Dear Anonymous,

Dear Anonymous,
I'd love to know why I've been "permanently banned" from any of your servers. I've just been visiting, trying to figure out what's going on. I guess even the ones that fight for free speech sometimes have a problem with it. This is interesting, because I thought that you wanted free speech. In fact, I was reading earlier about how you were postponing/canceling attacks because they could have taken away organizations rights to free speech. "We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget." Oh, don't worry. I do not forgive. I do not forget. Happy new year, hypocrites.

8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media

1. Fearmongering that WikiLeaks revelations will result in deaths.

2. Spreading the lie that WikiLeaks posted all the cables.

3. Falsely claiming that Assange has committed a crime regarding WikiLeaks

4. Denying that WikiLeaks is a journalistic enterprise.

5. Denying a link between Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers and WikiLeaks, despite Ellsberg's support of the site.

6. Accusing Assange of profiting from WikiLeaks.

7. Calling Assange a terrorist. (So are all his supporters terrorists too? Hmm. Interesting. I've never considered myself a terrorist. And I don't believe I ever will)

8. Minimizing the significance of the cable. (OPINION: Biggest significance? Finding out that governments will do whatever it takes to shut people up)

http://www.alternet.org/story/149369/8_smears_and_misconceptions_about_wikileaks_spread_by_the_media/?page=1

Jester's got Anonymous. People are genuinely afraid of what may happen. But whether he may or may not have this information doesn't really matter. He can prove that people can be taken down no matter who they are. In a way Anonymous has created a type of government, although it's almost an anarchy. But not quite. And Jester's showing that all government's can be taken down. I still think it's strange that he's trying to not have people find out who he is, but he really loves talking about himself.

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/12/fbi-raids-texas-colocation-facility-in-anonymous-ddos-probe.ars
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/29/lamomanning-wikileak.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE6BT0D620101230
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=164928413551805

Earlier in the week, hip-hop blogs RapGodFathers, OnSmash, Dajaz1, and RMX4U were seized by Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement group along with the torrent search engine Torrent-Finder. Reasons for the seizure had not been provided, but has now been given. Much of the reasoning for the seizure of the four blogs was left out of released document, but the full reasoning is provided for the seizure of Torrent-Finder. It is accused of being a "bit torrent website", which is untrue as it hosts no content and is merely a search engine. That's like taking down Google, because you could find it on Google too. And then it gets worse from there. "Evidence" is provided in the form of several posts. That's great and all, if the posts were actually from Torrent-Finder. Several of the posts are from TorrentFreak.com, one is a post from ZeroPaid, and one is a story off of CNET. Yet, somehow this is called "support". So if you link to a site, it's a crime. Why not just use an internet kill switch? Get all those "criminals" off for good!
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/01190512310/homeland-security-presents-evidence-domain-seizures-proves-it-knows-little-about-internet---law.shtml

1,947 out of 251,287 WikiLeaks cables released so far. (0.8%) Small number, big impact. And many of these have been made into videos which are on Youtube as a part of Operation Leakspin.
Dear Government,
You're losing. ;)

Declaration

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form…"

Oh really?

Anyway, I found a list of all WikiLeaks related operations that are being enacted by Anonoymous from here. 

operation #paperstorm ###http://goo.gl/Mhsrj http://goo.gl/7cFZh http://goo.gl/AWll9 ##- printing out flyers and pin em up. ###RUNNING (ENDLESS)

operation #renaissance ### http://goo.gl/hVNLo ##- twitter hashtag #oprnssnc - get your family and friends. ###RUNNING (ENDLESS)

operation #punk ### http://goo.gl/Mhsrj http://goo.gl/7cFZh http://goo.gl/AWll9##-get on the media, in a nice way. ###RUNNING (ENDLESS)

operation #sylvester ### http://goo.gl/t3zs3 ##-get them on new yeats eve. ###PENDING (31.12.2010)

operation #blackface ### http://goo.gl/2sIqH http://goo.gl/2sIqH ##- blackface your avatar in social networks!! ###ENDLESS RUNNING

operation #bling ###http://goo.gl/hJkUQ http://goo.gl/0KU0q http://goo.gl/5mRdM http://goo.gl/d4Qub##- wrting a messega on your bills and spread it. ###RUNNING

operation #leakspin ### http://goo.gl/e59L6 ##- read a cable and write a summary. help to work cables through. ###RUNNING

operation #trollfox ### http://goo.gl/1RBgE ##- simply: not abuse ops! ###RUNNING (ENDLESS)

operation #anonym ### http://goo.gl/YzD0D ##- donate cans! ###launching 5th Jan 2011

operation #giveback ### http://goo.gl/SuDvI ##- do something for chairty! ###RUNNING

operation #sinde ### http://goo.gl/OoAtY ##- ddos esp gov! ACTUALLY I DONT SUPPORT DDOS!!!! ### OVER (i think) ###succ###

operation #protest ### http://goo.gl/jY1ps ##- well, protest!! ###RUNNING

operation #apple ### http://goo.gl/AfoVv ##- actions against the forbidden fruit!! ###RUNNING

operation #boa ### http://goo.gl/xALFFhttp://goo.gl/elrdo http://goo.gl/yCoH8 http://goo.gl/Uig3Z ##- quit your boa account!! ###RUNNING

operation #wanted ### http://goo.gl/EMGgn ##- show the fbi how to catch bad guys!! ###RUNNING

Tor

Flaws Spotlighted in Tor Anonymity Network

• By John Borland  
• December 27, 2010  |  
• 8:58 pm  |  
• Categories: Chaos Computer Club

BERLIN, Germany — The quest for true digital anonymity is as old as the Internet, but seems to remain as elusive as a spam-free world.

The attack doesn’t quite make a surfer’s activity an open book, but offers the ability for someone on the same local network — a Wi-Fi network provider, or an ISP working at law enforcement (or a regime’s) request, for example — to gain a potentially good idea of sites an anonymous surfer is viewing.At the Chaos Computer Club Congress here today, researchers from the University of Regensburg delivered a new warning about the Tor anonymizer network, a system aimed at hiding details of a computer user’s online activity from spying eyes.

“Developers have to be aware of this kind of attack, and develop countermeasures,” said Dominik Herrmann, a Regensburg Ph.D student studying profiling and fingerprinting attacks. “But that proves to be very difficult.”

The research, performed by a variety of collaborators in Germany working on anonymity measures, represents a warning for privacy-conscious users wary of spying eyes, whether behind Net-unfriendly borders or simply corporate firewalls.

Tor is essentially an online mask, rather than a tool that hides the fact or content of communication itself. The project’s developers are addressing the problem of traffic analysis — essentially the threat that an attacker or observer might be able to tease out a person’s identity, location, profession, social network or other information about the message content by analyzing a message’s unencrypted headers.

To hide this information, the Tor system routes messages around a winding path of volunteer servers across the Net, with each relay point knowing only the address of the previous and next step in the pathway.

Once this circuit has been established, neither an eavesdropper nor a compromised relay will theoretically have the ability to determine both the source and destination of a given pieces of communication. According to the Tor project’s latest metrics, the network has drawn between 100,000 and 300,000 users per day over the last several months.

Herrmann and his fellow researchers say there’s a partial flaw in this arrangement, however. A potential eavesdropper on the end user’s own network still has the ability to analyze the patterns of data being returned, and in many cases will be able to develop a reasonable guess about the source of the communication.

An attacker — perhaps an ISP instructed by law enforcement or a government to engage in such surveillance — would first have to develop a list of potential sites that the target might be visiting, or that it was interested in monitoring. It would then run the Tor system itself, testing the way these sites appeared when accessed through Tor, developing a database of “fingerprints” associated with the sites of interest.

Once the target of the surveillance went online, the eavesdropper would capture the packet stream as it crossed the local network, and compare the source data with its fingerprint database with the help of pattern recognition software. Any match would be only statistical, giving somewhere between 55 percent and 60 percent certainty, Herrmann said — not enough to provide hard evidence in court, but likely more certainty than many people seeking privacy might be comfortable with.

Different online destinations will carry different susceptibility to fingerprinting, of course. Unusual sites, with characteristics such as very heavy or large graphic use, can be more easily identified, Herrmann said. By the same token, the easiest way for a Web site to fool such an eavesdropper would be to make its site look as closely as possible like another popular site — mimicking the look of the Google site, for example, one of the most commonly accessed pages on the Web.

Users themselves can guard against this type of fingerprint-based eavesdropping relatively easily, Herrmann noted. Downloading or requesting more than one site at a time through the network will muddy the pattern enough that certainty will be very difficult for the eavesdropper to establish.

The research many not dissuade many from using Tor, which remains one of the most promising approaches for individuals seeking to hide aspects of their identity or online activity. But it may well make them work harder.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/flaws-spotlighted-in-tor-anonymity-network/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired27b+%28Blog+-+27B+Stroke+6+%28Threat+Level%29%29

DDoS

"Reports that the Banks of America's website has been experiencing some downtime due to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by the pro-WikiLeaks and pro-piracy group Anonymous have been confirmed."
https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/10542-Bank-of-America-Hit-By-Anonymous-DDoS-Attack.html


This could have been verified by Twitter. Come on. Although, it appears that the attacks did very little, if anything. I predict more attacks in the future, until they actually cause some amount of problems with Bank of America.


Bank of America is now also reportedly buying domains that could be offensive against Bank of America in preparation for the possible WikiLeaks dump of BoA documents in the near future. Names purchased include names targeting Brian Monyihan, BoA's CEO, such as "BrianMoynihanSucks.com" and "BrianMoynihanBlows.com".
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/briefs/articles/90028814?Bank%20of%20America%20snatches%20up%20disparaging%20domains%20ahead%20of%20Wiki%20leaks



In my opinion, this makes it clear that even if Bank of America is not the target of WikiLeaks' next dump, that they definitely have something to hide. And will clearly be a target in the near future, if not the immediate future. It's like saying "I didn't do it" before someone even finishes their sentence. It puts blame on them, whether it was originally there or not.


And just a bit of a warning, but crimes and scams being perpetrated through Twitter are on the rise. Common scams are hijacked accounts, social media identity theft, worms, DOS attacks, botnet controllers, phishing, Twitter porn, and Twitter spam. Being aware of this can help people from losing their accounts or having their computers be damaged. 
https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/10152-Twitter-Crime-is-on-the-Rise.html




1,427 WikiLeaks mirrors. 1,942 out of 251,287 cables have been released. (0.8%)




"He's made us all into a pyramid, and he put himself on top!" -Barbie, 'Toy Story 3'

LeakSpin

http://crowdleak.net/
The new site launched earlier today, but has been down due to issues for a while now. No word as of yet when/if the site will be back up. Spread the truth. It's all we've got.
EDIT: CrowdLeak is now working again.

And I'm convinced that something may have caused my phone to get screwed up. As in when I was reading a WikiLeaks cable, the screen on my phone turned weird colors and was sort of shaking. Just a coincidence I guess. But a weird one.

UN Join Statement on WikiLeaks

Joint Statement

UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protectionthe Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression

Inter-American Commission on Human RightsSpecial Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression

Joint Statement On Wikileaks

December 21, 2010 – In light of ongoing developments related to the release of diplomatic cables by the organization Wikileaks, and the publication of information contained in those cables by mainstream news organizations, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression see fit to recall a number of international legal principles. The rapporteurs call upon States and other relevant actors to keep these principles in mind when responding to the aforementioned developments.

1. The right to access information held by public authorities is a fundamental human right subject to a strict regime of exceptions. The right to access to information protects the right of every person to access public information and to know what governments are doing on their behalf. It is a right that has received particular attention from the international community, given its importance to the consolidation, functioning and preservation of democratic regimes. Without the protection of this right, it is impossible for citizens to know the truth, demand accountability and fully exercise their right to political participation. National authorities should take active steps to ensure the principle of maximum transparency, address the culture of secrecy that still prevails in many countries and increase the amount of information subject to routine disclosure.

2. At the same time, the right of access to information should be subject to a narrowly tailored system of exceptions to protect overriding public and private interests such as national security and the rights and security of other persons. Secrecy laws should define national security precisely and indicate clearly the criteria which should be used in determining whether or not information can be declared secret. Exceptions to access to information on national security or other grounds should apply only where there is a risk of substantial harm to the protected interest and where that harm is greater than the overall public interest in having access to the information. In accordance with international standards, information regarding human rights violations should not be considered secret or classified.

3. Public authorities and their staff bear sole responsibility for protecting the confidentiality of legitimately classified information under their control. Other individuals, including journalists, media workers and civil society representatives, who receive and disseminate classified information because they believe it is in the public interest, should not be subject to liability unless they committed fraud or another crime to obtain the information. In addition, government "whistleblowers" releasing information on violations of the law, on wrongdoing by public bodies, on a serious threat to health, safety or the environment, or on a breach of human rights or humanitarian law should be protected against legal, administrative or employment-related sanctions if they act in good faith. Any attempt to impose subsequent liability on those who disseminate classified information should be grounded in previously established laws enforced by impartial and independent legal systems with full respect for due process guarantees, including the right to appeal.

4. Direct or indirect government interference in or pressure exerted upon any expression or information transmitted through any means of oral, written, artistic, visual or electronic communication must be prohibited by law when it is aimed at influencing content. Such illegitimate interference includes politically motivated legal cases brought against journalists and independent media, and blocking of websites and web domains on political grounds. Calls by public officials for illegitimate retributive action are not acceptable.

5. Filtering systems which are not end-user controlled – whether imposed by a government or commercial service provider – are a form of prior censorship and cannot be justified. Corporations that provide Internet services should make an effort to ensure that they respect the rights of their clients to use the Internet without arbitrary interference.

6. Self-regulatory mechanisms for journalists have played an important role in fostering greater awareness about how to report on and address difficult and controversial subjects. Special journalistic responsibility is called for when reporting information from confidential sources that may affect valuable interests such as fundamental rights or the security of other persons. Ethical codes for journalists should therefore provide for an evaluation of the public interest in obtaining such information. Such codes can also provide useful guidance for new forms of communication and for new media organizations, which should likewise voluntarily adopt ethical best practices to ensure that the information made available is accurate, fairly presented and does not cause substantial harm to legally protected interests such as human rights.

Catalina Botero MarinoInter-American Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression

Frank LaRueUN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression

http://www.cidh.oas.org/relatoria/showarticle.asp?artID=829&lID=1