Andrew Auernheimer aka Weev - "I'm Going To Prison For Arithmetic"

http://youtu.be/GV0JzMDnD4U

LeakSource - White House Moves To Counter “Online Radicalization”, Free Speech Isn't So Free

The War of on Terror continues with a new grave threat – people writing things on the internet. The government is now trying to find ways to counter “online radicalization to violence” a phrase so broad it could mean practically anything.

Under the guise of curbing the “radicalization” of U.S. citizens and identifying and purging potentially violent persons from the Internet, the White House has initiated the creation of a new interagency working group to address what it calls a growing problem.

The White House issued a fact sheet delineating the broad objectives of the plan.

FACT SHEET: Working to Counter Online Radicalization to Violence in the United States

http://www.scribd.com/doc/126102728/White-House-Working-to-Counter-Online-Radicalization-to-Violence-in-the-United-States-FACT-SHEET

The interagency group will be headed by Quintan Wiktorowicz, the current White House senior director for community partnerships on the national security staff. The new group will be called The Interagency Working Group to Counter Online Radicalization and will be charged with the implementation of an Internet safety program to address online violent extremism.

Wiktorowiczs stated,

“Violent extremist groups ─ like Al Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents, violent supremacist groups, and violent “sovereign citizens” ─ are leveraging online tools and resources to propagate messages of violence and division. These groups use the Internet to disseminate propaganda, identify and groom potential recruits, and supplement their real-world recruitment efforts. Some members and supporters of these groups visit mainstream fora to see whether individuals might be recruited or encouraged to commit acts of violence, look for opportunities to draw targets into private exchanges, and exploit popular media like music videos and online video games. Although the Internet offers countless opportunities for Americans to connect, it has also provided violent extremists with access to new audiences and instruments for radicalization.”

Shorter: the internet is gaining in power and we have not figured out a way to dominate it yet, this scares us.

But don’t worry according to the White House Fact Sheet the government will be “collaborating with industry” to help deal with the menace of free speech on the internet.

Collaborating with Industry: The Federal Government will collaborate with industry to explore how we might counter online violent extremism while protecting lawful Internet use and the civil liberties and privacy of individual users. Many companies have developed voluntary measures to promote Internet safety (such as fraud warnings, identity protection, and Internet safety tips), and we look forward to hearing their views about how we might apply similar measures to counter online radicalization to violence.

Big Government and Big Business working together, all to help us. This marriage of state and corporate power to regulate the internet sounds great doesn’t it? If only there was a name for such a system. In any case, allowing the government to work with industry to develop “countermeasures” to “radical” speech is a great way to protect all our freedom. What could go wrong?

Full Article at LeakSource

Congressmen Demand 7 Answers From Aaron Swartz's Prosecutors

1: What factors influenced the decision to prosecute Mr. Swartz for the crimes alleged in the indictment, including the decisions regarding what crimes to charge and the filing of the superseding indictment?


2: Was Mr. Swartz's opposition to SOPA or his association with any advocacy groups considered?


3: What specific plea offers were made to Mr. Swartz, and what factors influenced the decisions by prosecutors regarding plea offers made to Mr. Swartz?


4: How did the criminal charges, penalties sought, and plea offers in this case compare to those of other cases that have been prosecuted or considered for prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?


5: Did the federal investigation of Mr. Swartz reveal evidence that he had committed other hacking violations?


6: What factors influenced the Department's decisions regarding sentencing proposals?


7: Why was a superseding indictment necessary?

Full Article at Ars Technica

http://youtu.be/gJxSDlfWp_g

Kim Dotcom Interview - Encrypt Half The Internet, Government Spying Out Of Control

http://youtu.be/mphBRtr030s

Unlocking Your Phone Now Carries 10 Year Sentence And $1M Fine - DMCA At Its Finest

ADVISORY

BY DECREE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

IT SHALL HENCEFORCE BE ORDERED THAT AMERICANS SHALL NOT UNLOCK THEIR OWN SMARTPHONES.

PENALTY: In some situations, first time offenders may be fined up to $500,000, imprisoned for five years, or both. For repeat offenders, the maximum penalty increases to a fine of $1,000,000, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both.*


That's right, starting this weekend it is illegal to unlock new phones to make them available on other carriers.

NEW ABSURD CRIME

When did we decide that we wanted a law that could make unlocking your smartphone a criminal offense?

The answer is that we never really decided. Instead, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998 to outlaw technologies that bypass copyright protections. This sounds like a great idea, but in practice it has terrible, and widely acknowledged, negative consequences that affect consumers and new innovation. The DMCA leaves it up to the Librarian of Congress (LOC) to issue exemptions from the law, exceptions that were recognized to be necessary given the broad language of the statute that swept a number of ordinary acts and technologies as potential DMCA circumvention violations.

Every three years groups like the American Foundation for the Blind have to lobby [warning:PDF download] Congress to protect an exception for the blind allowing for books to be read aloud. Can you imagine a more ridiculous regulation than one that requires a lobby group for the blind to come to Capitol Hill every three years to explain that the blind still can't read books on their own and therefore need this exception?

Full Article on The Atlantic

You can check out the government document here.
Library of Congress - Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies

The Backlash On YouTube Has Already Begun

http://youtu.be/iQbhBC4SJvo
http://youtu.be/nxlBxjURaOg
http://youtu.be/win-mjqgUjg
http://youtu.be/cnw20YcKSDA
http://youtu.be/kIKBY1pfH30

Anonymous Threatens Massive WikiLeaks-Style Exposure, Announced On Hacked Gov Site

Hacktivist organization, Anonymous, is threatening perhaps their biggest play ever: a massive WikiLeaks-style exposure of sensitive U.S. government secrets.

As proof of their power, they announced details of the plan on hacked government website, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC.gov). Citing the recent death of free information activist Aaron Swartz, they explain, "With Aaron’s death we can wait no longer. The time has come to show the United States Department of Justice and its affiliates the true meaning of infiltration."


Swartz was facing up to 50+ years in prison and a $4 million fine after releasing pay-walled academic articles from the popular JSTOR database. Some legal scholars have argued that releasing copyrighted material, or breaking the “terms of service” of a website, should not carry such harsh penalties. Anonymous is demanding that legislation be passed to no longer consider such violations a felony–a law that Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (CrunchGov Grade: A) has already introduced.

If legal reforms are not enacted, Anonymous has threatened to activate files containing embarrassing or incriminating secrets.

Full Article on Tech Crunch

http://youtu.be/WaPni5O2YyI

Facing 30 Years Prosecutors Turn Down Internet Activist Aaron Swartz's Plea Deal 2 Days Before His Suicide

• Internet activist Swartz, 26, committed suicide on January 11 at his Brooklyn home as he faced 30 years in jail



• Prosecutors turned down Swartz's lawyer over plea deal on January 9



• U.S. attorneys file to dismiss case in court today after Swartz's death



• Internet activist faced decades in prison over hacking charges for allegedly downloading more than four million academic journals



• Hundreds of academics post copyright-protected journals for free in tribute to Swartz



• Hacker group Anonymous crash MIT website over prosecution of Swartz, described as a 'grotesque miscarriage of justice'

Full Article on Dailymail.co.uk

F2C2012: Aaron Swartz keynote - "How we stopped SOPA"

http://youtu.be/Fgh2dFngFsg

Huffington Post - Anonymous Hacks MIT, U.S. Department Of Justice In Aaron Swartz Tribute

Internet activists with the group Anonymous claimed credit for hacking the Massachusetts Institute of Technology website Sunday, in memoriam of the Aaron Swartz, the Reddit co-founder who recently committed suicide.


Reddit users reported the entire mit.edu domain was down, including their school email service. The backup emergency site, emergency.mit.net, was reportedly down too. MIT's website was restored Sunday evening, as Anonymous admitted they were behind the attack.


"Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government's prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it — enabling the collective betterment of the world through the facilitation of sharing — an ideal that we should all support," Anonymous' said in a statement, which replaced MIT's website.

Full Article on Huffington Post

Paypal Freezes XBOX Media Center Donations - "Guilty Until Proven Innocent"

So it looks like I am guilty until I have proved my innocence. It is strange they refer to the forum link rather than the main site url. Am I being accused of something they have found on the forum? Hard to know since they give no real information at all to what I am guilty of. “PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.” – in reference to? Are they suggesting XBMC4XBOX facilitates/encourages or instructs people to engage in illegal activity? Are they referring to the software itself or some specific forum discussion ? Hard to know, but no project donations have been used for anything like this. The transactions they listed in the email are just donations to the project from users. All money goes towards project costs, and to developers for their time.


Googling for this sort of email shows it happens by mistake time and time again. From freezing charity donation funds, to other cases similar to ours. I have had my Paypal account frozen twice before, firstly when a card expired (some random security audit), and a second time when I made a transaction from another country and it was frozen since I was connecting from a different geographic location. Both times were a pain to resolve, even though I did nothing wrong, which seems to be the way Paypal like it.


I have already spoken to them on the phone. But guess what, they can’t do anything, because I need to speak to the “AUP” team, who of course only have an email account. Email has been sent. I wonder how long this will take to resolve. I suspect later rather than sooner. It’s also worth noting that a note on my paypal account states “This limitation cannot be appealed against.“ – that’s fair!

Full Article With Letter From PayPal