Assange Granted Bail In UK By Westminster Magistrate's Court

Assange Granted Bail At London Court Hearing



WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted bail Tuesday after a hearing at Westminster Magistrate's Court in London.

The 39-year-old Australian handed himself over to London police last week to answer a European arrest warrant over alleged sex crimes in Sweden.

Assange is facing accusations of rape, sexual molestation and illegal use of force in separate incidents in August in Stockholm. He could be sentenced to two years in prison if convicted. His lawyers deny the allegations and have vowed to fight any attempts at extradition.

The magistrate agreed to grant bail Tuesday after Assange's team of attorneys reported that Vaughan Smith, a former British army officer who founded London's Frontline Club, had offered his mansion in Suffolk to Assange.

Smith will keep Assange "if not under house arrest, at least under mansion arrest," said defense attorney Geoffrey Robinson. At that, Assange, dressed in a white shirt and a blue jacket and sitting in a glassed-in corner of the court with three security guards, smiled wryly.

The magistrate set bail at 200,000 pounds (about $315,000) plus two sureties of 20,000 pounds each (about $31,500). Assange's passport must remain with police, and he will be monitored by a location tag.

Assange must be at Smith's mansion, about two hours outside of London, for at least four hours overnight and four hours during the day. He will be required to report to police daily between 6 and 8 p.m. The next court hearing was scheduled for January 11.

After the conditions were set, Assange stood and said, "I understand," with a neutral expression.

Outside the court, about 100 people demonstrated in support of Assange, holding signs saying "Julian Assange is a political prisoner" and "Why are you shooting the messenger? This is not 1984."

During the hearing, Assange's team of attorneys argued that since he is only wanted for questioning and has not been formally charged, he is presumed innocent. The magistrate agreed.

But, said Gemma Lindfield, the attorney representing the Swedish prosecution, "The court has already found that Mr. Assange is a flight risk. Nothing has changed in this regard."

She said if the alleged offenses had occurred in Britain, "it undoubtedly would have been a charge of rape in this jurisdiction."

Those in attendance at the hearing included Fatima Bhutto, niece of the late Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto and current Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, and prominent left-wing journalist John Pilger.

The judge denied Assange's first request for bail at a hearing on December 7 on the grounds that there was a risk he would fail to surrender.

WikiLeaks' release of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military documents is also under criminal review in the United States.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he had authorized "significant" actions related to a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks' publication of the materials but has declined to elaborate.

An attorney for the WikiLeaks founder, citing Swedish authorities, has said a secret grand jury is meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, to consider charges related to the release of the documents.

WikiLeaks inflamed U.S. authorities last month by publishing the first of a large group of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables.

Only a small fraction of the 250,000 U.S. State Department documents have been released and more are being published daily.

U.S. authorities and other Western leaders say the documents' publication threatens lives and national security.

WikiLeaks and its supporters say that the public has a right to know what is going on behind diplomatic doors.

Assange has been in custody since handing himself over to police last week.

On Tuesday, Australian broadcaster and CNN affiliate, Seven News, said it had received his first correspondence since being imprisoned.

The network said Assange's mother, Christine, who is in London after traveling from Australia to be near her son, handed it a note in response to her question as to whether it had been worth it.

The statement from her son said: "My convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have expressed. This circumstance shall not shake them. If anything this process has increased my determination that they are true and correct."

Christine Assange told Seven News she supported her son and appealed for others to do the same. "As a mother, I'm asking the world to stand up for my brave son," she said.

On his last appearance in court, several celebrities joined protesters with offers to post bail.

In an email entitled "Hands Off WikiLeaks," human rights activist Peter Tatchell urged readers to join him outside the court to defend the website and its founder.

"The WikiLeaks revelations regarding secret U.S. diplomatic cables have exposed the two-faced, dirty diplomacy of the U.S. government and its support for unsavoury regimes and human rights abusers," Tatchell wrote.

He added: "Although the charges against Assange look like a fix to silence and discredit him, there may be truth in them. It is impossible to be sure either way. However, what is beyond question is that some top people in the U.S. are out for revenge. They want to destroy Assange and WikiLeaks."


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Sources: CNN, Reuters, Amazon, Mastercard, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

"Operation Payback" Net Freedom Of Speech Advocates Rally: 5 Recent Attacks ("Hacktivists")

Hackers Rally To Support WikiLeaks: Top 5 Recent Attacks

In an effort nicknamed "Operation Payback," a loose association of hackers called "Anonymous" has been targeting the websites of companies and organizations that have cut ties with WikiLeaks by overwhelming their sites with traffic, prompting them to shut down. Twitter and Facebook have blocked accounts for Anonymous, citing the illegality of their attacks as a terms-of-service violation. WikiLeaks' Facebook and Twitter accounts remain up and running.

“Of course, Anonymous is expected to keep creating new accounts as quickly as Facebook and Twitter squash them; it’s a bit like Whack-a-Mole or doing battle with a hydra, in that sense,” said social media news website Mashable. "Fighting Anonymous is a task we wouldn’t wish on anyone."

Below are some of the most notable attacks:


1.) Mastercard and Visa

Mastercard was the first credit-card company to come under attack by hackers, and attacks on Visa soon followed – both launched in retaliation for the companies’ refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks. At various points Wednesday, parts or all of their websites were down, MSNBC reported.

NPR reported Thursday that WikiLeaks’ payment processor, Iceland's DataCell ehf, is preparing to sue both companies for their decision to block the funds, which it claimed is costing the company money.

"It's difficult to believe that such a large company as Visa can make a political decision," [CEO Andreas] Fink said in a telephone interview from Switzerland. In an earlier statement, his company had defended the WikiLeaks, saying that "it is simply ridiculous to think WikiLeaks has done anything criminal."


2.) Paypal

Paypal, which stopped accepting payments for donations to WikiLeaks, was another one of the early victims of hacker attacks. Its blog was down earlier in the week and its main website was inaccessible for several hours Wednesday, according to Computer World. Access was sporadic into Thursday morning. Because Paypal relies on people being able to log in to its site, the company is taking a financial hit from the attacks.

According to Reuters, a spokesman for the group of hackers confirmed that it was executing attacks on Paypal, among others.


3.) Swiss bank Postfinance

The Swiss bank Postfinance, a financial branch of the Swiss postal system, has been struggling to stay online as well after it shut down one of the key WikiLeaks bank accounts.

According to Fox News, Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty said the website “buckled under a barrage of traffic” on Tuesday but that the attacks have eased up. "It was very, very difficult, then things improved overnight," he told the AP. "But it's still not entirely back to normal."


4.) Swedish government

Reuters reported that the Swedish government’s website was down overnight Wednesday. Sweden has issued an arrest warrant for Assange.

The New York Times also reported that the websites of the Swedish prosecutor’s office and the lawyer representing the women involved in the charges against Assange were down at various points.


5.) Sarah Palin

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been a vocal critic of WikiLeaks, and hackers are fighting back. Computer World UK reported that her personal website was down Thursday morning local time and in an email to ABC news, said that her and her husband’s credit card information had been hacked.

The attacks come only a week after Palin … said the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, should be hunted down in the way armed forces target the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

In an outburst on Facebook, Palin had branded Assange “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands”.

After the attack on her site, Palin wrote: “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against [Assange’s] sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

Hackers have also hit websites belonging to WikiLeaks critics such as US Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, according to Computer World.





WikiLeaks: Who Are The Hackers Behind Operation Payback?


The MasterCard website was forced offline for several hours today, following an online assault led by a shadowy group of hackers protesting against the card issuer's decision to block payments made to the WikiLeaks website.

The "distributed denial of service" attack was apparently orchestrated by a "hacktivist" group calling itself Anonymous, which has in recent days temporarily paralysed the websites of Post Finance, the Swiss bank which closed WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange's account, and the website of the Swedish prosecution office.

Twitter is next in its sights, following allegations that the social networking site is "censoring" visibility of the breadth of discussion of WikiLeaks by preventing it from appearing in Twitter's "trends". Twitter has denied that it is doing this, saying its systems identify topics that are "being talked about more right now than they were previously" – which doesn't include WikiLeaks.

But who, or what, is – or are – Anonymous?

A 22-year-old spokesman, who wished to be known only as "Coldblood", told the Guardian that the group – which is about a thousand strong – is "quite a loose band of people who share the same kind of ideals" and wish to be a force for "chaotic good".

There is no real command structure in the group, the London-based spokesman said, while most of its members are teenagers who are "trying to make an impact on what happens with the limited knowledge they have". But others are parents, IT professionals and people who happen to have time – and resources – on their hands.

The group has gained notoriety for its attacks on copyright-enforcement agencies and organisations such as the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous was born out of the influential internet messageboard 4chan, a forum popular with hackers and gamers, in 2003. The group's name is a tribute to 4chan's early days, when any posting to its forums where no name was given was ascribed to "Anonymous". But the ephemeral group, which picks up causes "whenever it feels like it", has now "gone beyond 4Chan into something bigger", its spokesman said.

The membership of Anonymous is impossible to pin down; it has been described as being like a flock of birds – the only way you can identify members is by what they're doing together. Essentially, once enough people on the 4chan message boards decide that an issue is worth pursuing in large enough numbers, it becomes an "Anonymous" cause.

The group counts the current campaign in support of WikiLeaks as "probably one of [its] most high profile yet". The group gained notoriety more recently for a number of sustained assaults against the sites of US music industry body RIAA, Kiss musician Gene Simmons, and solicitors' firms involved in lawsuits against people suspected of illegal filesharing. In early 2008, Anonymous launched a campaign against the Church of Scientology, bringing down related websites and promising to "expel" the religion from the internet.

"We're against corporations and government interfering on the internet," Coldblood added. "We believe it should be open and free for everyone. Governments shouldn't try to censor because they don't agree with it.

"Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with."

The spokesman said Anonymous plans to "move away" from DDoS attacks and instead focus on "methods to support" WikiLeaks, such as mirroring the site. "There's no doubt in [Anonymous members'] mind that they are breaking [the] law," he said of the latest attacks. "But they feel that there's safety in numbers."

Anonymous refused to say whether it would target government-owned websites next, but warned: "anything goes."


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Sources: Amazon, Christian Science Monitor, Guardian.co.uk, Mastercard, MSNBC, Paypal, RT, Youtube, Google Maps

Wikileaks Cyberwar Saga Animated Version (Video)

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Assange's Supporters Wage Cyberwar For Web 2.0 Freedom Of Speech: Wikileaks "Hacktivists"

Hackers Wage Global Cyberwar In Defense Of WikiLeaks


They're calling it a global "cyberwar." Among the victims: Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Swiss bank PostFinance, and now the Swedish government. Among the attackers: Hackers from Chile to Norway to New Zealand.

"The fact that it’s so global is just a sign of the times. This type of operation has no borders," says Gregg Housh, an unofficial spokesman for the loosely knit "hactivist" group Anonymous, which is organizing the cyberattacks.

Hackers worldwide have launched what they call “Operation Payback” targeting companies that have cut off support for WikiLeaks or its beleaguered founder Julian Assange. On the Twitter feed for "Operation Payback," the hackers today announced their next target: Amazon.com.

“The war is on,” said one person on the Anonymous chat forum WhyWeProtest.net, which Mr. Housh helped create in 2008. In return, Anonops.net, a site that Anonymous has used to announce its attack plans, has come under cyberattacks from those apparently opposed to WikiLeaks.



Their efforts so far have disrupted the websites of the targeted companies for brief periods of time, though it isn't clear how much money – if any – it's costing the companies.

While the Anonymous hackers have called this a "cyberwar" over Internet freedom and support for WikiLeaks, Internet security specialist Bruce Schneier says this is not a "war" in any sense of the word. "It’s kids playing politics."

Indeed, while Mr. Housh is in his 30s, many of the Anonymous participants are said to be teenagers.

The Swedish government’s official website, regeringen.se, was the latest to come under distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which is when a mass of individual computers simultaneously attempt to access the same website, overloading and collapsing the website. A DDoS barrage overnight on Dec. 8 disabled the government website for several hours.

It came under attack because the government last month issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange on allegations of sexual assault, which he denies. He was arrested Dec. 7 in London and now faces possible extradition to Sweden. Assange's lawyer has called the arrest a "political stunt."

"In a lot of respects this has become a war. Assange is definitely thought of as a political prisoner," says Housh in a telephone interview from Boston, where he works by day for a computer repair company. While intimately aware of Anonymous activities, Housh himself says he is only an observer at this time.

As pressure has come from the US government for WikiLeaks to cease operations, US companies have also dropped support for the site, which on Nov. 28 began publishing more than 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.

On Dec. 1, Amazon.com refused to allow its web servers to host WikiLeaks any longer. (Ironically, Amazon's UK website is now selling the WikiLeaks cables for the Kindle.) A day later, New Hampshire-based company EveryDNS.net refused to continue supporting the domain name WikiLeaks.org. On Dec. 3, the online payment service provider PayPal stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks. On Dec. 6, the Swiss bank PostFinance said it had frozen Assange’s account.

Some of those companies, in turn, have faced the wrath of hactivists who also call themselves "Anons" – short for Anonymous. PostFinance was disabled by DDoS attacks on Dec. 6. PayPal has reported slower services because of DDoS attacks. The websites for MasterCard and Visa were down for several hours Dec. 8.

“Anons have been organizing attacks on various sites,” confirms Mr. Housh.

But who is Anonymous? Housh says the loose-knit group is composed of anyone who joins an Anonymous online message board, shows up for an Anonymous event, or joins in Anonymous projects. The Guardian, attempting to describe the group, writes that "the membership of Anonymous is impossible to pin down; it has been described as being like a flock of birds – the only way you can identify members is by what they're doing together."

A spokesman for Anonymous in London who goes by the name "Coldblood" – and whom Housh knows – told the BBC today that "more and more people are joining and helping in" Operation Payback.

"I see this as becoming a war but not your conventional war. This is a war of data, we are trying to keep the Internet open and free for everyone, just the way the Internet has been and always was," he said.

And in a now widely circulated open letter to the world, Anonymous has spoken:

“We are not a terrorist organization as governments, demagogues, and the media would have you believe. At this time Anonymous is a consciousness focused on campaigning peacefully for Freedom of Speech. We ask the world to support us, not for our sake, but for your own.

“… Pay attention citizens, governments, and the world. Anonymous' peaceful campaign will focus on any organization, corporation, government, or entity until the Internet is truly free.”

Suspicions are in the air over what site might be the next to come under attack.

"If the big companies weren't locking down their information before, they're definitely doing it now,” Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant at a computer security firm Sophos told the Telegraph: "This is really unprecedented and Amazon could be next."

Whether the hackers succeed in downing Amazon, says security expert Mr. Schneier, depends on the volume of traffic that Amazon.com is able to handle and the volume of DDoS attacks that Anonymous delivers.

"If the attacker has a bigger pipe than the defender, then the attacker wins," he says. "It all depends on the size of the pipe."


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Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Mastercard, Paypal, RT, Youtube, Google Maps

Hackers Take Down U.S. & South Korean Government Web Sites...Both N. Korea, China Suspected

MSNBC----


WASHINGTON - A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting Cyber crime.

Suspected cyber assaults also paralyzed Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, banks and Internet sites in a barrage that appeared linked to the attacks in the U.S., South Korean officials said Wednesday.

The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening.

U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."

The U.S., she said, sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.

It was not clear whether other federal government sites also were attacked.

A lot of computers involved:

Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

"It certainly seems to be a well-organized attack," an anonymous government official told The Washington Post. "There are a lot of computers involved. What we don't know is who is orchestrating it."

In South Korea, the sites of 11 organizations including the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and top Internet portal Naver went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, said Ahn Jeong-eun, a spokeswoman at Korea Information Security Agency.

They appeared to be linked to the knockout in the United States, though investigators are still unsure who was behind the attacks, Ahn said.

An initial investigation found that many personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time, Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said that military intelligence officers were looking at the possibility that the attack may have been committed by North Korean hackers and pro-North Korea forces in South Korea.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said it could not immediately confirm the report.

South Korean media reported in May that North Korea was running a cyber warfare unit that tries to hack into U.S. and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said he doubts whether the impoverished North has the capability to knock down the Web sites.

But Hong Hyun-ik, an analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, said the attack could have been done by either North Korea or China, saying he "heard North Korea has been working hard to hack into" South Korean networks.

Two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their Internet service provider to resolve the problem.

Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, called it a "massive outage" and said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.

Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites, including 40 government sites it watches.

According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was "100 percent down" for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent of the time.

"This is very strange. You don't see this," he said. "Having something 100 percent down for a 24-hour-plus period is a pretty significant event."

He added that, "The fact that it lasted for so long and that it was so significant in its ability to bring the site down says something about the site's ability to fend off (an attack) or about the severity of the attack."

Denial of service attacks against Web sites are not uncommon, and are usually caused when sites are deluged with Internet traffic so as to effectively take them off-line. Mounting such an attack can be relatively easy using widely available hacking programs, and they can be made far more serious if hackers infect and use thousands of computers tied together into "botnets."

For instance, last summer, in the weeks leading up to the war between Russia and Georgia, Georgian government and corporate Web sites began to see "denial of service" attacks. The Kremlin denied involvement, but a group of independent Western computer experts traced domain names and Web site registration data to conclude that the Russian security and military intelligence agencies were involved.

According to The Washington Post, Joe Stewart, the director of malware research at Atlanta based SecureWorks, said the attack software contained few clues about its origins, although a line of text deep in within the malware carried the cryptic message "get/china/dns."

Documenting cyber attacks against government sites is difficult, and depends heavily on how agencies characterize an incident and how successful or damaging it is.

Government officials routinely say their computers are probed millions of times a day, with many of those being scans that don't trigger any problems. In a June report, the congressional Government Accountability Office said federal agencies reported more than 16,000 threats or incidents last year, roughly three times the amount in 2007. Most of those involved unauthorized access to the system, violations of computer use policies or investigations into potentially harmful incidents.

The Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, says there were 5,499 known breaches of U.S. government computers in 2008, up from 3,928 the previous year, and just 2,172 in 2006.


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Sources: MSNBC, Washington Post, Keynote Systems, Tech Shout, Google Maps

Iranian Revolution Created Cyberwars...Government Imposed Media Blackout Didn't Work!

MSNBC----


There are currently two revolutions taking place in Iran right now. The uprising on the ground and in Cyberspace.

In many ways we're seeing the first real, kind of Cyber War of the 21st century.

Its not Silicon Valley or Langley, instead these are individuals somewhere in a basement or some parent's garage, using the internet in the way they see fit.

Its changing the way that government can react to these kinds of protests.

Its had a huge effect in the way that Iran can respond to these demonstrations.

Imagine if in 1989 we had Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

I don't think there would have been a Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Author Reza Aslan.....June 19, 2009

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