Anonops #13: Stop CISPA

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RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping

A leaked presentation from the RIAA shows that online file-sharing isn’t the biggest source of illegal music acquisition in the U.S. The confidential data reveals that 65% of all music files are “unpaid” but the vast majority of these are obtained through offline swapping. The report further shows that cyberlockers such as Megaupload are only a marginal source of pirated music.

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In total, 15 percent of all acquired music (paid + unpaid) comes from P2P file-sharing and just 4 percent from cyberlockers. Offline swapping in the form of hard drive trading and burning/ripping from others is much more prevalent with 19 and 27 percent respectively.

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Hong Kong Facebook user arrested over hacking threat

HONG KONG — Hong Kong police said on Sunday they had arrested a 21-year-old man after he reportedly said on social networking site Facebook that he would hack several government websites.

Police said the man, who was later released on bail, was held on suspicion of "access to a computer with criminal or dishonest intent" after he allegedly threatened to hack seven government websites between June and August this year.

"The Internet is not a virtual world of lawlessness," a police spokesman said, adding that the man was required to report back to the police in October.

The unidentified man was arrested on Friday before being released on bail, the spokesman told AFP.

He faces up to five years imprisonment if found guilty.

The man is a member of the global hacker group Anonymous, the South China Morning Post said. The group is said to have 20 members in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, which guarantees civil liberties not seen on the mainland, including freedom of speech.

The police spokesman declined to confirm his link to Anonymous. The last posting on the "Anonymous HK" Facebook page on July 22 urged authorities to show "respect" to citizens.

The notorious group, which is believed to be a loosely affiliated network of "hacktivists", has attacked sites of groups as varied as MasterCard and Visa, the US Justice Department, and the Tunisian and Yemen governments.

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Internet Pirates Will Always Win

STOPPING online piracy is like playing the world’s largest game of Whac-A-Mole.

Hit one, countless others appear. Quickly. And the mallet is heavy and slow.

Take as an example YouTube, where the Recording Industry Association of America almost rules with an iron fist, but doesn’t, because of deceptions like the one involving a cat.

Total Eclipse of the Heart Literal Video Version (REFRAMED) - YouTube.flv

YouTube, which is owned by Google, offers a free tool to the movie studios and television networks called Content ID. When a studio legitimately uploads a clip from a copyrighted film to YouTube, the Google tool automatically finds and blocks copies of the product.

To get around this roadblock, some YouTube users started placing copyrighted videos inside a still photo of a cat that appears to be watching an old JVC television set. The Content ID algorithm has a difficult time seeing that the video is violating any copyright rules; it just sees a cat watching TV.

Sure, it’s annoying for those who want to watch the video, but it works. (Obviously, it’s more than annoying for the company whose product is being pirated.)

Then there are those — possibly tens of millions of users, actually — who engage in peer-to-peer file-sharing on the sites using the BitTorrent protocol.

Earlier this year, after months of legal wrangling, authorities in a number of countries won an injunction against the Pirate Bay, probably the largest and most famous BitTorrent piracy site on the Web. The order blocked people from entering the site.

In retaliation, the Pirate Bay wrapped up the code that runs its entire Web site, and offered it as a free downloadable file for anyone to copy and install on their own servers. People began setting up hundreds of new versions of the site, and the piracy continues unabated.

Thus, whacking one big mole created hundreds of smaller ones.

Although the recording industries might believe they’re winning the fight, the Pirate Bay and others are continually one step ahead. In March, a Pirate Bay collaborator, who goes by the online name Mr. Spock, announced in a blog post that the team hoped to build drones that would float in the air and allow people to download movies and music through wireless radio transmitters.

“This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system,” Mr. Spock posted on the site. “A real act of war.” Some BitTorrent sites have also discussed storing servers in secure bank vaults. Message boards on the Web devoted to piracy have in the past raised the idea that the Pirate Bay has Web servers stored underwater.

“Piracy won’t go away,” said Ernesto Van Der Sar, editor of Torrent Freak, a site that reports on copyright and piracy news. “They’ve tried for years and they’ll keep on trying, but it won’t go away.” Mr. Van Der Sar said companies should stop trying to fight piracy and start experimenting with new ways to distribute content that is inevitably going to be pirated anyway.

According to Torrent Freak, the top pirated TV shows are downloaded several million times a week. Unauthorized movies, music, e-books, software, pornography, comics, photos and video games are watched, read and listened to via these piracy sites millions of times a day.

The copyright holders believe new laws will stop this type of piracy. But many others believe any laws will just push people to find creative new ways of getting the content they want.

“There’s a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it’s an inverse relationship,” said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. “The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online.”

The hit HBO show “Game of Thrones” is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don’t really want to solve the piracy problem.

“If every TV show was offered at a fair price to everyone in the world, there would definitely be much less copyright infringement,” he said. “But because of the monopoly power of the cable companies and content creators, they might actually make less money.”

The way people download unauthorized content is changing. In the early days of music piracy, people transferred songs to their home or work computers. Now, with cloud-based sites, like Wuala, uTorrent and Tribler, people stream movies and music from third-party storage facilities, often to mobile devices and TV’s. Some of these cloud-based Web sites allow people to set up automatic downloads of new shows the moment they are uploaded to piracy sites. It’s like piracy-on-demand. And it will be much harder to trace and to stop.

It is only going to get worse. Piracy has started to move beyond the Internet and media and into the physical world. People on the fringes of tech, often early adopters of new devices and gadgets, are now working with 3-D printers that can churn out actual physical objects. Say you need a wall hook or want to replace a bit of hardware that fell off your luggage. You can download a file and “print” these objects with printers that spray layers of plastic, metal or ceramics into shapes.

And people are beginning to share files that contain the schematics for physical objects on these BitTorrent sites. Although 3-D printing is still in its infancy, it is soon expected to become as pervasive as illegal music downloading was in the late 1990s.

Content owners will find themselves stuck behind ancient legal walls when trying to stop people from downloading objects online as copyright laws do not apply to standard physical objects deemed “noncreative.”

In the arcade version of Whac-A-Mole, the game eventually ends — often when the player loses. In the piracy arms-race version, there doesn’t seem to be a conclusion. Sooner or later, the people who still believe they can hit the moles with their slow mallets might realize that their time would be better spent playing an entirely different game.

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Anonymous releases sample of Australian telco's data

A campaign using the name and much of the iconography of activist group Anonymous has released data it hopes will embarrass the Australian Government into backing away from even considering data retention laws.

Data has been posted to a number of file sharing sites and appears to have been released at around 2:00AM Sunday AEST.

The Register has visited three of the sites and the data concerned is far from explosive as it lists the addresses of government agencies and foreign embassies in Australia. Some lines of data reveal the first names of individuals. Some record hobbies. A field for mobile phone numbers and phone numbers that will reach individuals in the evening is also present in many records.

The group has described the attack and its motives in a blog post and video in which the group justifies the release by describing it as a “proof of concept attack” that used “the very same methods your government uses on the Australian population.” Those methods, Anonymous or those using that name assert, could mean any data held by the Australian Government could be exposed in similar ways, to the detriment of individuals' liberty and privacy.

The attack is said to have exploited a flaw in an un-patched and forgotten AAPT ColdFusion server hosted at a third party, Melbourne IT. How that represents a method Australia's government uses is not explained.

The speech accompanying the video diverges from the written text, and at around 2:25 in the video issues a threat of further action:

Do not underestimate what a nation settled by convicts can do. You must keep the people happy. Do that and there is no drama. Otherwise, you'd better expect us.

The soundtrack to the video is spoken in a mock Australian accent that even some anons, in a chat room the Anonymous' Op_Australia twitter feed has promoted as a reliable source of information on its antipodean activities, found risible.

The decision to claim the video is spoken by a member of the Australian public is also noteworthy, as some people in the chat room appear not to reside in Australia. One has told The Reg he or she resides in France. Others keep hours that indicate they either have very unusual sleeping patterns or reside in time zones beyond Australia.

Chat in the room also indicated the group had difficulty preparing the data for release, as the size of the stolen data - 40 gigabytes and several hundred database tables – presented technical challenges. Banter also seemed to indicate that different opinions about what to release were being debated among activists. Some argued that AAPT's confirmation of data loss achieved the group's aims and that the eventual release therefore did not need to make additional revelations.

The eventual decision preserved some column headers, but the majority of cells are replaced with the word “NULL”.

On Saturday the blog post above was also, for a time, removed from the AnonPR.net site. Chat in the group also suggested activists were attacking the web site of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. ®

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Operation Demonoid Engaged

Greetings World,

The collective has noticed that Demonoid, a popular bittorrent tracker has been removed from the Internet. This atrocity was carried out by the copywrong police of Ukraine, as their gift to the United Fascists of America http://bit.ly/OW2D0y. This is unacceptable, we cannot stay silent while this ruthless attack has occured on our freedom of speech. Internet has always been free and should stay free forever! We hold these rights of freedom to be self evident.

Despite Demonoid blocking all Ukranian IP addresses to avoid upsetting local law, the site still attracted the attention of the authorities. The raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky‘s to the United States on the agenda: copyright infringement. This implies that the attack against Demonoid was a preplanned operation, and a deliberate and malicious attack against Internet Freedom. We will not let this go unpunished. We will seek revenge against all criminals responsible and their punishments will be severe.

We can no longer sit around and watch this censorship happen right in front of us. Haven’t you, Ukraine, learned anything from the Anonymous “Collective”? You were attacked once, and yet feel the need to keep censoring us, your people, and every day hard working citizens?

What do you gain? What and or who are you protecting?

No need to answer those questions. It’s plain and simple, money, power, & greed are your driving forces to keep humanity enslaved and deprived of the freedom of information, and freedom of speech.

We would like to remind you to take notice of what is happening around the globe, with governments, agencies, and companies trying to suppress us as people, as human beings! It only takes one idea, one person to voice an opinion and the masses will rise up and follow as one.

Ukrainian Government, you have committed a crime against Humanity & Freedom. We will not tolerate this. We will take direct actions against you and your criminal friends until you realize the crimes you’ve committed and restore our beloved Demonoid.

The history of Ukraine, former Soviet Union, has always been corrupted and filled with fallacies. What brings you to the United States? Why is this a gift? We weren’t aware we were exchanging gifts. You can already Expect your gifts from us!

Operation Demonoid, Engaged.

We are Anonymous,
We are legion,
We do not forgive,
We do not forget,
Ukranian government, You should have expected us.

irc.anonops.pro | 6667/SSL: +6697
#OpDemonoid

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London Olympics 2012: Anonymous Targets Italian Race Walker Alex Schwazer after Dope Scandal

The Italian branch of the Anonymous hacking collective has defaced the homepage of Italian Olympic 50km race walk champion Alex Schwazer, who was disqualified from London 2012 for testing positive for performance-enhancing blood booster EPO.

Featuring a Guy Fawkes' mask which says "no to doping", the website also carries a statement by the syndicate which condemns the use of banned substances.

"Doping kills sport. Doping kills life," said the hacktivists. "Anonymous Italy condemns the doping practice in sport.

"Dear Alex, besides being an athlete you are also a carabinieri [a member of the Italian army who has civil responsibilities]. You should not have committed this mistake as your life, your job, your sport bring too much responsibility for us, your family and your people.

"We, Anonymous, join those who fight and work to "clean" the sport of the doping plague."

Schwazer, who has been suspended by CONI, the Italian Olympic Committee, had been one of Italy's big medal hopes in the 50 km race walk - having won gold at Beijing 2008, breaking the Olympic record by more than a minute.

However he tested positive for EPO, a supplement which increases the aerobic capacity of the body's blood cells, and was banned before even reaching London.

In a televised interview with Italian public broadcast RAI, Schwazer said he obtained EPO on his own, and used it because he felt immense pressure to win again.

Sobbing during the interview, Schwazer insisted that he won gold at Beijing without the assistance of drugs, adding: "I wanted the gold again at all costs."

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Mars Landing Videos, and Other Casualties of the Robot Wars

NASA's successful landing on Mars of an SUV-sized nuclear rover from a rocket-skycrane should have marked a high point in collaborative accomplishments between humans and robots. But here on Earth the situation was a bit more tense. That's because, just hours after the celebrated touchdown, Vice Magazine's Motherboard blog broke the news that one of NASA's official clips from the mission had been pulled from YouTube, replaced with a notice from the video site indicating that the "video contains content from Scripps Local News, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."

Motherboard points the finger of blame at the DMCA, the law that provides the terms under which online service providers must enforce copyright policies in order to avoid liability. But as Ars Technica has since pointed out, the problem likely lies not with the DMCA itself, but with the additional (and voluntary) automated Content ID system YouTube has developed. Content ID uses digital fingerprinting technology to identify duplicate audio and video on YouTube and, depending on the "business rules" configuration of the designated rightsholder, blocks or places ads next to videos. Unfortunately, the robots behind that copyright enforcement machine have the tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, even when it ends up silencing real — human — speech.

The balance struck in the DMCA is not perfect, and it's certainly subject to abuse. For example, the clause saying that takedown notices must be sent in good faith under penalty of perjury very rarely shows its teeth. And even in cases where content is non-infringing and the uploader is willing to file a counter-notice, the accuser gets 10-14 days of censorship for free, before the service provider can put it back up. In the case of newsworthy videos or commentary on current events, those 10-14 days can make or break the message.

Despite this, the DMCA at least strives to limit those abuses by, among other things, providing an appeal process with a safe harbor for providers who allow content back up after a counter-notice.

Content ID, by contrast, is an opaque and proprietary system where the accuser can serve as the judge, jury, and executioner. Worse, the person whose speech is being silenced has little recourse. The Content ID system tips whatever balance is present in the DMCA and allows even more pernicious forms of manipulation and abuse. In a Wired column earlier this year, Andy Baio enumerated some of the problems that YouTube users encounter:

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Open Letter from Anonymous regarding #opAnaheim

Subject: Flash mob this Saturday, August 18, 2012

Dear Citizens of Anaheim,

This is Anonymous from Operation Anaheim.

As you were chanting outside city hall, “THE WORLD IS WATCHING” to the police, we watched youtube videos of citizens being shot in Anaheim, and then saw a mother with child being attacked by a police canine.

When we saw that, we were outraged. We started working as a collective to help you fight these racist cops. In solidarity with Anaheim, we have been working online, trying to bring awareness to this issue. We have also sent food to protesters on the ground, and will continue to support you during future protests.

When we saw the paramilitary police force respond to peaceful protesters, we were shocked.

When we saw youtube videos of children describing being shot by police, we were disgusted. ( http://gg.gg/fp0)

In complete solidarity with you all, we understand that your community has been terrorized by the police and paramilitary forces that have been called in to suppress your protests. Because of the past few stressful weeks, in a planned meeting with our on-the-ground informants, we would like to help the community unwind.

We’re now calling on the citizens of Anaheim, and outlying areas to assemble for a flash mob on their streets, away from the police. We’re calling for the citizens of Anaheim and their supporters to take a night off and relax, please. On Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 5pm, please leave your home and head into the streets and try to find others. March down your sidewalks looking for for other people in your community. Start to gather in a decentralized fashion using Twitter, texting and phones to gather everyone to a single spot decided by the rule of mass mob.

Please bring drums, boomboxes, drinks, and share your stories over a peaceful evening where there is no other call to action against the police. Take the night off and build your community.

We encourage all supporters in the area surrounding Anaheim to join in solidarity with the residents of Anaheim.

We continue to stand with you, Anaheim. We will be posting news on our Twitter @opAnaheim or email us at opanaheim@yandex.com .

Local 99% groups to alert:
@OccupySD / http://www.sandiegooccupy.org/forum
web@Occupylosangeles.org / http://occupylosangeles.org/?q=forum
email to mexicamovement@sbcglobal.net
http://nationalbrownberets.com/contactus.html

In solidarity,

We are Anonymous Operation Anaheim and the 99%.
Together we are legion,
We do not forgive,
We do not forget,
Anaheim,
Expect to party with us.

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wikileaks twitterde op dinsdag 07-08-2012 om 05:58:10 WikiLeaks has been under sustained large scale DDoS attacks since August 3. Help us purchase more bandwidth: http://t.co/p9sNjWBK reageer retweet

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AntiLeaks twitterde op woensdag 08-08-2012 om 06:35:52 #Wikileaks #AntiLeaks We are behind the attacks on Wikileaks and it's supporters. We will be issuing a statement shortly. reageer retweet

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enquerre twitterde op vrijdag 10-08-2012 om 09:40:21 From what I can observe across the cyberverse #Anonymous is seriously pissed off with @antileaks. They'll be exposed soon. #Wikileaks reageer retweet

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Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.

The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing.

Hacktivists aligned with the loose-knit Anonymous collective took credit for hacking Stratfor on Christmas Eve, 2011, in turn collecting what they claimed to be more than five million emails from within the company. WikiLeaks began releasing those emails as the Global Intelligence Files (GIF) earlier this year and, of those, several discussing the implementing of TrapWire in public spaces across the country were circulated on the Web this week after security researcher Justin Ferguson brought attention to the matter. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks was relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, crippling the whistleblower site and its mirrors, significantly cutting short the number of people who would otherwise have unfettered access to the emails.

On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, “the head of a new breed of terrorist.” As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning.

Mr. Ferguson and others have mirrored what are believed to be most recently-released Global Intelligence Files on external sites, but the original documents uploaded to WikiLeaks have been at times unavailable this week due to the continuing DDoS attacks. Late Thursday and early Friday this week, the GIF mirrors continues to go offline due to what is presumably more DDoS assaults. Australian activist Asher Wolf wrote on Twitter that the DDoS attacks flooding the WikiLeaks server were reported to be dropping upwards of 40 gigabytes of traffic per second on the site.

According to a press release (pdf) dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is “designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports.” A system of interconnected nodes spot anything considered suspect and then input it into the system to be "analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.”

In a 2009 email included in the Anonymous leak, Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton is alleged to write, “TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.” Burton formerly served with the US Diplomatic Security Service, and Abraxas’ staff includes other security experts with experience in and out of the Armed Forces.

What is believed to be a partnering agreement included in the Stratfor files from August 13, 2009 indicates that they signed a contract with Abraxas to provide them with analysis and reports of their TrapWire system (pdf).

“Suspicious activity reports from all facilities on the TrapWire network are aggregated in a central database and run through a rules engine that searches for patterns indicative of terrorist surveillance operations and other attack preparations,” Crime and Justice International magazine explains in a 2006 article on the program, one of the few publically circulated on the Abraxas product (pdf). “Any patterns detected – links among individuals, vehicles or activities – will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations, enabling them to begin investigations into the suspected surveillance cell.”

In a 2005 interview with The Entrepreneur Center, Abraxas founder Richard “Hollis” Helms said his signature product “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.” He calls it “a proprietary technology designed to protect critical national infrastructure from a terrorist attack by detecting the pre-attack activities of the terrorist and enabling law enforcement to investigate and engage the terrorist long before an attack is executed,” and that, “The beauty of it is that we can protect an infinite number of facilities just as efficiently as we can one and we push information out to local law authorities automatically.”

An internal email from early 2011 included in the Global Intelligence Files has Stratfor’s Burton allegedly saying the program can be used to “[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go facial recognition software.”

Since its inception, TrapWire has been implemented in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs) and has appeared abroad as well. The iWatch monitoring system adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department (pdf) works in conjunction with TrapWire, as does the District of Columbia and the "See Something, Say Something" program conducted by law enforcement in New York City, which had 500 surveillance cameras linked to the system in 2010. Private properties including Las Vegas, Nevada casinos have subscribed to the system. The State of Texas reportedly spent half a million dollars with an additional annual licensing fee of $150,000 to employ TrapWire, and the Pentagon and other military facilities have allegedly signed on as well.

In one email from 2010 leaked by Anonymous, Stratfor’s Fred Burton allegedly writes, “God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major HVT in CONUS, the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients.” Files on USASpending.gov reveal that the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense together awarded Abraxas and TrapWire more than one million dollars in only the past eleven months.

News of the widespread and largely secretive installation of TrapWire comes amidst a federal witch-hunt to crack down on leaks escaping Washington and at attempt to prosecute whistleblowers. Thomas Drake, a former agent with the NSA, has recently spoken openly about the government’s Trailblazer Project that was used to monitor private communication, and was charged under the Espionage Act for coming forth. Separately, former NSA tech director William Binney and others once with the agency have made claims in recent weeks that the feds have dossiers on every American, an allegation NSA Chief Keith Alexander dismissed during a speech at Def-Con last month in Vegas.

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Anonymous Vows Revenge For Wikileaks And Demonoid Blackouts

Wikileaks sites remain down, as does Demonoid, and Anonymous isn’t happy

Anonymous has said it will not take lightly this week’s actions against Wikileaks and Demonoid, one of the world’s oldest torrent-tracking websites.

Wikileaks sites remain down today, including the main portal, wikileaks.org, and many of its mirror sites which are spread around the world, such as wikileaks.de in Germany. Julian Assange’s organisation claims to have been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The websites have been down for almost a week now.

Subsequently, an organisation going by the name of @AntiLeaks on Twitter claimed to be behind the DDoS. “Wikileaks survives through donations that pay for their cyber terrorism and Assange’s legal defense. We will continue to enforce a blockade on Wikileaks and it’s [sic] supporters whom attempt to raise donations on it’s [sic] behalf,” the account holder tweeted.

A real hit?

In response, this morning one of Anonymous’ most-followed Twitter accounts, @Anon_Online, tweeted: “This means #War.”

A number of onlookers have suggested Wikileaks could just be looking for attention, using the DDoS as a way of gaining sympathy, but André Stewart, president international at Corero Network Security, said it appeared to be a genuine attack.

“What is interesting is how the attack not only targeted Wikileaks, but also the donation portal, ‘Justice for Assange’, and affiliates websites, showing that this attack was not a flash in the pan, but a targeted DDoS attack against Wikileaks,” Stewart said.

“Due to the highly organised nature of the attack it is unlikely to have been an individual who has carried out the attack.”

Meanwhile, Anonymous has issued a clarion call to exact revenge upon the authorities who shut down Demonoid. Earlier this week, Ukrainian law enforcement raided the data centre that hosted Demonoid’s servers and took the site offline.

An apparent release from the hacktivist collective claimed the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the first trip of first vice prime minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky to the US on the agenda of copyright infringement. “This implies that the attack against Demonoid was a preplanned operation and a deliberate and malicious attack against Internet freedom,” the message read.

“We will not tolerate this. We will take direct actions against you and your criminal friends until you realize the crimes you’ve committed and restore our beloved Demonoid.”

twitter:

M4RT1N15URF3R twitterde op zaterdag 11-08-2012 om 07:19:18 #Trapwire is mass surveillance of YOU. 24/7. So, we #OpTrapWire!How to disable cameras:http://t.co/1jYJwV79Love, #Anonymous reageer retweet

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Guide to Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) destruction.

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The following has been blatantly robbed from an outrageous Web site we stumbled upon. We've included it here for entertainment purposes only. Honest.

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Fault Lines - Controlling the web

Are US authorities increasingly trying to limit user freedom on the internet in the name of national security?

In January 2012, two controversial pieces of legislation were making their way through the US Congress. SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, were meant to crack down on the illegal sharing of digital media. The bills were drafted on request of the content industry, Hollywood studios and major record labels.

The online community rose up against the US government to speak out against SOPA, and the anti-online piracy bill was effectively killed off after the largest online protest in US history. But it was only one win in a long battle between US authorities and online users over internet regulation. SOPA and PIPA were just the latest in a long line of anti-piracy legislation US politicians have passed since the 1990s.

"One of the things we are seeing which is a by-product of the digital age is, frankly, it's much easier to steal and to profit from the hard work of others," says Michael O'Leary, the executive vice-president for global policy at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The US government says it must be able to fight against piracy and cyber attacks. And that means imposing more restrictions online. But proposed legislation could seriously curb freedom of speech and privacy, threatening the internet as we know it.

Can and should the internet be controlled? Who gets that power? How far will the US government go to gain power over the web? And will this mean the end of a free and global internet?

Fault Lines looks at the fight for control of the web, life in the digital age and the threat to cyber freedom, asking if US authorities are increasingly trying to regulate user freedoms in the name of national and economic security.

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Anonymous Operation TrapWire – Press Release

Sunday – August 12, 2012 11:00 AM ET USA

Greetings Citizens of the United States of America –

This weekend, it was disclosed by Wikileaks the details about a system known as “TrapWire” that uses facial recognition and other techniques including high-end artificial intelligence to track and monitor individuals using countless different closed-circuit cameras operated by cities and other institutions, including private businesses. This program also monitors all social media on the internet. The software is billed as a method by which to prevent terrorism, but can of course also be used to provide unprecedented surveillance and data-mining capabilities to governments and corporations – including many with a history of using new technologies to violate the rights of citizens. TrapWire is already used in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas, DC, London, and other locales around the USA.

The ex-CIA agents who help run the firm are old friends of Stratfor vice president Fred Burton, whom they’ve briefed on their own capabilities in e-mails obtained by Anonymous hackers and provided to WikiLeaks. Stratfor has engaged in several surveillance operations against activists, such as those advocating for victims of the Bhopal disaster – on behalf of large U.S. corporatons; Burton himelf was revealed to have advocated “bankrupting” and “ruining the life” of activists like Julian Assange in e-mails to other friends. TrapWire is extremely expensive to maintain, and is usually done so at taxpayer expense; Los Angeles county alone has spent over $1.4 million dollars on the software’s use in a single three-month period of 2007.

Although most of the regions in which TrapWire operates don’t share information with each other, all of this is set to change; as Abraxas Applications president Dan Botsch told Burton via e-mail, “I think over time the different networks will begin to unite,” noting that several networks had already begun discussions on merging their information. Abraxas itself has always had the ability to “cross-network matches” from every region at their own office. By June 2011, Washington D.C. police were engaged in a pilot project under the Departent of Homeland Security that’s likely to lead to more cities using TrapWire on a more integrated basis.

Abraxas, the firm whose spin-off Abraxas Applications developed TrapWire in 2007, has long been involved in a lesser-known practice known as persona management, which involves the use of fake online “people” to gather intelligence and/or disseminate disinformation. The firm Ntrepid, created by Abraxas owner Cubic Corporation, won a 2010 CENTCOM contract to provide such capabilities for use in foreign countries; several board members of Ntrepid also sit on Abraxas.

The more we learn about TrapWire and similar systems, it becomes absolutely clear that we must at all costs shut this system down and render it useless. A giant AI electronic brain able to monitor us through a combination of access to all the CCTV cameras as well as all the online social media feeds is monstrous and Orwellian in it’s implications and possibilities. The Peoples Liberation Front and Anonymous will now put forth a call to arms, and initiate the doom of this evil and misbegotten program. We will use the following tactics to accomplish this goal:

1) The PLF and Anonymous will work closely with WikiLeaks and Project PM to gather, collate, disclose and disseminate as much information as possible about TrapWire and it’s related technologies and programs. This was begun this weekend, and already much has been learned. And they are scared of this, already many sites and repositories of data on TrapWire are disappearing – being taken down by those who do not want you to know the truth about what they are doing. And WikiLeaks is at this writing enduring a massive and historic DdoS attack in an attempt to conceal this information from the public. We will do this not only to educate the general public regarding TrapWire, but to move them to pressure their representatives to shut down funding for this and similar programs of massive surveillance, and to pass laws outlawing the creation of future projects of this type.

2) ACTION ALERT – “Smash A Cam Saturday”: TrapWire has access to virtually all CCTV’s that have IP/internet connectivity. We have prepared an initial map/database of these cameras across the USA, and we will continue to expand this knowledge base.

http://bit.ly/PcByYJ

While this database is a good guide to high priority camera targets, we encourage everyone to target any camera with IP/internet connectivity. We are asking everyone to sabotage at least one CCTV per week on what we are calling “Smash A Cam Saturday”. We have provided this excellent manual of different tactics and strategies for disabling or destroying these “eyes of the beast”.

http://bit.ly/1Qjp

3) As stated above, this “monster” doesn’t just have eyes that need gouging out – it also has “ears”. TrapWire constantly monitors social media. In a strange twist of fate, the company that developed TrapWire also works on something called “sock-puppet” programs. These are projects designed to create thousands of fake personas on social media. We will turn this idea and software against them, creating thousands of phony accounts and use them to produce a deluge of false triggers for the TrapWire program – essentially drowning it in “white noise”.

4) Finally, the Peoples Liberation Front and Anonymous will do what we do best. We will find, hack – and destroy the servers where the AI “electronic brain” of this program is housed.

Operation TrapWire is a direct action of the over-arching Anonymous Operation USA. TrapWire is but one instance of how the government of the USA has turned against it’s own citizens, designating them as suspects and enemies. Now those citizens rise, and take back their country and their freedom. Welcome to the Second American Revolution.

We Are Anonymous

We Are Legion

We Never Forgive

We Never Forget

Government of the USA, it’s to late to EXPECT US.

twitter:

Robyn_DaHood twitterde op maandag 13-08-2012 om 07:31:03 #OpTrapWire definitely underway, peeps are pissed. We will not forgive, We will not forget. #Anonymous #PoliceState #OWS reageer retweet

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Trapwire surveillance system exposed in document leak

Papers released by WikiLeaks show US department of homeland security paid $832,000 to deploy system in two cities

It sounds like something from the film Minority Report: a CCTV surveillance system that recognises people from their face or walk and analyses whether they might be about to commit a terrorist or criminal act. But Trapwire is real and, according to documents released online by WikiLeaks last week, is being used in a number of countries to try to monitor people and threats.

Founded by former CIA agents, Trapwire uses data from a network of CCTV systems and numberplate readers to figure out the threat level in huge numbers of locations. That means security officials can "focus on the highest priorities first, taking a proactive and collaborative approach to defence against attacks," say its creators.

The documents outlining Trapwire's existence and its deployment in the US were apparently obtained in a hack of computer systems belonging to the intelligence company Stratfor at the end of last year.

Documents from the US department of homeland security show that it paid $832,000 to deploy Trapwire in Washington DC and Seattle.

Stratfor describes Trapwire as "a unique, predictive software system designed to detect patterns of pre-attack surveillance and logistical planning", and cites the Washington DC police chief mentioning it during a Senate committee hearing. It serves "a wide range of law enforcement personnel and public and private security officials domestically and internationally", Stratfor says.

Some have expressed doubts that Trapwire could really forecast terrorist acts based on data from cameras, but Rik Ferguson, security consultant at Trend Micro, said the software for such systems had existed for some time.

"There's a lot of crossover between CCTV and facial recognition," he said. "It's feasible to have a camera looking for suspicious behaviour – for example, in a computer server room it could recognise someone via facial recognition or your gait, then can identify them from the card they swipe to get in, and then know whether it's suspicious if they're meant to be a cleaner and they sit down at a computer terminal."

The claims might seem overblown, but then the idea that the US could have an international monitoring system seemed absurd until the discovery of the Echelon system, used by the US to eavesdrop on electronic communications internationally.

Trapwire has not yet commented on the leak.

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TrapWire investigation links transit systems and Anonymizer in global surveillance network

The facts behind TrapWire continue to surface in the days since WikiLeaks exposed the state-of-the-art surveillance system, but minute-by-minute more is being revealed about not just the scary intelligence infrastructure but its questionable ties.

Last week, WikiLeaks published their latest addition to trove of the so-called Global Intelligence Files — emails uncovered from Texas-based Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) by Anonymous late last year — in turn revealing a widespread surveillance system blanketing much of the United States and abroad. The project, TrapWire, is the brainchild of Abraxas, a Northern Virginia corporation that has cut countless deals with the federal government and is staffed by former agents out of not just the Pentagon but practically every leading intelligence agency in the country. As those connections are examined under a magnifying glass by researchers and hacktivists alike, though, more and more is being brought to light about the correlations that exist between the biggest of brothers and an entire industry that profits from pulverizing what is left of privacy.

In addition to Abraxas overseeing perhaps the most-secret and advanced surveillance system in the world, other entities directly connected to the company have a monopoly in America’s mass-transit system and have also advertised themselves as the purveyors behind a tool designed to protect the privacy of US citizens.

Much remains unknown about the actual technology behind TrapWire, but Abraxas founder Richard Helms explained it in a 2005 interview as being “more accurate than facial recognition.” A system of surveillance cameras in select locales across the world are connected to analysis centers that aggregate other data, which can be combined to examine suspicious activity reports and routinely monitor every move across vast areas of public space. Publically available information links the TrapWire system to projects in New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, among others, but the ties beyond just that one Abraxas endeavor open the operation up to an infinite number of possibilities.

San Diego-based Cubic Corporation acquired Abraxas in 2010 for only $124 million in cash, close to the same amount that the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense awarded the contractor during just the last 11 months. Within the vast Cubic empire exist other facets, though, ones that could very well be working hand-in-hand with what is quickly unfolding as one of the best-kept law enforcement operation secrets ever.

Included in the sale of Abraxas to Cubic in 2010 was Anonymizer, described by its publicists as “the leader in consumer online anonymity solutions.” Anonymizer exists under the alleged platform of providing identity masking while making communiqué and clandestine transactions over the Web, and its then-newly-hired vice president for consumer products, Chaminda Wijetilleke, said in 2010, “As the online privacy space continues to mature, Anonymizer is in a great position to increase its lead in the industry and to be at the forefront of bringing innovative products to market.”

“Consumers need state-of-the-art solutions to protect themselves from relentless threats to their online privacy,” added Wijetilleke, who went on to add, “I’m excited to join the Anonymizer team and to help drive this evolving business forward.” In Cubic’s acquisition of Abraxas and Anonymizer, though, real life privacy may have been put under immense risk thanks to TrapWire.

TrapWire was first unraveled in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks by Abraxas back in 2004, and a decade down the road their connections within the private sector have surpassed more than just counterterrorism companies. In addition to being now under the same umbrella is Anonymizer, its parent company, Cubic, manages a massive transportation division that is reported to be the world’s leader in terms of automated fare collection cards and its related infrastructure in mass-transit systems across the globe.

Cubic confirms on their own website that, “Over the past decade, Cubic has implemented more than 80 percent of the major smart card systems in the U.S. now active today,” including network in New York, DC, Los Angeles and Chicago. And although no written connection has been discovered in only the few days since TrapWire was exposed, researchers are on the ready to point out what these systems can do when combined with one another.

Through Cubic’s transportation division, customers can use identity-linking credit cards to purchase unique fare tickets that grant them access to the biggest metro systems in the United States. Once walking away from the ticket machine, though, those same passengers are placed under surveillance in certain markets that not just rely on Cubic for their metro fare needs, but use TrapWire to track suspicious activity.

According to a 2009 GIF email believed to be from Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton, the intelligence officer writes, “TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.” In 2011, Burton allegedly writes that the same surveillance system can be used to “[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go facial recognition software.” When combining the state-of-the-art face-tracking with the same technology that can tell you the precise location and time that a person is performing a financial transaction at a Cubic machine, the company’s control over certain cities is almost all-encompassing.

In one email alleged to have come from Strafor VP Burton in November 2011, he writes of TrapWire coverage in DC that “National Park Police have approached us for a proposal to cover all of the Mall area – in addition to the Fed and Military sites already covered.”

“Our network there is growing almost daily,” the email reads. In terms of TrapWire’s blanketing of New York, Burton writes in a separate email that the “NYPD has done what no US Govt Agency has been able to do” in the counterterrorism arena because of TrapWire. How, exactly, the company creates profiles of suspicious persons using state-of-the-art surveillance and an endless array of mysterious information remains a matter yet to be made public.

Anonymous: Operation BART - August 13, 2012

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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TrapWire scandal: mainstream media whitewashes the facts behind massive surveillance program

The discovery of a surveillance system named TrapWire has connected state and federal law enforcement agencies with a vast intelligence infrastructure, raising questions everywhere — except in the mainstream media.

The New York Times finally brought TrapWire into discussion late Monday in an article published on their website that has journalist Scott Shane discarding initial reports made about the surveillance system as “wildly exaggerated.” A piece published hours earlier in Slate says stories about TrapWire are “rooted in hyperbole and misinformation” and “heavier on fiction than fact,” and even Cubic Corporation, the San Diego, California company reported as the parent company to developers Abraxas Corp., have been driven to dismiss that rumored relationship with a formal press release.

“Cubic Corporation acquired Abraxas Corporation on December 20, 2010,” a Monday afternoon statement from Cubic claims. “Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc.”

But four days after RT first broke the news of a nationwide surveillance system operated underneath the noses of millions of Americans — and even citizens abroad — the mainstream media and the major players are going to great lengths to abolish any and all allegations about TrapWire. As private researchers, journalists and hacktivists correspond with one another over the Web, though, the information becoming increasingly available about Cubic, Abraxas and TrapWire — facts meant to be left under wraps — is opening up details about a vast operation with strict ties to the intelligence community, the federal government, the US Defense Department contractors and countless others across the globe.

While the New York Times has indeed finally come forth with a story on TrapWire, their rushed exposé about a story sparked by “speculation” contains references to allegations that are argued directly in emails obtained from Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, the intelligence company that was hacked by the Anonymous collective last year. Emails uncovered in the attack were provided to WikiLeaks, who on their part published the trove in installments, including a dump last week. Thanks to a red flag being raised by independent researcher Justin Ferguson last week, the TrapWire system was linked to Stratfor staffers, in turn causing a colossal investigation to be launched from all corners of the Internet.

So far, that probing has proved at least one thing: that the allegations made by both Cubic and sources speaking to the Times are either dead wrong or represent a quickly snowballing attempt at a cover-up.

Speaking to the Times for Shane’s article, New York Police Department chief spokesman Paul Browne says that rumors the city’s subway system is covered by 500 cameras linked to TrapWire are false. Explicitly, Browne says, “We don’t use TrapWire,” but the Times stops short of printing a quote from the NYPD that exceeds six syllables. While Browne has not publically weighed in yet as to if the NYC surveillance cams were formerly part of the TrapWire system, emails uncovered in the Stratfor attack seem to suggest exactly that.

In an email dated September 26, 2011, Stratfor Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton is believed to have responded to a memo about the NYPD’s counter-terrorism efforts by writing, “Note their TrapWire intuitive video surveillance capabilities. NYPD has done what no US Govt Agency has been able to do in the CT [counter-terrorism] arena.”

In a separate correspondence sent one year earlier on July 16, 2010, Burton writes that “TrapWire may be the most successful invention on the GWOT [Global War on Terror] since 9-11.”

“I knew these hacks when they were GS-12's at the CIA. God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major HVT in CONUS, the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients,” he adds, referring to “high-value targets.”

Contrasting the statements made by the NYPD rep and Stratfor’s VP open up nothing more than a he-said-she-said scenario that makes it impossible, at this point, to put a finger on who exactly is in the right. Since New York City has readied their own domain-awareness-system, openly admitted to conducting undercover surveillance of Muslim residents and installed thousands of cameras on the island of Manhattan alone, though, it doesn’t seem all that odd that Mayor Bloomberg would have authorized the use of TrapWire in at least some capacity during the past few years.

Also brought into question are the merits behind Cubic Corporation's claims about their relationship with TrapWire. “Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc.,” the company claims in their press release issued this Monday. According to a 2007 report in the Washington Business Journal, though, that as well is a full-on fib.

“Abraxas Corp., a risk-mitigation technology company, has spun out a software business to focus on selling a new product,” the article reads. “The spinoff – called Abraxas Applications – will sell TrapWire, which predicts attacks on critical infrastructure by analyzing security reports and video surveillance.”

Published more than five years before the Stratfor emails prompted a probe into TrapWire and its affiliates, the Washington Business Journal article answers a lot of questions that are being asked today.

“Reston-based Abraxas Applications will seek federal, state and local government clients as [well] as companies in financial services, oil and gas, chemicals, transportation and other industries with critical infrastructure,” the article alleges.

Just as today, though, Business Journal also acknowledges a cloud of secrecy that keeps the juiciest part of TrapWire under wraps: “The 300-person company has spent millions of dollars developing TrapWire, but won't say precisely how much,” their article reads.

Elsewhere, the Journal adds another piece to the puzzle involving the surveillance system and the NYPD: “Abraxas Applications hits the ground running. Abraxas Corp. previously won contracts to test TrapWire with the New York Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, Department of Energy and Marine Corps.”

Meanwhile, current investigations conducted by RT and other outlets have suggested that TrapWire may be connected to as many as thousands of cameras in Washington, DC and others in London, Las Vegas as elsewhere.

twitter:

RayBeckerman twitterde op donderdag 16-08-2012 om 00:50:42 RT @Min_Reyes #Anonymous and #Wikileaks calling for activists to come to the Ecuadorian embassy in London to protect Julian Assange. reageer retweet

quote:

UK 'threatened' to arrest Assange inside Ecuador's embassy

quote:

Patino also released details of a letter he said was delivered through a British embassy official in Quito, the capital of the South American country.

The letter said: "You need to be aware that there is a legal base in the UK, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, that would allow us to take actions in order to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the Embassy."

The letter added: "We need to reiterate that we consider the continued use of the diplomatic premises in this way incompatible with the Vienna Convention and unsustainable and we have made clear the serious implications that this has for our diplomatic relations."

An Ecuadorean government spokesman said: "We are deeply shocked by the British government's threats against the sovereignty of the Ecuadorean Embassy and their suggestion that they may forcibly enter the embassy.

"This a clear breach of international law and the protocols set out in the Vienna Convention.

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Anonymous calls for shut-down of TrapWire to start this Saturday

As details surface about a futuristic and frightening global surveillance network called TrapWire, members of the Anonymous collective are calling for citizens everywhere to voice their opposition and help end the system beginning this Saturday.

“As we learn about TrapWire and similar systems in the surveillance industry, it becomes more apparent that we must, at all costs, shut this system down and render it useless,” active members of Anonymous write in a press release issued early Thursday. Beginning this weekend, Anonymous is asking others concerned with TrapWire and the acceleration of America into a full-fledged surveillance state to make their voices heard — peacefully.

“An omniscient AI electronic brain able to monitor us through the thick web of CCTV cameras, as well as online social media feeds is monstrous and Orwellian in its implications and possibilities. Anonymous will now put forth a call to arms. We will see to it that this evil and invasive system ceases to function, and the right to privacy is upheld," active members of the collective state.

Only one week after RT first broke news of TrapWire, an intricate global intelligence infrastructure discussed thoroughly in hacked emails allegedly obtained from Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, activists around the globe have denounced the state-of-the-art surveillance system that is believed to be in use across the world.

According to internal emails Anonymous claims to have hacked last year from Stratfor and distributed to WikiLeaks for publication as the Global Intelligence Files, the TrapWire system has been put in place in locales including Las Vegas, New York, London and Washington, D.C. Now active members of the loose-knit hacktivism group are encouraging all of those opposed to a system orchestrated by mysterious artificial intelligence programming with vast government ties to civilly reject it.

As stated in emails included in the Global Intelligence Files, Stratfor had a contractual agreement with TrapWire and its parent company, Abraxas, to advertise its product in exchange for an 8 percent commission [pdf]. Abraxas founder Richard Helms has publically stated that TrapWire “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas.”

When Abraxas white-papers and other publically available information is corroborated by claims made in the Global Intelligence Files, though, the TrapWire system is turned into not just a tool to fight terrorists but a stealthy way of letting law enforcement and federal agencies monitor the moves and actions of any person of interest.

Off the record, Stratfor Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton allegedly claims in the hacked emails that TrapWire has allowed its affiliated agencies to do “what no US Govt Agency has been able to do in the CT [counterterrorism] arena.” Other accusations attributed to Stratfor link the surveillance system’s intelligence to being delivered “inside the walls” of the White House, Scotland Yard and other agencies, with Burton even touting their elusive ties in one decoded emails as purposely circumventing the “dysfunctional” Department of Homeland Security and bureaucratic Capitol Hill politics.

When the government is given the ability to decide what constitutes suspicious activity and no oversight into that decision making is at all apparent, the consequences of the TrapWire system transcend to a point where free speech and political activism can become nonexistent, lest the fear of governmental retaliation is ignored entirety. Given repeated reports of activists and journalists being targeted by law enforcement even within the United States this year, though, the fear of federal surveillance of all US citizens is quickly becoming not just a distant worry but a very real crisis.

Anonymous members have taken notice, and write this week, “The imbalance between our accountability to the government and big business and their accountability to us is growing.” Beginning Saturday, they want others to help end that asymmetry.

“Anonymous cordially invites you to observe and participate in an upcoming protest of what we see as a direct violation to our fundamental rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in privacy,” members of the group write. “This Saturday the 18th, Anonymous members will be engaging SplashCam as a branch of Op-TrapWire. The goal is to peacefully disrupt the unnecessary and disturbing surveillance of citizens beginning the morning of the 18, and ending when the network and infrastructure are proven to be off-line and no longer functioning.”

In order to do as much, Anonymous is also circulating suggestions that could be implemented to attempt to render TrapWire-linked cameras useless, even momentarily, including placing boxes and bags over cameras, plastering the lenses with stickers and even using household lubricates and other viscous liquids to leave the lenses unusable.

“Some TrapWire cameras are sealed inside a plastic dome, from which they observe our every move. Cover or smear this dome, or the exposed lenses, and the camera becomes useless. A way to achieve this is smudging with Vaseline, or other grease. Pudding as well as bean or starch pastes are also great alternatives, and while removable, are not easily cleaned whence dry,” members write.

“Many cameras are not within easy reach, so for these we recommend supersoakers or water-balloons full of karo syrup and water or, more easily available, soda.If you are within reach of the camera but do not have access to aforementioned items, simple crayons or other waxes will suffice.”

In the single week since TrapWire has been exposed, both Abraxas and its parent company have tried to dismiss their connection with the program, although alleged Stratfor emails suggest that the system, at least at the time of that correspondence, was growing by the day.

The New York Police Department — who is documented in the Global Intelligence Files to have entered an agreement with the surveillance system — has shot down rumors of existing ties as well. In Australia, where TrapWire is rumored to be operated, a Sydney Morning Herald piece published earlier this week critiquing the project was mysteriously scrubbed from the website of the paper and its affiliates.

With the mainstream media only slowly catching on to a campaign growing even quicker than TrapWire itself, Anonymous members say that dismantling the linked devices and raising awareness is necessary for the sake of all.

“They will not hesitate to label us terrorists, and that we are out to destroy and undermine safety,” the members say in a statement. “They will say we are the ones placing you in danger. We are merely patriots taking a stand for individual rights outlined in the Constitution and which our elected officials swear to uphold but have failed to do.”

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RIAA Revenue Dwindles As Labels Cut Back

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The latest RIAA tax filing shows that the revenue generated by the anti-piracy group has reached a new low. In just two years the membership dues from music labels have been cut in half and have now sunk to below $30 million a year. While the group has 72 employees, payouts to the top two executives including CEO Cary Sherman amount to more than $3 million, some 25% of the total wage bill.

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John-Michael Howson taunts Julian Assange's Mum with Nazi slogan

3AW Sunday Morning contributor John-Michael Howson embroiled himself in controversy this morning when he used a Nazi slogan after Julian Assange's Mother backed out of an interview.

Christine Assange was waiting on hold while Darren James, Nick McCallum and Howson interviewed Sam Castro from the Wikileaks Australian Citizens Alliance regarding Ecuador's decision to grant political asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

PLAY: The fiery exchange between John-Michael Howson, Sam Castro and Christine Assange

Howson called Castro a hypocrite for supporting Assange's decision to seek political asylum in Ecuador, a country Howson claims has a 'poor' human rights record.

"You people are so full of it, you make me want to spew up," Howson said.

"You support free speech yet you're going on about a country that restricts free speech," he added.

Christine Assange was put to air after Castro's interview concluded and she immediately condemned John-Michael Howson's treatment of the previous guest.

"I won't be doing an interview with you because you're acting like a pig,'' Ms Assange said.

Howson responded by screaming on air: "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!''

Ms Assange then hung up the phone.

Howson claims he was censored by Ms. Assange because she denied him the chance to state his opinion:

"These people just want to come on air and give us their propaganda and they don't want any tough questions."

Callers were polarised on the appropriateness of his outburst, and Nick McCallum referred to John-Michael Howson as an 'equal opportunity abuser.'

DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE SUNDAY MORNING PODCAST HERE

twitter:

pacific_justice twitterde op zondag 19-08-2012 om 11:49:14 After Christine #Assange was grossly insulted today, It appears the #3AW website has been defaced LOL http://t.co/mjbi7TgZ #Anonymous reageer retweet

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Hackers backdoor the human brain, successfully extract sensitive data

With a chilling hint of the not-so-distant future, researchers at the Usenix Security conference have demonstrated a zero-day vulnerability in your brain. Using a commercial off-the-shelf brain-computer interface, the researchers have shown that it’s possible to hack your brain, forcing you to reveal information that you’d rather keep secret.

As we’ve covered in the past, a brain-computer interface is a two-part device: There’s the hardware — which is usually a headset (an EEG; an electroencephalograph) with sensors that rest on your scalp — and software, which processes your brain activity and tries to work out what you’re trying to do (turn left, double click, open box, etc.) BCIs are generally used in a medical setting with very expensive equipment, but in the last few years cheaper, commercial offerings have emerged. For $200-300, you can buy an Emotiv (pictured above) or Neurosky BCI, go through a short training process, and begin mind controlling your computer.

Both of these commercial BCIs have an API — an interface that allows developers to use the BCI’s output in their own programs. In this case, the security researchers — from the Universities of Oxford and Geneva, and the University of California, Berkeley — created a custom program that was specially designed with the sole purpose of finding out sensitive data, such as the location of your home, your debit card PIN, which bank you use, and your date of birth. The researchers tried out their program on 28 participants (who were cooperative and didn’t know that they were being brain-hacked), and in general the experiments had a 10 to 40% chance of success of obtaining useful information (pictured above).

To extract this information, the researchers rely on what’s known as the P300 response — a very specific brainwave pattern (pictured right) that occurs when you recognize something that is meaningful (a person’s face), or when you recognize something that fits your current task (a hammer in the shed). The researchers basically designed a program that flashes up pictures of maps, banks, and card PINs, and makes a note every time your brain experiences a P300. Afterwards, it’s easy to pore through the data and work out — with fairly good accuracy — where a person banks, where they live, and so on.

In a real-world scenario, the researchers foresee a game that is specially tailored by hackers to extract sensitive information from your brain — or perhaps an attack vector that also uses social engineering to lull you into a false sense of security. It’s harder to extract data from someone who knows they’re being attacked — as interrogators and torturers well know.

Moving forward, this brain hack can only improve in efficacy as BCIs become cheaper, more accurate, and thus more extensively used. Really, your only defense is to not think about the topic — but if you’re proactively on the defensive, then the hacker has already messed up. The only viable solution that I can think of is to ensure that you don’t use your brain-computer interface with shady software, brain malware — but then again, in a science-fictional future, isn’t it almost guaranteed that the government would mandate the inclusion of brain-hacking software in the operating system itself?

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'Operation Free Assange': Anonymous take down UK's Justice Ministry's website

The website for the UK Ministry of Justice is under attack after hacktivists engaged a mission to try and take down justice.gov.uk in retaliation for Britain’s handling of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Several Twitter accounts associated with the loose-knit Anonymous collective have acknowledged that the UK Ministry of Justice’s website is being targeted with a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack. The assault on the website is being carried out under a campaign branded #OpFreeAssange.

“#OpFreeAssange: TANGO DOWN! http://www.justice.gov.uk/ [500 Internal Server Error] [#Anonymous #WikiLeaks],” reads one tweet sent from the @Anon_Central Twitter account.

The hackers also claim to have taken down the website of another British government department, the Department of Work and Pensions. “Gov. of UK Expect Us!” read a tweet by Anonymous.

Assange, the founder and editor of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, has been ordered by Swedish authorities to be extradited from the UK where he had been under house arrest. Two women from Sweden have accused Assange of sex crimes, although he has yet to be charged.

In fear of being sent to Sweden and then extradited to the US to be tried for his role with WikiLeaks, Assange applied for political asylum in Ecuador, which the Latin American country finally granted him last week after two months of waiting. Regardless, British authorities have refused to give Assange safe passage out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London so that he may travel overseas.

Before Ecuador President Rafael Correa approved the asylum bid, British authorities threatened to storm the embassy last week, prompting supporters of Assange and WikiLeaks to surround the building overnight in hopes of deterring any attempt by the UK to follow through with the extradition.

“If the UK did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching,” Assange told his supporters during his Sunday afternoon speech from London.

“So, the next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador."

In addition to lambasting the British for coming close to violating international law, Assange asked for US President Barack Obama to “do the right thing” and end his war on whistleblowing, saluting accused WikiLeaks contributor Private First Class Bradley Manning as a hero whose release from prison must be made immediately.

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Op donderdag 16 augustus 2012 21:05 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

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Pussy Riot Trial: Hackers Target Website Of Court That Jailed Russian Punk Band

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The website of a Moscow court that convicted three members of punk band Pussy Riot to two years in jail each for belting out a profanity-laced anti-Kremlin song inside a cathedral was hacked on Tuesday.

A slogan denouncing President Vladimir Putin was posted on the site as was an appeal for the trio's release along with a video clip of one of the band's latest anti-Putin songs and a clip by Bulgarian singer Azis, local media reported.

The hack attack - claimed by AnonymousRussia, which says it is affiliated with hacking activist group Anonymous - comes amid a chorus of criticism of the sentences, which Western governments and singers said were disproportionate and opponents of Putin called part of a crackdown on dissent.

A screenshot posted by opposition activist Ilya Yashin on Twitter showed the court's web page topped by an inscription reading: "Putin's thieving gang is plundering our country! Wake up, comrades!"

Another caption called for the release of the band's jailed members - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30.

The site of Moscow's Khamovniki district court http://hamovnichesky.msk.sudrf.ru/ was operating normally by noon (0800 GMT) but its hacked version was on display for several hours on Tuesday morning.

Darya Lyakh, a spokeswoman for the court, said a department of the Supreme Court had asked federal investigators to look into the hacking attack.

The high-profile trial ended on Friday with two-year sentences for the three women who were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

The judge said they had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow's main cathedral in February where they had sung a "punk prayer" urging the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin.

The women said their aim had been to criticize close ties between the state and the dominant Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader offered support to Putin in the run-up to his reelection to the presidency in March after four years as prime minister.

The United States and the European Union called the sentences disproportionate and Washington has urged Russian authorities to "review" the case.

Human rights groups and musicians including Madonna and Paul McCartney have also criticized the trial, but opinion polls indicate few Russians sympathies with Pussy Riot and support from local musicians has been muted.

On Monday, Russia police said they were searching for other members of Pussy Riot and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed Western criticism of the sentences, saying people should not "go into hysterics" about the case.

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TrapWire tied to anti-Occupy Internet-spy program

How do you make matters worse for an elusive intelligence company that has been forced to scramble for explanations about their ownership of an intricate, widespread surveillance program? Just ask Cubic, whose troubles only begin with TrapWire.

Days after the international intelligence gathering surveillance system called TrapWire was unraveled by RT, an ongoing investigation into any and all entities with ties to the technology has unturned an ever-increasing toll of creepy truths. In only the latest installment of the quickly snowballing TrapWire saga, a company that shares several of the same board members as the secret spy system has been linked to a program called Tartan, which aims to track down alleged anarchists by specifically singling out Occupy Wall Street protesters and the publically funded media — all with the aid of federal agents.

Tartan, a product of the Ntrepid Corporation, “exposes and quantifies key influencers and hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms for objective, un-biased output,” its website claims. “Our analysts, mathematicians and computer scientists are continually exploring new quantification, mining and visualization techniques in order to better analyze social networks.” In order to prove as such, their official website links to the executive summary of a case study dated this year that examines social network connections among so-called anarchists, supposedly locating hidden ties within an underground movement that was anchored on political activists and even the Public Broadcasting Station [.pdf].

“Tartan was used to reveal a hidden network of relationships among anarchist leaders of seemingly unrelated movements,” the website claims. “The study exposed the affiliations within this network that facilitate the viral spread of violent and illegal tactics to the broader protest movement in the United States.”

Tartan is advertised on their site as a must-have application for the national security sector, politicians and federal law enforcement, and makes a case by claiming that “an amorphous network of anarchist and protest groups,” made up of Occupy Oakland, PBS, Citizen Radio, Crimethinc and others, relies on “influential leaders,” “modern technology” and “illegal tactics” to spread a message of anarchy across America.

“The organizers of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy DC have built Occupy networks through online communication with anarchists actively participating in the movements’ founding,” the executive summary reads. On the chart that accompanies their claim, the group lists several political activism groups and broadcast networks within a ring of alleged anarchy, which also includes an unnamed FBI informant.

Although emails uncovered in a hack last year waged at Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, suggested that Occupy groups had been under private surveillance, the latest discovery of publically available information implies that the extent to which the monitoring of political activists on American soil occurred may have extended what was previously imagined.

Things don’t end there, though. While the TrapWire tale is still only just beginning, the Ntrepid Corporation made headlines last year after it was discovered by the Guardian that the company was orchestrating an “online persona management” program, a clever propaganda mill that was touted as a means “to influence regional and international audiences to achieve U.S. Central Command strategic objectives,” according, at least, to the Inspector General of the US Defense Department [.pdf]. The investigation eventually revealed that the US Central Command awarded Ntrepid $2.76 million worth of taxpayer dollars to create phony Internet “sock puppets” to propagate US support.

One year later, the merits of Tartan’s analytics are now being brought into question, but so are the rest of the company’s ties. A trove of research accumulated by RT, Project PM founder Barrett Brown, PrivacySOS.org and independent researchers Justin Ferguson and Asher Wolf, among others, has linked Tartan with an even more unsettling operation.

Margaret A. Lee of Northern Virginia is listed on several websites as serving on the Ntrepid board of directors as secretary, a position she held alongside Director Richard Helms, CFO Wesley R Husted and President Michael Martinka. And although several parties are going to great lengths to deny the ties, a paper trail directly links Lee and company to Abraxas — and thus Cubic — and, of course, TrapWire, the very surveillance system that is believed to be blanketing the United States.

According to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, TrapWire Inc. was registered to Margaret A Lee on March 7, 2009. Other publically available information reveals that, at least at one point, Wesley Husted served as chief financial officer for TrapWire, Inc., where Richard H Helms held the title of CEO.

Various sources have since claimed that Helms, a former CIA agent that once ran the agency’s European division, has severed ties with TrapWire, yet the other connections remain intact.

In RT’s earlier research in the TrapWire case, it was revealed that TrapWire’s parent company, Cubic Corporation, acquired an online identity masking tool called Anonymzer in a 2010 merger, and also controls the fare card system at some of the biggest public transportation systems in the world. According to the latest findings, Cubic’s control extends beyond just that, though. Under their Ntrepid branch, Cubic controlled an operation that spied on political activists with FBI informants and attempted to link them to crimes across America.

Whether or not the TrapWire system was implemented in such operations is unclear, and Cubic continues to maintain that they are not involved with the surveillance network.

Last week, Cubic Corporation issued a press release claiming, “Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc.”

“Abraxas Corp., a risk-mitigation technology company, has spun out a software business to focus on selling a new product,” the article reads. “The spinoff – called Abraxas Applications – will sell TrapWire, which predicts attacks on critical infrastructure by analyzing security reports and video surveillance.”

Not only does a 2007 report in the Washington Business Journal insist that the companies are practically one in the same, though, but a 2006 article in the same paper reveals that Abraxas had just acquired software maker Dauntless. Researchers at Darkernet have since linked Lee, Husted and Helms to the Abraxas Dauntless Board of Directors as well.

Justin Ferguson, the researcher who first exposed TrapWire two weeks ago, has noted that Lee, Helms and Husted were listed on Abraxas Dauntless’ filings with Virginia as recently as December 2011. They also are all present on the TrapWire filings dated September 2011 and the latest annual filing made with the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations on behalf of Ntrepid.

Nevertheless, in a conversation this week with Project PM’s Barrett Brown, Cubic Corp. Communication Director Tim Hall dismisses this ties again.

“There is no connection at all with Abraxas Applications and Trapwire and or Ntrepid,” Hall allegedly insists, according to audio uploaded to YouTube.

Brown, on his part, says he has obtained Cubic’s 2010 tax filings that show that Ntrepd, like Abraxas, is “wholly owned” by Cubic.

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Scared of Anonymous: Tampa police prepare for mass arrests during Republican convention

Are computer hackers, political activists and an underground army of anarchists preparing to overthrow next week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa? Police in Florida seem to think so, and are taking every precaution to prepare for violence.

Acting on the assumption that hacktivists with the loose-knit, international Anonymous collective will wage a war next week on Tampa with the help of weapon yielding anarchists angry at the Republican Party and American establishment all together, law enforcement agencies in Florida are in a hurry to secure the Sunshine State in the event that a mass orchestrated action disrupts the GOP’s national convention.

Authorities had originally deciphered YouTube videos uploaded by alleged Anonymous members to suggest that the group was calling for others to provoke criminal acts across Tampa. The discovery earlier this week of bricks and pipes on a Tampa rooftop has further led authorities to assume that anarchists will engage in a mass violent uprising to coincide with the RNC. To prepare for a mass revolt, the entirety of nearby Orient Road Jail has been emptied out on the command of Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee, who wants to ensure that the facility’s 1,700 beds can be utilized in the event of a mass arrest.

In Florida, it’s a classic case of fear mongering. Everywhere else, it’s a joke.

"It could be a 15 year old in the basement," security reporter Bruce Schneier tells Tampa Bay Online. "Anonymous is a lifestyle. Anyone can say they're with Anonymous."

Authorities aren’t so eager to heed the expert’s advice, however, even if Schneier has authored a tremendous amount of articles on Anonymous throughout his career as a technology and security journalist.

Earlier this year, Scheiner addressed a crowd at San Francisco’s RSA conference with a lecture on cyberculture, at the time saying, "Anonymous is more of a name that anyone can pub upon themselves if they act in a way that is consistent with Anonymous' work. We shouldn't think of them as an actual group".

The police aren’t buying that explanation, though, and are linking the hacktivism collective with balls-to-the-wall anarchy. In downtown Tampa’s North Florida Ave. this week, authorities discovered a pile of bricks and pipes on a businesses’ rooftop. Near the scene of the “crime” was a graffiti portrayal of Guy Fawkes, the British revolutionary whose likeness has been adopted by both Anonymous activists and Occupy Wall Street protesters as a single identity that a hive-mind can maneuver behind.

Florida-based private investigator Bill Warner is weary, to say the least. He doesn’t see the bricks and pipes as possible construction site components, but weapons or destruction. After all, not every building is erected with bricks and plumbing; only some. To Warner, this is an indication that domestic terrorists on par with al-Qaeda insurgents will disrupt the RNC.

"These are tactics terrorists use in the Middle East. They will hide bricks in piles in buildings and so forth. They will move into the area start their little protests. Then they will find their pile of bricks and pipes and start busting out windows," Warner tells Tampa’s Fox affiliate.

In a video posted earlier in the week by a person claiming allegiance to Anonymous, a call-for-action is put forth asking supporters to dismantle the “clean zone” being set up in Tampa where people will be able to exercise their First Amendment right to protest without fear of repercussion.

“Let us band together and knock down the walls of the clean zone for it violates our Constitution,” the video claims. “The city of Tampa is our city, the peoples city. Together united by one divided zero we will fight for what belongs to the people. May freedom be with you all.”

Speaking to local Bay News 9, Warner says, “This is pretty bad,” and takes the video as an indication that “There's a lot of trouble coming our way.”

"Have they more locations with those bricks on roofs some place around town? I don't know but they've done it already.They've done surveillance around the area. They know where to go.This is right across the street from the hotel where the media is going to stay," Warner adds.

On one of his several personal websites, Warner writes, “Anonymous and Black Block seek the overthrow of the US Government, they hate cops and everything they stand for and seek to disrupt the Tampa RNC.”

In another post, Warner says that Anonymous and Black Bloc — a separate, underground protest group that regularly encourages acts of violence — are one in the same and refers to them as “dirtbags.”

Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor has already prepared the city for any violence that a demonstration waged at the Republican Party could bring. She, unlike Warner, refuses to publically group the alleged Anonymous YouTube video with the other hairy evidence, though.

"This is no surprise for us, but we are watching what is happening,” she adds. “There's no doubt that a small percentage of people who are coming here are bent on destruction and disruption."

"Don't think that you are bothering us. It's our job to look into this, and we take it very seriously," Chief Castor adds to WTSP News.

And, for those people, Sheriff Gee has a simple warning, posted on the county website in an open letter “to the agitators and anarchists who want only to bring a dark cloud” to the RNC: “criminal activity and civil disturbances will not be tolerated and enforcement actions will be swift.”

Examiner.com claims that the Tampa police have spent over $13 million on security items, an dozens of high-def closed-circuit television cameras are reported to have been installed in preparation too. In response, activists have created a smart-phone app that allows protesters to see where the city has installed surveillance cameras across Tampa.

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Anonw0rmer gets 27 months in prison

A federal judge in Austin today sentenced a Galveston man to 27 months in federal prison for hacking into computers of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Alabama Department of Public Safety, Houston County, Alabama and the West Virginia Chiefs of Police Association.

Higinio O. Ochoa III, aka Anonw0rmer, who pleaded guilty in June to accessing a protected computer without authorization, had faced up to five years in prison. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks ordered him to pay more than $14,000 in restitution.

Ochoa hacked into the computers in February and downloaded personal and confidential information, deleted data and defaced Websites, according to U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman’s office.

Ochoa claimed he was associated with hacker groups known as “Anonymous” and “CabinCr3w,” according to court documents. He also boasted on Twitter and other websites about his hacking, the documents said.

Source: http://www.statesman.com/

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Hacking group claims massive attack on oil giant

A hacking collective said it successfully attacked the world’s largest oil company – and is threatening to strike again.

Saudi Aramco, the biggest oil producer on the planet, was reportedly forced to quarantine thousands of infected PCs from its other systems after the onslaught.

The hacking group – which calls itself the “Cutting Sword of Justice” – said that it had destroyed as many as three-quarters of the company’s computers on August 15. That would total at least 30,000 machines.

Saudi Aramco has not confirmed or denied that the attack took place, but said it has experienced “a network disruption”.

In a statement the company said that “the company’s specialised technical team immediately responded to restore service” and “confirmed the integrity of its electronic network that manages its core business”.

The hacking group has posted data including hacked IP addresses which the New York Times said might lend credibility to their claims.

And in their own statement, posted online, the group said the company should expect to see another large-scale attack as soon as Saturday.

It said:

. “We, behalf of an anti-oppression hacker group that have been fed up of crimes and atrocities taking place in various countries around the world, especially in the neighboring countries such as Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, Egypt and …, and also of dual approach of the world community to these nations, want to hit the main supporters of these disasters by this action.One of the main supporters of this disasters is Al-Saud corrupt regime that sponsors such oppressive measures by using Muslims oil resources. Al-Saud is a partner in committing these crimes. It’s hands are infected with the blood of innocent children and people.

… This is a warning to the tyrants of this country and other countries that support such criminal disasters with injustice and oppression. We invite all anti-tyranny hacker groups all over the world to join this movement. We want them to support this movement by designing and performing such operations, if they are against tyranny and oppression.”

It is not known precisely who is behind the attacks, with some speculating a foreign government such as Iran might be sponsoring the hackers.

Security expert Rob Rachwald, from the firm Imperva, said the attack was unprecedented:

“The Saudi Aramco attack is the first significant use of malware in a so-called hacktivist attack.

“In the past, hacktivists have typically used application or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks – in which they clog a website with traffic until it goes offline. However, the attack on Saudi Aramco is the first significant use of malware in a hacktivist attack. Hacktivists rarely use malware, if other hacktivists jump on this trend it could become very dangerous.”

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Redhack:

_{TO OUR ANONYMOUS, LULZSEC BROTHERS AND ALL THE HACKTIVIST FRIENDS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD;}

Anonymous name has been used by AnonsTurkey on twitter for their personal interests and they are attacking the oppressed people with the influence of the government and the racist agenda of the chauvinists.

Relationship between Redhack and Anonymous goes back to the time of 4chan in 2005. We continue to be in solidarity with active and true hackers within Anonymous and offer our help within our capabilities when it is required.

We steer the real arm of the Anonymous in Turkey for years. We have helped them as much as we can within our capabilities. We had the opportunity to meet freedom defender Jeremy Hammond and some of you will know what we have gone through after the FBI rats infiltration.

We were actively involved in the Anonymous actions about the censorship in 2011 that have shook Turkey. Our position was also to help to organise it. After these actions some inexperienced teenagers that have taken active part in have stayed with Redhack hoping to learn something. But the “populism” was high with these people and this wasn’t accepted within our ranks. Neither within our group there are no names nor within the Anonymous. Anonymous or Redhack never thought that names were important but ideas were. But these people always put forward their names and we did not accept this. We always thought that they were young and might change positively. But then they were not happy about us being socialist and our revolutionary values were hard for them to accept. According to them we should act within the norms of “official ideology” and act around the chauvinism that was imposed on people and the brotherhood relations with the Kurdish people should have been cut off. Due to these reasons we have decided to exclude them from Redhack and Anonymous Turkey. But they have not stopped and created an Anonymous Turkey account on twitter with the help of some DDOS and BOP geeks. Later they have offered us their support when Redhack was widely talked about in Turkey. We thought they have probably changed; also we have never refused support from others. But things have developed quite strangely. Rise of Redhack have disturbed US and the Turkish government. Soon after US Embassy in Ankara has condemned us, the groups that were supporting us have changed as well.

At that time Anonymous centrally offered us their support and carried out actions with us. These people wanted to join OpsupportRedHack but we have refused this due to their track record. Then they have announced on twitter that they will no longer support Redhack. But the group names themselves AnonsTurkey and their 15-17 years old kids started to attack us with their BOTNET owner friends that uses them.

We have continuously warned them that “names are not important its either Redhack or Anonymous, what’s important was what was done”. But they refused this and showed up on TV programs using the prices we have paid for years and had adolescent discussions. Although this nasty behaviour we have tried hard to protect our hacker ethics up until when they have attacked www.haber.sol.org.tr . The reason behind it was this site has reported that one of their actions was wrongly credited as it was Redhack. They have not requested them to change this article. This is a significant news site for the left in Turkey. Not only this site but they have also carried out DDOS attack on the sites of Kurdish people using the “excuse of PKK”, anarchists and democrats that had weak systems.

We have reacted against these unjust and wrong actions that damage the fraternity between the peoples. This is a blow to the oppressed people’s struggle against brutal fascist regime of Turkey which also declared Redhack as terrorist.

Presently the media is reporting about this and claiming that Redhack and Anonymous are fighting between themselves after AnonsTurkey have announced that “Anonymous will not have any dealings with Red hack anymore”. This is deemed as that Anonymous is under their monopoly and further damages the fight for freedom by hacktivist.

It cannot be normal for these people to attack us at the same time when we are declared as terrorists and Interpol, Intelligence Services and fascist hackers attacking us.

We had to show some attitude against these populist and chauvinistic waves. Our attitude is not against the Anonymous but against those using this name for their dirty desires. If anyone is looking for Anonymous Turkey it’s always been us from the beginning.

They cannot damage our relations with Anonymous. We know that they didn’t like our efforts to pull Anonymous away from being under the guidance of government and turn it into being against the system. We won’t let Anonymous to be used as a stalking-horse for the capitalism and the request of the government.

Whoever works “unconditionally and generously” for Anonymous is the Anonymous. Whoever works “unconditionally and generously” for Redhack is the Redhack.

Hacking should be left to hackers, not to the clowns that are interested in being famous and enemies of socialism.

The manipulators supported by US imperialism and works for the government cannot damage the brotherhood between the Anonymous and Redhack.

The enemy has many faces but only one name: CAPITALISM!

WHOEVER OWNS THE SUN IS ALSO THE LORD OF THE SHADOWS AND THE SUN IS RISING FOR THE PEOPLE!

LET’S CONTINUE THE HACKING FOR THE PEOPLE!

twitter:

anon_1907 twitterde op maandag 27-08-2012 om 21:19:17 #TangoDown www.interpol.com #OpFreeAssange #Anonymous second day || Expect Us - Justice --@AnonOpsLegion reageer retweet

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Anonymous hacks AVX Corporation, alleging war profiteering in Congo

One of the latest Anonymous operations, #OpColtan or #OperationGreenRights, aims to raise awarness of AVX Corporation’s maneuvers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1998. As of the writing of this article, AVX’s website is down, presumably thanks to Anonymous.

AVX, headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, sells capacitors, electrical components, interconnects and other products to corporations such as Motorola and Nokia. According to an AVX website that is still up, the company operates in a number of markets, including, “computer, telecommunications infrastructure, cellular, industrial, automotive, consumer, military and medical sectors.” AVX is organized as three divisions: Passive Components, KED Resale Components and Interconnects.

It seems that in 2001 the United Nations accused AVX of extracting Columbite-tantalite (coltan), a black metallic ore used in the construction of consumer electronics such as smart phones, computers, DVD players, etc., during a civil war in the Congo in 1998. Warring groups within the Congo had apparently been smuggling coltan out of the region with the help of neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. The coltan ultimately ended up in the hands of US manufacturers such as AVX in the form of tantalum. (Profit first, ask questions later.)

The UN’s accusations never culminated in any international action, but AVX claims to be committed to conflict-free tantalum (an element of coltan), with plans for purchasing it from “verified” sources in the DRC and surrounding countries. Anonymous, it would seem, isn’t putting too much faith in AVX to ethically source tantalum from the DRC.

“NOW a new civil war is growing up in Congo and is totally hypocrite to share DRC in different areas in order to say that some of these are war free,” reads Anonymous’s Pastebin post. “AVX, UN trial refused to punish you, but Operation Green Rights doesn’t forget. AVX, is the time to pay for your crimes, the trial is the whole mankind.”

Typical Anonymous rhetoric, but it does serve to shine a light on the reality that DRC is entering another period of civil war, and that corporations could very well profit from it. Hopefully AVX is committed to its “conflict-free” pledge, but with global corporations, profit drives everything, most especially during war.

#OpColtan also demonstrates the upside of Anonymous’s role in raising awareness of global corporate ethics (even as a preventive measure). If the US and UN are unable or unwilling to do anything about it, then there are precious few options other than letting Anonymous do its work.

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[Updated] Hackers Dump Millions of Records of Banks, Politicians

TeamGhostShell, a hacking collective linked with the infamous group Anonymous, is claiming that they have hacked some major US institutions including the likes of CIA, banks and accounts of politicians and has posted those details online.

The dumps comprising of millions of accounts has been let loose on the web by the hacking collective. The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians and to avenge the hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies.

The leader of TeamGhostShell, DeadMellox, reported the hack through a tweet. Records, containing details of CIA accounts/records, banks, politicians, were leaked under the project dubbed ProjectHellFire and the hackers have said that more will follow.

twitter:

DeadMellox twitterde op zaterdag 25-08-2012 om 20:52:14 #ProjectHellFire - 1 million accounts/records leaked http://t.co/PKvJFGWY http://t.co/IeAdmD3i https://t.co/b0uG7zeb https://t.co/G5O66nue reageer retweet

“We are also letting everyone know that more releases, collaborations with Anonymous and other, plus two more projects are still scheduled for this fall and winter. It’s only the beginning.” the hackers said.

The hackers have also claimed that they are in possession of “three different access points” to millions, probably billions, of databases from a Chinese mainframe; US stock exchange mainframe/s; and Department of Homeland Security which they are going to offer to deserving hackers.



The dumps have been posted here, here, here and here.



[Update @ 11:11 UT]: The hackers have mentioned the name CIA which is basically a company named C.I.A. Services and not the Central Intelligence Agency of the US. For this reason we have omitted the name CIA from the title as well as the content of the story.

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British Minister likens Anonymous to fascists and racists

Hacktivist cabal Anonymous has continued its attack on UK government websites in retaliation to the UK’s treatment of Julian Assange, this time hitting former Wales and Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain.

Hain told the BBC he feels Anonymous' actions resemble those he experienced in the “anti-apartheid and anti-fascist struggles." The MP participated in South Africa's anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s. "I have had these attacks for 40 years, mostly from racists and fascists."

He added that Anonymous had got its targets wrong as he has been a supporter of Assange.

Hain used the attack to urge for cyber security, taking to Twitter where he wrote "after targeting of several sites in recent months latest incident is more evidence that UK needs to wake up to growing cyber security threat." Anonymous targeted the UK’s Ministry of Justice and the Home Office last week.

Meanwhile, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said that the standoff regarding Assange as an “unfortunate incident over, after a grave diplomatic error by the British in which they said they would enter our embassy."

Ecuadorian officials have been outraged at British government threats of trying to seize Assange should he stray from the Ecuadorian embassy where he has been camped for two months.

The Washington-based Organization of American States also condemned Britain's threat with South American foreign ministers claiming Britain's stance is unacceptable.

Correa told the UK’s Sunday Times that the sex crime allegations made against Assange would not be deemed a crime in Latin America. "The crimes that Assange is accused of, they would not be crimes in 90 to 95 per cent of the planet," he said.

He also played the Pinochet card, questioning the British government’s contradictory approach to extradition, when it did not extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet after his 1998 arrest in London.

Pinochet was wanted on an international arrest warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who is now featured on Assange's legal team.

"Britain supported Augusto Pinochet unconditionally. And they let him go, they didn't extradite him on humanitarian grounds, whereas they want to extradite Julian Assange for not using a condom, for the love of God,” Correa said.

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LulzSec hacker arrested over Sony attack

A second member of the LulzSec hacking collective has been arrested by US authorities in connection with attacks on Sony Pictures Europe

US police have arrested Raynaldo Rivera, 20, an alleged member of the hacking group LulzSec, on charges that he took part in an extensive breach of the computer systems belonging to Sony Pictures Europe.

Rivera, of Tempe, Arizona – who allegedly used the online nicknames of "neuron", "royal" and "wildciv" – surrendered to police in Phoenix six days after a federal grand jury in Los Angeles produced an indictment charging him with conspiracy and unauthorised impairment of a protected computer. If convicted, he could face 15 years in prison.

The indictment, which was unsealed on Tuesday, accuses Rivera and co-conspirators of stealing information from Sony Pictures Europe's computer systems in May and June 2011 using an SQL injection attack – which exploits flaws in the handing of data input for databases to take control of a system – against the studio's website.

SQL injection, or SQLi, is an increasingly common technique used by hackers to break into systems.

The indictment says Rivera then helped to post the confidential information onto LulzSec's website and announced the intrusion via the hacking group's Twitter account.

While Rivera was the only person named in the indictment, the FBI said his co-conspirators included Cody Kretsinger, 24, a confessed LulzSec member who pleaded guilty in April to charges stemming from his role in the Sony attack.

Yet the indictment and the arrest still leaves open one of the most puzzling questions left by the hacking spree seen in the first half of 2011, when the hacking collective Anonymous – and LulzSec, which grew out of it, were coming to public attention.

That is the question of who hacked into Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) system in April.

The attack, which may have leaked credit card details for millions of users, has never been traced to any group – although Sony suggested not long afterwards that Anonymous might have been involved.

Since then it has given no further details about who it suspects of carrying out the attack, and no data from the attack has ever been posted publicly.

By contrast the Sony Pictures Europe hack of which Rivera is accused saw the data leaked on 2 June, and LulzSec's activities are generally reckoned to have begun on 30 May with the posting of a fake story about Tupac Shakur to the PBS website.

Following the Sony Pictures Europe breach, LulzSec published the names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of thousands of people who had entered contests promoted by Sony, and publicly boasted of its exploits.

"From a single injection we accessed EVERYTHING," the hackers said in a statement at the time. "Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?"

Authorities have said the Sony breach ultimately cost the company more than $600,000 (£378,000).

LulzSec, an underground group also known as Lulz Security, is an offshoot of the international hacking collective Anonymous and took credit for attacks on a number of government and private sector websites, including the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency, the US Congressional website, and the Sun and News International sites.

The latest indictment says Rivera is suspected of using a proxy server in a bid to conceal his IP address to avoid detection.

Court documents revealed in March that a former Anonymous member known as Sabu, whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, had pleaded guilty to hacking-related charges and had been providing information on his cohorts to the FBI since June 2011, after he was identified as he logged into a public bulletin board from his home address.

That same month, five other suspected leaders of Anonymous, all them alleged to be LulzSec members as well, were charged by US authorities with computer hacking and other offences.

A number of arrests followed in the UK, where six people have been charged with various offences linked to LulzSec's activities.

An accused British hacker, Ryan Cleary, 20, was indicted by a US grand jury in June on charges related to LulzSec attacks on several media companies, including Sony Pictures.

Kretsinger, who pleaded guilty to the same two charges now facing Rivera, is due to be sentenced on 25 October. A prosecutor said he was likely to receive substantially less than the 15-year maximum prison term carried by those offenses.

Monsegur, 28, a Puerto Rican living in New York, has pleaded guilty to 12 charges, including three of conspiracy to hack into computers, five of hacking, one of hacking for fraudulent purposes, one of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and one of aggravated identity theft.

Those charges would attract a total of 124 years' jail, but it is thought he has arranged a plea bargain with the US government. Monsegur received a six-month reprieve from sentencing earlier in August in light of his cooperation with the government.

Anonymous and its offshoots focused initially on fighting attempts at internet regulation and the blocking of free illegal downloads but have since taken aim at the Church of Scientology, global banking and other targets.

Anonymous, and LulzSec in particular, became notorious in late 2010 when they launched what they called the first cyberwar in retaliation for attempts to shut down WikiLeaks.

The rise of LulzSec saw a burst of similar "crews" aiming to hack sites, but since then Anonymous has focussed on providing an outlet for documents released by WikiLeaks.

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Operation NYT

In mid-August, Wikileaks released a trove of e-mails culled from the 5.6 million seized from the criminal private intelligence firm Stratfor, which aside from its public geopolitical analysis work was soon revealed to have been engaged in covert surveillance operations against activists including those located in Bhopal and engaged in advocacy for those sickened by the Union Carbide disaster.

Having engaged in regular correspondence with the executives of another firm called Trapwire which oversees deployment of an eponymous surveillance and "data-mining" capability used in an unknown number of cities and regions around the world – correspondence conducted in large part in reference to the corrupt promotional bargain the two firms had struck – Stratfor's e-mails included a good deal of confirmable information as well as assertions regarding the nature of the product itself and the way it might be used.

While real researchers poured through the release and compared the info therein with primary sources like those stemming from the 70,000 HBGary e-mails, The New York Times put on the story some yahoo who declared fears to be "wildly exaggerated" in part because two unnamed, titleless sources at the Department of Homeland Security told them they tried it and didn't like it.

No indication is given as to whether or not this was proven to the reporter, or if he saw any evidence of it at all. At any rate, this reporter did not see fit to mention what was elsewhere being shouted by Anonymous, Telecomix, Wikileaks, ProjectPM, and independent researchers: that Cubic is in control of this capability, and that this was where the main problem lay.

Cubic Corporation has successfully hidden its ties to other secret subsidiaries such as Ntrepid, which tax documents from 2010 show to have been "wholly owned" by Cubic even in addition to having a board virtually identical to Cubic's other, acknowledged and respected subsidiary, Abraxas.

That Ntrepid won the 2010 persona management from CENTCOM/USAF – another matter that we have screamed to the rooftops about since OpMetalGear and through echelon2.org – is simply one of several matters that absolutely should be of concern to every population in which Cubic controls aspects of civilian, public space security. This should be doubly the case in light of the Team Themis scandal, involving Palantir, HBGary, Berico, the Justice Department (which for some reason failed to investigate when deferred to by the netfascist Lamar Smith of SOPA infamy), Bank of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Incidentally, the NYT was offered the first look at the e-mails which produced that and other scandals, but declined, and the e-mail evidence of this and other incompetence will be provided to all through other press channels within the next 48 hours, or else via the usual Anonymous venues.

The facts on Trapwire have since been confirmed by a series of other outlets ranging from The Daily Caller to Pravda to The New American to NBC.com to Cryptome, and by six Australian outlets that were promptly forced to delete the assertion via Cubic's powerful lawyers – but these facts have yet to be acknowledged by the NYT nor by those other outlets that still think highly of the Grey Lady despite her being a filthy, poorly-composed whore – Thomas Friedman's syphilitic dominatrix.

Death to this horrid paper. And dox upon Mark Mazzetti, who was caught sending an unpublished column to a CIA spokesman with the note, "This didn't come from me," – an incident that has since been inexplicably described by The Time's own spokesperson as a favor Mazzetti did for the author of the column even after the managing editor said it was some sort of secret he couldn't tell Politico for reasons of, presumably, national security.

For the present, we will simply extend the bounds of sanity to the extent possible by spreading these and other failures of the New York Times by attaching the info to those deeds to come, and by encouraging all Anons to assist in this brief engagement, done in conjunction with #OpTrapwire and #OpBigBrother. Incidentally, the apparent changing of a New York Times website administrator password earlier today was, although amusing if true, not in accordance with generally-accepted Anonymous tradition of non-aggression via hacking or DOS towards publications not run (officially) by the state. Gawker has been only exception, lol Kayla.

Jeremy Hammond and others who have been charged with stealing secrets from the gods are not the responsibility of the New York Times, the media, or the public. They are our heroes. As such, it is our duty to do whatever possible – within the ethics agreed upon by the individual actors who may choose to conduct this and other operations and generally exemplified by prior Anonymous-attributed activities – to force attention to those portions of the information of great and demonstrable relevance to the Grand Imperial Republic of the United States, its pseudo-vassals, and those populations within reach of its situational awareness and covert operational capabilities.

We will do this despite, and because of, the failures we continue to see from a media that has evolved under pressure of a degenerate market demographic, the American people, but which could have easily chosen to compete for the honest and the virtuous and supported itself while encouraging the civic virtue that will either revive soon, or be transformed into guerrilla online civil war of a sort even more unexpected than what we have brought you these years past.

Don't wait. Retaliate.

We do not forget.

Anonymous

irc.anonops.pro / webchat.anonops.pro #ProjectPM

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Siemens and Fujitsu General Hacked, Data leaked for #OpColtan

Earlier we posted that another Philips website had been hacked not long after a large load of data was leaked from various other Philips sites. Well now another two electronics Giants have been hacked by Anonymous hacktivist in the name of OpColtan.

The two companys are Siemens Switzerland (siemens.ch) and Fujitsu General Brazil(.fujitsugeneral.com.br) and both have resulted in data from server databases being leaked via paste sites.

The attacks have been carried out by @OpGreenRights and the Siemens attack has been posted to private paste in two different parts while the Fujitsu leak was posted to pastebin in a single paste.

The leaked data from the Siemens attack contains basic database information as well as other non critical information related to the site.

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The Nine Commandments of Covering Anonymous

The first time that I heard about Anonymous was four years ago. I was then a rookie writer at the Phoenix, and our receptionist patched through a cold call from a self-described unmasked hacker named Gregg Housh. Crack salesman that he is, within minutes Housh had my full attention, and was schooling me with lore of his real-life and virtual crusades with the Internet collective known as Anonymous. I was intrigued by their latest scrum — a war with the Church of Scientology — and decided to dig deeper. After a week of researching and scanning their networks, I found myself not only obsessed with the peculiar Internet Relay Chats (IRC) and image boards that Anons inhabit, but fascinated by their unique embrace of everything from vigilantism to bukkake.

Most coverage of Anons and their shenanigans — from their beef with Scientology to their WikiLeaks-related hits on MasterCard — has been superficial. Low points have come from television outlets like the Los Angeles Fox News affiliate that garnered derisive memetry by labeling Anonymous an "Internet hate machine." On the opposite end of that spectrum is a select cadre of insider writers and academics, many of whom the mainstream media rely on for explanations. But in between the broadcast goofballs and the experts, accurate long-form reporting on Anonymous is anomalous. There's also been little discussion of the actual act of covering Anonymous — even as its affiliates, like Occupy Wall Street, and the group's numerous targets have rocked headlines.

As we're all increasingly connected to an online culture over which Anonymous wields great influence — from silly Tumblr trends to mass calls for activism — it's no longer adequate for journalists to only kind of get it. This is a critical concern, and one that's been debated extensively since the June release of Parmy Olson's 400-plus page opus, We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency. In blog posts, on chats, and at interactive conferences, journalists and Anons alike are discussing the unique challenges of reporting on this hard-to-peg troop of trolls and hackers, geeks and Web warriors. While they sometimes disagree on tactics, collectively these muckrakers set the tone for this burgeoning line of journalistic and anthropological inquiry. Using their stories, we've devised a blueprint for not just covering, but understanding Anonymous.

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/bos(...)ymous/#ixzz258oM5Ruw

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Voortvluchtige oprichter Pirate Bay opgepakt

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Een van de oprichters van de populaire downloadsite The Pirate Bay is opgepakt in Cambodja. De Zweed Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (27) staat op een internationale lijst van gezochte personen, zei zijn advocaat zaterdag tegen de krant Svenska Dagbladet.