Posts tagged Arrests
Anonymous Takes Out Interpol Website After Hacker Arrests
Feb 28th
Two Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous have claimed responsibility for a denial of service attack on the Interpol website, which is currently out of commission. The international law enforcement agency arrested 25 suspected hackers in more than a dozen cities across Europe and Latin America today. Interpol’s “Operation Unmask” followed what it called “a series of coordinated cyber-attacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain.”
The @anonopshispano account called for the attack at 1:54 p.m. Pacific time. The worldwide news account @AnonOps first tweeted “TANGO DOWN” at 2:43 p.m. Pacific time. It published a second message five minutes later, proclaiming that “#Anonymous is not a criminal organization.”
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Interpol’s statement on Operation Unmask cites attacks on Colombian government websites, Chile’s national library and a Chliean electric company, among other targets. Police from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain carried out the arrests, seizing 250 computers and mobile phones, as well as credit cards and cash. Suspects ranged in age from 17 to 40.
At press time, the Interpol site is struggling to recover, but it is no longer completely down.
- #LibertadAnon TARGET: www,interpol.int WEBHIVE: tinyurl.com/73v56og/ FIRE! THIS IS A WORLDWIDE CALL! #Anonymous
— Anonymous Hispano (@anonopshispano) February 28, 2012
interpol.int TANGO DOWN >> FREE INTERNATIONAL ANONS! #Anonymous
— AnonOps (@anonops) February 28, 2012
interpol.int TANGO DOWN II 404 Interpol, #Anonymous is not a criminal organization.
— AnonOps (@anonops) February 28, 2012
See also: Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack on the Vatican
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Josh Stearns’ Tracking of Journalist Arrests at Occupy Protests Wins Storify of the Year
Jan 2nd
Storify users have voted to name Josh Stearns’ story tracking journalist arrests at Occupy protests as their story of the year. The social Web storytelling tool has grown up this year, finding itself in the right place at the right time to transform the way news gets made.
Stearns, journalism & public campaign director at FreePress.net, used Storify to keep track of the arrests of credentialed journalists at Occupy Wall Street and other affiliated protests. He collected stories of journalists being cuffed, tackled and trapped, even as they shouted that they were members of the press. We highlighted his efforts in our article, “How Storifying Occupy Wall Street Saved The News,” and we’re thrilled that the Storify community is celebrating his great work.
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Storify’s Story Of The Year contest opened December 19. Users voted for their favorite Storify posts using the Storify ‘Like’ button. Stearns won an iPad 2, as did a randomly drawn lucky voter, Jason Barnett, executive director of The UpTake. Stearns used Storify to document reporter arrests because “it really paints a whole picture, rather than just being a series of links.”
The number 2 story of the year was Reuters social media editor Anthony De Rosa’s 2011 Timeline of Protest, Revolution and Uprising. It’s a sweeping document that covers all the Arab Spring uprisings, which were driven by online media in unprecedented ways.
Storify is a free social media journalism tool, allowing anyone to pull together pieces of the Web into embeddable stories. It’s used by big publishers (including ReadWriteWeb) and everyday users alike, and all that work is featured side by side. To get a sense of what Storify can do, check out its top 10 most quoted tweets of the year.
If you’re interested in learning to use Storify yourself, we’ve published a guide, “How To Curate Conversations With Storify.”
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Kuwait Arrests Social Media Users: This Week in Online Tyranny
Oct 5th
Two Twitters and one YouTube user have been arrested recently in the Gulf country of Kuwait. Kuwaiti Twitterers Nasser Abul and Mubarak Al-Bathali and YouTuber Lawrence Al-Rishidi have all been arrested in the last month or two.
Abul had issued “insulting tweets of the Sunni sect and severe criticism and insults to the Saudi and Bahraini regimes for their stand against the Bahraini protests.” Al-Bathali “has been previously linked with Al-Qaeda and of fundraising money and recruiting men for them through his speeches and visits to different mosques years ago.” Al-Rishidi “insulting the Kuwaiti Amir (ruler) in a Youtube video, which has disappeared.” Not everyone arrested for social media use is made of sugar cubes and rosebuds.
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Activists met at Internet Governance Forum. An international group of activists concerned with keeping the same Internet that acted as a bullhorn for the Arab Spring free of government control met in Nairobi. Transcripts of the meetings, which took place at the United Nations building in Nairobi, Kenya, from September 27 through September 30 are available on the IGF’s website.
Pro-Chavez hackers silence critics. Venezuela President Hugo Chavez has a long history of silencing opponents, including online. The latest move to shut Chavez critics up are the actions of a pro-government hacker or hacker group called N33. Leonardo Padron, a writer for a Venezuelan soap opera, and a Twitter user with a quarter-million followers, has been a vocal critic of the demagogic president. His account was hijacked, marked with “N33″ and made to tweet posts critical of the writer and others who oppose the autocratic administration.
Others whose Twitter accounts have been subverted include “an activist, a humorist, three journalists, a TV show host, an ex-diplomat and a former Chavez supporter, all of them openly critical of Chavez.”
Indonesia to block 300 more websites. “(T)he Indonesian government…plans to take down 300 sites believed to host radical activity or views.” The country’s biggest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, is supporting the move.
Indonesian flag photo by Mr. T in DC
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Report: FBI Arrests Members of Hacktivist Group Anonymous in Nationwide Crackdown
Jul 19th
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has raided the homes of over a dozen alleged “hacktivists” associated with Anonymous in New York, New Jersey, Florida and California this morning, according to Fox News. The main Anonymous Twitter accounts, the group’s primary mode of communication with the world, have been silent but a correlated account @ThaiAnonymous has weighed in on the raids.
“It doesnt matter how many people the ‘FBI’ arrest.. wether they are core members or not.. #anonymous have started something unstoppable.”
Anonymous and related hacker group LulzSec have angered governments across the United States and Europse in recent weeks with an “AntiSec” campaign designed to attack government agencies and contractors. It was just a matter of time before the FBI tracked some members down.
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The three homes in New York were located in Long Island, Brooklyn and Baldwin. The Baldwin home allegedly belongs to Giordani Jordan where police spent nearly two hours searching and confiscating computers and electronic accessories, according to Fox News. All suspects are in their late teens to late 20s.
The raids follow an arrest made by Scotland Yard in England last month of 19-year-old Ryan Cleary accused of launching distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) on British agencies. LulzSec admitted that he was associated with the group in a very limited way though was not considered a full member.
Anonymous has claimed responsibility or been implicated in criminal hacking or DDoS attacks on the Central Intelligence Agency, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, the state of Arizona, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others.
It appears that one of the leaders of Anonymous that goes by the codename of Sabu was not included in the arrests as he just tweeted a YouTube video by Anonymous member/sympathizer @Beast1333 that is a mashup of hip hop music and TV news announcers.
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Google’s Schmidt Fears Arrests of Google Employees
Jun 27th
Google’s Eric Schmidt, speaking the Dublin summit on extremist violence (which we discussed earlier today), talked about growing problems with internet censorship and the risks faced by internet companies in authoritarian countries. Among other concerns, Schmidt said he feared the the possibility that Google employees might be arrested or even tortured for their involvement with un-censored channels of information.
The internet has become an increasingly prominent medium for the spread of political information, and that includes both the accepted mainstream (such as the Obama campaign, which many political analysts say became successful because of its effective use of the web, and especially media) and the dissident groups (such as the revolutionary change seen in Egypt and Tunisia).
Google’s objective, which focuses on providing access to and organizing the world’s information, isn’t compatible with censorship. Google backed out of China, a market of a billion potential users, because the company was not willing to comply with the regulations of the Chinese government. While Schmidt wasn’t willing to say which countries he fears may take action against Googlers, he did state that “There are countries where it is illegal to do things that Google encourages. In those countries, there is a real possibility of [employees] being put in prison for reasons which are not their fault.”
Beyond the famed Googler Wael Ghonim, who both used the web to spread anti-government information and was arrested for those efforts, Google has launched services to help people continue to access information even when their government doesn’t necessarily approve. In Tunisia, Google helped users by providing a phone-to-Twitter service that short-circuited the government’s attempt to fully block the internet.
With the internet becoming more prominent and Google continuing to play a role in keeping information access open, Schmidt is not optimistic. “I think this problem is going to get worse,” he stated.
[Sources include: Reuters]
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Google’s Schmidt Fears Arrests of Google Employees
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Bahrain Arrests Poet, China Arrests Artist: This Week in Online Tyranny
Apr 8th
Poet arrested by Bahrain security. After reciting a satirical poem during the Bahraini protests, Ayat Al-Qormezi was arrested. Her parents were tortured by gunmen, who told them their four sons, who had been forced face-down onto the floor, would be murdered before their eyes if they were not told where their daughter, the poet Ayat, was.
Mahmood Al-Yousif, the Bahraini “blogfather” who was arrested last week, was freed shortly thereafter due in part to pressure from the U.S. government.
Will the U.S. exert equal pressure to free a young lady whose fame is mostly as a poet? Will Bahrainis agitate for her release?
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Additional Bahraini bloggers arrested in the crackdown include Mohamed El-Miskati.
If anyone has a link to, or copy of, the poem that Ayat recited in Pearl Square on the 23rd of February, please share it with all of us in the comments.
American governmental transparency sites to be shuttered. It was reported that Data.gov and a number of related sites, started at the instruction of President Barak Obama to increase transparency in government, are going to be shut down due to budget constraints. Some groups are mounting challenges to those shut-downs.
China arrests its best-known artist. Ai Weiwei, a globally-regarded artist and the architect of the “Bird’s Nest” stadium, was arrested this week by Chinese authorities. Ai is a blunt-talker and critic of the government. ReadWriteWeb founder, Richard MacManus, served on a panel last year with Ai and reports on the efforts to free him.
U.S. developing cell phone “panic button.” The U.S. government is funding the development of an application that will allow pro-democracy activists to delete all incriminating evidence on their cell phones with a single click while sending out an alert to their fellow activists.
LiveJournal suffers DDOS attacks. For the past several weeks, LiveJournal, one of the earliest blogging hosts, has been suffering large-scale distributed denial of service attacks. The company says that the attacks have targeted a number of different users’ journals, some of whom are political in nature. The service has a large number of Russian users, including its president, Dmitry Medvedev.
Ayat photo via Islamic Human Rights Commission
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Zimbabwe Charges 45 with Treason for Watching Egypt Coverage, Arrests Facebook User
Mar 5th
Zimbabwe tends to remain out of the media spotlight, despite having one of the worst and most enduring dictatorships in the world. One of the reasons for this invisibility is that its resident tinhorn, Robert Mugabe, has outlawed independent domestic media and refused to allow international media in.
But people have a passion for news and that passion has gotten 45 Zimbabweans arrested and charged with treason in the southern African country. Their crime is having watched DVDs of recorded news coverage of the uprising in Egypt.
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The 46 initially arrested on February 19 (one has been freed) included “lawyers, students, and trade unionists,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
According to the Guardian, the Zimbabweans had been attending a meeting a called “Revolt in Egypt and Tunisia: What lessons can be learnt by Zimbabwe and Africa?” The security forces seized two DVDs of North African uprising coverage, a video projector and a laptop computer.
Although Mugabe allowed opposition figure Morgan Tsvangirai to join the government last year, it seems clear the move was cosmetic and neither Tsvangirai nor his party or any other opposition figures have been able to make much headway in restoring civil society to a country that was once known as the “breadbasket of Southern Africa” and is now known as a wasteland.
Facebook User Arrested
Despite a lack of penetration of online media in Zimbabwe, the country has had bloggers and groups that used blogs and other social media to report on the government’s war against the poor squatters who set up shantytowns in the country’s larger cities.
Now, Vikas Mavhudzi has become the first Zimbabwean Facebook user to be arrested. Also earlier this month, Mavhudzi left a comment on the Facebook account of Morgan Tsvangirai and was arrested for “subverting a constitutional government,” according to SW Radio Africa.
“I am overwhelmed, I don’t want to say Mr. or PM what happened in Egypt is sending shockwaves to dictators around the world. No weapon but unity of purpose worth emulating, hey.”
Both of these situations had in common a paranoid, violent regime that takes even interest in actions which happened a continent away as a direct threat to its continued power. Mugabe, originally a fighter against the British and an exemplar of peaceful transition from colonial to post-colonial rule, has become a poster child for the kind of “leader” who will do anything whatsoever to retain that rule, including destroying his country.
Anonymous had earlier targeted the country’s government in a series of distributed denial of services attacks. It is uncertain what, if anything, the group is still doing. Zimbabwe is another country the world has taken its eyes off of during the so-called Jasmine Revolution.
For the time being, Zimbabwe continues to work with the Chinese on a vast nationwide electronic eavesdropping center outside the capital city Harare. The intent is to be able to spy on any communication of any kind, including email, from the center.
If anyone from the Anonymous organization reads this, they are encouraged to give us all an update on their efforts in the comments.
Mugabe photo from Wikimedia Commons | Zimbabwe sunset by Martin Addison
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