Anonops #9: Get Los(t) Zetas

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LAPD Info Posted by 'Anonymous' Hackers in Response to Occupy L.A. Raid

​Not everyone's buying L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck's glowing review of police performance during last week's raid of Occupy L.A.

A hacker group under Twitter handle @CabinCr3w just published the personal information of about two dozen LAPD officers on Tumblr. The crew has been badgering various police departments across America for what many suspect to have been an orchestrated joint crackdown on Occupy Wall Street.

An unnamed member of the crew tells KPCC reporter Tami Abdollah in a chat room that "the bay knows us from OpBART" ...

... or, the attack on BART for censoring cellular communication between officer-involved-shooting protesters.

That would make them part of superstar hacker group Anonymous, whose offshoot LulzSec likewise published the personal information (including cell numbers) of a handful of Arizona law enforcement earlier this year. That hit was a statement against racial profiling and harsh immigration policing.

The LAPD, on the other hand, have come under fire for their treatment of the nearly 300 protesters they detained and jailed in the wee hours of December 1.

"It all comes from those [LAPD] actions, and how the protesters are now being treated like criminals for practicing a fundamental right," the hacker tells KPCC.

LAPD Commander Andy Smith admits to the Los Angeles Times that "It's a creepy thing to do, but what they did doesn't appear to be against the law." Still, the first incarnation of the leak, reportedly posted December 5, has been removed from Sticky Paste, and the owner of that site denies taking it down.

(A list of every LAPD command staffer's email, however, is still up on Sticky Paste.)

As of yesterday morning, police were "investigating who may be behind the site," the Times reported. To that, the hacker group snapped, "Funny that @LAPD is "looking" for who posted their info... not like we hid that we did it. Y U NO EXPECT US?"

The original Sticky Paste leak listed some names of officers' family members, including children. However, the Tumblr sequel censors itself in this regard, saying, "we will not release family names."

Another strange factor: Some of the officers listed have been retired for years, and had nothing to do with the raid.

Update, 9:30 a.m.: This is getting good. The hacker group has begun bickering with LAPD homicide detective Sal LaBarbera, who launched a "cops on Twitter" debate this fall when he Tweeted a photo of a dead body, along with some casual commentary.

twitter:

AnonymousPress twitterde op vrijdag 09-12-2011 om 01:10:58 CENSORED? RT @CulturalHistory: @AnonymousPress You know every so often when I try to RT some of your stuff twitter will say you don't exist. reageer retweet

twitter:

AnonymousPress twitterde op vrijdag 09-12-2011 om 01:20:36 WTF?! RT @laraste: @AnonymousPress Yes, you are absolutely censored from my stream. I can't retweet your stuff if it includes # o c c u p y reageer retweet

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Salarissen medewerkers Radboud Universiteit op straat

Studenten van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen hebben ontdekt dat het interne netwerk kampte met een beveiligingsprobleem. Door de lek lagen de salarissen van medewerkers op straat. Ook was er toegang tot de adressen van personeel en studenten.

Volgens Tweakers.net. bracht de onderwijsinstelling het nieuws zelf naar buiten, maar wil de universiteit er verder weinig over kwijt. Ook niet hoe de studenten achter het lek zijn gekomen.

Volgens een mededeling op de site van de Radboud Universiteit gaat was het niet mogelijk wijzigingen aan te brengen in de blootgelegde data. De studenten hebben vervolgens zelf de universiteit ingeseidn, waarna het lek is gedicht.

'De universiteit bedankt de studenten voor hun inzet en voor de zorgvuldige wijze waarop ze het informatielek hebben aangekaart', meldt de Radboud Universiteit.

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Russians fight Twitter and Facebook battles over Putin election

Protests against president's party escalate across social media with flood of automated counterattacks and alleged hacking

Russians have flooded Facebook and Twitter as they organise unprecedented protests against Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. But they are not alone. Thousands of Twitter accounts appear to have been created with the sole purpose of drowning out opposition voices by flooding the service's hashtag search function.

The automated attacks have dumped a blizzard of meaningless tweets with hashtags such as #Navalny, on which tweets about Alexei Navalny are collated, making it impossible to follow the flow of news about the arrested opposition leader. Many of the so-called "Twitter bots" have now been shut down.

The flood of fake tweets came after liberal websites, including the LiveJournal blogging platform, the website for radio station Ekho Moskvy and weekly journal Bolshoi Gorod , were shut down by distributed denial of service attacks on Sunday, the day of Russia's disputed parliamentary vote.

The website for Golos, an independent election monitor, was also shut down. Golos employees complained this week that their email had been hacked and inaccessible for several days. On Friday, tabloid Life News published employees' private emails, detailing correspondence with the US development agency – presented as "proof" that the group was acting on foreign orders to disrupt the Russian election.

The most interesting hack attack, however, came via a more antiquated instrument – the telephone. On Thursday, the liberal Yabloko party and newspaper Novaya Gazeta said their telephone lines had been paralysed by endless calls featuring a recorded female voice: "Putin is very good. Putin loves you. Putin makes your life happy. Love Putin and your life will fill with meaning. Putin does everything for you. Remember, Putin does everything just for you. Putin is life. Putin is light. Without Putin, life has no meaning. Putin is your protector. Putin is your saviour." Over and over again.

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Monsanto PR Firm Reportedly ‘Ended’ by Anonymous

It seems that Monsanto may be having a rough week.

Not only was the company hit by a press release declaring them the worst company of 2011, but a group of Anonymous hackers claim to have actually completely disrupted the operations of a PR firm which manages Monsanto’s own PR.

The hackers infiltrated the PR firm, known as The Bivings Group, citing “15+years of running marketing campaigns and helping some of the most corrupt corporations on the planet, as well as several governmental agencies, cover up their dirt.”

The hackers claimed to have succeeded in bringing down The Bivings Group on December 5th.

Going by information released by Anonymous, Bivings Group shut down all of their servers and liquidated their assets after the infiltration, while former employees moved on to start ‘The Brick Factory’, a new PR firm. The hackers actions are obviously driven by the PR firm’s decision to help run marketing campaigns for corrupt corporations like Monsanto.

One week after the hackers infiltrated their system, The Bivings Group reportedly stated:

. Our Cyber Infrastructure has recently been put under attack. We are evaluating the extent of the intrusion, and apologise for any downtime and issues this may cause you. It is not yet determined what the motives behind the attack are, or what, if any data has been compromised. We will continue to keep you up to date, and sicerely apologise for any inconvenience.

Sometimes it is hard to see what is wrong and what is right, though it is quite apparent that Monsanto is a corporation with no regard for human health or the planet. This isn’t the only example of resistance against corrupt companies like Monsanto, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Regardless of whether or not the attack will be considered to be in the right by some anti-Monsanto activists, one thing is clear: Monsanto’s own crimes against public health and the environment trump any form of cyber attack in terms of wrongdoing.

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Anonymous Mexico casts first stone in "Operation Safe Roads"

Roughly 11 days ago, Anonymous Mexico announced the new operation, #Opcarreterasseguras in Spanish, via social media and video. The hackivists seek to highlight “the thousands of kidnappings, murders and rapes that bus passengers fall prey to by organized crime elements on Mexican highways,” according to a press release.

Anonymous Mexico listed its demands in an accompanying video, which focused on security concerns like GPS tracking and silent alarms that would alert authorities when a bus was in the process of being hijacked. The deadline for those demands to be met was Dec. 10.

As the clock struck at midnight, Anonymous Mexico followed through with its promised cyber attacks on three bus companies: Transpais, Estrella Blanca, and Autobuses Del Oriente.

The press release announcing the cyber strike stated those involved were “also attacking several insurance companies as well as government websites, but we will allow the press to do their investigative reporting in order to report on it.”

At time of publication, the website for bus company Autobuses Del Oriente was the only site down, possibly due to a DDoS attack.

Update:

“We did not expect them to meet our demands so quick. It will take time but I feel they didn't believe us” wrote a spokesperson for the operation, in a private Twitter message to the Daily Dot. The spokesperson went on to write the attack would continue for "24 hours straight."

“For example ADO operates in 13 Mexican states. Right now you can’t buy a ticket online because we downed them. They are losing money right now. We believe these actions repeatedly will teach them that safety is profitable,” added the spokesperson, before linking to their blogspot.

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News HBGary CEO Says Anonymous Hack Made Him Money: Begging for Round 2?

In an interview with Network World, HBGary’s CEO and founder Greg Hoglund bragged that the Anonymous attack on HBGary Federal earlier this year actually brought them business. Will this precipitate a second round with the hacking collective?

Earlier this year, HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr spoke publicly about his intent to infiltrate Anonymous. The hacking collective bristled at Barr’s declaration and hacked his email, which contained communications with Bank of America about how to neutralize WikiLeaks; which, at the time, was said to be sitting on a treasure trove of incriminating documents from some major bank, commonly thought to be BofA.

Barr attempted damage control by chatting with Anonymous members in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC), but HBGary Federal was publicly humiliated and Barr was eventually forced to resign.

However, HBGary founder and CEO Greg Hoglund, who had created HBGary Federal to contract with the U.S. government, stated in an interview published this morning in Network World that the Anonymous attack did not ruin HBGary. Instead, it created a degree of sympathy for the company and brought them business.

In a sense, it seems as if Hoglund was thanking Anonymous. In another sense, however, it could be interpreted as Hoglund asking for a second round with Anonymous.

That said, much of the various nodes of Anonymous have, in recent months, shifted their gaze to working as publicity engines for and participants in the Occupy movement. As hacker anthropologist and NYU professor Gabriella Coleman told us in a recent interview, “Some Anons have gotten quite involved [in Occupy] on the ground in different cities, lending a helping hand.”

In other words, perhaps Hoglund’s boasts are of little interest to Anonymous now.

But, one can’t help wondering if Round 2 of the Anonymous vs. HBGary battle is heating up.

#Anonymous: Message of Solidarity

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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Recognizably Anonymous

How did a hacker group that rejects definition develop such a strong visual brand?

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Six or eight people, Housh reckons, hashed out a press release. It read like the script to a movie trailer, so somebody proposed turning it into a video, combing Archive.org to dig up images of rolling clouds and ominous background music available under a Creative Commons license. They kept fiddling with the ending of the script, using Anonymous-associated phrases already in circulation. Another contributor proposed a conclusion: “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive, we do not forget.” Pause. “Expect us.”

“Everyone in the channel erupts,” Housh recalls. “Like ‘Oh my god. You’ve done it. You have done it! We win this game.’ ” The script was fed into AT&T text-to-speech software, and became the video’s creepy voice-over. Next the group created a Web site. For a logo, they considered imagery that had been floating around 4Chan and elsewhere, including the headless suit-man. Someone—Housh says the person wishes to remain anonymous—suggested imposing that image over a U.N.-style globe logo. Then a question mark was added where the figure’s head should be. In what seems like a missed opportunity, the Anonymous logo did not appear anywhere in the video. “We weren’t branding experts or anything,” Housh explains.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/(...)up/Affected_articles
Wikipedia:Bell Pottinger COI Investigations

It emerged in early December 2011 that accounts operated by Bell Pottinger, a British PR firm, had been extensively editing Wikipedia to further their clients' interests. This page attempts to identify and remove these edits.

So far, eleven accounts are confirmed to have been operated by the firm, and several more cannot be confirmed but have suspicious editing records. The list is probably not complete - please let us know on the discussion page if you have found others.

The affected articles are listed below, grouped into clusters by topic. It should not be considered a list of clients, and there may be false positives.

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FloridaFamilyJUSTtheBeginning

Florida Family Association feels the need to put hate at the forefront of what it stands for.

Your hatred, bigotry and fear mongering towards Gays, Lesbians and most recently
Muslim Americans has not gone unnoticed!

Anonymous will not stand for hate and divisive vitriol to be spread across our country and whenever we can...we will stop it...
FFA you managed to use your power to influence Lowe's to follow you into your racist stupor and they too will answer for that...
For now, you will answer to it..as well as your unfortunate followers having personal information shared with the world so everyone can know how racist and hateful you all are.
I am going to assume most of the people who receive your newsletter, email you and make donations are potentially part of the 99%. They are likely lower middle class people who have been mislead by all of your bullshit and god talk...therefor they too are unwitting victims. So I will NOT share all of the Credit Card information I got.
I am though reading the emails and getting information on those who did donate to make sure they are not worthy of the scorn of Anonymous as well...if i find information such as anyone being a part of other hate groups such as the Klan or anything similar all bets are off for those people.
Also, I am looking for you Steve Ensley...and I will find you.

I want all of your followers to know though their information is NOT SAFE in your hands until you address your security issues.

http://floridafamily.org/(...)no=%Inject_Here%1171

EMAIL & IP ADDRESSES OF THOSE WHO GET YOUR NEWSLETTER :

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Secular progressives are fundamental socialists, who are hostile toward Christianity and traditional American values. They are committed to dramatically changing America to look like the godless, socialistic Western Europe.

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Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties

One of my first large keynotes, in 2007, was called Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties. In the 15-minute original keynote at OSCON, I outlined all the civil liberties that were at risk because of enforcement of the copyright monopoly, and that the copyright industry brutally understood these liberties needed to be killed to preserve their business. What was fringe paranoia five years ago is now becoming the law of the land.

The keynote in question shows how the copyright monopoly is fundamentally incompatible with horizontal unmonitored digital communication, and therefore, with the Internet and private communications as very concepts.

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At the same time in the United States, China and Iran are held as shining examples of countries which still have a working freedom of speech despite having given the copyright industry the privileges they want. (Even I could not have made this up; it is just too far out) And to applause from the Senate, no less. This was in the SOPA/PIPA debate, and I would have a hard time finding a better example of how completely incompatible the copyright monopoly is with fundamental rights.

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WikiLeaks: A tale of two worlds

WikiLeaks, 4Chan and Anonymous are examples of how rogues can thrive against the will of empire.

Melbourne, Australia - There is something eerie about the WikiLeaks logo (see above). It works as a sort of graphic manifesto, an image of dense political content stating a notion of ample consequences. A cosmic sandglass encloses a duplicated globe seen from an angle that puts Iraqi territory at the centre.

Inside this device the upper and darker planet is exchanged, drip by drip, for a new one. The power of the image lies in the sense of inexorability it conveys, alluding to earthly absolutes like the flow of time and the force of gravity: a bullish threat that grants the upper world no room for hope. The logo narrates a gradual apocalypse, and by articulating this process of transformation through the image of the leak, WikiLeaks defines itself as the critical agent in the destruction of the old and the becoming of the new world.

What has become manifest since late November 2010, with the release of what is now known as "The US Embassy Cables", is that the narrative implicit in the WikiLeaks logo, that of a world disjunct, describes a greater struggle against the global power held diffusely by transnational corporations and enforced by governments around the world. This power is under attack by a relatively new actor that can be called, for now, the autonomous network.

The conditions that allow the network to challenge the power of governments and corporations can be traced to the origin of the Internet and the Cold War zeitgeist that made the network we know possible. It was only because Cold War strategists had to narrate to themselves the unfolding of convoluted thermonuclear apocalypse scenarios, a dark art that peaked with Herman Kahn's surreal book On Thermonuclear War, that a computer network with the characteristics of the internet was implemented.


"I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned. The early Internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense. "

- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak


The idea of imminent apocalypse was so extraordinary that it allowed for the radical thinking that over a decade evolved into the TCP/IP computer protocol suite, a resilient network protocol that makes the end user of the network its primary agent. The design philosophy of the internet protocols represents a clean break from the epistemes and continuums that had historically informed the evolution of Western power, as traced by Foucault and Deleuze from sovereign societies to disciplinary societies to societies of control.

Steve Wozniak has written, "I was also taught that space, and the moon, were free and open. Nobody owned them. No country owned them. I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned. The early internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense".

To produce a commons is indeed an accident for Empire. Dismissed as a never-meant-for-the-masses autonomous zone, by and for the military and academia, it was allowed to evolve out of control. But this accident that happened because of daydreaming an extreme future never stopped happening.

It evolved.

At some point it gained an accessible graphic interface, and spilled all over the globe. By then it was too late to disarm what is now the increasingly contentious coexistence of two worlds, as the WikiLeaks logo registers. One world is a pre-apocalyptic capitalistic society of individualism, profit and control; the other a post-apocalyptic community of self-regulating collaborative survivors. The conflict arises from an essential paradox: Because the web exists, both worlds need it in order to prevail over the other.

The "cyber war" announced so spectacularly (in the Debordian sense) in the days following WikiLeaks' US Embassy Cables release is not really about the DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service), "denial of service" attacks that barely obstructed access to the MasterCard website for a few hours. If anything, the ephemerality of the disturbance leaves the sensation that Anonymous, the group that launched it, is far from being a structural threat. What journalists around the world have failed to narrate is the tale of a network that increasingly challenges, bypasses and outcompetes the global corporate-government complex. This is a struggle about the obsolescence of the very idea of the nation-state, and an almost unanimous coalition of governments, led by the US, fighting furiously to regain control by exerting legal, financial, symbolic and, perhaps most concerning, technical violence on their adversary.

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What is interesting is that WikiLeaks, after all, is still up and running. Someone still hosts it (poetically, a hosting company located in a Cold War-era anti-nuclear bunker), and their fund-raising channels have diversify to bypass the embargo (with partial success). WikiLeaks is an example of how a rogue can still thrive against the will of Empire, supported by an emerging ecology of more autonomous actors. MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon don't need to be shut, just bypassed or outcompeted. As the autonomous ecology matures, it allows for more complexity. This is where the war stands to be won: in the building of autonomous structures of all sorts (structures that bypass and outcompete existing ones) on top of other new structures until the entire old world is unnecessary.

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Op maandag 12 december 2011 15:56 schreef Stephan1237 het volgende:
Weblog GeenStijl heeft ontdekt dat vanaf het kantoor van auteursrechtenwaakhond Buma Stemra illegaal materiaal wordt gedownload van internet. De organisatie strijdt sinds jaar en dag tegen illegaal downloaden van beschermde materialen, maar maakt zich er volgens GeenStijl zelf ook schuldig aan.
De bloggers baseren zich op de website Youhavedownloaded.com. Daar wordt bijgehouden vanaf welk IP-adres bepaalde bestanden met bijvoorbeeld films worden gedownload. Een IP-adres is het digitale adres van iemands internetverbinding, dat valt te koppelen aan huisadressen.

GeenStijl vulde het IP-adres van het hoofdkantoor van Buma Stemra in en ontdekte dat via hun verbinding een aflevering van een Amerikaanse tv-serie is gedownload, en het spel Battlefield 3.

GeenStijl vindt dat pikant, omdat slechts 4 tot 6 procent van de wereldwijd via internet gedownloade bestanden via de genoemde site wordt bijgehouden. Mogelijk dat er meer bestanden zijn gedownload via de verbinding van Buma Stemra. (ANP/Redactie)

Bron : http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/55(...)-zelf-illegaal.dhtml

En wie gaat Buma/Stemra voor de rechter slepen

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KLPD gebruikt ‘afluister-software’ op computers verdachten

Het Korps Landelijke Politiediensten (KLPD) gebruikt software die op afstand kan worden geïnstalleerd op de computer van verdachten. Daarmee kan vertrouwelijke communicatie zoals een skypegesprek worden gevolgd. Dat bleek vanavond uit antwoorden van minister van Justitie Ivo Opstelten op vragen van D66, GroenLinks en SP.

Half oktober ontstond er ophef in Duitsland over het gebruik van ‘Bundestroyaner-software’ door de politie. Die bleek veel meer te kunnen dan wettelijk toegestaan. Zo maakt de Bundestroyaner het mogelijk op afstand de microfoon van een geïnfecteerde computer aan te zetten en gesprekken in de huiskamer af te luisteren.

Ook werd betwijfeld of het wel alleen verdachten waren waarbij de Duitse politie meekeek. De software zou onder andere via e-mail op computers terechtkomen. De producent, het Duitse softwarebedrijf Digitask, verklaarde tegen nrc.next dat de software ook aan een Nederlandse overheidsdienst is verkocht.

Welke dienst wilde het bedrijf niet zeggen. Dat lijkt nu het KLPD te zijn geweest. Opstelten noemt alleen de Unit Landelijke Interceptie van de dienst, die voor de hele politie werkt, als gebruiker van dit soort software.

De minister schrijft dat die alleen wordt gebruikt na goedkeuring door een officier van justitie. Functionaliteiten die in strijd zijn met de wet worden volgens Opstelten onklaar gemaakt.

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Voice-over-internet companies win EU backing in dispute with mobile carriers

EU ministers call for checks on telecom operators that penalise the smooth functioning of services such as Skype

Voice-over-internet companies complaining that mobile and landline internet providers penalise the smooth functioning of their services got backing from EU ministers on Tuesday, who called for the European Commission and regulators to check on telecom operators that do so.

The move gives leverage to complaints about mobile carriers around the world that have blocked internet telephony services such as Skype.

A report by the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) association, VON Europe, whose members include both Google and Skype-owner Microsoft, says Vodafone Group restricts access to web-based calls on pay-as-you-go deals, while some mobile providers do not allow VoIP at all, including France Telecom's Orange, Bouygues, Germany's E-Plus and its parent group, Dutch provider KPN.

It points to the example of the French operator SFR which sells "internet access" packages for Apple's iPad which specifically ban voice-over-internet (VoIP) and peer-to-peer use, while labelling it "unlimited". In the UK, only Three and O2 allow VoIP-based use of the iPad on their mobile internet packages.

"In other words, ISPs do have incentives to discriminate between players operating at the application and content layers," notes VON Europe's report. "Internet service providers can act as monopolists by shaping traffic in a way that departs from the application providers', content/service providers' or users' interests."

Ministers urged the pan-European regulator and the European Commission to monitor mobile companies' traffic management to ensure they do not hamper "net neutrality", meaning that all services are treated equally.

The regulator, BEREC, says infringements of "net neutrality" – in which some internet traffic such as voice calls is blocked in favour of other data – are infrequent, but ministers are concerned that some services are being throttled.

That in turn could stifle the development of brand new services because carriers and telecoms companies would defend older models, but put Europe at a disadvantage compared with countries that better implement net neutrality.

In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommended a number of rules to enforce net neutrality on fixed, though not mobile, companies at the end of 2010. But mobile carrier Verizon Communications challenged even that weak approach in October.

BEREC will publish a joint report from regulators in the 27 EU member states in February on whether telecom firms respect the principle of net neutrality.

Microsoft's Skype service says it is either blocked or overpriced by mobile operators, who see its low-cost service as a threat to their business. Skype's customer base is forecast to reach 150 million by 2016, according to Juniper Research.

The Netherlands passed a law in October banning mobile firms from charging customers extra for web-based call services.

twitter:

AnonCircle twitterde op dinsdag 13-12-2011 om 18:55:00 CNN tells us what it thinks we want to hear... http://t.co/4JgmFogN #Anonymous #OWS reageer retweet

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LA Councilman: Leaked Info On LAPD Officers Could Put Families At Risk

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A City Council member called on Monday for state lawmakers to help the personal information of law enforcement officers remain confidential.

Councilman Dennis Zine wants the California Legislature to move quickly to protect police, fire and other officers after family photos, property records and campaign contributions of LAPD police commanders was posted online last week.

And according to Zine, the department should use the Department of Motor Vehicles as a privacy model.

“The DMV recognized a number of years ago they do have the confidentiality for law enforcement personnel and it’s been use-effective, so we’re trying to extend that to the assessor’s office, which maintains those records,” Zine told KNX 1070.

Punitive measures to be determined would be assessed for violators under the plan, he added.

A former police officer himself, Zine said he wants to work on legislation that will standardize protections for law enforcement agencies across the state in effort to protect what’s most important to the officers.

“The bottom line is the ability of law enforcement not to be intimidated or not to feel intimidated and their families to be protected,” he said. “When they start posting the children’s names, addresses, it causes concern with the officer’s and their families.”

The LAPD has launched an investigation into a number of cases involving the personal information of police officials that ended up on the internet.

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Op maandag 12 december 2011 10:38 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

[..]

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Anonymous Leaks Anti-LGBT Movement Member Emails

After yesterday they leaked information on the members of the Florida Family Association (FFA) for their discrimination campaigns launched against Muslims, the members of Anonymous leaked the email addresses and passwords of what they call “The Most Active Anti-LGBT Members on the Web.”

A total of 600 email log-in credentials were published in a Pastebin document, but since the passwords are in clear text, I’m not going to provide a link.

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Members of the Anonymous hacktivist collective are known to fight for those who are often targeted by the public for being different. LGBT rights opposition organizations are most often affiliated with right-wing religious and socially conservative political organizations.

If not long ago Anonymous punished those who oppose Muslims, now it’s the turn of those who actively oppose gay and transgender civil rights.

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Guy Fawkes Mask, 'Anonymous' Milieu, Used in Teen YouTube Threat That Got SoCal High School Shut Down, Cops Say

​A threat against Bishop Montgomery High School made very publicly via YouTube landed a 16-year-old suspect in handcuffs, police said today.

Torrance police Sgt. Steven Jenkinson tells the Weekly the video featured an Occupy-style Guy Fawkes mask and the graphic stylings of the hacker group Anonymous. It made a statement indicating "something very bad is going to happen" today at the campus attended by the sophomore, he said.

The kid was arrested Sunday on suspicion of making terrorist threats. But following calls from concerned parents Saturday the school ...

... already made plans to shut down Monday, Jenkinson said.

It'll be back up and running tomorrow: A statement today by the Torrance Catholic school's principal, Rosemary Libbon, states that "the situation has been resolved."

The video allegedly featured threats made in a voice that is processed through robotic, Autotune-style software, police told us.

As a precaution, as school was closed today, administrators and security personnel swept the campus to ensure that there were no "suspicious items or devices," Jenkinson said.

He said police checked to see if the teen suspect was involved with the hacker group but found no connection.

The video, unfortunately for us, has been taken down.

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The academics of Anonymous

If the word “doxing” makes you think of puppies, and the word “hacker” has you imagining a zit-faced, social outcast eating junk food in his or her parents’ basement, it’s time to head to the anthropology section of your local library or bookstore and start reading up on “hacktivism,” or online activism.

Academics have been studying the very non-academic undertakings of hacktivists, predominantly groups such as Anonymous, for years. These include the repeated hacking of the Church of Scientology Web site, the infamous online message board 4Chan, and the philosophy of “doing it for the Lulz.” Their findings, while not your average classroom fare, are helping to paint a picture for policy makers of a leaderless, geographically and socio-economically diverse and powerfully disruptive group.

“Anonymous is by nature, as well as design, difficult to define,” said New York University Assistant Professor of media, culture and communication Gabriella Coleman during a gathering at the Brookings Institution on Dec. 9. ”It made my life as an anthropologist very difficult at times.”

Coleman has spent the past decade studying hackers, meeting with members of the hacking community and using formal academic tools to understand this emerging sector of society. She joined Richard Forno, director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Cybersecurity Program, and Paul Rosenzweig, the founder of Red Branch Law and Consulting and former assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security, at Brookings. The group was convened by Brookings’s Director of the Center for Technology Innovation, Allan Friedman.

“I tend to say they’re geeks — they’re geeks and they’re hackers,” said Coleman when asked about the demographics of the hacking populace, “and yet, when you say geeks, often times the problem with using the term like that is that it kind of conjures one image, and one image alone: basement, pimples, and psychological pa­thol­ogy. That is wrong.”

Coleman has met with a “remarkably diverse group,” with people who “are near royalty” in Europe and others who are “below working class” and “at the bottom of the barrel at some level.”

“They just have very unusual backgrounds,” said Coleman of those in the group willing to engage in illegal activity, “which may be one of the reasons they me be willing to go where they go.”

Beyond understanding who Anonymous is, there’s the additional question of how to protect society against its destructive power. This, argues Rosenzweig, depends on which value is deemed to be predominant among the group. Is it hacktivism, vigilantism or collective action?

If it is a hacktivist group or a criminal group, such as Mao in China or the VietCong, perhaps anti-insurgency tactics, such as the employment of good intelligence, empowering hactivist resistance movements and public education campaigns should be used, said Rosenzweig. If vigilantism is dominant, the solution could lie in improving criminal law enforcement and diplomatic activity. If, however, the group is deemed to be dominated by an attitude of collective action, then it falls under First Amendment-protected speech, meaning that reinforcing First Amendment protections and vigilant policing of the margin between protected speech and criminal activity are all that can be done.

“I see less of the political speech and more of the criminality,” said Rosenzweig, “but I am certainly willing to acknowledge that I might be wrong.”

Right or wrong, the subject of online activism can be expected to only grow as a subsection of anthropological study in the coming years. A far cry from the social outcast in mom and dad’s basement.

Given this, we spoke with Coleman afterward about what to expect from Anonymous, what companies can learn from the group’s behavior, and what aspiring and current anthropologists can expect in terms of how these activities stand to change the academic landscape.

quote:

Anonymous hacker arrested and bail on 10k bond, faces 15years for LOIC attack

Well once again, a person who downloaded the infamous LOIC and used it in a widespread attack, the attack was on gene simmions website.

Kevin George Poe, 24, of Manchester, Connecticut, who used the screen name “spydr101,” was taken into custody today without incident in Hartford and later was released on a $10,000 bond, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles said in a statement. He’s accused of waging a denial of service attack on GeneSimmons.com.

If found guilty he faces the same problem all the other anons do…a possible 15years behind bars for using a simple program. Its amazing they can even have such a high bail bond for just computer hacking…

Poe made his first appearance in U.S. District Court, where a judge ordered Poe released on a $10,000 bond and required Poe to come to Los Angeles at a date yet to be determined.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles returned an indictment last week that accused Poe of being affiliated with the Anonymous hacking group.

The FBI alleges that during a five-day period in October 2010, Poe and others linked to Anonymous allegedly conducted a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Simmons’ computer systems, sending tens of thousands of electronic requests designed to overload the computer server and render the website useless.

By now everyone knows that LOIC would have to be the most stupid way to attack anything at all,

quote:

'Time-persoon' 2011: de demonstrant

Time Magazine heeft 'de demonstrant' uitgeroepen tot persoon van het jaar. Die heeft namelijk niet alleen zijn eigen ongenoegen kenbaar gemaakt, maar ook de wereld veranderd, vindt Time.

Volgens het Amerikaanse blad is 2011 vooral het jaar van demonstraties. "Massaal en effectief straatprotest was een wereldwijde eigenaardigheid totdat het een jaar geleden plots het bepalende thema werd. De betoger maakte weer geschiedenis", aldus het blad.

Onder 'de demonstrant' schaart Time onder anderen de Tunesische fruitverkoper die zichzelf in brand stak en daarmee min of meer de Arabische Lente ontketende.

Wanhoopsdaad

De 26-jarige Mohammed Bouazizi was een gewone Tunesische jongen met een universitaire opleiding. Na zijn afstuderen kon hij geen werk vinden. Omdat hij inkomsten nodig had, ging hij op straat groente en fruit verkopen. Bij een controle nam de politie zijn spullen in beslag, omdat hij geen vergunning had.

Op 17 december 2010 overgoot hij zichzelf met benzine en stak zichzelf in brand. Bouazizi belandde op de intensive care met ernstige brandwonden. Hij overleed 4 januari dit jaar. De wanhoopsdaad van Bouazizi leidde tot protesten in het hele land

Eervolle vemelding

De Occupy-beweging die in september in de VS losbarstte en daarna de hele wereld veroverde, en de demonstranten in Griekenland die protesteerden tegen de bezuinigingen, krijgen ook een eervolle vermelding.

quote:

PVV steekt tóch geen stokje voor 'geheim' ACTA-verdrag

Minister van Economische Zaken Maxime Verhagen kan zonder problemen namens Nederland de onderhandelingen voeren over het ACTA-verdrag. Dat bleek tijdens de stemmingen in de Kamer vandaag.

Lang leek het erop dat de PVV daar een stokje voor zou steken, maar uiteindelijk steunde de partij een motie van D66-Kamerlid Kees Verhoeven niet. 'Teleurstellend en een gemiste kans', vindt Verhoeven.

Het ACTA-verdag is een overeenkomst tussen de Verenigde Staten, Japan en de Europese Unie en moet door copyright beschermde goederen waarborgen. Er moeten afspraken in worden gemaakt hoe piraterij, met name op internet, te voorkomen en te bestraffen. Het verdrag bevat afspraken die het illegaal downloaden van films en muziek moeten tegengaan. Minister Verhagen voert namens Nederland de onderhandelingen. Op het verdrag bestaat kritiek: het zou de vrijheid van internetters drastisch inperken bijvoorbeeld - maar niemand weet precies wat er in het verdrag staat.

Turbulent
Het verdrag kent in de Kamer een korte maar turbulente geschiedenis, 'een soort van afvalrace', aldus Verhoeven. De Kamer verzocht Verhagen twee weken geleden unaniem om openbaarheid over de onderhandelingsdocumenten voor het verdrag. 'Die documenten hebben juridische waarde. Zonder deze documenten kun je het verdrag niet goed beoordelen', zegt Verhoeven.

Verhagen schreef op dat verzoek een brief, waarin hij aangaf dit niet te kunnen, omdat Nederland dan allerlei verdragen zou schenden. Toen de Kamer daarop nogmaals verzocht om openbaarmaking, stemden VVD en CDA tegen, maar de PVV bleef voor openbaarmarking. Verhagen wilde de documenten alleen vertrouwelijk ter inzage geven, waardoor een debat erover onmogelijk werd.

Hierop diende Verhoeven vandaag zijn motie in, om Verhagen ervan te weerhouden namens Nederland op te treden bij de verdere onderhandelingen en ondertekening van ACTA. Maar nu stemde de PVV niet meer voor.

Gebeld
Verhoeven: 'Ik denk dat Verhagen met Wilders heeft gebeld en heeft gezegd: zorg ervoor dat jouw fractie tegen de motie stemt. Het is een gemiste kans. We hadden als Nederland nog invloed kunnen uitoefenen op Europa, maar het omgekeerde gaat gebeuren. Daar zit 'm de crux. Er komt nu een ratificeringswetje, maar dan gaat het er alleen nog maar over hoe we het verdrag in de Nederlandse wetgeving gaan invoeren.'

Downloadverbod
Volgens de D66'er is dat geen goed nieuws. In het ACTA-verdrag zou worden vastgelegd dat individuele internetters hoge boetes opgelegd kunnen krijgen en is er wellicht ruimte voor een downloadverbod. Een verbod dat onlangs door de Kamer - met steun van de PVV - is tegengehouden.

Kamerlid Jhim van Bemmel (PVV) deelt de visie van Verhoeven niet. Hij zegt op de site van Webwereld: 'We hebben ons laten informeren door de minister, en hij is met handen en voeten gebonden aan de afspraken met Europa. Nu kunnen we onze gedoogminister het zo moeilijk mogelijk maken, maar daar voelen we niets voor.'

Volgens hem is nu niet gezegd dat Nederland ook daadwerkelijk instemt met ACTA. Het uiteindelijke verdrag moet door de Eerste en Tweede Kamer worden goedgekeurd. Pas wanneer alle landen van de Europese Unie instemmen met het verdrag, kan ook de Europese Commissie het ondertekenen.

Goed moment
Volgens Van Bemmel zou het moment dat het verdrag in de Kamer komt nog een 'heel goed moment' kunnen zijn, om tegen te stemmen. Verhoeven ziet dat anders; 'op het moment dat Verhagen het ACTA-verdrag heeft ondertekend, kan Nederland niet zoveel meer doen'.

Volgens Verhagen leidt ACTA niet tot strengere regelgeving in Nederland. D66 heeft daar zo zijn vraagtekens bij.

De Limburgse PVV-leider Laurence Stassen laat via Twitter weten niet achter het standpunt van de landelijke fractie te staan: 'Voor alle duidelijkheid: PVV eurofractie was en is tegen geheimhouding ACTA en is voor 100% openbaarheid! Dus oneens met Haags PVVstandpunt!'

twitter:

BarrettBrownLOL twitterde op woensdag 14-12-2011 om 22:39:16 An important #Anonymous participant and #ProjectPM member has been arrested in Europe. reageer retweet