Anonops #13: Stop CISPA

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Internet without borders: Anonymous protests Indian web censorship (PHOTOS)

Hundreds gathered in several Indian cities to rally against "growing government censorship of the internet." The events were held under the banner of Anonymous, the global hacktivist group that earlier downed India’s largest Internet provider.

Hundreds of Indians in the Guy Fawkes masks associated with the Anonymous and Occupy movements staged rallies in New Delhi and 15 other major cities, including Mumbai and Bangalore.

The call for demonstrations by the Indian branch of the group follows a March 29 court order issued in the southern city of Chennai, demanding 15 Indian Internet providers block access to file-sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay and video sharing sites such as Vimeo and Dailymotion.

On Wednesday, the Anonymous forum fired an opening shot by attacking the website of state-run telecom provider MTNL, pasting Guy Fawkes, who has become a logo of sorts for the group, on MTNL’s home page.

In an open letter the same day, the group accused the government of trying to create a "Great Indian Firewall" to establish control on the web and issuing a "declaration of war from yourself… to us."

The government has been embroiled in a row with social networks after a series of meetings with internet giants Google, Yahoo! and Facebook to discuss how questionable content can be pre-screened.

But concerns for Internet freedom in India are not new, and stem from an update to the country’s Information Technology Act in April last year.

The new rules regulating Internet companies – providers, websites and search engines – instruct them that they must remove "disparaging" or "blasphemous" content within 36 hours if they receive a complaint from an "affected person."

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Caught in the ACTA: Protests sweep Europe (PHOTOS)

Thousands of Europeans rallied as one against the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which they believe is a draconian attack on online privacy.

In Brussels, hundreds turned up at the city center with banners and slogans denouncing the bill, drawing parallels between the treaty and George Orwell’s seminal novel 1984; a reference to the increased internet surveillance ACTA would allow.

German protesters got in on the act too, wearing the Guy Fawkes masks associated with the Anonymous and Occupy movements, brandishing banners saying "don’t give ACTA a chance".

More protests are expected on Saturday in the United States, with hundreds in New York and Kansas City using social networks to confirm their attendance at the rallies.

ACTA, which has been in the works since 2007, is a multinational treaty for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement. It aims to establish a global legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet, and would create a new governing body outside existing forums like the World Trade Organization or the United Nations.

Its supporters claim the treaty is the only way to respond to “the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works.” But opponents consider it an act of war, clamping down on freedom of expression and privacy.

The future of ACTA is already in question, not only because of continuous global protests, but because of dwindling government support as well. Earlier this year, the treaty lost three crucial European Parliament committee votes – which many say may reflects on how the EU Parliament will vote on the treaty in July.

The European Union suspended efforts to ratify the treaty in February amid a storm of protest from human rights activists. Thousands demonstrated across the EU against ACTA and the amount of power it would give to big corporations.

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Anonymous did Protest and IT ministry says 'Anonymous' is lying

The call for demonstrations by the Indian arm of the group follows a March 29 court order issued in the southern city of Chennai demanding 15 Indian Internet providers block access to file-sharing websites such as PirateBay.

The order has resulted in access being denied to a host of websites that carry pirated films and music among other legal content, including www.isohunt.com and www.pastebin.com.On Wednesday, the Anonymous forum fired an opening shot by attacking the website of state-run telecom provider MTNL, pasting the logo of the group the mask of 17th century revolutionary Guy Fawkes on www.mtnl.net.in.

Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), the country's premier agency dealing with cyber security contingencies, said that its website was neither attacked nor brought down on Saturday. Hackers allegedly belonging to the group called Anonymous had earlier claimed they had attacked CERT-IN website with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

A spokesperson from ministry of communications & IT told TOI, "The claim that CERT-IN website was attacked and brought down by hackers is without any basis and at complete variance with the facts. The fact is that the website has been running continuously & uninterruptedly including the whole of today."

"We don't want anything to be censored online because now-a-days the web is an effective tool to express thoughts and share things with others - be it through social networking or emails," said a volunteer from the group. "Without Internet, people cannot be liberated," added another participant.

The minister was said to have shown Internet executives examples of obscene images found online that risked offending Muslims or defamed politicians, including his boss, the head of the ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi.

Earlier Anonymous, which protested against what it perceives web censorship in several Indian cities today evening, had claimed that it attacked and took down CERT-IN website. "This is your response team #india! They can't even protect themselves. How will they protect others," read a tweet from @opindia_revenge, the group's Twitter handle.

"We will keep attacking http://cert-in.org.in and http://india.gov.in ! #GOI, ready to face ups and downs?" said the hackers.

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http://thehackernews.com/2012/06/anonymous-takes-down-mtnl-website.html

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_{Posted On 6/08/2012 06:37:00 PM By THN Security Analyst}

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MTNL's corporate website could not be accessed, following the attack since afternoon and officials said efforts were underway to restore it. MTNL Delhi, Deputy - GM (Internet), Deepak Sharma said it was not hacking but 'denial of service attack' under which the server is unable to provide services to the customers.

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Am I Anonymous?

Learning how Anonymous works means learning to be one. Gabriella Coleman narrates her experience of being in between worlds.

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Ein erster Blick in die geleakten Mails von Scientology-Österreich …

Am vergangenen Wochenende hackte Anonymous Austria die Emails einer der beiden Scientology-Organisationen in Wien und gewährte derart einen aktuellen Einblick. Neben internem Bla-Bla gab es eine ganz wesentliche Information – und natürlich auch die eine oder andere Absonderlichkeit der besonderen Art.

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Online privacy: Home Office to write blank cheque for 'snoopers' charter'

Internet and phone companies will be forced to track email, Twitter, Facebook and other online data under new legislation

The government is to offer a blank cheque to internet and phone firms that will be required to track everyone's email, Twitter, Facebook and other internet use under legislation to be published on Thursday.

The Home Office has confirmed it will foot the bill, thought to run into tens and possibly hundreds of millions, for collecting and storing the extra social media and web browsing records needed to implement the scheme, which critics have dubbed an "online snooper's charter".

Ministers did not put a figure on the cost of the new scheme but said it would be far less than the £2bn price tag estimated when Labour put forward a web-tracking scheme based on a central Home Office database in 2006.

The Liberal Democrats are expected to scale back their criticism of the legislation, which is to be published in draft form on Thursday, after Nick Clegg's intervention secured a series of safeguards, including a scrutiny inquiry by MPs and peers that will report by the end of November.

But the measure is expected to continue to attract fierce criticism from libertarian Conservatives, led by the former shadow home secretary David Davis, who this week attacked it again, calling it "expensive, unnecessary and a huge invasion of everyone's privacy".

An online petition run by the campaign group 38 degrees has already attracted more than 163,000 signatures under the slogan: "Our civil liberties have taken a battering in recent years from politicians of all backgrounds. Now it's time to for us to push back."

Tom Brake MP, co-chair of the Lib Dem home affairs committee, said the decision to publish the bill in draft meant there was now an opportunity to examine all its aspects before it was voted on in parliament.

Brake said there was no objection in principle to extending the capability of the police and security services to access communications data from emails, texts and mobile phones to Twitter, Facebook and other new forms of social media. But the party wanted assurances that it was technically possible to access the "who sent what to whom, when and where" traffic data without accessing content – a point about which there is much debate.

Brake said they wanted to see the list of state agencies who could not access such personal data without a warrant extended to cover bodies such as the Food Standards Agency.

He said he also wanted to know what proportion of the 500,000 requests for communications data already made each year successfully contributed to investigations and whether it was possible to reduce the volume.

The safeguards secured by Clegg include the joint scrutiny committee of MPs and peers, who will hear expert evidence, including that from the Home Office, and examine all aspects to ensure the measure is not "rammed through parliament". It has already been quietly agreed that the committee should report by the end of November, implying a timetable that could see the measure on the statute book within 12 months.

It is also expected that inquiries into the bill will be mounted by parliament's intelligence and security and home affairs committees before it emerges in its final form.

Other safeguards to be detailed in the draft bill are a "case-by-case" oversight by the interception of the communications surveillance commissioner, the publication of a privacy impact statement, and powers for the information commissioner to ensure the stored data is kept secure then destroyed when the 12-month retention period expires.

Individuals who feel they have been subject to unlawful tracking will be able to complain to a panel of senior judges in the investigatory powers tribunal.

It will also remain the case that the police and security services will not be allowed to access the content of emails, texts, mobile calls and other confidential web use, without a warrant signed by the home secretary.

The communications data police and others may seek about an individual includes email addresses and phone numbers of people who have been in contact, when this happened, and where, the details giving the police records of suspects' associates and activities.

Internet and phone companies are already required to give the police and security services access to the communications data they retain for their own billing and business purposes. But the Home Office states that the rapidly changing nature of the net, including the widespread use of social media that is not billed item by item, means that this power is no longer sufficient for tracking the activities of criminals online.

Officials say that 25% of requests for communications data by the police and security agencies can no longer be met.

The legislation to be published today will break new legal ground in requiring internet and phone companies to collect this new communications data and not just pass on data they already retain.

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In Flawed, Epic Anonymous Book, the Abyss Gazes Back

It’s hard to report on Anonymous.

It’s a non-organization of pranksters-turned-activists-turned-hackers-turned-hot-mess-of-law-enforcement-drama — a story that is hard to get, and hard to write.

To work with a secretive and hunted group requires making many non-obvious choices. One of the unnamed but extensively quoted hackers in Forbes London bureau chief Parmy Olson’s new book on the group, titled We Are Anonymous, told me once that anons were “by nature deceptive” — and they are. (How do I know it’s the same person? I recognized their way of talking. Then I asked.)

Anons lie when they have no reason to lie. They weave vast fabrications as a form of performance. Then they tell the truth at unexpected and unfortunate times, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. They are unpredictable. The nihilistic fury that Olson describes in the lifestyle of young anons goes in every direction, including inward, and it often spills over onto people like Olson and me for no obvious reason.

You can’t follow the money in Anonymous, or look at the power structures, or hunt for a greater rationale in a collective that on most days doesn’t have one. But we still have to make the choice about what we believe, why, and how it fits into a larger picture. We use circumstances, gut instincts, and plenty of what hackers call social engineering to tease out the evidence we need to write about the collective, to fulfill our role in the story.

Make no mistake, we have a role. You just can’t not join. It’s impossible to not be part of the thing, when the thing uses the media to talk to itself.

So what makes Parmy Olson’s We Are Anonymous so frustrating is that it plays the narrative straight, as if these issues don’t exist at all.

But Olson and I, like professor Biella Coleman and former CNN correspondent Amber Lyon, documentary filmmaker Brian Knappenberger, and even Gawker’s Adrian Chen, cannot avoid shaping the thing and having it shape us. We are the medium the collective uses to define itself, and we end up owning some of what it becomes. We are, no matter what rules we’ve set up to avoid it, an organ of the Hive Mind. It is Schrödinger’s media landscape, and our observations always affect the outcome.

For this reason its vital that we expose our methods and internal rules. Who do we name, and more importantly, who do we not? I avoided this particular ethical issue by publicly refusing to name anyone who is not, as they say in Anonymous, namefagged already. Olson plunges through hundreds of pages without even a nod in the issues direction.

How has Olson chosen who she trusts and when? Her methods are hidden, her notes not referenced in the text, and she appears nowhere in her book. While thats a traditional choice for journalism, in this strange case it harms Olsons credibility. In an environment where all your sources lie to you, you must tell the world how you came to believe the story youre telling.

The social systems of the internet, of which Anonymous is a highly evolved example, disrupt the established pathways of consequence. Instead of looking for the expert or person in charge for quotes, the heart of the story may be almost anywhere. Searching for the right source in Anonymous is often more like investigating a murder than crawling up the chain of command looking for an interview.

Anonymous made us, its mediafags, masters of hedging language. The bombastic claims and hyperbolic declarations must be reported from their mouths, not from our publications. And yet still we make mistakes and publish lies and assumptions that slip through. There is some of this in all of journalism, but in a world where nothing is true and everything is permitted, its a constant existential slog. Its why theres not many of us on this beat.

Journalism is part of a world of institutions, hierarchies, and social traditions codified by nation states and organizations. We create laws and rules to control who gets to do things that matter, so we can concentrate power where we want it. Its meant to create a predictable world we can inhabit within Natures capricious grasp. The tools of journalism were built for this world, its what shaped our rhetoric and narrative. Its partly why were always so keen on printing peoples titles, or age, or race, placing them within a hierarchy, telling you how important they are. The techniques of contemporary journalism are the Big Man theory of history, writ small and fast.

Anonymous breaks all that, and its a huge headache. But for reporters who had to file stories on the group, the rise of Lulzsec, an exclusive club of hacker elites that acted just like the normal world from within the larger collective, was a godsend. It finally provided a fast way to tell an outrageous and popular story, and we responded with predictable enthusiasm.

And thats how Parmy Olson gets around the problems of writing about Anonymous by not actually writing much about Anonymous. Her real topic is Lulzsec. In the 414 pages of Olson book, she only explores the worldwide collective where its relevant to the formation of the small spinoff group of six that burned intensely for a few weeks in the summer of 2011, drawing media attention like no hacker group before.

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Razzia gegen Anonymous in Deutschland

Ermittelt wird gegen 106 Beschuldigte wegen einer Attacke auf die Server der Gema

Das deutsche Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) hat mehrere Wohnungen von angeblichen Mitgliedern von Anonymous durchsucht. Zuvor hatte die der deutschen Musikrechteverwertung Gema IP-Adressen an die Ermittler übergeben.

106 Beschuldigte

Ermittelt wird gegen insgesamt 106 Beschuldigte wegen Teilnahme an einer Attacke auf die Server der Gema. Die Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Frankfurt entsprechende Medienberichte. Bei den Verdächtigen soll es hauptsächlich um Jugendliche und Heranwachsende handeln.

Denial-of-Service-Attacken

Die Aktivisten setzten bei ihren Angriff Denial-of-Service-Attacken ein. Bei solchen Attacken werden Server gezielt mit Anfragen bombardiert, bis diese wegen Überlastung nur noch langsam funktionieren oder ganz zusammenbrechen. Bei den Razzien am Dienstag und Mittwoch seien unter anderem Computer, externe Festplatten, Karten-Lesegeräte und Mobiltelefone beschlagnahmt worden, meldet "Spiegel Online".

Streit mit Google

Hintergrund der Angriffe auf die Gema sind Streitereien um die Vergütung für Musikvideos auf der Internetplattform Youtube. Die Gema, eine Vertretung von Urheberrechtsinhabern wie Komponisten, Textautoren oder Musikverlegern, streitet seit langem mit Google um die Abgaben beim Abspielen von Musikvideos der Videoplattform YouTube. Deshalb sind viele Musikvideos für Nutzer aus Deutschland nicht verfügbar.(red/APA, 14.06. 2012)

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Every call, every email, every text: UK unveils bill aimed at logging citizens’ Web activity

LONDON — British authorities on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. — and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation’s top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists.

The government insists it’s not after content. It promises not to read the body of emails or eavesdrop on phone calls without a warrant. But the surveillance proposed in the government’s 118-page draft bill would provide authorities a remarkably rich picture of their citizens’ day-to-day lives, tracking nearly everything they do online, over the phone, or even through the post.

All that data would be kept for up to a year — ready for browsing whenever anyone in authority wanted it. In some cases, the bill envisages monitoring the information in real time.

Home Office Secretary Theresa May said in an editorial published ahead of the bill’s unveiling that only evil-doers should be frightened.

“Our proposals are sensible and limited,” she wrote in The Sun, the country’s top-selling daily. “They will give the police and some other agencies access to data about online communications to tackle crime, exactly as they do now with mobile phone calls and texts. Unless you are a criminal, then you’ve nothing to worry about from this new law.”

Yet plenty of people were worried, including a senior lawmaker from May’s governing Conservative Party.

“This is a huge amount of information, very intrusive to collect on people,” David Davis, one of the proposal’s most outspoken critics, told BBC radio. “It’s not content, but it’s incredibly intrusive.”

Human rights defenders were aghast. Privacy group Big Brother Watch said the proposal risked turning Britain into a “nation of suspects.” Civil rights organization Liberty said the law would mean the “indiscriminate stockpiling of private data.”

Authorities and civil libertarians have been debating the plan for weeks, but Thursday marked the first time that the government itemized exactly what kinds of activity it wanted to track.

The list is long.

The bill would force providers — companies such as the BT Group PLC or Virgin Media Inc. — to log where emails, tweets, Skype calls and other messages were sent from, who was sending them, who they were sent to, and how large they were. Details of file transfers, phone calls, text messages and instant conversations, such as those carried over BlackBerry Messenger, would also be recorded.

The bill demands that providers collect IP addresses, details of customers’ electronic hardware, and subscriber information, including names, addresses, and payment information.

What May didn’t mention in her editorial — and the Home Office left off its press release — was that the government also is seeking to keep logs of citizens’ Internet history, giving officials access to the browsing habits of roughly 60 million people — including sensitive visits to medical, dating, or pornography websites.

Prefer to send mail the old-fashioned way? That would be monitored, too. Address details and other markers printed onto envelopes would be copied; parcel tracking information would be logged as well.

Officials say they need all that information to stay on top of a rapidly-changing technological landscape. Britain’s online child protection agency said Thursday it was missing out on a quarter of the traffic used by child pornography networks. In an editorial in the Times of London entitled “Trust me, I need to know about your emails,” Scotland Yard chief Bernard Hogan-Howe said that the collection of communications data played a role in 95 percent of serious organized crime operations.

The measure remains a draft bill, which means it’s subject to change before it is presented to Parliament.

In a nod to controversy surrounding the bill, the government has taken the unusual step of submitting it for comment to two parallel legislative bodies: A joint legislative committee composed of members of Britain’s House of Lords and the House of Commons as well as Parliament’s intelligence committee.

In a statement to fellow lawmakers, May struck a measured tone, saying she recognized “that these proposals raise important issues around personal privacy” but that the law would be balanced.

She was less measured in The Sun, where she dismissed worries that the bill would stomp on free expression as “ridiculous claims” dreamed up by “conspiracy theorists.”

“Without changing the law the only freedom we would protect is that of criminals, terrorists and pedophiles,” she said.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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FOIA Documents Show TOR Undernet Beyond the Reach of the Federal Investigators

Recently released documents detail the federal government's inability to pursue cybercriminals shrouded by the tricky anonymity tools used by the Silk Road marketplace and other darknet sites - tools which are funded in part by the federal government itself. In this particular case, a citizen reported stumbling upon a cache of child pornography while browsing the anonymous Tor network's hidden sites, which are viewable with specialized, but readily available, tools and the special .onion domain.

Documents, released through a Freedom of Information Act request by Jason Smathers on MuckRock, show that after being given details of the illicit material, investigators were stymied as to the origin of the pornography's host. In the investigators' own words, "there is not currently a way to trace the origin of the website. As such no other investigative leads exist."



Smathers' request was originally for all Justice Department records mentioning the Silk Road marketplace. The Justice Department forwarded the request on to the FBI for processing. In fact, the FBI had received an almost identical request, also filed by Smathers, and rejected it, claiming at the time that responsive records could not be found.

While he is currently appealing the FBI's initial response, 11 pages of responsive documents were withheld from the Justice Department's release. The FBI cited Exemption (b)7(d) in that case, which excludes from disclosure "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes which could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source and information furnished by a confidential source."

The FBI and DEA had been directed to investigate Tor networks, and specifically the Silk Road marketplace where users can buy and sell legal and illegal goods anonymously using a combination of Tor and the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, by Senator Charles Schumer who stated that the DEA was "aware of the site" and most likely investigating it.

A nearly identical request regarding Silk Road to the Drug Enforcement Agency was rejected as being too broad or burdensome to process, while the Secret Service claimed it had no responsive documents, as did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

The DEA has touted infiltrating similar anonymous Tor marketplaces in the past.

Despite the illegal ends of these marketplaces, the technology was begun and still operates with more noble aims: It was originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Lab, and later maintained by the Tor Project, a non-profit group supported financially at various times by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, various governmental and NGO entities, Google and the National Science Foundation. The technology has proven important in puncturing through Internet censorship and tracking attempts around the world.

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Anonymous-like group threatens to 'take down' corrupt system

A SELF-STYLED group of local hacktivists has threatened to "take down the system" in Cyprus, and are demanding an end to corruption in political life and to media manipulation of the masses, according to a video posted on YouTube.

The clip, featuring the typical graphics and audio effects of the Anonymous videos with a person donning the Guy Fawkes mask from the 2005 movie "V for Vendetta," warns:

"Governments are elected as representatives of their people so as to make their voices heard. This is, as it seems, the last thing the governments of today do. This is unacceptable and those who commit this kind of fraud should be strictly punished. We will take down your corrupted system and guess what?! We have already started!"

Dated June 8, the video is signed by AvengersOn-, whose Facebook page describes them as "a group of hacktivists from the island of Cyprus which supports Anonymous and the ideology around them." It can be viewed here:

Anonymous Message To Cyprus | By AvengersOn- #opCyprus

.

The authors take issue with what they perceive as widespread corruption and nepotism in government: "Bribery, which can take the form of votes as well as money, is a big issue in Cyprus. It is disgusting and it only undermines your social and cultural life and values. Reconsider! The government of Cyprus is totally corrupted and we don't like corrupted systems.

"There are a lot of people who are bribed within the government and they therefore employ people who do not deserve to hold the position they are given due to the bribery, depriving the jobs from those who truly deserve them."

The clip goes on to blame the Mari explosion of last July on "your governments' mistakes and the negligence they show during their service."

It also reprimands both the government and the media in Cyprus for concealing the truth about ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), a multinational treaty which aims at the establishment of standards for intellectual property and rights’ enforcement.

"The people of Cyprus, the smashing majority of them," the video says, "does not even know what ACTA is and what its purpose is. Its purpose is to render downloading from the internet movies or music a criminal offence. Again, it is repeated that illegal downloading will now be a criminal offence within the states who signed it and people will even go to jail for doing so. Its sole purpose is to protect the music and movie industries which lead the world and, therefore, have no regard to the people's freedoms."

ACTA, which has generated a great deal of controversy around the world, is currently being debated at the European Parliament. Back in February the Cabinet here approved the agreement, but a bill has yet to be sent to parliament.

Activists and hacktivists alike are calling on Cypriot MPs to suppress any such legislation should it come to the House.

Meanwhile an online petition against ACTA in Cyprus has been launched (http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-acta-in-cyprus.html).

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Anon_Fighter twitterde op zaterdag 16-06-2012 om 21:50:11 Who's ready for #OpRacism?! 10 mins until attack on http://www.americannaziparty.com #DDoS #NoRacism #Anonymous CHARGE UR LAZ0RS #ReTweet reageer retweet

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AnnieElch twitterde op zondag 17-06-2012 om 21:32:59 #Anonymous you have done well WhiteHonor.com disappeared from the internet an hour ago. When we say Expect Us, we mean it. #OpRacism reageer retweet