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Ignorance is not bliss
Bank of America Seizes E-Commerce Funds of Online Gun Parts Retailer, Says They ‘Shouldn’t Sell’ Guns
‘It seems that gun bias is deepening in some sectors of American society, even enticing some firms to break the law – or, at the very least, abuse the law – in order to pursue their anti-Second Amendment agenda.
That certainly seems to be the case with Bank of America, which has reportedly seized the e-commerce funds of a legitimate gun maker for no reason other than to oppose the fact that the company sells firearms and ammunition online.’
‘Operation Free Assange’: Anonymous take down Interpol website
27 August, 2012
Interpol
Hactivist group Anonymous claims to have taken down the websites of Interpol and a British police force as part of a campaign calling for the freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Several Twitter accounts associated with the loose-knit Anonymous collective have announced that the website of International Criminal Police Organization was taken down. The site was unavailable as of 9:18 pm GMT on Sunday but resumed functioning soon after.
The hackers also claim to have taken down the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), a UK police unit responsible for operations against serious and organized crime.
Read more: http://rt.com/news/anonymous-interpol-free-assange-607/
‘Operation Free Assange’: Anonymous take down UK government websites
August 21, 2012,
AFP Photo / Joel Saget
Several British governmental websites, including the Ministry of Justice, have been attacked by hacktivists in retaliation for Britain’s handling of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Under the campaign, which was branded “#OpFreeAssange,” Anonymous undertook a mission to take down justice.gov.uk and number10.gov.uk, the official site of the British Prime Minister’s Office. The websites are now operating normally once again.
Several Twitter accounts associated with the loose-knit Anonymous collective have acknowledged that the UK Ministry of Justice and the PM Office’s websites had been targeted with a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack.
“#OpFreeAssange: TANGO DOWN! http://www.justice.gov.uk/ [500 Internal Server Error] [#Anonymous #WikiLeaks],” reads one tweet sent from the @Anon_Central Twitter account.
The hackers also claim to have taken down the website of another British government department – the Department of Work and Pensions. “Gov. of UK Expect Us!” reads a related tweet by Anonymous.
Assange, the founder and editor of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, has been ordered by Swedish authorities to be extradited from the UK where he had been under house arrest. Two women from Sweden have accused Assange of sex crimes, although he has yet to be charged.
Read more: http://rt.com/news/anonymous-uk-justice-site-down-157/
Skype Goes Big Brother, Allowing Police to Monitor Text Chats
Wednesday, 01 August 2012
‘Long sought and used as a communications tool beyond the reach of Big Brother’s probing eyes, Skype has recently announced the company plans more cooperation with police, to include sharing of text chats.
While surveillance of the audio and video feeds of the online phone service remains impractical – even when courts issue warrants – that barrier, too, could eventually be dismantled as Skype transforms into one of the globe’s premier forms of telecommunication, The Washington Post reported recently.’
Read more: Skype Goes Big Brother, Allowing Police to Monitor Text Chats
PC malware hits Iranian nuclear facilities: Report
Jul 26, 2012
TEHRAN: Iranian nuclear facilities have reportedly been stuck by a computer worm that plays AC/DC’s hit song Thunderstruck repeatedly, and at full volume.
There has been no confirmation of the attack from Tehran, but the evidence stems from a series of e-mails purporting to be from the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran.
An unnamed Iranian scientist e-mailed Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finnish Internet security firm F-Secure, saying that the facilities at Natanz and Fordo, near Qom, were hit by a worm, the Daily Mail reports.
According to the report, the malware not only disables the automated network at both sites, but also seemed to have an interesting side effect of blaring out AC/DC at any given moment.
Facebook Banking on a Cashless Society
Monday, 16 July 2012
‘As if the current methods of evaporating privacy and pushing a world toward the Cashless Society were not moving fast enough, Facebook is now developing and beta testing an app that would allow users to “pay their utility bills, balance their checkbooks, and transfer money at the same time they upload vacation photos to the site for friends to see.”
Essentially, the new application which is currently in beta phase with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, allows for interactions regarding banking and financial services over alleged secure and private connections.’
Par:AnoIA: Anonymous Launches WikiLeaks-esque Site for Data Dumps
By Quinn Norton July 13, 2012
Frustrated by the lack of impact from Anonymous’ otherwise famous hacks and data dumps, and the slow pace of material coming out of WikiLeaks, participants in the Anonymous collective have launched a WikiLeaks-like site called Par:AnoIA (Potentially Alarming Research: Anonymous Intelligence Agency).
Paranoia, which debuted in March, is a new publishing platform built by Anonymous to host Anonymous data leaks that’s trying to find a solution to a problem that plagues news sites, government transparency advocates, and large-website owners everywhere: how to organize more data than any human could possibly read.
The site marks a departure from the groups’ previous modus operandi, where it would publicly drop the documents, make them available in a torrent — usually as a zip file, and then move on. By contrast, the goal of Paranoia is to curate and present content to a hopefully interested public.
Read more: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/paranoia-anonymous/
Obama gives himself control of all communication systems in America
July 10, 2012
US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo/Pool/Luke Sharrett)
US President Barack Obama quietly signed his name to an Executive Order on Friday, allowing the White House to control all private communications in the country in the name of national security.
President Obama released his latest Executive Order on Friday, July 6, a 2,205-word statement offered as the “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.” And although the president chose not to commemorate the signing with much fanfare, the powers he provides to himself and the federal government under the latest order are among the most far-reaching yet of any of his executive decisions.
“The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions,” the president begins the order. “Survivable, resilient, enduring and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial and tribal governments; private sector entities; and the public, allies and other nations.”
Read more : http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-president-order-communications-770/
Black Boxes to Monitor All UK Internet and Phone Data
Tuesday, 03 July 2012
‘Internet and phone firms are preparing to install “black boxes” to monitor UK internet and phone traffic, and decode encrypted messages – including Facebook and GMail messages.
As part of the Home Office’s communications data bill, internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone companies will be obliged to collect communications records and keep them for a year, writes Channel 4 News Technology Producer Geoff White.
The government has insisted that the actual content of messages won’t be stored, but until now it has not been clear how communications companies will be able to separate content from “header data”, such as the sender and recipient of a message, and the date it was sent.’
Read more: Black Boxes to Monitor All UK Internet and Phone Data
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