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Saturday 17 December 2011
Article for 20th & 23rd of December.
In response to SOPA, Anonymous hackers target US government
Anonymous hackers launch "Operation Blackout" in response to Stop Online Piracy Act now before Congress.
Jeb BooneDecember 16, 2011 18:43Anonymous hackers launch "Operation Blackout" in response to Stop Online Piracy Act now before Congress.
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Hackers are lining up to target the US government if a bill that they say would threaten internet freedom is passed by the US Congress. (Spencer Platt/AFP/Getty Images)
In response to a bill now before Congress, which opponents say would dramatically erode internet freedom, the free and fair use of copyrighted material and online privacy, hacker groups have begun to publicly threaten to launch attacks on US government workers and websites.
The US House Judiciary Committee debated for a second day on Friday the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that would bestow the US Department of Justice and individual copyright holders with unprecedented powers to shut down websites and crack down on users for what they deem to be violations of copyrights.
The vote was postponed after day two of the debate after a wayward tweet derailed talks on Thursday. Rep. Steve King (R – Iowa) tweeted that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D – TX) was “boring.” The hearing then grinded to a halt after Jackson Lee took issue with the offensive comment. The hearing fell behind schedule and the vote was delayed until Dec. 21.
The delay will give the bill’s detractors more time to organize its calls for the bill to be dropped. The bill as it now stands appears to have enough votes to pass the House of Representatives and move on to the Senate.
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But opponents — including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Mozilla, the Brookings Institute, Reporters Without Borders, the ACLU, and Human Rights Watch — argue that SOPA would cause “an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigations,” a line that echoes the opinions of many Congressional democrats.
Abandoning letter-writing campaigns and other traditional lobbying efforts, some prominent online hacker groups are now threatening to resort to more direct action.
Anonymous, a hacker organization that made headlines earlier this year by shutting down government websites during the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, said Friday it was preparing to launch what it called “Operation Blackout,” and rallied Americans to participate in nationwide protests in an effort to stop the legislation from passing.
“The United States government shall see that we are truly legion and we shall come together as one force opposing this attempt to censor the internet once again,” Anonymous said in a video posted online.
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Although denying that their announcement was a call to arms for would-be hackers, Anonymous and its allies said that what it deems to be “acts of oppression” would be met with retaliation.
“We, Anonymous, know that this is a hidden campaign to destroy the ability of people across the world to connect and share their experiences with one another. To the American Congress: If you pass this bill, you will pay for it,” the group said.
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4chan, an online forum that is widely considered the darkest, most murky corner of the internet, and which was the birthplace of the Anonymous hacker collective, is awash with calls to arms. In between postings of pornographic images and internet memes, users watched the live internet stream of the SOPA debate among the house judiciary committee, discussing possible means for retaliation should the bill make it to the floor of the US House of Representatives for a vote.
For Anonymous and their hacker brothers-in-arms LulzSec, attacking US government websites is nothing new. The two groups, and a few others, turned last summer into a hack-fest of unseen magnitudes, attacking numerous US government websites, including those belonging to the CIA, the FBI, and the Senate, all in retaliation for the arrest of hackers in the US and the UK. The group also attacked corporate sites belonging to companies like PayPal and Sony for their role in limiting the ability of Wikileaks to receive donations.
But these hacks were not intended to compromise national security or steal credit card information, the hackers said. Anonymous’ hack of choice is the distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), which forces websites to shut down for a finite period of time, embarrassing the organization and, in some cases, causing it to lose revenue. Occasionally, the hackers have also published personal information belonging to employees.
Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the representative that introduced the SOPA bill, has had his personal information released on both pastebin.com (a popular text hosting website used by LulzSec and Anonymous) and 4chan, including his home and work telephone numbers and addresses, as well as other information found on his tax documents.
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Other congressmen and judiciary committee staffers have had their personal phone numbers and home addresses made public as well.
While many 4chan users, operating under the Anonymous banner, demanded that proponents of the bill be harassed using the newly public information, others warned such actions would only serve to further the argument that SOPA is necessary to protect not only copyrights but also personal privacy.
Nevertheless, in the extra time it now has before the bill goes to a vote, Anonymous and other hacker collectives, which view themselves as being under direct, existential threat, hope to rally like-minded individuals to help stop the legislation, encouraging passive internet users to join what could become Anonymous’ largest cyber war yet.
Article for 20th & 23rd of December.
What is the Stop Online Piracy Act?
This battle of copyright versus online freedom may change the Internet as we know it.
Opponents say the bill could prevent intellectual and technological advancement.
You may have heard the term "SOPA" getting thrown around these last few days. But what exactly does it mean?
The future of the Internet is at a crossroads because of SOPA and Protect IP, two controversial bills on their way through congress that may affect you. Major tech companies in Silicon Valley have come out strongly against SOPA. Gizmodo even called it a "digital Patriot Act." But Hollywood says the bill is essential in the battle against online piracy.
CNET's Declan McCullagh broke it down. Here is the key information for a quick refresher:
What's the justification for SOPA and Protect IP?
Rogue websites, many offshore, that steal and pirate American content (movies, etc.) online. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the head of the House Judiciary committee chairman, was the author of SOPA.
Rogue websites, many offshore, that steal and pirate American content (movies, etc.) online. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the head of the House Judiciary committee chairman, was the author of SOPA.
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How would SOPA work?
Like an Internet death penalty. With a court order, the US attorney general could force a service provider like Comcast to prevent access to a website within five days.
Like an Internet death penalty. With a court order, the US attorney general could force a service provider like Comcast to prevent access to a website within five days.
Who supports SOPA?
The three organizations that have probably been the most vocal are the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Hollywood outspent Silicon Valley by about ten-fold on lobbyists in the last two years.
The three organizations that have probably been the most vocal are the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Hollywood outspent Silicon Valley by about ten-fold on lobbyists in the last two years.
Who's opposed to SOPA?
Many people and companies that use the Internet, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL and Linkedin.
Many people and companies that use the Internet, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL and Linkedin.
How is SOPA different from the earlier Senate bill called the Protect IP Act?
SOPA is broader. Protect IP targeted domain name system providers, financial companies and ad networks -- not companies that provide Internet connectivity.
SOPA is broader. Protect IP targeted domain name system providers, financial companies and ad networks -- not companies that provide Internet connectivity.
What are the security-related implications of SOPA?
SOPA would require Internet providers to redirect allegedly piratical domain names to a different server, violating DNSSEC. DNSSEC is a set of security improvements to the domain name system so there is no break in the chain between a website and its user. Innocent websites could be swept up as collateral damage. The method can also be easily bypassed.
SOPA would require Internet providers to redirect allegedly piratical domain names to a different server, violating DNSSEC. DNSSEC is a set of security improvements to the domain name system so there is no break in the chain between a website and its user. Innocent websites could be swept up as collateral damage. The method can also be easily bypassed.
What will SOPA require Internet providers to do?
It could require Internet providers to monitor customers' traffic and block websites suspected of copyright infringement.
It could require Internet providers to monitor customers' traffic and block websites suspected of copyright infringement.
Are there free speech implications to SOPA?
To be blacklisted, a website must be "directed" at the U.S. and the owner has to "promote" acts that can infringe copyright. Opponents say SOPA has language that could blacklist the next YouTube, Wikipedia or WikiLeaks.
To be blacklisted, a website must be "directed" at the U.S. and the owner has to "promote" acts that can infringe copyright. Opponents say SOPA has language that could blacklist the next YouTube, Wikipedia or WikiLeaks.
What has the response to this language been?
The Motion Picture Association of America said SOPA is perfectly constitutional. Mozilla, which makes the Firefox web browser, responded by asking its users to "Protect the Internet: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation...your favorite websites both inside and outside the US could be blocked based on an infringement claim."
The Motion Picture Association of America said SOPA is perfectly constitutional. Mozilla, which makes the Firefox web browser, responded by asking its users to "Protect the Internet: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation...your favorite websites both inside and outside the US could be blocked based on an infringement claim."
Does the U.S. Congress support SOPA?
Support for Protect IP is remarkably broad, and SOPA a little less so. An analysis by the RIAA says that of some 1,900 bills that have been introduced in the Senate, only 18 other bills enjoy the same number of bipartisan cosponsors as Protect IP does.
Support for Protect IP is remarkably broad, and SOPA a little less so. An analysis by the RIAA says that of some 1,900 bills that have been introduced in the Senate, only 18 other bills enjoy the same number of bipartisan cosponsors as Protect IP does.
What happens next?
In terms of Protect IP, the Senate Judiciary committee has approved it and it's waiting for a floor vote. One hurdle: Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has placed a hold on the bill. A vote on SOPA was postponed Friday, probably until sometime in early 2012. Where it goes from there is an open question that depends on where the House Republican leadership stands. Because the House's floor schedule is under the control of the majority party, the decision will largely lie in the hands of House Speaker John Boehner and his lieutenants.
In terms of Protect IP, the Senate Judiciary committee has approved it and it's waiting for a floor vote. One hurdle: Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has placed a hold on the bill. A vote on SOPA was postponed Friday, probably until sometime in early 2012. Where it goes from there is an open question that depends on where the House Republican leadership stands. Because the House's floor schedule is under the control of the majority party, the decision will largely lie in the hands of House Speaker John Boehner and his lieutenants.
Article for 20th & 23rd of December.
Anonymous: Friend ir Foe?
Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is an group, whose members are geographically spread around the world but connected through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, chaotic, global brain.[2] It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known.[3]
In its early form, the concept has been adopted by a decentralized online community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily focused on entertainment. Beginning with 2008, the Anonymous collective has become increasingly associated with collaborative, internationalhacktivism, undertaking protests and other actions, often with the goal of promoting internet freedom and freedom of speech. Actions credited to "Anonymous" are undertaken by unidentified individuals who apply the Anonymous label to themselves as attribution.[4]
Although not necessarily tied to a single online entity, many websites are strongly associated with Anonymous. This includes notable imageboards such as 4chan, their associated wikis, Encyclopædia Dramatica, and a number of forums.[5] After a series of controversial, widely-publicized protests and distributed denial of service(DDoS) attacks by Anonymous in 2008, incidents linked to its cadre members have increased.[6] In consideration of its capabilities, Anonymous has been posited byCNN to be one of the three major successors to WikiLeaks.[7]
Discover more about Anonymous here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
Sunday 11 December 2011
Article for 12th & 16th of December.
EPA: Natural Gas Fracking Linked to Water Contamination
The finding is likely to shape how the U.S. regulates and develops natural gas resources across the Eastern Appalachians
| December 9, 2011 | 12
Image: Abrahm Lustgarten/Pro PublicaIn a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked undergroundwater pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process.
The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to water resources.
In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds known to be used in frack fluids.
"The presence of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethers...and the assortment of other organic components is explained as the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field," the draft report states. "Alternative explanations were carefully considered."
The agency's findings could be a turning point in the heated national debate about whether contamination from fracking is happening, and are likely to shape how the country regulates and develops natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale and across the Eastern Appalachian states.
Some of the findings in the report also directly contradict longstanding arguments by the drilling industry for why the fracking process is safe: that hydrologic pressure would naturally force fluids down, not up; that deep geologic layers provide a watertight barrier preventing the movement of chemicals towards the surface; and that the problems with the cement and steel barriers around gas wells aren't connected to fracking.
Environmental advocates greeted today's report with a sense of vindication and seized the opportunity to argue for stronger federal regulation of fracking.
"No one can accurately say that there is 'no risk' where fracking is concerned," wrote Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on her blog. "This draft report makes obvious that there are many factors at play, any one of which can go wrong. Much stronger rules are needed to ensure that well construction standards are stronger and reduce threats to drinking water."
A spokesman for EnCana, the gas company that owns the Pavillion wells, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an email exchange after the EPA released preliminary water test data two weeks ago, the spokesman, Doug Hock, denied that the company's actions were to blame for the pollution and suggested it was naturally caused.
"Nothing EPA presented suggests anything has changed since August of last year--the science remains inconclusive in terms of data, impact, and source," Hock wrote. "It is also important to recognize the importance of hydrology and geology with regard to the sampling results in the Pavillion Field. The field consists of gas-bearing zones in the near subsurface, poor general water quality parameters and discontinuous water-bearing zones."
The EPA's findings immediately triggered what is sure to become a heated political debate as members of Congress consider afresh proposals to regulate fracking. After a phone call with EPA chief Lisa Jackson this morning, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told a Senate panel that he found the agency's report on the Pavillion-area contamination "offensive." Inhofe's office had challenged the EPA's investigation in Wyoming last year, accusing the agency of bias.
Residents began complaining of fouled water near Pavillion in the mid-1990s, and the problems appeared to get worse around 2004. Several residents complained that their well water turned brown shortly after gas wells were fracked nearby, and, for a time, gas companies operating in the area supplied replacement drinking water to residents.
Beginning in 2008, the EPA took water samples from residents' drinking water wells, finding hydrocarbons and traces of contaminants that seemed like they could be related to fracking. In 2010, another round of sampling confirmed the contamination, and the EPA, along with federal health officials, cautioned residents not to drink their water and to ventilate their homes when they bathed because the methane in the water could cause an explosion.
To confirm their findings, EPA investigators drilled two water monitoring wells to 1,000 feet. The agency released data from these test wells in November that confirmed high levels of carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene, and a chemical compound called 2 Butoxyethanol, which is known to be used in fracking.
Still, the EPA had not drawn conclusions based on the tests and took pains to separate its groundwater investigation in Wyoming from the national controversy around hydraulic fracturing. Agriculture, drilling, and old pollution from waste pits left by the oil and gas industry were all considered possible causes of the contamination.
In the report released today, the EPA said that pollution from 33 abandoned oil and gas waste pits 2013 which are the subject of a separate cleanup program 2013 are indeed responsible for some degree of shallow groundwater pollution in the area. Those pits may be the source of contamination affecting at least 42 private water wells in Pavillion. But the pits could not be blamed for contamination detected in the water monitoring wells 1,000 feet underground.
That contamination, the agency concluded, had to have been caused by fracking.
The EPA's findings in Wyoming are specific to the region's geology; the Pavillion-area gas wells were fracked at shallower depths than many of the wells in the Marcellus shale and elsewhere.
Investigators tested the cement and casing of the gas wells and found what they described as "sporadic bonding" of the cement in areas immediately above where fracking took place. The cement barrier meant to protect the well bore and isolate the chemicals in their intended zone had been weakened and separated from the well, the EPA concluded.
The report also found that hydrologic pressure in the Pavillion area had pushed fluids from deeper geologic layers towards the surface. Those layers were not sufficient to provide a reliable barrier to contaminants moving upward, the report says.
Throughout its investigation in Wyoming, The EPA was hamstrung by a lack of disclosure about exactly what chemicals had been used to frack the wells near Pavillion. EnCana declined to give federal officials a detailed breakdown of every compound used underground. The agency relied instead on more general information supplied by the company to protect workers' health.
Hock would not say whether EnCana had used 2 BE, one of the first chemicals identified in Pavillion and known to be used in fracking, at its wells in Pavillion. But he was dismissive of its importance in the EPA's findings. "There was a single detection of 2-BE among all the samples collected in the deep monitoring wells. It was found in one sample by only one of three labs," he wrote in his reply to ProPublica two weeks ago. "Inconsistency in detection and non-repeatability shouldn't be construed as fact."
The EPA's draft report will undergo a public review and peer review process, and is expected to be finalized by spring.
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