WikiLeaks to Release Over 100 Secret Documents on Detention Policies
Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets
PlayStation ‘master key’ leaked online, Tiny Drones Work Together!
Jester Update: th3j35t3r ‘patriot hacker’ Promotes the Military Industrial Complex & Al-CIA-duh. FYI, it’s a group account, one of them exposed himself to be Tom Ryan, of Provide Security. (‘Terrorist Hackers’ are good for InfoSec biz)
Hacktivists Advocate: Meet The Lawyer Who Defends Anonymous
We’re as harmless or dangerous as anyone else. Chances are that we’re less dangerous because we don’t want to screw you all over. #Anonymous
Show Transcript
Introduction: Anonymous Part 2
Welcome new listeners. October 25th, 2012. Exciting show. We’re thankful for another opportunity to talk about what’s going on in the world — talk about what you need to know when you didn’t have time to catch up, when you were busy dealing with the rat race that is life on planet Earth. Whether it is one Earth, Mother of God, or some would say a single living organism in itself — from space it would appear that it is alive. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful from space. Too bad so much death and destruction and ultimately separation of the human race is taking place on the surface of planet Earth. We’re seeking to change that. That’s why we’re here. Thank you for tuning in to Decrypt the Matrix, Revealing Talk Radio.
Exciting show tonight. Anonymous Part 2. We had a great show yesterday where we talked about Anonymous. We covered what Anonymous is up to lately — but it’s super hard to define. We heard a statement from Anonymous, went through their manifesto. We talked about the new “We Are Legion” documentary, which is the history and background — the real, raw history of how Anonymous came to be. They are like an immune system reacting, in a serious mode of self-preservation. Anonymous is seeking out injustice, exposing online bullies like those behind the Amanda Todd case, hacking the corrupt Italian police, leaking their emails not too long ago, hacking shady government contractors like Stratfor International — who knows if some of these may or may not have been at the behest of the FBI.
Remember, Sabu was on a short leash, cruising for a reason. Barrett Brown — Barrett Brown sitting in jail right now. Shout out to Barrett Brown. Barrett Brown, well-known founder of Project PM. Project PM was a wiki he created for organizing the information exposed through the HBGary leak. HBGary was the first of the big hacks, with the help of LulzSec — allegedly Topiary, perhaps some others.
As we know, LulzSec was both boys, and with the Twitter updates that led to their capture — also Sabu’s thirty-day run was quite entertaining. Thirty days with a bon voyage message at the very end. No sooner does it end, and if you noticed, one of them — who we now know was an informant trading information at the time — posted messages that said things like “in order for justice to be brought” and “we may well be” — bizarre messages making a statement. So that was quite entertaining. But I will tell you, the individual known as Jake Davis was aware of his surroundings at the highest level. There are some gems in there that I think the more awake truth seekers out there would certainly take notice of. Definitely check that out if it interests you.
WikiLeaks Detention Policy Documents and the NDAA
WikiLeaks just dropped some information about the detention policies of the United States government — foreign policy detention policies, stuff they’re not talking about in the debates that they absolutely should be. Anonymous has clearly taken an interest in this. WikiLeaks and Anonymous may or may not have beef recently. As far as the paywall situation, WikiLeaks shouldn’t be charging — that should be free, and we’re on the same page as others who were saying that. If your donations find their way down to liability, some saw that as a red flag. Not cool. Some factions of Anonymous — though no one can speak for all — many elements of Anonymous seem to have come forward and disagreed with that philosophy. Let’s take a neutral stance: everyone has their approach and everyone runs their own yard.
WikiLeaks said technically they’re just making people wait behind a paywall that will obviously come down in the future. Fair enough — they make their own choices on how they want to self-preserve and protect the network. But it certainly seems like they need closer investigation. People like John Young at Cryptome — Cryptome.org — a far less sexy leak site. If you consider yourself Anonymous and you haven’t explored Cryptome.org, look up John Young. He is a ritual founder of WikiLeaks. He and Julian Assange were close enough to be associates in that respect. John bailed out early — he didn’t like the authoritarian approach, the top-down pyramid, the control of information at the top. Assange justifies that as being necessary. John seems to think that drives more secrecy. Both are valid arguments from which they are presented — make your own analysis.
Cryptome.org is like an all-you-can-eat violations buffet — letters to companies that have said “I’m getting called out, our secrets are out right now.” Meanwhile, all the rights organizations issue statements and cry foul. The media sits there twiddling their thumbs. The alternative crowd goes berserk, cries foul as well, hoping that mainstream outlets eventually pick some of it up. But in the case of continual constitutional violations, one after the other, it’s only driving the resolve of Anonymous even further. New Anons being born every day.
Anonymous released a message about the NDAA — the National Defense Authorization Act. Anonymous responded to this immediately, with Jeremy Hammond and others in jail, in great spirits. He loved the show of support. The message reads:
“Hello, citizens of the world. We are Anonymous. Your brothers and sisters at home — now is the time to open your eyes. As anyone who has civil libertarian values understands, this is not only happening in the US. The National Defense Authorization Act is the most unconstitutional legislation witnessed in modern language. It was cleverly designed to detain Americans, and it essentially says it can indefinitely detain Americans simply by labeling them as threats. The 112th Congress, 2012, Section 1867, titled the National Defense Authorization Act, designates the entire US as a battleground on which US military forces can operate, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting power to arrest and detain US citizens without trial. This has been handed to the military to hold you without trial, label you a terrorist — it’s confusing, it has different sections, but the bottom line is that detention of US citizens is included. The passage of this legislation is nothing less than a declaration of war against the American people. The power elite have signed into law the evolution of a bill of rights into a military dictatorship — a country where secret arrests, secret prisons, and unlawful interrogation are in charge.”
“Americans who are unaware, take heed. You have not yet realized — once this becomes law, you have no right to an attorney, no right to a trial, no right to be informed of charges. Someone shows up at your house, and they will soon be on their way. Those who use certain words in conversation will be targeted. Those who will listen, here is something terribly wrong with this country, and you know where it leads.”
So the NDAA — this topic has been hot for a year now. A freaking year, and ninety percent of Americans are probably clueless that they have no rights anymore when it comes to being detained in America by the military, no less.
Anonymous as a Force for Good: Humanitarian Operations
Our country feels like it’s continually under siege. Now Anonymous, even while being associated with terrorism, has been responding to corruption scandals, supporting Occupy Wall Street, getting the message out, supporting uprisings in Middle Eastern countries — which may or may not be awakened or manipulated by the state itself. But Anonymous is helping the people directly. Anonymous looks like the People’s Liberation Front. They help people directly and support places like Syria, getting directly into these countries to bring support, bring medical supplies, bring technology that allows them to get the message out, avoid internet censorship which keeps activists in those oppressive countries from connecting to Twitter, connecting to Facebook.
So you’ve got to watch your operational security. This is so important to maintain, perhaps primarily now because of the NDAA. Anyone can be labeled a terrorist. The power structure is trying to make it look at every possible turn like Anonymous are terrorists. They have gone so far as to manipulate the marketing and production of the Modern Warfare game, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Guess who is the new enemy? The techno enemies of cyberspace. In the video game trailer, it shows a Guy Fawkes mask, a mysterious bass voice on TV — this is the new terrorist of 2013 and beyond, according to this new video game put out by the establishment. It’ll sell millions, billions — Call of Duty put out over a billion in sales in a matter of a few months.
And it’s programming. It’s programming the kids. Programming these video gamers to be desensitized by more and more real violence, death, destruction — slitting throats, chopping heads off the wall, rocket launchers. “Ha ha, I killed you!” Respawn. It desensitizes people into accepting this perpetual war culture. It makes it okay when soldiers are sent overseas to kill other people of other cultures that they don’t even know or recognize — “just go shoot, it’s your job, because we’re spreading democracy.”
So Anonymous needs to exist. Then we get people out there like The Jester, who promotes the military-industrial complex with his ideas about going after terrorists online. The military-industrial complex props up these bogeymen because cyber security benefits the system’s self-preservation and power. So guys like The Jester and his little InfoSec buddies — for them, dangerous hacker terrorists are good for business. He loves trying to link Anonymous to terrorism so he can showboat, constantly self-promoting. He’s been exposed multiple times. He’s been outed as being an obvious enemy of Anonymous, an enemy of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks was a target of his preferred DDoS attacks against WikiLeaks. Think about that — the government goes after what’s technically illegal, just as their goal is to stir most of us against PayPal. But PayPal is like a normal, legit business, right? Now they’re in bed with the government, but WikiLeaks isn’t, so it’s okay? The Jester — the government probably loves him. Claims to be former military or whatever. Whoever he is, it’s irrelevant. He promotes the military-industrial complex.
Don’t get caught up by The Jester. He’s been outed multiple times. And don’t forget about companies like Coca-Cola — affiliated with paying down union leaders. Colombian union leaders being targeted. Credit card companies complicit. And companies like Monsanto using Blackwater, now rebranded under the guise of Erik Prince, who now lives abroad to avoid what should obviously be war crimes charges. There are a hundred and fifty thousand government contractors over there getting paid insane amounts of money to work outside the law — in some cases a thousand dollars a day to be in the war zone, shoot locals dead, and get away with it. The system loves this.
Jailbreaking and Phone Unlocking: Your Rights Shrinking
The DMCA — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — makes it legal to circumvent digital rights management schemes. When Congress passed the DMCA, they gave the Librarian of Congress the power to grant exemptions. The latest batch of exemptions, which will be in force for three years, were announced on Thursday. Only five categories of circumvention are allowed — one fewer than the current batch of exemptions which was announced in July 2010. The new exemptions take effect October 28th.
The new batch of exemptions is fundamentally shrinking your rights. The exemption process for the next three years: you’ll be allowed to jailbreak smartphones but not tablet computers. You’ll be able to unlock phones purchased before January 2013, but not phones purchased after that. It will be legal to rip DVDs to use an excerpt for documentary purposes, but this would not apply to your iPad. None of these distinctions makes much sense, but Congress probably deserves more blame for this than the Library of Congress.
For accessibility, the first exemption applies to e-books that are distributed with technological protection measures which prevent read-aloud functionality or interfere with screen readers — your own applications versus what was purchased legitimately through standard channels. The big news: jailbreaking smartphones. The new rule allows for circumvention of computer programs on mobile phone handsets to execute lawfully obtained applications, where such circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on that phone handset. In other words, jailbreaking is permitted for telephone handsets, as it was under the 2010 rules. That was a big breakthrough in 2010. Nice to know at least that’s staying. What about tablets? No dice.
The Library noted concerns that the scope of the proposed class was too broad, that a wide range of devices might be considered tablets, notwithstanding significant distinctions among them in terms of the way they operate, their intended purposes, and the nature of the applications they can accommodate. For example, a book-reading device might be considered a tablet, as might a handheld video game device or laptop computer. The Library ruled that the record lacked sufficient basis to develop an appropriate definition for tablet-caliber devices, so the exemption remains limited to smartphones.
Now the phone unlocking part — this is absolutely huge. This is what should rile you up. If you’re a person who likes to switch carriers often, listen up. Congress is going to permit users to unlock their phones to take to a new carrier, but with a crippling caveat: the phone must have been originally acquired from the operator of a wireless telecommunications network or retailer no later than ninety days after the effective date of this exemption. In other words, phones currently on your nightstand can be unlocked, but those purchased after January 2013 can only be unlocked with the carrier’s permission. Are you serious?
Why the change? Two key factors. One, the 2010 ruling established that when you purchase software, you don’t actually own it. You merely license it according to the terms of the end-user license agreement — that long string of words nobody ever reads before clicking accept. Librarians have argued that this undermines the claim that unlocking your phone constitutes fair use. Secondly, there are more unlocked or unlockable phones on the market than three years ago, and most wireless carriers have more liberal policies for unlocking handsets. As a result, the Library of Congress decided it should no longer be legal to unlock your cell phone without the carrier’s permission.
Jailbreaking is serious. This was posted recently: corporations are seeking to control everything, even things that you buy. They want to make it so you can’t resell goods outside the United States or use certain car parts from overseas. These crazy laws are coming for the American people, and the international community has no idea.
WikiLeaks vs. Anonymous: The Tyler Project and the Rift
Anonymous revealed details of its own WikiLeaks-style project called Tyler — a no-cost, decentralized online document release platform designed to circumvent problems inherent in WikiLeaks, set to launch on December 21st, 2012, the day many believe to be the end of the world. About a hundred members were specified. A representative spoke about the Tyler project and the rift with WikiLeaks in an e-mail.
This is a bombshell. Previously, Anonymous had long been allied with WikiLeaks and its mission of shattering secrecy by leaking classified information. But a message recently posted by Anonymous on Pastebin stated: “WikiLeaks has chosen to dishonor and insult Anonymous and all information activists by requiring payment for documents it previously made available for free.” Yes, they absolutely required payment, though they’ve also said it will become free after the election.
Anonymous is not a structured group with a defined leader. Posts slamming WikiLeaks for asking for donations have appeared, though it remains unclear whether these opinions represent the group as a whole or just a few scattered members. WikiLeaks said openly that the paywall was temporary — “don’t donate a dollar, just wait” — which is arguably anti-information-freedom, but they’re free to make their own choices. Some Anonymous activists claim they provided WikiLeaks more than two million emails released as part of the Syria Files, and also worked together on the Stratfor hack — millions of emails from the Texas-based global intelligence company.
Though we don’t often hear this, that hack was allegedly directed. Was it the FBI? Did they direct Sabu to do this? FBI and Stratfor — has the FBI been in on this? Did the FBI want to screw over Stratfor for some reason? Did they want to make it look like those emails were leaked when they wanted that information in the Stratfor files to come out? Who knows. These are things worth considering. Anything is a possibility.
Jeremy Hammond is in jail right now. Barrett Brown, as recently as September, was online on TinyChat, and there are allegations of an FBI agent threatening him. Everyone’s got their reasons and justifications. Both Jeremy Hammond and Barrett Brown have recently written letters expressing gratitude for the support that has been shown. Get out there and show your support — these guys are locked up right now. They’ve sacrificed themselves to promote these ideas, and incredible information has come to light and action against corruption has taken place.
Surveillance, Invasive Technologies, and the InfoSec Industry
We don’t agree with everything that’s been stated, obviously, but as for spreading information and talking about these corrupt intelligence agencies and the companies that are selling out our privacy — companies like Cubic Corporation, Trapwire, and others. These are all former intelligence guys, probably still connected. Who knows who’s sitting right now getting paid, having sold their soul for a quick buck.
Hopefully more and more passionate activists continue to talk about these invasive technologies — oppressive technologies being sold to governments by the State Department that help exploit and backdoor your cell phone whenever they want, manipulate your online conversations anonymously whenever they want. A statement by Anonymous Ireland said recently, very simple, direct, and honest: “We are as harmless or as dangerous as anyone else. Chances are that we’re less dangerous because we don’t want to screw you all over. Hashtag: Own Us.” That’s Anonymous Ireland on Twitter.
A system known as TrapWire uses facial recognition techniques to capture individuals on closed-circuit cameras operated by cities and other institutions. This method provides unprecedented surveillance and data mining capabilities that governments and corporations want. Recently, documents obtained via Anonymous hackers and provided to journalists show that these companies engaged in surveillance operations against activists — activists who were advocating for victims of the Bhopal disaster and other causes. Large US corporations support this surveillance infrastructure.
This surveillance is extremely expensive to maintain and is usually funded by taxpayers. Los Angeles County spent 1.4 million dollars on surveillance in a single three-month period in 2007. And this is set to change further, with applications emerging. In 2011, Washington DC police were engaged in a pilot project under the Department of Homeland Security. The cops and feds are watching at all times.
Closing: Anonymous Defends Humanity
Anonymous is out there to protect people. They’re constantly exposing pedophile rings, and even in some cases calling out the FBI and the government. You hear about those stories. These are all good things, all humanitarian efforts that Anonymous is regularly engaged in. Operation Haiti and other operations were huge — textbook humanitarian efforts.
Coltan — known as coltan, broken down into substances used in electronics — is crucial for the gadgets that drive billion-dollar companies nowadays. Coltan is mined using slave labor in the Congo. Anonymous is working to expose these injustices as well.
We’re running out of time. I wish we could talk about this more, but I hope we all learned something tonight. Come back tomorrow. This has been Max, signing off. Love you guys. Thanks for listening to Revealing Talk Radio.
