Anonops #16: Snowden leaked it all, who is next?

Its Over 9000!!! [Original Video and Audio]

LOLPRAH: OVER 9000 PENISES!

Tom Cruise Scientology Video - ( Original UNCUT )

Message to Scientology

Operation Payback #Anonymous Message RE: ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, Internet Censorship & Copyright

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BarrettBrownLOL twitterde op maandag 03-09-2012 om 02:16:10 And all this because man put in motion systems that returned to enslave him #ProjectPM reageer retweet

Anonymous Hacks Westboro Baptist Church Website LIVE

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http://www.thinq.co.uk/20(...)persecute-anonymous/
NATO leaders have been warned that WikiLeaks-loving 'hacktivist' collective Anonymous could pose a threat to member states' security, following recent attacks on the US Chamber of Commerce and defence contractor HBGary - and promise to 'persecute' its members.

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From a single hashtag, a protest circled the world

(Reuters) - It all started innocuously enough with a July 13 blog post urging people to #OccupyWallStreet, as though such a thing (Twitter hashtag and all) were possible.

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Gabriella Coleman Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication

Trained as an anthropologist, Gabriella (Biella) Coleman examines the ethics of online collaboration/institutions as well as the role of the law and digital media in sustaining various forms of political activism. Between 2001-2003 she conducted ethnographic research on computer hackers primarily in San Francisco, the Netherlands, as well as those hackers who work on the largest free software project, Debian. Her first book, "Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking" is forthcoming with Princeton University Press and she is currently working on a new book on Anonymous and digital activism. She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, including ones from the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Institute for Advanced Study.

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Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action

^{Gabriella Coleman, April 6 2011}

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Our Weirdness Is Free

The logic of Anonymous—online army, agent of chaos, and seeker of justice.

_{by Gabriella Coleman, [01.13.2012]}

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Coding Fredom [PDF]

The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking

^{Gabriella Coleman 2013}

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Anonymous And The War Over The Internet

This article is the first in a two-part series tracing the development of the amorphous online community known as Anonymous, pranksters who have become a force in global affairs.

^{The Huffington Post, Saki Knafo. Posted: 1/30/12 12:20 PM ET | Updated: 2/1/12 07:36 PM ET}

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Anonymous by Anonymous

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Freedom fighters or cyber-terrorists?

Internationally famous for cyber-attacks against the Church of Scientology, government agencies of the US, Israel, Tunisia, Uganda, and others; child pornography sites; copyright protection agencies; the Westboro Baptist Church; and corporations such as PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and Sony, who are the hacktivist collective known as ‘Anonymous’? What do they think? What motivates them?

In November 2012, The Imaginary Book Co. invited Anonymous to share their thoughts. We wanted to try and capture something of the essence of an imaginary non-organisation, to preserve it as a time-capsule for the future. We believe we’re witnessing the birth of something important, although perhaps it’s too early to even say what it is yet: a new form of democracy? Time will tell...

We assured Anonymous we would not edit, collate, correct, censor, comment upon, or judge what we received. That’s for others to do. We would simply print. We didn’t know what we’d get, if anything. This is what we got.

Anarchic, chaotic, sensible, deep, shallow, thoughtful, radical, revolutionary, and funny, this book is the first time Anonymous have written in their own words; plenty has been written about them, most of it inaccurate. And who’s to say this book itself isn’t more disinformation? Does it express the hopes and desires and motivations of the entire collective? Undoubtedly not; just a small sample of the thousands of reasons why anyone would associate themselves. Nevertheless, it’s a snapshot of Anonymous, right here and now, at this moment in time. If you want to know where Anonymous is headed, this is the book for you. When your government starts burning books, this is the one they’ll come for first…

Published to coincide with Anonymous’ worldwide “Million Mask March” on November 5th 2013, this 212 page paperback book, measuring 190mm x 250mm (7.72 x 10.08 inches) is packed with images, slogans and texts that explain, not only what Anonymous think, but how to get involved yourself.

All royalties from this book are being donated to FreeAnons, which provides legal and moral support for activists facing prosecution for involvement, alleged or otherwise, in Anonymous actions.

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op maandag 14-04-2014 om 15:28:57 "I just miss - I miss being anonymous." - Barack Obama” -.- reageer retweet

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Barrett Brown's New Book 'Keep Rootin' for Putin' Skewers Mainstream Media Pundits

Next week, Barrett Brown's legal defense fund is publishing the jailed journalist's hilarious new book, Keep Rootin' for Putin: Establishment Pundits and the Twilight of American Competence. Brown's new work takes down talking heads and argues for the revolutionary potential of the Internet. The book couldn't address his case directly, since his prosecutors secured a gag agreement, but implicitly shows why his legal battles are so important.

You remember Barrett Brown, the colourful author who loudly defended the hacktivist collective Anonymous. After the 2007 release of his first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny, Brown embraced the cutting edge by publishing his deep research into WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and leaked documents from military and corporate “cybersecurity” contractors in the Guardian, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. He did it all with gonzo flair, publicly labeling himself “Cobra Commander” after the cartoon character, addressing fellow activists by video from bubble baths while drinking wine, and the like.

His new book tears apart the error-ridden blather of five influential pundits and calls for their replacement by populist researchers and activists equipped with the Internet. He envisions a sort of cyber-Library of Alexandria, a more lateral space for public discourse based on the historical record rather than on opinion, often reckless or incoherent, paraded as fact and bestowed from above.

But the kind of inanity he blasts in Keep Rootin' for Putin is now aimed at him by the government. He faces more than a century in prison chiefly for sharing a hyperlink, allegedly, to cancelled credit card data from the Stratfor hack, which landed five million of the Austin-based intelligence firm's emails on WikiLeaks. The credit card data didn't come from him; he just pointed fellow researchers to it during the media buzz generated by the hack. His prosecutors shared the same link by putting it in his indictment, right there on Page 1. So it's okay, ethically, for the Department of Justice to share the link, but not for him to do it?

The government's stupidity extends to charging him for allegedly making threats against the FBI agent who raided his and his mother's homes. In addition to Brown's now-infamous YouTube rants against Special Agent Robert Smith, the prosecution cited his disapproving tweet quoting Fox News analyst Bob Beckel saying of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: “A dead man can't leak stuff...illegally shoot the son of a bitch.” They argue Brown's quoting of Beckel represents a threat against the FBI agent. But Assange is “not the alleged victim” Smith, Brown's lawyers say dryly in their January motion to dismiss the threat charges. “Mr. Beckel, to wit, remains unindicted.”

In that motion, the defense points out Brown's much-cited video quote that he was “going to ruin [Smith's] life and look into his fucking kids” was immediately preceded by the words “I don't say I'm going to kill him.” They point out the First Amendment requires such statements to rise to the level of a “true threat” of “physical harm” to become offenses. The motion lists the prosecution's selections from Brown's videos and Twitter timeline and shows which statements don't threaten bodily harm, which are conditional, and so on. Further, the context in the videos and on Twitter suggested he meant the sort of journalistic investigation/character assassination widely practiced by Anonymous.

Such Department of Justice stupidity is shielded by the sorts of pundits Keep Rootin' for Putin criticizes, because their professional output is noisy bullshit behind which the authorities can conspire unexamined. Brown aims to burn down the pundits' credibility.

First on the book's hit list is Thomas Friedman, unfortunately a bestselling author and twice-weekly columnist for the New York Times. He told readers in 2001 to “keep rootin' for Putin” as the man to reform Russia, in a column that paid attention to Moscow sushi bars but not the wily leader's creepy backstory. Brown points out that in 1999, Putin had been director of the Federal Security Service, the successor of the KGB, while the Kremlin was planning to bomb Moscow and blame it on Chechen terrorists. Agents from the Service were caught planting explosives in the city; other bombings were attributed to Chechens. Putin, elevated to prime minister, used the supposed attacks as a pretext to invade Chechnya, a war so popular it helped propel him to the presidency. Friedman ignored this deadly intrigue, and instead complimented the “California-Kremlin” rolls.

By itself, Friedman's mistake would be a story of a failed prediction and misplaced focus, but it gets worse. In an August 2008 column entitled “What Did We Expect?” Friedman mocked the Clinton and George H. W. Bush administrations for “short-sightedness” in foreign policy choices the columnist said fueled Putin's rise to power—with nary a word about his own, earlier propaganda for the Russian politician. These are day-in, day-out mistakes for Friedman, the book shows, but the New York Times has been feeding them to us for two decades straight.

The Washington Post gives us the same sort of serial nonsense, Brown explains, taking on Richard Cohen and Charles Krauthammer, two pundits for the paper whose columns have hit newsstands nationwide for 30 years. He traces how Cohen in 2007 accused Hillary Clinton of “forever” lying, then a year later blamed those who made the same claim, accusing them of committing a “ferocious mugging of memory.” He proves Krauthammer has been wrong about basically “every military and foreign policy matter on which he's opined from 1999 to 2010.” As Keep Rootin' for Putin piles up evidence, you begin to realize the mainstream media isn't there to inform you, but, whether through design or sheer incompetence, to distract you.

Brown wipes out William Bennett, host of a nationally syndicated talk radio show, anti-intellectual chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Secretary of Education under President Reagan, and author of such bestsellers as The Children's Book of Virtues. As drug czar under President George H.W. Bush, Bennett said beheading drug dealers would be morally appropriate (“I used to teach ethics—trust me,” he explained to talk show host Larry King) and blamed addiction on Satan. “Bennett is so full of horse shit,” Brown writes. “He could fertilize every bombed-out coca field from the Yucatan to Bolivia.”

The book's last target is Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic for 37 years. Brown ridicules Peretz's writing style, quoting this example: “The New York Post and Reuters both report not exactly that Bernie Madoff has cancer. But that he's told his fellow inmates that he has cancer, pancreatic cancer, at that. Which means that, if the tale is true, he'll be a goner soon, very soon. Unless there's a medical miracle, as sometimes there is even in such terrible afflictions of the pancreas.” Peretz's logic is no less tortured.

Keep Rootin' for Putin, in contrast, is a quick, fun read. You can knock it out in two or three sittings, and you need not be a news junkie to follow the arguments and get most of the jokes. It's written in a bloggy style, with interludes of Led Zeppelin lyrics and surreal examples. “Let us say that I am a Roman pundit named Barriticus,” Brown writes at one point, “and I am living a few years after the initial food riots have occurred. When I givemy magnificent oration, after first having made love to several high-born young ladies...” There are also plenty of Easter eggs for bookworms, with allusions to such writers as H.G. Wells and Dostoevsky.

The book is certainly not dumbed down. His analysis ranks up there with the best of the brilliantly paranoid political authors. You have to hope the Texas juries in his April and May trials scrutinize his case as closely as he does the pundits. Given that gag agreement, it seems Brown's prosecutors fear his intelligence.

Keep Rootin' for Putinis a manifesto, not just some book version of Media Matters, the liberal fact-checking outfit whose articles you email your right-wing uncle to refute the articles he emails you. Brown argues the Internet is our superpower for removing the pundits. It allows us to catalog and cross-reference their mistakes, making a book such as his easier to produce. He has an admirable way of calling for taking up arms without scolding us. “We have a chance to dismantle the obsolete media structure that has already crippled our nation to some great extent and will cripple it further,” he says, “unless those of us who recognize this problem take some sort of, like, action.”

Cutting through the hubris of the pundits, he points out, will clear the way for our own communications. “The most important fact of the 21st century is that any individual on the planet can now communicate with any other individual on the planet,” he says, explaining that we are no longer beholden to nationalist pundits who, as leech-like intermediaries, filter and firewall information. With global networks, we can conduct our own projects for news, analysis, and action. If you want to communicate with revolutionaries the pundits ignore until it's profitable, as Brown and Anonymous did to support the Arab Spring uprisings, you can. If you want to crowdsource research into leaked emails of the government's shady contractors, as Brown's ProjectPM did, you can.

That is, unless the government shuts you down—as they're trying to shut down Brown. This new power for the people, the Internet, with its ability to forge bonds between activists worldwide and publicly archive forbidden data on sites such as WikiLeaks, terrifies the authorities. He takes it all in stride. “Life is full of possibilities,” he notes, “most of them sarcastic.”

Brown, who pleaded not guilty to every charge, is ready for the courtroom battle. On his team is legal heavyweight Charles Swift, who represented former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Salim Hamdan before the Supreme Court in the most significant case to date dealing with the war on terror, winning Geneva Conventions protections for the prisoners and limits to presidential power. Hamdan was ultimately acquitted of all charges. Attorney Ahmed Ghappour, an expert in national security cases, is also on Brown's team. Free speech advocates Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have rallied to his defense.

The prosecution, despite the gag agreement, is already losing on the media front. This month, on House of Cards, a show popular enough to be mentioned on President Obama's Twitter timeline, the hacker character Gavin told the FBI to drop all of Brown's charges. Venues big and small, from this one to the New York Times to WhoWhatWhy, have been questioning the government's case.

Keep Rootin' for Putin has its faults. It could have been buttressed a bit with some statistically-minded analysis of the flows of capital and patronage that put the media institutions and their pundits in power. His asides sometimes get a little distracting, as when he states, “I'm also increasingly irritated by my own writing style.” But for the most part, the style is jazz.

As a generalist, Brown tended to shift focus, which allowed him to draw connections between disparate subjects, but gave the book a bit of a rocky history. He started writing it in 2006, then stopped, then finished it in 2010 before diving into the wild world of Anonymous. The book was originally contracted with Cambridge House Press to be published under the title Hot, Fat, and Clouded: The Amazing and Amusing Failures Of America’s Chattering Class.

If you're at all interested in the media and its failures or the Internet and its potential, you'll find Keep Rootin' for Putin entertaining and, despite the pundits' ridiculousness, inspiring. To get a copy, visit the Free Barrett Brown website and follow @FreeBarrett_on Twitter for announcements. The book will be available for donors to his legal defense fund.

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Barrett Brown Signs Plea Deal in Case Involving Stratfor Hack

Barrett Brown, whose case became a cause célèbre after he was charged with crimes related to the Stratfor hack, has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors, according to court filings.

Prosecutors filed a motion this week in a Texas court agreeing to seal the plea agreement, which the court granted (.pdf).

Brown’s attorney, Ahmed Ghappour, won’t discuss the matter, due to a court-ordered gag, but another document filed by the government this week (.pdf) hints at the nature of the deal.

In the document, which supercedes two of Brown’s previous three indictments, the government charges Brown with two crimes: allegedly assisting the person who hacked Stratfor after the fact, and obstructing the execution of a search warrant targeting Brown.

The first charge is a new one and relates to assistance Brown allegedly gave the person who hacked Stratfor “in order to hinder and prevent [his] apprehension, trial and punishment.”

According to the government Brown worked to create confusion about the hacker’s identity “in a manner that diverted attention away from the hacker,” which included communicating with Stratfor after the hack in a way that authorities say drew attention away from the hacker. The hacker is not named, and it’s not clear if it’s convicted Stratfor intruder Jeremy Hammond, or an earlier hacker who’s known to have penetrated the company first.

The obstruction charge relates to an attempt by Brown and his mother to hide a laptop from authorities during a search of her home in March 2012. Brown’s mother was separately charged with obstruction and given six months probation.

The two charges greatly reduce the amount of time he could face at a sentencing hearing, which previously had been estimated at more than 50 years.

Brown’s earlier indictments were poised to become a First Amendment test case. He was charged with 12 counts centered around a link he posted in a chat room that pointed to a file containing data stolen in 2011 from the intelligence firm Stratfor, or Strategic Forecasting. The data, stolen by Hammond, a member of the loosely affiliated Anonymous collective, included company emails as well as credit card numbers belonging to subscribers of Stratfor’s service.

Brown didn’t steal the data but simply copied a hyperlink from one public chatroom and reposted it to another.

Eleven of his charges accused him of aggravated identity theft for possessing and trafficking in stolen authentication features — which authorities identified as the three- and four-digit card verification value (CVV) printed on the back of the cards.

Last month prosecutors dropped these eleven charges against Brown, after his attorney filed a motion to dismiss on grounds that Brown’s alleged conduct did not violate identity theft statutes as written.

The twelfth charge, for access device fraud, had remained in place. That one accused Brown of illegally possessing the stolen cards — presumably cards that were found on his computer after he downloaded the Stratfor cache himself.

But that charge has disappeared from the superceding document the government filed this week, which replaced the indictment. In its place is the new charge for accessory after the fact.

Brown is scheduled to be re-arraigned, on the charges on the superceding document, on April 29 in Texas.

Brown is also facing charges related to threats he allegedly made against an FBI agent. It’s unclear if the plea agreement will cover that indictment as well. If it does, and the two cases are combined, Brown’s maximum statutory sentence would likely be five years.

Brown has been in custody since he was arrested in 2012 while in the middle of an online chat.

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How to Chain VPNs for Complete Anonymity

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Big name individual hackers and hacker groups everywhere in the news are getting caught and thrown in jail. Every time I see something like this happen, I won’t lie, I get a little sad. Then I wonder, how are these guys getting caught? If a group like LulzSec, with all the fame and “1337-ness” can get caught, I think my hacker comrades are doing something wrong.

When members of LulzSec started getting captured, it was because proxy and VPN services complied to federal request and handed over the private information of its users. I think this is wrong for a number of reasons—foremost, people should be able to have their own privacy respected. Today’s Null Byte will be demonstrating one of the methods around this: Chaining VPNs.

A VPN allows you to connect to a remote network, and over all ports, encrypt and forward your traffic. This also changes your IP address. Chaining VPNs is a tricky task, though there is a simple and uncommon method I know of. Using multiple VPNs together has the huge perk of being completely anonymous.

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F.B.I. Informant Is Tied to Cyberattacks Abroad

WASHINGTON — An informant working for the F.B.I. coordinated a 2012 campaign of hundreds of cyberattacks on foreign websites, including some operated by the governments of Iran, Syria, Brazil and Pakistan, according to documents and interviews with people involved in the attacks.

Exploiting a vulnerability in a popular web hosting software, the informant directed at least one hacker to extract vast amounts of data — from bank records to login information — from the government servers of a number of countries and upload it to a server monitored by the F.B.I., according to court statements.

The details of the 2012 episode have, until now, been kept largely a secret in closed sessions of a federal court in New York and heavily redacted documents. While the documents do not indicate whether the F.B.I. directly ordered the attacks, they suggest that the government may have used hackers to gather intelligence overseas even as investigators were trying to dismantle hacking groups like Anonymous and send computer activists away for lengthy prison terms.

The attacks were coordinated by Hector Xavier Monsegur, who used the Internet alias Sabu and became a prominent hacker within Anonymous for a string of attacks on high-profile targets, including PayPal and MasterCard. By early 2012, Mr. Monsegur of New York had been arrested by the F.B.I. and had already spent months working to help the bureau identify other members of Anonymous, according to previously disclosed court papers.

One of them was Jeremy Hammond, then 27, who, like Mr. Monsegur, had joined a splinter hacking group from Anonymous called Antisec. The two men had worked together in December 2011 to sabotage the computer servers of Stratfor Global Intelligence, a private intelligence firm based in Austin, Tex.

Shortly after the Stratfor incident, Mr. Monsegur, 30, began supplying Mr. Hammond with lists of foreign websites that might be vulnerable to sabotage, according to Mr. Hammond, in an interview, and chat logs between the two men. The New York Times petitioned the court last year to have those documents unredacted, and they were submitted to the court last week with some of the redactions removed.

“After Stratfor, it was pretty much out of control in terms of targets we had access to,” Mr. Hammond said during an interview this month at a federal prison in Kentucky, where he is serving a 10-year sentence after pleading guilty to the Stratfor operation and other computer attacks inside the United States. He has not been charged with any crimes in connection with the hacks against foreign countries.

Mr. Hammond would not disclose the specific foreign government websites that he said Mr. Monsegur had asked him to attack, one of the terms of a protective order imposed by the judge. The names of the targeted countries are also redacted from court documents.

But according to an uncensored version of a court statement by Mr. Hammond, leaked online the day of his sentencing in November, the target list was extensive and included more than 2,000 Internet domains. The document said Mr. Monsegur had directed Mr. Hammond to hack government websites in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and Brazil and other government sites, like those of the Polish Embassy in Britain and the Ministry of Electricity in Iraq.

An F.B.I. spokeswoman declined to comment, as did lawyers for Mr. Monsegur and Mr. Hammond.

The hacking campaign appears to offer further evidence that the American government has exploited major flaws in Internet security — so-called zero-day vulnerabilities like the recent Heartbleed bug — for intelligence purposes. Recently, the Obama administration decided it would be more forthcoming in revealing the flaws to industry, rather than stockpiling them until the day they are useful for surveillance or cyberattacks. But it carved a broad exception for national security and law enforcement operations.

Mr. Hammond, in the interview, said he and Mr. Monsegur had become aware of a vulnerability in a web-hosting software called Plesk that allowed backdoor access to thousands of websites. Another hacker alerted Mr. Hammond to the flaw, which allowed Mr. Hammond to gain access to computer servers without needing a user name or password.

Over several weeks in early 2012, according to the chat logs, Mr. Monsegur gave Mr. Hammond new foreign sites to penetrate. During a Jan. 23 conversation, Mr. Monsegur told Mr. Hammond he was in search of “new juicy targets,” the chat logs show. Once the websites were penetrated, according to Mr. Hammond, emails and databases were extracted and uploaded to a computer server controlled by Mr. Monsegur.

The sentencing statement also said that Mr. Monsegur directed other hackers to give him extensive amounts of data from Syrian government websites, including banks and ministries of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. “The F.B.I. took advantage of hackers who wanted to help support the Syrian people against the Assad regime, who instead unwittingly provided the U.S. government access to Syrian systems,” the statement said.

The court documents also refer to Mr. Monsegur’s giving targets to a Brazilian hacker. The hacker, who uses the alias Havittaja, has posted online some of his chats with Mr. Monsegur in which he was asked to attack Brazilian government websites.

One expert said that the court documents in the Hammond case were striking because they offered the most evidence to date that the F.B.I. might have been using hackers to feed information to other American intelligence agencies. “It’s not only hypocritical but troubling if indeed the F.B.I. is loaning its sting operations out to other three-letter agencies,” said Gabriella Coleman, a professor at McGill University and author of a forthcoming book about Anonymous.

During the prison interview, Mr. Hammond said that he did not have success hacking a large number of the Plesk websites that Mr. Monsegur had identified, and that his ability to create a so-called back door to a site depended on which operating system it ran on.
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TN
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I hope the FBI kept a tighter leash on these informants than they did on Whitey Bulger, but I doubt it. Last I checked, neither Brazil nor...
FC
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Given the current foreign situation between the US and Iran, Syria and Pakistan, I can understand the interest in gathering as much...
Norman Pollack
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More evidence of the National Security State under Obama as a threat to US civil liberties, in this case, the FBI, presumed to operate only...

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He added that Mr. Monsegur never carried out the hacks himself, but repeatedly asked Mr. Hammond for specific details about the Plesk vulnerability.

“Sabu wasn’t getting his hands dirty,” he said. Federal investigators arrested Mr. Monsegur in mid-2011, and his cooperation with the F.B.I. against members of Anonymous appears to have begun soon after.

In a closed hearing in August 2011, a federal prosecutor told a judge that Mr. Monsegur had been “cooperating with the government proactively” and had “literally worked around the clock with federal agents” to provide information about other hackers, whom he described as “targets of national and international interests.”

“During this time the defendant has been closely monitored by the government,” said the prosecutor, James Pastore, according to a transcript of the hearing. “We have installed software on a computer that tracks his online activity. There is also video surveillance in the defendant’s residence.”

Mr. Monsegur’s sentencing hearing has been repeatedly delayed, leading to speculation that he is still working as a government informant. His current location is unknown.

Exactly what role the F.B.I. played behind the scenes during the 2012 attacks is unclear. Mr. Hammond said he had been in constant contact with Mr. Monsegur through encrypted Internet chats. The two men often communicated using Jabber, a messaging platform popular among hackers. Mr. Monsegur used the alias Leondavidson and Mr. Hammond used Yohoho, according to the court records.

During a conversation on Feb. 15, 2012, Mr. Hammond said he hoped all the stolen information would be put “to good use.”

“Trust me,” Mr. Monsegur said, according to the chat logs. “Everything I do serves a purpose.”

Now, sitting in prison, Mr. Hammond wonders if F.B.I. agents might also have been on the other end of the communications.

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More context for Jeremy Hammond's allegations against FBI



New York Times - F.B.I. Informant Is Tied to Cyberattacks Abroad - April 23, 2014
nytimes.com/2014/04/24/world/fbi-informant-is-tied-to-cyberattacks-abroad.html

"But according to an uncensored version of a court statement by Mr. Hammond, leaked online the day of his sentencing in November, the target list was extensive and included more than 2,000 Internet domains."

The article refers to a previous paste, http://pastebin.com/xy8aQY9W
In view of NYT's reporting, we would like to add some additional context to this statement, with 3 previously unpublished paragraphs from Jeremy.

- -

On August 22, 2013, on what was supposed to be the eve of the sentencing of Hector Monsegur, aka “Sabu,” a former Anonymous comrade turned FBI informant, I released a short statement about the FBI’s use of Sabu, and by extension, me and my co-defendants, to break into the websites of numerous targets of the government’s choosing – including those belonging to foreign governments. The following day, we learned that Sabu’s sentencing was again postponed. The reasons behind these adjournments are not publicly known. But in any case, Sabu is not the real issue. What is important is how the FBI used him, and how they may still be using other hacktivists to gather intelligence and illegally break into websites without oversight, accountability or reprisal.

In my case, the FBI used Sabu to infiltrate and monitor hundreds of public and private hacker chatrooms where he was able to gain influence within Anonymous by claiming responsibility for hacks carried out by others, bragging to the media with hyperbolic quotes, accusing others of being sellouts and snitches, and encouraging hacks into government and corporate websites. He enabled hackers and facilitated hacks by supplying several servers for storage of hacked emails and databases, cracking encrypted password lists, suggesting specific targets, and offering step-by-step technical advice to people as they were breaking into systems. Impressionable and less experiences hackers, eager to please a visible Anonymous "leader" would send him their half-finished vulnerability findings; Sabu would then pass this information along to skilled hackers to finish the job.

The United States government hypes the hacker threat and celebrates convictions in order to justify the multi-billion dollar cyber security industrial complex, but they are guilty of the same crimes they aggressively prosecute and claim to work to prevent. Manipulating hackers to break into international websites to steal emails and databases is a previously undisclosed aspect of the wide-ranging cyber and surveillance operations being carried out by the NSA and other agencies. The government hopes that my conviction will legitimize the abusive tactics and illegal objectives it sponsors. I took responsibility for my actions, now it is time for the government to answer for its own crimes.

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Anonymous' Airchat Aims to Allow Communication Without Needing Phone or Internet Access

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Online hacktivist collective Anonymous has announced that it is working on a new tool called Airchat which could allow people to communicate without the need for a phone or an internet connection - using radio waves instead.

Anonymous, the amorphous group best known for attacking high profile targets like Sony and the CIA in recent years, said on the Lulz Labs project's Github page: "Airchat is a free communication tool [that] doesn't need internet infrastructure [or] a cell phone network. Instead it relies on any available radio link or device capable of transmitting audio."

The idea is that people all over the world, including those in rural areas and developing countries, will one day be able to communicate for free without the need for a mobile phone network, phone line or internet access.

While the project is workable at the moment, it is simply a proof of concept at this stage and Anonymous has revealed Airchat in the hope to get more people involved in developing the technology as well as raising funds.

twitter:

Anon_Cherry twitterde op vrijdag 25-04-2014 om 23:01:11 #Anonymous We are everywhere, even in #GTST lol 😁 #RTL4 #DutchSoapSerie http://t.co/1aRFziTZdL reageer retweet

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Barrett Brown lawyer: US tried to 'kill a fly with a sledgehammer'

Ahmed Ghappour speaks out after gag order was lifted and says effect of prosecutorial overreach is 'chilling to free speech'

The lawyer for Barrett Brown, the activist-journalist in jail in Texas on charges related to his involvement with computer hackers, has called for an overhaul in the way technology cases are handled by the criminal justice system to counteract potential abuses and excessive prosecutorial aggression on the part of the US government.

In his first substantive comments since a gagging order on Brown and his legal team was lifted last week, Ahmed Ghappour told the Guardian that in his opinion, the US government had tried to "kill a fly with a sledgehammer”. He accused prosecutors of imposing overly broad charges that had put unnecessary strain on the system, had profound personal implications for Brown who has been in custody for more than 500 days, and sent a chill across public debate.

“There needs to be discussion about how we avoid this kind of prosecutorial overreach in future. Prosecutors need to be more cautious in how they deal with complex cases like these to make sure the charges better reflect the conduct described, otherwise the effect is chilling to free speech,” Ghappour said.

He added: “The government’s original allegations did not fit the evidence, or the conduct, character or reputation of Barrett Brown.”

Last month the US government dropped 11 of the 17 counts it had brought against Brown, who faces three separate indictments. The dismissed allegations all related to a breach of the website of the private intelligence firm Stratfor that was carried out in 2011 by the hacking collective Anonymous.

The main instigator of the hack, Jeremy Hammond, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last November.

Brown was charged, most notoriously, with transferring stolen property, because he had posted a hyperlink on his own personal chat room, Project PM, to a website containing the hacked Stratfor material. Technology commentators warned that such a prosecution posed a threat to free speech on the internet because it raised a barrier to linking across sites on which so much of the culture of the web is based.

A day after Ghappour and the defence team filed a motion to dismiss those charges, the prosecution rolled over without explanation and dropped them.

“The government had no choice to drop the charges because they contained errors that were so wide of the mark they could not be put right by re-indicting him,” Ghappour said.

In a document released after the gagging order was lifted, the precise nature of Brown’s involvement with Anonymous over the Stratfor hack has been revealed. Paradoxically, far from attempting to commit fraud or to profit personally from the computer breach, Brown offered to contact the CEO of Stratfor to ask him whether the company wanted any redactions to be made in the hacked material before it was posted.

The document, which signed by both Brown and US attorney Sarah Saldana as a truthful account of events, quotes from internet chats between the journalist and the Anonymous hacker who carried out the Stratfor breach, named only as “O”. Brown writes to the hacker: “It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to tell Stratfor that you guys will consider making any reasonable redactions to emails that might endanger, say, activists living under dictatorships with whom they might have spoken… If they fail to cooperate, it will be on them if any claims are made about this yield endangering anyone”.

Ghappour told the Guardian that he found it ironic that the government had accused Brown of something so vastly different from what he actually did. “The government charged Brown with criminally transferring credit card information, when in fact what he did was to offer to redact sensitive material.”

The lawyer, a former computer engineer with considerable experience in super-computers, and who now teaches at the University of Texas law school, said hacking cases and other prosecutions involving new technology were so complex that grand juries and attorneys alike were often bamboozled by the evidence. “That makes the potential for abuse by the government much greater, so safeguards have to be better established.”

Brown will appear on court on Tuesday to plead guilty to all the remaining charges against him. The charges include: acting as an accessory after the fact to the Stratfor hack, threatening an FBI agent in a YouTube video, and interfering with a law enforcement officer serving a warrant on him.

The charges carry a maximum punishment of more than eight years, but Brown’s legal team will argue that the sentences should run concurrently and that given the insubstantial damage caused by the YouTube video, he should be released on time served. “Barrett expresses deep regret for what he did in making the threat, which he did impulsively at a time when he felt cornered and was unable to make rational decisions,” Ghappour said.

quote:

Silencing Barrett Brown

quote:

The previously unreleased transcript of Barrett Brown’s September 4 gag hearing in Dallas, obtained by WhoWhatWhy, shows just how far the government tried to go to shut up a “hacktivist journo” who challenged the status quo.

The lead prosecutor, Candina Heath, told the judge that, during the trial, Brown should be forbidden from publishing criticism of the government. That conversation, revealed in the transcript, was out of earshot of those in the gallery when WhoWhatWhy attended the hearing.

At the time of that hearing, Brown faced more than a century in prison for, allegedly, threatening an FBI agent, sharing a link to credit card data publicized during a hack, and conspiring to hide his laptops. Free speech advocates, such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, labeled the charges nothing less than retribution for his anti-establishment work.

But prosecutors sought to go further, with a gag order that undoubtedly would have been among the most sweeping restrictions on an American journalist’s free speech—reminiscent of the eighteenth-century Alien and Sedition Acts, which jailed writers and editors for criticizing the authorities.

quote:

hai Cambodia, Anonymous knocking on your backdoors

quote:

The National Police were cooperating with the FBI to conduct an investigation on [hacking] when we found out these two suspects hacked the NEC…and other government institutions." - Lieutenant General Chhay Sinarith, Cambodia's Ministry of Interior internal security department ************************************************************************************************* inviting the FBI in to your country to bust Anonymous is a bad idea. anyone reading this should be wondering why the FBI are even in Cambodia, is this US tax payer dollars at work, chasing students engaging in online protest around the world? th prime minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen has kept himself in office more than 27 years, does that sound like a democratic ruler to you? there are a lot of questions here:

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 mei 2014 12:40 schreef polderturk het volgende:
Het is lang geleden dat Snowden iets gelekt heeft. Zou hij nog iets achter de hand hebben?

May 5th arrests

quote:

http://0paste.com/5897

Anonymous / @Anarchoanon / #Every5th

MEDIA ALERT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: @anarchoanon anarchoanon@riseup.net
(We operate anonymously to avoid retaliation by police, but we are real
people wiling to work with you to help you tell this story as you see
fit.)

Denver 5/5- Wednesday, May 5th saw the 7th monthly “Every 5th” protest in
the streets of Denver. The loose internet-based activist collective known
as “Anonymous” has been holding these events to call attention to
different issues in the city and the nation. The last event on April 5th
was a protest against police brutality, which was predictably attacked by
the Denver Police Department. This month's protest was to call for an
“end to Denver's war on free speech,” to call attention to the
unconstitutional anti-protest measures often taken by the police
department. The number of marchers fluctuated between 30 and 100
throughout the day. With slogans and banners calling attention to police
brutality and free speech issues, the march went all around downtown,
passed through the Auraria college campus, and visited the 16th st mall.
While the march was on the sidewalk outside Rock Bottom Brewery on 16th
st, a line of riot police charged the march and violently pushed several
people, including elderly women and children, to the ground in addition to
making several unprovoked arrests. After a tense standoff outside Rock
Bottom, the march went back up 16th st to disperse at the capitol
building. As people dispersed to leave the protest, squads of Denver
police stalked people leaving the protest, ambushing groups and
individuals in parking lots and streets, apparently as “revenge” for their
protest against the Denver Police Department. It was very apparent to
eyewitnesses that Denver Police were maliciously targeting protesters in
an attempt to intimidate them into ceasing first amendment-protected
protest activity. The Denver Police continue to claim that their actions
were to keep the public safe, which is very odd when reconciled with the
sounds of innocent bystanders screaming as the police rushed and attacked
people who were standing on the sidewalk. The protest was not hurting
anyone, there was no danger and no acts of destruction. The only danger
present was that crowds of people on the 16th street mall might see that
there are people ready to stand up against the privatized, militarized,
and gentrified direction Denver has been taking of late.

An account by a mother who was violently knocked to the ground by DPD
during the attack on the crowd outside Rock Bottom Brewery:

“I was walking on the sidewalk, playing my drum when the police suddenly
attacked the crowd. A police officer pushed me to the ground, someone
picked me up, and then another police officer picked me up and threw me
into a man standing nearby. The officer then yelled at me to “get off of
him!” after the police themselves threw me into this man. This was my
first protest in Denver, and I never said “fuck the police.” I was
conducting myself in a peaceful and legal manner, and the police really
opened up my eyes in terms of how they deal with protests in this city. I
did not feel safe and in fact felt endangered by the officers' aggressive
behavior. I asked who was in charge, but no officers would tell me who is
in charge. Who is responsible for this? This is not ok.”

The person who provided the above eyewitness account is available for
interviews upon request. We can provide other eyewitnesses as well.

“A group of us was calmly walking away from the protest, heading towards
the Capitol Hill neighborhood. As we passed through a parking lot, a
group of police officers on bicycles suddenly surrounded us, rammed our
friend's bike with their bike, knocking him to the ground. They proceeded
to chase him and arrest him without explaining themselves. Another
individual present was punched in the face although he was never detained
or accused of a crime. This kind of behavior by Denver Police is clearly
a direct retaliation against us exercising our first amendment rights to
publicly denounce the corruption and brutality of this city's police
force. Today, I am ashamed to be a taxpayer in the city of Denver,
because my tax dollars are financing the violent repression of peaceful
dissent.”

Video of police assaulting the crowd outside Rock Bottom Brewery:

May 5th arrests

A very interesting conversation between Denver Police twitter account and
“Your Anon News” an influential anonymous twitter account with 1.2 million
followers:
pic.twitter.com/KzelGDN08B
pic.twitter.com/h8HBqICijn
pic.twitter.com/lVoZZR6Pcj
pic.twitter.com/9ZcDM1WZgQ
pic.twitter.com/2AHAw8bkxr
pic.twitter.com/mhr8ygqN5T
pic.twitter.com/oVgmNpWxhk
pic.twitter.com/uTqlYl1fbi

quote:

Protesters set up camp at net neutrality rally outside FCC headquarters

Occupy-style protest against proposed 'open internet' rules that protesters say will give control of the web to major corporations

Protesters set up camp outside the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) on Wednesday to fight plans they say will create a two-tier internet and hand control of the web to major corporations.

The rally – reminiscent of the Occupy-style rallies that started in 2011 – started outside the FCC’s Washington headquarters at noon with protesters from Fight For the Future, Popular Resistance and others unfurling banners reading “Save the Internet”.

Protesters then announced they intend to camp out outside the FCC until 15 May when the regulator is expected to announce new rules for the internet that will formalise plans for higher speed internet for those able to pay for it. On Wednesday Google, Facebook and Amazon joined around 100 other technology companies in signing a letter to the FCC rejecting "individualised bargaining and discrimination" for internet traffic.

"[The FCC must] take the necessary steps to ensure that the internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce," the letter says.

Public interest groups have become increasingly concerned that the new rules will end “net neutrality” – the concept that all internet traffic should be treated equally on the web. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has defended his plans for what he calls the “open internet”.

The future of net neutrality has effectively been in limbo since a federal court struck down most of the FCC’s open internet order in January in a case brought by Verizon. The loss paved the way for fast lanes that have the major broadband providers have lobbied hard for, and for which they plan to charge extra to their biggest users.

"We don’t have armies of paid lobbyists at our disposal but we can not let the freedom of the internet be hijacked by giant monopolies,” said Evan Greer of Fight For The Future.

More than a million people have now signed petitions to the FCC calling for them to enshrine net neutrality rules and prevent a tiered system.

A group of 86 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Free Press and Reddit, are asking the FCC to reclassify broadband companies as "telecommunication services", which would give the commission the authority to impose net neutrality rules on them.

Wheeler has said the FCC’s new rules will protect net neutrality.

“The Internet will remain like it is today, an open pathway,” Wheeler wrote in a FCC blogpost in April. “If a broadband provider (ISP) acts in a manner that keeps users from effectively taking advantage of that pathway then it should be a violation of the Open Internet rules.”

Critics charge, however, that cable firms will successfully challenge any new rules to tie their hands unless the FCC’s regulatory control over them is increased and point out cable firms have already effectively created a two-tier system. After the FCC lost to Verizon in January, a tiered system has already started to emerge with Netflix and others striking deals for a faster service with cable firms.

“The internet is as necessary to our society as shelter and water, people should have equal access to it,” said Greer. “We have seen an unbelievable amount of support from people since these new rules emerged. It may seem technical but it affects everyone’s life and people are not going to just stand by and let this happen.”

quote:

Hacker-Turned-FBI Informant Sabu Has Sentencing Postponed for Seventh Time

quote:

It seems like the FBI is not quite finished with one of its most valuable assets, Hector Monsegur (aka Sabu) the former Anonymous and LulzSec member who had his sentencing postponed for a seventh time on Wednesday.

Monsegur was due before Judge Loretta Preska in New York on Thursday but he has once again had his sentencing postponed, according to sources speaking to the Daily Beast website.

No new date has been set for Monsegur's next court appearance yet, giving us no indication of whether or not the FBI want to keep using Monsegur for a long or short period of time. His sentecning was last adjourned on 8 May.

Monsegur will face punishment for crimes associated with the 50 Days of Lulz campaign he and his fellow hackers carried out which saw them attack companiess such as Sony and EA as well as law enforcement agencies including the CIA and SOCA.

The former Anonymous hacker has already pleaded guilty to 12 criminal charges, including multiple counts of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking, computer hacking in furtherance of fraud, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.

quote:

Autistic Hacker Helped FBI Nail Anonymous Boss

Criminal charge was dropped after man, 26, cooperated with the feds

quote:

MAY 13--In an effort to identify leaders of Anonymous, the FBI arrested an autistic New York man and then used him as a cooperating witness to help snare a notorious fellow hacker who was subsequently indicted for his central role in a series of high-profile online attacks, The Smoking Gun has learned.

In return for the hacker’s cooperation--and in light of his autism--Department of Justice officials initially agreed to defer prosecution on a criminal complaint charging the man with hacking Gawker Media, an illegal incursion that yielded registration information for more than a million individuals who signed up with the popular blog network.

Federal prosecutors eventually dropped the hacking charge altogether, according to court records that were kept under seal long after the hacker’s arrest by a team of FBI agents. Investigators were concerned that if the man’s cooperation became public, he would be harassed by hackers then being targeted by the FBI. Additionally, disclosure of his cooperation, prosecutors contended, “would jeopardize substantial ongoing investigations into the defendant’s former co-conspirators, many of whom are suspected of carrying out substantial computer hacks against several businesses.”

So, to “help ensure the defendant’s safety,” Thomas “Eekdacat” Madden became, for a time, “John Doe.”

The 26-year-old Madden, whose cooperation has not been previously disclosed, lives with his parents in Troy, a city 10 minutes outside Albany. An only child, Madden graduated in December 2010 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he completed a double major in computer science and mathematics, according to school records.

quote:

Report claims Anonymous will protest Glenn Greenwald for ties to PayPal billionaire

The Internet hacktivist group Anonymous is calling for protests against author and civil liberties advocate Glenn Greenwald because of his relationship with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

In a release posted to Pastebin, the secretive activist group is calling for members to attend and disrupt scheduled book signings where Greenwald will be promoting his new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.

The point of contention between Greenwald and the group stems from his relationship with First Look founder and eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

eBay purchased PayPal in 2002.

Representing the “PayPal 14,” — a group charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after they attempted to disrupt PayPal’s operations in retaliation for PayPal’s refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks — Anonymous stated that the 14 are “struggling to raise more than $80,000 in court-ordered restitution” that must be paid to eBay/PayPal.

Anonymous claims that, while the 14 face jail and fines, Greenwald and Omidyar have been cashing in on the “digital information war.”

“Greenwald and Pierre occasionally express tepid ‘support’ for the PayPal14. But where’s the $80,000? That’s lunch money to Greenwald or Pierre. For the PayPal14, it’s a crushing financial burden,” they wrote. “Pierre, according to Forbes, rakes in $7.8 billion per year while the PayPal14 struggle to stay afloat. Pierre started off First Look, Greenwald’s news media outlet, with $50 million in funding — tens of millions more than $80,000.”

Anonymous is also complaining that Greenwald and Omidyar are watering down the “hacktivist movement” by not publishing all of Edward Snowden’s documents, or heavily redacting them, thereby keeping “aggressive, non-celebrity journalists from finding answers and pro-freedom hackers from building better defenses.”

Anonymous members are instructed to attend Greenwald’s book signings to protest, record their activities, hand out fliers, and explain the relationship between the author and his financial benefactor.

The “YourAnonNews” Twitter account expressed support for the campaign on Monday, along with the account representing Occupy Wall Street.

The Twitter account for WikiLeaks also backed the campaign, though they suggested that only PayPal — and not Greenwald — should be targeted.

. #Paypal14 are rightly fuming about Paypal boss @Pierre Omidyar (though the proxy attack on @GGreenwald is harsh) http://t.co/r4EauU1wTd

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 12, 2014

Omidyar has previously called for leniency for the PayPal 14, saying they should have been cited for a misdemeanor instead of facing felony charges.

Raw Story has requested a statement from Glenn Greenwald.

quote:

Anonymous projected sign: ‘United Stasi of America Don’t Spy on Us’



Hacktivist group Anonymous projected another message on the USA embassy in Berlin on Thursday night before heading away in an unidentified van. Disguised in capes and Guy Fawkes masks, the Anonymous members used a generator and a projector to display the message: ‘United Stasi of America Don’t Spy on Us.’ This is the third time the group has projected their protest against the US.

The action comes one week after Edward Snowden’s latest document ‘black budget’ was published in the Washington Post, outlining how the NSA use encryption codes, similiar to those used in banking systems, to trade data on medical records, web searches, Internet chats, and phone calls of citizens around the world.

The Guardian, who Snowden released NSA secret files to, published an article on Friday morning stating how the NSA uses internet traffic to access communications around the world and how to avoid getting spied on.

quote:

State Watchdog threatens to block Twitter under new blogger bill

A senior official from Russian control agency Roskomnadzor says new restrictions would apply to all bloggers who write in Russian, even if they live abroad, adding that whole platforms can be blocked inside the country for refusal to cooperate.

The new law defines ‘popular bloggers’ as those having 3,000 or more visitors per day and demands that such people were registered under their real names and follow some basic rules similar to those mentioned in the Law on Mass Media – verify their reports and abstain from posting slander or anything that can be described as ethnic, religious or social hatred. The law must come into force on August 1 this year.

However, the law has no provisions connected with the global and trans-border nature of blogs and the internet as a whole. The document is not saying directly if it applies to cases in which both the authors of blogs and the blog platforms are based outside Russia.

Deputy head of Roskomnadzor Maksim Ksendzov said that this would not matter.

“The law is not tied to the territorial registration or passport data. If someone writes in Russian or any other language used by the peoples of the Russian Federation, if he or she is seeking to attract the Russian audience’s attention and if they use Russian sites for this, such people will have to observe the law,” the official said in an interview with popular daily Izvestia.

Ksendzov added that as the law offers no means to influence the foreign-based bloggers the Russian agency would most likely have to block the whole blog platform or social network in Russia, but only after they refuse to take down the illegal content. Roskomnadzor already practices such scheme as part of the enforcement of the federal law that bans the dissemination of terrorist and extremist information and also the federal law on protection of children.

The official said that major companies like Twitter and Facebook were still reluctant to cooperate, unlike Google that had been removing offensive and illegal videos from its YouTube portal for some time already.At the same time, the way Twitter was encoding its traffic would lead to complete blocking of the microblogging service on the Russian territory even after Roskomnadzor blocks only one tweet, he noted.

Ksendzov suggested in the interview Twitter’s objectives in Russia were not only commercial, but also political and this was the reason of the uncooperativeness.

“Twitter is a global tool for distribution of political information. When they interact with us they use the audience as a means for reaching their goals. At the same time the value users and their interests for the company is extremely low,” the head of the Russian watchdog said.

“By gradually refusing to comply with our demands they are deliberately creating the conditions in which the blocking of this resource on our country’s territory becomes practically inevitable,” Ksendzov complained.

Following the release of the interview senator Ruslan Gattarov also blasted Twitter’s uncooperativeness at a Friday session of the Upper House’s commission for development of information society.

“The ugliest situation of all is that we have with Twitter. This company is not observing the Russian laws and only slightly reacts to the Roskomnadzor demands,” Gattarov said.

At the same time, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, known for his fondness with technology and gadgets, has played down the situation in his Facebook account.

“As an active user of social networks, I hold that the Russian laws must be observed by everyone – the networks and the users alike. But certain civil servants, responsible for the development of the industry must sometimes turn their brains on and give no interviews that announce the shutdown of social networks,” Medvedev wrote.

Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the authorities in the Kremlin were convinced that all foreign companies must observe all laws in force on the Russian territory. “The law exists to be observed,” Peskov told Interfax.

quote:

Anonymous #PayPal14 Campaign Spreads Pirated Copy of Glenn Greenwald's Book on Snowden

quote:

Anonymous, the online hacktivist collective, is calling on people to read and disseminate a pirated copy of Glenn Greenwald's new book about Edward Snowden, in protest at his links to eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

The campaign is a bid to raise awareness about the plight of the PayPal 14, a group of Anonymous members who were convicted of taking part in a cyber-attack against PayPal in 2010.

The campaign is trying to help raise the $80,000 (£51,170) the group has been court ordered to pay PayPal in compensation for the damage it caused during the attack.

At the time of publication, the the GoFundMe page has raised $6,514 of the total.

The campaign, which was announced by Anonymous on Monday, called on supporters to physically protest at events Greenwald was taking part in this week to promote his book called No Place to Hide, which details his publication of a trove of top secret documents stolen by Edward Snowden and relating to governmental spying at the NSA and GCHQ.

Billionaire backer

In the press release published by Anonymous, the group said:

"As Greenwald gets a book tour, the PayPal14 get sentencing hearings. He is traveling the world to promote his book about Snowden's NSA leaks, and the 14 are struggling to raise more than $80,000 in court-ordered restitution for eBay/PayPal, companies ultimately overseen by Greenwald's billionaire backer, Pierre Omidyar."

Greenwald announced earlier this year that he would be working as one of the editors of a new website called The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media - a company belonging to Omidyar.

PayPal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay, which is why Omidyar is being targeted.

The Anonymous campaign calls on people to help promote the fundraising drive, to engage Greenwald and Omidyar on Twitter by using the hashtag #PayPal14 and to physically protest at Greenwald's book signing.

Pirated copy

While not a part of the original press release, many of the prominent Anonymous Twitter accounts - including @YourAnonNews which has more than 1.2 million followers - have been promoting links to a pirated electronic copy of Greenwald's book.

Greenwald kicked off his book tour on Tuesday in New York before travelling to Washington and Boston. While a member of Anonymous has claimed to IBTimes UK that there we people their in Anonymous' name, at least at some of the events, it doesn't seem as if they had much impact on the signings themselves.

Greenwald has yet to respond publicly to the campaign and both he and Omidyar have not responded to requests for comment from IBTimes UK.

Wikileaks, which was the reason the attack on PayPal happened in the first place, has pledged its support to the fundraising drive and protest campaign against Omyidar, but said the "proxy attack" on Greenwald was "harsh".

quote:

Snowden’s likely involvement with CryptoParty

quote:

It appears likely that Edward Snowden was involved with CryptoParty. Cryptome has uncovered a public key for cincinnatus@lavabit.com, which is the same alias he used to contact Glenn Greenwald — and it’s associated with the organizing of an event in Honolulu, Hawaii in December 2012, where the now-famous NSA whistleblower was then living. Here’s the original page via Wayback Machine. Although I’m awaiting official confirmation from his lawyers, the odds are very high that it was him. CryptoParty is a global movement that was spawned nearly two years ago from an idea by Asher Wolf, an Australian activist.

quote:

There’s also the video that Snowden created which I discovered in July last year, and has since been confirmed by Greenwald; a tutorial on GPG encryption for journalists, which was credited to “Anonymous 2013″ and posted by the Vimeo user anon108. Although setting up PGP proved too difficult for Greenwald, behind the voice-changing effect is someone who sounds extremely knowledgable about the mechanisms of digital security. Combined with the EFF and Tor Project stickers pictured on his laptop, the Anonymous and CryptoParty connections show a man attuned to the struggle for our rights on the internet; one with his eye on those communities.

quote:

PayPal14

In December 2010 when Wikileaks was stirring the pot of controversy with its hard hitting leaks, cowardly companies like PayPal and Visa caved into hidden but significant political pressure and blocked Wikileaks. This act of blatant censorship infuriated many citizens who expressed their dismay on every available online channel. Anonymous was well poised to harness the fury ball of anger and did so by coordinating one the largest DDoS campaigns the Internet has yet witnessed, variously called Operation Avenge Assange or Operation Payback.

Media attention was frenzied, catapulting this collective of collectives out of relative obscurity and into the international spotlight. In the New York Times, one of the Internet’s original patron saints—John Perry Barlow— prophetically cast the Anonymous campaign as “the shot heard round the world—this is Lexington.” In quoting Emerson’s poem “Concord Hymn,” Barlow hearkens to the first gunshot fired in the American Revolutionary war at the Battle of Lexington, which marked the outbreak of armed combat between the Colonies and the Kingdom of Great Britain. The information war, well under way, had seen a decisive battle.Months later, a slew of ordinary participants were arrested for their contributions.

For many who supported the protest, this once spectacular and exciting collective outcry has likely faded from memory. But for those facing the charges, it never went away. They have endured three years of expensive, time consuming and stressful battles against a mighty and well resourced US DoJ. Thanks to excellent legal support, they have accepted a plea bargain and the fine they are collectively facing is now a lot less than what it could have been: $86,000.

The DDoS is understandably a controversial political among geeks, hackers, and citizens. It has its limits and strengths and I myself am far from being a staunch fan. Whatever you may think of the DDoS (and I recommend looking out for this book on the DDoS by Molly Sauter), the Pay Pal 14 were driven by conviction. They have explained it with candor on their fundraising website: “They were not spreading malware, hacking servers, or even damaging the systems themselves. . . These people were making a statement and publicly exposing PayPal in front of their shareholders and the world on behalf of those of us who value freedom of information.” Their intervention also came at the right time helping to keep the issue of corporate censorship under the public limelight for a few precious weeks.

The time has come for those of us who believe in the right to dissent online to help them raise the funds so the can resume their interrupted lives.The government banks on the fact that activist movements, especially those running on spontaneity, often dissipate, fracture, and vanish. They bank on the fact that putting activists through an expensive legal wringer will cower many others into silent submission. We can prove them wrong. Lending support sends a strong message back: under adversity, the movement can preserve and take care of their own.

Yesterday I pledged $350 and if matched in 36 hours, I promised to double the amount. I was thrilled to see it took less than five hours for that to happen. I hope you consider donating what you can and spreading the word.

quote:

The Connection Between The Copyright Industry And The NSA

quote:

As I described in a previous column, the copyright monopoly cannot be enforced without mass surveillance. There is no way to tell a private conversation in a digital environment from a monopolized audio file being transferred, not without actually looking at what’s being transferred. At that point, the secrecy of correspondence has been broken and mass surveillance introduced.

The copyright industry has been continuously and relentlessly pushing for more mass surveillance, including surveillance of citizens who aren’t under any suspicion (“mass surveillance”) for this reason. They defended the now-illegal Data Retention Directive, which logs everybody’s communications and location all the time (specifically including yours), as well as similar initiatives.

Most notably, the copyright industry is known for using child porn as an argument for introducing mass surveillance, so that the mass surveillance can be expanded in the next step to targeting people who share knowledge and culture in violation of that industry’s distribution monopolies. This is a case study in taking corporate cynicism to the next level.

This mass surveillance is also what feeds the NSA, the GCHQ, and its other European counterparts (like the Swedish FRA). It is continuously argued, along the precise same lines, that so-called “metadata” – whom you’re calling, from where, for how long – is not sensitive and therefore not protected by privacy safeguards. This was the argument that the European Court of Justice struck down with the force of a sledgehammer, followed by about two metric tons of bricks: it’s more than a little private if you’re talking to a sex service for 19 minutes at 2am, or if you’re making a call to the suicide hotline from the top of a bridge. This is the kind of data that the spy services wanted to have logged, eagerly cheered on by the copyright industry.

This has a direct connection to free speech as such.

In Germany, the effect of this logging and violation of people’s privacy has been studied extensively. According to a study conducted by polling institute Forsa before the data retention was in place, over half of German citizens would refrain from placing communications that could be used against them in the future – drug helplines, psychologists, even marriage counseling. A significant portion of Germans had already refrained from taking such contacts for that reason.

quote:

How Anonymous accidentally helped expose two Chinese hackers

quote:

How did security firm Mandiant put names to two previously unknown Chinese hackers who, it says, steal American corporate secrets for the Chinese government? With a little inadvertent help from Anonymous.

Mandiant's 74-page report covers a particular hacking group referred to as "APT1" and contends that the group works for or under the direction of the Chinese government as part of the military's secretive "Unit 61398." The report ties a huge string of hacks over the last few years to Unit 61398 and goes on to show the building where the hacks might be hatched. The report is stuffed with detail uncommon in these types of stories, and even includes a translated Chinese document showing a local telecom company agreeing to Unit 61398's request for additional fiber optic connections in the name of state security.

The Mandiant researchers then tried to go one step further, putting at least a few real names to the coders involved. (BusinessWeek recently did something similar, with fascinating results.) Mandiant began with a malware coder who goes by the name "UglyGorilla"—a name which is left repeatedly in code tied to the APT1 group.

Back in 2007, for instance, Mandiant says that UglyGorilla "authored the first known sample of the MANITSME family of malware and, like any good artist, left his clearly identifiable signature in the code: 'v1.0 No Doubt to Hack You, Writed by UglyGorilla, 06/29/2007'[sic]." But despite all the uses of the name "UglyGorilla" buried in code samples, leads to the person's actual identity were hard to come by—until Anonymous hacked security firm HBGary Federal in early 2011.

quote:

#OpPayBack: Anonymous Takes Down US Army, Air Force, Marines and Navy websites

Earlier today, the online hacktivist group Anonymous conducted a massive Denial-of-service attack (DDoS) on defense related websites of the United States.

Attack was conducted under the banner of Operation PayBack. As a result, nineteen high profile websites belonging to US Army, US Marines, US Air Force and US Navy were taken down.

The news of successful DDoS attack was announced by Anonymous via their Twitter handle @Anon_Centre. While the list of all targeted websites is available here.

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The army.mil domain was down for hours as seen in the below given screenshot:



It is unclear if Anonymous will keep on attacking these domains or there are some other targets in the list. Stay in touch as we will keep you posted with more on this attack.

At the time of publishing this article, all targeted websites were restored and working online.

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An open letter to members of the New Jersey District Court, FBI, and DOJ, consisting of an invoice.

To the Honorable Susan D. Wigenton, US Attorney Paul J. Fishman, Assistant US Attorney Zach Intrater, and FBI Special Agent Christian Schorle,

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?" -Shakespeare

It has long been one of the fundamental pillars of our system of law that when one commits a crime against another, they are made to give restitution to their victims.

I have, over the course of 3 years, been made the victim of a criminal conspiracy by those in the federal government. This was a conspiracy of sedition and treason, perpetrated with violence by a limited number of federal agents to deprive me of my constitutional rights to a fair trial and unlawfully put me in prison. This is not a hallucination on my part. These claims were in fact verified by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals when they vacated the false judgement against me imposed by the court of Judge Susan D. Wigenton. Perhaps you haven't read the opinion of the appeals court exposing all of you as liars and seditionists yet. If so, here you go: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/04/11/weev.pdf

On January 18th, 2011 I was kidnapped at gunpoint by the US Marshals from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the town where I was born, based off a criminal complaint based on complete falsehoods written by FBI Special Agent Christian Schorle. The complaint alleged I had broken into AT&T's servers (I hadn't, as confirmed by the appeals court which verified no evidence was presented that any of my accesses bypassed security restrictions) and that New Jersey was the jurisdiction because AT&T was headquartered there. In actuality, AT&T was headquartered at the time in Houston, Texas. This sort of blatant falsehood is verifiable by a simple Google search.

Thus I was taken from Arkansas, the nicest place I ever lived, and brought to Newark, New Jersey, a place worse than any of the many third world countries I have visited. I was held under bail conditions where the government refused to allow me to work in my industry, told me where I could live (I was not allowed to return to my birthplace of Arkansas where I lived at no expense, and instead forced to pay rent in New Jersey), and was subject to the indignity and expense of regular mandatory travel to the Newark courthouse to urinate in front of a federal employee. I was told where I could travel, and where and how I could sleep. My time and life was completely monopolized by the federal government during this period, again based off false statements from a lying piece of shit in the federal government.

I then spent a swath of the next years struggling to find an attorney because the overworked federal defender I was given told me to plea to false charges because even if I was innocent there was no way I'd win. I then struggled to get this attorney enough resources to fight the case while he was struggling to keep the lights in his office on.

Going to trial two years later, the United States Attorneys and FBI repeatedly perjured themselves in order to wrongfully convict me. FBI Special Agent Phillip Frigm claimed that the manufactured evidence was "secured" by MD5 signatures. This was factually wrong and perjurously asserted as true under oath-- MD5 signatures do not work in the manner he implied. Assistant US Attorney Michael Martinez claimed that I committed a crime because my use of the Internet was "not like going to ESPN and checking my favorite sports team's scores", and Assistant US Attorney Zach Intrater claimed that I had committed a crime because I automated web requests with a script. This, of course, ignores the fact that the vast majority of web requests are programmatic and automated-- total API requests and automated GET per year are approaching the quadrillions. Lie after lie after lie stacked up in open court on behalf of the agents of the government. If there was any integrity left in the justice system there would be special prosecutors appointed to charge you with the perjuries you committed.

Orchestrating this circus was the judge, Susan D. Wigenton, who not only ignored my constitutional right to a trial in a reasonable location but blatantly allowed manufactured evidence and perjury on the part of FBI and DOJ employees in her courtroom. The rights I have enumerated in the Constitution (and, in some cases, even The Declaration) were violated with near completion.

At sentencing, I made the following statement to Judge Wigenton:

"I don’t come here today to ask for forgiveness. I’m here to tell this court, if it has any foresight at all, that it should be thinking about what it can do to make amends to me for the harm and the violence that has been inflicted upon my life."

It is time, now that the fraud and violence committed against me has been exposed by the appeals process, to begin making amends to me for the harm her court has done.

My current market-determined hourly rate is 1 Bitcoin an hour. I was taken from my childhood home at gunpoint on January 18th, 2011, and I was not allowed to freely exercise my liberties as a citizen until April 11th, 2014. That's 1179 days that you used my time that I am now billing you for (I gave you a discount by not including the last day). I am owed 28,296 Bitcoins. I do not accept United States dollars, as it is the preferred currency of criminal organizations such as the FBI, DOJ, ATF, and Federal Reserve and I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises.

Know that all this wealth will be directed towards a good and charitable cause. I am building a series of memorial groves for the greatest patriots of our generation: Timothy McVeigh, Andrew Stack, and Marvin Heemeyer. You see, In the "Special Housing Unit", which is Bureau of Prisons codespeak for "solitary confinement" and "torture", I had enough time to think about the current state of federal government.

The federal government has declared war on We the People. I am but the latest casualty of the unjust and seditious war being waged against honest Americans and defenders of the Constitution. At Waco the FBI directed the murder of 76 men, women, and children. At Ruby Ridge the FBI murdered both a 14-year-old boy and a woman cradling her infant child. All federal agents are, in fact, murderous thugs and seditious terrorists. Sedition is the charge for crimes which undermine the Constitution with violence. I can assure you that violence was used against me, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has already verified that the case against me undermined the Constitution.

28,296 Bitcoins. This is my invoice. It will only come once. As government criminality continues to be exposed on a daily basis, there is an urgent question which our government must answer: by what civil and peaceful means can those of us harmed by government perjury, fraud, and violence be compensated for the losses we have experienced? My Bitcoin address: 1JTeYcsx37XTq5NRgjepAHDqaLHTZUL88a
Now the government's answer, or lack of it, will be permanently preserved in the Bitcoin block chain as a matter of public record. PAY ME MY MONEY, YOU LYING SUBHUMAN GARBAGE. You also should resign from your posts, as you've shown yourselves to be collective disgraces to rule of law and enemies of the United States Constitution. Those of us who actually love this country should take your places.

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Anonymous puts Indonesia on notice over West Papua

The global activist network Anonymous has launched a campaign to raise attention on censorship and the killings of indigenous West Papuans in Indonesia's eastern region.

Anonymous, which is known for its activist stunts and disruptions to government and corporate websites, says West Papuans have been silenced for too long by Indonesia's military and government.

Anonymous also says the United Nations should take responsibility for the sham referendum it sanctioned in 1969 which incorporated the former Dutch New Guinea into Indonesia.

Indonesia denies that it censors media coverage of West Papua, and claims it is steadily bringing in development to improve the lives of people there.

However Indonesia's military insists it will continue to respond firmly to separatism.

Anonymous asks for a UN peacekeeping force, the withdrawal of all non-organic Indonesian troops in West Papua, and a free and fair referendum so Papuans can decide their own destiny.

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Surf champ accused of hacking

An alleged Anonymous hacker accused of targeting the Indonesian Government and personal details of thousands of AAPT customers is a surf lifesaver and cancer support fundraiser living in a beachside property in Scarborough.

Adam John Bennett has appeared in Perth Magistrate's Court charged with hacking into the database of telecommunications company AAPT and obtaining sensitive information - including credit card and Medicare details, addresses and phone numbers.

As of this week, the 40-year-old was a fundraising manager for Cancer Support WA. He previously held a position as a company director with Paynes Find Gold Limited. In his spare time, Mr Bennett is an experienced surf lifesaver, prominent within the Scarboro Surf Life Saving Club, and a participant in national lifesaving championships.

Cancer Support WA was yesterday doing its own inquiries into the allegations.

"We are aware that a staff member, Adam Bennett, was charged on Thursday and that he is assisting with a Federal police investigation," it told _The Weekend West _. "We take the matter very seriously and are investigating internally."

Federal authorities will allege Mr Bennett, operating under the online pseudonym of "Lorax", hacked AAPT servers in 2012 and obtained more than 200,000 names and 100,000 email addresses.

He is also accused of compromising Indonesian Government web servers.

A teenage accomplice in NSW is accused of hacking into data belonging to the ACT Government and the Netspeed ISP based in Canberra.

After Government and Australian Communications and Media Authority investigations were launched into the security breaches, law enforcement agencies began a hunt for the two hackers associated with Anonymous.

In the past few days, the Scarborough property was raided and several hard drives were seized, which will take police months to analyse.

Mr Bennett did little to hide his social media profile, with his personal Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages open for all to see. The online Anonymous persona Lorax is also one of the most open on the internet, hosting regular online radio broadcasts.

Part of Mr Bennett's bail conditions imposed by a Perth magistrate was that he not use the internet for any other purposes than for banking, employment and legal advice.

Lorax's last post on a Facebook page, entered last week, read: "Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!"

After the arrests, Tim Morris - the AFP's national manager high tech crime operations - said online attacks could have a big impact on government and business services.

"Hacking activities can affect everyone from small businesses right up to large government organisations," Assistant Commissioner Morris said.

"These acts can cause serious disruption to government and business networks, which in turn can be catastrophic for people who rely on these networks to run their small business or administer their entitlements or personal finances.

"The impairment or disruption of communications to or from computer networks is a criminal act, not harmless fun."

Mr Bennett is due to appear in court next month.

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Barrett Brown’s Court Documents Unsealed: The Implications of the Gag Order

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On January 23, 2013 Brown was indicted once more on charges related to the raids on his apartment and his mother’s house. The FBI accused Barrett of “knowingly and corruptly conceal[ing] and attempt to conceal records, documents and digital data contained on two laptop computers”. His mother would later receive six months probation and a $1,000 fine for her role in hiding computers for her son.

At this point the lead prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney Candina S. Heath, began working to convince Judge Sam Lindsay that Barrett Brown was attempting to manipulate the media while in prison. Recently unsealed court documents reveal the prosecution’s fears that Brown’s media connections would paint the government in an unfavorable light. Ms. Heath argued that silencing Brown’s attorney’s, Charles Swift and Ahmed Ghappou, was necessary to protect the jury, and Barrett himself, from being tainted by media portrayal of the case.

The transcript of the proceedings that led to the gag order reveal a fearful government attempting to silence a rising voice in independent media. The prosecution attempted to limit Barrett’s ability to write while in prison based on an article where “He is critical of the witnesses that will be called. He is critical of the government which has the tone, and I mentioned the tone of the article was problematic.” Ms. Heath claimed criticism of the government would affect the FBI agents she wanted to call as witnesses. Judge Lindsay did not buy the claim however. “I think at this point what you are saying, Ms. Heath, is too broad. I think it is overly broad, and I really do not think if I put something like that in the order that it would pass constitutional muster.”

Eventually the court would decide on a gag that forbid Brown or his attorneys from speaking to the media, but did allow Brown to write articles unrelated to the case and for the Free Barrett Brown organization to continue making statements regarding fundraising.

Another telling part of the unsealed documents relates to media connections Brown maintained. Ms. Heath told the court that after listening to recorded phone calls made from the county jail between Barrett Brown and Kevin Gallagher she worried more articles would be written about the case. Gallagher is the head of Free Barrett Brown. The prosecution discussed conversations between Brown and Gallagher where the two discuss journalists who may be interested in writing about the case. The documents mention Michael Hastings, Janet Reitman of Rolling Stone (listed as Jenna Wrightman), and Glenn Greenwald.

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While Barrett Brown sits in prison awaiting sentencing on August 18 the implications of his trial are already being felt. What does it mean for journalists and activists who are arrested under false or exaggerated claims? Does having well known friends in the media, or being a journalist alone justify a gag order? Are we likely to see similar orders issued in the future? If one judge can be convinced that maintaining a media presence is tantamount to manipulating public opinion it is likely that others will follow suit.

Kevin Gallagher believes, The message sent by the DOJs gagging technique is clear. It says that in cases involving dissidents and political activists, not only will we listen to and transcribe all of your calls from jail and monitor all letters and communications, but we will drag family, friends and the media into the case, and try to prevent the defendant from defending theirself in the press.

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BiellaColeman twitterde op zaterdag 24-05-2014 om 12:28:48 In all my years studying Anonymous this case is the most troubling + puzzling: Hacker, Creeper, Soldier, Spy https://t.co/s5yH9j98xB reageer retweet

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Hacker, creeper, soldier, spy

Chapter One: ‘My family is military’

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MILTON, ONT., APRIL 2014 Guards at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex, a maximum-security jail near Toronto known to inmates as the Milton Hilton, came to rouse their newest prisoner from a concrete bed in the intake holding cells. Pulling back the hoodie covering his face, they found his T-shirt had been yanked up and twisted around his throat as a ligature.

The distraught prisoner was Matt DeHart, a 29-year-old American who had been brought to jail days earlier by a Canada Border Services Agency official and five police officers, who arrested him at the apartment he shares with his parents while fighting for refugee protection here.

Pulled from the cell and taken to hospital, he appeared to suffer no serious physical injury but underwent a mental health assessment. After returning to jail, Matt then dived headfirst from his bunk onto the concrete floor of his cell, requiring another urgent hospital visit. He told doctors he had crashed on purpose because he “had no hope.”

Days later, Matt appeared by video link at a detention review before a tribunal of Canada’s Immigration & Refugee Board (IRB). It took half an hour for jail guards to retrieve him from a one-to-one suicide watch cell and sit him in front of the camera. Matt peered into the lens. He looked dreadful: unshaven and unkempt, his eyes red and swollen, his lids heavy from medication. He squinted and grimaced.

It’s not that I’m not patriotic — I am. I voted for Bush. My family is military, pretty gung ho. But everything has changed.
— Matt DeHart

Gone was his bravado and the wide, almost goofy smile he seemed shy about flashing during many meetings with the National Post over the past eight months, while he was on bail from immigration detention on strict conditions. His father, Paul DeHart, a retired U.S. Air Force major who worked in the powerful National Security Agency, sat grim-faced, watching his son on the video monitor.

“We’re here on a claim of torture,” Paul said, his voice straining as he stated Matt has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “To visit your son in a maximum-security prison in a suicide smock … more heavily medicated than he’s ever been … For anyone with PTSD to be treated that way, much less your own child … is very disturbing.”

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Government Seeks Seven-Month Sentence for LulzSec Leader ‘Sabu’

As a reward for his extensive cooperation helping prosecutors hunt down his fellow hackers, the government is seeking time served for the long-awaited sentencing of top LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur, also known as “Sabu.”

After delaying his sentencing for nearly three years, the government has asked a federal court to sentence Monsegur to time served — just seven months — calling him an “extremely valuable and productive cooperator” in a document that details for the first time his extensive cooperation providing “unprecedented access to LulzSec.”

Monsegur, who has long been despised by members of LulzSec for his reported snitching, faced a possible sentence of between 259 and 317 months imprisonment under U.S. sentencing guidelines. But the U.S. Probation Office and prosecutors have asked for a reduced sentence “without regard to the otherwise applicable mandatory minimum sentence in this case” in a motion submitted to the U.S. District Court (.pdf) in the Southern District of New York on Friday.

A top leader of the hacking group LulzSec, Monsegur turned informant after he was secretly approached by authorities in June 2011, providing information that led to the subsequent arrest of other top members of LuzSec and Anonymous, including Jeremy Hammond, aka “Anarchaos”of Chicago, who was sentenced last year for his role in the hack of private intelligence firm, Stratfor.

The court document provides a timeline of events around Monsegur’s cooperation with authorities that many have suspected for years, including his efforts to draw fellow hackers into incriminating conversations.

Calling his cooperation “complex and sophisticated” the document describes, for example, his close involvement with law enforcement agencies in several jurisdictions to investigate Hammond in Chicago, while coordinating with FBI agents in New York, physical surveillance teams deployed in Chicago, and an electronic surveillance unit in Washington, D.C.

Hammond was sentenced last year to ten years in prison.

Monsegur, an unemployed father of two, formed LulzSec in the spring of 2011 with about five other core members, who went on a rampage over the next couple of months, targeting about 250 victims, including media outlets, government agencies and contractors, and private companies during their crime spree. Monsegur led the loosely organized group of hackers from his apartment in a public housing project in New York, working as a key player to analyzed victim web sites for vulnerabilities that could be exploited and providing other technical assistance.

The group, which also operated under the name Internet Feds, hacked a number of high-profile victims including HB Gary — a private intelligence firm that bragged it had identified members of Anonymous — the reality TV show “X-Factor,” PBS, Sony Pictures, Senate.gov, Nintendo, and a Georgia-based affiliate of the FBI’s Infragard organization.

Monsegur, as Sabu, was one of the most outspoken and brazen of the LulzSec crew before falling silent that summer, leaving behind a parting Tweet that quoted the The Usual Suspects film.

When he reappeared in September, many members of the anonymous hacking group suspected that Sabu had been arrested, since fellow hackers had outed him by publishing information about his identity online. Sabu denied at the time that he’d been snagged by the feds. But according to the government’s motion, his demise as leader of LulzSec was swift and painless and within hours after being interviewed by authorities, “he was back online cooperating proactively.”

According to the document, authorities approached Monsegur at his New York home on June 7, 2011 at which point he needed little convincing to cooperate. He quickly admitted guilt to criminal conduct before he was even charged with any crime and even spilled the beans to authorities about past crimes he had committed for which they had no knowledge of his role.

He admitted, for example, to participating in DDoS attacks against PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, which were targeted after the companies blocked donations to WikiLeaks. Monsegur also admitted to hacking thousands of computers between 1999 and 2004, engaging in various hacktivism activities as well as carding activity — stealing and selling credit card information for financial gain or to pay off his own bills. He also admitting to selling marijuana, illegally possessing an unlicensed firearm, and purchasing stolen electronics and jewelry.

“Monsegur admitted his criminal conduct and immediately agreed to cooperate with law enforcement,” the document notes. “That night, Monsegur reviewed his computer files with FBI agents and provided actionable information to law enforcement. The next morning, Monsegur appeared in court on a criminal complaint charging him with credit card fraud and identity theft, and was released on bail, whereupon he immediately continued his cooperation with the Government, as described further below.”

Monsegur entered a guilty plea to the court on August 15, 2011, for an indictment charging him with twelve counts in New York, including nine counts related to computer hacking; one count related to credit card fraud; one count of conspiring to commit bank fraud; and one count of aggravated identity theft. The plea resolved four other cases filed against him in the Eastern and Central Districts of California, the Northern District of Georgia, and the Eastern District of Virginia).

But Monsegur apparently violated the terms of his agreement in 2012. According to the document, in May 2012, his bail was revoked over “unauthorized online postings” he made, and he was arrested on May 25th, before being released on a revised bail December 18, 2012. Monsegur has been free since that time, while cooperating with authorities, and has spent only a total of seven months in prison since 2011.

In court records, Monsegur was generally identified only as CW-1 and was praised extensively (.pdf) for “actively cooperating with the government.” Authorities in fact petitioned the court several times to delay Monsegur’s sentencing during his continued cooperation.

According to authorities, part of Monsegur’s post-arrest cooperation included providing information to help repair hacked systems belonging to PBS and Senate.gov. He also provided authorities with information about hacks involving servers belonging to the Irish political party Fine Gael and the Sony Playstation Network.

But his most extensive assistance led to the arrest of fellow LulzSec members, including Ryan Ackroyd, aka “Kayla” of Doncaster, United Kingdom; Jake Davis, aka “Topiary” of London; Darren Martyn, aka “pwnsauce” of Ireland; Donncha O’Cearrbhail, aka “palladium” of Ireland; Mustafa Al-Bassam, aka “T-Flow” in the UK; as well as Hammond, Ryan Cleary and Matthew Keys, a former Reuters employee accused of inciting members of Anonymous to hack one of his former employers.

Monsegur provided “crucial, detailed information regarding computer intrusions committed by these groups, including how the attacks occurred, which members were involved, and how the computer systems were exploited once breached,” the government reveals.

This assistance “contributed directly to the identification, prosecution and conviction of eight of his major co-conspirators, including Hammond, who at the time of his arrest was the FBI’s number one cybercriminal target in the world. On top of that, Monsegur engaged in additional, substantial proactive cooperation that enabled the FBI to prevent a substantial number of planned cyber attacks,” the government noted.

Working at the direction of law enforcement for three years, sometimes into the late evening and early morning, Monsegur drew his fellow hackers into online chats designed to confirming their identities and whereabouts.

“During some of the online chats, at the direction of law enforcement, Monsegur convinced LulzSec members to provide him digital evidence of the hacking activities they claimed to have previously engaged in, such as logs regarding particular criminal hacks,” the government notes. “When law enforcement later searched the computers of particular LulzSec members, they discovered copies of the same electronic evidence on the individuals’ computers. In this way, the online nicknames of LulzSec members were definitively linked to their true identities, providing powerful proof of their guilt.

“Other times, at the direction of law enforcement, Monsegur asked seemingly innocuous questions designed to elicit information from his co-conspirators that, when coupled with other information obtained during the investigation, could be used to pinpoint their exact locations and identities,” the document reveals.

Ackroyd has been sentenced to 30 months in prison; Davis was sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention facility; Al-Bassam was sentenced to 20 months, which was suspended for two years; Martyn and O’Cearrbhail received probation and a fine; Cleary was sentenced to 32 months in prison; the case of Keys is pending.

Monsegur also helped “disrupt or prevent at least 300 separate computer hacks” that authorities say targeted U.S. Armed Forces, Congress, unidentified U.S. courts, NASA, and a number of private companies.

“Although difficult to quantify, it is likely that Monsegur’s actions prevented at least millions of dollars in loss to these victims,” the government states effusively. “Monsegur also provided information about vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, including at a water utility for an American city, and a foreign energy company. Law enforcement used the information Monsegur provided to secure the water utility, and the information about the energy company was shared with appropriate government personnel.”

The government notes that because Monsegur’s cooperation was publicly exposed shortly after his arrest, he and his family faced severe threats, causing authorities to relocate him and some of his family members.

“Monsegur repeatedly was approached on the street and threatened or menaced about his cooperation once it became publicly known,” prosecutors note. “Monsegur was also harassed by individuals who incorrectly concluded that he participated in the Government’s prosecution of the operators of the Silk Road website.”

In one case, a reporter had to be removed from the school where the journalist had sought to interview children for whom Monsegur served as guardian.

Monsegur’s sentencing is set for May 27.

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wikileaks twitterde op zondag 25-05-2014 om 01:58:50 Page 11 of "#Sabu" sentencing doc contains apparent reference to FBI operation against WL http://t.co/9eCiFxStK1 See http://t.co/Ex6qZMkKgf reageer retweet

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SENTENCING SUBMISSION by USA as to Hector Xavier Monsegur - 1:11-cr-00666-LAP - Document 30

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Hacker, creeper, soldier, spy

Chapter Two

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Edpilkington twitterde op dinsdag 27-05-2014 om 17:54:53 Judge at "Sabu" hacker informant sentencing "salutes" his "extraordinary cooperation" with FBI - lets him walk with time served reageer retweet

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Hacker, creeper, soldier, spy

Chapter three

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Hacker, creeper, soldier, spy

Chapter four

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Hacker, creeper, soldier, spy

Chapter five