Hasta La Gadget!

The death of Aaron Swartz, as many of you already know, is something that has Anonymous upset, and today the hacker collective is doing something about it. Two weeks after Swartz committed suicide, Anonymous has taken over the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s website, leaving a message for visitors and threatening to release government documents it has uncovered. At the time of this writing, the U.S. Sentencing Commission hasn’t made a statement about the attack.

The message said that “a line was crossed” with the death of Swartz and lambasted the current state of the justice system in the United States, claiming “law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control, authority and power in the interests of oppression or personal gain.” In the time since Anonymous took over the website, the U.S. government has taken it offline. There’s no word on when the website will return, but you can bet that the government will be looking for the hackers who carried out this attack.

Those who did hack into the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s website need to tread carefully, because lately we’ve been seeing quite a few hackers get arrested for their actions. Just yesterday, a group of Anonymous hackers were arrested for their involvement in the attacks on PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa. Still, Anonymous members have never seemed too concerned about the repercussions of their actions in the past – they just want to get their message across.

Anonymous is upset over the treatment of Aaron Swartz, who allegedly downloaded millions of papers from JSTOR. Swartz was facing a fine of as much as $1 million and could have been hit with 35 years of jail time. These penalties were seen by many as extreme, and after his passing, we’re seeing blowback from a lot of Internet activists. Stay tuned for more information.

[via CBSNews]

Anonymous hacks U.S. Sentencing Commission site after Swartz death is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome to Wednesday evening everyone. This afternoon, what’s supposedly the first full image of the rumored HTC M7 leaked out, though it’s worth pointing out that what we’re seeing is only a render and not an actual device. Facebook today announced free calling over WiFi or mobile data connections for iPhone, instantly making one of the biggest VOIP providers around. We heard a bit about the Galaxy Note III today, with rumors saying that it will come equipped with a 6.3-inch screen and Samsung’s new Exynos 5 Octa CPU, while Apple and Amazon have been ordered to meet over their App Store case.

It just got a whole lot easier to migrate your Xbox Live account, while LG announced its goal of selling 75 million phones in 2013. Experts are saying today that soot is greatly contributing to climate change, and Apple’s leaked roadmap is suggesting that the company may release the iPhone 5 in various colors with plastic casing. AT&T is now allowing FaceTime over cellular for all tiered subscribers, and Real Racing 3 has been teased with real tracks and locations.

A Missouri lawmaker wants to place a tax on violent video games, and Microsoft announced today that first Surface Pro tablets have started coming off the production line. Temple Run 2 is launching on iOS tonight and coming to Android next week, while Facebook seems to be quick to reassure users about security concerns with its new Graph Search feature. Microsoft’s new Play store is bringing Xbox Arcade games to Windows 8 and RT, and the T-Mobile Nexus 7 is now available through the tablet’s Google Play listing. NASA has joined forces with the European Space Agency for the new Orion module, and Anonymous has forced the Westboro Baptist Church out of Aaron Swartz’s funeral service.

RIM has managed to get 1,600 companies to sign up for its BlackBerry 10 testing program, and one analyst from UBS AG has cut his Surface sales projections for Microsoft’s fiscal Q2 in half. T-Mobile might be very close to launching its 4G LTE network in Las Vegas, and we learned today that Disney Infinity will come sporting a pretty expensive price tag. Blockbuster UK has entered into administration, while the latest Google Doodle is celebrating Frank Zamboni’s 112th birthday. Finally tonight, Chris Burns delivers his review of the AirDroid 2 beta. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you enjoy the rest of your night folks!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: January 16, 2013 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Hack-collective Anonymous broke into MIT’s website over the weekend and subverted it into a tribute to open-access activist Aaron Swartz, the internet hero who committed suicide on Friday last week. Describing the $1m lawsuit Swartz faced for hacking into the JSTOR database as “a grotesque miscarriage of justice,” Anonymous also called for “reform of computer crime laws,” CNET reports, in addition to “a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet.”

In a lengthy post, including a link to details on Swartz’s funeral on Tuesday this week and a copy of the “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto,” Anonymous describes Swartz as “A hero in the SOPA/PIPA campaign, Reddit cofounder, RSS, Demand Progress, Avaaz, etc.” and sets out a list of “wishes” for legal and ethical change moving forward. “The situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of US computer crime laws,” the hackers wrote, “particularly their punishment regimes, and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining.”

Our wishes

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of computer crime laws, and the overzealous prosecutors who use them.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of copyright and intellectual property law, returning it to the proper principles of common good to the many, rather than private gain to the few.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for greater recognition of the oppression and injustices heaped daily by certain persons and institutions of authority upon anyone who dares to stand up and be counted for their beliefs, and for greater solidarity and mutual aid in response.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.

However, contrary to some of Anonymous’ more aggressive take-overs, the hacking team included an apology to MIT for co-opting their site. In fact, despite complaints from some that MIT had let Swartz down by not vigorously defending him when the US government decided to prosecute over the JSTOR case, Anonymous claims not to blame the institution:

“We tender apologies to the administrators at MIT for this temporary use of their websites. We understand that it is a time of soul-searching for all those within this great institution as much — perhaps for some involved even more so — than it is for the greater internet community. We do not consign blame or responsibility upon MIT for what has happened, but call for all those feel heavy-hearted in their proximity to this awful loss to acknowledge instead the responsibility they have — that we all have — to build and safeguard a future that would make Aaron proud, and honour the ideals and dedication that burnt so brightly within him by embodying them in thought and word and action” Anonymous

Swartz had a history of butting heads with the law as he pushed for freedom of data. Back in 2008, he wrote a custom app to take advantage of free Pacer digital judicial library accounts to gather around 20m documents in a more easily-accessed place, while the similar hack which led to the JSTOR indictment saw him pull almost the entire database using a secretly-installed laptop.

Anonymous hacks MIT with Aaron Swartz memorial & manifesto is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Anonymous hacking collective has petitioned the White House, using the US government’s open forum to ask for DDoS attacks to be registered as an official form of complaint – and requesting the convictions of previous DDoS attackers be wiped from their records. More »

Anonymous has been making the Internet interesting to be on for the past couple of years as they hacked a number of services like PayPal, breached the PlayStation Network, and hacked the CIA website. Today, they’re making their voice heard through the White House’s website, WhiteHouse.gov, but for once, they’re not relying on hacking methods to get their point across.

Anonymous have launched a petition on WhiteHouse.gov with the title “Make, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), a legal form of protesting.” In their petition, they write:

“With the advance in internet techonology, comes new grounds for protesting. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any “occupy” protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time.

As part of this petition, those who have been jailed for DDoS should be immediatly released and have anything regarding a DDoS, that is on their “records”, cleared.”

It’s interesting for Anonymous to attempt to rally the Internet around it in order to have a petition be considered to the U.S. Government. What makes this more interesting is their request to have anyone who has been jailed for DDoS attacks to be released and have their record cleared of the attacks. We’re not entirely sure why Anonymous would want that to be a part of the petition as it leads us to believe maybe one of their own is having a little bit of trouble with their record.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Wikimedia Foundation’s ‘Wikivoyage’ Travel Site Launching On January 15th, Gmail Updates Compose View With Ability To Label, Star Before Sending,