Free Republic

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lost another high-profile supporter as Anonymous, the hacking collective, said the whistleblowing site had been “ruined by egos”. Anonymous, a loose group of internet “hacktivists”, has been one of WikiLeaks’ closest allies during the past two years, launching cyber attacks against the site’s opponents and, some claim, becoming a source of its material. ...But leading Anonymous accounts on Twitter, which rallied behind WikiLeaks and Mr Assange despite his legal and financial woes, have now withdrawn their support, decrying the freedom-of-information project as a “One Man Julian Assange show”. Calling the split “the end of an...

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania recently caught the attention of the hacktivist collective Anonymous when the city government targeted a businessman’s attempt to clean up downtown trash. The city owns a vacant lot overrun with weeds and debris, adjacent to Ori Feibush’s coffeeshop. After years of battling with the city over the eyesore, Feibush took it upon himself to clean it up. He spent at least $20,000 of his own money to remove 40 tons of trash and renovate the property — a project Anonymous claims would have cost Philadelphia taxpayers $1.5 million. The city is threatening Feibush with legal action for trespassing...

According to many customers, sites hosted by major web host and domain registrar GoDaddy are down. According to the official GoDaddy Twitter account the company is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it. Update: customers are complaining that GoDaddy hosted e-mail accounts are down as well, along with GoDaddy phone service and all sites using GoDaddy’s DNS service. Update 2: Anonymous is claiming responsibility. A member of Anonymous known as AnonymousOwn3r is claiming responsibility, and makes it clear this is not an Anonymous collective action. The service Down For Everyone Or Just Me says the GoDaddy company...

President Obama is an Apple user through and through. He answers Reddit questions from a MacBook, got an early iPad from Steve Jobs himself, and Rush Limbaugh even thinks Obama hacked Siri just to mess with him. But just because you’re the leader of the Free World doesn’t mean you’re not susceptible to AntiSec hacks too. The UDID for President Obama’s iPad may or may not have been among the more than 1 million UDIDs the AntiSec leaked this morning from the FBI’s databases.

Federal authorities are urging law enforcement agencies across the country to watch out for signs that extremists might be planning to wreak havoc at the upcoming political conventions -- by blocking roads, shutting down transit systems and even employing what were described as acid-filled eggs. The warning came in a joint FBI-Department of Homeland Security bulletin issued Wednesday. The bulletin specifically warned about a group of anarchists from New York City who could be planning to travel to the convention sites to disrupt the events by blockading bridges. Anarchists "see both parties as the problem," so both conventions are prime...

A Roman Catholic Church employee who gave $600 to a group leading the opposition to a Minnesota constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples does not have to reveal his name. State campaign finance regulators said in a decision Friday, Aug. 17, that the donor could be identified as "John Doe" in contribution reports to protect him from being fired by church officials. It is the first time an individual has been exempted from the state's disclosure requirement, said Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. The donor told the board that when he...

Ecuador has granted asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange two months after he took refuge in its London embassy while fighting extradition from the UK. It said his human rights might be violated if he is sent to Sweden to be questioned over sex assault claims. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK would not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the country and the move was also criticised by Stockholm. Ecuador said it would seek to negotiate arrangements for Mr Assange to leave. "We don't think it is reasonable that, after a sovereign government has made the decision...

PITTSBURGH — Wednesday night the 14th, 15th and 16th bomb threats were reported at different buildings on the University of Pittsburgh campus. School officials sent out the following alert to students and staff just after 5 p.m., "A general bomb threat has been received for the Cathedral of Learning, Posvar Hall and Litchfield Tower C. Please evacuate these buildings. If safe to do so please tell others of this message." Wedneday morning a 13th bomb threat was reported at a building on the University of Pittsburgh's campus. The threat was reported at Thackeray Hall around 10:30 a.m. University officials increased...

I’m reassured—indeed, encouraged—indeed, buoyed!—by this morning's Politico article, "GOP pros fret over Paul Ryan." "GOP pros" are the stupidest part of "the stupid party." For one thing, they're not very professional—why are they using the press to take shots at the Ryan pick in the first place? For another, they're cowardly—“nearly all the Republican professionals interviewed for this story said they would share their unfiltered views only 'on background' rules of attribution." Most of all, they're a terrific contrarian indicator. When "GOP pros" are most full of fear and apprehension about Republican prospects—for example, Reagan in 1980, Gingrich in 1994,...

"I am not a 24-year-old gun-slinging killer from Aurora," James P. Holmes wrote on Facebook Friday morning. Holmes is a Denver man who shares first and last names with the suspect in the deadly shooting that took place at a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie, just hours before, James Eagan Holmes. As the investigation got under way in the shooting at the "The Dark Knight Rises" premiere, in which 70 members of the estimated 300-seat crowd were killed or injured, those looking for clues to make sense of it all went online for a digital footprint for the...

(CBS News) New York state lawmakers have proposed a ban on anonymous online comments. Called the Internet Protection Act (A.8688/S.6779), the legislation would require a web site administrator to pull down anonymous comments from sites, including "social networks, blogs forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages."The bill states: A web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or...

The hacking group “Anonymous” appeared to have shut down the Home Office website on Saturday night, in an apparent protest against extraditions of British citizens to the US and so-called “draconian surveillance proposals.” An apparent “denial of service” attack made it impossible to access the Home Office website for at least an hour. Those trying to access the website were instead confronted by a notice that “Due to a high volume of traffic this page is currently unavailable.” The attack appeared to have been partly in protest at extradition proceedings against Gary McKinnon, 46, who is accused of hacking US...

The computer hacking group Anonymous has promised to shut down the Internet in its entirety this Saturday, March 31st, according to a post on "pastebin" which has since gotten 165,000 views. The piece states that Anonymous will be attempting this in order to protest "SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun." The post, which was then uploaded to Reddit, promises an attack on 13 root DNS servers. Anyone trying to access a website, it promises, will get an error message. The group, however,...

A recent threat, purportedly from the hacker group Anonymous, stated boldly that its members would stop the internet on 31 March ...

When hacktivist Jeremy Hammond was arrested last week in Chicago as a part of a wide government investigation in the online group Anonymous, his mother, Rose Collins, called him a genius without any wisdom. “Again?” she asked when informed by the Chicago Tribune that her son had been arrested for hacking. “I love my son, but he is a genius with no brain. He has a 168 IQ, but he has no wisdom.”  In an attempt to educate the world at-large about the dangers of Anonymous, Rose Collins reached out to Townhall Finance and spoke about Jeremy and Anonymous. She ended by asking a...

A page from the Vatican website is seen in 2008 when the site, without fanfare, added a Latin section. (CNS photo) By Francis X. RoccaCatholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican's official website suffered an attack by computer hackers March 7, cutting off access by users for several hours. Italian media outlets reported that the website, vatican.va, became unresponsive around mid-afternoon local time, just as several other websites carried messages taking credit for the disruption in the name of the hacking group Anonymous. Email to and from the vatican.va domain was reportedly also blocked for at least...

Here’s a lesson to the Hackers for the 99%: You’re not anonymous once you get caught. And you’ll always get caught, because, um, the internet was designed by the Department of Defense. And that’s a group that doesn’t want anyone to remain anonymous for long.  In fact, they are so good at tracking people down-with extreme prejudice- that they can make sure a very large bomb fits in a very tiny place. But that’s not your biggest problem. No your biggest problem is that hubris led you to a confrontation with Mexican drug lords who have all sorts of contacts...

For months, The Real Sabu, as he called himself on Twitter, boasted, cursed and egged on his followers to take part in computer attacks against private companies and government agencies worldwide. “Don’t give in to these people,” he wrote on Monday, ridiculing “cowards” in the federal government. “Fight back. Stay strong.” It turns out that Sabu had become an informant for federal law enforcement authorities. On Tuesday, in what could be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the government crackdown on a loose, large confederation of politically inspired “hacktivists,” he was unmasked and revealed to have helped the authorities catch...

Top members of the computer hacker group "Anonymous" and its offshoots were arrested and charged Tuesday after a wide-ranging investigation used the help of a group leader who was working as a secret government informant. Five of the suspects, considered by investigators among the "most sophisticated hackers in the world," were arrested in the United States and Europe and charged in a Manhattan federal court over their alleged role in high-profile cyberattacks against government agencies and large companies, according to an indictment. A sixth man, Hector Xavier Monsegur, a notorious hacker known as "Sabu," pleaded guilty in August to computer...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In the U.S. government's biggest crackdown to date on a hacktivist group calling itself "Anonymous," four leaders and one other activist were arrested Tuesday and charged with a computer hacking conspiracy. The U.S. Department of Justice also revealed Tuesday that it had snared the prime leader of an Anonymous offshoot group called LulzSec, which conducted a high-profile, two-month hacking rampage last summer against corporate and government targets. -snip- What particularly set the movement on edge was the conviction and apparent turning of the LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur, known by his hacker alias Sabu.