• High school football players accused of rape: Lawyers slam Anonymous release of video, photo

    By Reuters

    Two Ohio high-school football players accused of raping a teenage girl may not get a fair trial after a photo and video allegedly associated with the case were posted on the Internet by the computer hacking group Anonymous, a lawyer for one of the accused said on Friday.


    The players, both 16 and members of the Steubenville High School football team, are charged with raping a 16-year-old fellow student last August, according to statements from their attorneys to local and national media.

    Their juvenile court trial is scheduled for February in Steubenville, a city of 19,000 about 40 miles west of Pittsburgh.

    The case shot to national prominence this week when Anonymous activists made public a picture allegedly of the rape victim, being carried by her wrists and ankles by two young men, and of a video that showed several other young men joking about an alleged assault.

    Walter Madison, the lawyer for one of the defendants said on CNN that his client was one of the young men in the photograph, but does not appear in the video.

    But the picture "is out of context," Madison said. "That young lady is not unconscious," as has been widely reported.

    "A right to a fair trial for these young men has been hijacked," Madison said, adding that social media episodes such as this have become a major threat to a criminal defendant's right to a fair trial.

    "It's very, very serious and fairness is essential to getting the right decision here," he said.

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    Adam Nemann, an attorney for the other defendant, could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday. In an interview on Thursday with Columbus, Ohio, broadcaster WBNS-10TV, Nemann raised concerns about the effect the Anonymous postings could have on potential witnesses in the case.

    "This media has become so astronomically ingrained on the Internet and within that society, I am concerned witnesses might not want to come forward at this point. I would be surprised now, if there weren't witnesses now who might want to start taking the Fifth Amendment," Nemann told the station.

    The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offers protection against self-incrimination in criminal proceedings.

    The case has also been a challenge for local officials because of conflicts of interest. Both the local prosecutor and police have close ties to the school that the defendants attend.

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    As a result, the case is being investigated and prosecuted by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's office.

    Interviewed on CNN on Friday, DeWine said it was not unusual for his office to prosecute or investigate cases in small towns where close ties within the community caused conflicts of interest to arise.

    He also voiced concern about how social media may affect the case.

    "This case needs to be tried not in the media, not in social media," DeWine said.

    He said Anonymous' attempt to shame the alleged attackers had actually harmed the victim.

    Not only is the victim hurt by the initial crime, but "every time something goes up on the Internet, the victim is victimized again," DeWine said.

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  • Update: CIA site back up after Anonymous claims attacks on it and Alabama state sites

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook

    Updated at 11:45 p.m. ET: cia.gov is back up, although it is loading slowly, about nine hours after it was reported to be down, followed shortly by a claim that the hacker group Anonymous was responsible.

    Updated at 7:10 p.m. ET: cia.gov remains inaccessible four hours after it was first reported to be down, followed shortly by a claim that the hacker group Anonymous was responsible. As security experts have noted, that's an unusually long time if the attack really is a straightforward DDoS assault. 

    Meanwhile, the Anonymous Twitter account that set off the original round of reports has tweeted a follow-up that bolsters our original report (below) that the attack could have been launched by Anonymous or simply by "elements claiming to be part of it":

    Updated at 6 p.m. ET: cia.gov remains inaccessible, about three hours after it was first reported to be down. Meanwhile, the Alabama Department of Homeland Security says any "comment would be premature at this time" because it was an "ongoing investigation," The Birmingham News reports.

    Updated at 5:28 p.m. ET: Jennifer Youngblood, a spokeswoman for the CIA, tells CNN the agency is "looking into these reports."

    Original post: The hacker group Anonymous, or elements claiming to be part of it, claimed it launched an ambitious set of attacks Friday, saying it had taken down the CIA's website and had harvested the personal information of 46,000 people in Alabama.

    Neither claim could immediately be confirmed, but the CIA's site remained unavailable late Friday afternoon. 

    An Anonymous member tweeted CIA TANGO DOWN, using a military expression for the killing of an important target:

    (Don't worry; the shortened link takes you to a safe news report on the incident.)

    Gizmodo quoted a member of Anonymous as saying the CIA was under a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, by a group of anti-pedophile hackers.

    The CIA had no immediate comment. The length of the site's disappearance suggests either an unusually extensive DDoS assault or a different form attack that could have infiltrated the agency's servers directly. That would mark a notable advance in the ability of Anonymous or hackers claiming to be affiliated with it to penetrate cyberdefenses.

    In a further indication that the group could be stepping up its generally anti-bureaucracy, pro-open-Internet approach, Anonymous separately claimed responsibility for an attack on Alabama government servers, saying it had harvested the personal information — including dates of birth, Social Security numbers and criminal records — for 46,000 state residents.

    In an Internet post that msnbc.com is not linking to, the Anonymous operative said the attack was launched in opposition to "recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals."

    That appears to be a reference to a law Gov. Robert Bentley signed in June that has been called the nation's toughest immigration legislation. The posting linked to an msnbc.com story from September in which state officials promised to fully enforce the new law.

    The post said the personal data would be deleted. But it did publish edited samples from 500 residents as proof of its claim — something Anonymous isn't known to have done before when the information involved private individuals, rather than government or police officials.

    The attack resembles one that Anonymous claimed Tuesday night, when the Salt Lake City, Utah, police website went down under a DDoS campaign. A purported Anonymous member told NBC station KSL that that attack harvested phone numbers, addresses and email addresses of police officers and officials, as well as information on drug operations, suppliers, license plate numbers and more.

    That attack came a day after yet another similar attack on a website for the West Virginia Chiefs of Police Association. The same Anonymous group that claimed Friday's CIA attack — calling itself CabinCr3w — claimed responsibility harvesting the personal information of more than 150 police officers.

  • Anonymous says it takes down FBI, DOJ, entertainment sites

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    Hacking group Anonymous said Thursday it knocked out the websites of the FBI, U.S. Department of Justice, and several entertainment industry sites as retribution for anti-piracy efforts by both the government and the entertainment industry. The group said it was "the largest attack ever," with 5,635 participants involved in bringing down the sites.

    In addition to the FBI and DOJ, the Recording Industry of America, Motion Picture Association of America, Universal Music and BMI.com websites were also attacked. Said the DOJ in a statement: "The Department of Justice web server hosting justice.gov is currently experiencing a significant increase in activity, resulting in a degradation in service. The department is working to ensure the website is available while we investigate the origins of this activity, which is being treated as a malicious act until we can fully identify the root cause of the disruption."

    An MPAA spokesman said, in an emailed statement to the AP, that despite the attack, the site was working by Thursday evening. "The motion picture and television industry has always been a strong supporter of free speech," the spokesman said. "We strongly condemn any attempts to silence any groups or individuals."

    The RIAA confirmed its site had been attacked, but said it was operating normally by evening.

    The FBI's site, as of 9 p.m. ET Thursday, was back up. About 45 minutes earlier, however, it could not be accessed and resulted in an error message:

    The FBI.gov site could not be accessed at at 8:15 p.m. ET Thursday.

    "Get some popcorn," Anonymous said on Twitter. "It's going to be a long lulzy night," indicating more was to come. "Lulz" is Internet slang for "laughs," and the hacking group LulzSec, or Lulz Security, is allied with Anonymous.

    Anonymous' actions, its biggest in a single swoop, comes a day after an Internet protest against two proposed anti-piracy bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and the Protect IP Act, before Congress, and on the same day as a federal indictment of employees of a major Internet content-hosting site, Megaupload.com.

    Universal Music's home page was not accessible Thursday afternoon.

    Megaupload employees are accused of taking $500 million from copyright holders and generating $175 million in criminal proceeds via illegal downloads of films, music and other content, according to the indictment. Although the website is based in Hong Kong, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said.

    The Justice Department said in a statement said that Kim Dotcom, 37, and three other employees were arrested Thursday in New Zealand at the request of U.S. officials. Three other defendants are at large.

    Before the site was taken down, it posted a statement saying allegations that it facilitated massive breaches of copyright laws were "grotesquely overblown."

    "The fact is that the vast majority of Mega's Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay," the statement said. "If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch."

    Anonymous and LulzSec have taken down several private industry and government websites in the past year, largely through distributed denial-of-service attacks like the ones launched Thursday.

    Members of Anonymous may have been particularly angered by the government action against Mega sites "which were massively popular among Anonymous’ young, copyright-flouting contingent of the Web," notes Andy Greenberg of Forbes.

    Said Anonymous on Twitter: "Censors & copyright terrorists beware!"

    Megaupload is considered a "cyberlocker," in which users can upload and transfer files that are too large to send by email. Such sites can have perfectly legitimate uses. But the MPAA, which has campaigned for a crackdown on piracy, estimated that the vast majority of content being shared on Megaupload was in violation of copyright laws.

    According to the federal indictment, Megaupload was estimated at one point to be the 13th most frequently visited website on the Internet. Current estimates by companies that monitor Web traffic place it in the top 100. The site has 150 million registered users. Megaupload allowed users to download films, TV shows, games, music and other content for free, but made money by charging subscriptions to people who wanted access to faster download speeds or extra content. The website also sold advertising.

    Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.

    The Justice Department said it was illegal for anyone to download pirated content, but that its investigation is focused on the leaders of the company, not users who may have downloaded a few movies for personal viewing.

    Congress is weighing anti-piracy legislation largely backed by the entertainment industry and opposed by the tech world for the way it would alter the Internet and companies' roles in policing it. Wikipedia led the way Wednesday with an Internet blackout, while other websites, including Google, provided links to online petitions against the bills. Some senators and members of Congress did pull their support because of the protest. Both bills are due to be considered in the next several weeks.

    On Thursday, Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate, asked the Senate majority to reconsider the Protect IP Act bill before moving ahead with it because of the "serious issues" with the legislation.

    (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and Comcast/NBC Universal. Comcast/NBC Universal is listed as a supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act on the House Judiciary Committee website. Microsoft itself said it opposes SOPA as it is "currently drafted.")

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  • Anonymous hacks group in Muslim TV show uproar

    Adam Rose / AP

    Nawal Aoude, a pediatric respiratory therapist, left, and her husband Nader go for a walk in a scene from the TLC series, "All-American Muslim." The series features five families from Dearborn, Mich., a city near Detroit with one of the highest concentrations of Arab descendants in the country.

    By Matt Liebowitz

    SecurityNewsDaily

    A conservative Florida organization's opposition to the reality show "All-American Muslim" has stirred up a storm of controversy that's got Lowe's, a Muslim rights group, travel website Kayak, actor Kal Penn and the hacktivist group Anonymous all choosing sides.

    Tuesday, the Tampa-based Florida Family Association told the St. Petersburg Times that its website was hacked by a member of Anonymous. FFA executive director David Caton said the attack shut down the FFA site, leaving a message saying that the site destroys free speech. (The site is back online.)

    "In a country that supposedly embraces free speech, those that oppose our position have no qualms about destroying our free speech," Caton said. "This is the worst I've seen any group respond."

    [Anonymous Hacktivists Attack 'God Hates Fags' Websites]

    The online takedown comes after the FFA, citing what it called "All-American Muslim's" anti-American agenda and Islamic "propaganda," persuaded the home-improvement chain Lowe's to pull its ads from the TLC cable channel show.

    The backlash from Lowe's compliance with the FFA riled the Council on American-Islamic Relations as well as "Harold and Kumar" star Kal Penn, hip-hop forefather Russell Simmons and California Sen. Ted Liu, who told the Associated Press, "The show is about what it's like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of discrimination is exactly what's happening here at Lowe's."

    A Dec. 11 post on the file-hosting site Pastebin credits the hack to Anonymous and AntiSec, an offshoot of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking groups that targets large organizations and government corruption.

    Along with exposing the email and IP addresses of 33 FFA newsletter recipients and donors, the credit card type and card verification numbers of 13 more and the usernames and passwords of three FFA site administrators, the hacker, identified on his Twitter feed only as "ihazCAnNONz," condemned the conservative group for its "hatred, bigotry and fear mongering towards gays, lesbians and most recently Muslim Americans."

    "Anonymous will not stand for hate and divisive vitriol to be spread across our country and whenever we can...we will stop it..." the hacker wrote. "FFA you managed to use your power to influence Lowe's to follow you into your racist stupor and they too will answer for that."

    The FFA's influence reached beyond Lowe's; the travel website Kayak also decided to stop running ads on "All-American Muslim" when the show returns next month.

    In a press release issued Wednesday, Kayak explained its position.

    "We decided to advertise on it in the first place because we adamantly support tolerance and diversity," Robert Birge, Kayak's chief marketing officer, wrote, adding, "When we decided to give our money to TLC for this program, we deemed the show a worthy topic."

    Birge said that TLC was "not upfront" about the nature of the show. He didn't elaborate, but said part of Kayak's decision was based on the quality of the show, not its message.

    "I watched the first two episodes," Birge wrote. "Mostly, I just thought the show sucked."

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