Newly Released FBI “Domestic Terrorism” Training on Anarchists, Environmentalists, Show COINTELPRO Tactics

Newly released FBI presentations show the flawed and misleading information the government is using to train agents to identify and investigate “domestic terrorist” groups such as “black separatists,” anarchists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists.

Among the more troubling portions of the training materials are warnings of activists using the Freedom of Information Act, engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, and gathering in coffee shops.

The domestic terrorism training materials were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU. They offer additional insight into a disturbing pattern of FBI activity misrepresenting political activists as “terrorists” and manufacturing “domestic terrorism threats” where none exist, akin to the notorious COINTELPRO program of J. Edgar Hoover.

In presentations on “Anarchist Extremism,” the FBI warns:

– Anarchists are “Criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities”

– Anarchists are “Not dedicated to a particular cause”

– Green anarchists believe “individuals should ‘get back to nature’”

Their meeting locations include “college campuses, underground clubs, coffee houses/ internet cafes.” Their criminal activity includes “Sleeping Dragons” (a form of civil disobedience in which people lock arms in PVC pipes).

Anarchists are also “paranoid / security conscious,” according to the presentation. This is an interesting observation coming from the FBI, considering there have been two recent cases where the FBI played a key role in infiltrating anarchist groups in order to orchestrate alleged terrorist attacks. In the Cleveland May Day arrests, and in the Chicago NATO arrests, the FBI trumpeted the arrest of “terrorists” that agents themselves tried desperately to create.

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Law Enforcement Considers Blocking Cell Service During NATO Protests

Reports suggest local law enforcement agencies are considering shutting down cell phone services in the city over the weekend and while it will most likely be very effective, many are questioning if the move is legitimate.

The Daily Beast reports that the FBI and Secret Service have standing authority to jam signals and they can also push for the shutdown of cell towers, thanks to “Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 303,” which lays out the nation’s official “Emergency Wireless Protocols.”

According to the National Communications System, the protocol details a “shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during national crises.”

The irony of the situation is, of course, in the fact that the US security services are considering doing something they’ve condemned others for. Just a month ago, President Barack Obama announced a plan to penalize authoritarian regimes that block internet access for protesters. The penalties will be aimed at countries like Syria and Iran that use technology to enable human-rights abuses against dissidents – but to many, this is a perfect example of double standards.

This potential development is just one of the drastic security measures Chicago law enforcement agencies are considering. They’ve also invested as much as $1 million on riot-control equipment, including at least one long-range acoustic device, or LRAD, and upgrades to shields to be worn by the police.

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Whistleblowing Wednesday: Feds Want To Hack X-Boxes, Wii’s And PS3’s

The Department of Homeland Security has launched a research project to find ways to hack into gaming consoles to obtain sensitive information about gamers stored on the devices.

One of the first contracts for the project was awarded last week to Obscure Technologies, based in California, to devise a forensic tool that will siphon data from the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3 and other consoles.

The $177,000 contract requires the company to create new hardware and software tools that can extract data from gaming consoles, and to purchase used gaming consoles outside the U.S. to determine what data was left on them by previous owners that can be extracted, including information about communications with other gamers, according to Foreign Policy magazine.

Gaming consoles can store sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers and addresses. Newer systems also allow users to communicate with one another via messaging and chat systems, and the government is interested in knowing what data is stored in the systems and can be siphoned out of them. But the systems often employ anti-tampering technologies that can make extracting data from them difficult.

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Whistleblowing Wednesday: FBI Is Meeting With Facebook, Skype, etc. To Include A Backdoor For Surveillance

The FBI has been lobbying top internet companies like Yahoo and Google to support a proposal that would force them to provide backdoors for government surveillance, according to CNET.

The Bureau has been quietly meeting with representatives of these companies, as well as Microsoft (which owns Hotmail and Skype), Facebook and others to argue for a legislative proposal, drafted by the FBI, that would require social-networking sites and VoIP, instant messaging and e-mail providers to alter their code to make their products wiretap-friendly.

The FBI has previously complained to Congress about the so-called “Going Dark” problem – the difficulty of doing effective wiretap surveillance as more communications have moved from traditional telephone services to internet service companies.

Under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, passed in 1994, telecommunications providers are required to make their systems wiretap-friendly. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband providers like ISPs and colleges, but web companies are not covered by the law.

CNET reports that in addition to this push from the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission may be looking at reinterpreting CALEA to demand that video and non-telephone-replacement VoIP products such as Skype and Xbox Live be modified to include backdoors that allow FBI surveillance.

The news comes on the heels of another FBI plan that began kicking around in 2010 that would require backdoors in encrypted communication systems. That proposal, which would revisit the encryption wars of the 1990s, has failed to gather administration backing.

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In another astonishing development in the Megaupload saga, a judge in New Zealand’s High Court has declared the order used to seize Kim Dotcom’s assets as “null and void”. The blunder, which occurred because the police applied for the wrong type of court order, means that the Megaupload founder could have his property returned.

Just when it seemed that the handling of the Megaupload case couldn’t get any more controversial, a development from New Zealand has taken things to the next level.

Following the raids on Kim Dotcom’s mansion in January, police seized millions of dollars worth of property belonging to the Megaupload founder. But thanks to a police blunder, he could now see all of those assets returned.

On Friday, Justice Judith Potter in the High Court declared the order used to seize Dotcom’s property “null and void” after it was discovered that the police had acted under a court order that should have never been granted.

The error dates back to January when the police applied for the order granting them permission to seize Dotcom’s property. Rather than applying for an interim restraining order, the Police Commissioner applied for a foreign restraining order instead, one which did not give Dotcom a chance to mount a defense.

According to New Zealand Herald, on January 30th prosecution lawyer Anne Toohey wrote to the court explaining that the wrong order had been applied for and detailed five errors with the application.

Justice Potter said that police commissioner Peter Marshall tried to correct the error by applying for the correct order after the raids were completed and retrospectively adding the items already seized.

Although the correct order was eventually granted albeit on a temporary basis, Potter said she will soon rule on whether the “procedural error” will result in Dotcom having his property returned.

The Crown is arguing that since the new order was granted the earlier error no longer matters, but Dotcom’s legal team framed it rather differently by describing the seizure of assets as “unlawful”.

Whether the assets are returned will rest on Dotcom’s legal team showing a lack of “good faith” in connection with the blunder. A hearing to decide if the assets will be returned will take place next week.

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MegaUpload Negotiating To Let US Gov’t Officials (And Everyone Else) Retrieve Their Legit Files That Were Taken Down

Aside from preparing the cases of the Megaupload defendants, a team of lawyers is working hard to grant the site’s users access to their personal data. The cyberlocker is working out a deal with the Department of Justice to allow users to download their personal files. Interestingly enough, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom reveals that these users include many high-ranking US Government officials.

In the wake of the MegaUpload shutdown many of the site’s users complained that their personal files had been lost due to collateral damage.

From work-related data to personal photos, the raid disabled access to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of files that were clearly not infringing.

With most of the news coverage focusing on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and the racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges, the fate of these users hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

By taking down Megaupload many of the site’s users were directly harmed. To resolve this matter Megaupload has been talking to the Department of Justice.

“Megaupload’s legal team is working hard to reunite our users with their data. We are negotiating with the Department of Justice to allow all Mega users to retrieve their data,” Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

Over the past weeks Megaupload has been looking into the various options they have to grant users temporary access. Interestingly enough, this quest revealed that many accounts are held by US Government officials.

“Guess what – we found a large number of Mega accounts from US Government officials including the Department of Justice and the US Senate.”

“I hope we will soon have permission to give them and the rest of our users access to their files,” Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

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FBI Snitch, Sabu, Won’t Be Charged For Drug Dealing And Gun Possession 

The American computer hacker who shocked other Internet saboteurs by becoming an FBI informant didn’t just break the law on the Web: He also carried a gun and was involved in drug dealing.

Court documents unsealed this week show that in exchange for his help locking up fellow hackers, federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute Hector Xavier Monsegur for a litany of other crimes he admitted committing, including illegal handgun possession and his attempted sale of a pound of marijuana in 2010 and 4 more pounds in 2003.

The court filings and other legal documents paint a picture of Monsegur, who was known on the Internet as a shadowy figure called “Sabu,” as a chronic lawbreaker.

New York City’s housing authority confirmed Friday that it recently obtained an eviction order tossing him out of his late grandmother’s apartment in a public housing project, following two years of legal proceedings. In a statement, the agency said he “has not been a legal tenant in good standing.”

Monsegur is also facing a month-old misdemeanor charge that he impersonated a federal agent.

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Message From The Pirate Bay:

New TPB investigation leaked

TPB is not hosted in -insert country here-, as far as we know. “As far as we know?” you might ask! Yes. TPB is set up in a very special way to make sure that it will stay up. This means that noone really knows exactly where the servers are, but we’ve made sure to stay out of the United States of Arrogance and some other countries where the governments do not like free speech.

The only box someone could find is the one in the front, that needs to be public. We have multiple of those, scattered like diarrhea around the world. They contain no storage device, no graphics card. Only a network cable, a cpu and memory. Being nice people, we’ve put small easters egg into each box though, for the hard work put into finding that public machine! Nothing dangerous though, just funny.

Even though this means that TPB can never be pin-pointed to a certain country, the Swedish district attorney Fredrik Ingblad initiated a new investigation into The Pirate Bay back in 2010. Information has been leaked to us every now and then by multiple sources, almost on a regular basis. It’s an interesting read. We can certainly understand why WikiLeaks wished to be hosted in Sweden, since so much data leaks there. The reason that we get the leaks is usually that the whistleblowers does not agree with what is going on. Something that the governments should have in mind - even your own people does not agree.

Since our recent move to a .SE domain the investigation has been cranked up a notch. We think that the investigation is interesting considering nothing that TPB does is illegal. Rather we find it interesting that a country like Sweden is being so abused by lobbyists and that this can be kept up. They’re using scare tactics, putting pressure on the wrong people, like providers and users. All out of fear from the big country in the west, and with an admiration for their big fancy wallets.

We’re staying put where we are. We’re going no-where. But we have a message to hollywood, the investigators and the prosecutors: LOL.

Anonymous Snitch Tried, and Failed, to Pass Himself Off As an FBI Agent Last Month

Sabu Court Dox

MegaUpload faces more copyright, wire fraud charges

A U.S. grand jury added more charges against file-sharing website Megaupload and its executives, and also accused them of taking copyrighted content from sites such as YouTube for its own service, according to a new indictment released on Friday.

The founder, Kim Dotcom, and six others employed by the site were charged with eight additional counts of copyright infringement and wire fraud. They were originally charged with five counts of conspiracy and copyright infringement.

Dotcom and four of his co-workers have been arrested and are awaiting extradition proceedings in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Two suspects remain at large.

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IMPORTANT: FBI tells citizens to spy and collect info on internet users who use proxies (shield IP).

Do you use proxies, VPN or Tor? Or go to Starbucks to access the internet. Are you set on always paying in cash? According to the FBI and DOJ, you may be a terrorist.

A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity. 

The document, part of a program called “Communities Against Terrorism”, lists the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity.

The FBI and DOJ asks ordinary citizens to gather information like license plate number, spoken language, name and ethnicity and submit it to the FBI if a customer at an internet cafe is using a proxy or shields their IP.

Since when was internet privacy a crime? With the FBI and DOJ concerned with citizens shielding their IP, will it soon become a crime? 

Credit

American prosecutors have warned that data from users of file-sharing site Megaupload could be deleted from host servers within days.

US officials have blocked access to Megaupload and charged seven men, saying the site facilitated millions of illegal downloads of movies, music and other content.

A letter filed by prosecutors on January 27 said storage companies Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group may begin deleting data from Thursday onwards.

Representatives for the two companies declined to comment about the threat of large scale data wiping.