Anonymous names Saturday a global day of protest to defend free speech

Anonymous to protest Saturday in San Diego
The shadow hactivist group Anonymous has announced it will be protesting American efforts to stop Wikileaks in downtown San Diego tomorrow, Jan 15th starting at 6pm. Anonymous, which is not affiliated with Wikileaks, grabbed headlines when they attacked MasterCard’s and Visa’s websites with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack which resulted in outages for both companies. The group has since attacked other targets as well. The Anonymous Protest is going to be at 326 Broadway...

Anonymous urges global protests
A group of self-styled Internet freedom fighters have called for a global day of action in Protest at attempts to close down Wikileaks. Anonymous has gained notoriety in recent months for its cyber-attacks on the websites of companies it deems to be anti-Wikileaks. Now, in a new video posted on its blog, it calls for a series of offline protests. These are planned for major cities around the world on 15 January. "The Internet needs champions and we will rise...We are Anonymous and so are yo...

It takes more than a subpoena to scare Birgitta Jonsdottir
Last updated Friday, Jan. 14, 2011 2:49PM EST When Birgitta Jonsdottir was a punk-rock teenager, a hard-core Anarchist who loved to listen to the nihilist British band Crass, her boarding school decided to take her class on a school trip to Althing, Iceland's national Parliament. The visit was intended to inspire Students by offering them a glimpse at the seat of government, presumably so that they could aspire to occupy it one day. While the rest of her class was in awe, Ms. Jonsdottir thought:...

Tunisia's Wikileaks Revolution, Ctd
Earlier this week, in a piece that has proved prescient, Elizabeth Dickinson discussed how certain unflattering cables "acted as a catalyst" for the coup: The country's ruling family is described as "The Family" -- a mafia-esque elite who have their hands in every cookie jar in the entire economy. "President Ben Ali is aging, his regime is sclerotic and there is no clear successor," a June 2009 cable reads. And to this kleptocracy there is no recourse; one Jun...

Twitter Fights the Man
When the Justice Department hit Twitter with a court order demanding the Private Data of certain users associated with Wikileaks, the G-men might have expected that the Social Networking site would wilt like the half-dozen easily bullied companies that have cut off the whistle-blower, but Twitter, in the words of Wired’s Ryan Singel, “beta-tested a spine.” Not only did the government want this data, but it wanted Twitter to keep quiet about handing it over. To that end, Justice...

Iceland and Birgitta Jonsdottir, the Tip of the Spear against Orwellian Kleptocracy
(source) Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a fiery Aries, a suitable metaphor for her life, and now a member of Althing , the Icelandic parliament, has long been an artist, Activist and Hell-raiser in Iceland when not shaking things up globally. Born in Reykjavik, Bigitta relentlessly, over time, developed multiple talents in the fields of poetry, visual art, music, writing, editing and publishing as well as becoming an Internet pioneer, world-traveler and Political Activist. She had her first poetry col...

Robert Weller: Finally A Line Obama Won't Cross On WikiLeaks
It seemed there was nothing the Obama Administration wouldn't do to shut down Wikileaks and shut up Julian Assange. Today we found out there is. In a somewhat curious move, the Treasury Department declined a right-wing congressman's request to blacklist WikiLeaks. There already is a Grand Jury investigating Assange and the government has put pressure on Financial Institutions and Internet providers not to do business with the Whistleblowers. A U.S. Army private has been held in solitary for se...

The War on Rhetoric
Today marks a week since an American Terrorist went on a murderous rampage in Arizona and so began the American War on Rhetoric.  The lone gunman was apparently fixated on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. He met her three years prior to the tragedy in Tucson but that hasn’t stopped political pundits from placing blame, pointing fingers and blasting accusations.  The media should be ashamed for wagging their crooked fingers at anyone other than the American Terrorist who pulled the t...

The First WIKILEAKS Revolution?
Tunisians didn't need any more reasons to Protest when they took to the streets these past weeks -- food prices were rising, Corruption was rampant, and Unemployment was staggering. But we might also count Tunisia as the first time that Wikileaks pushed people over the brink. These protests are also about the country's utter lack of freedom of expression -- including when it comes to WikiLeaks. Tunisia's government doesn't exactly get a flattering portrayal in the leaked State Department cables...

Congress Prepares to Renew Patriot Act for Another Year
H.R. 67, a new bill introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers (R - MI), would extend the Patriot Act’s provisions which would be set to sunset in February through an additional year. The House had approved a previous extension in February of last year, but only after abandoning the Privacy protections that were angrily objected to by the Obama Administration. At the time, that bill was slipped into the “Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act.” The new version is expected to face ev...

Ex-CIA officer pleads not guilty in news leak case
WASHINGTON - Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling pleaded Not Guilty Friday to Criminal Charges of illegally disclosing national defence information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. Sterling faces six counts charging him with unauthorized disclosure of national defence information, unlawfully keeping national defence information, mail Fraud, unauthorized conveyance of government property and obstructing justice. His arrest last week marked the latest case brought by the...

The Tunisian Revolution
(Editor’s Note: This was written yesterday and events are quickly unfolding even as you read this.) Events in Tunisia are unfolding extremely fast. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali is on his way out of the country in response to days of Protests that have brought the country to a virtual standstill. Arabic media outlets are now reporting that Ben Ali is either on a plane, or preparing to leave immediately. His Prime Minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, has taken over as head of government and ...

U.S. Treasury: We Can't Blacklist WikiLeaks
Source: CBS News Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was among the many politicians publicly enraged by Wikileaks documents dump of U.S. Diplomatic Cables, likening it to a Military act of aggression. King, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, asked the U.S. Treasury Department to add Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange to its economic blacklist, or sanctions list. Doing so would have given Wikileaks the same designation as Terrorist groups. On Friday, the Treasury Department said no. "...

Treasury Dept: No Evidence to Launch WikiLeaks Embargo
Rep. Peter King (R - NY) is publicly fuming tonight after the Treasury Department announced they couldn’t follow through with his demand to place Wikileaks on the SDN list, insisting that they had absolutely no evidence supporting their addition under any of the existing criteria. Treasury officials insisted they don’t just get to add whoever they want to the list, which imposes a full embargo on anyone who finds themselves on it, but that they can only amend the list under t...

Chairman King: Treasury should 'explain' itself on WikiLeaks
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Pete King (R-N.Y.) called on the Treasury Department on Friday to explain why it will not place sanctions on Wikileaks, barring U.S. corporations from doing business with the organization and its founder. The comments come after the Treasury Department said it currently lacks the evidence necessary to take that action. In response, King listed what he saw as harms caused by WikiLeaks. "Recent reports indicate that the U.S. has been forced to relocate...

Tunisia in Turmoil: Where To Learn the Most Quickly
​The president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who has been in power since 1987, has left the country amid weeks of Protests, and Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi has assumed power in an announcement on state television, according to CNN. Before leaving, Ben Ali fired a minister and some aides, "dissolved the government and declared a State of Emergency," and called for new parliamentary Elections, as unrest grew stemming from information made public by Wikileaks about widespread c...

Homeland Security Junks Its Sensor-Laden Border Fence
It only took nearly a year of hiatus and $1 billion in sunk costs, but the Department of Homeland Security has finally gotten rid of the networked suite of sensors that made up its virtual Border Fence. But some of its technology may live on as zombie border protection. The virtual fence “cannot meet its original objective of providing a single, integrated Border Security technology solution,” Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded in a statement today heralding the program’s te...

Could Tunisia Be The Next Twitter Revolution? Ctd
Evgeny Morozov dismisses the notion: What strikes me about events in Tunisia is that Social Media seems to have failed in what many of us thought would be its greatest contribution (outside of social mobilization) - that is in helping to generate and shape the coverage of events in the Mainstream Media. On the contrary, despite all the buzz on Twitter it took four weeks to get the events in Tunisia on the front pages of major Newspapers, at least here in the US (the situation in Europe was som...

Indian journalist defends WikiLeaks at British parliament
Source: Hindustan Times Whistle-blower website Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange "do not deserve to be treated like common criminals" for upholding "such precious freedom" that does not exist in many countries, a leading Indian Journalist said. The US athorities want to charge Assange for revealing state secrets after his website published thousands of documents, including files related to US-led War in Afghanistan and Iraq War and Diplomatic Cables sent to and from American embassies acr...

Tunisia Protests: Is This The First WikiLeaks Revolution?
Foreign Policy : Tunisians didn't need any more reasons to Protest when they took to the streets these past weeks -- food prices were rising, Corruption was rampant, and Unemployment was staggering. But we might also count Tunisia as the first time that Wikileaks pushed people over the brink. These protests are also about the country's utter lack of freedom of expression -- including when it comes to WikiLeaks. Read the whole story: Foreign Policy Get HuffPost World On Twitter an...

Wikipedia 'too tough for many'
Wikipedia is too complicated for many people to modify despite billing itself as "the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit", its founder has said. Jimmy Wales told BBC News the site wants a new generation of contributors, including more women. The online encyclopaedia, which is 10 years old on 15 January, is the world's fifth most popular site. It aims to increase its users from 400m to 1bn by 2015. But growth requires a new interface, said Mr Wales. "We have to support ou...

People in glass houses shouldnt condemn WikiLeaks when they supported the IRA
This was written by Iron Knee. Posted on Saturday, January 15, 2011, at 1:34 am. Filed under Hypocrisy. Tagged Wikileaks. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed.Post a comment or leave a trackback. ...

TUNISIA: The first WikiLeaks revolution, or the first Food Crisis revolution? When things are rick
TUNISIA: The first Wikileaks revolution, or the first Food Crisis revolution? When things are rickety, there’s often no single cause for the collapse. ...

Top 10 MyFDL Diaries of 2010
In case you missed it, be sure to check out the top 10 FDL blog posts of 2010! One of the things that makes FDL such an important resource for news coverage and analysis is our thriving diarist community. Our diarists write some of the most compelling and thought-provoking pieces of ‘citizen journalism’ to be found on the Internet, especially among The Progressive left. From liveblogging the Prop 8 trial, to offering unique insights into the Julian Assange / Wikileaks saga, our diari...

Bank of America website suffers outage
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Some Bank of America customers trying to access their online and mobile accounts were unable to get through on Friday -- an issue the bank says it is aware of and working to resolve. "We are experiencing some sporadic issues for a small population of customers," spokeswoman Tara Burke said Friday afternoon. "The majority of our customers can bank online." Email Print The outage was widespread enough to prompt a torrent of complaints on Twitter. It also...