More Wikileaking

And now your link to "Operation Payback" has been broken!! Oh YA, we are livin' it now.

Not long ago these kinds of scandals and revenge tactics would have been shut down in minutes and we would not have heard a word about it. Now, we could become directly involved if we want to...

In other news...

The Philadelphia, PA-based mobile payments firm Xipwire, Inc. said Tuesday that it would act as an intermediary for WikiLeaks after the world's largest credit card providers halted all electronic donations to the non-profit media outlet.

The company has set up a page where WikiLeaks supporters can donate, saying it will waive all related fees.
> https://xipwire.com/give/wl

XipWire comment} 

  "we feel that PayPal's recent decision to refuse to process donations on their behalf effectively silences voices in this democracy.

   In fact, it was the Citizens United case that basically equated donations with free speech and if the Supreme Court decided that our government doesn't have the power to regulate that speech then it's our opinion that corporations certainly shouldn't have that power either."

Noah}  And ain't it so! Why should corporations be taking the lead on these matters? Well, we KNOW why, but it was never officially announced that government has been taken over by corporate interests.

Hey - lets take it BACK!!

Hack it Back, whatever. May the most clever inherit the internet!!

from The Progressive Economics Forum:

Quote:

As we witness the on-going drama of governments and conservative forces around the world trying to shut down the whistleblower site Wikileaks and imprison and silence its founder, Julian Assange, on very thin grounds of sexual assault (read the British newspaper The Daily Mail's story on the Swedish police report on the allegations - they are beyond absurd), what we are really seeing is a pure moment of what occurs when the corporate state and corporate sector feel threatened by forces it cannot control.

They are panicking and reacting in a very predictable and draconian and even fascistic (dare I use the word) fashion. They are responding in such a heavy-handed manner even though only a tiny fraction of the 250,000 diplomatic documents in existence have been released so far, and are more embarrassing to the US and other governments than actually causing much real damage. And they are probably doing so because of what will emerge next, in particular given Assange's threats to release internal documents from Wall Street, specifically Bank of America.

An Exclusive Interview with Julian Assange on the eve of his arrest

http://www.narconews.com/Issue67/article4273.html

"Wikileaks founder denies accusations, says its fascinating to see the tentacles of the corrupt american elite"

   It might be okay for government to keep secrets, but only if the citizenry who elected that government wants them too.

   Clearly, with so many people reading the WikiLeaked cables of government members, we want to know what they are saying.

Here's a prime example:

WikiLeaks Cables: Shell's Grip on Nigerian State Revealed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/08/wikileaks-cables-shell-ni...

"The oil giant Shell claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to politicians' every move in the oil-rich Niger Delta, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable.."

 there will of course be a Canadian equivalent to this

WikiLeaks Cables: Oil Giants Squeeze Chavez

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-oil-giants-squeeze...

"American diplomats say president is now desperate to attract foreign partners after nationalisation frightened many away. The US ambassador to Havana reported that the Castro government which depends heavily on Venezuela's financial support, was fretting about its benefactor's economic health..'

Tomgram: Fatima Bhutto - The War Against Pakistan

http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175329/

"the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to view the secret cables and other classified documents published by WikiLeaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.."

Noah_Scape wrote:

   It might be okay for government to keep secrets, but only if the citizenry who elected that government wants them too.

   Clearly, with so many people reading the WikiLeaked cables of government members, we want to know what they are saying.

[url=http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-773]US Cyber Security Act (Rep) introduced in 2009[/url] Guess which stalled bill will suddenly be on the agenda when the other party of warmongering plutocrats and fascistas switch places with the other wing of the same party by next election?

Is Wikileaks another inside job? Is Wiki"Leaks" a made-up situation conceived in the bowels of the Pentagon, like 9/11 was? Disaster fascism? Cyber gestapo in the skunkworks.

Quote:

Is Wikileaks another inside job?

Yes. Everything is an inside job, and everyone is in on it.

Except you. 

Fidel and Jingles, cut it out.

Catchfire wrote:

 Can we please move any news and analysis to do with specific wikileaks (for example, South Ossetia, Russia and Georgia) to their appropriate individual threads (or start a new one if you like). Let's keep this thread specifically about Wikileaks and the international (i.e. American) assault thereupon.

Don't the 911 "truthers" have a playpen thread of their own?
If I too was a conspiracy monger, I'd think they were a CSIS plot to make babble look irredeemably ridiculous.

It isn't. Have you actually listened to Julian Assange or read any of the web site articles? It seems that you haven't, if you reall think that.

Here is an example, United States - Visa and Mastercard beneficiaries of State Department lobbying effort. It is actually pretty dry and factual, based on their material.

Actually, I'm going to crack a cold one when Assange goes to jail in Sweden.  The guy is a meglomaniac, and WikiLeaks is a cult of personality, much like Wikipedia.

Assange let Bradley Manning the soldier lie in jail while he was off screwing people who supported his organization.  WikiLeaks collected money in Manning's name, and, after delivering nothing, had to be shamed today into handing some of the funds over.  All this while Assange was getting blow jobs from WikiLeaks groupies in Swedish cinemas.

Also today, some ex-members of WikiLeaks broke ranks and have called Assange a "slave trader" who thought he was an "emperor".

I hope the Swedish prosecutors nail him to the cross.  And it looks like it will happen too.

-=+=- wrote:

Actually, I'm going to crack a cold one when Assange goes to jail in Sweden.  The guy is a megalomaniac, and WikiLeaks is a cult of personality, much like Wikipedia.

Assange let Bradley Manning the soldier lie in jail while he was off screwing people who supported his organization.  WikiLeaks collected money in Manning's name, and, after delivering nothing, had to be shamed today into handing some of the funds over.  All this while Assange was getting blow jobs from WikiLeaks groupies in Swedish cinemas.

So I guess this means the you are calling for Jimmy Wales incarceration on the charge of meglomania, and have taken a vow of celibacy until whoever your chosen favourite political prisoners are released from jail. Am I right?

Speaking of which, your short form Rush Limbaugh drive by on Wikileaks money pledged to Manning is big on hyperbole, and predictably shy on balance. For one thing not all people who support Manning, are trashing Wikileaks, the money is only a month late, and most seem to understand that the present legal and political embroglio are extenuating circumstances, and to a certain extent understandable.

Quote:

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said last week at a panel discussion in London that WikiLeaks had contributed “a substantial amount of money” to Manning’s defense. But upon learning Tuesday that the money had actually not been paid yet, Hrafnsson told The Washington Post that there was a misunderstanding and that $20,000 would be distributed to Manning’s defense immediately by the nonprofit Wau Holland Foundation, which manages the majority of WikiLeaks donations.

“The contribution was informally agreed upon quite some time ago, and that was relayed to the defense fund,” WikiLeaks spokesman Hrafnsson told the Post. “I was under the impression it had been formally authorized as is required by the trustees [of the] Wau Holland Fund. This situation has now been rectified, and the payment is being processed now.”

[SNIP]

Loraine Reitman, a member of the group's steering committee, shied away from placing blame on WikiLeaks.

"WikiLeaks is the reason we've been able to get so much money and donations," she told Threat Level. "They've been linking to us and tweeting about us, and every time they do it, donations come in."

Maybe you don't really give a shit about Manning and are just using him for a drive by smear... in the name of condemning hypocrites and political manipulators no less. No one on the Manning network has suggested that Wikileaks is intentionally ripping people off, or had to be "shamed" into making good on the payment, you made that up.

But that is ok, you are allowed to, it's the internet.

Shocking!

By the way, why does the article you have just linked to contain none of the information and allegations that you have made in your post about Anonymous. I know that spreading on-line talking point rumours for the gullible is tough work, but at least you could do us the favour of providing a source for your specific allegations.

It certainly says nothing like: "90% of the DDoS against these targets was from criminally malware-infected computers". You made that up. But that is ok, you are allowed too, it's the Internet.

Thanks for the source.

Maybe the Russians are helping out? I wouldn't be surprised. Nor am I actually convinced.

More importantly, I don't really care. Paypal and Amazon, should at least have had the backbone to make the US government get a court order, or an simple injunction, as opposed to caving in to the first phone call they got from Big Brother. I care even less about Visa and Mastercard. I would not be at all unappy if Visa and Mastercard were put out of business entirely -- those two organization are basically legalized extortion rackets anyway, and should be banned.

By the way, what did you think of Sarah Palin's fatwa death sentence on Assange?

1) You are still pounding this dead horse about Wikileaks not handing over the money to Manning's defense team. Given all of the action. I find the Wikileaks exaplanation entirely credible given the fact that their chief operative is under massive legal assault, and the fact that they have only 5 staff. Someone forgot to sign an authorization for disbursement. Totally believable to my mind.

2 and 3) The fact that a bunch of junior snot nosed hackers joined in on the DDos attacks, and that they were using their existing networks of hacked computers as drones in the attacks is not surprising at all. Nothing at all links these activities to Wikileaks, and moreso, nothing at even links Anonymous to these supportive "interlopers". These attacks are organized freely on the web -- there is no command and control.

Anyone can join in the attack, and anyone can activate their botnetwork, wether it is a legal volunteer network, or one using hacked computers infected with malware. As I said, it could even be the Russians helping out.

4) Who cares? Any activist organization like Wikileaks, always has competing political interests in it. The fact that there is a split in the organization and some people are complaining that the leader is a tyrant is completely predictable and means nothing to me. I have worked on volunteer software design teams, where people make exactly those kinds of complaints. In fact, if you go to any number of web development sites that allow any free discussion at all, complaints about tyranny are common.

Indeed, once every other day someone comes onto this site and accuses the moderators of being undemocratic tyrants! What else is new? This is politics.

At the end of the day, I believe one thing about Julian Assange, and that he would never knowingly distribute disinformation or doctored materials on to the web. I believe that every single thing they authorize on their web site to be published as a leak, is something that he, and they, believe is the genuine article.

Their track record is extremely good, on this score.

Beyond that, all the stuff about Julian Assange "the person" is completely immaterial to me.

Well said, Cueball, I totally agree with your take on this.

Any idea what the average age on 4chan is?

I'm not defending the homophobia (or child porn, racism,etc.) on 4chan.  I'm actually a queer man so obviously it disgusts me.

However, it doesn't make me turn against their DoS attacks.  I still see them as a form of popular justice, as Anonymous is made up of regular people, even if a lot of them have bad politics.  It doesn't cost us anything to support them.  Do you feel that speaking approvingly of 4chan somehow gives legitemacy to the more distasteful side of the message board?

Justifies?  What an odd word to bring into that exchange.  You seem to know about 4chan, so I am asking you what your guess would be as to the average age there?  I am under the impression that it's about 14.

-=+=- wrote:

wage zombie wrote:

Any idea what the average age on 4chan is?

Ah, okay.

That justifies the child pornography?  Or just the homophobia?

Can't believe I am reading this on babble.

And especially when you make insinuations like that.

What is this, grade five?

-=+=- wrote:

Lachine Scot wrote:

I'm not defending the homophobia (or child porn, racism,etc.) on 4chan.  I'm actually a queer man so obviously it disgusts me.

However, it doesn't make me turn against their DoS attacks.  I still see them as a form of popular justice, as Anonymous is made up of regular people, even if a lot of them have bad politics.  It doesn't cost us anything to support them.  Do you feel that speaking approvingly of 4chan somehow gives legitemacy to the more distasteful side of the message board?

The DDoS attacks were not popular justice though.  They were almost overwhelmingly a criminal enterprise using hijacked computers (90% -- see the above figures), not voluntary botnet downloads .

Criminal? Well, I guess that depends on your definition of criminal. To my mind it is basically vandalism, and protest. I consider computer hijacking and Malware to be a nuisance. That said, I would be appalled if someone were to spend a day in jail for the the "crime" of hijacking a computer to commit petty acts of vandalism against major corporations, like MasterCard or Visa.

I think putting malicious malware on someone's computer is worth a nice punch in the face, and that is about it. Its about on the level of knocking over my garbage bins, stomping on my garden, or at worst, throwing a rock through my window.

Cueball wrote:

I think this discussion of the pro-Wikileaks cyber attacks, and there origins, is a topice well worth its own thread. We already have one on the rape charges.

The last time I checked there was no child porn, hacking info, homophobia or racism on the Wikileaks site, and this is a thread about Wikileaks which has nothing to do with Anonymous or anything else as far as we can tell. Here is the WikiLeaks statement on this topic: Editorial - Statement on DDOS attacks

Quoted from the statement:

Quote:

Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said: “We neither condemn nor applaud these attacks. We believe they are a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets.”

Because of the overwhelmingly criminal nature of the DDoS, I think WikiLeaks has to denounce them uncategorically to regain the moral highground.  If not, the lingering illegality of what happened will begin to eat away at their position.

(And not putting distance between themselves and 4chan/Anonymous is another timebomb that at some point will go off in their faces.  Like I said upthread, they are not people you want to be identified with).

[url=http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sc-dc-1130-hackers-2... job: Stolen diplomatic cables show U.S. challenge of stopping authorized users[/url]

L.A. Times wrote:

WASHINGTON — For any organization that keeps secrets on computer networks, the lesson of WikiLeaks is painfully clear: In the cyber age, there are few things so damaging as a determined insider with the right passwords.

The Pentagon already knew that, it turns out. In February, before it emerged that a disgruntled U.S. Army intelligence analyst allegedly used his computer access to fuel the biggest disclosure of secret national security information in American history, the Defense Department hired a former hacker to lead a research program to detect digital spying by employees. [...]

"There was no top secret material there, no raw intelligence, not the most sensitive stuff," Aftergood said of the WikiLeaks disclosures, the latest of which involves nearly 250,000 diplomatic cables. "But the idea that someone could sit with access to a USB port and just download to their heart's content – that's poor security practice."

It's as if no US aircraft carriers were scathed during a "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor.

DP