Anonymous hacks MIT after Aaron Swartz's Suicide

On Sunday, the official site of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) went offline. On a couple of the website’s subdomains, Anonymous hackers published a message in memory of Aaron Swartz, the Reddit co-founder and activist who recently committed suicide.

“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 […],” the hacktivists wrote on the defaced pages.

“Moreover, the situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of U.S. computer crime laws, particularly their punishment regimes, and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining. Aaron's act was undoubtedly political activism; it had tragic consequences,” they added.

The hackers ask the government to “reform” computer crime and copyright and intellectual property laws.

“We call for this tragedy to be a basis for greater recognition of the oppression and injustices heaped daily by certain persons and institutions of authority upon anyone who dares to stand up and be counted for their beliefs, and for greater solidarity and mutual aid in response,” they wrote.

“We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.”

They concluded their statement by apologizing to MIT administrators for temporarily taking over the website.

MIT has ordered an internal investigation into the case of Swartz. Furthermore, JSTOR – the digital library that accused him of illegally downloading content – has released its own statement regarding Swartz’s death.

At the time of writing, the main MIT site appeared to be working properly. The subdomains that hosted the hacktivists’ message have been taken offline.

In the meantime, a petition to remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz has been created. The petition appears to be supported by both Anonymous and the controversial Kim Dotcom.
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FILED UNDER:MIT ANONYMOUS HACKTIVISM PROTEST DEFACED WEBSITE

Anonymous Wants Obama Administration to make DDOS Attacks a Legal Form of Protesting

In a petition submitted to the White House’s “We the People” website, Anonymous hacktivists are asking the Obama administration to make distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks a legal form of protesting.

“With the advance in internet techonology, comes new grounds for protesting. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage,” the initiators of the petition wrote.

“It is, in that way, no different than any ‘occupy’ protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time,” they added.

“As part of this petition, those who have been jailed for DDoS should be immediately released and have anything regarding a DDoS, that is on their ‘records’, cleared.”

Hacktivists have often used DDOS attacks in their protests. It was their “weapon” of choice when US authorities took down the popular Megaupload file sharing service.

At the time, they disrupted numerous high-profile websites, including the ones of the FBI, the US Department of Justice, the White House, and ones belonging to the motion picture industry.

They've also utilized DDOS attacks to protest against Israel and the Syrian government.

The petition, created on January 7, has been signed by 814 individuals. However, in order for it to be taken into consideration, it needs to be signed by 25,000 people by February 6.

Official Anonymous communication channels have hundreds of thousands of followers, so getting 25,000 signatures shouldn’t really be an issue. However, some supporters might be discouraged to do so because those who sign the petition are required to create a whitehouse.gov account.

Anonymous Twitter alternative developed for rioters

After discovering that BBM and their Twittery playthings fed straight into the hands of the cops, smartphone-toting revolutionaries have taken up a new type of instant messaging – Vibe.

Like Twitter in that it is open and lets you mass-message, Vibe is unlike Twitter in that all messages or "vibes" are anonymous. You can set how far you want them to be available too – from 15 metres to global.

The messages self-destruct after a set period of time: from 15 minutes to forever. That makes it much more attractive to those who want to bring down the Man via the medium of street protest, but don't want the Man, or their mothers, or the police looking at twitpics of themselves jumping up and down on burning bin-bags.

According to the New York papers, Vibe is now the instant messaging app of choice for the protesters at Manhattan's #OccupyWallStreet.

Though it is innocently described on the iTunes store as a good way to chat to other people near you at football games or conferences, developer Hazem Sayed, who is based in New York, is actively keen for his app to be adopted by the protesters.

It seems to be catching on:

The NY Daily News interviewed protester Drew Hornbein, a member of the camp's Internet Committee, who explained its uses to the paper:

"Let's say you're protesting and someone up ahead sees that the cops are getting ready to kettle people, they can send out this vibe that only lasts a few minutes that says, 'Cops are kettling'," said Hornbein.

"It's anonymous too, so not only are you able to send out relevant information to a small radius, but it also disappears, there's no record of it, so no one can come after the person who sent it."

Another social media platform for Theresa May to worry about.

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Anonymous plans to take down BART Web site today

Hacktivist group Anonymous says it will take the Web site of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system off line later today for six hours while also inundating BART fax lines and e-mail accounts. A press release published online detailing the group's plans says the actions are in retaliation for BART's unilateral shutdown of cell phone service Thursday night at some BART stations to prevent another planned protest.

The Thursday demonstration had been planned to protest the fatal shooting of a man by a BART police officer last month. BART officials said they took cell phone service offline in an attempt to disrupt the planned protest, which was to be coordinated via mobile devices, because they worried the demonstration could "lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators." An earlier protest last month had disrupted BART service.

Chatter about #OpBART cropped up Friday on Twitter, but few details could be found until plans for a peaceful protest Monday evening outside a central San Francisco BART station began circulating. That was followed with this posting late Saturday of the planned attack on BART's e-mail, faxes, and Web site:

Anonymous will take the following actions over the next 48 hours.
1) We have begun at once a massive Black Fax and E-Mail Bomb action, where we will fill every inbox and fax machine at BART with thousands of copies of our message that this outage was unacceptable
2) Tomorrow, Sunday - August 14, 2011 at High Noon Pacific Time we, Anonymous - will remove from the internet the web site of BART located at www.bart.gov for exactly six hours. That's twice as long as they shut off the cell phones for.
3) On Monday - August 15, 2011 at 5:00 PM Pacific Time there will be a physical protest at the Civic Center Bart Station. Expect us !

BART spokesman Jim Allison said, they are aware of both the planned cyberattacks and Monday's planned protest. He would not elaborate on any plans to deal with either, but said that BART will "continue trying to provide information to our customers [via the BART Web site.]"

Allison says he has not yet heard or seen any evidence of the e-mail and fax "bomb" campaign that the Anonymous release claims is already underway.

As Sunday commuting was just getting underway, at least one sympathetic Twitter account was already reporting support for Anonymous' cause:

"Wow...walking to the @SFBART and I'm starting to see people with masks on. "