Website Wikileaks has begun releasing sensational information on the multi billion dollar global spying industry. The database contains hundreds of documents shining a light on the methods being used by secret services all over the world, more to come.

Here are some of the emails that were hacked:

superuser@kinnersley.com:q1w2e3r4
admin@kinnersley.com:q1w2e3r4
caius@kinnersley.com:3431a5
studio@kinnersley.com:8a0cf1
darren.corbett@fosterfreeman.com:tyres
jane.obrien@fosterfreeman.com:shoes
paul.white@fosterfreeman.com:114gate
sales@gfdesign.com:93a000
Carolyn.Morton@uwe.ac.uk:f8055a
blue96m3@aol.com:440dff
caroline.dean@fosterfreeman.com:276c03
richard.evans@fosterfreeman.com:a816c4
123@kinnersley.com:f76af2
ANGE.BAILEY@SUFFOLK.PNN.POLICE.UK:e9e6ff
neil.mckeating@city-of-london.pnn.police.uk:2028ef
dwane@ronsmithandassociates.com:32142e

 

For a complete list please click here.

 

Valenzuela pleaded not guilty recently to federal charges of hacking into the Paypal website last December. The group Anonymous was protesting PayPal’s decision to not forward donations to the Internet whistleblower website Wikileaks.

“The indictment alleges that several people launched a DDoS attack on the PayPal servers,” Jordanna Thigpin with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy.

A DDoS, or Dedicated Denial of Service, attack floods a server to a point where it is rendered inaccessible.

“I was on the Internet, reading the news,” Valenzuela said. “I saw something about PayPal shutting down payments to Wikileaks, and I clicked on some other site and joined a protest. And next thing I knew, my house was surrounded by guns.”

Federal agents took her computers and questioned her for five hours.

Thigpin said the case against Valenzuela and other protesters push the limits of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was mostly designed to protect government systems.

“The only entity that (they) may have suffered is a private company,” Thigpin said. “We have to ask ourselves about that.”

Neither the FBI nor the U.S. Attorney would comment on this case today, except to say that it is active and ongoing.

In the meantime, Valenzuela says that being wrongly accused has ruined her life and her faith.

“I thought I had the right to protest,” Valenzuela said, “but was wrong to think I had the freedom to do it.”

News Source comes Thanks to ABC KGO

Anonymous Release 09/16 by @AnonCMD: #RefRef is Ready!

We would like to thank everybody who has put so much time and effort into the #Anonymous movement so far. From #opBART – #OperationFreedom – #OperationPayback – The Up and Coming #OccupyWallStreet and #opSyria – We are succeeding!

I would like to also thank everyone who has made #RefRef a possibility. @AAJKR did a great amount of development work for #Anonymous as a whole, and the #RefRef tool, we thank you. Also, @AnonOps, @JackalAnon, @8Presstorm8, @YourAnonNews, @AnonymousIRC, Rum, Burn, Sabu and so many others who are changing the world today.

We will be releasing #RefRef Saturday, September 17th at Noon GMT. 7AM NYC and 4AM LA – In accordance with #OccupyWallStreet

Here is a video of what the group anonymous is all about:

A man has been charged by police investigating web attacks allegedly carried out by hacking collective Anonymous against firms deemed to have acted against the whistleblower website Wikileaks.

Scotland Yard named student Peter David Gibson, 22, of Castleton Road, Hartlepool, Cleveland as one of the individuals alleged to have waged DDoS attacks on PayPal, Amazon, Mastercard, Bank of America, PayPal and Visa in December 2010.

Those are actions that are contrary to Section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977, it added.

The Computer Misuse Act, which carries maximum prison sentences of 10 years, was not cited by the police.

Gibson is expected to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 7 September.

Detectives at the specialist computer-crime unit quizzed Gibson in April this year.

He was one of six people arrested in connection to a UK police probe into “Operation Avenge Assange”.

The five other UK-based men – aged, 15, 16, 19, 20 and 26 – were arrested, following coordinated police raids in the West Midlands, Northants, Herts, Surrey and London, under the Computer Misuse Act in January this year.

It is alleged that the individuals set off Distributed Denial of Service attacks using a modified piece of open source software known as the Low Orbit Ion Cannon.

The program was used to send a constant stream of data to targeted websites in an effort to shutter the sites.

In July this year federal law-enforcement personnel in the US arrested 16 people accused of carrying out computer crimes that damaged or breached protected systems. Fourteen of these suspects, from 10 states across the US, were alleged to have been involved in “Operation Avenge Assange”.

Anonymous’s assault against PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, Amazon, and others was mounted after those firms cut off services to WikiLeaks, following publication by the whistle-blower site of classified US diplomatic memos.

Source: The Register

A Secret War in 120 Countries

The Pentagon’s New Power Elite

By NICK TURSE

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.”

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM’s baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command — the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 — indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. “I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000,” he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet — mostly the industrialized nations of the global north — were considered the key areas. “But the world changed over the last decade,” he said. “Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south… certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t.”

To that end, Olson launched “Project Lawrence,” an effort to increase cultural proficiencies — like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs — for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed “Lawrences of Wherever.”

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government. According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won’t disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. “We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where we’re at,” says Nye. “Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have — it may be internal, it may be regional.”

But it’s no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while “white” forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the U.S. spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism’s National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America’s most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland. So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. “Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises.”

The Pentagon’s Power Elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces — like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines — a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people’s heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM’s prime contracts awarded to small businesses — those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons — have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself. As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM “is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies.”

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military. Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as “the president’s private army,” today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive’s private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once “special” for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: “I am convinced that the forces… are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer.”

Recently at the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that U.S. Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, “Are you talking about unattributed explosions?”

What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, U.S. Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada’s entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America’s elite troops now operate each year, and it’s only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special” force this large, this active, and this secret — and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won’t be coming from Olson or his troops. “Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it,” he said in response to questions about SOCOM’s secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military’s secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com, where this article originally appeared. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books), which brings together leading analysts from across the political spectrum, has just gone into its second printing. Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His website is NickTurse.com.

Source: counterpunch.org

As per Julian Assange’s Post:

LEGAL ACTION BY WIKILEAKS AND DATACELL AGAINST VISA AND MASTERCARD

Release after Sat 2 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

WikiLeaks and Datacell (a service provider assisting WikiLeaks) are to sue Visa & MasterCard for engaging in an unlawful, U.S. influenced, financial blockade.

On June 9th a the law firms Bender von Haller Dragested in Denmark and Reykjavik Law Firm in Iceland acting on behalf of DataCell and WikiLeaks told the companies that if the blockade is not removed they will be litigated in Denmark and a request for prosecution will be filed with the EU Commission. Visa Europe, MasterCard Europe, and Teller (a Danish company licensed to process transactions on behalf of the card companies) are the subjects of the complaint.

It was pointed out to these companies that their coordinated action on December 7th last year to block all credit card transactions to WikiLeaks and DataCell constituted a serious violation of the Competition Rules of the EU (Article 101(1) and 102). Furthermore, that the actions of these companies have violated Danish merchant laws when they terminated the payment services and by refused to reinstate them.

Visa Europe, Master Card Europe, Teller and Korta where told that if the payment services would not be reinstated and liability for the damages accepted, DataCell and WikiLeaks would file a complaint to the European Commission regarding violation of EU competition laws and file a lawsuit with Danish Maritime and Commercial Court (“Sø- og Handelsretten ”).

Teller has acknowledged that it is ready to reinstate the services as due diligence by the company has not found any violations by DataCell, but, despite this, the company has been ordered by Visa and MasterCard to keep the payment services closed. Visa and Master Card (which have 70 and 25 percent market share in Europe respectively) have not answered the demands or shown willingness to negotiate a settlement.

In light of this outcome DataCell and WikiLeaks will instruct their international legal team to take actions against these companies in the coming days as outlined above. Further actions in other jurisdictions will follow.

For information concerning the complaint to the EU Commission and the case in general please contact:

Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, Supreme Court Attorney, sveinnandri@icelaw.is, phone +354 8947406 any hours.

——

Supplementary information:

The actions of Visa Europe and MasterCard Europe as concerns DataCell and Wikileaks violate the EU Treaty

In December 2010 the international card companies, Visa Europe and MasterCard Europe ordered the Danish/Norwegian payment card service company, TELLER A/S, to terminate its payment services (provided through its agent Korta in Iceland) to DataCell ltd., (datacell.com). Wikileaks, the media organisation, had received donations through the web-site of Datacell.

DataCell tried to get access to the international payment card networks through other members of the Visa and MasterCard networks without success. Their order to exclude DataCell from payment services has not only blocked donations to Wikileaks but has also effectively prevented DataCell from operating and receiving payments for its services as an international data centre and hosting operator.

In Europe, as in most parts of the world, Visa and MasterCard dominate the market for collecting and processing (acquiring) payments made with payment cards. Visa holds about 70% of this market in Europe, while MasterCard has around 26% of the market. Collectively, these franchises hold therefore approximately 96% of the market for acquiring services in Europe.

DataCell claims that the order of the card companies to its members (licensees) in Europe to boycott Datacell, absent any objective justification, (no such has been provided by the card companies) constitutes an abuse of market dominance in the meaning of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, (TFEU).

DataCell furthermore claims that identical and simultaneous actions taken by Visa, MasterCard , Teller and Korta in respect of DataCell (and Wikileaks) constitute a concerted anti-competitive practice in the meaning of Article 101 (1) of the TFEU which prohibits all agreements and concerted practices, which prevent, restrict or distort competition within the internal market.

The penalty for infringing the competition rules of the EU can amount to 10% of the turnover of the companies involved. Moreover, violators of the competition rules may now be sued in most jurisdictions within the EU for damages under the law on tort. DataCell (and Wilkleaks) are now preparing such action in Demark and Iceland against the card companies.

As mentioned above it is the opinion of DataCell that the card Companies have not been able to provide any objective justification for their actions. In this context it is emphasised:

(I) The provision of payment gateways whereby the holder of a merchant agreement uses its merchant account to accept, idonations/payments related to non-profit organisations or companies, which do not have their own merchant account is common and accepted business practice.

(II) The services provided by DataCell to Wikileaks are in no way different from other payment card gateways provided by competitors of DataCell to organisations and companies around Europe and around the world.

(III) When DataCell entered into the payment service agreement with Teller and Korta it was made clear to the companies that DataCell would use its merchant account to receive donations for Wikileaks.

(IV) When Teller at the request of DataCell carried out a compliance check of DataCell’s operations they were found to be 100% compliant with Teller’s requirements and the terms and conditions of the payment services agreement.

(V) Wikileaks has nowhere been found to be engaged in any illegal activity. Infact, in the only formal US review to occur, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy C. Geitner, refused (January 13) to add WikiLeaks to the US financial embargo list, saying that there was no legal justification to do so.

(VI) There are no ownership connections between DataCell and Wikileaks / Sunshine Press Foundation (the Sunshine Press Foundation is the corporate arm of the Wikileaks organisation). Datacell does not have any representatives or representation in the Wikileaks organisation nor does Wikileaks have any say in the matters DataCell. The relationship between DataCell and Wikileaks is a pure business relationship.

(VII) Finally, Visa and MasterCard do not prevent their members from supplying payment card services to media organisations that openly support and cooperate with Wikileaks.

-Julian Assange

What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.