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War on Anonymous: British Spies Attacked Hackers, Snowden Docs Show
- detcader 13y agoWish this had the whole title not just "War on Anonymous"
- samstave 13y agoWe need a War on Politics.
- nsns 13y agoPolitics is not the problem, politics is essential for our lives, what's wrong is that it simply serves big capital these days, with growing disregard for civil rights.
- nitrogen 13y agoI'm sure there are ways we could update the political process with more modern ideas of logic, science, election theory, and consensus.
- detcader 13y agolook up Fair Elections. It's simple and promising.
- f_salmon 13y agoExactly money must be taken out of politics, i.e.: No more lobbying (= legalized corruption). But how are you going to do that when rich people are already in power and are using their financial dominance to protect their monopoly of power?
- erichocean 13y agoBy eliminating taxation (governments can simply print the tax money they need according to a fixed formula against the national GDP), and then using computers, allow citizens to directly apportion their equal portion of the taxes to the causes they think are worthy, updated on a regular basis (I suggest daily so that the populace can respond quickly to things like natural disasters). A simple approach would be to let each person subdivide their tax "share" (which is equal among all voters) by 1% increments. In addition, private individuals could establish "tax baskets" that could be used to fund a number of smaller entities with a single appropriation, so that your 1% could be apportioned among hundreds of entities without you having to type them all in. This approach completely eliminates money from politics: politicians no longer have the power to tax specific individuals (or grant special exemptions), and they also no longer have the power to give money to people within (or outside) government. It does not eliminate the ability of government to meddle with regulations, but the populace can trivially respond by docking their budget immediately in retaliation. It's amazing how much better behaved government institutions are when they are directly answerable to the people. This approach is completely reasonable in the information age and with monetary systems, like the US, where fiat money is used. We already calculate GDP numbers, and the number for taxation would simply be fixed as an amendment to the constitution (while simultaneously invalidating all other tax powers from the government). For extra fun, double the amount of tax dollars created and give everyone in the country a basic income out of it. I suggest that half of all taxes go towards a basic income (social money for individuals), and that the other half go to the community in the form of government, law enforcement, schools, police, etc. and whatever other social programs individuals want to apportion their social tax dollars to (social money for the community).
- f_salmon 13y agoCertainly an idea that should be discussed in the mass media. (I'm not counting on US mass media, though, for some time to come.) In other words, it can be summed up as 1 way to make democracy more direct. (The problem is, Washington with its ever-increasing level of corruption, is never going to want a more direct democracy.)
- _xczx 13y agoInteresting that there are still services around that are vulnerable to syn floods.
- oracuk 13y agoWith enough bandwidth everyone is vulnerable.
- StuartWalker 13y agoGood read.
- blendergasket 13y agoWhy is the lady in the video on this page reporting this from Russia even though she said they got the docs from Snowden before he went to Russia? Are ALL their pundits in Russia for the Olympics?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- detcader 13y agoSnowden gave his documents to a handful of journalists (Greenwald, Poitras, Gellman, etc), who give documents to media outlets to publish. It's that simple, I think.
- NickSharp 13y agoThe original documents, with some interesting logs. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/snowden_anonymous_nbc_document.pdf http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/snowden_anon...
- NickSharp 13y agoRelated article: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sentencing-lulzsec-hacker-sabu-delayed-once-again-1432135 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sentencing-lulzsec-hacker-sabu-dela... "For the third time in less than a year the sentencing of Hector Monsegur (aka Sabu) has been delayed without explanation." Subu as a founder of Lolzsec, organized "elite hackers" to attack a number of targets, until (and after) he was arrested and immediately turned informant. Working for the FBI, Subu continued to recruit new hackers for new operations while feeding all information to his government bosses. Read these chat logs. How is that not entrapment?
- redthrowaway 13y agoYou have to wonder, do the GCHQ agents involved really think Anonymous is worth their time? Are the people actually carrying out these attacks convinced that their efforts are better spent on that than identifying and infiltrating terrorist networks? I get spying. I get compromising and penetrating the networks of rival countries. I even get economic espionage, in the same way that I understand why the US Marines overthrew sovereign governments in service of United Fruit. But DDOSing Anonymous? Were they loading up LOIC and firing their lazors at freenode? That just seems fucking pathetic. It looks like a bunch of children got written a big cheque and were told to go play. We're constantly inculcated with notions of spy agencies as supremely powerful, supremely competent cloak-and-dagger organizations that work in the shadows to guide world events. But this just makes them look like bratty kids with a rich uncle. It's pathetic.
- detcader 13y agoI know next to nothing about it, but Anonymous probably aids WikiLeaks in some way, and WikiLeaks is definitely threatening.
- teddyh 13y agoI know next to nothing about you, but you are probably an ignorant gossipmonger.
- detcader 13y agoI don't understand the hate here. I meant threatening in a good way, to financial/state power.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- polymatter 13y agoWhat you did was wild speculation.
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- higherpurpose 13y ago> the British counterpart of the NSA, shut down communications among Anonymous hacktivists by launching a “denial of service” (DDOS) attack – the same technique hackers use to take down bank, retail and government websites – making the British government the first Western government known to have conducted such an attack I remember when this idea was still pretty much seen as a "conspiracy theory" around the time when Wikileaks was getting DDOS'ed.
- monsterix 13y agoSo it was never about terrorism to start with; it was and has always been about retaining power & oversight by selling "security" to the cheap sheep. Was there a doubt on its true motivations? No, I don't think so. But looking at how things have been in America for the last 10+ years (since the justification of WTC) I don't see much hope unless the citizenry rises to the occasion and fixes these rascals to their place. I sincerely hope they do, but I am given up on this already.
- higherpurpose 13y agoI urge everyone here to read this article about Congressman Pike's fight against the NSA: http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-... This part especially stuck out to me: > Pike was less interested in sensational scandals like Church’s poison darts and foreign assassination plots than he was in getting to the guts of the intelligence apparatus, its power, its funding, its purpose. He asked questions never asked or answered since the start of the Cold War: What was America’s intelligence budget? What was the purpose of the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies and programs? Were they succeeding by their own standards? Were taxpayers getting their money’s worth? Were they making America safer? > Those were exactly the questions that the intel apparatus did not want asked. The Church Committee focused on excesses and abuses, implying that with the proper reforms and oversights, the intelligence structures could be set right. But as the Pike Committee started pulling up the floorboards, what they discovered quickly led Rep. Pike and others to declare that the entire intelligence apparatus was a dangerous boondoggle. Not only were taxpayers getting fleeced, but agencies like the NSA and CIA were a direct threat to America’s security and democracy, the proverbial monkey playing with a live grenade. The problem was that Pike asked the right questions—and that led him to some very wrong answers, as far as the powers that be were concerned. From what I've noticed, nobody is asking these questions today, and yet NSA and CIA keep getting bigger and bigger funding, with NSA having nothing to show for it and yet with expanding capabilites, and CIA wanting more funds mainly to operate more drone strikes in secret (i.e. covert wars). This is a path that's actually dangerous for national security, either because they are collecting data on people that can later be hacked and gotten by rival nations, or because they're starting wars with other nations who knows for what selfish reasons, without the people knowing anything about it. We should have a big debate about it, yet no one seems to be starting it.
- smsm42 13y agoSo he expected a government agency to track its efficiency and see if the money spent is really warranted compared to the effects produced? That's crazy talk. That would be running the government like a good business. Nobody does that. And yet less folks like CIA or NSA. They protect us from evil, so people should shut up, pay up and be quiet and trust them, they're the good guys after all.
- dispense 13y agoI would like to see more information on the botnet were or are operating. Is it fully theirs or did they rent it? If they rented it, how and from whom? If it is fully theirs, what did it consist of? Did they rent a bunch of servers, or did they use a collection of residential connections? Were these connections used with the consent of their owners, or did the GCHQ hack them? If there was consent, who gave it to them? ISPs? The legality of this is interesting. I suppose it takes a peculiar legal structure to operate a botnet lawfully.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- etanazir 13y agoHas anyone ever done a kickstarter to bribe government employees to whistleblow on other government employees?
- Bahamut 13y agoI have no love for Anonymous (far from it), but some of this is disturbing.
- peterwwillis 13y agoAnonymous channels existed in IRC servers around the globe, on million-user-plus networks and tiny networks alike. It's chilling to think whole networks of people completely unrelated to Anonymous could get taken down just because a few morons were using a channel to organize attacks. (Also, am I missing something, or did they completely miss an opportunity to collect intel by taking them offline and making them move to more private channels?)
- fafner 13y agoFreenode regularly suffers DDOS attacks. Scary to think that the British government might be behind this...
- websitescenes 13y agoAnonymous failed because its members were systematically targeted, falsely accused and in some cases assassinated. The only thing the group stood for was the inherent right to information. Information should be freely available. This is the only route to true security. The government says if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. We'll wtf governments?! Why you so scared? If I were to apply the same logic, I could get the impression you're hiding something.