Wikileaks Payback - Offensive and Defensive

[Magda Hassan]

Hackers take down website of bank that froze WikiLeaks funds


By Daniel Tencer
Monday, December 6th, 2010 -- 8:32 pm
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A group of Internet activists calling themselves Operation Payback have taken credit for shutting down the website of a bank that earlier Monday froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks.
Announcing its successful hack on a Twitter account, the group declared, "We will fire at anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks."
Earlier in the day, Swiss bank PostFinance issued a statement announcing that it had frozen 31,000 euro ($41,000 US) in an account set up as a legal defense fund for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The bank said it had frozen the account because, in opening it, Assange had claimed residency in Geneva.
"Assange cannot provide proof of residence in Switzerland and thus does not meet the criteria for a customer relationship with PostFinance," the bank said.

As of Monday evening, the PostFinance website was unavailable.
Operation Payback also promised a hack attack on PayPal, the online payment service that last week cut off WikiLeaks, denying the group a major tool for collecting donations from supporters.
With the financial noose tightening around WikiLeaks even as a legal one tightens around its founder's neck, Operation Payback has effectively declared war on the organizations working to hobble WikiLeaks.
"In these modern times, Internet access is fast becoming a basic human right," the group says in a video posted to YouTube. "Just like any other basic human right, we believe it is wrong to infringe upon it."
The video continues: "To move to censor content on the Internet based on your own prejudice is, at best, laughably impossible. The unjust restrictions you impose on us will meet with disaster, and only strengthen our resolve to disobey and rebel against your tyranny."
WikiLeaks has in recent days been under a deluge of cyber-attacks that led to its DNS registration for its .org URL being taken down, but by mid-Monday the site had reappeared on more than 500 different domains.
News sources in Britain reported late Monday that Assange has arranged to meet with British police on Tuesday, and will likely face a court hearing over an international warrant issued by Sweden in connection with accusations of sexual assault. The criminal probe does not allege non-consensual sex, only that Assange had sex with two women without a condom.
Supporters of the secret-spilling organization argue that the controversies surrounding WikiLeaks -- from the unusual criminal probe against Assange, to banks freezing their funds -- are part of a global campaign to shut down a website that has embarrassed world leaders on numerous occasions.
-- With earlier reporting by Stephen C. Webster
The following video was posted to YouTube by Operation Payback.

[Magda Hassan]

WikiLeaks sponsor in trouble with the taxman

Published: 7 Dec 10 14:11 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20101207-31651.html
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A major WikiLeaks donor is in trouble in Germany for not filing its accounts on time, but tax authorities insisted Tuesday this was unrelated to its ties to the controversial web organisation.

• Three seniors killed in nursing home fire - National (7 Dec 10)
  
• Berlinale invites 'anti-regime' Iranian director to serve on jury - Society (7 Dec 10)
  
• Wikileaks reveals potential terrorist targets - National (6 Dec 10)
  

The Wau Holland Foundation, which has reportedly transferred €750,000 ($1 million) in donations from the public to WikiLeaks, has been sent a second reminder to file its 2009 accounts.

"But this has nothing to do with WikiLeaks," Michael Conrad, a spokesman for tax authorities in the western state of Hesse, told new agency AFP, saying the reminder was nothing out of the ordinary.

"We haven't got anyone in our crosshairs, we don't have any crosshairs."

WikiLeaks has found itself under growing international pressure following its release of secret US documents to several news organisations, with its donation pipelines slowly being cut off.

MasterCard Worldwide on Monday stopped funnelling payments to the organisation, and on Friday US-based online payment service PayPal blocked financial transfers.

The Swiss Post Office's banking arm shut down one of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's bank accounts on Monday, saying he had provided false information in his application.

PayPal has also shut down the Wau Holland Foundation's account, the foundation said, saying PayPal had told it it was "in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding... financial support to WikiLeaks."

Australian national Assange, 39, was arrested in London on Tuesday. He is wanted in Sweden for questioning on suspicion of crimes including rape.

The Wau Holland Foundation, named after a "data philosopher" and co-founder of German hackers' collective the Chaos Computer Club who died in 2001, called on its website for people to continue supporting WikiLeaks.

It said that passing on donations, which are tax deductible to those giving money, to Wikileaks was lawful in Germany, and that bank transfers were still possible.
If the foundation fails to file its accounts, the authorities will compile them on their behalf— a service which the foundation will have to pay for, Conrad added.

[Peter Lemkin]

WikiLeaks sponsor in trouble with the taxman

Published: 7 Dec 10 14:11 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20101207-31651.html
Share
Tweet

A major WikiLeaks donor is in trouble in Germany for not filing its accounts on time, but tax authorities insisted Tuesday this was unrelated to its ties to the controversial web organisation.

• Three seniors killed in nursing home fire - National (7 Dec 10)
  
• Berlinale invites 'anti-regime' Iranian director to serve on jury - Society (7 Dec 10)
  
• Wikileaks reveals potential terrorist targets - National (6 Dec 10)
  

The Wau Holland Foundation, which has reportedly transferred €750,000 ($1 million) in donations from the public to WikiLeaks, has been sent a second reminder to file its 2009 accounts.

"But this has nothing to do with WikiLeaks," Michael Conrad, a spokesman for tax authorities in the western state of Hesse, told new agency AFP, saying the reminder was nothing out of the ordinary.

"We haven't got anyone in our crosshairs, we don't have any crosshairs."

WikiLeaks has found itself under growing international pressure following its release of secret US documents to several news organisations, with its donation pipelines slowly being cut off.

MasterCard Worldwide on Monday stopped funnelling payments to the organisation, and on Friday US-based online payment service PayPal blocked financial transfers.

The Swiss Post Office's banking arm shut down one of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's bank accounts on Monday, saying he had provided false information in his application.

PayPal has also shut down the Wau Holland Foundation's account, the foundation said, saying PayPal had told it it was "in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding... financial support to WikiLeaks."

Australian national Assange, 39, was arrested in London on Tuesday. He is wanted in Sweden for questioning on suspicion of crimes including rape.

The Wau Holland Foundation, named after a "data philosopher" and co-founder of German hackers' collective the Chaos Computer Club who died in 2001, called on its website for people to continue supporting WikiLeaks.

It said that passing on donations, which are tax deductible to those giving money, to Wikileaks was lawful in Germany, and that bank transfers were still possible.
If the foundation fails to file its accounts, the authorities will compile them on their behalf— a service which the foundation will have to pay for, Conrad added.

If you believe this has nothing to do with Wikileaks, you are a Coincidence Theorist Extraordinaire! :y:

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packag...27,00.html

Doesn't work for me. Apparently he was way in front before they removed him from the poll.

Just a reminder, Time did the same several years ago when people gave the most votes to President Morales of Bolivia

[Keith Millea]

Wikileaks gains support from Pirate Party & Operation Payback

WikiLeaks, the non-profit new media organization that has recently gained mainstream press coverage for releasing US State Department diplomatic cables, has found itself blacklisted from the support of corporations which once enabled the group’s web operations. The future of WikiLeaks was beginning to look dim as more organizations cut their ties, however newfound support from Pirate Parties in multiple countries as well as from Operation Payback may give the controversial site a much longer life.



After EveryDNS, the nameserver provider for WikiLeaks, cut ties with the organization last week, the Swiss Pirate Party stepped up and allowed them to move onto one of their registered domains. This action prompted additional Pirate Parties from the Czech Republic, Austria, Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to band together and support the efforts to keep WikiLeaks online.

“Pirate Parties from around the world, including the Pirate Party UK, today reaffirmed their commitment to whistleblowing worldwide. Concerned about freedom of information, opinion and press, the Pirate Parties have decided in a joint resolution to make WikiLeaks available on a worldwide mirroring infrastructure,” the UK Pirate Party told TorrentFreak. “The mirrors will guarantee that the release of US diplomatic cables can continue and previous publications will stay online.”

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has had their financial ties cut by PayPal and the Swiss bank where Julian Assange housed his organizations donations. The anonymous organizers behind Operation Payback have taken notice and launched one of their trademark DDoS attacks against both of the financial institutions’ websites.

“While we don’t have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same: we want transparency (in our case in copyright) and we counter censorship,” an Operation Payback representative posted on the group’s website. “The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we cannot say what we think and not express how we feel. We ca not let this happen, that is why we will find out who is attacking WikiLeaks and with that find out who tries to control our world. What we are going to do when we found them? Except for the usual DDoSing, word will be spread that whoever tries to silence or discourage WikiLeaks, favors world domination rather than freedom and democracy.”

These developments are surely a thorn in the side of the United States government, whose numerous efforts to silence WikiLeaks have proved unsuccessful. Now that the organization has the top players in the war against censorship on their side, it looks like it won’t be going away any time soon.

Video message from Operation Payback

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZNDV4hGUGw

The Wiki page for Anonymous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)

[Myra Bronstein]

...
The following video was posted to YouTube by Operation Payback.

Operation Payback. Catchy name. Where can we donate? Or will that make us terrorists?

[Magda Hassan]

"Operation Payback" attacks to go on until "we stop being angry"

By Nate Anderson | Last updated September 30, 2010 11:28 AM

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against anti-piracy websites have gone on for a week now, with the lawyers behind the "US Copyright Group" being the latest target. And the anonymous Internet users behind "Operation Payback" aren't done acting out; in an interview yesterday with the security experts at Panda Labs, one of the organizers said that Anonymous' attacks will continue "until we stop being angry." Judging from the list of things that make him (?) angry, this could take a while.
The law firm of Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver was one of the newest targets of the attacks, organized a week ago to take down antipiracy organization around the world. Already hit: the RIAA (US), BPI (UK), MPAA (US), AFACT (Australia), BREIN (Netherlands), Aiplex (India), and Websheriff (UK). One of the smaller sites actually yielded the biggest bounty; the UK "P2P settlement letter factory" ACS Law gave up several hundred megabytes of private e-mails after being taken offline by the attack.
The organizers of Operation Payback view themselves as anarchists with a strong moral streak. In their initial attack announcement, they claimed that anarchists had already "succeeded en-masse in distributing content to the poor, the underprivileged, the restricted. The most popular pirates are the chinese, whose content filters restrict a vast amount of content from them. The second most popular, the poor, who cannot afford things like college books or entertainment."
These self-styled Robin Hoods are "strongly motivated to do what we can to fight back against things which are morally questionable," which means that they are now launching DDoS attacks in favor of piracy. "Sharing information" is the new morality—"information" in this case apparently including films like Get Him to the Greek, currently the top movie download on The Pirate Bay.
Operation Payback is the rage of those who need more attention. "What do we have to do to be heard?" asks the original call to action. "To be taken seriously? Do we have to take to the streets, throwing molotovs, raiding offices of those we oppose? Realize, you are forcing our hand by ignoring us. You forced us to DDoS when you ignored the people, ATTACKED the people, LIED TO THE PEOPLE! You are forcing us to take more drastic action as you ignore us, THE PEOPLE, now."
And the rage will continue until the perpetrators feel less angry about the "rich and powerful corporations" who run the world. "In a world where our voice is ignored, we feel we have no choice but to revert to direct action."
Or, as an attack organizer put it last week, "We are seeking to change our way of life OUTSIDE the 'basement' we are trapped in. This is just the beginning. This is only the start."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/...-angry.ars

[Myra Bronstein]

..."Sharing information" is the new morality...

That could be DPF's motto.

[Peter Lemkin]

...
The following video was posted to YouTube by Operation Payback.

Operation Payback. Catchy name. Where can we donate? Or will that make us terrorists?

They have some 'catchy' videos on the internet!......:driver: :marchmellow:

[Magda Hassan]

http://anonops.net/
AnonOps: Fighting for freedom on the Internet!

We are an anonymous, decentralized movement which fights against censorship and copywrong. This is our homepage. Please look around and/or join the discussion in our chat.
Request to media citing our statements: We would appreciate if you could reference or link back to us. That way, we don't need to invite people to join us in every statement we make, but let them decide themselves whether they're interested or not. If you do use something from the site, please use the 'permanent link' to link to that specific revision of the page.
--Thanks, Anon.
News

[Sun Dec 7]: The site is back up on a new host!
[Sun Dec 5]: On the WikiLeaks issue, Operation Payback has been paying attention as well. In our statement we would like to clarify some details and thus present our plans.
"The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."
- John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Wikileaks have been down because of Distributed-Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS). There are reasons to believe that The United States Of America are behind this since due to the nature of the leak on Sunday 28th November 2010, where over 251000 documents (US diplomatic cables) were published on WikiLeaks.
What is this all about? And what does it have to do with censorship and Operation Payback?
While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons. We want transparency and we counter censorship. The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we can not say what we think and are unable to express our opinions and ideas.
We can not let this happen. This is why our intention is to find out who is responsible for this failed attempt at censorship. This is why we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy.
"In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble."
- Ron Paul
Who tried to stop WikiLeaks?

• EveryDNS released a statement confirming that it took action against Wikileaks because of the numerous denial-of-service attacks that had been carried out against the original domain. (guardian) (tweet)
  
• "TheJester" who had this to say: "www.wikileaks.org - TANGO DOWN - for attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, 'other assets' & foreign relations #wikileaks #fail".
  
• The French government: "The French government has moved to ban WikiLeaks from French servers, part of a series of moves threatening the group's presence on the internet. Industry minister Eric Besson said it is "unacceptable" for French servers to host the site, which "violates the secret of diplomatic relations and puts people protected by diplomatic secret in danger"(article).
  
• Amazon pulled the plug on hosting the whistle-blowing website only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security. Its refreshing to see that a company like amazon takes direct orders from a government employee (not even an official call from the government), disregarding their customers first amendment rights. Democracy is a fine thing (guardian).
  
• In a statement, PayPal said: "PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We've notified the account holder of this action" (allvoices).
  

Need we say more? If PayPal had the slightest moral, they would have donated to wikileaks themselves. We also regret to hear that EveryDNS rather tries to save its own instruments rather than doing whatever in their power to keep the website up (whatever happend to looking after your customers?). WikiLeaks is a pioneer of transparency. They are the whistleblowers that this society is crying out for. If we're all going to bury our heads in the sand and ignore these contradictions of a so-called free society, then why do we still vote? Then why are we even interested in politics at all? Why don't we hand them our (copy)rights on a silver plate, with the apology that we were counteracting them?
This is a global issue, but the United States of America's first amendment is a good example:
"Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression"
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Current condition of this amendment:

• If you're a Muslim, you're a terrorist. Freedom of Religion
  
• If you publish something groundbreaking about the government, it's treason. Freedom of Press
  
• If you express your feelings, it's copyright infringement. Freedom of Expression
  

So why does that amendment even exist in the first place, if it is treated with blatent disregard? Are we the only ones who think this is slightly hypocritical? Everybody portrays Anonymous as a bunch of 13 year old nerds glued to their computers and gaming consoles. Are a "bunch of 13 year olds" the only ones capable of understanding how serious this situation is, how it could affect our very way of life? Just as the university students in the UK are fighting a seemingly losing a battle, so are we (spec). There is a limited number of avenues available taking the legal route, sometimes challenging and breaking laws are necessary to being heard and noticed.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell (My Few Wise Words of Wisdom' (2000) by Charles Walker)
By doing everything to discredit WikiLeaks, Julian Assagne and all others involved, the world's governments demonstrated that they are worse than terrorists. At least terrorists are honest in what they try to achieve. Whatever is said in the smear campaign against Julian Assagne, how could it ever be worse than a complete government having hidden agendas and trying to silence everybody who stands against it?
So, what are we, Operation Payback going to do about it?

• We offer WikiLeaks an additionalmirror and have it Googlebombed.
  
• We will create counter-propaganda, organizing attacks (DDoS) on various targets related to censorship (time, date and target will be published by that time).
  
• Contact media entities, inform them that Operationayback has come out in support of Wikileaks, and has declared war on the entities involved in censoring there information; we will seek public support in a campaign against censorship.
  
• We will find and will attack those who stand against Wikileaks and we will support WikiLeaks in everything they need.
  

Choose freedom. Help us.
Thanks in advance,
Anonymous
http://www.anonops.net

Interesting links:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/17457/wik..._lieberman
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010...e-assange/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010...aks-probe/



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