Anonymous member Peter Fein deanonymizes himself in a video interview with BBC:
Anonymous ‘hactivist’ goes public on cyber protests
See also: My video interview with Fein and The Doctor.
Taghacktivism
In this video I speak with Peter Fein and The Doctor of the digital activist group Telecomix, which worked to keep the Internet available in the middle east during the Arab Spring by providing dial-up Internet access and even using fax machines to send information into Libya. The Doctor also works on the wireless mesh darknet project Project Byzantium. In this interview we talk about what Telecomix does and why it matters.
This interview has been a long time coming. It was conducted at Contact Summit in October, 2011. It was recorded at the end of a long day and we were all pretty tired. Please excuse the background noise, this was the quietest place we could find.
See also:
Ars Technica’s article on darknets
An idea for solving the distance problem in wireless darknets from acrylicist
From SiliconAngle:
Hacktivism is the result of mashing up the words hack and activism and was coined in 1998 by Omega, a member of the Cult of the Dead Crow hacker crew. By definition, hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends or “the nonviolent use of legal and/or illegal digital tools in pursuit of political ends”. Hacktivism can be in the form of web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies,virtual sit-ins, typosquatting, and virtual sabotage. Wikipedia also defines hacktivism as “the writing of code to promote political ideology: promoting expressive politics, free speech, human rights, and information ethics through software development.”
TechCrunch TV interviews Bruce Sterling on Hacktivism at SXSW:
Recently, one or more of the University of East Anglia’s servers were hacked and a large number of private e-mails exchanges between researchers at Climate Research University were made public.
NASA climate scientist Gavin A. Schmidt writes on his non-NASA endorsed blog:
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
Jones is quoted in New York Times on the subject and confirms that that particular e-mail is real, but the university says they cannot confirm that all the material circulating on the Internet is authentic.
You can read a few quotes from the e-mails at the Telegraph.
James Delingpole at the Telegraph claims these e-mails prove there was a conspiracy to hoax the world about global warming, but in my opinion a reading of this material only proves the CRU researchers were earnest, passionate believers in their research.
(Thanks to Trevor for the Telegraph link)
The hacker/performance art/activist organization Electronic Disturbance Theater has invented a new device, the Transborder Immigrant Tool:
We looked at the Motorola i455 cell phone, which is under $30, available even cheaper on eBay, and includes a free GPS applet. We were able to crack it and create a simple compasslike navigation system. We were also able to add other information, like where to find water left by the Border Angels, where to find Quaker help centers that will wrap your feet, how far you are from the highway—things to make the application really benefit individuals who are crossing the border.
Some background:
In the 80s I was a member of something called the Critical Art Ensemble. We wrote a series of books published in the 90s that speculated on what the future, and computers especially, might bring. Our core speculations were that we would see the emergence of three different arcs of capitalism in the 90s: digital capitalism, genetic capitalism or clone capitalism, and particle capitalism or nano-driven technology. We decided we would speculate not only on the artistic aspect of these emerging capitalisms but also on how we could intervene as artist-activists into each of these areas. We developed the idea of electronic civil disobedience as a way to mediate the emergence of digital capitalism. Some Critical Art Ensemble members have even been arrested for their work. One in particular, Steve Kurtz, was brought before a grand jury in 2004. Homeland Security considered his use of nonpathogenic bacteria in certain museum installations a bioterrorist threat.
Vice: Transborder Immigrant Tool Helps Mexicans Cross Over Safely
(Thanks Josh Ellis)
The US is blaming China for recent government web site hacks. Sounds like more new Cold War crap to me. The story also mentions the fact that “American hackers have vandalized scores of Chinese Web sites since the spy plane collision.”
Websites operated by the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services were working properly Sunday after being vandalized one day before by hackers who federal officials believe are from China.
A picture of Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot who was killed in a collision with a U.S. Navy spy plane April 1, was posted Saturday on the Department of Labor’s website. Agency spokesman Stuart Roy compared the vandalism to graffiti: “You can lock up a store so the merchandise is safe,” he said, “but you can’t stop somebody running by with a can of spray paint.”
© 2024 Technoccult
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑