Daily Archives: 13 January 2011

US subpoenas Wikileaks tweets

Intellectual Property helps makes this behavior possible. In an IP-free world, people could more easily abandon a company that cooperates with abusive governments (like ours), but in our world, where ideas are considered property, and imitation can be halted by means of government violence, it is much less likely companies will have a reason to resist such invasive actions.

open quotehe US government has subpoenaed Twitter in a bid to support an ongoing criminal investigation into whether Wikileaks and people involved or connected to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic member of parliament, broke the law.

According to Wikileaks lawyer Mark Stephens live on the BBC News a short time ago, it is believed Facebook and Google (see here) have also been contacted regarding Wikileaks members and potential whistleblowers.

Update (12:20am GMT): Mark Stephens on the BBC News also makes clear that the court order will also cover the “600,000 odd followers that Wikileaks has on Twitter“.close quote (Read more from zdnet.com)

FBI Raids ISPs Trying to Track Down ‘Anonymous’

open quoteEfforts to track down the “Anonymous” group involved in the Operation Payback DDoS attacks have included an FBI raid against a Texas-based server-hosting company according to recent reports.

Other raids have been reported in Germany and British Columbia relating to the attacks, but they don’t appear to have led to any new arrests. So far the arrest of a 16 year old Dutchman for his involvement in the attacks was the only one which has come.

But the documents suggest that the FBI is really keen on tracking down those involved, and has been targeting the IP addresses used in the organization of the attacks. Officials have declined comment on what information was garnered from the seizure of servers involved.

Though “Anonymous” predates the recent high-profile attacks, the organization’s use of a “voluntary botnet” to attack the websites of organizations which have moved against WikiLeaks has garnered them enormous media attention, as well as attention from law enforcement. The group briefly downed the websites of Visa and MasterCard early in December.close quote (Read more from news.antiwar.com)