Der Spiegel reports the hacktivist collective Anonymous is actively targeting neo-Nazis in Germany in a campaign called Operation Blitzkrieg.
The group has launched a WikiLeaks-style website, Nazi-Leaks, to support the operation. They are publishing materials hacked from Germany's extreme right-wing party, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or National Democratic Party of Germany (NDP).
Just as SOPA opponents in the United States prepare for round two in their battle against far-reaching anti-piracy legislation, it appears that their Spanish counterparts just lost theirs. On Friday, the Spanish government approved the Sustainable Economy Law, (SEL) which enables rights holders to have infringing websites shut down within 10 days after a complaint is filed.
Once a complaint is made, a judge can order ISPs to block access to sites that host copyrighted material or have them shut down entirely. The law, which was officially passed early last year but never implemented, was approved by Spain's new, more conservative government last week and will now be enacted as planned, much to the delight of the film and music industries, as well as other media companies.
Recent images of a newly rebranded cosmopolitan Mecca show Islam's holiest site lit by skyscrapers towering over the Ka'aba, the shrine built by the Patriach Abraham and his son Ishmael. The Ka'aba is a modest but overpowering, cubed brick building, referred to as the House of God, towards which millions of Muslims turn to pray five times a day. It is also the focus of the Hajj, or Muslim pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam. It is obligatory for every Muslim (who can afford it and is physically able) to perform the journey, one taken by millions of people over almost 1500 years. But the daunting new urban infrastructure proposed by Saudi Arabia has led to expressions of both pride and disgust. It has been both hailed as a needed reform and condemned as the "Las Vegasization" of the holy city of worship at the expense of Islamic heritage.
Does technology have a place in a sacred space? It seems as though there might be little choice.
Sweden has surrendered its official Twitter account, @sweden, to the hoi polloi. The project, Curators of Sweden, signs up Swedes to tweet a week at a time. It started December 10 with Jack Wermer, a writer and marketing specialist. The second tweeter was Hasan Ramic, a Bosnian immigrant
Currently, the position is filled by the moose-hunting, oral tobacco product enthusiast Anders Dalenius.
Let's say you're a Middle Eastern dictator with an atrocious human rights record and repressive domestic policies. Currently, many of your constituents are in the streets, loudly decrying your government calling for you to step down, if not for your execution. In many ways, the situation doesn't look that different than it did in other countries in the region just before their leaders were overthrown.
Despite a violent crackdown on the protests, the rabble rousers just won't quit, and they're using their smartphones to keep in touch and get around your stringent controls on freedom of the press. What ever do you do?
Ríodoce, one of the few publications left in Mexico that cover gang-related crime news, suffered a distributed denial of service attack on Friday. The publication's host, DreamHost, told the weekly by email that the attack threatened other customers, so they were being dropped. Their URL, www.riodoce.com.mx, now defaults to a placeholder page.
The publication, located in the city of Culiacán, in Sinaloa state, is one of very few mainstream news publications that still cover cartel-fuelled drug violence and related news. Most publications have been terrorized into silence.
Despite his reputation as a darling of the Left for his anti-American rhetoric, Venezuela's strongman Hugo Chávez is known by many in his country as a dedicated suppressor of free speech. An article in the International Herald Tribune today by Francisco Toro spells out the lengths Chávez has gone to stifle one of his bêtes noires, Twitter.
The Twitter accounts of many of Chávez's critics have suddenly begun spewing pro-Chávez, anti-opposition propaganda. More recently, the tack the hackers have taken has begun to show more subtlety.
The five bloggers from the United Arab Emirates who were sentenced to between two and three years in prison yesterday were today pardoned. Ahmed Mansour, Nasser Bin Ghaith, Farhad Salem Hassan, Ali Al-Khamis and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq, were sentenced for "insulting" the leadership of the U.A.E. and fomenting discord by encouraging protests and a democracy petition.
Although we're glad the innocent men were pardoned (their "crimes" are crimes only in highly controlling states and are not recognized as such by organizations like the United Nations) it was clear that the message of both the prosecution and pardon was this: the leadership of the country owns you.
One year ago today, the slow leak of over 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks began. It would be the biggest exposure of such information in recorded history, and the event would trigger both a massive wave of support for the organization and an unprecedented backlash that has included governments, financial institutions and Internet companies.
Today, WikiLeaks is struggling to survive, let alone operate as it once did. A financial blockade has crippled its finances, its founder continues to fight extradition over sexual assault charges and others have defected from the organization entirely. Some of them even launched a competing site for whistleblowers.
Today, the Federal Supreme Court of the United Arab Emirates, acting as the "State Security Court," sentenced five bloggers to prison time. Pioneering Emirati blogger Ahmed Mansour received the harshest sentence, three years. The other four received sentences of two years each.
Mansoor was charged in April with a very popular "crime" among the tyrannies that crack down on difference of opinion: "insult." In this case, insulting the U.A.E.'s leadership; specifically, the Vice President of Abu Dhabi.
