Anonymous hacks U.S. sites to protest treaty

Protesters wearing Guy Fawks masks hold the logos of the international hacker group Anonymous during a demonstration against Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Budapest, Hungary, Feb. 11, 2012. / AP Photo/MTI

LONDON - Cyber rebels from Anonymous announced Friday the group has carried out a new series of attacks against U.S. government websites to protest a global copyright treaty.

Anonymous said in a statement posted to the Internet that it had attacked websites for the Federal Trade Commission's consumer protection business center and the National Consumer Protection Week.

The Trade Commission confirmed that the sites had been compromised, saying in an email that they had been taken down and wouldn't be brought back "until we're satisfied that any vulnerability has been addressed."

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Earlier Friday, the sites had been replaced with a violent German-language video satirizing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA.

The treaty aims to halt intellectual property theft — such as illegal film downloads — but many activists fear its provisions could be used to prosecute trivial acts such as remixing music or making online video montages.

The hackers' video underlined the latter point, showing a home computer user being shot to death by alleged ACTA enforcers for emailing a photograph to his mother.

In its statement, Anonymous also boasted of stealing a significant amount of personal data from Trade Commission employees — including everything from banking statements to dating website information. That claim could not immediately be confirmed.

[violet0117]

Apparently, hypnotoad72 isn't familiar with critical thinking. And Govt nevvvvver conspires against people. Ever.


Did I mention never?

[BWB2020]

Any opinions vis-a-vis Anonymous notwithstanding, they have a point that is perhaps more important than even they realize.

Centuries of common-law commerce has been reversed to the point that now thought is now claimed to be owned, contracts are assumed to be valid without personal signatures, and "patents" are selectively granted to some, yet denied to others.

By the logic of the "intellectual property" people, Ford Motor should have to pay royalties in the billions to the descendants of Otto Benz, the aircraft makers owe monetary debt to the descendants of DaVinci, and even computer makers should pay royalties to at least to the estate of Alan Turing, and also to the Chinese person who first devised the abacus, upon which the computer's model if information representation, and calculation is based.

Jif and Skippy owe the family of George Washington Carver, and Thomas Edison owes his assistant money for figuring out that a vacuum was necessary for his light bulb to work longer than a second or two.

The very idea of "intellectual property" is ridiculous, as there are few humans on earth who have original thought, independent of knowledge that came before them.

There is no such thing as "theft" of a thought, as thought is not material, the original thinker can still think it, and has not lost the use of it.

This movement towards claiming ownership of non-material entities will destroy the world's economy.

Since we are descending into the ridiculous, then I claim ownership of the process by which gravitationally-induced nuclear fusion of hydrogen releases broad-spectrum radiation, from infra-red to gamma, with photon emission as a side effect, therefore anyone enjoying the light of day, or a starry night owes me royalties, because I am the first to describe it in this fashion. Anyone availing themselves of sunlight without paying royalties to me, is now guilty of theft of sunlight, moonlight, and starlight.

[credibility2]

We need to find all of these anarchists in this criminal ring and put them before an active firing squad.

[sdguero]

Because we know that the corporate-welfare system they are questioning must be perfect, and anyone who dissents via non-violent (albeit illegal) protest deserves nothing less than to be euthanized.

Or we could put them in camps where they can work for free for us until they starve to death and then we can throw them into ovens and use their hair for our bedding (I hear technology protesters' hair makes an awesome pillow stuffing). Sounds like a perfectly credible (pun intended) "solution" to this problem eh buddy?

Man we have really come a long way in the last century...

[ok_ryder]

I'm sure these Anonymous folks are government workers. The U.S. has such an expanded spy network and secret services that anyone doing this would quickly be caught. The govt wants to scare their own into going along with more and more clamp downs on internet freedom. That is what this is all about.

[Whys333]

Dating website information... really hit'em where it hurts! :D