Hacktivism

Unaccountable Hackers: The CIA, Vengeance And Joshua Schulte

February 7, 2024 Binoy Kampmark, Counter Punch. Educate! CIA, Hacking, Hacktivism, Julian Assange, Wikileaks

The release of the Vault 7 files in the spring of 2017 in a series of 26 disclosures, detailing the hacking tools of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was one of the more impressive achievements of the WikiLeaks publishing organisation. As WikiLeaks stated at the time, the hacking component of the agency’s operations had become so sizeable it began to dwarf the operations of the National Security Agency. “The CIA had created, in effect, its ‘own NSA’ with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capabilities of a rival agency could be justified.”

Saga Of Barrett Brown: Inside Anonymous And War On Secrecy

June 26, 2017 Christian Stork, www.whowhatwhy.org Resist! Hacktivism, Wikileaks

By Christian Stork for Who What Why - Alleged “hacktivist” Barrett Brown, the 31-year old mislabeled “spokesman” for the shadowy hacker collective known as Anonymous, faces federal charges that could put him away for over a hundred years. Did he engage in a spree of murders? Run a child-sex ring? Not quite. His crime: making leaked emails accessible to the public—documents that shine a light on the shadowy world of intelligence contracting in the post-9/11 era. A critically acclaimed author and provocative journalist, Brown cannot be too easily dismissed as some unruly malcontent typing away in the back of a gritty espresso lounge. He is eccentric. And he was clearly high on something, if only his own hubris, when he made a threatening video that put him in the feds’ crosshairs. But that’s not the real reason for the government’s overreaction. Evidence indicates it has a lot more to do with sending a message to the community he comes from, which the government sees, correctly, as a threat. The Barrett Brown case is simply the latest in a string of prosecutions in which the government pursues anyone involved in making information “liberated” from governmental or corporate entities easily accessible to the public.

British Hactavist Whistleblower Facing Extradition To US Faces Possible 99 Years

August 10, 2016 Alex Matthews, www.dailymail.co.uk Resist! Hacktivism, United Kingdom (UK), Whistleblowers

By Alex Matthews For Daily Mail - US authorities should be 'thankful' a British hacker targeted them instead of terrorists according to the man's lawyer. Lauri Love, 31, from Stradishall in Suffolk, is accused of stealing 23,000 personal details of government employees from the US Federal Reserve, the US Army, the FBI and NASA. The Aspergers sufferer and vicar's son is fighting extradition to the US where he faces 99 years in prison if convicted.

Anonymous Takes Down 1,000 Israeli Government And Business Websites

July 19, 2014 Mary-Ann Russon, www.ibtimes.co.uk Resist! Anonymous, Hacktivism, Israel, Wars and Militarism

Hacker collective Anonymous has announced that it has taken down over a thousand of crucial Israeli websites in a huge new coordinated cyber-attack called #OpSaveGaza on 11 July and 17 July, in support of the people of Palestine. Some of the websites, such as the Tel Aviv Police Department's online presence, are still offline two days after the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and numerous Israeli government homepages have been replaced by graphics, slogans, and auto-playing audio files made by AnonGhost, the team of hackers who coordinated the attack. The official Israeli government jobs website has had its homepage replaced by a graphic titled "Akincilar", which is Turkish for the Ottoman Empire's troops.A message written in English and Turkish - presumably by Turkish hackers - and accompanied by pictures of Palestinians suffering says: "The Jerusalem cause is Muslims' fight of honour" and says that people who fight for Palestine are "on the side of Allah". Another Israeli government website now bears an AnonGhost graphic and lists the usernames of 38 hackers. An audio file that auto-plays when the page loads plays music and a synthesized newsreader clip, together with a message beseeching human rights organisations, hackers and activists to attack Israeli websites to become the "cyber shield, the voice for the forgotten people".

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