, conduct surveillance, or otherwise mess with the Internet as part of your proposals through the ITU / WCIT. We know who you are, because it has basically all leaked by now.

Our counterproposal therefore is this.

We all count.

We all have a vote. Everybody. All over the world, whoever has access to the internet.

If you don't like it, too bad for you.

We'll stick with a broad-based coalition of people who can work with organizations like ICANN, ISOC, Regional Internet Registries, OpenNIC, civil society groups, and pretty much anyone all over the world that's ready to handle the business of governance of internet proposals in a serious way. We disagree that there should be a "new season of cooperation" between ICANN and the ITU. We don't think that the ITU can nor should handle "cybersecurity" nor "spam" type regulation nor should these issues be addressed in the ITRs or TD64s as principles either. To the extent that these issues are problems they can be discussed, debated, and "policy-ized" in multistakeholder institutions that have worked in the past (the ones mentioned above are fairly good, even if they need improvement) but quite frankly, most people who raise the specter of "cybersecurity" problems are really trying to make a bid for control for elements of the internet, and if you're smart you know that it can't be controlled by governments. But if you're honest you also know that governments that develop national laws by and large haven't resulted in a balkanized internet (even China is having to face the music, the great firewall can't last forever) but that they will each always have their laws. The real problems begin if you abandon elements of the governance of the internet to a statist institution, the ITU, which essentially through the WCIT is serving as a convention of deliberate restraint upon the internet, not incremental but immediate, in a fashion that should concern all people.

If you are the U.N. ITU or frankly any U.N. organization, you are not the right people to be handling these matters. You don't have any experience in it. You've shown how closed off you are. Just keep on doing satellite registration and working on getting grants for expanding broadband for internet in rural areas and stuff like that. You've done some OK work there, but your other stuff sucks. We've had to fight tooth and nail for the better part of a year just to get you to open up a touch. Not exactly the sign of an open organization ready to handle "internet governance" of any kind. Also, you are statists.

Again, if it wasn't already clear:

There are something like 190 of you at the UN ITU that "vote" or come to concurrence in arcane and secretive processes that you believe should affect the rest of the entire world. We do not have to and will not accept the results of your deliberations. We categorically reject your statist shit. For those of you who are there who are arguing against the proposals at the ITU WCIT that would impact the Internet, thanks - that is much appreciated. Sorry you had to be there.

This is just a small sample of us that oppose what you are doing at the ITU, but here:
http://googleblog.blogspo(...)t-free-and-open.html
http://www.freeandopenweb.com/#loc=3/8.0000/22.0000
Something like 2,397,000 (Two million, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand) people want a #freeandopen web and stand in opposition to the #ITU model as of the time this pastebin was launched into the interwebs. Obviously, that's a lot more than 190 or however many government representatives there are that "vote" or "concur" at the ITU WCIT.

So take note.

The ITU is irrelevant.

The people of the world are relevant.

The #Anonymous counterproposal to the #ITU is simple, that that the people of the world count.

That every voice counts, and that it will be counted in a multistakeholder process not governed by governments nor by the ITU.

That is all.

Goodnight.

- #Anonymous

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ITU Approves Deep Packet Inspection Standard Behind Closed Doors, Ignores Huge Privacy Implications

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Techdirt has run a number of articles about the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) currently taking place in Dubai. One of the concerns is that decisions taken there may make the Internet less a medium that can be used to enhance personal freedom than a tool for state surveillance and oppression.

Against that background, a story published by the Center for Democracy & Technology about the ITU's work in the area of standards takes on an extra significance:

twitter:

Crypt0nymous twitterde op woensdag 05-12-2012 om 16:30:09 Tango Down:.itu.int & itu.ch still down via #OpWCIT | #WCIT | #ITU | #WCIT12 | #Anonymous reageer retweet

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The United Nations and the Internet: It's Complicated

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The immediate threat to the Internet as we know it is the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) scheduled for December in Dubai by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a U.N. body whose remit has thus far been limited to global telephone systems. Members meet behind closed doors. Their policy proposals were until recently accessible only to members -- until activists forced transparency upon them through a website called "WCITLeaks." The leaked documents reveal how a number of governments -- in league with some old-school telecommunications companies seeking to regain revenues lost to the Internet -- are proposing to rewrite global international telecommunications regulations in ways that opponents believe will corrode, if not destroy, the open and free nature of the Internet. (For readers wanting to delve into details, a number of nonprofit organizations including the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Internet Society have published analyses of the leaked documents and other recent ITU statements.)

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History has shown that all governments and all corporations will use whatever vehicles available to advance their own interests and power. The Internet does not change that reality. Still, it should be possible to build governance structures and processes that not only mediate between the interests of a variety of stakeholders, but also constrain power and hold it accountable across globally interconnected networks. Right now, the world is only at the beginning of a long and messy process of working out what those structures and processes should look like. You might say we are present at the creation.

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Adviseurs Opstelten hekelen hackende politie

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“Kinderporno wordt als argument misbruikt wordt om absurde bevoegdheden te introduceren. Net zoals tien jaar geleden ‘terrorisme’ te pas en te onpas gebruikt werd. (…) De minister zet de noodzakelijke samenwerking met de hackersgemeenschap onder druk zet door ethische hackers te achtervolgen. Het cybersecuritybeleid dreigt te mislukken; de minister beweegt zich als een olifant in de porseleinkast.”

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Police breakthrough in 'Anonymous' hacking case

A young man has been convicted after organising distributed denial of service attacks on a number of businesses.

Police say four men were involved in the crimes using the banner 'Anonymous'.

Christopher Wetherhead of Holly Road, Northampton was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, the operation of a computer.

The three others are Jake Alexander Birchall of Little Neston, Cheshire, Ashley Rhodes of Bolton Crescent, London and Peter David Gibson of Castleton Road, Hartlepool, Cleveland.

Working under online nicknames including 'Nerdo' and 'NikonElite', the group targeted a number of companies from the digital entertainment industry that make up the anti-piracy lobby.

The group then switched their attentions to companies including Mastercard and PayPal after their withdrawal of services from Wikileaks.

DCI Terry Wilson of the Police Central e-Crime Unit, said: "These are important convictions which confirm this type of activity is not merely civil protest but is serious criminal conduct.

"The activity has not only significant financial and reputational implications to businesses endeavouring to operate online but also an effect on the general public's right to access online services.