Saturday, January 26, 2013


Anonymous Threatens Massive WikiLeaks-Style Exposure, Announced On Hacked Gov Site


usscgov-edited
Hacktivist organization, Anonymous, is threatening perhaps their biggest play ever: a massive WikiLeaks-style exposure of sensitive U.S. government secrets. As proof of their power, they announced details of the plan on hacked government website, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC.gov). Citing the recent death of free information activist Aaron Swartz, they explain, “With Aaron’s death we can wait no longer. The time has come to show the United States Department of Justice and its affiliates the true meaning of infiltration.”
Swartz was facing up to 50+ years in prison and a $4 million fine after releasing pay-walled academic articles from the popular JSTOR database. Some legal scholars have argued that releasing copyrighted material, or breaking the “terms of service” of a website, should not carry such harsh penalties. Anonymous is demanding that legislation be passed to no longer consider such violations a felony–a law that Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (CrunchGov Grade: A) has already introduced.
If legal reforms are not enacted, Anonymous has threatened to activate files containing embarrassing or incriminating secrets.
“The contents are various and we won’t ruin the speculation by revealing them. Suffice it to say, everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public. At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file. Any media outlets wishing to be eligible for this program must include within their reporting a means of secure communications.”
It appears that the secrets will come a cost: Anonymous claims that there will be “collateral damage” if they are reluctantly forced to expose the information, presumably related to individuals who they think are associated with, but responsible for, the offensive laws.
For added effect, Anonymous made USSC.gov editable. “Feel free to upload snapshots of your improvements with the hashtag #USSC. Failing that, we find that highlighting large sections and pressing the backspace key has a great therapeutic effect…”
As of this writing at 3am PT, the encrypted files on the page are no longer downloadable, but the hacked site remains intact.
We’ve seen Anonymous angry before, but the death of Swartz and the recent prosecution of some of their members seems to have pushed them over the edge. Big news may be coming very soon




I believe that this will have international business repercussions, because if true it will give vital information to the rest of the world that would have an effect on the stock market and world problems.





 

Friday, January 18, 2013

A day after Algerian forces launched a military raid to end a deadly hostage crisis at a natural gas plant, confusion reigned on Jan. 18 over the fate of the captives and their Islamist captors. Western leaders, some of whose citizens were among the hostages, expressed frustration at having heard little from Algerian officials about the continuing standoff, and some governments signaled alarm over the Jan. 17 operation that Algerian authorities admit resulted in the death of an undisclosed number of hostages. Security officials in Europe indicate that their services too have not obtained or been offered much intelligence on the unfolding crisis


“The operation resulted in the neutralizing of a large number of terrorists and liberation of a considerable number of hostages,” Algerian Communications Minister Mohand Saïd Oubelaïd announced after the raid. “Unfortunately, we also deplore the death of some [hostages], and some who were wounde


“The Algerians are aware we would have preferred to have been consulted in advance,” a Cameron spokesperson said while describing the frustration his boss had expressed to Algiers over its handling of the situation.
Cameron wasn’t the only leader caught off guard by Algeria’s rapid, unilateral decision to use deadly force at the hostage site. Japan expressed its objections to the operation and urged Algiers to “put human lives first.” Government officials in Tokyo also reportedly summoned Algeria’s ambassador to Japan to discuss their unhappiness over deaths of Japanese prisoners during the raid. But Algerian officials seemed in no mood to countenance questioning of their handling of the situation.

My Opinion-
What is happening in Algeria will raise the price of oil around the world. The Islamist are in Mali and parts of Algeria, but France and other countries are trying to take out the Islamist, but violence will rush through North Africa from Libya to Morocco.