protesters

Anonymous petitions U.S. to see DDoS attacks as legal protest

It's hard to imagine a group that adheres to anarchic ideology would want its actions legalized under U.S. law. But that is exactly what Anonymous is doing.

The loose-knit group of hackers submitted a petition to President Obama this week asking that distributed denial-of-service attacks be recognized as a legal form of protest.

The petition, which is posted on the White House's "We the People" Web site, claims that DDoS attacks are not illegal hacking but rather a way for people to carry out protests online. Similar to the Occupy movement when protesters pitched tents … Read more

Twitter renews privacy fight in Occupy Wall Street case

Twitter today renewed its privacy defense of a user accused of disorderly conduct during an Occupy Wall Street protest last October, telling a New York appeals court that police failed to comply with the U.S. Constitution's safeguards when trying to access his account.

A lower court's ruling in June that user "tweets are unprotected by the federal and New York constitutions is still erroneous," Twitter said in a brief (PDF) filed this morning.

Prosecutors want Twitter to turn over "any and all user information, including e-mail address, as well as any and all tweets&… Read more

Judge: Twitter must release account data of arrested user

A judge has ordered Twitter to release three months of data from the account of a user being prosecuted for disorderly conduct related to an Occupy Wall Street protest on the Brooklyn Bridge last October.

The district attorney's office in New York City wants Twitter to turn over basic user information from Malcolm Harris' Twitter account (@destructuremal), and his tweets. Harris' motion to quash the subpoena to Twitter was denied by the criminal court of the city of New York on the grounds that Harris had no proprietary interest in the user information on his Twitter account. Twitter challenged the subpoena, … Read more

ACLU, EFF: Subpoena for Twitter data would chill free speech

Three consumer rights groups filed a friend of the court brief today arguing that allowing the government access to an individual's Twitter account information would chill free speech.

The brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Citizen comes three weeks after Twitter filed its own challenge to an order from a New York State court requiring it to hand over data on one of its users who was arrested for disorderly conduct during an Occupy Wall Street protest last year.

The District Attorney's Office in New York wants Twitter to turn … Read more

Verizon's moms to company: How 'bout a contract Mother's Day?

Mother's Day exists not merely to make some people large profits, but also to raise sincere emotions.

Perhaps this is what inspired some working moms at Verizon Communications to appear in a video, which serves as a response to Verizon's current Mother's Day TV ad.

You might have been assailed by this TV ad. It's the one in which a mother and daughter spend the whole time weeping because they are both desperate for Droid Razrs or merely a desperate child-raiser and her daughter.

The point of the ad is to talk about what moms really … Read more

EFF: Prosecutors want location data via a Twitter shortcut

New York City prosecutors have subpoenaed Twitter in order to get data about the account holder's location during the Occupy Wall Street protests, the Electronic Frontier Foundation disclosed in a blog post today.

By granting the subpoena request -- which Twitter has challenged -- the court is allowing prosecutors to bypass the need for a search warrant as typically required when seeking location information, the EFF argues.

"The judge also allowed the government to get access to location information without a search warrant. Twitter keeps a record of a user's IP address when he logs in to … Read more

Workers threaten to jump off roof in Foxconn protest

Foxconn workers in a facility in Wuhan City in China reportedly threatened to jump off a building if their demands for higher wages were not met.

According to the Hong Kong-based activist group Information Centre for Human Rights (Translate), as many as 200 workers from the Foxconn facility climbed a building and said that they would collectively jump if the company didn't address wage issues. Soon after, local police arrived on the scene, and the workers returned to work.

Reuters, which first reported on the news, spoke to someone representing Foxconn owner Hon Hai Precision Industry, who said the … Read more

Techie gets naked to protest TSA

I am generally in favor of nudity as a form of self-expression.

I am not sure, though, how often it has been successful when that self-expression involves protest.

Portland, Ore., resident John Brennan, however, who reportedly works in tech with a major Silicon Valley company, got to Portland International Airport and decided to bare his soul. And a little more. For he dropped everything in order to get the TSA operatives to drop, some said, their harassment of his being. His explanation, though, proved a little different.

I am grateful, in a way, to the Associated Press for revealing some … Read more

Old-time hacktivists: Anonymous, you've crossed the line

In December 1998, a U.S.-based hacker group called Legions of the Underground declared cyberwar on Iraq and China and prepared to protest human rights abuses in those countries by disrupting their Internet access.

About a week later, a coalition of hackers from groups including Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), L0pht, Chaos Computer Club in Germany, and hacker mags 2600 and Phrack issued a statement condemning the move. "We - the undersigned - strongly oppose any attempt to use the power of hacking to threaten to destroy the information infrastructure of a country, for any reason," … Read more