Matthew Keys, deputy social media editor of Thomson Reuters and former web producer at a Tribune Company-owned television station in Sacramento, Calif., has been charged in a federal indictment for allegedly conspiring with members of hacker group "Anonymous" to hack into a Tribune Company-owned website. A Justice Department press release said that Keys, 26, was charged with providing log-in credentials to a Tribune Company server and encouraging Anonymous members to disrupt the website. A hacker then made changes to a Los Angeles Times news feature. Keys could face up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 for each count if convicted.

Justice Department:

Matthew Keys, 26, of Secaucus, N.J., was charged in the Eastern District of California with one count each of conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, transmitting information to damage a protected computer and attempted transmission of information to damage a protected computer.

Keys was employed by Sacramento-based television station KTXL FOX 40, as its web producer, but was terminated in late October 2010.

The three-count indictment alleges that in December 2010 Keys provided members of the hacker group Anonymous with log-in credentials for a computer server belonging to KTXL FOX 40’s corporate parent, the Tribune Company. According to the indictment, Keys identified himself on an Internet chat forum as a former Tribune Company employee and provided members of Anonymous with a login and password to the Tribune Company server. After providing log-in credentials, Keys allegedly encouraged the Anonymous members to disrupt the website. According to the indictment, at least one of the computer hackers used the credentials provided by Keys to log into the Tribune Company server, and ultimately that hacker made changes to the web version of a Los Angeles Times news feature.

The indictment further alleges that Keys had a conversation with the hacker who claimed credit for the defacement of the Los Angeles Times website. The hacker allegedly told Keys that Tribune Company system administrators had thwarted his efforts and locked him out. Keys allegedly attempted to regain access for that hacker, and when he learned that the hacker had made changes to a Los Angeles Times page, Keys responded, “nice.”

Each of the two substantive counts carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The conspiracy count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.

Twelve celebrities and politicians are victims of a hacker who posted information about their finances online, including their Social Security numbers, credit-card information, and mortgage amounts. Michelle Obama, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Hillary Clinton, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson, Ashton Kutcher, and Joe Biden are among those who were hacked.

NBC News Los Angeles:

The site, which bore an internet suffix originally assigned to the Soviet Union, remained active Monday evening and had garnered nearly 70,000 hits, according to a ticker on the homepage.

It did not state how the information was obtained or why the 17 people targeted on the site were selected, describing the records only as "secret files."
...
Several of the pages, to which we are chosing not to link, featured unflattering pictures of the celebrities or government officials whose information was posted.

While government officials often have to disclose details on their finances – and celebrity divorces sometimes feature public financial data – the information posted online exceeds those disclosures.

The LAPD and FBI are both investigating the incident, according to TMZ.

Hacktivists claiming to be from the group Anonymous threatened early Saturday to release sensitive information about the U.S. Department of Justice as a response to the prosecution and death of Aaron Swartz.

They claimed to have one such file on multiple servers ready for immediate release.

The hacktivist collective had previously knocked the DOJ and MIT's websites offline as a form of "tribute" to Aaron.

The website of the U.S. government agency responsible for federal sentencing guidelines was hijacked, and a message demanding the United States reform its justice system or face incriminating leaks to select news outlets:

Two weeks ago today, a line was crossed. Two weeks ago today, Aaron Swartz was killed. Killed because he faced an impossible choice. Killed because he was forced into playing a game he could not win — a twisted and distorted perversion of justice — a game where the only winning move was not to play.

Anonymous immediately convened an emergency council to discuss our response to this tragedy. After much heavy-hearted discussion, the decision was upheld to engage the United States Department of Justice and its associated executive branches in a game of a similar nature, a game in which the only winning move is not to play.

The "game" mentioned in the video involves releasing a file ("warhead") containing sensitive information about the Justice Department. Anonymous isn't saying just what the information is:

The contents are various and we won't ruin the speculation by revealing them. Suffice it to say, everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public. At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file. Any media outlets wishing to be eligible for this program must include within their reporting a means of secure communications.

The hacked site also contained links to "warheads" each named after one of the Supreme Court justices, and each linked to a website containing a "503 service unavailable" error message.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission took its website down for several hours before restoring it later Saturday, although it still didn't seem to be quite fully functional at last check.

A full transcript of Anonymous' message after the jump.

Continue reading »

The hacktivist group Anonymous has claimed responsibility for taking down a Texas school district's website in protest of new controversial student tracking ID badges.

In an e-mail to KENS 5, Anonymous stated that they took down the district's website on Saturday, and also included in the e-mail a link to a recent Kens5.com article on the district's new Smart IDs.

From the email:

"We saw your article ... Anonymous (@tr1xxyAnon) are not going to allow this!"

Via:

In response to an e-mail from Kens5.com seeking further comment, Anonymous said they are fighting for the students and want answers from NISD officials.

"They're tracking students! They have rights too. I want a statement about this, nobody agrees with that, even the parents!" Anonymous said in an e-mail.

A call seeking comment from NISD was not immediately returned.

NISD officials have said that the goal of the new program is to increase attendance in order to secure more funding from the state. Officials said even an 1 or 2 percent boost could increase attendance-based revenue by more than $2 million.

Last week, a student at John Jay High School was granted a restraining order against principal Robert Harris, who had threatened to expel the student for not wearing her SmartID:

A student at John Jay High School has been granted permission by the court to continue classes after she was nearly kicked out for refusing to wear an ID that tracks her whereabouts.

Andrea Hernandez, who identifies herself as a Christian, cited religious reasons for not wearing the new student-tracking ID, according to court documents.

Hernandez said that the barcoded tracking ID badges are viewed as “the mark of the beast” by her religion.

Political Ad Data Comes Online 2014 But It's Not Searchable

by Justin Elliott ProPublica, Aug. 2, 2012, 2:38 p.m.

After a bruising months-long fight between media corporations and the Federal Communications Commission, a government website came online today that will feature political ad data from television stations around the country.

This means that detailed files about political advertising 2014 which show who is buying political ads, how much they are paying, and when the ads are running, among other information 2014 will finally be available online. In the past, those interested in the files, which are by law public, had to travel to stations to get physical copies.

Though the new system is far from perfect, it will likely give the public and journalists a new window into how an expected few billion dollars are spent on political ads on local television this election cycle.

For now, only the affiliates of the top four broadcast networks in the top 50 markets will have to upload their political files to the FCC site. (The Sunlight Foundation has a map of the missing markets here.) All broadcasters will have to start complying in July 2014.  And the rule is not retroactive for political ad data 2014 so the site will only have information on political ad buys going forward.

The FCC requires broadcasters to upload information on political ad purchases "as soon as possible, which the Commission has determined is immediately absent extraordinary circumstances."

So what can we find on the new site? So far, not very much. Few broadcasters have uploaded files. But there are a few examples of what we'll get more of in the coming weeks.

Here, for example, are the files posted by WCPO, the ABC affiliate in Cincinatti. If you navigate to the "Federal" folder, then the "President" folder, then the "Obama" folder, you will find this contract (.pdf) for an ad buy the campaign made this week.

You can see that GMMB Inc., a Democratic ad firm in Washington that works with the Obama campaign, paid a total of $67,110 for three days worth of ads on the station this week. The ads were targeting the 35 demographic and ran on shows including Jeopardy and the Jimmy Kimmel Show. The filing does not make clear which specific ad was run.

The new system has a few serious limitations.

It is difficult to get an overall picture of spending by a single campaign, super PAC, or other outside group. You can only search by station name, network affiliation, or channel number, not by, say, typing in the name of the political campaign or outside group that bought an ad. I asked the FCC about this and an agency official who declined to be named said that "plans are to have a search function shortly but the scope is yet undetermined."

Then there's the fact that, as we've previously noted, the FCC declined to require broadcasters to upload files in a single format. That means that it won't be easy to aggregate data and analyze it in volume. That's in contrast, for example, to federal election filings, which are uploaded in a single, so-called "machine-readable" format that can be analyzed with computers.

The head of the FCC's media bureau has said that putting the files in a single format is a "long-term goal."

The new FCC website is also still under construction. The "Help" section, for example, is blank. And a page for developers also appears incomplete.

Another part of the public file that is worth keeping an eye on requires broadcasters to post "a list of the chief executive officers or members of the executive committee or board of directors" of any entity that pays for ads or programming on a "political matter or matter involving the discussion of a controversial issue of public importance." This could come in handy when, as often happens around Election Day, opaque outside groups are created and start buying ads.

It's also worth noting that there's a range of other non-political information from broadcasters' public file that will be going online, including: information on who owns a station; an Equal Employment Opportunity file describing the racial makeup of a station's employees; a map showing where a station's signal reaches;  descriptions of children's programming on the station; and a range of other information. 

ProPublica launched a project earlier this year, Free the Files, to get readers to go to TV stations and send in political files to be posted on our site. Stay tuned for more coverage of the FCC and political ad spending. 

Via:

ALLIES of global hacker group Anonymous have put on their masks and picked up litter in a Tokyo park as a protest against tough illegal download laws.

The 80-strong collective said yesterday's busy bee was a protest against Japan's tougher laws against illegal downloads.

In light rain, they took part in an "anonymous cleaning service" for one hour in a park and on pavements in the shopping and entertainment hub of Shibuya, a change from the group's trademark website attacks.

They were dressed in black and wore masks of Guy Fawkes, the central figure in England's 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up parliament, which have become a symbol of protests by the loosely linked alliance around the world.

The group said that cyber attacks are the work of other global Anonymous networks in the global internet community, and that they prefer "constructive and productive solutions."

"We want to make our fellow citizens aware of the problem with a productive message."

A Seattle Occupy group drops $5,000 from hotel to protest money in politics: Occupy protesters in Seattle tossed $5,000 out of a hotel window to protest the influence of money in politics.

MicCheckWallStreet, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, staged the demonstration as the group's website called for an amendment to the Constitution and that it is "time we declared independence from Citizens United" – citing the supreme court case which effectively ruled that corporations can make political contributions.

The YouTube video above shows two people tossing the cash -- in $1 and $5 bills -- out of a window above downtown Seattle.

The group sought donations on its website for a wepay.com account. The wepay page shows that McCheckWallStreet met its $5,000 goal with collections from only 37 donors.

"Every dollar you donate is guaranteed to be thrown off a building and is tax deductible, what more could you ask for?!," said a statement on MicCheckWallStreet's website.

Stating that "money is the new tea", the statement said that the event was "as much art installation as protest", declaring that "it sends a powerful message".

The following UStream video shows a small crowd that gathered in an alley where some of the money was falling:

Video streaming by Ustream

[Via]

H/T reader MountainMan23.

In a press release, Anonymous has claimed to have leaked 1.7 GB of data stolen from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, a Department of Justice agency that collects and analyzes crime data. The file has been leaked to The Pirate Bay. This is a Monday Mail Mayhem release.

Greetings world,
We are Anonymous.
Today we are releaseing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now.
Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump.
We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what
inevitably happened.

We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information.

We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free.

The price we pay very often is our own freedom. The price governments pay is the exposure of their corruption and the truth being revealed, for the truth will set us free in the end.

So once more we call on you. Hackers, activists, and freedom fighters; join us in our struggle against these corporate

Then a man without a mask says the following:

What’s next? What’s next is… all they can do is shut down the Internet itself. And we see, how that went for them, in Egypt. And we the people know, that when the government shuts down the Internet, that’s when it’s time to shut down the government.

Then he puts the Guy Fawkes mask on,and repeats the Anonymous slogan:

We are Anonymous
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect us

He then adds an extra warning, “And now, expect a whole lot more.”

Is this data actually part of what was foretold by Christopher Doyon, aka "Commander X"? Doyon is the Anonymous member who is hiding in Canada because he's wanted in the United States and facing a 15 year prison sentence for a prior hack attack:

Q. What’s next for Anonymous?
A: Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems.

I still find myself incredulous at the possibility that government employees with access to every classified government database could've turned over the keys to the kingdom, but it seems that Anonymous wants to convince us of exactly that.

There have been at least 40 alleged members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous arrested during the past year. In an interview with the National Post, one of the group's last remaining leaders tips us off to the group's next planned action.

Christopher Doyon, aka "Commander X," whose name is public because he's been indicted for hacking a California county government website after government officials forcibly removed a homeless encampment from courthouse steps. Doyon faces 15 years in prison for that action. For the interview, he met with a reporter and photographer from the Post in Canada where he is a now a fugitive from the FBI.

At the end of the interview, Doyon makes a whopper of a claim, make of it what you will:

Q. What’s next for Anonymous?
A: Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems.

Every classified database is a bit of a stretch for me to wrap my brain around. I can't even begin to imagine how many such databases our nation uses. But remember that Bradley Manning released a few hundred thousand emails from just one such database.

The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the U.S. State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the U.S. Department of Defence in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody.

Now people are leaking to Anonymous and they’re not coming to us with this document or that document or a CD, they’re coming to us with keys to the kingdom, they’re giving us the passwords and usernames to whole secure databases that we now have free reign over. … The world needs to be concerned.

Now this claim, that the Anons next action could be the result of an inside job is quite plausible, and again, recall Bradley Manning. As we saw with Manning's Cablegate, just that one database created quite the stir for the U.S. government. Even with the "keys" to but a few of these databases would make Anonymous quite the force to be reckoned with, despite their diminished membership.

Congratulations! You have your own bank, as in the Yes Men strike again...

Note: A "phishing" site warning may appear when you click on the link, but you don't need to worry, it isn't. Just click on the "ignore" option and proceed to the site, and if you have a moment to report the phishing tag as being false that would be great.

In a personal letter on the website from the CEO of Your Bank of America, Brian Moynihan (I'm sure we can get someone else to fill that spot soon enough!):

Dear Fellow American,

Welcome to your Bank of America.

Today, it's time to acknowledge that our Bank isn't working anymore—not just for the market, but for people, our real customers. We've paid $8.58 billion in relief to borrowers and $3.24 billion in fines. We face lawsuits and claims from citizens, companies, and state and local governments. There is even a petition with the Federal Reserve to break up our bank, adding yet more uncertainty to our position. Finally, we've found ourselves front-and-center in the national foreclosure crisis, and deep in unpopular investments like coal, at a time when climate change is a growing societal concern.

As a result, our company’s shares have fallen precipitously, and now trade at one-fifth their 2008 price. Our Bank may, in fact, soon need help keeping afloat—and much as in 2008, you, the American taxpayer, will be asked to provide that assistance.

The institutions you rescued in 2008 have continued much as they always were, engaging in the same practices that brought our economy so close to collapse. To make sure that this time around, things turn out differently, we at Bank of America are launching a forum in which you, the American taxpayer, can prepare for the time that you own us. By sharing ideas, and reading and rating the ideas of others, you can begin charting a course for this Bank—your course.

And when the day comes that you, the American taxpayer, own this Bank, you will be ready to make it a Bank for America—one that brings benefits not to the privileged only, but to all of our customers, and to all of our stakeholders too.

Welcome to your Bank of America.

Brian T. Moynihan
Chief Executive Officer
President

Be sure to visit Your Bank of America soon -- while it's still there -- and submit your ideas in the ideas section.