If you thought the The Anonymous Group had hung their suits for the night, think again. The following is a list of additional Tunisian government and financial sites that have been rendered nonoperational; at the time of this publication, each is still down:
www.bmvt.com.tn - Tunisian Stock Exchange
www.sicad.gov.tn - Tunisian Foreign Relations
www.industrie.gov.tn - The Ministry of Industry
www.commerce.gov.tn - Tunisian Government Commerce
www.carthage.tn - The Carthage Palace: Presidency of The Republic of Tunisia
benali.tn - Presidential Elections Site
www.ministeres.tn - Tunisian government site listing various ministries
Expressed motivations for these attacks, as well as yesterday's DDoS attack updates, can be found here.
The Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture and Information has adopted regulation for internet publishing, including electronic newspapers, forums, and blogs. aitnews.com outlines the regulations in an article.
Besides the electronic press, forums and blogging, the thirteen forms of internet publishing include websites, electronic ads, mobile phone or other broadcasts, email groups, electronic archives, room dialogues, and "any form of electronic publishing the ministry wishes to add".
There are ten terms required to obtain a license, including good conduct and behaviour.
Tech Eye reported on an attack on various Zimbabwe government websites by Anonymous in response to censorship of WikiLeaks cables:
Graham Cluley writes from his bog, AKA Naked Security: "Grace Mugabe, wife of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, was recently reported to be suing a newspaper for $15 million after it published a WikiLeaks cable that claimed she has benefited from illegal diamond trading."
Now government websites, including the Ministry of Finance, have been hacked and suffered from DDoS attacks. One page displays an outline of a black suit with the message: "We Are Anonymous. All your base are belong to us. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us..."
A Jan 3, 2011 article in the Sydney Morning Herald also covers the Zimbabwe attacks. Anonymous moved on to the Tunisian government on Jan 2.
Anonymous hacktivists have been busy today carrying out attacks on the Tunisian government site located here (IP address: 193.95.68.223). The site is still down as of the publication of this update, and has been down for several hours.
According to IRC chats with various Anonymous members who appear to be well-informed regarding current events in Tunisia, the motivations for the attacks are numerous, ranging from Tunisia's general and long-standing affinity to Internet censorship, to recent riots in Sidi Bouzid and surrounding towns being covered by various media sources.
Another relatively recent act of censorship that seems to have served as the basis for the present call to arms is the Tunisian government's decision to censor online access to Wikileaks and other whistleblowing sites (like TuniLeaks) that make reference to Tunisia or contain certain keywords that might suggest reference to Tunisia.
The Anonymous group, while diverse, intractable and virtually indefinable in terms of a steady membership class, is nevertheless united in its ideals pertaining to freedom of expression and a collective distaste for censorship, inspiring this most recent declaration:
The Tunisian government wants to control the present with falsehoods and misinformation in order to impose the future by keeping the truth hidden from its citizens. We will not remain silent while this happens. - Anonymous
There have been rumors of possible imminent attacks on 3 further Tunisian sites but they do not appear to be in progress at this time.
Read more here and here. For those who are unable to access media sources due to censorship in their own area, this screenshot may be accessible as an alternative (c/o @AnonymousIRC via Twitter).
Update 2 :
The following sites have also been taken down: www.marchespublics.gov.tn and www.pm.gov.tn. As of 9:05 Eastern Standard Time, the former site displayed this message. This is the welcome page for Mohamed Ghannouchi, the Tunisian Prime Minister. A cached version of the page can be viewed here.
Go to the third update, containing a more exhaustive list of sites taken down.
New York Times: Diplomats Help Push Sales of Jetliners on the Global Market
"The king of Saudi Arabia wanted the United States to outfit his personal jet with the same high-tech devices as Air Force One. The president of Turkey wanted the Obama administration to let a Turkish astronaut sit in on a NASA space flight. And in Bangladesh, the prime minister pressed the State Department to re-establish landing rights at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York."
El País: América Latina recela de la expansión de China (Latin America mistrusts the Chinese expansion)
"Los cables de la diplomacia estadounidense revelan desconfianza entre los líderes latinoamericanos tras la gira por la región de los dirigentes comunistas chinos Xi Jinping y Hui Liangyu y el aumento de las inversiones del gigante asiático. (The American diplomatic cables reveal mistrust between the Latin American leaders over the increasing investments of the Asian giant after the tour made by the Chinese communist leaders Xi Jinping and Hui Liangyu all over the region.)"
Aftenposten: Amerikansk ambassadør advarte mot Khader (U.S. ambassador in Copenhagen warned three years ago against the Danish politician and writer Naser KHAD and stamped him as too extreme in his attacks on Muslims.)
"We no longer see KHAD as a useful contact to promote Muslim integration in Denmark ... He has been so extreme in his attacks on both Muslims and believers in our programs that we are alienating more Muslims by working with KHAD than by ignoring him, writes the American ambassador."
SFGate has an article about facebook and the internet translated from Philippe Rivière of Le Monde:
The world's most powerful online architects and its political leaders plan to "civilize" the free Internet, which they still see as a lawless zone. If they succeed in domesticating the Internet, stating your real identity will be the price you have to pay in order to enjoy full access. The word "web" was originally an image used to describe a decentralized system of interconnected information networks. Nobody imagined that a spider would actually take up residence at its center and start spying on the activities of all Internet users.
According to Haaretz, Israel has only 12 minutes to respond to an attack by Iran. This insight into military preparedness comes from a leaked cable released today.
The cable quotes Ashkenazi as saying that Israel is preparing for a large-scale war with Hamas or Hezbollah. Ashkenazi said that he believes Hezbollah to possess 40,000 rockets, while U.S. officials put the number at closer to 50,000 rockets. "Hamas will have the possibility to bombard Tel Aviv, with Israel's highest population concentration," Ashkenazi reportedly said.
El País: Pacto fallido entre EE UU y Japón para reducir la caza de ballenas (Failed agreement between the United States and Japan to reduce the whale hunting)
"Tokio solicitó mayor dureza contra los ecologistas 'piratas' que acosan a su flota A. Hillary Clinton estuvo de acuerdo, pero Australia impidió el pacto. (Tokyo asked for a rougher attitude towards the "pirat" ecologists that harass their A fleet. Hillary Clinton agreed, but Australia stopped the agreement.)"
El País: EE UU no dio 'luz verde' a Sadam Husein para que invadiera Kuwait (The United States did not approved Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait)
"El presidente iraquí, desesperado por la ruina del país tras la guerra con Irán. (The Iraqi President, desperate due to the ruin of his country.)"
Romanian online media organization cotidianul.ro has given the Press Freedom award to Julian Assange for service to freedom of expression and democratic values.
Criticizing Europe for today handing over the EU presidency to Hungary, which just implemented a widely condemned new media law severely curtailing freedom of expression in that country, the organization warns against trying to conceal dangerous and questionable decisions in countries vulnerable to economic and financial crisis. Besides a vote of solidarity with Julian Assange, the award is meant as a call to all fellow free citizens to "Defend freedom of expression!"
Coverage of the Tunisian riots is being subject to censorship within the country and what some are calling a media blackout internationally. Excerpt from Global Voices coverage follows:
A game of cat and mouse and an actual “cyberwar” is taking place for two weeks now between Tunisian netizens and “Ammar”, the nickname of the very elaborated censorship system deviced by the Tunisian minister of interior. Blogger Astrubal explains its secret techniques.
Tunisian bloggers have long been using circumventing softwares, getting news on facebook and share censored posts, videos, photos or news updates ( like the beating of a journalist) on the main Tunisian blogging platforms and information gateways hosted overseas or via twitter and key words like #sidibouzid.
Still, “Ammar” also seem to want to be rid off social media network: ...
Tunisian netizens- the most connected community on facebook in North Africa- could not upload any photos or videos on facebook on the afternoon of december 30. ...
Demonstrations of support to the #sidibouzid movement took place in Paris, Munich, and Beyrouth. The “media black out” by the main international media outlets and western diplomacy, in addition to the domestic censorship, was a frequent subject of bitterness amongst many Tunisian activists. ...
No internet in Tunis but the media says that the situation is stable yet the protests continue in all regions #sidibouzid ...
The English press seems mostly exempted from the accusations of blackout directed at others.
On November 30, 2010, an article appeared on 7iber.com criticizing the coverage of Wikileaks in the Jordan media:
It is arguably the biggest global story of the month, and quite possibly the year. Yet the biggest leak of confidential government cables in history has not been enough to elicit a proportionate reaction from the Jordanian media, even when Jordan plays an actual role in this bit of news. With the US embassy in Amman apparently being one of the top sources in the world when it comes to the leaks, and cables regarding Jordanian officials positions on Iran and the Middle East peace process being largely quoted in the international media, one is forced to wonder why the local media has initiated a self-imposed embargo on the story.
As the second day of the post-”cablegate” news cycle unfolds, local media in Jordan seems to have only stuck out its head enough to disseminate the government’s position in a slew of standardized articles in the major newspapers all reiterating the same denials and reaffirming the same positions.
Since then, 7iber.com has joined radio station and internet news provider AmmanNet, and Ammon News, all translating the US state cables from Wikileaks into Arabic.
7iber.com has eight cables so far, all mentioning Jordan. AmmanNet has three cables issued by the U.S. Embassy in Amman and eleven cables for Jordan and the Arab region.
For all those who felt that the world would never wade through 251,287 United States embassy cables, once more, they have underestimated the internet. Presenting, the US State Cables:
And to warm up:
So why is Wikileaks a good thing again?
Real-time Wikileaks Twitter search results set to the Beatles
It's going to be a great year.
Democracy Now spends an hour reviewing their interviews with Julian Assange in July in London after the release of the Afghan war logs, and in October, again in London, after WikiLeaks published some 390,000 classified U.S. documents on the war in Iraq.
2010 can be defined as the year of WikiLeaks. The whistleblowing website first made headlines around the world in April when it released a video of a U.S. helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians, killing 12 people, including two Reuters news staff. In July, WikiLeaks created a bigger firestorm when it published more than 90,000 classified U.S. military war logs of the war in Afghanistan. Then in October, WikiLeaks published some 390,000 classified U.S. documents on the war in Iraq, the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history and the greatest internal account of any war on public record. In November, WikiLeaks began releasing a giant trove of confidential State Department cables that sent shockwaves through the global diplomatic establishment.
Allegations and Investigation
On Dec. 16, the FBI raided a Texas server-hosting company in hopes of finding evidence to advance an investigation into the hactivist groups engaged in various attacks against Wikileaks-unfriendly institutions and individuals.
The investigation seems to have been set in motion as a direct result of PayPal's actions; PayPal is said to have supplied the FBI with various IP addresses hosting an IRC chat for current and prospective hacktivists. At least one hard drive was seized.
CBS News has compiled a substantial list of significant revelations made by WikiLeaks during the past year. Their links lead to many other sources and constitute a valuable reference tool and archive.
The distinguished blogger digby of Hullabaloo was moved to comment when she saw this list:
CBS News did something really, really unusual for a major news organization. It published an article about what Wikileaks has revealed. Evidently, CBS is not of the opinion that their job is to conceal these things from the public, which is fairly unique.
Ask yourself why it is that our governing institutions and major corporations believe they have a right to keep all this from you.
UK Information Commissioner Christopher Graham is interviewed by the Guardian:
We are strongly of the view that things should be published. Where you're open things will not be WikiLeaked. Whatever view you take about WikiLeaks – right or wrong – it means that things will now get out. It has changed things. I'm saying government and authorities need to factor it in. Be more proactive, [by] publishing more stuff, because quite a lot of this is only exciting because we didn't know it. You can't un-invent WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is part of the phenomenon of the online, empowered citizen ... these are facts that aren't going to go away. Government and authorities need to wise up to that. ...
One response is that they will clam up and not write anything down, which is nonsense, you can't run any organisation that way. The other is to be even more open. The best form of defence is transparency — much more proactive publication of what organisations do. It's an attitude of 'OK. You want to know? Here it is'.
Democracy Now interviews Robert Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the only U.S. citizens to be executed under the Espionage Act. He states:
Now, but it’s not surprising that the government would use conspiracy, whether it’s against my parents or whether it’s against the WikiLeaks people, because if you’re anybody who engages in conversation or discussion, and the government can get one person to testify that that discussion was to leak classified material, or to transmit information to the Soviet Union, in my parents case, they could be swept up in the dragnet. And you could get people to rat out their friends in order to get more lenient sentences. It sows distrust among the community of support. It scares other people into silence.
And so, what we see here is, if there is a criminal indictment for conspiracy, not an attack on just Julian Assange himself, but on the entire community of support that is seeking to promote the very revolutionary idea that the people have the right to know what their government is doing, that’s what this ultimately is all about. And every left-wing, every progressive organizer, every organizer, in general—how can you engage in organizing, in getting groups of people to protest and coordinating activities, without engaging in what the government would term a conspiracy? And so, it is a threat to all of us. And that is really why I issued my call for us to recognize this. This Espionage Act of 1917 has been the sword of Damocles, sitting quietly, mostly unused, ready to spring out and attack dissenters. And when you have it in the context of the growing secrecy that we face today ... and an authoritarian-oriented Supreme Court, it is a danger to us all.
Iran has reportedly blocked access to El Pais, Jornal de Noticia and other secondary reporting sites in response to a cable released Thursday. According to Jornal de Noticia the cable in question refers to a confrontation between President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
The telegram states that the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, slapped Ahmadinejad after a heated argument in the Supreme National Security Council in January 2010 on how to deal with the protests that followed the controversial elections June 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer
