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

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Op dinsdag 13 januari 2015 08:43 schreef SicSicSics het volgende:
Wat vinden we (Papier?) van de hypocrisie van Anonymous over het sluiten/ aanvallen van Jihadwebsites 'vóór de vrijheid van meningsuiting'? Omdat er een boodschap op staat die anonymous niet welgevallig is?

En hoe is dat anders dan een krampachtige overheidsreactie om, in een poging tot 'bescherming', meer controle te willen hebben over wat er op internet staat?

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Behind Anonymous’s Operation to Reveal Britain’s Elite Child-Rape Syndicate

As last week's horrifying news from France dominated the European and global news cycles, much of the media's attention toward the growing allegations of British political elite being involved in a ring of child rape has notably subsided. Online, however, a group of activists—some associated with the hacktivist group Anonymous—have been pushing for more attention to be brought to this deeply unsettling issue percolating in the UK. Their efforts are being organized under the hashtag banner of #OpDeathEaters.

In December, Scotland Yard made the shocking admission that new allegations pertaining to the rape and murder of young boys by so-called VIPs in Britain's political world are true.

A man who goes only by the pseudonym Nick came out to the media and the authorities to allege that he was the victim of rape and abuse by high-profile political figures in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Kenny McDonald, the detective in charge of the investigation into Nick's claims, "Nick has been spoken to by experienced officers from the child abuse team and experienced officers from the murder investigation team. They and I believe what Nick is saying is credible and true."

Nick went on to tell the BBC that children who were swept up in this VIP ring were brutally abused, and would be attacked if they did not obey the men who were holding them hostage. He also describes what appears to have been a fairly brazen operation: "People who drove us around could come forward. Staff in some of the locations could come forward. There are so many people who must have had suspicions. We weren't smuggled in under a blanket through the back door. It was done openly and people must have questioned that and they need to come forward."

Just as Britain was processing the shocking news of child rape and murder by its political elite, in January, Prince Andrew was accused of having sex with a minor who alleges she was the "sex slave" of a billionaire. A lawsuit brought against the US Department of Justice by a woman named Virginia Roberts has alleged that Jeffrey Epstein—a disgraced financier and known friend of Prince Andrew who, in 2008, pleaded guilty to "felony solicitation and procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution"—had forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew.

Epstein himself is no stranger to allegations and lawsuits pertaining to sexual crimes involving children. Three 12-year-old girls were allegedly brought to Epstein from France as a "birthday gift." He has also been sued over a dozen times by girls who claim they were abused while underage, all of which were settled out of court. A former Palm Beach Police Chief whose department investigated Epstein in 2005, after complaints were brought to them by the parents of a 14-year-old girl, told the Daily Beast that Epstein's case was "minimized by the State Attorney's Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice."

The core of Roberts's claim against the DOJ is that they should throw out the plea deal given to Epstein in 2007.

As for Prince Andrew, he and Buckingham Palace have categorically denied that Roberts's claims are true. He may even be immune to the lawsuit, as it was filed in American courts. Prime Minister David Cameron, however, has so far refused to defend Prince Andrew publicly.

A photograph of Prince Andrew, with his arm around a 17-year-old Virginia Roberts, has since appeared in various media outlets.

In her suit, Virginia Roberts claims she was used "for sexual purposes to many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister and other world leaders." Photographs have placed Stephen Hawking and Bill Clinton on Jeffrey Epstein's private island—which has been described as an "Island of Sin"—though no such allegations have been brought against either man.

VICE contacted Heather Marsh, author of Binding Chaos, who says she "set the objective [for #OpDeathEaters] and brought the initial research and story to the Internet where it has been taken up by Anonymous and others." Marsh does not identify as a member of Anonymous.

According to her, the central objective of #OpDeathEaters is to "establish independent, internationally linked, victim-led inquiries into high-level complicity, obstruction of justice, and cover-ups in the paedosadism and child-trafficking industries." Its targets are: "Those in positions of power who control or enable the industry, globally."

When asked about the media attention to this issue so far, Marsh rated it "ridiculously low," adding that this is "the biggest story to break in the UK in centuries."

She continued: "What media coverage there is from the more prominent outlets is a diversion instead of investigation. Media has consistently depicted the rape, torture, murder, abduction, and blackmail of children as 'child sex' or a 'sex scandal' and the child victims as 'prostitutes' or even 'rent boys.'"

The connection between Epstein and Prince Andrew, Marsh believes, "could potentially implicate members of the royal household and others in their circle in not just complicity in the crimes of child trafficking and rape but also in obstruction of justice and influence peddling in criminal networks."

To be clear, Prince Andrew is being accused of having sex with Roberts when she was a minor, who claims she was forced on him by Epstein as part of "an orgy with numerous other underaged girls." He's not being accused of child trafficking itself.

In critiquing the media coverage of the Prince Andrew allegations thus far, Marsh pointed out that it is often "presented as a 'salacious' story about 'Prince Andrew's personal life' instead of the matter of urgent public interest it is." She went on to say: "The equally urgent stories [about high-profile human trafficking rings] in other countries are also ignored in both their own and international media, and all of these stories are presented as isolated incidents instead of the interconnected global network of influence and potential blackmail they are part of."

While Marsh's claims of an "interconnected global network" of human trafficking by high-profile politicians and powerful figures are impossible to prove, it is true that much of the reporting on the Prince Andrew allegations fails to contextualize it against the Scotland Yard-approved claims of a British VIP child rape and murder syndicate, which, at the very least, is believed to have operated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Marsh told VICE that Britain's new #WeProtect internet filter, meant to keep child porn off the web, is also making research into this subject difficult for her counterparts in England. She also is very clear to distinguish the seriousness of the crimes of Epstein, the proven allegations against British VIPs in the 70s and 80s, and the potential wrongdoing of Prince Andrew, as different than just "lonely men in their basements," adding: "They were officials with drivers, security, an army of staff, secret services, courts and police covering for them and years of victims and they belonged to international networks."

When asked about the success of #OpDeathEaters thus far, Marsh told VICE: "My initial goals were to have a core group of researchers, journalists and activists accept the validity and scale of the story and begin looking further, to change the propaganda in the way the story was covered, and to have the momentum unstoppable by Christmas. I believe those things have been successful. Having this fairly unbelievable story widely accepted was the biggest hurdle, and one I had to bank all of my credibility on, but it is not questioned by anyone who has seen the data."

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Journalist Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in federal prison, must pay $890K in restitution

The intelligence and security journalist has already served more than two years in prison for charges related to his proximity to sources within the hacktivist entity known as Anonymous.

A court in Dallas has sentenced Barrett Brown to 63 months in federal prison, minus 28 months already served. For count one in the case, he receives 48 months. For count 2, he receives 12 months. And for count 3, he receives 3 months. He is also ordered to pay $890,000 in restitution.

The government's charges against the intelligence and security reporter stemmed from his relationship with sources close to the hacker group Anonymous, and the fact that Brown published a link to publicly-available copies of leaked Stratfor documents.

Brown read a statement to the court during the sentencing hearing, and you can read that statement in entirety here.

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Anonymous Infiltrates the Police, Cop Facing Discipline After Wearing Guy Fawkes Mask to Protest

Miami Beach, Florida – A North Miami Beach Police officer is facing disciplinary action from his police department for his involvement in “Anonymous” and his refusal to take off a mask at a recent protest that he organized and participated in.

According to officials at the North Miami Beach Police Department, Officer Ericson Harrell violated department policies when he was arrested in Plantation during a one man protest against Obamacare.

Commanders at the police department said that his actions were “unbecoming of an officer”and that he will be suspended without pay. However, since Harrell was suspended with pay immediately after his arrest, his pay will be docked 20 hours, according to police department spokeswoman Major Kathy Katerman.

Katerman also said that Harrell is an “above average officer” and that the department was “disappointed in this, absolutely. Any policy violation we take very seriously. We expect he’ll improve his behavior or face more discipline.”

Harrell was off duty at the time of his arrest on November 22, 2013 and has been dealing with harassment from the police department ever since. The results of his lengthy internal investigation were finally announced this week.

At the one man protest, he was wearing a black cape and a Guy Fawkes mask that is oftentimes worn by supporters of Anonymous. The officer was also reportedly holding a flagpole with an inverted U.S. flag. When he was approached by officers and told to take off his mask he refused, and was eventually arrested for obstructing traffic and violating a local ordinance against wearing masks in public. According to local defense attorneys, the law against masks and hoods was created in 1951 as a response to the Ku Klux Klan.

Although the charges against Harrell were soon dropped, he faces constant scrutiny at work because the police department now knows his political beliefs.

After his arrest in Plantation, investigators confiscated his police issued laptop and reprimanded him for spending time on “conspiracy theory-related websites” and other non-work material during work hours. However, it is likely that the sites in question were on personal time, and it is interesting that the department specifically mentioned “conspiracy theory-related websites” in their report.

At the outcome of an internal police department investigation, the North Miami police also specifically reprimanded him for “being part of an organization that could interfere with the agency.”

In addition to the official discipline received from the department, Harrell may lose access to government computer databases, which he uses for work. According to The Sun Sentinel, Harrell was warned that associating with Anonymous could put his computer access at risk and that he could lose his police certification.

Below is an interview with Harrell, when he first became an outspoken police officer.

VICTORY! Charges Dropped for Florida Cop Who Refused to Remove Guy Fawkes Mask

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Anonymous calls for activists to help expose international paedophile networks with 'Operation DeathEaters'

Hacktivist group Anonymous, which has made public attacks on extremists, corporations and religious and governmental bodies, is calling for help in its fight against international paedophile networks, or what it calls the “paedosadist industry”.

In a project named Operation DeathEaters, Anonymous says it is is planning on collating evidence against international paedophile rings and their severe abuse of children and find the links between different operations, and to bring them to justice.

Anonymous has issued a video instructing activists on how they can aid in the operation, which has appeared at a time of serious allegations of historic child sexual abuse levied against prominent UK figures, including claims that a VIP Westminster paedophile ring existed in the past.

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Recent allegations have led to the Met police’s investigation into three alleged murder cases of young boys dating back to the 1970s and 1980s that have been linked to claims that there existed a VIP Westminster paedophile ring allegedly involving high profile establishment figures.

“The Westminster paedophile ring is one of many cases where Operation DeathEaters has actively pursued and sought truth, in order to end the hideous crimes concealed behind the British elite,” Anonymous alleges in a statement.

“In fear of these investigations being bungled over time, the operation’s objectives are clear and simple: source public information before it disappears, push for independent enquiry, and offer support to witnesses and the victims where needed.”

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Op vrijdag 23 januari 2015 11:49 schreef SicSicSics het volgende:

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Even een crosspost die ik ook in BNW zette. Hoeveel 'anons' zouden nu gaan zeuren over persvrijheid en een hetze tegen 'anonymous'?

Quotes dan maar los

Lekker ventje wel:

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America is echt een intolerante fascistenstaat als je dat al niet eens meer mag zeggen

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Heeft ie nog mazzel met zijn straf volgens mij!

http://crimeblog.dallasne(...)piracy-charges.html/

vrijdag 23 januari 2015 11:42

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Bad, Bad Barrett Brown

The sentencing of someone who couldn’t hack his way out of a paper bag is the latest sign that we’re in the middle of a nerd scare.

^{By Gabriella Coleman}

Among both American and British law-enforcement communities, the temptation runs strong to treat hackers and hacktivists in simplistic terms. The public was offered a rare glimpse of this reductive tendency by a published cache of leaked NSA and GCHQ documents. In a presentation slide evaluating various uses of the anonymizing tool Tor, hacktivists like Anonymous are slotted firmly and unambiguously into the “bad” category—immediately adjacent to both pedophiles and criminals.

. Anonymous and LulzSec are right up there with pedophiles and state-sponsored hackers, says GCHQ, with regards to Tor. pic.twitter.com/MjU3XKwlhP
— Andrew Blake (@apblake) December 29, 2014

On Thursday, this moral binary was once again rehashed in a Dallas courthouse, when Judge Samuel Lindsay handed down a stiff sentence to journalist and rabble-rousing activist Barrett Brown. Brown had originally faced 17 charges and was convicted of three crimes: making threats against an FBI agent, obstruction of a search warrant, and assisting the Anonymous hackers who infiltrated and gutted Austin, Texas–based intelligence company Stratfor. (It must be said that the threats, delivered as a video tirade, were hyperbolic and preposterous but illegal.) Brown, who has already been behind bars for more than two years, received an additional 35 months in jail and a fine of nearly $1 million to be paid to Stratfor. The judge ruled that Brown “more than merely reported the hackers’ activities”—he helped organize them.

With Thursday’s sentencing, the state confirmed a notable new trend: the willingness to single out and prosecute not only politically motivated hackers, but also geeks and journalists who work closely with them—like Brown. He wasn’t a hacker, nor was he officially charged with hacking crimes. (His prosecution did not rely on the controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, responsible most recently for ensnaring Aaron Swartz, a well-respected hacktivist who committed suicide.) Far from it. As an anthropologist who was embedded in Anonymous’ Internet Relay Chat channels for more than two years, I watched Brown lend a helping hand during many political operations initiated by the faceless collective. But it remained a running joke in Anonymous that Barrett could not “hack” himself out of a paper bag.

And yet, Barrett Brown is nonetheless the latest victim of what advocate and lawyer Gráinne O’Neill has dubbed “the nerd scare”: Over the past couple of years, scores of hackers have been arrested in a single, unprecedented, cohesive swoop—and largely in direct retaliation to politically motivated hacks, such as those organized by the collective Anonymous. These hacks are not about getting rich—they are digital direct action intended to increase transparency and to protest censorship and corruption.

Brown’s role in Anonymous was as an avid strategist and organizer. The creator of an online think tank and crowdsourced wiki called Project PM, Brown was particularly committed to exposing the growth and corruption of private security and intelligence firms like Stratfor. What private military contractors like Blackwater are to the U.S. military, private intelligence firms are to institutions like the National Security Agency. Edward Snowden worked for one such contractor. And Brown aimed to uncover any evidence of malfeasance in this industry through the scraps of information provided by leakers and hackers.

Let me state again that Brown did not coordinate—much less partake in—the actual infiltration of Stratfor, which took place in December 2011. During the incursion, Anonymous hackers swiped credit card numbers, emails, and other information, then distributed the material online. Most notoriously, they used thousands of the stolen credit card numbers to donate money to nonprofit and charity organizations. (It’s entirely possible that the cards weren’t all used for such Robin Hood–esque purposes, of course, but evidence suggests that donations were made.)

Brown was mostly interested in the emails, but he did share a link to the credit card numbers that had been stolen by Anonymous hackers. At one point, he faced a charge for posting that link. Out of all of the 17 counts he originally faced, this one was the most controversial: He had not stolen or used the credit card information but was simply reposting a widely circulated link from one chat room to another. This charge was dropped in March 2014, but the judge nevertheless agreed with the prosecution’s arguments on Thursday that linking to the stolen data had aided the hackers.

Once the hack had been completed, Brown sought the emails to scour for evidence of abuse and corruption. Brown, operating unabashedly and under the mantel of his given name, was not the only one to believe the emails were vital to the public interest. WikiLeaks eventually published many of them, and their contents demonstrate Brown’s journalistic instincts. They describe Stratfor’s involvement in a range of disconcerting activity, including the criminal monitoring of activists. A 1984 explosion at a Union Carbide India Ltd. plant in Bhopal, India—widely considered the worst industrial disaster in world history—left thousands dead and more than 500,000 exposed to deadly chemicals. Stratfor was hired by Dow Chemical to keep tabs on activist groups like the Yes Men and Bhopal Medical Appeal—which were actively working to publicize the issue and assist the victims.

Soon after WikiLeaks posted the emails, Stratfor issued a terse statement saying that it was unwilling to verify the authenticity of the leaked emails: “Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them.”

According to journalist Steve Horn, who sifted through thousands of Stratfor emails and wrote a two-part series examining the tactics deployed by the firm and its predecessors, the majority of company emails show that “the most important service Stratfor provides is its sociological analysis in service to corporate power and capital, not the dirty on-the-ground work,” as he put it. Indeed, only a smattering of emails point to direct, though low-level, involvement in the monitoring of activists. Still, between emerging examples of abuse and the enormous difficulty in accessing corporate records, we should, at a minimum, be troubled by actions that punish journalistic attempts to bring such information into the public domain. Brown is certainly not a journalist in the strict traditional sense. But he (and his Project PM) contributed to a burgeoning “fifth estate”: the hackers, leakers, independent journalists, and bloggers increasingly working with “the fourth estate,” the mainstream news, to inform the public about wrongdoing.

Hacker arrests are nothing new, but never before have they been so intensely concentrated. Raids were more sporadic throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and usually took one of two distinct forms: Law enforcement would target lone, apolitical hackers like Kevin Mitnick and Gary McKinnon, or aim to cripple infrastructures used by whole groups of underground hackers—closing down the bulletin-board systems where they congregated and otherwise disrupting their often-illegal activities. The largest and most famous of these American raids was Operation Sundevil. Carried out across 14 U.S. cities on May 8, 1990, the operation resulted in 27 search warrants executed and four arrests made. Worldwide, hackers wielding their skills for political aims were largely ignored by law enforcement. (Of course, every rule has its exceptions, as demonstrated by the 30 counts of computer crimes brought against a young Julian Assange in 1991.)

This approach changed with the appearance of Anonymous. In 2011 and 2012, its successes spurred a multinational coordinated crackdown that delivered more than 100 arrests around the world. In the U.S., all those put behind bars as part of this “nerd scare” have been actual hackers—with the exception of Barrett Brown.

Had he simply had the fortune of being born and residing on the other side of the Atlantic, say in the United Kingdom or Ireland, where some Anonymous hackers have been tried, his punishment in all likelihood would have been less severe. Comparatively speaking, the Irish and British Anonymous cases were remarkably mild. Two Irish hackers who defaced a website received no jail time. In May 2013, after pleading guilty to one charge of hacking the Pentagon and conspiring to hack Sony, Britain’s National Health Service, and Rupert Murdoch’s News International, Ryan “Kayla” Ackroyd was sentenced to 30 months in British jail, of which he served 10; notably, he received no fine or fee. Brown’s restitution fee will virtually guarantee years of indentured servitude.

Like so many hackers, whistleblowers, journalists, and hacktivists who have recently dared to take a stand for press freedom, accountability, and increased transparency, Brown is now paying a steep price. But he wasn’t a hacker. In fact, in 2013 an American hacker, Jeremy Hammond, pleaded guilty to this crime and is currently serving a 10-year sentence for it. Yet Brown still has to pay close to $1 million to Stratfor as if he had been the one to do it. If Stratfor’s vice president of intelligence, Fred Burton, truly lives by the code, “Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations”—as one email purports—then we can see the importance of the leaks and whistleblowing activities of Anonymous, and also the actions of those like Barrett Brown, who both assisted the collective, and utilized their work in the interest of the public.

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Op zaterdag 24 januari 2015 12:53 schreef SicSicSics het volgende:

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Dat hebben ze dan aardig uit de juridische stukken weten te houden. En die tweets en youtubefilmpjes zijn natuurlijk gestaged en/ of uit hun verband getrokken? Of zijn die gewoon acceptabel?

Anonymous - #OpDeathEaters | February, Friday 13th

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude

^{Journalist Barrett Brown looks back in anger at the government’s trumped up charges against him as he starts a 63 month prison sentence.}


Not long ago I was a mild-mannered freelance journalist, activist, and satirist, contributing to outlets like the Guardian and Vanity Fair. But last Thursday I was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison in a case that Reporters Without Borders cited as a key factor in its reduction of America’s press freedom rankings from 33 to 46. As inconvenient as this is for me, the upside is that for the first time in the two and a half years since I was arrested, I am at last able to speak freely about what has been happening to me and why—and what it means for the press and the republic as a whole.

A portion of my sentence stems from an attempt I made to conceal from the government the identities of certain contacts of mine: pro-democracy activists living under Middle Eastern dictatorships such as Bahrain, with which the U.S. is known to share intelligence on such things. Another large chunk is due to an admittedly ill-conceived public threat I made—in the midst of opiate withdrawal and what court psychologists say was a manic state brought on by medication issues—to investigate and humiliate an F.B.I. agent, who had himself threatened to indict my mother in an attempt to get me to cooperate against individuals associated with the Anonymous movement (my mother was indeed charged). Though I clearly stated that my intent was not violent, the prosecution claimed that my “victim,” Dallas-based Special Agent Robert Smith, had reason to fear that I might physically harm him and even his children—in which case it is not immediately obvious why the prosecution felt the need to alter the end of the sentence in question when quoting it on the indictment. (My complete statement, (PDF) in which I make a point of noting that I was merely going to proceed along lines spelled out by the FBI-linked contractor C.E.O. Aaron Barr while he was investigating activists on behalf of his corporate clients, and that I was doing so perfunctorily, and merely in order to make a point about the F.B.I.’s traditional reluctance to investigate its allies, has been viewed on YouTube by well over 100,000 people, including the dozens of reporters who have covered the story; none of them seem to agree with the Department of Justice contention that a journalist’s threat to “look into” someone in an explicitly non-violent manner necessarily entails violence.) A separate declaration I made to the effect that I’d defend my family from any illegal armed raids by the government, while silly and bombastic, was not actually illegal under the threats statutes. To judge from similar comments made by Senator Joni Ernst, it would not even have necessarily precluded me from delivering the G.O.P.’s recent response to the State of the Union address.

But the charges that prompted the most international outrage were those alleging fraud. In late 2011, I copied and pasted a link to a publicly-available file, which chat transcripts introduced in court showed that I initially believed to contain the same leaked corporate emails I’d long been in the habit of reviewing for my Guardian articles. The file turned out to contain customer data, including credit card numbers. Although the government’s own forensics showed that I never opened the file, the D.O.J. contended (PDF) that I had thereby engaged in 11 counts of aggravated identity theft, punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of 22 years in federal prison.

The feds were eventually forced to drop these precedent-setting charges, after which I agreed to plea to the spurious make-believe crimes described above, so as to avoid the perils of a Texas jury. (As the government itself warned in a 2013 public filing, (PDF) my status as an atheist would have seriously damaged my ability to get a fair trial here in Dallas—although one might wonder how a jury would know I’m an atheist unless the government made a point of bringing it up, as they did, say, in that 2013 public filing.)

I also had to plea to an Accessory After the Fact charge for having contacted the corporate espionage outfit Stratfor after some Anonymous-affiliated hackers stole several million of the firm’s emails and vowed to publish them online; I offered to arrange with the hackers to redact any of those communications that could potentially have endangered any foreign contacts if made public. For this, I will not only serve additional prison time, but have also been ordered to pay the company over $800,000—which is to say that I will spend the rest of my life in a strange state of post-cyberpunk indentured servitude to an amoral private intelligence firm that’s perhaps best known for having spied on Bhopal activists on behalf of Dow Chemical. That the prosecution did not quite manage to articulate how I did any damage to this particular company did not seem to dissuade U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay in this matter. Likewise, His Honor did not express any visible interest in the fact that the F.B.I. itself has acknowledged having actually overseen the hack on Stratfor via its confidential informant, Hector “Sabu” Monsegur, who recently appeared in a national television interview with Charlie Rose to discuss his role in these matters.

Quite understandably, most media coverage of last week’s sentencing hearing has focused on the exciting twist ending. Despite having dropped the notorious “linking” charges, the government still managed to convince Judge Lindsay to hold me responsible for the act of copying and pasting a link—a link that was already public, and which led to a file which was already itself public, and to which other journalists had also linked without being prosecuted for it—by way of a sentencing mechanism known as “relevant conduct.” In doing so, Judge Lindsay stated that this would not actually cause any concern among journalists—an exquisitely bizarre claim insomuch as countless journalists have been expressing concern over this very matter since the charges were first brought in 2012, with Wired’s Quinn Norton even having testified at a prior hearing that she herself would have been subject to such prosecution not only in the Stratfor affair, but throughout much of her career reporting on online security. In the wake of last week’s sentencing, Norton announced she could no longer report on security breaches and advised her colleagues to refrain as well.

I will leave it to Judge Lindsay to explain to the concerned members of the press that they are not actually concerned; based on the commentary that’s now coming out of outlets ranging from the U.S. News & World Report to The Intercept and the Columbia Journalism Review, His Honor has a big job ahead of him. Instead, I will merely point out the other major scandal inherent to this case, one which has so far gone largely unreported—that in addition to having lost the “right to link” journalists have also now lost the “right to quote.” In trying to make the case that I was a violent threat to Agent Smith, the prosecution attributed to me the following statement: “Dead men can’t leak stuff … illegally shoot the son of a bitch.” I will admit that this is clearly an outright call for murder, and thus would certainly seem to warrant an F.B.I. investigation. The problem is that it wasn’t I who uttered this, but rather Fox News commentator Bob Beckel, who said it on national television in the course of a no-doubt productive discussion about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. I had merely quoted the statement on my Twitter feed—in disapproval, of course, as I happen to admire Assange, and he, himself, has put out a statement expressing astonishment that the U.S. government would attribute to me a call for his murder made by someone else on a major cable news network. Now, it would be one thing if this had simply been a misunderstanding on the part of the D.O.J., which, in all fairness, was clearly in a rush to flesh out its fabricated case against me. But when my attorneys pointed this out in a motion to dismiss the charge, the prosecutor, Candina Heath, actually stuck to her guns, arguing that, by quoting this, I had “promoted” the idea. Among many other things, this leaves open the question of why Bob Beckel has not been indicted. The answer is that, unlike me, Beckel did not spend much of 2011 investigating the full extent of the Team Themis conspiracy, in which F.B.I.-linked contracting firms prepared a covert and criminal scheme by which to launch cyber-attacks in a campaign of intimidation against activists and journalists deemed supportive of Wikileaks—a conspiracy that, as the press and even some members of Congress noted at the time that it was foiled and made public by Anonymous, had been put in motion by none other than the D.O.J. itself.

The dozen or so Americans who still have faith in the essential decency of the D.O.J., despite the assorted scandals of the last 15 years, might find it hard to believe that the charges against me were actually prompted by my efforts to bring attention to the agency’s own wrong-doing. It’s a fine thing, then, that the late journalist Michael Hastings saw fit to publish a copy of the original search warrants in my case, which list Themis firms HBGary Federal and Endgame Systems as subjects to be searched among my files, along with echelon2.org, the website on which my colleagues and I posted our research on the matter. Stratfor, the firm I allegedly cost almost a million dollars via a single phone call, is left unmentioned.

But what should worry Americans most is not that the various frightening aspects of this case can fill a rather wordy article. What should worry them is that this is not even that article. The great bulk of the government’s demonstrable lies, contradictions, and instances of perjury are still sealed and thus unavailable to the public. Other matters are just now coming to light, such as the revelation, two days before my sentencing, that the D.O.J. had withheld from my defense team sealed chat transcripts from the Jeremy Hammond hacking case which contradicted its key claim that I was a co-conspirator in the Stratfor hack. And there are still other aspects of all this, such as the F.B.I.’s seizure of my copy of the Declaration of Independence as evidence of my criminal activity, that I blush to even commit to print, lest I not be believed, even despite the F.B.I. itself having now confirmed it.

Suffice to say that I shall produce a far more comprehensive account of this whole affair later this year, even if I have few illusions that it will make much difference; a state that had reason to fear the press would not have acted as openly as it has, for as long as it has, and to such ends as it has. If anyone needs me in the meantime, I’ll be in prison.

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The government's cyberterrorism 'concerns' are a pretext for their own hacking operations

^{Jeremy Hammond}

The US has always been the world leader of cyberwar, hacking damn near everyone without any repercussions. And, for years, US intelligence officials and private contractors have been milking hacks to secure billions in cyber security programs: all you need is an enemy, and they will sell you the cure.

Their blatant hypocrisy, threat inflation and militaristic rhetoric must be challenged if we are to have a free and equal internet.

That familiar formula is playing out again with the recent Sony hack. We are supposed to be shocked that these “cyber-terrorists” – purportedly from North Korea – would attack our critical infrastructure and, clearly swift retaliation is in order. But, despite the apocalyptic hype, the Sony hack was not fundamentally different from any other high-profile breach in recent years: personal information was stolen, embarrassing private emails were published and silly political rhetoric and threats were posted on Pastebin. In many ways, it’s similar to an Anonymous operation except that, this time, the FBI accused North Korea. That accusation was based on supposed forensic analysis which they have not publicly produced after refusing to participate in joint inquiries.
This official narrative is disputed by many renowned infosec figures. Any skilled hacker or well-financed nation-state practices anti-forensics measures like modifying logs and using proxies to make the attacks appear to originate elsewhere. And North Korea has already been falsely accused of several cyber-attacks – including attacks against US and South Korean targets in July 2009 and again in 2013. The inherent difficulty of identifying the true attackers should give us pause
before we rush to judgment.

It is, however, the perfect pretext for the US to launch their own hacking operations (not that they’ve ever needed any justification before).

Authorities are once again sounding the cyber-terrorist alarm, promoting a “Free Speech vs North Korea” showdown because the attackers were allegedly angry about The Interview, a comedy about a CIA plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un (which Sony reportedly consulted with the State Department and the right-wing RAND Corporation to produce). I am not able to see the movie from prison, so I can’t give you a proper critique; maybe it is amusing but, considering the CIA’s long and vicious history of assassinations, secret prisons, torture, extrajudicial executions-by-drone and overthrowing democratically-elected governments to install dictatorships, it is not at all surprising Sony would get hacked for making a movie gloating about that.

Sony, too, is an unusual poster child for free-speech advocates in light of their history of lawsuits in defense of their “intellectual property”. Years ago, my LulzSec comrades hacked Sony in retaliation for their prosecution of an individual who published information on how to jailbreak the Playstation 3. (Citing the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Sony sued not only the original publisher but attempted to go after everyone who even watched the instructional video on YouTube.) This time, Sony’s army of lawyers have threatened news organizations and individual Twitter accounts with lawsuits in an atrocious and ultimately ineffective attempt to prevent discussion of their now-public internal emails, demonstrating exactly how they feel about the First Amendment.
When I think about free speech, I am not crying over a multi-billion dollar tech and media empire staging the withdrawal of their movies from theaters to generate PR for a record online release a week later. I’m thinking about the Alien Registration Act, the Palmer raids, the red scares, the Haymarket Martyrs, COINTELPRO and the House of Unamerican Activities. I think about the harassment of whistleblowers and journalists like Chelsea Manning, Barrett Brown, Julian Assange, James Risen and others, the protesters driven out of public parks at Occupy Wall Street and those that continue to be beaten and arrested at anti-police brutality protests. For seeking the truth, voicing our dissent, and demanding justice, we are criminalized and treated like terrorists.

Invoking the threat of “terrorism” is the biggest smoke-and-mirrors mechanism used to deny citizens both due process and free speech in the 21st century. Law enforcement agents use that word to summon images of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and stoke public fear into justifying their mass surveillance dragnet – monitoring each and every communication, every internet transaction. The primary targets of these abuses have been Muslims and immigrants, but trumped-up federal terrorism charges have entrapped activists like the Cleveland Five and various earth and animal liberation warriors. Now the latest enemy is “cyber-terrorism”: the governments insist that our critical infrastructure is under attack, and we need draconian new measures to protect our “national security”.

Sensational Hollywood movies like “Live Free, Die Hard” and the new “Blackhat” propagate this false narrative with ridiculous and unfeasible “terrorist” hacker attacks on nuclear facilities and the power grid. No attacks like this have ever happened, but there is an active effort to recruit independent hackers to sell out and work for the man, purportedly to defend US networks and catch the bad guys.

But when the FBI did arrest a supposed “blackhat” – Hector Monsegur, aka Sabu – and turned him into an informant, they were more interested in hacking targets of their own choosing than preventing attacks on US targets. Despite live knowledge of our ongoing hacking operations through Sabu, they were unable (or unwilling) to stop me from following through with dozens of high profile hacks; some, like the Stratfor breach, they helped facilitate. Instead, Sabu asked me to hack hundreds of foreign government websites from a list he provided, which I regrettably did, unaware of his status as an informant.

And that’s what this hype of “cyber-terrorism” is all about: establishing pretexts for our ongoing offensive hacking operations. “...As we implement these responses, some will be seen, others may not be seen”, a State Department spokeswoman said as North Korea was hit with repeat cyber-attacks shutting down their internet while more economic sanctions are imposed (through which everyday North Koreans suffer). But for all the accusations against North Korea and China, there is no question that the US has always been the world leader in cyber-warfare. Amongst Snowden’s revelations was evidence of the US/Israeli STUXNET, FLAME and DuQu viruses, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers in dozens of countries. They hacked into corporations like Brazil’s Petrobas, news agencies like Al Jazeera, DDOS’d Anonymous chat servers, and even tapped the personal cellphones of world leaders. Our unparalleled efforts to assert military-style dominance over the internet is forcing other countries to develop their own hacking units, leading to a digital arms race which makes us all less safe.

If the US truly wanted to stop the proliferation of nation-state hacking, they would push for UN conferences to establish guidelines defining and prohibiting “cyber-warfare”. This would require coming clean and putting an end to their own operations, but if they won’t even abide by the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners of war and the use of torture, there’s no reason to expect they wouldn’t continue hacking in secret. Just as the US government want a monopoly on the use of military force – waging wars to “spread democracy” while condemning those who fight back as “terrorists” – they correspondingly seek a monopoly on the use of hacking. Congress enhances computer crime statutes and the FBI locks up “bad guy” hackers like myself, while recruiting others to work for the government to commit attacks against sovereign countries. Then everyone acts surprised when foreign countries start using the same tactics on us.

When those in power break their own laws then there is no law and no moral authority; there are just competing factions in an international power struggle to control resources like oil, land, drugs and information. Like all wars, only the rich ruling class benefits, and everyone else suffers.

A different kind of cyber-war is possible: not one between nation-states but between the people and their governments.The internet’s natural state is anarchy and any attempts to militarize or corporatize it will be owned, exposed and driven offline anyway. I shed no tears when I hear about Sony, CENTCOM or police departments being hacked. In prison, we love hearing about all the bigshots getting hacked by guys like us. So keep on, true-to-the-code blackhats for great justice: instead of selling out your skills to the industry competing for federal contracts supporting US empire, actively undermine it by contributing anti-state solutions by developing encryption, anti-censorship and anonymity infrastructure. We’re cheering for you.

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Anonymous Call UK Protest Against ‘Paedophiles in the Establishment’

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Infamous hacker group Anonymous have called for several demonstrations in the UK to protest against what they believe is a huge coverup of paedophile networks by “those who are meant to protect”.

Anonymous have recently turned their attention to international and institutional paedophiles, including those connected to the Westminster child sex abuse scandal currently unfolding in the UK. The group are now calling for people to ‘take to the streets’ next Friday in London’s Trafalgar Square, Glasgow and Essex.

Heather Marsh, speaking on behalf of the group, explained that “Operation Death Eaters”, as the project is referred to, is not only seeking to expose those responsible for the crimes, but also those who enabled the sexual abuse to continue.

Anonymous- #OpISIS Continues...

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-Link: http://bit.ly/1EQwYJc
-Link: http://pastebin.com/d8ND4rvV List update on Feb 9, 2015

twitter:

YourAnonCentral twitterde op donderdag 12-02-2015 om 06:56:29 Netherlands Feb 13 Event | Location Amsterdam: https://t.co/B6gsmn6MKB #OpDeathEaters reageer retweet

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US gas pump hacked with 'Anonymous' tagline

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Hacker from Anonymous says he was charged after refusing to help FBI

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A 28-year-old hacker currently serving a six-month prison sentence for computer crimes now says that authorities asked him to help the United States gather information on Mexican drug cartels, then charged him with dozens of counts after he refused.

Fidel Salinas of Texas started his half-year prison sentence last Friday, according to court documents obtained by RT, three months after he accepted a plea deal that saw him owning up to a single count of accessing without authorization the computer system of Hidalgo County in 2012. The activity was part of an operation that authorities say involved the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

This Wednesday, however, Wired reported that Salinas said ahead of surrendering to US Marshals last week that the agreement he reached with the Department of Justice was hardly the first time that the two had discussed a deal.

According to Wired, Salinas told journalist Andy Greenberg that agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation attempted to recruit him to assist with the FBI’s own intelligence gathering operations in 2013. After Salinas shot them down, he soon found himself being charged with dozens of counts through no fewer than four indictments filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

In May 2013, Greenberg wrote this week, the FBI interrogated Salinas for six hours, during which they allegedly asked him to harness his cyber skills in order to help federal authorities gather intelligence on Mexican drug cartels — a previous target of Anonymous.

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Domestic Terror: #Anonymous’ #OpDeathEaters Responds to Arrest of Daniel Rosen, State Department Counterterrorism Capo

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Anonymous, that group of masked “terrorists” who have taken on everything from ISIS to tiger hunters to high school bullies to the credit card industry has a new target this week. That would be Daniel Rosen, the US State Department’s Director of Counterterrorism Programs and Policy, and a natural enough target for payback from the hacktivists whom he has targeted, but business-as-usual hostility aside, there’s a whole new reason that the swashbuckling collective has this senior government official in its sights. His arrest Tuesday on charges of soliciting sex from a minor falls squarely within the scope of #OpDeathEaters, the enormous international operation to identify, expose, and remove pedophiles from positions of power in the elites of world governments.

A message from Anonymous to Chicago Police #OPGitmo2Chicago

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#Gitmo2Chicago: protests target police 'black site'

Homan Square abuse allegations encircle mayor Rahm Emanuel as Anonymous, Occupy and Black Lives Matter take to social media and streets beyond Chicago

The Chicago police facility Homan Square was becoming the focus of an organized protest movement this weekend, as the hacktivist collective Anonymous and organizers associated with the Black Lives Matter movement seized on allegations of unconstitutional abuse at the secretive warehouse.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top adviser to Barack Obama suddenly facing a runoff for re-election, remained at the political fulcrum of a mounting campaign both on social media and the streets of Chicago, where demonstrations were planned for Saturday outside what coordinated campaigners described as mirroring a CIA “black site”.

Organizer Travis McDermott said Saturday’s “Shut Down Homan Square” protest was one of several being planned as far away as Los Angeles.

“Hopefully with the presence we expect to have, that will put a little bit of pressure to say, ‘Hey, look – this isn’t going to go away,’” he said.

On Friday night, campaigners associated with the Occupy and Anonymous collectives took to Twitter, Instagram and other social-media platforms with the hashtag #Gitmo2Chicago to decry allegations of what users alternatively labeled as a “secret prison” and “torture soon coming to a city near you”.

Six people and multiple Chicago attorneys came forward to the Guardian this week with detailed accounts of police holding suspects and witnesses for sustained periods of detention inside Homan Square, without public records, access to attorneys or being read their most basic rights – involving what they said included shackling, physical abuse and being “disappeared” from legal counsel and family. The Guardian’s recent investigation into Chicago police brutality began the week before, with a two-part account of the tactics of Detective Richard Zuley, who went from Chicago homicide investigator to Guantánamo Bay torturer.