Anonymous Takes Down Dept.of Justice Website

By Jeralyn, Section Media
Posted on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 05:51:13 PM EST
Tags: Anonymous, MegaUpload (all tags)

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Unbelievable. The Department of Justice website has been attacked and is now down. So is Universal Music. Anonymous has taken credit, saying it's payback for the MegaUpload Indictment today.

Here's the text of the press release DOJ issued announcing the MegaUpload Indictments.

More here. You can follow along on Twitter, at #OpMegaUpload, #MegaUpload, #Anonymous and @anondaily

One tweet says the FBI's website is next. YourAnonNews says "Incoming Database Dump. Get Ready "

Internet anarchy has arrived. No one should underestimate the abilities of Anonymous. [More...]

The feds executed 20 search warrants in 9 countries, seized $50 million in assets, 18 domain names and a bunch of servers. The 72 page indictment is here.

What's Megaupload? P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige explain.

Who else uses Megaupload?

From Ars Technica, Why the Feds Smashed Megaupload.

The first I ever heard of Megaupload was in December when they released the song and I read this article by a French journalist: Inside the Secretive World of Megaupload. It's a good read. As is this 2010 New Zealand news article about the background of Kim DotCom aka Kim Schmitz buying New Zealand's most expensive mansion for $30 million. This 2010 investigative report by New Zealand's Investigate Magazine also has a lot of detail on Schmitz.

< Details of Marianne Gingrich Interview | DOJ Takes to Twitter to Address DDOS Attacks on Gov't Websites >

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Anonymous Takes Down Dept.of Justice Website | 18 comments (18 topical)

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Grab the popcorn (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by BTAL on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 05:52:52 PM EST

or your rear end. One way or another, this could get out of hand very fast.

Goats. (5.00 / 2) (#4)
by Addison on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 07:02:43 PM EST

Those sites haven't been hacked. It's a DDOS attack on the front pages. Basically just setting up software to request information many times a second from a site, slowing it down. It's the "real world" equivalent to letting a herd of goats loose on a highway to tie up traffic. It doesn't involve any breach or any actual "hacking" of the underlying systems.

: Probably you are quite right (none / 0) (#5)
by andgarden on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 07:06:58 PM EST

: you are right, I changed (none / 0) (#6)
by Jeralyn on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 07:10:48 PM EST

"hacked" to "attacked"

: It's not just the front pages (none / 0) (#13)
by Peter G on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 08:31:40 PM EST

See my comment #1 to Jeralyn's other, later post on this subject.

Man in the street interview (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by Edger on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 07:17:27 PM EST

about it, here ;-)

Hezbollah (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by koshembos on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 08:08:58 PM EST

No group of hidden individuals with some vague claims of justice and peace is entitled to do what anonymous does. Is it a Chinese front, a KGB agent, a lefty fascist or may it is simply Hezbollah? May be they hack and steal credit cards and then pretend to be Robin Hoods.

Fight for justice demand the light of day.

My thought on that. (5.00 / 0) (#18)
by Romberry on Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 05:53:08 PM EST

My thought boils down to this. Know what you eventually call people who really get out and fight for justice against the machine in the light of day? (Answer at the bottom of this comment.)

Cue Arthur Silber:

If I had a million dollars, I'd bet all of it on the proposition that the U.S. Government has the power right now to shut down any and every website, internet provider, etc., etc., etc., etc. it wishes, and to do so permanently. And they could throw a whole lot of people in jail because they "threaten national security" or violate some statute, regulation, administrative rule, whatever.
I'd win that bet.
[big snip]
With regard to ... issues of liberty and privacy in general, let me now ask you a few questions. How long do you think it would take you to identify, read, and understand every provision in every statute, regulation and other authorization that gives surveillance powers to the government? Furthermore: Would you know each and every place to look, or how to determine what those places were? Additionally: With a staff of 20, or 50, could it be done, even if you were provided with limitless time and limitless funds?
I submit to you, without qualification or reservation, that you could not do it.
[big snip]
The conclusion of the argument is one almost no one chooses to face squarely. Nonetheless, it is the truth: the U.S. Government already possesses the power to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever it wants.

(Much more at the link.)

So after that, the question I posed remains. What do you eventually call people who really get out and fight for justice against the machine in the light of day? Prisoners if they're lucky. Martyrs if they're not.

Anonymous can't fight in the open. To do so would frankly be stupid. Calling for them to be out in the open strikes me as similar to what the British military said of the soldiers of the American Revolution when they complained that those soldiers hid behind trees and wouldn't fight out in the open. And the Revolutionary response was (paraphrasing) "Hide and fight and run away, and live to fight another day."


ha ha ha ha ha (none / 0) (#12)
by TeresaInPa on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 08:28:49 PM EST

who was it that used to call up people screaming hezboooooooollaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
?

I have this memory of a crazy lady and she would call some liberal talk radio show on Air America? I don't know, but it's cracking me up. Thank you for jogging a weird funny memory.


: Agreed... (5.00 / 2) (#14)
by ScottW714 on Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 09:22:17 AM EST

But he did forget to mention that odd Orwellian act by the Justice Department that triggered the reaction.
Its like seizing the assets of the Craiglist owner's because someone sold hot goods using their site. MegaUpload is a file storage site so people like you and me can share files. And because they won't let Corporate America in to view our files, they are being treated as if they actually committed the crimes.
At least the groups he mentioned didn't buy Congress and use the the Justice Department like their own personal cops to arrest people who are literally on the side of the planet for what should be a civil matter.
I pirate goods occasionally, but it's not egregious and usually because of something not related to money.
But this week has me re-thinking the money angle, I can't support this non-sense. They whine about about all the lost revenues because of copyright issues, but damn, the pocket book is wide open to legislatures.
That being said, I can't agree with Anonymous. They are doing shady non-sense in protest to shady non-sense, how they think they are any better...

The press release (none / 0) (#2)
by andgarden on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 05:58:16 PM EST

actually puts forward a really interesting theory of the crime/conspiracy.

I suspect that whether the defendants are entitled to a safe harbor is going to be highly fact specific.

Wow n/t (none / 0) (#3)
by Militarytracy on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 06:44:57 PM EST

Here's a (none / 0) (#8)
by Makarov on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 07:51:01 PM EST

Scribd version of the 72 page indictment:

Megaupload indictment

The part I find hilarious is the DOJ actually uses the lack of a searchable index for material on Megaupload as evidence of the "Conspiracy" to mask their alleged copyright violations.

So, by making it harder for people to locate unauthorized copies on their servers, they actually commit a felony. Ha.

I uploaded the actual document (5.00 / 2) (#9)
by Jeralyn on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 07:58:43 PM EST

without having to go through scribd and read it in that their box. It's here.


: Thank you for that (none / 0) (#10)
by andgarden on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 08:06:36 PM EST

Very convenient.

how would the DOJ know what is authorized (none / 0) (#15)
by nycstray on Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 10:26:39 AM EST

and what isn't? i work with licensed properties and have had clients pass me files through sharing sites. aside from some obvious unauthorized material, there's a whole lotta grey area there.


Not unbelievable (none / 0) (#16)
by Lora on Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 10:34:40 AM EST

Folks, the internet has never been safe. Beware of trusting anything valuable (like your elections for example) to any equipment (like electronic voting or vote-counting, for example) that could possibly be accessed by the internet (even when you are told it can't, it can).

Anonymous made my Friday... (none / 0) (#17)
by kdog on Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 10:59:19 AM EST

give 'em cyber-hell boys and girls!