Archive for 2010/12/18

Assange’s lawyer is the prominent Mark Stephens whose law firm Finers Stephens Innocent is legal adviser to the Rothschild Waddesdon Trust which is concerned with the “maintenance, improvement and payment of certain of the outgoings in respect of Waddesdon Manor (Rothschild’s most prestigious property in the UK) in the Vale of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.”

The Wadesdon Trust’s board of trustees is chaired by the Queen”s former Private Secretary Lord Fellowes and has three Rothschild family members as trustees, Lord (Jacob) Rothschild, Lady Rothschild (his wife) and Beth Matilda Rothschild. It is domiciled 14 St James’s Place in London which is also the London address of Lord Jacob Rothschild and his high profile wealth management business St. James’s Place Group (formerly J. Rothschild Assurance Group).

More: http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/sullivan/wikileaks-assanges-lawyer-has-connections-rothschilds

Previously:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has won an award from the “Economist” magazine, a financial publication controlled by the Rothschild banking family, and he has also featured on an “Economist” video clip, raising questions about conflicts of interest.  Assange predicted a bank run could be triggered by bank data leaks but he does not mention that this would result in the robbery of millions of people because of the way the fractional reserve banking system works, and profit the banks. Is a false flag bank run hyped by the banker’s media and carried out by a Rothschild operative being planned to rob millions and to implement emergency laws?

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who plans to leak bank documents that will take down „one or two“ major banks according to Forbes, has won an award from the Economist, a magazine belonging to the Economist group, half of which is owned by the Financial times, a subsidiary of Pearson PLC. A group of independent shareholders, including many members of the staff and the Rothschild banking family of England. Kurt Nimmo writes that the Economist is owned by members of the Rothschild banking family of England. It is run by the Economist Group, a known CIA front

More: http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-has-close-links-to-the-economist-controlled-by-the-rothschild-banking-family/

The Rothschild family (known as The House of Rothschild,[1] or more simply as the Rothschilds) is a European family of German Jewish origin that established European banking and finance houses from the late eighteenth century. Five lines of the Austrian branch of the family were elevated into the Austrian nobility, being given hereditary baronies of the Habsburg Empire by Emperor Francis II in 1816. The British branch of the family was elevated into the British nobility by Queen Victoria.[2][3] It has been argued that during the 19th century, the family possessed by far the largest private fortune in the world, and by far the largest fortune in modern history.[

Over more than two centuries,[11][12] the Rothschild family has frequently been the target of conspiracy theories.[41][42][43] These theories take differing forms, such as claiming that the family belongs to the Illuminati,[44] or controls the world’s wealth and financial institutions.[45][46] Supposedly, the Rothschild family encouraged wars between governments. Discussing this and similar views, the historian Niall Ferguson wrote: “As we have seen, however, wars tended to hit the price of existing bonds by increasing the risk that a debtor state would fail to meet its interest payments in the event of defeat and losses of territory. By the middle of the 19th century, the Rothschilds had evolved from traders into fund managers, carefully tending to their own vast portfolio of government bonds. Now having made their money, they stood to lose more than they gained from conflict. The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars by putting their financial weight behind Britain. Now they would.. sit on the sidelines.”[47]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family#Conspiracy_theories

Because they are using a Wikileaks logo, many people thought that the “press release” was issued “by Wikileaks”. In fact there has been no press release about this by Wikileaks and none of the official Wikileaks mirrors sites even recognise the wikileaks.info mirror. We wonder how long it will be before Wikileaks supporters wake up and start to question why wikileaks.info is not on the list of real Wikileaks mirrors at wikileaks.ch.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20101218_wikileaks_ddos_of_spamhaus_political_activism_at_its_dumbest/

The credit companies were called to a meeting on Sunday with the committee to talk about the reasons why they have decided to withdraw their services from the site.

Robert Marshall, chairman of the committee said that everyone wants to know the reasons why they decided to act like this and on what legal grounds. He added that no one could answer it effectively apart from saying the decision was made by a foreign source outside of Iceland.

The committee now is gathering information from all companies involved including MasterCard and Visa on the legalities behind blocking the donations. Marshall added that they were at risk of losing their licenses to operate in Iceland and a review of this will take place shortly.

More: http://news.carrentals.co.uk/credit-companies-to-be-barred-from-iceland-34229169.html

See also: http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Parliament-Committee-Calls-Ban-on-Wikileaks-Harsh-Operation-on-Freedom-of-Expression

Unredacted statements held by prosecutors in Stockholm, along with interviews with some of the central characters, shed fresh light on the hotly disputed sequence of events that has become the centre of a global storm.

Stephens has repeatedly complained that Assange has not been allowed to see the full allegations against him, but it is understood his Swedish defence team have copies of all the documents seen by the Guardian. He maintains that other potentially exculpatory evidence has not been made available to his team and may not have been seen by the Guardian.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden

Google had until today to comply with the Connecticut Attorney General’s demand that it hand over the data its Street View cars collected via unsecured WiFi.

But Google, which has been cleared of wrongdoing by the Federal Trade Commission but remains under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission over the matter, rejected AG Richard Blumenthal’s request, according to a Wall Street Journal report. That has left the state AG pondering his next steps, including legal action.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-rejects-state-ags-request-legal-action-to-follow/42871

It’s no surprise that more and more people are streaming TV shows and movies over the Internet rather than relying on the old standard, cable. But, according to a recent Nielsen study, set-top box manufacturers have something to worry about as gaming consoles are slowly but surely becoming the premier entertainment hubs in living rooms.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/study-gaming-consoles-are-taking-over-living-room-entertainment-hubs/20871

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/freed-on-bail-ndash-but-us-steps-up-efforts-to-charge-assange-with-conspiracy-2162639.html

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101216/17303812306/warner-bros-smarter-than-average-studio-wont-fight-yogi-bear-parody.shtml

More: http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20101216/17372712307/deep-packet-inspection-firms-trying-to-turn-net-neutrality-satire-into-reality.shtml

Previously:

Imagine a world where every app has its own data plan
http://vrritti.com/2010/12/15/imagine-a-world-where-every-app-has-its-own-data-plan/

What’s troubling isn’t just that the folks who made the decision to seize these domain names don’t seem to know what they’re talking about, but that they seem to have relied almost exclusively on the MPAA for their (lack of) knowledge on the subject at hand.

It looks like the four blog/forum sites (RapGodFathers, OnSmash, Dajaz1 and RMX4U) and Torrent-Finder were all lumped together into a single warrant and affidavit. The affidavit was written by a Special Agent with ICE, named Andrew Reynolds, who indicates in the affidavit that he only recently graduated from college (he notes that he’s only been on the job for one year, but before that he was a “student trainee with the group”).

More: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/01190512310/homeland-security-presents-evidence-domain-seizures-proves-it-knows-little-about-internet—law.shtml

Limewire asked the judge to have the record labels actually prove their losses — and, somewhat stunningly — it appears the judge has agreed, despite the record labels’ claim that trying to prove damages would represent a “crushing burden”:

On Tuesday, Judge Freeman said tough noogies, with some interesting language written in the margins of a court-endorsed memo to the parties. She scribbled — barely legible — that Lime Wire should enjoy enough discovery to mount a defense on the damages issue. Both Lime Wire and the labels must pick 100 works — 80 songs and 20 albums — that each believes to be representative of the damage (real or not) that file-sharing has on the record companies. In addition, 100 more works — another 80 songs and 20 albums — will be selected at random.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/04100512316/judge-limewire-case-wants-to-explore-how-much-file-sharing-really-costs-record-labels.shtml

 Espinel has announced that a variety of companies — including Google, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Network Solutions — have apparently agreed to effectively disappear and cut off certain websites. The focus, for now, is on “unlicensed web pharmacies,” with the idea being that these companies will effectively kill off those sites:

Together, the firms hope to tackle every link in the chain that keeps unlicensed pharmacies operating by stopping them showing up in search results, taking their websites offline, delisting the domains they use and stopping payments reaching them.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/03240112312/us-ip-czar-gets-companies-to-cut-off-unlicensed-online-pharmacies.shtml

France’s National Assembly to approve a law to set up a blacklist allowing the government to censor any website it doesn’t like. The full law isn’t passed yet, apparently, as it still needs to be approved by a variety of others before it becomes a law.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/03493812314/french-national-assembly-approves-internet-censorship-law.shtml

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/17/europe_cybercrime_crowd_sourcing/

Raids on Tuesday led to the arrest of 42 suspected members of the gang, reckoned to be led by two Romanians, according to Romanian prosecutors.

The group specialised in hacking into the corporate phone systems of Western firms before making calls to premium rate numbers under their control, earning a commission in the process. Victims of the scam included corporates in the US, UK, South Africa and Italy as well as Romania, AFP reports.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/17/romania_telecoms_fraud_arrests/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/17/assange_set_up/

Google has expanded a program designed to prevent search engine users from visiting websites that could scam them or install malware on their computers.

The feature includes the words “This site may be compromised” to search results that contain sites that Google’s automated tools indicate may be under the influence of third-party spammers, phishers or other scammers. Hackers often exploit vulnerabilities on legitimate sites so they can be used as a low-cost and stealthy platform for carrying out phishing attacks and spamming operations.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/17/google_site_compromise_warning/

‘We lost your trust and don’t deserve it back’

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/18/gawker_hack_aftermath/

Every defendant in these cases has been “severed,” and cases can only proceed against local residents.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/judge-kills-massive-p2p-porn-lawsuit-kneecaps-copyright-troll.ars

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/12/apple-owns-66-of-online-music-market-amazon-second-at-13.ars

By leveraging a portion of Google’s massive library of digitized books, the team has created what they call a “culturome,” with which they can track the use of language and terms across hundreds of years. This lets them track not only trends in language and usage, but the rise and fall of celebrities and historic events in the books of many eras. And, thanks to Google, the underlying data has been exposed via a Web interface, allowing others to perform their own analysis.

More: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/googles-digitized-books-provide-verbal-culturome.ars

See also: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/

“The most sophisticated adversaries are going to go unnoticed on our networks”

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/93506/20101217/ucode-cracking-agency-works-as-if-compromised.htm

The Internet has changed our world in many ways, and not all for the good.

The list can begin with the proliferation of pornography, the rise in hate speech and WikiLeaks. But equally disturbing are the significant privacy concerns raised by marketers and others tracking our habits online.

Many web users do not realize how closely their activities are being watched, not by Big Brother but by Madison Avenue. Sophisticated monitoring has grown steadily in recent years, as marketers have learned it can help them put the most effective message in front of the right customer.

Already, companies collect massive amounts of information about which web sites you visit, what you search for, what you buy and other behavior online. None of it requires your permission. In fact, many of the techniques are designed to conceal what is really going on.

More: http://www.herald-dispatch.com/opinions/x1205905248/Editorial-Do-Not-Track-initiative-a-good-idea

nine days in solitary confinement has made him as angry as hell
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/anger-fuelling-bailed-assanges-fight/2029540.aspx

First, the economy continues in a tailspin, Second, the prospect of war overseas looms large and is imminent, then there is North Korea. “Above all,” it’s the arrogance, indifference, incompetence, immorality, corruption and slough of our government officials and their body politic, and the media, which are destroying the country.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=240921

http://www.bakersfield.com/opinion/letters/x1680088355/Internet-such-a-good-thing

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/social-media-backlash-has-begun-20101217-190r7.html

“Amazingly, the government wants to bar this newspaper’s journalists — along with most federal workers — from reading information already plastered all over the public square.”

http://tinyurl.com/2djl628

Wikileaks and the media: Dancing with the devil

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/wikileaks-and-the-media-dancing-with-the-devil/article1842750/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40728284/ns/business/

Q: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

A:
On December 3rd, the site began experiencing unexplained performance problems. After no likely causes were found, we began mitigating the problem by increasing server capacity. As the server upgrades seemed to reduce problems, we initially attributed the problems to increased or unusual traffic. Soon after, we discovered something more sinister. Hackers had indeed broken into the site. While the entirety of their nefarious mission may never be known, we do believe that they were trying to increase the search engine ranking (“black hat SEO”) of less than legitimate businesses such as online pharmacies with reputations for shipping fake medicine. After some analysis and consulting a computer security expert (a “white hat” hacker), we decided that the then-current software was too vulnerable to keep. While repairs to the old software were perhaps possible, the likelihood of a future breach on the old system remained too high.

Q: SO WHAT DID YOU DO? AND, WHAT’S WITH ALL THESE BUGS?

A:
On or about December 7th (the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack), we fought back. We had a secret weapon up our sleeve. We had been building a replacement software solution intended to be launched months from now. So, we pressed it into service early. Of course, pushing new software into service early does have consequences. As you have likely noticed, we are still ironing out various improvements and bugfixes. We are also rebuilding and changing several other technical aspects behind the scenes. We have an entire team working day and night.

Q: WAS ANY OF MY DATA COMPROMISED?

A:
There is a possibility that user data stored at Ain’t It Cool has been compromised. While we have no definitive evidence that Ain’t It Cool’s databases have been downloaded by hackers, we wish to warn all users that unknown hackers may have accessed email addresses, IP addresses and passwords of users.

Much more: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/47763