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A hacker collective, identified as ‘Anonymous’, has declared war on WikiLeaks’ censorers. The group has earned itself a reputation in the tech world for targeting the entertainment and software security industries who lobby for pro-Copyright (anti-piracy) laws.
The controversial UK Digital Economy Act, passed June 8, 2010, which liberal critics claim is “too heavily weighted in favour of the big corporations and those who are worried about too much information becoming available,” stoked the ire of the hacker group. Their attacks, however, began only after an Indian security group called AiPlex Software launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults on file-sharing sites:
Anonymous responded with its own DDoS attacks in a campaign called ‘Operation Payback’, first targeting the websites of US rights holder groups the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), then turning to smaller companies such as AiPlex and UK law firms who act on behalf of rights holders.
With all the recent DDoS attacks and corporate complicity in bringing down WikiLeaks, the hacker collective decided to take a little break from their usual activities to lend a hand to WikiLeaks. They redirected their angst towards those companies assisting the US government in shutting WikiLeaks down. The group claimed in a tweet, thirty minutes ago:
I should probably clarify something. I’m not anti-government, anti-establishment, or anything of that sort. I’m just anti-…anti-Wikileaks.
WikiLeaks was dealt a crucial blow on Friday when online payment service provider PayPal terminated WikiLeaks’ account, thereby closing its principal method for receiving financial donations from supporters. PayPal additionally froze 61K EUR held by the whistle blower group. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, The Swiss Bank Post Finance announced today that it has frozen “Julian Assange’s defense fund and personal assets (31K EUR) after reviewing him as a ‘high profile’ individual.”
‘Anonymous’ immediately set its sites on PayPal, and in particular its PayPal blog. Their DDoS attack on PayPal’s blog “lasted for 8 hours (not including the time where the website resolved to a 403 error) and caused the blog to experience 75 service interruptions.” The groups insists that ‘Operation Payback’ still remains in effect, despite their recent shift in attacks in support of WikiLeaks.
The ‘Anonymous’ organizers explained their rationale for lending a helping hand to WikiLeaks:
“While we don’t have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same: we want transparency (in our case in copyright) and we counter censorship. The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we can not say what we think and not express how we feel. We can not let this happen, that is why we will find out who is attacking WikiLeaks and with that find out who tries to control our world. What we are going to do when we found them? Except for the usual DDoSing, word will be spread that whoever tries to silence or discourage WikiLeaks, favors world domination rather than freedom and democracy.”
Amazon Web Services and EveryDNS.net — both companies who dropped WikiLeaks as a customer last week — are thought to be the next prime targets for ‘Anonymous’.
Meanwhile WikiLeaks has announced their servers in Sweden are once again under DDoS attack, and that the UK has now received a new warrant for Julian Assange’s arrest, and may issue it shortly. ZDNet UK reports:
The Press Association said that Scotland Yard had received the paperwork for Assange’s arrest under a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) from Sweden. Assange is believed to be in the south-east of England.
The arrest warrant was first issued in November, but was rejected by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which processes EAWs on legal grounds. A second was sent on Friday, according to the BBC. Assange is wanted under charges of ‘sex by surprise’ with two Swedish women, a charge which only seems to exist in Sweden.
A Soca spokesman declined to say whether the agency had passed an arrest warrant to the Metropolitan Police.
“We cannot confirm or deny whether an arrest warrant has been received, or sent on to Scotland Yard,” said the spokesman.
In the event Assange is arrested, he has promised a ‘poison pill’ in retaliation:
Julian Assange has distributed to fellow hackers an encrypted ‘poison pill’ of damaging secrets, thought to include details on BP and Guantanamo Bay.
He believes the file is his ‘insurance’ in case he is killed, arrested or the whistleblowing website is removed permanently from the internet.
Mr Assange – understood to be lying low in Britain – could be arrested by Scotland Yard officers as early as tomorrow.
Stay tuned …
UPDATE:
I found the ‘Anonymous’ hacker group’s website entitled Operation:Payback for those interested in learning more about what they advocate for:
AnonOps: Fighting for freedom on the Internet!
We are an anonymous, decentralized movement which fights against censorship and copywrong. [...]
Here is the group’s: Operation Avenge Assange manifesto.
UPDATE 2:
The Guardian: Julian Assange To Be Questioned By British Police
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is expected to appear in a UK court tomorrow after his lawyers said he would meet police to discuss a European extradition warrant from Sweden relating to alleged sexual assaults. [...]
Mark Stephens, attorney for Julian Assange, told NBC that “No representation from Sweden will be in that meeting”.
UPDATE 3:
The Guardian: Julian Assange Has Been Arrested And Is Due To Appear In Court
WikiLeaks will continue releasing the leaked US embassy cables in spite of his arrest this morning. [...]
Assange has also pre-recorded a video message, which WikiLeaks is due to release today. But the Guardian understands the organisation has no plans to release the insurance file of the remaining cables, which number more than 200,000. It has sent copies of the encrypted file to supporters around the world. These can be accessed only by using a 256-digit code. [...]
Originally published at AlterPolitics
43 Comments
If I were Wikileaks personnel I’d want to keep a safe distance from these wild banditti and desperados. Paypal have jumped the shark, on the other hand.
Yeah, I doubt WikiLeaks is going to risk their own image/credibility by even loosely affiliating, or even publicly tipping their hats at, outside hacker groups, but I’m sure that on the inside they are greatly appreciating the support.
The US government can’t legally get WikiLeaks taken down, so they are resorting to hacker methods (DDoS attacks) to try and bring them to their knees. Well, I suppose the hackers are merely returning DDos fire.
Go, Anonymous, go!
I’d also like to see them bring down the MSM sites that are parroting the USG propaganda and threats directed at WikiLeaks and Assange.
Yeah, me too, Alternate ID.
This is sort of like an anonymous internet populist revolt, all in the name of transparency.
Tangential– “Assange is seeking supporters to put up surety and bail for him. He said he expected to have to post bail of between £100,000 and £200,000 and would require up to six people offering surety, or risked being held on remand.” (link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/06/wikileaks-julian-assange-police )
Canadian hub for “Investigate Tom Flanagan for inciting murder against Julian Assange” http://www.facebook.com/pages/Investigate-Tom-Flanagan-for-inciting-murder-against-Julian-Assange/178664602160629?ref=mf
More at http://www.facebook.com/wikileaks
Damned! That bail seems extortionate for what he’s actually being accused of: consenting sex ‘by surprise’.
This is all a political ploy to get him into US hands. This suit is frivolous and that bail is obscene.
Thanks for the links, by the way…
yes support from all sorts is what is needed. united we stand used to be a concept worth fighting for. and Wikileaks is fighting for all of us. i hope assorted groups and individuals will help save what Assange has started.
united we stand and divided we fall. sounds like a good slogan, too bad it’s not that way in America.
Also from that Guardian story:
—
The credit card firm said it was cutting off payments because WikiLeaks was engaging in “illegal activity”. “MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal,” spokesman Chris Monteiro said.
—
I’m sure it’s sheer coincidence that MC just noticed this (unspecified) “illegality”.
Un-freaking-believable! There is absolutely nothing that proves they’ve done anything illegal. He points out illegalities committed by the power elites, and all of a sudden corporations falsely accuse WikiLeaks of having done something illegal.
What about ‘innocent until proven guilty’? WikiLeaks should file suit against these companies for slander.
A few more actions like this and WL will be greatly squelched for the all but those who deliberately seek it out. That’s a very effective form of soft-censorship in the Internet Age.
I’ll bet that Twitter and FB are hoping that somehow this all fades before they too have to succumb to the pressure they are (or soon will be) feeling. In many respects this current WL blowup is a test and demonstration of the extent of the “social” part of their business plans.
Twitter especially will be a test case. If the knuckle under, esp before FB, expect most other social media companies to mute WL in their own domains.
I really hope this doesn’t happen, and I’m sure some folks at Twitter HQ are sweating this one out: they have a LOT of reputation & trust to lose.
But on CNN they have been steadily working the terrorism designation for the last few days. It’s now become an essential media truth. Expect a “TERRORIST!!!!” declaration to be the “legal” tool of choice as the US tries to justify whatever actions they take to silence WL.
Good points. Without Twitter and Facebook it will make it virtually impossible for them to let anyone know where the mirror sites are, and what’s happening (dumps, etc).
This has been one of the most eye-opening of situations. To see the MSM do the government’s bidding (against their own first amendment interests) and so blatantly. And then to see all other corporate entities fold instantly (with minimal government pressure) to make it nearly impossible for WikiLeaks to function — it really is something unique happening here.
It feels more like a high-stakes thriller (novel) than a real life event, and to see it unfold this way, before our very eyes is just really just something …
Twitter will likely shut down their account, but Facebook won’t:
Facebook: We’re Not Kicking Wikileaks Off Our Site
http://j.mp/frqjL4
We really need to be skeptical about all of this. Perhaps things are as they seem. But perhaps the whole episode is a false flag/psyop to censor the whole internet. We now have a war between WL supporters and WL non-supporters.
Consider this very carefully:
“]Lawrence] Lessig said [Richard] Clarke told him that the Justice Department had already written up much of the Patriot Act before the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and that there is a similar proposal on the shelf in case of an Internet catastrophe.”
(http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/category/brainstorm-tech/)
Are we watching a slow motion internet 9/11???
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
If in the next few days, the media starts pushing this story hard, then that will be a big reason to believe that the fix is in.
I really do believe now that WikiLeaks is authentic (uncompromised). Whether a certain percentage of the documents have been placed with them by undercover intelligence groups (pretending to be whistle blowers) is a little less clear.
But I seriously believe that the Administration is embarrassed. I truly believe that Hillary is embarrassed. It doesn’t make her look good asking US diplomats/embassies to try to steal the credit card numbers, get fingerprints, etc off of UN officials. That’s a violation of the law.
WikiLeaks has exposed criminal activities. It has shown Afghanistan’s former vice president, Ahmed Zia Massood, carrying $52 million in cash on a trip to Dubai.
That makes the US look pretty bad, blowing all our money over there to prop up this corrupt government (whose leaders are literally taking our tax dollars, and putting them into Dubai bank accounts).
I can’t believe the US would expose themselves, and their allies in such a poor light.
Well, you have to ask yourself what price needs to be paid to shut down the internet? We know the price to start two wars. 3000 dead Americans.
As for the credit cards–and I’m not trying to justify it–that might actually be a tiny price because–for all I know–it might be well known that many countries are adding biometrics to their spy databases for diplomats.
And, the US may be having its hand forced to some extent.
Just as 9/11 wasn’t purely an inside job, neither is this. Or so the argument would go.
The Web Is Spice, the Anon’s are the Fremen.
All we’re missing is our Moud Dib . . . n some big ass worms.
R’ccd. Highly.
Thanks for the inside update on this . . . ya won’t hear about it from many other places . . . all sites are running scared of govt retribution . . .
CallUp, it’s becoming the MOST interesting and important issue of our day . . .
And how it resolves, I believe, will be a KEY indicator of what our immediate future holds for personal and national freedoms and hope for better times for we the people . . . I fear the worst, however.
I really should have quoted the whole Lessig bit. Here is how it begins:
Tech visionary Lawrence Lessig made a sobering prediction Tuesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference: “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event,” he said, “an event that demonstrates the instability of the Internet, and that inspires the government to a response.”
He said he believes this digital disaster – a major hacker attack or other act of cyber-terrorism in the next 10 years – will prompt the U.S. government to clamp down on Internet freedoms in an online parallel to the Patriot Act.
Ok, gotta add that those are some great comments and thoughts on it all up there . . . well done folks, n thanks . . .
Thank you, kindly, Larue.
I’ve been watching this unfold for the last week (hiding @ home w/flu) and if anything the US media has been discrediting, low-balling and finally distorting with a variety of FEAR-based spin. There is a distinct momentum towards burying everything about this WL story except any sensational aspects which involve Julian Assange and his Swedish/Interpol legal issues.
The Guardian* continues to provide a variety of in-depth coverage, in far far more detail than any US MSM sources.
So I’d suggest that the “time-release” strategy** used by WL with this latest release has been quite effective. If they can keep from being censored by the Land of the Free.
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2010/dec/06/julian-assange-wikileaks-latest?intcmp=239
** This is deliberate, the WL crew have stated that they’ve found bulk dumps to be less effective and more likely to be ignored by the sensationalist short-attention-span press.
I see it the same way. This entire WikiLeaks situation has really pulled me in.
There’s been so much cover up, lack of transparency & accountability, etc. for so long in this country, and here these guys (WikiLeaks) have just blown the lid off it all.
And to some degree, they’ve been untouchable. They’ve forced the US government to resort to hacking, to strong arming Sweden, to trying to demonize them, … The US government looks completely impudent in the lengths they’re having to go to try and cover all this up, and it is killing them.
I’ve never witnessed in my lifetime such a David and Goliath duel where this superpower is so frustrated and humiliated that he resorts to kicking below the waist and resorting to any nasty tactic he can come up with — all in the eyes of the world.
I just can’t believe the MSM isn’t covering every moment of this playing out — it’s got all the ingredients the public starves to see. :)
There should be a big chunk of tech-industry bloggage if FB and or Twitter trend evil and block WL. Should be an interesting couple of days.
And BTW, there are a few extremely unpleasant anti-WL trollers over in the Big Orange coverage. Very toxic.
My comment was about Anonymous specifically.
Ah! Yeah, should be interesting. There’s such a fantastic impedence mismatch between an ad-hoc hacker group like Anonymous and celebrity-based corp media that coverage should indeed be pretty superficial. Pick up the shiny toy and shake it for a bit, etc.
Still, “Anonymous” would be a handy bugaboo, like “eco-terrorist”…
Twitter’s “trending” algorithm isn’t known, so there is no way to prove anything, but based on what people are seeing in terms of volume and distribution, the #wikileaks hash tag should be a popular dicussion, along with #assange and a few other tags, but none of them are trending.
It’s all original research, so take it at face value, but details are here: http://osdir.com/Article10586.phtml
Seems odd huh? As someone who keeps a Twitter client open constantly AND who has implemented “trending”-type algorithms for social media sites I am more than a little suspicious about this.
I’ve been giving Twitter a LOT of trust on this one. We’ll probably soon see how that works out :-0
You need to read this analysis: Assange and the conspiracy to destroy this invisible government Assange is quite intelligent and has given this plenty of thought. He doesn’t expect the Gov. to become transparent, he expects it to close up further and cause it to collapse upon itself. Our “intelligence” is pathetic. We have almost no foreign language experts – and kicking out the homosexuals who specialize in this area is just one example of the stupidity and unwillingness or inability to change course even though we are approaching the cliff at a fast clip. Our government is beyond reform; the oligopoly is in charge. Our whole economy is based on war, weaponry, strong-arming and pillagry. The Ambassadors behave like account managers/salesmen for the weapons industries, not diplomacy- it’s obvious in the immature tone in the cables.
It’s gonna get worse before it gets better, but Manning and Assange have sped up the time frame.
thecallup is correct. These cables destroy the credibility of more than one Administaton, so if it’s coming from the inside, it’s from below and it’s not partisan. It doesn’t meet the test than 9/11 had – assuming they just let it happen, or even the Bush/CIA takedown of Nixon (audio). No one is left standing in with the Wikileaks release.
They don’t deserve trust.
Twitter has been aligned with the gov. since the mumbai attacks and the Iranian green “revolution”/ election when USAID & NED provided the opposition with communicaton tools and technology before hand.
The algorithm was changed when Justin Beiber trended for weeks. After it peaks and drops off a bit, it wont trend anymore. This is the excuse they gave after the Mavi Marmara bloodbath when it fell off the menu.
And FB is already sucking up to the Feds no matter what that twerp says – he wouldn’t run JustSayNow Ads. The gov. needs to have a known place where they can get the domains or addresses in order to shut them down.
I don’t see how they can keep the IP’s for wikileaks alternate sites off twitter, there’s too many of us to spread it and change the terms just a little bit.
Well, Paypal’s still up
I just fine it EXTREMELY interesting that Lady Lynn Forrester de Rothschild was on MSNBC yesterday, practically hyserical about these leaks;…………..and that the gov got randy when Assange said the bank tranches info would be next
Assange just denied bail. Big shocker (not really as all of this is moving into extra-legal territory)
“GregMitch: Film director Ken Loach was in court with Assange, apparently to help with bail — which was denied in any case.”
Yep! The centered powers v. decentered powers.
“We know the price to start two wars. 3000 dead Americans.”
If there is one thing that really gets up my nose it’s that allegedly “left” or “liberal” Americans who should effing well know a hell of a lot better than to mindlessly repeat the Right Wing Republican / Neocon lie about 3000 Americans.
Kindly go and check how many are known to have died as a result of those attacks.
Once you’ve done that kindly go and check how many of those were not Americans. I knew 9 people killed in those attacks. 3 were British, 1 was German, 5 were Irish.
3000 Americans my a*se.
mfi
No it is not a big shocker, if you knew anything about British legal practice you would know that in any proceedings involving alleged sexual assault up to and including rape it is the norm not to be given bail. That is also true of Irish legal practice and it’s true of German legal practice, ditto The Netherlands.
The reason why this is the case should be too obvious to require pointing out. However here goes. In British jurisprudence it is difficult for those alleged to have carried out sexual assault to persuade the court to grant them bail because the court is required to consider the rights of the alleged victim.
Moreover in extradition proceedings particularly those involving foreign nationals with no fixed abode within the jurisdiction of the court is required to bear in mind the possibility of the subject of the extradition request absconding before the matter can be decided.
mfi
The MSM is run by corporatists and for corporatists. That’s why they want to keep the BoA leaks from coming out.
Yeah. At least 500 British citizens died, for starters.
Anon shouldn’t have threatened — should have just made the move then taken credit for it. He/she gave PayPal time to harden their network.
Sure enough, the MSM is pushing the “Anonymous” story hard.
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=wikileaks+anonymous
“gets up my nose” Evidently. But correction noted.