tagged w/ War on freedom
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This is secret War going on in the media. With CIA Trickery and Deception the main tools used to intentionally hide the truth. By armies of psy-ops teams skilled in the science of manipulating public opinion are targeting and attacking Anonymous, Wikileaks and Bradley Manning... This is an operation to twist public perception by use of sociological warfare techniques (psy-ops) with disseminating untruths and disinformation to manipulate the public.... All Standard procedures and Techniques that have been used by CIA psy-ops in "Operation Mockingbird" in the media for many years ~ All without the public even catching on...
Recently the foundations of that corruption and their ~ business as usual has been shaken to its core... Finally their Status quo of on going manipulation of public opinion and day to day operations came into question by Wikileaks exposing US Diplomatic Cables.
Currently...The government is in damage control... still watching and preparing for what could come next. Since then, they have observing two CIA allies ( & dictators); Tunisia and Egypt's both face overwhelming public mass outrage as both of the governments Failed. Now, this same Tsunami Wave that Wikileaks started has hit in the USA ... Starting in Madison Wisconsin...and already spreading across the nation.
Why so much attention? To stop any more unraveling of the exposure to the public of even more damaging corruption acts... They should be scared! They know what they are hiding... Because Wikileaks exposed the truth....By pulling back the Curtain on the systematic disinformation campaign waged against the American public. What we see today...Like..."The Great OZ" when he goes into damage control saying... "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain over there!!!" The only thing we haven't seen "yet" is... The Flying Monkeys! Their cover has been blown... The corruption and hypocrisy exposed and noted... with a caveat of.... more to come.
It is more than just having confidence in We Are Anonymous.... It is knowing the core of what tricks... are to come as they fight their long practiced psy-ops attacks to confuse the public and to discredit and hide the truth. IT IS A DIRTY GAME THEY PLAY!
If the public really knew the depth of what really is going on... things would be much different for everyone on the planet... The Truth is "TOP PRIORITY" in any democracy... Without the truth we have Fascism. In a democracy we can't have the Government using sociological warfare techniques against out public as they do today!
=== WARNING: (PSY-OPS) DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN STARTS BELOW ===
BY OLD BRUTUS, ON MARCH 6TH, 2011
Washington, D.C.–Anonymous Internet users discovered Thursday that the United States Government plays a major role in the day-to-day operations of the most popular Internet news source used by internet activists, or “hacktivists.”
Anonnews.org claims to serve decentralized hacker group Anonymous as its central source of information, including targets and Anonymous press releases, which anyone can submit.
A number of Internet users frequenting both the chronicle.SU and anonnews.org websites discovered that the website selectively runs articles that only fall in line with the agenda of the U.S. Government, and brought this to the attention of chronicle.SU senior executives.
[Editor's note: Due to the close-hitting nature of this piece,
subjective articles such as "we," "us" and "I" will be foundin the following paragraphs.]
As perhaps only a handful of our readers know, anonnews.org, whose slogan is Everything Anonymous, actively deletes any and all content submissions originating from chronicle.SU. We have fought this for a long time, out of fairness to Anonymous and outside objectors, but we too have come to realize anonnews.org is either owned by, or in collusion with, various government agencies.
This clampdown on information is akin to what many of us learn in college courses, or from history itself, to expect from oppressive regimes, and compares in no small way to the aggressive reaction from the USG when news hit of daily-leaking diplomatic cables.
It is worth noting that anonnews.org no longer accepts press releases relating to Wikileaks.
Anonymous purports to expose and crush oppressive regimes, and even went on the record with Al Jazeera Saturday morning to take credit for the unprecedented attacks on websites owned by Mastercard, PayPal, Amazon, and outside governments. Anonymous’ spokesperson, which could literally be anyone in the world, compared their actions with those of protesters in the streets of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
VIEW THE FULL PSY-OPS DISINFORMATION ON THE LINK BELOW:
http://www.chronicle.su/news/anonnews-org-run-by-united-states-government/
~This is secret War going on in the media. With CIA Trickery and Deception the main... more
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Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed to US Streets in Roving Vans
As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.
“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.
The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.
It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)
“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”
AS&E’s Reiss counters privacy critics by pointing out that the ZBV scans don’t capture nearly as much detail of human bodies as their airport counterparts. The company’s marketing materials say that its “primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents,” and that “the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person.”
Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.
But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”
The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images. Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment. Reiss says AS&E has customers on “all continents except Antarctica.”
Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”
GO TO STORY:
http://yourdaddy.net/2010/09/27/feds-to-deploy-full-body-scan-technology-to-us-streets-in-roving-vans/Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed to US Streets in Roving Vans
As the privacy... more
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Spy bloggers not ‘friending’ U.S. targets, Centcom says
By Jeff Stein
The U.S. Central Command says its new “Persona” social media "infiltration" software is designed to cozy up to extremist bloggers overseas, not law-abiding Americans chatting on Facebook or similar sites.
Earlier this month, the Web buzzed with a report that the software was designed to “manage ‘fake people’ on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues,” implying that the Defense Department was targeting critics of the war in Afghanistan and other conflicts.
Further compounding a sinister view of the software was the discovery of e-mails from the head of a company implicated in “dirty tricks” against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and a pro-labor organization, which discussed how such technology could be used.
"There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas...” wrote Aaron Barr, the chief executive officer of HBGary Federal, a Colorado Springs company whose hacked e-mails revealed plans to attack critics of Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Barr resigned Feb. 28 “to allow the company to move on after an embarrassing data breach,” according to the technology Web site ThreatPost.
Centom's June 22, 2010, contract, offered through the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, specified that “Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries…while hiding the existence of the operation…and provid(ing) excellent cover and powerful deniability.”
“Individuals can perform static impersonations, which allow them to look like the same person over time,” the contract added. It “also allows organizations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization.”
The fake Internet personas, the contract specified, “must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms.”
Centcom spokesman Cmdr. Bill Speaks acknowledged in an interview last week that the Air Force had a contract for the Persona Management Software, but denied it would be deployed against domestic online protesters.
“The contract, and the Persona management technology itself, supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language Web sites to enable CENTCOM to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the U.S.,” Speaks told SpyTalk. “The contract would more accurately be described as supporting U.S. Central Command, rather than the Air Force -- the Wing here at MacDill provides contracting support for us -- efforts.”
Speaks said the software would "absolutely" not be used against law-abiding Americans.
Former CIA director and retired Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden called the technology cutting-edge but “developmental.”
“Operationally developmental, technologically developmental and legally developmental,” he told Washington Times reporter Shawn Waterman.
But in testimony last June, then-Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus suggested the use of such technology was well underway.
“Operation Earnest Voice (OEV) is the critical program of record that resources our efforts to synchronize our Information Operations activities, to counter extremist ideology and propaganda, and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard,” Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“OEV provides Centcom with direct communication capabilities to reach regional audiences through traditional media as well as via Web sites and regional public affairs blogging,” Petraeus said.
The FBI has also used fictitious identities for years to infiltrate jihadist Web sites.
Sometimes touted as "America’s first online operative in the War on Terror," the FBI's Shannen L. Rossmiller, a former Montana municipal judge, is said to have "created 30 fictitious male Islamist undercover identities...for purposes of communicating and tracking the enemy [in] Arabic language Internet forums."
"Since 9/11, Judge Rossmiller has delivered more than 200 cases of actionable intelligence and stings -- including two of the largest convictions in the War on Terror," her Web site claims.
GO TO STORY:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2011/03/spy_bloggers_not_friending_us.htmlSpy bloggers not ‘friending’ U.S. targets, Centcom says
By Jeff Stein... more
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Wednesday, 16. February 2011
by Sibel Edmonds
To Those Who Second-Guess Our Police State Status: Shame on You!
I just received the following news and I am way too upset to write a coherent piece on this. Ray McGovern is a good friend of mine. We live less than 10 miles apart. Together we have participated in many events and protests. He is one of the most informed, articulate, gentle, peace-loving and peace-seeking human beings I’ve ever known…For me, this hits too close to home: My father was similarly brutalized by dictator regimes, and that was only the beginning, before it escalated to being tortured and having his toenails pulled out by the state police. Why? He was a doctor, a surgeon with an inquiring mind, and he spoke out whenever he could against dictatorships and for liberties. Participating in peaceful demonstrations, encouraging others to rise up for their rights, and reading authors such as Steinbeck (the American author black-listed there as ‘communist and anarchist’) landed him on the list of to-be-punished and pacified…
Right now, at this point, all I have to say to those who second-guess our nation’s police state status is this: “Shame on you!” As for my irate minority friends over here at Boiling Frogs, please help disseminate this news, because the scum bag media won’t;’ thank you.
At Clinton Speech: Veteran Bloodied, Bruised & Arrested for Standing Silently
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday, condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.
Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern remarked, as he was hauled out the door, “So this is America?” As you see, Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, lacerations and contusions inflicted in the assault.
Mr. McGovern is being represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “It is the ultimate definition of lip service that Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government’s supposed concerns for free speech rights and this man would be simultaneously brutalized and arrested for engaging in a peaceful act of dissent at her speech,” stated attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the PCJF.
# # # #
GO TO STORY:
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/02/16/breaking-news-ray-mcgovern-brutalized-left-bleeding-by-hillary-clinton-police-“so-this-is-america”/Wednesday, 16. February 2011
by Sibel Edmonds
To Those Who Second-Guess Our Police... more
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Analysis from .dd Images & Backups
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Physical Image Email Analysis
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>Lantern version 2.0 Brochure<
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Dr. Alex Karp, the Co-Founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, one of three data intelligence firms who worked to develop a systematic plan of attack against WikiLeaks and their supporters, has severed all ties with HBGary Federal and issued an apology to reporter Glenn Greenwald.
The move comes just twenty-four hours after The Tech Herald reported on the plans, thanks to a tip from Crowdleaks.org
After the tip from Crowdleaks.org, The Tech Herald learned that Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies, worked together with law firm Hunton and Williams to develop a proposal for Bank of America in order to deal with the “WikiLeaks Threat.”
Hunton and Williams were recommended to Bank of America’s general counsel by the Department of Justice, according to the email chain viewed by The Tech Herald. The law firm was using the meeting to pitch Bank of America on retaining them for an internal investigation surrounding WikiLeaks.
“They basically want to sue them to put an injunction on releasing any data,” an email between the three data intelligence firms said. “They want to present to the bank a team capable of doing a comprehensive investigation into the data leak.”
Hunton and Williams would act as outside counsel on retainer, while Palantir would take care of network and insider threat investigations. For their part, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal would analyze WikiLeaks.
Some of the things mentioned as potential proactive tactics against WikiLeaks include feeding the fuel between the feuding groups, disinformation, creating messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization, and submitting fake documents to WikiLeaks and then calling out the error.
“Create concern over the security of the infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the process is believed to not be secure they are done. Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project. Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting a team together to get access is more straightforward,” the proposal said.
Moreover, reporter Glenn Greenwald, who writes for Salon.com, was singled out in the proposal as a person offering a level of support to WikiLeaks that needed to be disrupted. This disruption would include making Greenwald, and others in similar situations, choose between professional preservation and cause.
Our original coverage on this topic can be viewed here.
On Thursday evening, Dr. Alex Karp sent The Tech Herald a statement on the events and information presented in the story.
“As the Co-Founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, I have directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HB Gary,” the statement starts.
Dr. Karp explains that Palantir Technologies provides a software analytic platform for the analysis of data. They do not provide – “nor do we have any plans to develop” – offensive cyber capabilities.
In addition, the statement says that Palantir does not build software that is designed to allow private sector entities to obtain non-public information, engage in so-called cyber attacks, or take other offensive measures.
“I have made clear in no uncertain terms that Palantir Technologies will not be involved in such activities. Moreover, we as a company, and I as an individual, always have been deeply involved in supporting progressive values and causes. We plan to continue these efforts in the future,” Dr. Karp added.
“The right to free speech and the right to privacy are critical to a flourishing democracy. From its inception, Palantir Technologies has supported these ideals and demonstrated a commitment to building software that protects privacy and civil liberties. Furthermore, personally and on behalf of the entire company, I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters.”
Palantir Technologies’ statement comes at a time when HBGary has refused to talk about the WikiLeaks proposal, or any other topic for that matter, related to the security incident caused by Anonymous after HBGary Federal’s Aaron Barr went to the press claiming he had infiltrated the loosely associative group.
The only statement from the company on the incident appeared on their website before it was fully restored.
“HBGary, Inc and HBGary Federal, a separate but related company, have been the victims of an intentional criminal cyberattack. We are taking this crime seriously and are working with federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities and redirecting internal resources to investigate and respond appropriately,” the statement said at the time.
“To the extent that any client information may have been affected by this event, we will provide the affected clients with complete and accurate information as soon as it becomes available. Meanwhile, please be aware that any information currently in the public domain is not reliable because the perpetrators of this offense, or people working closely with them, have intentionally falsified certain data.”
It is unlikely that Anonymous would forge thousands and thousands of emails or attachments. Yet, the complete severance of ties by Palantir Technologies, and the public apology to Greenwald, leaves little room for doubt that the information seen by The Tech Herald, Crowdleaks.org, and many others is legitimate.
Update:
Berico Technologies has cut ties as well. More information is here.
Update 2:
Palantir sent us some additional information. The blow points were emailed to us on Sunday.
Palantir never has and never will condone the sort of activities that HBGary recommended.
Specifically:
Palantir does not condone the recommendations in HBGary's presentations, proposals and emails. Moreover, the tactics proposed by HBGary were never accepted and never acted upon.
Palantir did not participate in the development of the recommendations that Palantir and others find offensive.
Palantir was NOT retained by any party to develop such recommendations and indeed it would be contrary to Palantir ethics, culture and policies to do so.
As we have previously stated, Palantir has severed all ties with HBGary going forward.
As you have probably already discovered in your research, there are two items we want to make very clear:
Palantir did not participate in any activities involving HBGary's proposed tactics.
The slide entitled "Potential Proactive Tactics" was authored solely by HBGary.
The Palantir logo on the slide is the result of a collated deck and does not represent Palantir's position.
Content can be found verbatim in HBGary's email / powerpoint.
GO TO STORY:
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201106/6804/Firm-targeting-WikiLeaks-cuts-ties-with-HBGary-apologizes-to-reporterDr. Alex Karp, the Co-Founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, one of three data... more
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I tricked my employer so I could attend the protests in Egypt. I am not a traitor. I don't need anything from anyone.
I am not a hero. I was only used the keyboard, the real heroes are the ones on the ground. Those I can't name. This is the season where people use the word traitor against each other. I wasn't abused, I was jailed, kidnapped. I met some really intellectual people in jail, they actually thought that we were traitors, working for others. If I was a traitor I would have stayed by the swimming pool in my house in the UAE. What are called the "facebook youth" went out in their tens of thousands on January 25th, talk to them. This is the era where people who have good intentions are considered traitors.
My wife was going to divorce me because I didn't spend time with her, and now they call me a traitor. I spent all my time on the computer working for my country. I wasn't optimistic on the 25th but now I can't believe it. Thanks to everyone who tried to get me out of jail. It's Haram (sinful, not right) for my father to lose his sight in one eye and now is at risk of losing it in the other. I kept thinking "are people thinking of me?" I was wondering if my family knew where I was, my wife, dad, mother.
I am proud of what I did. This is not the time to settle scores. Although I have people I want to settle scores with myself. This is not the time to split the pie & enforce ideologies. The secret to the success of the facebook page was use of surveys.
I met with the Minister of Interior today. He was sat like any other citizen. He spoke to me like an equal. I respected that. The youth on the streets made Dr Hossam Badrawi (General Secretary of NDP) drive me to my house today. They transfered me to state security, it's a kidnapping. On Thursday night, at 1am I was with a friend, a colleague from work. I was taking a taxi, suddenly four people surrounded the car, I yelled "Help me, Help me" I was blindfolded then taken away. I will say this as it is: nothing justifies kidnapping, you can arrest me by the law, I am not a drug dealer or terrorist.
Inside I met people who loved Egypt (State Security people) but their methods & mine are not the same. I pay these guys salaries from my taxes, I have the right to ask the ministers where my money is going, this is our country. I believe that if things get better those (good state security people he met) will serve Egypt well. Don't stand in our way, we are going to serve Egypt. I saw a film director get slapped, they told him "You will die here" Why?
Now they want to have an agreement with me when they are in a position of weakness. I am not a hero, I am a normal person. What happened to me was a crime but I still thank those who tried to got me out, I am an educated person, I have a family. Badrawi told me we took all the bad people out from the NDP. I told him I don't want to see the logo of the NDP ever again. The NDP is got this country to where it is. You can create a new party. It looks like I might be kidnapped again after this.
There were 300 fake registrations on my facebook page, all negative comments, about how we were allegedly being paid. I was the admin of the page but others paid for it. We are dreamers (says it in English). There was no Muslim Brotherhood presence in organising these protests, it was all spontaneous, voluntary. Even when the Muslim Brotherhood decided to take part it was their choice to do so. This belongs to Egyptian youth.
Please everyone, enough rumours. Enough.
I told the Interior Minister - I was upset - I told him I will go in the car with Hossam Badrawi but without an NDP logo. I told them we don't want any NDP logo on the streets. I cried when I heard that there are people who died, officers and protesters, this is my country.
I was chatting with Ahmad Maher of 6th of April Youth Movement about the Jan 25 protests but he didn't know who I was. My wife is an American, I can apply for US citizenship but I didn't, not even the lottery. Many people want to leave though. We have to restore dignity to all Egyptians. We have to end corruption. No more theft. Egyptians are good people. We are a beautiful people. Please everybody, this is not a time to settle scores, this is a time to build our country.
I can't claim I know what happened when I was inside. I didn't know anything until one day before I left. The interrogators wanted to know if outsiders were involved. I convinced them this was a purely Egyptian movement. The treatment was very good, they knew I was a good Egyptian. I was blindfolded for 12 days, I didn't see their faces. They wanted details, information. "Are the people who planned this outsiders?" We didn't do anything wrong, this was an appeal.
I wrote an appeal to the president Egypt on Jan 25. I told the Minister of Interior we have two problems 1- We don't talk to each other, this must be solved, 2- There is no trust. I told the Interior Minister if I stripped naked & told people that I was beaten even without marks they would believe me. The Egyptian State TV channels didn't portray the truth, that is why people watch the private channels now.
There were several men in the room with me & the Minister of Interior. I asked him if I can speak about this he said as u wish. Everyone asked me "How did you do this?" The Interior Minister told me he was only a minister for 8 days. I was told that people died, one day before I was released.
( They are showing pictures of young people who died during the protests. Wael breaks down crying. Screenshot:
Wael @Ghonim's last words: I want to tell families who lost their sons this is not our fault. This is the fault of those clinging to power.
Many thanks to @SultanAlQassemi, a columnist for The National, based in the UAE, and prolific reporter on the #jan25 movement in #egypt
GO TO STORY: http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/exiledsurfer/~Ab8xxI tricked my employer so I could attend the protests in Egypt. I am not a traitor. I... more
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http://sourceforge.net
By Marius Bosch and Georgina Prodhan
JOHANNESBURG/LONDON (Reuters) - If anyone needed proof that cyber activists can create havoc in the real world, the last few weeks have provided evidence in megabytes.
Rallying behind WikiLeaks, the thousands of internet activists who made headlines in December by bringing down the websites of MasterCard and Visa have been branching out.
Operating under the banner "Anonymous", their other forms of action have included hacker defacements of websites, real-life protests such as mass leafleting, and a role in Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution".
Anonymous activists attacked and shut down several government websites before the ouster of former President Zine al Abedine Ben Ali. They have also targeted governments they see as enemies of free speech. Last month the website of Zimbabwe's finance ministry was hacked and the homepage replaced by a message from Anonymous.
A report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) this week said such attacks on computer systems are unlikely to cause a global shock on their own, though could do if launched in the midst of a natural disaster such as a large solar flare that wipes out satellites and other key communications hardware.
But this misses the point. Global chaos is not Anonymous' aim. As the WikiLeaks and Tunisia cases show, the group targets specific institutions and its attacks are designed to temporarily delay more than destroy. Think of them not as acts of cyber war but as high-profile guerrilla strikes.
1> CATALYSTS
A look inside some of the main online forums suggests that those behind the WikiLeak-inspired attacks are patient, coordinate almost organically, and remain wary of outsiders. That all means that their next moves remain unpredictable.
In the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels -- chat rooms where up to 3,000 participants at a time can discuss strategy and plot attacks -- reporters are treated with suspicion. Over the past few weeks, though, a few Anons -- as activists refer to themselves online -- agreed to talk to Reuters.
There is anecdotal evidence that Anonymous is growing stronger. Several Anons told Reuters the arrest of Assange and the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Visa and Mastercard -- in which company websites were bombarded with so many requests they crashed -- inspired them to join the group.
"Saw it on a news article, joined the IRC, and things went on from there. 4 months ago," one Anon nicknamed "tflow" told Reuters in a private message on the IRC channel.
"I was angry at the arrest of Assange and how the credit card companies shut down WikiLeaks' accounts. Been here since," said another, going by the name of Noms9001, referring to the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Britain.
"I'm not a rebel, I can say that. For me, it's been an issue of governments and corporations attempting to control what we say and hear online."
One said they had been involved with Anonymous since the group's Project Chanology protests against the Church of Scientology in 2008. Another blamed a failed late December attack on Bank of America on a splinter group of Anonymous, and said an expected drop by WikiLeaks of documents related to the bank could provide an opportunity for a renewed effort to bring down its site.
2> MONITORING
Targets are chosen by consensus and can be attacked by as many as 10,000 computers simultaneously. Communication is mainly through IRC but supporters also use micro-blogging site Twitter and video-sharing site YouTube to release information.
The activists claim to come from all over -- Europe, the United States, China and elsewhere in Asia -- and share an almost paranoid concern with covering the tracks left by the software they use.
During the attacks on Tunisian government websites over the past couple of weeks, activists warned Tunisian citizens in the OpTunisia IRC channel against joining an assault on local internet hosting organisation ATI.
"If you are Tunisian, do not participate in the DDoS attack. Chances are that you will get traced and arrested. Unless you have means to conceal your IP and know what you are doing, do NOT attack," warned one activist.
"Do NOT give out any personal information on this IRC network. This is a public chat and you can be sure that it is monitored," the activist added.
There's a good reason for the caution. Two Dutch teenagers were arrested in December in connection with cyber attacks by WikiLeaks supporters. Both have been released and are awaiting trial.
And the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation raided a Texas server-hosting company last month looking for evidence that Anonymous had used its servers to launch attacks on PayPal, according to an affidavit obtained by The Smoking Gun website.
Some activists hope their sheer numbers will prevent authorities from trying to trace them. "Imagine tracking 9,000 plus computers across the planet for an arrest," Calgarc said in the IRC channel in reply to a question on how an attacker can hide his tracks.
3> FIRE YOUR CANNON
All you need to wage cyber war is a fast-paced internet forum packed with hundreds of determined activists and a simple piece of software called a Low Orbit Ion Cannon. Activists download the LOIC -- initially developed to help internet security experts test website vulnerability to DDoS attacks -- and start firing packets of data at the targeted website.
If enough people join in, a DDoS attack prevents the overloaded server from responding to legitimate requests and slows the website to a crawl or shuts it down totally.
Attackers can even listen to a dedicated internet radio station, Radiopayback, during attacks.
A quarter of a million copies of the LOIC software have been downloaded from sourceforge.net so far, more than half of them since November when Web hosting and banking organisations began withdrawing support from WikiLeaks.
One in five downloads since the start of November was in the United States, with a few hundred in Tunisia, and a handful in bandwidth-deprived Zimbabwe.
Users of the software can be traced. A study by Dutch researchers found last year that the tool did not mask the host computer's internet protocol (IP) address.
Barrett Lyon, a security expert who specialises in protecting companies against denial of service attacks, said the LOIC program is fairly rudimentary but effective if used by thousands of people. "It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. It's not as focused as it could have been. If they got their software together in a more sophisticated kind of way, this kind of thing could have gotten easier with more violence."
Lyon said depending on the time of day there were 500-10,000 computers involved in the attacks.
"10,000 people have quite a bit of fire power," he added.
4> CREDIBLE COUNTERFORCE
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http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-54257020110119?ca=rdt
http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/1/6/tunisia-cyber-special-anonymous-takes-down-the-government.htmlhttp://sourceforge.net
By Marius Bosch and Georgina Prodhan
JOHANNESBURG/LONDON... more
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Call comes after revelation that US has tried to force Twitter to release WikiLeaks members' private details...
WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter to secretly hand over details of accounts on the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange.
Amid strong evidence that a US grand jury has begun a wide-ranging trawl for details of what networks and accounts WikiLeaks used to communicate with Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables, some of those named in the subpoena said they would fight disclosure.
"Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into WikiLeaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain," WikiLeaks said in a statement.
The writ, approved by a court in Virginia in December, demands that the San Franscisco-based micro-blogging site hand over all details of five individuals' accounts and private messaging on Twitter – including the computers and networks used.
They include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Manning, Icelandic MP Brigitta Jonsdottir and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp. Three of them – Gonggrijp, Assange and Jonsdottir – were named as "producers" of the first significant leak from the US cables cache: a video of an Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians and journalists in Baghdad.
The legal document also targets an account held by Jacob Appelbaum, a US computer programmer whose computer and phones were examined by US officials in July after he was stopped returning from Holland to America.
The court issuing the subpoena said it had "reasonable grounds" to believe Twitter held information "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation".
It ordered Twitter not to notify the targets of the subpoena – an order the company successfully challenged.
The court order crucially demands that Twitter hand over details of source and destination internet protocol addresses used to access the accounts, which would help investigators identify how the named individuals communicated with each other, as well as email addresses used.
The emergence of the subpoena appears to confirm for the first time the existence of a secret grand jury empanelled to investigate whether individuals associated with WikiLeaks, and Assange in particular, can be prosecuted for alleged conspiracy with Manning to steal the classified documents.
The US attorney general, Eric Holder, has already said publicly that he believes Assange could be prosecuted under US espionage laws. The court that issued the subpoena is in the same jurisdiction where press reports have located a grand jury investigating Assange.
It has been reported that Manning has been offered a plea bargain if he co-operates with the investigation.
The emergence of the Twitter subpoena – which was unsealed after a legal challenge by the company – was revealed after WikiLeaks announced it believed other US Internet companies had also been ordered to hand over information about its members' activities.
WikiLeaks condemned the court order, saying it amounted to harassment.
"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," Assange said in a statement.
Jonsdottir said in a Twitter message: "I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone."
Twitter has declined to comment, saying only that its policy is to notify its users where possible of government requests for information.
The specific clause of the Patriot act used to acquire the subpoena is one that the FBI has described as necessary for "obtaining such records [that] will make the process of identifying computer criminals and tracing their internet communications faster and easier".
The subpoena itself is an unusual one known as a 2703(d). Recently a federal appeals court ruled this kind of order was insufficient to order the disclosure of the contents of communication. Significantly, however, that ruling is binding in neither Virginia – where the Twitter subpoena was issued – nor San Francisco where Twitter is based.
Assange has promised to fight the order, as has Jonsdottir, who said in a Twitter message that she had "no intention to hand my information over willingly".
Appelbaum, whose Twitter feed suggested he was travelling in Iceland, said he was apprehensive about returning to the US. "Time to try to enjoy the last of my vacation, I suppose," he tweeted.
Gonggrijp praised Twitter for notifying him and others that the US had subpoenaed his details. "It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," Gonggrijp said. "Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/08/wikileaks-calls-google-facebook-us-subpoenasCall comes after revelation that US has tried to force Twitter to release WikiLeaks... more
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The government has done its research, quite a bit in fact, trying to demean cannabis and make it seem unethical. They didn't expect the studies to backfire however and make marijuana seem like what it really is, a herb with many benefits and few side effects.
10) MARIJUANA USE HAS NO EFFECT ON MORTALITY:
A massive study of California HMO members funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found marijuana use caused no significant increase in mortality. Tobacco use was associated with increased risk of death. Sidney, S et al. Marijuana Use and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 87 No. 4, April 1997. p. 585-590. Sept. 2002.
9) HEAVY MARIJUANA USE AS A YOUNG ADULT WON'T RUIN YOUR LIFE:
Veterans Affairs scientists looked at whether heavy marijuana use as a young adult caused long-term problems later, studying identical twins in which one twin had been a heavy marijuana user for a year or longer but had stopped at least one month before the study, while the second twin had used marijuana no more than five times ever. Marijuana use had no significant impact on physical or mental health care utilization, health-related quality of life, or current socio-demographic characteristics. Eisen SE et al. Does Marijuana Use Have Residual Adverse Effects on Self-Reported Health Measures, Socio-Demographics or Quality of Life? A Monozygotic Co-Twin Control Study in Men. Addiction. Vol. 97 No. 9. p.1083-1086. Sept.
1997
8) THE "GATEWAY EFFECT" MAY BE A MIRAGE:
Marijuana is often called a "gateway drug" by supporters of prohibition, who point to statistical "associations" indicating that persons who use marijuana are more likely to eventually try hard drugs than those who never use marijuana - implying that marijuana use somehow causes hard drug use. But a model developed by RAND Corp. researcher Andrew Morral demonstrates that these associations can be explained "without requiring a gateway effect." More likely, this federally funded study suggests, some people simply have an underlying propensity to try drugs, and start with what's most readily available. Morral AR, McCaffrey D and Paddock S. Reassessing the Marijuana Gateway Effect. Addiction. December 2002. p. 1493-1504.
7) PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK (PART I):
The White House had the National Research Council examine the data being gathered about drug use and the effects of U.S. drug policies. NRC concluded, "the nation possesses little information about the effectiveness of current drug policy, especially of drug law enforcement." And what data exist show "little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use." In other words, there is no proof that prohibition - the cornerstone of U.S. drug policy for a century - reduces drug use. National Research Council. Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us. National Academy Press, 2001. p. 193.
6) PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK (PART II):
DOES PROHIBITION CAUSE THE "GATEWAY EFFECT"?): U.S. and Dutch researchers, supported in part by NIDA, compared marijuana users in San Francisco, where non-medical use remains illegal, to Amsterdam, where adults may possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana from regulated businesses. Looking at such parameters as frequency and quantity of use and age at onset of use, they found no differences except one: Lifetime use of hard drugs was significantly lower in Amsterdam, with its "tolerant" marijuana policies. For example, lifetime crack cocaine use was 4.5 times higher in San Francisco than Amsterdam. Reinarman, C, Cohen, PDA, and Kaal, HL. The Limited Relevance of Drug Policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and San Francisco. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 94, No. 5. May 2004. p. 836-842.
Read the full article for the top 5 studies on breakthroughs in marijuana study.
http://research-marijuana.blogspot.com/2009/09/top-10-cannabis-studies-government.htmlThe government has done its research, quite a bit in fact, trying to demean cannabis... more
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