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26 minutes ago
Friday, 10 December 2010
Cyber attacks: payback time
In a cyber attack known as Operation Payback, a group of online activists called Anonymous targeted the websites of companies that had treated WikiLeaks like a bad smell. Visa, MasterCard, Paypal and Amazon have all had their websites, and in some cases their services, affected. Welcome to the world of the chaotic good. It is chaotic. But is it good?
These companies all considered that their association with WikiLeaks damaged their brand image, a reflection prompted in some cases by a helpful call from the US state department. In essence they are trying to have it both ways: pretending in their marketing that they are free spirits and enablers of the cyber world, but only living up to that image as long as they don't upset anyone really important. At Amazon there is real confusion between the two roles: it refused to host WikiLeaks but continued to sell an eBook of the leaked cables online.
The hacktivists of Anonymous may be accused of many things – such as immaturity or being run by a herd instinct. But theirs is the cyber equivalent of non-violent action or civil disobedience. It disrupts rather than damages. In challenging the credit card companies and the web hosts in this way, they are reminding these businesses that their brand reputation relies not only on how the state department sees them, but also on how they maintain their independence in the eyes of their users.
Not all the targets of the internet activists are the right ones. The website of the Swedish prosecution authority, which is currently attempting to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, on rape charges, and the website of Claes Borgström, the Stockholm lawyer representing the two women who made the allegations, were also brought down. As our interview with Mr Borgström makes clear, these women are going through hell: first for being the alleged victims of sexual assault, and second for being accused of involvement in some form of CIA honeytrap. The women's right to anonymity has been abandoned online as bloggers rake through their CVs. In Sweden, as in other countries, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution, and the test, beyond reasonable doubt, is set high. Far better would be to let the legal systems in Sweden and Britain take their course.
In times when big business and governments attempt to monitor and control everything, there is a need as never before for an internet that remains a free and universal form of communication. WikiLeaks' chief crime has been to speak truth to power. What is at stake is nothing less than the freedom of the internet. All the rest is a sideshow distracting attention from the real battle that is being fought. We should all keep focus on the true target.
Editorial
The Guardian, Fri 10 Dec 2010 00.01 GMT
JPBarlow RT @opendna: @Anon_Operations is the impostor/satire account. The threat vs EFF is a hoax. [The attack is real.]
Freedom
"You can call me a 4channer, you can call me a blogger, a hacker, a video gamer, you can call me whatever epithet makes you feel somehow superior, but you are wrong. I am none of those things, nor would I need to be to participate in the attack (I did not).
Anyone who understands what DDoS attacks do would never claim that they would cause widespread havoc or serious economic damage. They simply are a way to be a nuisance, to cause a little disruption, and to get the attention of perhaps a few stuffed suits so that next time, they won't sell their souls so publicly to quiet a voice that they and their government friends find so uncomfortable.
You can laugh at the people doing this, and console yourself with how geeky they all must be and think of all the socially acceptable friends you have. Or you can stop and consider what you can do yourself to stand up for a free press in this country"
Comment @'The Lede'
JPBarlow The EFF server is under attack. I would be disappointed if this were the result of my opposition to DDoS. #Anonymous?
World's oldest computer recreated in Lego
It's the oldest known computer, a relic dating back 2000 years and rediscovered at the bottom of the ocean. Now designer Andrew Carol has brought it back to life - using Lego.
That's not to say this project was child's play - making the device was an engineering feat that required specialist Lego, and a lot of patience (see stop motion video above).
The idea came from journalist Adam Rutherford who had seen a Babbage Difference Engine built by Carol and got in touch. "I asked him if he'd heard of the mechanism, and if he thought it was doable in Lego," says Rutherford. "A few weeks later, he sent me some pictures of a demo version he'd knocked up. It was stunning."
The Antikythera mechanism is an astronomical computer thought to have been built in 150BC. It was rediscovered on the Antikythera shipwreck in 1900 and has since astounded researchers by its mechanical complexity. It's been recreated numerous times, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a working replica has been made from Lego. "We recreated a 1st century BC computer out of the best toy humankind has ever invented," Rutherford says.
Catherine de Lange @'New Scientist'
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani 'at home' pictures trigger confusion over her fate
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani with her son Sajjad at home in northwestern Iran. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Confusion surrounded the fate of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman whose sentence of death by stoning for adultery triggered an international outcry, after photographs of her meeting her son at home were released by Iran's English channel television tonight.
Pictures from state-run Press TV showed her meeting Sajjad at home in Osku in northwestern Iran, boosting supporters' hopes that she had been released.
But footage of Ashtiani broadcast by the station later raised questions about whether she had actually been released from prison, or whether Iranian authorities had merely taken her to her home to collect evidence against her and film a confession.
In a short clip she is seen to say: "We planned to kill my husband."
The move came weeks after Iran signalled it might spare the life of Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, a mother of two who has been in Tabriz prison since 2006, and who faced execution by stoning for "having an illicit relationship outside marriage".
An international campaign for Ashtiani's release has been launched by her son Sajad, who was later arrested along with her lawyer Houtan Kian and two German journalists who were arrested after trying to interview her have also been freed.
The extraordinary case brought an unwelcome focus on human rights in Iran at a time when the Islamic regime was seeking to return to normal after the unrest that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in a disputed presidential election in June 2009.
Ecstatic campaigners initially hailed the news. "This is the happiest day in my life," said Mina Ahadi of the International Committee against Stoning (Icas). "I'm very happy for her son, Sajad, who fought single-handedly and bravely in Iran to defend his mother and tell the world that she is innocent. I'm sure that this day will be written in Iranian history books, if not the world's, as a day of victory for human rights campaigners."
International pressure over Mohammadi Ashtiani's fate began with campaigning on social networking sites and was later taken up by mainstream media as protest rallies were held in London, Rome and Washington, with support from Amnesty and other human rights groups, as well as a star-studded cast of celebrities including Colin Firth and Emma Thompson in Britain.
Iran's friends and enemies tried to intervene. Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, offered to give Mohammadi Ashtiani asylum in his country, while the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, urged Tehran to respect the fundamental freedoms of its citizens. Britain's foreign office minister Alistair Burt condemned the laws used against her as "medieval."
Tehran hit back furiously. Kayhan, a conservative paper, called Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the French president's wife, a "prostitute" who "deserved death" after she condemned the sentence.
Iran accused its critics of trying to turn a criminal case into something of wider significance. "It has become a symbol of women's freedom in western nations and with impudence they want to free her," the foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast protested last month. "They are trying to use this ordinary case as a lever of pressure against our nation."
Evidently feeling the heat, Iran described her as "an adulterous woman" and introduced new charges, portraying her as a murderer who killed her husband. Mohammadi Ashtiani was put on state TV three times to confess to her charges but human rights activists insisted she had been tortured.
But signs of a possible change of heart came after Mohammad Javad Larijani, a top adviser to the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, visited the UN last month and invited the secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to visit Iran. Still, he compared Ashtiani's case with that of Teresa Lewis, who was executed by lethal injection in the US state of Virginia for arranging the murder of her husband and stepson.
Under Iranian sharia law, those sentenced to death by stoning are buried up to the neck (or to the waist in the case of men), and those attending the public execution are called upon to throw stones. If the convicted person manages to free themselves from the hole, the death sentence is commuted.
Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in May 2006 of conducting an illicit relationship outside marriage. She endured a sentence of 99 lashes, but her case was re-opened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. She was acquitted, but the adultery charge was reviewed and a death penalty handed down on the basis of "judge's knowledge" – a loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present.
Five years ago when Mohammadi Ashtiani was flogged, Sajad, then 17, was present. "They lashed her in front my eyes and this has been carved in my mind since then," he told the Guardian before his own arrest.
Iran has rarely carried out stonings in recent years. But it executed 388 people last year – more than any other country apart from China, according to Amnesty International. Most were hanged.
Ten Iranian women and four men are on death row awaiting execution by stoning, among them Azar Bagheri, 19, Iran Iskandari, 31, Kheyrieh Valania, 42, Sarimeh Sajadi, 30, Kobra Babaei, and Afsaneh R.
Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Ian Black @'The Guardian'
Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Ian Black @'The Guardian'
Amazon share price plunges ahead of promised cyber ‘payback’ for WikiLeaks censorship
Is the world witnessing its first wave of digital sit-ins?
A group of "hacktivists" calling themselves "Anonymous" has been waging an "all-out cyber war" the last several days against corporate and public entities that have acted to censor secrets website WikiLeaks. They disrupted Visa and MasterCard transactions on Wednesday, bringing down websites for the world's two largest credit card providers. They stopped a Swiss bank from doing business and even knocked websites for a US Senator and former governor offline, with yet more attacks promised.
All of it -- or at least most, they insist -- is part of a voluntary campaign of cyber disobedience, to ensure these powerful entities know their actions are unpopular. Using a piece of software called "Low Orbit Ion Cannon," named after a weapon in the PC strategy game "Command and Conquer," volunteers can point their computers at a domain and begin saturating any server with traffic. If enough people join in, the site inevitably falls.
Their next target: Amazon.com. After announcing plans to blast the site with gobs of traffic, effectively denying page-loads to its regular customers, Amazon's share price on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol: AMZN) began to plummet, down 1.17 percent by 12:10 pm eastern. The site still appeared to be online.
Amazon was being targeted because the site took WikiLeaks off its cloud servers after being pressured to do so by staff for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who also saw his web operation taken down by "Anonymous." WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said they'd moved the site to Amazon to test it's commitment to free speech following a cyber-attack that took down their Swiss servers.
"Anonymous" also targeted online payments leader PayPal, owned by California-based eBay, taking the site offline intermittently early Thursday. Service to PayPal.com was intermittent at time of this writing.
PayPal's blog had been previously been taken offline by denial of service attacks after the firm froze one of WikiLeaks' accounts. It claimed to have released WikiLeaks' money on Wednesday night.
Attempting to explain their actions, PayPal Vice President Osama Bedier told a European audience that the US State Department had informed the company that WikiLeaks was engaging in illegal activities. That turned out to be untrue: the State Dept. never sent them such a letter -- it was directed to WikiLeaks -- and the alleged crime was committed not by the media organization, but by the individual who stole the information.
The "Anonymous" group, which uses a headless man in a black suit as its insignia, reveled in the digital mayhem they've caused, joking on Twitter mid-morning that they'd sold shares in Amazon to buy new suits.
The night prior, Twitter moved to ban an account that had been helping direct the voluntary botnets being led against some of the world's most hardened server farms, after "Anonymous" hackers claimed to have posted a list of 10,000 MasterCard numbers with expiration dates. A MasterCard spokesman told Raw Story the numbers weren't theirs. Many of the numbers on the list began with a '4', which is what all Visa accounts start with. It was unclear whether the card numbers were genuine or not.
WikiLeaks issued a statement Thursday saying they were in no way affiliated with or connected to "Anonymous."
"We neither condemn nor applaud these attacks," WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said in a media advisory. "We believe they are a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets."
Stephen C Webster @'Raw Story'
EFF: Information is the Antidote to Fear: Wikileaks, the Law, and You
When it comes to Wikileaks, there's a lot of fear out there on the Internet right now.
Between the federal criminal investigation into Wikileaks, Senator Joe Lieberman's calls for companies to stop providing support for Wikileaks and his suggestion that the New York Times itself should be criminally investigated, Senator Dianne Feinstein's recent Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and even the suggestion by some that he should be assassinated, a lot of people are scared and confused.
Will I break the law if I host or mirror the US diplomatic cables that have been published by Wikileaks? If I view or download them? If I write a news story based on them? These are just a few of the questions we've been getting here at EFF, particularly in light of many US companies' apparent fear to do any business with Wikileaks (with a few notable exceptions).
We unfortunately don't have the capacity to offer individualized legal advice to everyone who contacts us. What we can do, however, is talk about EFF's own policy position: we agree with other legal commentators who have warned that a prosecution of Assange, much less of other readers or publishers of the cables, would face serious First Amendment hurdles ([1], [2]) and would be "extremely dangerous" to free speech rights. Along with our friends at the ACLU, "We're deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea."
Even better than commentary, we can also provide legal information on this complicated issue, and today we have for you some high quality legal information from an expert and objective source: Congress' own research service, CRS. The job of this non-partisan legal office is to provide objective, balanced memos to Congress on important legal issues, free from the often hysteric hyperbole of other government officials. And thanks to Secrecy News, we have a copy of CRS' latest memo on the Wikileaks controversy, a report entitled "Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information" and dated this Monday, December 6.
Like this blog post itself, the CRS memo isn't legal advice. But it is a comprehensive discussion of the laws under which the Wikileaks publishers — or anyone else who obtains or publishes the documents, be it you or the New York Times — might be prosecuted and the First Amendment problems that such a prosecution would likely raise. Notably, the fine lawyers at CRS recognize a simple fact that statements from Attorney General Eric Holder, the Senators, the State Department and others have glossed over: a prosecution against someone who isn't subject to the secrecy obligations of a federal employee or contractor, based only on that person's publication of classified information that was received innocently, would be absolutely unprecedented and would likely pose serious First Amendment problems. As the summary page of the 21-page memo succinctly states,
Hopefully, this information will help counter much of the fear that our government's so-called "war" against Wikileaks has generated. Meanwhile, we will continue our effort to oppose online censorship and provide additional news and commentary on the ongoing WikiLeaks saga, which is shaping up to be the first great free speech battle of the 21st century. We hope you'll join us in the fight.
Between the federal criminal investigation into Wikileaks, Senator Joe Lieberman's calls for companies to stop providing support for Wikileaks and his suggestion that the New York Times itself should be criminally investigated, Senator Dianne Feinstein's recent Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and even the suggestion by some that he should be assassinated, a lot of people are scared and confused.
Will I break the law if I host or mirror the US diplomatic cables that have been published by Wikileaks? If I view or download them? If I write a news story based on them? These are just a few of the questions we've been getting here at EFF, particularly in light of many US companies' apparent fear to do any business with Wikileaks (with a few notable exceptions).
We unfortunately don't have the capacity to offer individualized legal advice to everyone who contacts us. What we can do, however, is talk about EFF's own policy position: we agree with other legal commentators who have warned that a prosecution of Assange, much less of other readers or publishers of the cables, would face serious First Amendment hurdles ([1], [2]) and would be "extremely dangerous" to free speech rights. Along with our friends at the ACLU, "We're deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea."
Even better than commentary, we can also provide legal information on this complicated issue, and today we have for you some high quality legal information from an expert and objective source: Congress' own research service, CRS. The job of this non-partisan legal office is to provide objective, balanced memos to Congress on important legal issues, free from the often hysteric hyperbole of other government officials. And thanks to Secrecy News, we have a copy of CRS' latest memo on the Wikileaks controversy, a report entitled "Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information" and dated this Monday, December 6.
Like this blog post itself, the CRS memo isn't legal advice. But it is a comprehensive discussion of the laws under which the Wikileaks publishers — or anyone else who obtains or publishes the documents, be it you or the New York Times — might be prosecuted and the First Amendment problems that such a prosecution would likely raise. Notably, the fine lawyers at CRS recognize a simple fact that statements from Attorney General Eric Holder, the Senators, the State Department and others have glossed over: a prosecution against someone who isn't subject to the secrecy obligations of a federal employee or contractor, based only on that person's publication of classified information that was received innocently, would be absolutely unprecedented and would likely pose serious First Amendment problems. As the summary page of the 21-page memo succinctly states,
This report identifies some criminal statutes that may apply [to dissemination of classified documents], but notes that these have been used almost exclusively to prosecute individuals with access to classified information (and a corresponding obligation to protect it) who make it available to foreign agents, or to foreign agents who obtain classified information unlawfully while present in the United States. Leaks of classified information to the press have only rarely been punished as crimes, and we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it. There may be First Amendment implications that would make such a prosecution difficult, not to mention political ramifications based on concerns about government censorship.The report proceeds to discuss the Espionage Act of 1917 and a number of other potentially applicable statutes, followed by an extended discussion (at pp. 14-20) of how the Supreme Court's First Amendment decisions — and in particular the Pentagon Papers case — could complicate such a prosecution. For anyone interested in or concerned about the legality of publishing the Wikileaks documents and the legal and political challenges to a successful prosecution, this CRS memo is an absolute must-read.
Hopefully, this information will help counter much of the fear that our government's so-called "war" against Wikileaks has generated. Meanwhile, we will continue our effort to oppose online censorship and provide additional news and commentary on the ongoing WikiLeaks saga, which is shaping up to be the first great free speech battle of the 21st century. We hope you'll join us in the fight.
johannhari101 Shameful massive vandalism in Westminster today: the Tories and Lib Dems voted to smash up our universities & chance of poor kids getting on
Brazil's President Lula Shows Support for Wikileaks (English Subtitles)
If you can't see the subtitles, click on "CC" button in the player and select the English language!
HA! Student protestors using hi-tech to outwit police in London (GB2010)
a few days ago i suggested the protesting students could do with some kind of "anti-kettling app", to outwit the efforts of the police to stop them protesting (they've also been keeping students detained out in freezing subzero temperatures, well after bedtime).
it turns out i was over engineering things in my head. the students on the anti-fees protests in London are now using this simple google map:
i got sent it by this guy
if you watch it, you can follow what's happening in london right now. with audio/video/image updates and stuff, it could also become a chaotic unflitered news repository.
there may be others from around the country, do post if you've seen them.
don't let me get carried away, but what i find interesting with this, with wikileaks, and going right back to older underground video news outlets like undercurrents, is that it does feel a bit as if the tools traditionally only available to the state for things like surveillance, evidence gathering, coordination and dissemination are being democratised.
i also very much enjoy the appearance of Godzilla in the Thames
GB2010 (cont.)
Police: Student protesters 'intent on violence'
Police: "Protesters have failed to stick to the agreed route." To be fair, neither did the Lib Dems
But at least there are toilets this time!
Julian Assange: The history of Warfare (2006)
The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, although here the phases
are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy. Thus:
Retribution:
I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother.
Anticipation:
I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother.
Diplomacy:
I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the
pretext that your brother did it.
At the cache of Assange's blog 'IQ' (2006/7)
Op_Payback TARGET: WWW.AMAZON.COM LOCKED ON!!! INSTRUCTIONS: http://pastehtml.com/view/1c8i33u.html <-- IGNORE THE WARNING! #wikileaks #payback #ddos
ggreenwald Time Magazine loudly spreads Government's key lie (used advisedly) about WikiLeaks - see Update V - http://is.gd/ipxO5
Thursday, 9 December 2010
TIME
Not only has Julian Assange NOT been banished from the TIME Person of the Year Poll, you can vote for him right here: http://su.pr/1rnf5m
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