Continuing pro-Wikileaks DDOS actions, Anonymous takes down PayPal.com

Anonymous

While I’m not sure this is the most effective or direct method, I do see why this is happening.

Visa and Mastercard will accept donations to the KKK, who are a known domestic terrorist organization who has repeatedly committed bombings, arsons, and murders, but they won’t accept donations from a news organization that has never been charged with anything.

Paypal has closed wikileaks’ account and seized the contents, apparently some 60,000 euros. Paypal has a history of doing this, where they can take anyone’s money for any reason because they’re not a bank.

Cutting into these companies bottom line, preventing people from generating them money, instilling fear, uncertainty and doubt in their customers, is certainly a good way to get their attention.

Anon isn’t organized. They have no coherent message. Throwing bricks at a starbucks window doesn’t get a point across very well, but they do have their reasons.

Anonymous

PayPal deserves it BIG time. All the poor small business owners that rely on them? Yeah, when they get their accounts frozen by PayPal for no good reason and have to prove they are NOT thugs. PayPal is behaving like a bully, and just because it almost has a monopoly (especially with eBay) should be NO reason not to target them. In the contrary, especially because they can behave like the kings of the world they need to get a tender kick in the ass. Their account freezing policy is pure robbery (temporary robbery, but still, up to six months? Come on!)

Anonymous

Whatever Wikileaks did had no relations to Paypal.If you believe that Paypal has the right to block someone’s profits because they don’t agree with them, then you should believe that annonimous has the right to block Paypals profits because he(they?) don’s agree with Paypal.

Johnny Fronthole

I’m surprised to see so much support for trickle down economics on this site. I guess it’s difficult to see the big picture when you’re the one being trickled on.

Jack

I’m surprised to see so much support for trickle down economics on this site. I guess it’s difficult to see the big picture when you’re the one being trickled on.

Wikileaks has nothing to do with these attacks. Some script kiddies took it on themselves to launch this attack.

Considering the concept of Wikileaks is to create a safe environment for anyone to leak documents and then have the material diseminated, how exactly does this DDoS create any safe environment? And how can that â€œinsuranceâ€ file ever be opened now that this DDoS nonsense is mixed in with WIkileaks?

Do you actually think of the big picture? And how much acting like fools hurts all.

Iâ€™m in strong favor of Wikileaks despite some issues I have with the latest leaks. But this DDoS stuff is childish and self-destructive.
- Johnny Fronthole
  
  My post wasn’t a claim of support in any direction.
  
  But the DDoS attacks, wherever they come from, and whyever they are motivated, draw attention to a desire to support WikiLeaks. If you have a way of getting millions of people to think about this and discuss it without inconveniencing the small business person who is complicit to the corporate agenda let’s hear it.
  - Jack
    
    If you have a way of getting millions of people to think about this and discuss it without inconveniencing the small business person who is complicit to the corporate agenda let’s hear it.
    
    I said in #74 â€¢ 8:11 PM, Dec 8:
    
    Iâ€™m all in favor of more mirroring of Wikileaks documents
    
    This DDoS only makes average folks more and more afraid of hackers and makes Assange look like the leader of malicious hackers the mainstream media wants him to be.
    - john dent
      
      Assange is, in fact, a straightened hacker himself, and maybe that is why he has so many supporters and sympathies of the community.
      
      But it’s not about him. It’s about how anybody uncomfortable enough for the big corporations (or US gov) is being treated. And that is a precedent, which can not be tolerated in this way.
      
      Maybe the DDOS attacks is not a superb way how to express this, but it is the way THERE IS. Personally, I am thankfull for it and do not believe this is a couple of n00bs or anarchs hoping/trying “to overtake the world”.
      
      This is about morale in the people standing up for this. Without it there would be just a bunch of guys doing x-mas shopping.

fastfreddy

Stop whining. The U.S. government created this problem when it decided to lie about foreign policy and clamp down on free media.

All economic boycotts have consequences. This one actually doesn’t have very big consequences, but it is letting the world know that there are people who aren’t willing to let government liars peddle their crimes unchecked.

DEFEND WIKILEAKS / SUPPORT OPERATION PAYBACK

Cowicide

Stop whining. The U.S. government created this problem when it decided to lie about foreign policy and clamp down on free media.

All economic boycotts have consequences. This one actually doesn’t have very big consequences, but it is letting the world know that there are people who aren’t willing to let government liars peddle their crimes unchecked.

DEFEND WIKILEAKS / SUPPORT OPERATION PAYBACK

Good post. Ok, let’s hear some more of you whine about how all this hurts your small business and ignore the larger picture in all this, you self-centered corporatist pawns.

imag

All of you saying that PayPal has to be kept up because the little people need to get paid…

Couldn’t one easily make the case that shutting down PayPal could end their domination of the space. Why is it good that PP has a near-monopoly on this kind of economic activity. Do you think that’s a good thing?

How bad would PayPal have to behave to make you okay with shutting them down for a few hours in protest?

And I’m sorry, but PayPal is a very large business, whose former CEO just tried to buy herself the Governorship of California. Don’t act like they are just a bunch of cute little elves.

@ Terabyte: they didn’t just stop hosting a site. They stopped people’s legitimate donations to a site the was doing nothing illegal, then froze their money in limbo. Where is your consideration for those little people, your fellow citizens?

Anonymous

I think the big issue here is that PayPal kept all the money Assange had on the Wikileaks account. It’s one thing to not want to help him, but they KEPT ALL THE MONEY when they canceled his account. That’s their standard operating procedure. It’s stupid and probably against the law but nobody does anything. :\

I disagree with the DDOS, but I also think they deserve it for stealing their users’ money when they suspend them.

Anonymous

I have one word: Vladuz

travtastic

All these poor small businesses are going to go bankrupt u guyz. My opinion of wikileaks has now become the opposite of what it was yesterday.

Ugly Canuck

These hackers are acting without any encouragement or direction whatsoever from Wikileaks, and as your reaction is the logical one, I think that these guys were the same guys who DDOSed Wikileaks itself.

“Wikileak hacker attacks” is what they are being called in the MSM: to catapult the propaganda, no doubt.

Wkikleaks has done nothing illegal or wrong.

A-non-mouse

It seems reading these comments if the U.S government were to do it’s own ddos attacks and blame Wikileaks it could alienate a large percentage of Wikileaks supporters. Perhaps time to step back and look at this before you do their job for them.

ericmartinex1

Nothing like a blind (but directed?) mob to dole out internet justice.

Or better yet, a mob of anonymous furry porn fueled teens commenting such insightful things as “give fuckin paypal some butthurt to support Julean!” from their cozy suburbia parents’ paid DSL modems to save the world.

Anonymous

The 4chan disdain for furry porn is nearly legendary. If you were as familiar with the site as your condescension implies, you wouldn’t have even considered putting that qualifier in your sentence. Please stop making generalizations.

Also, regarding the “what about the small businesses?” argument, while there are good arguments against the DDOSing that’s been going on, I’m reluctant to consider that a valid argument against them. We could say the same thing about union strikes – think about how many small businesses have ever been hurt by a public transportation strike.

Yes, I know the situations are not directly analogous, but my point is that sometimes, if the situation is deemed important enough, there’s precedent for society saying, “yes, people are suffering because of action, but the cause is worth it.” Obviously the protesters have decided, but now it’s up to everyone else to decide if we want to stand behind them.

HUGE CAVEAT. I do not intend this argument to be support for the DDOS’s. I merely intend it to be a technical criticism of lines of argument. I have my own doubts and concerns regarding the efficacy, intended purpose, and long-term effects of the DDOs’s, and if I had to make a decision right now I’d say we’d be better off if they hadn’t happened.

I’ve also seen the argument (on 4chan itself no less) that these DDOS’s just killed net neutrality in one stroke. This is like dry kindling under a pile of dynamite for legislators pushing for tighter control of the net. (again, I don’t support or believe such control would be effective, but since when has effectiveness stopped us from passing laws?)

imag

Missing some question marks there. I’ll throw them here:

??

Anonymous

17 Paypal alternatives:
http://blog.webdistortion.com/2010/07/28/paypal-alternatives-e-commerce/

hershmire

Wikileaks needs to come out and denounce these attacks if it wants to have any standing in world opinion. Otherwise, it’s just data terrorism extorting money for the right to publish secrets. And yes, these attacks come down to money, whether they’re approved of by WL or not.

joeposts

I guess it’s wrong to be amused by all this ‘hacking’ but I just don’t see how it’ll be anything more than a minor inconvenience. If you depend on Paypal to feed your children, god help you if you have a power outage or your ISP takes a dump. OMG, small businesses are being denied payment… for a few hours!

Visa and MC seem to be up and running again. I’m sure paypal will be back up once enough /b/tards decide to play WOW or go out and meet girls.

Jack

Yoda said it best: Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help
them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought
and suffered.

Anonymous

PayPal.com is still up and they have weathered much worse than a bunch of idiots doing a DDoS attack.

They are the leaders in dealing with this kind of attack and it simply won’t work for any extended period of time.

PayPal remains one of the only sites that has never been hacked.

Anonymous

Since when did PayPal become the savior of the independent, small shops? PayPal has worked hard to dick over as many people as possible. While you’re worried about your ex-mas shopping: what about people who use Google Checkout? Money orders? Did those disappear overnight? Hell, what about the small, local artists selling wares that you’re not patronizing when you patronize someone’s etsy shop?

Of course with all the foaming at the mouth it’s probably easy to ignore the update to this article that points out that PayPal’s service has been working (as well as it could be expected to work).

Anonymous

I feel for the sellers that rely on PayPal – I work for one – but this specifically is important in the development of Internet culture.

It is the only space in which those marginalized by any policy of the mainstream culture – dictated by the west’s corporate (yes this is a platitude) hegemony – which those of us who create the culture have a VOICE, a palpable effect.

Attacks on money processor’s – PayPal is (fuck, should!) only the beginning – is the perfect expression of the frustration of a (not the) populace. Give it to the people who power credit card processing in addition to the corporate sites. Make internet commerce impossible!

Effecting the commerce of the internet is one of the only democratic powers left us. Politics have failed. Politics are nonsense! Reasoned debate cannot happen there. If you read this as what i fear you will, piss your own tea on your forehead and call it cold.

It is the right time – OK, I’ll admit this should have been done on Black Friday… though hell, black friday downs a great deal of small merchants – to do this.

This is important and should set an example for us, Mutants all, to examine our place in the internet.

This is a fairly shoddily reasoned polemic (filled with difficult to follow paratheses and hyphens… im a bad writer).
I give it to anonymous.

Anonymous

Script Kiddies like seeing them on every single newspaper of the world at the moment.

While it will bolster their ego and is more honorable than going for money (they even donated to wikileaks from long saved pocket money from their parents which is also honorable), their actions will hurt the public picture to the extreme.

Congress will pass CYBERPROTECTION Act within no time due to Script-Kiddies efforts to see their grandeur of coordination. Coordination is great and is something they could put to good use to help the case of Cablegate and the free Internet. But the opposite is the cause from my point of view.

As Media, Radio, weren’t already occupied enough with the Assange trial. Now the Hacktivists make them forget to write about the Cables which keep leaking, but nobody seeing them, because Headlines is full of Hacker-Talk.

Of course it is a really interesting topic that media LOVES to print and readers SUCK-UP with their eyes.

The story of the underdog against the ‘evil’ (ok after cablegate w/o the quotation marks, just evil) corporation in the world.

Everyone loves the story, because it is reading from the ‘Underground’, yea like sitting in Mama’s room or unniversity dorm is ‘the underground’. Haven’t you seen Lynch’s The Social Network. That is real hacking. Not flodding the Internet with TCP packets. Oh dear, the world is so blind.

It is remarkable that a 16 year old is this skilled in using Unix. Using *nix is remarkably harder than clicking your day thru MacOS or Win7. I’m sure they will put these kills to a good cause when grown up and earn a lot of money.

The money will come from the exact the same corporations they put under fire today. Every corporation is more or less the same: It has to earn money at some point. Money is kind of hindering righteousness and accountability as we all will agree. Let me shed light on a typical Script-Kiddie future: Their remarkable skills (been there done that, but put it to good use) will make them feel good, forget about their principles, let them drive huge cars, have wife, children, maybe even an embedded computer system with no root-access whatsoever that talks to Apple Servers all day long. Yes, you can stay true to your principles, but only later you will recognize that only by playing the systems game you will break it.

The Cablegate case is the biggest chance in history to change something. The Hacktivists are destroying this chance with every new TCP-Flood, MAC-Spoof, and the subsequent BIG headlines they produce.

There are practically no news about the Ukrainian (FoxNews: Russian, hahahah) T-74 tanks that Bush waved through Somalia to Sudan. Obama’s DOD wanted to stop that (killing northern sudan muslims with USA backed tanks) Obama’s diplomat then pleaded to Obama to let the Tanks go through, because Sudan were promised them and payed the fine to the pirates (remember the pirates of somalia). Obama said ok let the Tanks go to Somalia but not Sudan, as Somalia pledged to not give them to Somalia Insurgents. Anyway 33 heavy tanks are gone, I bet not to the junk yard. DOD and Sarkozy at that time said, we have no idea for whom the tanks are as Bush waved them through for YEARS and had absolutely no problem with it. These Weapons have killed little african children. World Nobel Peace Price? TAKE IT AWAY from him, the crook named Obama and imprison Bush for his torture and weapon crimes already. Cheney is already on Interpols list, even without cable!

Shocked? Thrilled? Yes, that’s cable news and its great. It gives Closure. Knowledge. Power to change peoples minds.

DDoSing Visa Server’s gives just a boner. For that I have my wife.

[X] Arhhh I’m a Pirate. Join us – It’s legal and we need you.

radicalbytes

To all the folks grumbling about these PayPal DDOS attacks on the grounds that they hurt small business – I don’t get it.

First PayPal is owned by eBay which is listed on the NASDAQ-100 index, meaning its one of the biggest corporations in the world.

Second the same argument “that these attacks hurt small business” could be applied to Master Card or Visa or even Bank of America or JP Morgan for that matter (reminds me a little of the “too big to fail” mantra).

Third PayPal specifically has acted in horrible and unscrupulous ways to its customers for a very long time now. It didn’t start with bowing to the US State Department.

Forth the comparison of DDOS attacks to smashing windows is just not appropriate since the breaking of glass on a building’s exterior is purely symbolic and does not really actually interrupt business transactions or internal operations of a corporation. DDOS attacks on these companies do that (even if it is in a small way and for a short time).

mdh

I really do equate a DDOS like this with a flash-mob, not so much a bunch of anarchists with black bandana’s and molotov cocktails, but n00bs are easily frightened.

pity the n00b. they really do think the sky is falling.
Rider

First, not sure I understand thios point at ll, sure Paypal is rich and listed on NASDAQ, who cares. Has no relation to the people who use it, in fact it just proves that this will not hurt Paypal but will hurt it’s users

Second, paypal offerers terms and conditions that attract the smallest of small business something you will not find from Visa or Card processors.

Third. I do not need to be able to log onto the VISA or Mastercard site to use there services and withdraw money…. I do however need to be able to log onto the Paypal site to perform these actions.

This is the major problem the people do these attacks have no clue how these services work, the differences between them, how transactions work……

Anonymous

If you’re a fan of boing boing than you should read (for free) Cory Doctorow’s excellent novella Little Brother, then the antics of anonymous might make a lot more sense to you in the context of protecting freedom of speech, personal privacy, and of course democracy. Cyber surveillance, Cyberwars and cyberprotest will become evermore frequent in society as events spill back and forth across the digital threshold. You have a lot more to worry about from the US GOV building huge datacenters to store biometric and social profiles than you do from Anon taking offline a few of our modern day robber barrons for a little bit.

Here’s a idea go shop local and support a local merchant for once if you buy something on etsy or ebay good grief.

fastfreddy

The big picture: Activism has different layers of impact. Martin Luther King’s Montgomery Bus Boycott was mostly symbolic at first, a way of educating people about the evils of segregation. The bus owners complained it was hurting their bottom line, and other business said it was hurting them, too — but we now realize it was just.

Over time, and as it grew, the boycott started having more economic impact. The combined symbolic and economic toll led to change, and sparked a broader movement.

Sniping about whether the DDoS attack “really is going to change things” or whatever just totally misses the point. It’s already made huge headlines and pushed the debate about whether the government clampdown on WikiLeaks, and arm-twisting of companies likes PayPal, Amazon, VISA and MasterCard was justified.

It also forced those businesses to explain why they caved to government pressure. Maybe they won’t do it so quickly next time.

And on and on. Concern trolls need to be honest that they are on the side of the government clampdown, period. I personally oppose it, and defend WikiLeaks. You know where I stand.

ericmartinex1

Anon as Nelson Mandela or DDoS’ng random websites as form of protest (reverse censure)?

This is getting too surreal. Comparing guys that laugh at the holocaust, gays, people with tourettes, tits or GTFO, etc.

Real upstanding citizens of the world, Nobel Prize material. These are the people that need to make decisions and entrust things to. Perfect match for Wikileaks – unaccountable and angry at teh “man”

fastfreddy

“Nobel Prize material” — yeah just like the illegal torture, bombings and killing of innocent civilians that WikiLeaks exposed, and which the media was refusing to report until the secret information was released.

You know as well as I do this isn’t about Assange or the people who make up /b/. It’s about whether or not we want to have a media that can expose government lies.

That was the issue with the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and the illegal war in Vietnam, and it’s the same issue today.

Bookburn

These comments are much more entertaining when I imagine BB to be the Daily Bugle and Wikileaks to be Spiderman.

joeposts

Obviously the solution here is for all the small businesspeople who can’t feed their families because of the PayPal DDOS attacks to hit up the food banks that the anti-DDOS attack people are volunteering at.

RigelK

You just made me shoot ice water up into my nose and choke!!! LOLOL :)

Chong

Not saying I necessarily agree with what Anonymous are doing, but can people please stop calling them terrorists?
It may be mildly annoying, but it is not terrorism.

mr. wiggles

I went to check my balance at PayPal and couldn’t access via the non-www domain, but http://www.paypal.com worked. Either way, not a biggie — these protest DDOS attacks don’t last very long; most people should be able to login within a few hours unless PayPal can’t figure out how to somewhat minimize the onslaught of ‘visits’. I’ve received payments since it started, too — the attack hasn’t (apparently) stopped payments.

I mostly support Wikileaks, and totally support the DDOS attacks. It’s the digital community’s form of protest. I don’t think there’s any other way to really make yourself heard online. Seriously, do people think they ought to blog about it or something? No — the fight, and our voices, have to be brought to their doorsteps — their websites — to ensure that our voices are heard.

travtastic

They r turrerists.

This is inevitably going to become one of two things: a fleeting action squashed by government reprisals, or a total, albeit cyber, war.

Whether this is a false flag or not (I don’t believe it is), isn’t very important. If some paypal users are mildly inconvenienced for half an hour, I’m not losing any sleep.

Jonathan

Just got back from the bank, sending a Wikileaks donation via wire transfer. Freedom isn’t free. Etc.

Adolescent punks? Teenage script-kiddies? Yeah, sure, maybe that’s true. But this is a war. And just like any other war, a bunch of kids are out there fighting for our freedom.

Last night WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said: “Anonymous … is not affiliated with WikiLeaks. There has been no contact between any WikiLeaks staffer and anyone at Anonymous. We neither condemn nor applaud these attacks. We believe they are a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets.”

Sing it, fastfreddy.

RigelK

Thank you for posting that statement, Jonathan!
Wolfie XIII

It’s always the young who go to war and fight. They are the ones with ideals and passion to go to the front lines. The older you get the more likely you are to become scared of change and rocking the boat. Afraid to take just action because you are too distracted by just trying to pay rent next month, or find a buck for coffee tomorrow.

I say people need to go out a flier their towns phone poles with wikileaks, and anon information. It’s time to wake up the people.
davejenk1ns

It seems that WikiLeaks is taking a ‘soft alliance’ position by clearly stating that they don’t condone Anonymous’ behaviour, but also do not oppose it. Fair enough. It would be consistent with their philosophy of independent actors in an open environment. Power to the People!, Open Source Rulz! and all that. I get it– I marched at Rock Against Reagan and used to work for an Open Source company. It’s nice that fastfreddy hides behind “public opinion”– I seem to recall the same justification used by those wishy-washy Arabs and Pakistanis that continue to fund Al Qaeda and other ‘populist’ groups which really just end up killing people.

The problem for me is that it’s a quick hop step and a jump from this kind of ‘democratic open action’ to darker places. The Symbian Liberation Army used to get cheered when they would knock over the Phone Company, because everyone thought they were getting screwed by Ma Bell, and there was no apparent real cost. But when they upgraded to hitting banks, kidnapping, and killing, things got nasty.

Yes– governments are corrupt, and spy agencies do nasty things. Yes– I welcome more transparency and honesty and clean actions by our appointed representatives and the executive arm of the government. I just have a very wary eye on where this will or will not stop. Free Anarchy always sounds nice on paper and in your freshman polisci course, but in practice, a society with weak institutions is really only incubator for the powerful to prey upon the weak, for corruption and crime to flourish, and for the oppressed to only get more oppressed.

Yes– those very institutions seem to be the ones in the wrong here, but take a second and think about what they’re really doing in all those cables: cajoling, bargaining, and occasionally threatening other powers in a realpolitik environment. In other words: they’re doing their job.

imag

For all those small business owners. Here’s an idea, or 17:

http://blog.webdistortion.com/2010/07/28/paypal-alternatives-e-commerce/

I’m serious. Quit using PayPal. There’s a solution that’s a good, nonviolent protest and good for your business too.

RigelK

OK, what alternatives do y’all see instead of the DDOS attacks? What other protest options can y’all think up? What other directions can be explored?

Chong

A charity hip-hop single?

imag

Here is your humanitarian organization, the helper of all the little people in the world: http://gawker.com/5709579/

And to the person who said that complainers just like to complain: perhaps once you have dealt with injustice, you will understand.

Anonymous

Obviously many of you have been ill-informed by the recent mass-media confusion. While I am not affiliated with any of the mentioned parties I have managed to keep myself well informed of the actual issues.
The attacks against Pay Pal were clearly stated on the groups clear text conversations as being at least mainly related to the way that Pay Pal froze an account when it was needed most by a refugee in another country (after the Federal Government pressured them to of course, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/paypal-admits-us-state-de_n_793708.html), for criminal defense of bogus charges (at least one of the people that “filed” charges against the defendant has repeatedly mentioned that he was in fact wearing a prophylactic and hence the charge for having sexual intercourse without the use of a prophylactic are kinda odd).
I myself am wondering what will happen if the U.S. Government did attempt to charge him as though he is not a journalist (he does provide factual information, from informants, to the general public, over a commonly accessible media to an audience of several million around the world).
Staying informed is what will keep this from escalating out of proportion, is no one else concerned that our government is so actively seeking out to quiet a voice that points out said governments illegal, or less-than-moral actions?

Anonymous

Boo hoo hoo..
I’m appalled at all this whining.
WE NEED OUR PAYPAL!
DON’T PERSECUTE THE INNOCENT!
**Clue: when you continue to do business with a company that has
undeniably acted to persecute and censor free speech, you have
made the choice to be an accessory to that crime.
YOU ARE NO LONGER THE INNOCENT ‘little guy’.
Many SAY they believe wikileaks have a right to leak info about
corruption and lies-and many SAY they understand it is a serious issue -freedom of speech-…freedom of the internet…
But when it comes down to compromising one’s BREAD and CIRCUS, oh noooo! Can’t abide with anything upsetting your comfy little apathetic (gotta get more STUFF) world?
That’s the true test of one’s ‘so-called’ convictions.
How many of you have given lip service in the past year or the past week about the virtue or righteousness of wikileaks?
How many of you have closed your Amazon accounts? Paypal?
Consider writing a letter to MC or VISA with a statement
to terminate business with them? COWARDS!
I am a small business and I stopped doing business with paypal about a year ago because paypal is inept and regularly rip people off. Its not that difficult-All it takes is actually really giving a fuck about truth and integrity. (instead of just claiming one does)
It is possible to have a thriving business without paypal. It just takes alittle effort (and strength of character apparently).
Incidentally-one can also exist quite well without credit cards-Why can’t any of you walk your talk? if one’s talk has even an ounce of honor…one would take some action towards consistency.
If you have no impulse to DO THE RIGHT THING-then shut up and stop whining. Let those hackers do the heroic thing and make the decision for you. I only wish they’d stop F-ing around and do some serious monkey wrenching-I hope they can truly upset the flow of commerce for these companies (and for all you complicit sheeple as well) hopefully they’ve only just begun…

BOING BOING BOING-So many with big opinions, yet no impulse to do anything that truly supports those opinions- anything that is- but feed the corrupt organizations that are directly responisble for curbing your (and my rights) rights as a global citizen, and a presumably tax paying citizen.
I hold you and all those like you responsible-(not paypal, but the people who continue to fund paypal)
And to those who continue to give mastercard and visa money…
companies who allow donations to the KKK but cut-off wikileaks?-
If you continue to do business with them-what does that say about you?
And you whine-I’m just an innocent small business owner…
It would be funny if it weren’t SO FUCKING PATHETIC!

In the words of our U.S. Government– ‘GIVE ME THE CONVENIENCE OF LYING TO YOU EASILY… OR GIVE ME DEATH!’ and my answer; ok

Bulone

I don’t understand why people upset over wikileak for a bunch of hackers attacking paypal when wikileak itself doesn’t even condone the attacks. Those people who are hating wikileak for such acts are those who are looking for reason to hate it in the first place.

Anonymous

jesus people PAYPAL’S PAYMENT SERVICES ARE NOT AFFECTED!!!!!!!!!!! Why does everyone keep whining about missing sales?

Jonathan

It’s not like PayPal has a history of silencing criticism. I mean, what if you tried to publicly criticize PayPal, with, say, an anti-PayPal website? One thing’s for sure: they wouldn’t bully you by having their lawyers insist that you hand over your website to them.

Here’s a choice selection from their C&D to PayPalSucks.com:

On behalf of our client, we must insist that you immediately cease all further use of the PAYPAL mark and transfer the domain names to our client.

Full C&D: http://www.chillingeffects.org/domain/notice.cgi?NoticeID=309

Background: http://www.paypalsucks.com/domain-name-disputes.shtml

Anonymous

It looks like Twitter suspended Anon’s account.

MadRat

Personally I think these DDoS attacks are pointless. I mean, what are they thinking? “Dude! If we like, shut down PayPal for a day? They’ll have to let Julian Assange go and no one will ever touch Wikileaks again! It’ll totally work!”

Ugly Canuck

Isn’t the real question: Who was DDOSing Wikileaks itself?
Hmmmm?

Johnny Fronthole

Nazi.

The end.

RigelK

You forgot rule #34.

Anonymous

So what would you all suggest is a better way of protesting the Wikileaks situation than what Anon is currently doing?

You’re some creative people, what kind of action do you think would be able to enact some real change?

insert

Writing letters to our congresscritters will definitely be effective.
RigelK

I’ve asked that like twice already and gotten nothing back. *sigh*
- insert
  
  What do we do? Kvetching on Boingboing comment threads probably isn’t helping, but here we are…
  
  1. Talk to the real people in our lives. Compare Wikileaks to the Pentagon Papers. And compare the attacks on Paypal, Visa and Mastercard to boycotts of lunch counters and buses in the South. This shit is *that* real. Yes, this shit is that serious. Do we have the right to know that our government is invading countries without telling us (Yemen) and that our government is giving money to private companies to buy ten year old sex slaves? What do you do when its financial companies versus the people?
  
  2. Learn. We need to learn, and teach, about encryption technologies, P2P networking, and what to do when the normal tools of communication are broken. Cory has written about this stuff in Little Brother and, to a lesser extent, in For The Win. We rich white tech nerds (me, maybe you) need to spread this information to the less privileged in our society, because, after all, they’re the ones who’ll face the brunt of the bullshit that’s probably coming.
  
  All of this is legal and easy. Let’s set down our battle over whether anonymous is justified and do something productive.
  - foobar
    
    Talk to the real people in our lives. Compare Wikileaks to the Pentagon Papers. And compare the attacks on Paypal, Visa and Mastercard to boycotts of lunch counters and buses in the South.
    
    I think you mean sit-ins, which were the DDoSes of the 40′s. African Americans would sit at white only lunch counters where they would be refused service, but then no one else could patronize the counter.
    - insert
      
      You’re right, terminologically speaking, but in my defense, it was late… :)
      
      And interestingly, DDoSes are awfully sit-in like: they involve doing something ordinary in such a way that blocks others from accessing the resource.
      
      Further, I’m curious how DDoSing a corporation’s website — which is, despite Citizens United, not a human being — is “terrorism.” What on earth is your definition of terrorism, acb? No one is killed, no one is subjected to bodily injury, and no one really suffers permanent harm, except PayPal’s marketshare.
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      It’s a metaphorical war.

Anonymous

You all consider the US to be the most evil empire when China sends out DDOS attacks on Google just because one of their party members sees something unflattering about himself?
America is on the decline and China on the rise and they HATE freedom of speech…
Get your priorities on line to crack open the veil of secrecy cloaked around the worlds biggest super power emerging in the next ten years who would put you in prison for years without charges if they caught you.

Cowicide

America is on the decline and China on the rise and they HATE freedom of speech…

China hates speech because it still has an impact there unlike the USA which has quelled the impact of speech with corporatist media saturation that drowns out truth and amplifies LIES.

I see the brainwashing got to you too.
- Aloisius
  
  China hates speech because it still has an impact there unlike the USA which has quelled the impact of speech with corporatist media saturation that drowns out truth and amplifies LIES.
  
  I see the brainwashing got to you too.
  
  Wow. I mean really, wow. I mean, it would be cute if it wasn’t so unbelievably naÃ¯ve.
  
  Some day when you’re not fighting the corporatists, you should take a trip to a small town in the middle of nowhere, find a coffee shop and have a conversation with someone not on the internet. Oh, and I wouldn’t use terms like ‘brainwashing’ if you don’t want people not to laugh at you.
  
  Actually, I wouldn’t use brainwashing on the internet either.
  - Cowicide
    
    Some day when you’re not fighting the corporatists, you should take a trip to a small town in the middle of nowhere, find a coffee shop and have a conversation with someone not on the internet.
    
    Actually, I do that nearly every day. Do you? BTW, I’m so very sorry the term “brainwashing” triggers a sour reaction from you, but more intelligent folks I talk to tend to think a lot of Americans are, indeed,brainwashed.
    
    Does indoctrinated sound better to you?
  - Yamara
    
    Some day when you’re not fighting the corporatists, you should take a trip to a small town in the middle of nowhere, find a coffee shop and have a conversation with someone not on the internet.
    
    I thought all Starbucks had internet access.
    - Cowicide
      
      I thought all Starbucks had internet access.
      
      No, I hack it and bring it down at every Starbucks I go to and that forces everyone to talk to me about their brainwashing issues.

Rob

Anonymous isn’t a group. They certainly don’t have a spokesman. This talk of anonymous like it is a organized force is just ridiculous. The ones attacking these sites are just a tiny subset of the amoral flippant bastards that make up the generally anonymous users of 4chan’s random image board.

Jjust as many of those anonymous users seem to think it’s a terrible idea to do these attacks as they are too high profile. No one really knows cause it’s not like there’s a poll or anything. No one asked anyone elses permission. Some bright star said hey download this and a bunch of dim ones did so… DDOSing from their home connections like fools. Operation payback is a long brewing reaction to the clampdown on the relative lawlessness of the Internet…. Piracy crackdowns, expanding censorship, ACTA.

If anonymous is your hero you are either a seriously twisted fan of chaos and sick jokes, or you are seriously misinformed.

Anonymous

Well-I AM a twisted fan of chaos, and depending on one’s definition of ‘sick joke’… I confess I think jokes are good.
especially if they are at the expense of the immobile masses, and in the form of hitting them where they live; $$$$$
Bring on the chaos-I don’t care if it comes from a bunch of ineffectual ‘hacker’ hipsters.
And what about the compassion for the struggling masses, the majority who are just trying to pay the rent? Who need mastercard and visa? Yeah-when was the last time you had to crawl through the sewer for a rat for dinner? The standard of living for the poorest among us is still obscene in comparison to real poverty.
Point being-don’t profess support for wikileaks while at the same time supporting the oppressors of wikileaks.
Or condemn those who would make a non-violent statement of ineffectual chaos to those oppressors.

And ineffectual or not-ANY effort towards inserting a snag into the daily life of the consumer-voter-robots who perpetuate this sad state of affairs (by complicity) can only be heroic.
When a system becomes so rigid and petrified in it’s immense corruption-it is only CHAOS that can create change.
moo!

Anonymous

Operation Payback Spokesman Leaves Name in Press Release Meta Data

The rogue hacker group Anonymous, which has been making headlines for their repeated DDoS attacks dubbed Operation Payback, issued a press release. The most interesting piece of information int the release, though, was the name of the text’s author, which was present in the PDF’s meta data…

https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/10196-Operation-Payback-Spokesman-Leaves-Name-in-PR-Meta-Data.html

ZManBK

Let me see if I have this straight…

We’re supposed to support a group of script kiddies engaged in digital vandalism and criminal mischief… who call themselves ANONYMOUS and don’t disclose who they are … in support of WIKILEAKS, which is illegally posting purloined classified documents and who ALSO won’t disclose who they or their sources (other than Assange) in the name of GREATER TRANSPARENCY in the world?

Right.

Guys like Poster #150 (who posted at 9:07, above) seems to wish that Anonymous would all engage in even GREATER acts of vandalism and anarchy, with comments like:

> “I only wish they’d stop F-ing around and do some serious monkey wrenching-I hope they can truly upset the flow of commerce for these companies”

I wish I could attribute the quote, but he took the BRAVE POSITION of posting HIS comments anonymously. All of this sophomoric anger about eliminating secrets from people who won’t take responsibility for their words and actions by identifying themselves! If you believe these things, put your money where your mouth is and post your real name and address.

Actual, courageous change agents don’t hide behind a mask or anonymity: they, like Ghandi, are completely public about who and where they are, and what they’re doing. (And, for that matter, so are journalists, which Assage most certainly is not.) If you really have a problem with society, protest openly, and be prepared for jail.

Otherwise, you’re just a complicit whiner.

Cowicide

I wish I could attribute the quote, but he took the BRAVE POSITION of posting HIS comments anonymously

So your real name is ZManBK? Or shall I just call you hypocrite whiner?
radicalbytes

Technically Wikileaks is not “illegally posting” anything. Show me a law they have broken? You can’t and neither can the US government which is why Mitch McConnell on Meet the Press was threatening to change the law in retrospect to make Wikileak’s actions illegal. Even if Mitch changed the law he would be forced to prosecute the New York Times and most ever other newspaper that does investigative journalism too.

Bookburn

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I don’t know what to make of Wikileaks, let alone the “Operation Payback” that is supposedly showing support for Wikileaks. I can dismiss Visa and Mastercard attacks as “oh well, they are big corporations and can handle themselves.” But I like shopping on Etsy and eBay, and many of those sellers use PayPal services. I just finished my Christmas shopping last night and sent my payment via PayPal. I hate to see the makers like myself and those I’ve made purchases from loose profits for the sake of a political statement.

foobar

I just finished my Christmas shopping last night and sent my payment via PayPal. I hate to see the makers like myself and those I’ve made purchases from loose profits for the sake of a political statement.

I agree – hopefully in the future Paypal will stay out of politics and remain neutral.
Jack

Agreed. Attacking PayPal hurts the small businesses that rely on them to fulfill services. Whatâ€™s next? eBay? Etsy?

I know those sound random and disconnected, but this is all such a petty act of political defiance I doubt it will help anyone.
BookGuy

Nothing threatens our democracy and freedoms more than those scarf-knitting bastards on Etsy. Here’s hoping they’re next on the target list!
- Anonymous
  
  I would think that afghans on etsy are a bigger problem.
Mantissa128

I just finished my Christmas shopping last night and sent my payment via PayPal. I hate to see the makers like myself and those I’ve made purchases from loose profits for the sake of a political statement.

Really, Bookburn, you’ve summarized the situation in the world quite nicely, right there. America is hurting people in the world, lying to, detaining, groping, and torturing its own citizens. Two people are putting their lives, literally, on the line (Assange and Manning), to expose criminal wrongdoing on the part of the American government. Assange appears to be held on trumped-up charges, and they’re trying to extradite him.

And you’re concerned about your Christmas shopping. Oooookay.
- Jack
  
  Itâ€™s the difference between attacking a small business and a large business. eBay & PayPal are large entities that ultimately serve small sellers. I sell on eBay and use PayPal for payments. Iâ€™m not getting rich on this stuff, but it hurts me. Someone who is really not caught in the middle of this insanity. The small business folks are being hurt.
  
  Also, it is highly dubious if any of this DDoS attacks will end up strengthening the case in favor of Wikileaks. This is basically a huge script kiddie attack and plays into the worst hacker stereotypes out there.
  - john dent
    
    Jack, a lot of small business folk will be hurt. But this folk has their terms & conditions to also cover their rights (not only paypal’s). So if paypal (and mastercard and visa) can use this logic of breaking the T&Cs against wikileaks, so can small business folks ask for their right being serviced.
    
    Let us not be sheeps. Somebody at these companies has made the decision to go against wikileaks and the consequence is a revolt against THESE people. And the rest of the folk just shuts their mouths and sits in the corner? I say call their hot-lines, ask why you can not shop your christmas presents or do your accounts. Make them accountable. Ultimately, YOU are paying for your service (and don’t be fooled, even if it’s for free, you are paying provisions from the transactions anyway).
    
    I feel sorry hearing that all everybody cares for is their christmas presents. We are blinded by our governments, our basic rights are taken away and all we care for is our shopping list? Switch on the brains, people. Seriously.
    - Jack
      
      Somebody at these companies has made the decision to go against wikileaks and the consequence is a revolt against THESE people.
      
      Wikileaks has nothing to do with DDoS attacks. And DDoS will not do anything but hurt Wikileaks in the big picture.
      
      Iâ€™m all in favor of more mirroring of Wikileaks documents. But DDoS on this scale, in this way is not helpful to anyone.
    - john dent
      
      TRUE, wikileaks has nothing to do with this “happening”.
      
      It is not supposed to be helpful to anyone. It is supposed to show a protest against what is going on. It is supposed to be a virtual march through the streets in front of the paypal, mastercard and visa HQs. A basic civic duty, as I see it.
      
      And it’s not a group of hackers, there are ordinary people using tools designed for completely different purposes (maybe more evil, maybe not). But these are the “banners” for this march.
    - RigelK
      
      I do see what you’re saying. And, it is valid. But, have they crossed the line? For example, have they become the virtual equivalent of shattering store windows and looting, burning cars, and trampling bystanders? And, if you don’t think so, where do you see that line? When does action with honorable intent cross into dishonor because of a malfunction of that action?
      
      And, to everyone debating freedom of information, I struggle with how to parse this one out. Do I want the truth about BP and blood diamonds and Haliburton and Black Water put out there? Sure. Do I want people’s credit card numbers and personal medical information out there? No. I’m wondering how society is going to parse out public disclosure vs. privacy rights. Obviously, the examples I’ve given are extremes on the spectrum. But, how are we going to parse out the middle ground? Were those diplomatic cables legitimately private? What is in the insurance files people are holding that is ethically dubious? What lines must wikileaks, anon, and whoever else cross before they’ve gone too far?
      
      Now, whether the credit card numbers and expiration dates today were real or fake, Anon crossed that line. No matter how nebulous that line may be. How would you feel if it were your card number and date that had been leaked and you had to spend the next seemingly forever trying to clear up fraudulent charges, wait for a new card, reset your autodeductions, and all that?
    - john dent
      
      RigelK, I hear what you are saying. And honestly, I don’t know where the line should be for the Anonymous group as a whole. It is also not upon me to decide.
      
      But as each and single participant of this “march”, I can join it and leave it anytime I feel the line was crossed (which IMHO was done by releasing the hoax with the card No’s and expiration dates).
      
      But sure, this is a matter of precedent, there is no “police” or “conflict teams”. Only the public opinion ex-post decides. But I repeat what I feel was the most important here – to show the protest. This did happen.
      
      Now it is only the question of time when emotions will be calmed and the count of DDOS participants will drop, which will render further attacks ineffective.
    - RigelK
      
      What form(s) do you hypothesize the next wave(s) of cyberprotest will take?
    - john dent
      
      Not sure, really. These people were organised only in it’s most inner core, having tools and communication prepared. Everything else was spontaneous.
      
      The participant count rose from 0.5k yesterday to 2.5+k today just because these were people with the same “feel” and need to express themselves. This is what made attacks on paypal possible (smaller group could not have DDOS’ed them effectively). Nobody can actually guarantee it won’t skyrocket in the next days, the wave’s still not over yet.
      
      But these people are tech savvy and subjected to viral spread, and DDOS is old as internet itself. The primary target was to attract media attention, which spreads the message to the “off-line” world. Also considering this, DDOS seems to be the best choice also for the days to come.
      
      The question really is, how to attract the attention of the world out there. It is definitely not by producing more information (founding websites, spamming etc), since we are all already overloaded with it. DDOS is in this sense very effective. It creates a hole, gets your “shopping website (or whatever else)” off-line, makes you wonder (and even maybe think), so it gets really to the point.
    - fastfreddy
      
      Couldn’t agree more, John. Here we are in one of the most important debates over the freedom of information in our lifetimes, and all these people can whine about is “oh man, my ability to buy crap was slowed down for a couple hours!” Get some perspective!
      
      As for all the invective and claims of economic calamity thrown at Assange, WikiLeaks and Operation Payback — it’s history repeating itself.
      
      When Nelson Mandela called for a boycott against South African apartheid, we heard all the same crap. He was called a “terrorist” and “traitor” for 20+ years, businessmen complained that sanctions “only hurt the little guy,” etc. etc. And I’m sure there were some businesses that lost some money because of it.
      
      But now, looking back, we know it was all worth it. Mandela is revered as a national hero. We know the sanctions, even if they hurt some people’s bottom line, served a greater good.
      
      I am confident history will judge Assange and WikiLeaks the same way.
    - imag
      
      Well put.
      
      And Hershmire – what are you talking about? No one’s even asking for money.
    - Jack
      
      And Hershmire – what are you talking about? No one’s even asking for money.
      
      The DDoS attacks are being done in response to Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others denying WIkileaks their own funds right now. I doubt these funds would ever be denied to Wikileaks, but because they didnâ€™t have immediate access to it, this DDoS stuff happens.
      
      joposts said:
      
      OMG, small businesses are being denied payment… for a few hours!
      
      Same straight back to Wikileaks. They have lawyers. Funds might be frozen, but will DDoS attacks actually release those funds faster?
    - joeposts
      
      “will DDoS attacks actually release those funds faster?”
      
      Hell no, their website is down. Obviously that isn’t the goal of “Anonymous.” If they have a goal, I think it’s just to show how vulnerable just about any website is to a simple method of service disruption. I see it as essentially a protest – it’s inconvenient and it calls attention to a cause, whether you like it or not, or participate or not. Wikileaks also suffered from DDOS attacks – they did nothing to stop the leakage, but it made an impression in the media.
      
      Rider:
      “Instead of clicking on scipts this weekend I challenge all of you to go to the local food bank this weekend.”
      
      A worthy suggestion, perhaps you should make a thread on 4chan or mention it in the chatrooms they’re using.
    - imag
      
      Fine. But I disagree with the characterization of this as extortion.
      
      Visa and MC didn’t freeze funds. They just won’t let their own customers use their own money.
      
      The people donating aren’t being extorted from.
      
      Nor are the people who are getting their secrets published. In fact, it’s the opposite – the more money WL gets, the more they will publish.
      
      And I doubt Anonymous has any illusions about getting PayPal to give them money to stop.
      
      If you think this protest is just a bunch of teenagers crying – would you have thought the same thing about the Vietnam, or the Tienanmen Square protests. The reality is, when young people protest, some of them are just in it for a good time. But both of those protests were historic and they did result in real change.
      
      In a time were the wealth disparity is approaching the level of the middle ages, we are *lucky* to have a medium where the disenfranchised can take on the wealthy without massive resources. This kind of protest is needed. All the weapons have not been brought out on this one, but I guarantee that it has served to draw a line in the sand, however small, about the costs of this kind of censorship.
    - Jack
      
      In a time were the wealth disparity is approaching the level of the middle ages, we are *lucky* to have a medium where the disenfranchised can take on the wealthy without massive resources.
      
      There are wealthy people on Etsy and eBay?
    - imag
      
      Do you not understand what is going on here? We have a massive, corrupt empire driven by corporate greed. There are only so many mechanisms to fight it. The internet has the promise of some kind of equalization in the information war.
      
      It’s not like people on Etsy and eBay have no other way to conduct commerce than through PayPal. You act like they are some kind of humanitarian organization.
    - Jack
      
      Do you not understand what is going on here? We have a massive, corrupt empire driven by corporate greed. There are only so many mechanisms to fight it. The internet has the promise of some kind of equalization in the information war.
      
      Lighten up, Francis.
      
      Do you actually read that I support Wikileaks, admire the tools they are using to deal with what you are portraying as â€œ…a massive, corrupt empire driven by corporate greed.â€ but have no respect for these DDoS attacks.
      
      Do you actually want Wikileaks to still exist? And validly report on the stuff they get access to? How about rising above hacker B.S. and just prove you fight for good.
      
      RIght now the DDoS script kiddies are selling this philosophy short. And ultimately hurt Wikileaks (and other hacktivists) in the long run.
    - imag
      
      I hear your point. I see the information war differently.
      
      I am watching the collective action of thousands of brave (and some stupid) souls who are nonviolently making a statement before the gates of some of the most dominating corporate conspirators of our time.
      
      We live in a time where you can literally hunger strike yourself to death for a cause and be lucky to get a mention in your local rag (which is now owned by Clear Channel, and so is even more unlikely to report upon your injustice). The Iraq war protests didn’t work because Cheney and Co. have realized that they can simply ignore protests. Not only does that stance allow them to follow their agenda unimpeded, it disempowers the people who engaged in the protests, and make the people who went to a football game instead feel better about their lack of action.
      
      The DDOS attack is a new form of protest. It is offensive but nonviolent. It is certainly getting attention, something almost impossible to do over the roar of the consumption-driving media. There’s something to it more than just recklessness, I think.
      
      And if people blame Anon’s actions on Wikileaks, then that’s a problem of education. Taking a stand against Anon because people will misinterpret their actions is just like taking a stand against Wikileaks because people blame them for the content of the cables. We should be educating the people, not blaming the vehicle.
    - Bulone
      
      You can get luxury cars or house if you can afford.
    - Jack
      
      I want an Etsy house made of macaroni!
      
      Seriously, this comment threadâ€”like the DDoS attacksâ€”is useless.
  - Cowicide
    
    it hurts me.
    
    So when did selfishness become such a prevalent character-flaw in America anyway?
    
    It’s all about ME..
    
    Fucking infants.
davejenk1ns

Bookburn,

This is a bad thing, IMHO. It is rapidly turning from some innocent kids pranking free long distance with a beer can tab to active denial of an avenue of commerce. Think of PayPal as a bank or other financial institution. These kids are now actively denying that institution’s front face, and revenue to a certain degree. If this were an actual physical bank, this is where the FBI flak jackets and the black vans start to show up outside.

We’ve all heard the future-speak about “megacorporations” becoming more powerful than governments. I think it may end up going another way: “random groups of hax0rs” will be able to throw sand into the machinery of statecraft and commerce to a degree that they become significant factors in the political economy.

How will we know the point when /b/ goes from being some punks randomly taking down websites for lulz and morphs into something more sinister with blackmail notices, extortion, and/or political consequences? We’ve already seen that the PRC pays Chinese script kiddies to take their best shot at Western companies, same with Kremlin, Mossad, and CIA. I would assume that most governments on the planet are already doing the same or contemplating it. Fourchan’s random goofs may not be so random– and that is a distinct cost/risk to us all.
- Delaney
  
  What you’re describing is already happening…it just isn’t distributed or democratic. Say what you want about Anon, but it’s democratic. You said it yourself that they use methods that intelligence agencies the world over use. Those same intelligence agencies use blackmail, extortion, political consequences, murder, unlawful detention etc etc etc. If Anon became a powerful force like you describe nothing would change except the power would be more distributed.
  
  In a strange way it’s what faction as described in the Federalist Papers were all about. If Distributed denial of service becomes a great power (not likely IMO but whatevs) than power becomes distributed. I have no fondness for the USGovt, China, Israel etc. Julian Assange has said publicly that America needs another revolution. Our overlords are corrupt…all overlords, by definition are corrupt as Lord Acton taught us (“Power corrupts..absolute power…”). The only way to make power less corrupt is by distributing it.
- bersl2
  
  If this were an actual physical bank, this is where the FBI flak jackets and the black vans start to show up outside.
  
  The “partyvan” is a well-known meme to Anonymous.
  
  Question: Why are a good number of people here treating Wikileaks as if they had anything to do with the DDoSes? They don’t. It’s just some independent, script-kiddie Anons who want in on the fun in their own special way. I though this would be clear.
  - Anonymous
    
    Question: Why are a good number of people here treating Wikileaks as if they had anything to do with the DDoSes? They don’t. It’s just some independent, script-kiddie Anons who want in on the fun in their own special way. I though this would be clear.
    
    Clear to some of us, maybe. What about the general public? It takes no great intelligence to realise that the actions of those who support a cause play a *huge* role in how that cause is perceived.
    
    And right now, media throughout the world are running stories like “Hackers acting on behalf of WikiLeaks brought down the Visa website this morning”, or “An army of computer hackers have carried out revenge attacks against companies and organisations viewed as enemies of WikiLeaks”. That’s a *bad* look.
Anonymous

Who cares about a few material things??? No matter what someone does, another can always find something not good with it. It’s an activist statement. Get with it or don’t.

Ugly Canuck

Not that they need to take any stated position on that or anything else: the freedom of the press does not abrogate the freedom to keep one’s mouth shut, to express no opinion, to not answer any question.

mdh

also a LOL Cannon

RigelK

Crap. Too sleepy. JOHN Dent. Sorry.

*plods off to bed*

MrJM

That’ll teach… uhh… who exactly?

Anonymous

seems up and fine to me

Terabyte

Wow. Crossing the line big time. Just because a company does not want to host a questionable website does not make them a legitimate target of attack.

This is going to piss off a LOT of people and – as the previous commenter points out, affects Christmas shopping – in so doing hurts WikiLeaks. (After their Monday leak, I am permanently off their fan list, so there’s my disclosure, but this is also my honest analysis.)

mdh

I’m a fellow American, except I can appreciate when we’re being hoisted by our own petard.

Anonymous

This is the cyberspace equivalent of breaking the windows of a Starbucks with the intent of bringing down the WTO, and as minimally effective.

FatalDischarge

Good job dumbtards. I do not understand why taking down a website for 20 minutes is a big deal. What good does this do?

Anonymous

It’s called publicity. Think about it.

awjtawjt

you have no chance to survive make your time

ClintonD

I’m guessing the party van will be making a visit to some /b/tards shortly.

Rider

As a very small business that depends on paypal thank you very much for fucking over the small people with this attack anonymous.

mark.leaman

Honestly, I thought 4chan was fairly noble in the early days. The people who depend on these services are the ones getting screwed: Small business, artists, craft show folk, designers who sell on BigCartel, etc… This doesn’t make me want to support their cause, it makes me want to support those who will stop this nonsense. They’ve crossed the line into internet terrorism and have become the bad guy.

Anonymous

I noticed their irc system was encouraging ppl to use this tool from their own internet connection. They wouldn’t allow ppl from Tor to even take part so as to protect themselves from potential reprisal. Their recruitment area isn’t being too picky about who they invite into the attack. Must be a few law enforcement ppl undercover and involved by now.
It doesn’t seem run by the most saavy of the hackers.

jetfx

PayPal’s reasoning for cutting off WikiLeaks was extraordinarily lame. They cited an open letter by the US State Department they were not party to and not even directly accusing WikiLeaks of illegal activity, let alone a charge or conviction of such, as reason because it violates their terms of service of not financially supporting crime.

They deserve what they are getting.

Rider

Do the people who use paypal to process very small transactions deserve this?
- jetfx
  
  PayPal deserves this, but not their users. Their users never had a say in PayPal’s autocratic decision.
  - mdh
    
    nope, but I bet they’re all aware of it now.

joeposts

I, for one, welcome our cheetos-eating, trap-fapping, basement-dwelling overlords.

FatalDischarge

Wait wait. https://www.paypal.com loads but https://www.paypal.com does not?
I don’t get it.

Anonymous

I’m not sure DDOS were the right approach here. But if we do what many people suggest, and only protest in ways that can’t hurt any business, we may as well sign away the rest of our free speech now. Surely you know that if there are no consequences, corporations don’t care what you think?

Ugly Canuck

And isn’t the withdrawal of services by all of Wikileks contractual American partners – PayPal (sic), MasterCard, Visa, Amazon, as well as denial of any Official protection or aid against, or any concern about, illegal cyber-attacks against Wikileaks, also a ‘distributed denial of service’?

Or is that very phrase itself the “property” of the cyber-people now?

I see that they are quick enough to seek out and charge those whose action they do not approve of:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/dutch-police-arrest-teen-for-alleged-wikileaks-website-attacks/article1831782/

Will they be so quick to seek out and charge those who DDOSed the Wikileaks site itself?

Ugly Canuck

Ah, they have arrested a child, no less.

EH

wherever will i get my thrummed tea cozys now?!

theawesomerobot

Apparently people draw the line at making a statement when it starts to mildly annoy them.

Rider

It’s not mildly annoying, it’s how a lot of people make a very modest living. Paypal is how they get paid, they also need to be able to access the site to transfer money to bank accounts etc. If you could not get onto your banking website to get to your money you would be very upset.
- theawesomerobot
  
  “If you could not get onto your banking website to get to your money you would be very upset.”
  
  Isn’t that what Paypal is like normally? They’ve held thousands of dollars from me for over a month while completely contradicting their own policies. I feel bad for anyone who relies on them to make a living because they way they handle money is completely asinine.

Anonymous

I think it’s interesting to see what’s new there.

The attack is well guided and really easy to follow. There is a chat server with different channels where coordination, discussion and lulz take place. There is a dedicated chat room for technical help.

DDoS attacks consist of a huge amount of requests targeted at a server. Servers have a certain capacity that’s generally related to the average traffic of the site they serve; such peaks are really impossible to handle.
Because there is no or little difference between a spam connection and a legit one, the server becomes inaccessible for everybody.

These attacks are as old as the web, but they were carried by a small number of hackers, who used a wide network of virus-infected computers over which they had enough control to launch attacks.

The difference here is that nobody of the 3000 participants is an actual hacker. They all run an automatic program called LOIC on their machine. 3000 people armed with such a software is a nice, albeit small army… enough for Visa, MasterCard and PayPal apparently.

So this is not a regular attack like before. It’s a protest, a demonstration, a riot. In this sense I think it deserves some media coverage: we’re entering a new age where it becomes easy for anybody with a computer and an internet connection to take part to attacks like this. It’s incredibly empowering.

PayPal was chosen in the midst of heated debates. The majority seemed to fear that the general opinion would find it unfair to take down PP after they stepped back and released the funds for Wikileaks.
Other potential targets were Verified by Visa, Authorize.net, Fox News and even Twitter or Facebook.
It’s fairly unlikely that media outlets or social networks get targeted by the “hive”, since it would be seen as a move against free speech. However we can expect individual attacks from hardliners in the coming days.

Surprisingly enough, the whole AnonOps.net seems to be maintained by a regular team –it’s not just peer to peer–. I couldn’t figure out whether it was a 4chan users offspring, wikileaks relatives or something else.
This site led attacks against the RIAA/MPAA/IFPI in the past, so the 10~20 people running it are unlikely to be be tied to wikileaks.

Tonight (or today, depends where you live) was one of the very first actions of the kind.
It will be very interesting in the coming decade to see whether this kind of crowd-hack develop and if cloud computing can tackle it with elasticity.

Amazon was proposed as a target, but systematically rejected, because it’s “impossible”.

Hope it sheds a light ;)

kjh

The US government (who else) took down wikileaks website with a covert DDoS. Why is that OK? Then they have forced the wikileaks.org DNS to be taken down then effectively frozen wikileaks money and stopped them getting funds. All outside of rule of law and allowing no legal defence.

I don’t think this is the right reaction but it is open, unlike the US government’s covert responses. The internet people to respond in numbers. Expect it.

mark.leaman

4chan mounts massive DDoS on itself in retaliation against Operation Paypack called Operation Payback Payback.

bersl2

4chan is used to dealing with DDoS from its own users.
Anonymous

Anon don’t care what you think. Nor do the US government.

Also, not being able to log into paypal for half an hour is hardly the end of the world.

Get a grip. You can sell your tea-cosies tomorrow.

ridl

In yet another twist, anonops.net now appears to be under ddos.

RigelK

Ya know what? I was relatively pro-wikileaks until this. But, don’t screw with the little, independent folks like etsy sellers who depend on PayPal for a little bit of much needed income. Way to alienate lots of fringe culture crafter/makers who are, scratch that, WERE wikileaks supporters, anonymous! You crossed the line, asshole, and are losing allies.

Wolfie XIII

The little independent sites should join in with Anons… a couple days to make a statement about how the service mistreats people and organizations. This is not the first time nor will it be the last time pay pal has unilaterally taken actions against people they have a horrible consumer track record in those regards.

It may inconvenience a few people in the name of protest and free speech, but it’s worth it to make the point. It also brings more attention to the issues at hand with our modern world. Open your mind and think a little bit bigger than your belly button.
- Rider
  
  Spoken like a true dictator.
  - Wolfie XIII
    
    No if it were spoken as a dictator it would be join or die. I’m just saying it’s time to wake up and look around and hopefully realize a little bit of annoyance will bring attention to the issues facing us if we want to continue living in a free and just society.
    
    I think you should join the Anon revolution, but that’s your choice if you want to bury your head in the sand or stand up and be heard.
    - Rider
      
      Well I choose not to join, can I log into my paypal account now. Opps guess your not really giving me a choice are you.
- RigelK
  
  OK. *deep breath* I used to have the energy, strength, and fortitude for big statements like that. And, I still do honestly pitch in in small ways that I can when I can. But, as for “belly button,” in all honesty, these days just taking care of my son, keeping a roof over his head and food in his stomach, and dealing with issues that arise because he is special needs consumes me. I help out friends when I can with running errands, child care, etc. I donate food when I can. I am a volunteer literacy tutor. But, yeah, most hours of the day, I’m all belly button. Because, most hours of most days I am running scared just trying to make ends meet.
  
  So, yeah, right now, I’m staring at my belly button hoping that my grocery money for the week posts.
  
  I’ll go back to storming the castle when I’m not staring down the barrel of only getting less than half pay for the next 2 months because of my job’s scheduling. Sometimes, and I’m not proud of this but it’s a truth I’ve had to accept, my immediate responsibilities to my son and my immediate loved ones are the only belly button I can stare at at this stage of the game. It’s not about being inconvenienced. I just only have so much dragon slaying in me. It’s about being my son’s mother and providing those bottom 2 tier’s of Maslow’s heirarchy for him. The larger statements I’m trying to make right now are a) not going on food stamps or other aid, b) donating to food banks instead of asking for help from them, c) fighting with the school system over my son’s rights under his IEP (and, therefore, trying to also affect change for the children who come after him), and d) gathering friends together to pitch in our little bits to come together to provide a piece of equipment for a local family with a severely disabled child. Beyond that, I just can’t take deep enough breaths for right now for global action. Sorry to disappoint you, but I have to pick my battles right now.
  - Rider
    
    I wonder how much real good these internet push button heroes have ever done.
    
    Instead of clicking on scipts this weekend I challenge all of you to go to the local food bank this weekend.
    - mdh
      
      get off your high horse, just how much good have you done for your side this way?
    - Rider
      
      I volunteer at food banks regularly and volunteer my labor to repair used computers to be given to under privileged children.
      
      Your turn…
    - Jack
      
      …computers to be given to under privileged children.
      
      Wow, you slip computers underneath privileged children? Kind of like the â€œPrincess and the Peaâ€ but with a stack of mattresses and a netbook I guess.
      
      Seriously folks, nobody will look at the DDoS attacks as something to inspire. It just plays into the worst stereotypes and hurts the larger cause.
    - mdh
      
      So… you’re railing against those who would disrupt for sanctimonious reasons by disrupting conversation and being sanctimonious yourself.
      
      My turn? Okay. I have identified and thoroughly documented, leading to cleanup, over a hundred hazardous waste sites. I have documented habitat conditions along hundreds of miles of streams. I have worked in the laboratory of NASA scientists. I have developed curricula and taught hundreds of hours of ecology to grade school kids in urban environments. I have worked as a primary technician for dozens of community theater productions. Last year I set up a community garden with my friends and some of them started raising chickens that I taught them about.
      
      So, while I’m sure you have interesting things to say, what you or I have done has nothing to do with the value of your ideas.
      
      Your challenge to a ‘cred off’, which you and I will only lose around here, only shows the bankruptcy of your arguments.
      
      you bastard. neener.
    - fastfreddy
      
      Jack, what a ridiculous false dichotomy. One can’t stand up for media that exposes government lies AND deliver cans of food to the poor? Or maybe such multi-tasking is just beyond YOUR capabilities.
      
      I help the poor whenever I can. And I’ll expose the government lies that keep so many people poor as well. See, they kind of go together.
    - Jack
      
      Fast Freddy, your reply is in reply to RigelK.
  - Rider
    
    I wonder how much real good these internet push button heroes have ever done.
    
    Instead of clicking on scipts this weekend I challenge all of you to go to the local food bank this weekend.
Anonymous

@RigelK: The DDoS attacks are related to WikiLeaks the way WTO protestors are related to sweatshop laborers and subsistence farmers. Even the end result is the same. No real impact is felt by the powers that be but at least some public attention is called to the issues.
joeposts

“I was relatively pro-wikileaks until this.”

Seriously, what does wikileaks-the-organization have to do with this? Probably nothing. Maybe you should direct your ire at the people committing this interweb atrocity.
musicman

You are changing your opinion on wikileaks because of what is happening in wikileaks’ name? You know it’s not wikileaks behind these attacks, don’t you? I don’t mind if you decide you don’t like 4chan or Anonymous, on the basis of these attacks, but you can’t really blame wikileaks. And I’d be worried about your initial support if this is all it takes to change your mind.

Remember: the wikileaks issue is different from the DDoS (even if it’s the cause)

Nylund

I don’t think Anonymous is going to make any friends or change the present or future behavior of any corporation, nor affect the Wikileaks situation.

But, I must admit part of me is happy to see that the people still hold some power, that, if we really wanted to, we the people still have a few tricks up our sleeves “for a redress of grievances.” There is something very Fight Club / Project Mayhem about it that makes me smile.

Anonymous

USA pushes new Cyberspace Protection act with lightspeed thru congress. It will silence the Internet and Press forever. http://j.mp/gJx0va

The Anon Hacker-Kids that can handle nmap -sT -AGRESSIVE or maybe even only the low orbit Ion Cannon tool (install and click start, syncs itselfs) are plaing right into the hands of the mass media.

This case that is made up out of the headlines you keep producing will put pressure on congress to pass this: http://j.mp/eSTVGZ

Wikipedia calls this misguidedly called Hackers rightfully ‘Script-Kiddies’.

The public damage to the wikileaks cause is immense. The Hacktivists while sharing the same goals of transparency and censorship-free Internet are blinded by the Headlines they produce. Corporate Media is playing them out against their own goals!!! DARN IT WAKE UP already please! You’re damaging what could be the greatest chance for mankind to free earth from secrecy and warcrimes.

How about you start doing the hard stuff. Reading thru the leaks, producing blog articles and convince people of the cause of the free internet. Barlow’s poorly chosen words of ‘warriors and battlefield’ were so short-sighted, it will creep him up when he see’s his mistake and the whole Internet is censored.

This is the USA you’re fighting against. A few DDoS just won’t do. You can’t bet on the Media to do the hard work for your, sifting through the crimes of this earths governments and foremost corporations. It’s long such a cable. Writing, reflecting and producing convincing, text is even harder.

You will destroy Wikileaks and the free Internet. Please stop now!

#StopHacktivism #imwikileaks #imapirate

awjtawjt

Anonymous /b/grinches ruined Christmas for all the Whos in Whoville.

“Here, I made you Dinty Moore and stale pop tarts for Christmas, because I can’t order anything online and this is all they had at the Kwiky Mart.”

Rider

Again it’s not about people not being able to order things for Christmas. It’s about the person who makes a small amount of money selling stuff not being able to get paid.
- awjtawjt
  
  Anonymous /b/capdabblers ruined Chanukah for all the Whos in Whoville.
  
  “Here, I made you Gefilte and stale Manishevitz for Christmas, because I can’t order handmade botique dreidels online and this is all they had at the Kvetchy Mart. Feh!”
  - Rider
    
    Once again why do people keep making this about the people who can’t order. It’s the people who can’t get the money they use to pay bills out of Paypal that is the problem.
    
    Are people that blind that they don’t understand that when you place an order it’s not always coming from a huge corporation, it’s often coming from someone poorer then you are who is trying to make ends meet by selling stuff online.

Art

@#20davejenk1ns

A horrifying and quite plausible scenario.
You appear to be in a minority of people who actually grasp the severity of /b/’s actions.

Cowicide

ATTN: Whiners

Since THIS doesnâ€™t work anymore, this is what you get.

Just be happy this isn’t violent revolution yet.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F. Kennedy

Church

Meh. I’ve read enough nightmare-dealing-with-PayPal stories to think that this is a good thing. Maybe if corporations realize that it’s not just the government that can make their lives hell they’ll be a tad more reluctant to just roll over.

Maybe.

Jack

Have you ever personally dealt with these supposed â€œnightmare-dealing-with-PayPal storiesâ€? Because any rational adult knows those stories fall into the same level of validity as complaints about the post office, UPS, FedEx, public transportation or anything else. Just folks complaining to complain.

I walk out of my building and the homeless guys are complaining.

I ride the subway, office workers are complaining.

I go to a restaurant someone else is complaining.

Work in retail or in customer service and you realize pretty quickly that (1) people always complain and (2) there is not much you can do to calm down the worst complainers.

Take away complaining and some people donâ€™t have a social life.
- Church
  
  I walk out of my building and the homeless guys are complaining.
  
  Are you for real?
  - Cowicide
    
    real troll?
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah, I have witnessed first hand one of those paypal horror stories. I was trying to pay a lawyer to help me prevent my ex from doing something dangerous/disruptive to my firstborn child’s life. I only had x amount of dollars available to transfer and paypal held on to them long enough that I was unable to get an injunction in time to save him from a life altering experience. (and not in a good way)
  
  Using paypal is potentially a disaster for you due to their attitude about whose money it actually is – read your tos in full…
mark.leaman

TouchÃ©. It still screws over a lot of little folks who depend on the service. Bullying folks by any means is just another form of control and censorship. 4chan has had quite the reign of terror over the last seven days.

Antinous / Moderator

Cow,

Compose yourself.

Anonymous

maybe if paypal became less usable because of this more people would choose other options. paypal has become the microsoft of online payment systems. there is numerous other options. it is of very little cost to offer multiple options for sales and broadens one’s potential market.

Anonymous

this seems to be pointless and only relevant to the people actually participating. visa, mastercard, and paypal seem to be just fine, and a brief interruption in the availablity of their websites seems to have little (if any) notice.

FatalDischarge

Here. I will end this thread right now.
WIKILEAKS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS.
If you supported them before this, please, continue to do so.
IT IS NOT THEIR FAULT.

Also, Google will have to pry my caps-lock key from my cold, dead hands.

RigelK

Bookburn –

Ya know what? I work 2 jobs, take craft commissions, and sell a wee little bit of crafting online and am just trying to scrape together a life for my family. I have PayPal transactions in process. That money was budgeted to buy our groceries on Friday. So, yeah, this is a big freakin’ deal to me. It comes down to providing for my son. So, why don’t you get your smug ass off the couch and go do something helpful for a family who’s in need in your town this Christmas instead of self-righteously pontificating over inconvenienced Christmas shoppers. Screwing with PayPal screws over the little guy/gal who’s trying to work hard and get by and not depend on government aid in the wake of getting bitch slapped by the recession.

Anonymous

sorry it’s causing concern over food… but at least it’s “what you see is what it is” tactical attacks against PayPal… think about it, how many parts of the government keep taking money from your wallet and you barely KNOW… like the gas tax increase, the beverage increase, the new transit ‘maximum allowance’ reductions… every way they can wiggle money from your wallet and ‘bury’ the news about it they DO IT! over taxed by a sinking government because they over-spend our money.
Anonymous

well
it is their fault
Assange’s explains

“If their behavior is revealed to the public, they have one of two choices: one is to reform in such a way that they can be proud of their endeavors, and proud to display them to the public. Or the other is to lock down internally and to balkanize, and as a result, of course, cease to be as efficient as they were. To me, that is a very good outcome, because organizations can either be efficient, open and honest, or they can be closed, conspiratorial and inefficient”

since we don’t believe in fairy tales when it comes to politics, “closed, conspiratorial and inefficient” is the outcome here. He wants to choke the governments in paranoia until it seize to exist. And there you have it… anarchy.

The guy is self obsessed paranoid lunatic who couldn’t care less for the world he is pretending to save
- RigelK
  
  Ummm, did you mean that reply to me? Huh?
  
  Geez, I need a unicorn chaser after this comments thread.
  
  Thank you to jeffguevin and joe dent who really tried to converse with me and teach me. I appreciate the conversation.
  
  ‘Night all. *yawns sleepily*
- floraldeoderant
  
  @Anon 169:
  
  How you get ‘anarchist’ from that snippet of interview is beyond me.
  
  The purpose is to change the landscape from a playing field where the ‘bad people’ have every advantage (the example from the interview you cited was a company was cutting their baby food with plastics. The choice for competing baby food companies was ‘do the same’ or ‘be unable to compete’); to a field where the ‘good people’ have the advantage (not having to spend resources hiding the toxins they put in baby food).
  
  Without wikileaks (or an alternative FUNCTIONAL journalistic organization), the resources necessary to hid toxic baby food are minimal: no one’s really asking questions. As wikileaks gains power, the resource cost is increased.
  
  THAT is what Julian Assange was talking about.
  
  ***
  
  ALTERNATE RESPONSE: Asinine troll is asinine.

Rider

Hopefully something good will come out of this and maybe people will get off their asses and figure out a new secure way handle internet traffic and stop using the broken clodged together system we use now.

Anonymous

without reading the whole thread,

a meaningful result of this is all the little guys who are depending on this start looking around for a substitute for Paypal.

Paypal sounds too big to fail

Paypal bailout?

I closed my paypal account two days ago. I don’t depend on it but that would be an easy thing that you can do that doesn’t effect those who depend on paypal for processsing but do depend on it for ROI.

What are the alternatives to Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, Amazon(Closed that too)?

You build a better version(Human rights wise) in Iceland I’d check it out.

Captcha
Prevail allegiance

kpurcell

Stop whining about hurting the small guy. Anon brought down the website, not the service. My Paypal transactions went through fine but I could not log in to the site itself for about 20-30 minutes.

Rider

And if you can’t login into the site how do you do things like transfer funds out of paypal?

RigelK

Apologies – misdirected rant.
My previous comment was aimed at Mantissa128, not Bookburn.

Sorry Bookburn. *humbly grovels before you*

Bite me, Mantissa 128.

dug

Let me first just say, the attack on Paypal isn’t agreed on by all who are doing this; they’re aware of the greater impact to small business, and was intended to be aimed at stopping corporate secrecy.

This isn’t just because Paypal refused to do business with Wikileaks, but because they KEPT a lot of THEIR MONEY.

Yes, they’ve recently released the funds owed to Wikileaks, but this was apparently out of standard procedure, even though it’s not being reported that way. Either way, there’s a lot of unhappiness both ways.

It’s kinda felt as Mastercard, Visa and Paypal have now all commited the same wrongs by refusing to process transactions for Wikileaks, while still continuing with groups like the KKK.

Naturally it’s believed this is a result of being “lent-on” by the Government (as the ‘leaked’ letter says) – because why would any payment transaction company ever want to not do business?

Even the BBC in the UK are being stunningly silent about anything from the cables or about Wikileaks, and even less said about the last few days.

At the moment, Anonymous are aiming for getting attention. I think it’s well deserved.

Anonymous

Jesus guys, chill out! It’s not like Anonymous will succeed in shutting Paypal down forever – and those of us who get payments through them will still get ‘em. Read what Xeni said: their systems are still functioning – it’s just the paypal site that’s down (or patchy at least).

Secondly, this isn’t Wikileaks’ doing – it’s an entirely independent grassroots action from the 4chan crowd. This is the fringes of the internet responding to what many perceive as an attack on internet freedom. It’s the online equivalent to not being able to go to the bank to set up your new account because there’s a wildcat strike on, or maybe a demonstration out front. It’s not as if the whole online economy just collapsed…

Take a deep breath and look at cute kitten pictures for a while and it’ll all be over soon.

Anonymous

What do these people expect to achieve by this? Do they honestly believe that Visa and Mastercard and Paypal and all their other targets will behave differently as a result of this, that they’ll all make sincere grovelling apologies for their contributions to the Wikileaks drama?

Or will it encourage them to work even more closely with government authorities, and come down like an absolute ton of bricks on any individuals they can pin the blame on for this? FBI raids on service providers, that kind of thing?

For that matter, what will it do to general public opinion? Right now, I see that leaning somewhat on the side of Wikileaks – the US government (and others) are seen as over-reacting, making a huge drama of blaming the messenger. However, it seems to me that the general public are going to hear about stories like this, and start associating Wikileaks and Assange with hackers and internet vandalism. That’s not going to help the cause one bit.

acb

How is this not a terrorist act?

WikiLeaks is not terrorism, except in the incoherent brain-farts of the Sarah Palins of this world. This, however, is. Granted, it’s a rubbish form of terrorism, but it is an attack against infrastructure which people rely on, with the intent of causing collateral damage to make a point.

If the ringleaders or other participants are apprehended and jailed under computer crime laws, much like botnet extortionists are, I won’t shed any tears for them.

And Boing Boing shouldn’t be hailing these cowards as heroes.

Cowicide

And Boing Boing shouldn’t be hailing these cowards as heroes.

Yeah I hate it when people celebrate cowards, don’t you?
Anonymous

Boing Boing can no more hail someone as a hero than my coffee table can condemn my cats for their furniture clawing ways. Websites are inanimate, immaterial objects.

I see that you disagree with the opinions that appear in some of the posts that appear here. You might consider addressing those points and the posters who made them.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Anon #196: That Boing Boing has not done so is not from some metaphysical necessity or physical impossibility: but because they have chosen not to do so.
  
  The New York Times is also inanimate, by your definition: yet their editorials routinely call people heroes and villains.
  
  The press is the press: Boing Boing is the press: Boing Boing like the NYT enjoys, and has, the freedom of the press.
  
  The legs of your coffee table don’t.

Anonymous

Good for them. Although I complained to PayPal about their actions, I suspect this might get more of this attention. PayPal should not mix in to a dispute the US government is having with Wikileaks.

Ugly Canuck

Since when have politics and business become so intertwined in the USA?

How is that situation square with right-wing conservative free-market libertarian thinking?

Can any business in America refuse to serve anybody on whim or caprice? Because the would-be customer is black? Or republican? or is it all ok if they just don’t state a reason for refusing service??
- travtastic
  
  Strictly on a practical, real-world level?
  
  Yes.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Well, when the Gov doesn’t have the law to force people , they can only hope to persuade people to do as they would like.
    
    So the persuasion by the Gov of other entities to cease their dealings is “kosher” in my book: hence, they’ll be no support from me for the hack attacks.
    
    OTOH, the hack actions are more analogous to sit-ins than to terrorism. And they are not a tactic calculated to increase support for Wikileaks, it seems to me.
    
    Illegal and counter-productive.
    Just like some actions of the US Government as exposed by Wikileaks?
    WHo knows. I’ve never had a vote in a US election, so my interest in this matter may be less than that of Americans – after all, it is their Government that’s most closely involved with this Wikileaks thing so far, is it not?
    
    IMHO, this whole thing distracts from some real news of great import for Americans, and for the future: the recent failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to come to terms, and the reasons why that has happened.

Capissen

Hard to tell if this will help or hurt in the long run, but one thing is for sure: the internet is on fire tonight. Exciting times, these.

Niklas

Let me get this straight: Are /b/ trying to show their support for freedom of information from one organization by shutting down the flow of information among other organizations? How does that even make sense?

Gloster

I think a brief summary of the general public stance would be:
“I’m glad some people are willing to fight against extralegal governmental oppression, that is unless it interferes in any way with my ability to hoard material goods.”

Are you seriously saying that your principles stop where your incomes from PayPal and Christmas shopping begin? It’s not like anyone will be starving or losing their home as a result of this. What, if anything, are you willing to give up?

Cowicide

Are you seriously saying that your principles stop where your incomes from PayPal and Christmas shopping begin?

It’s the American way for some of these folks, I think.

RigelK

joeposts -

I would be thrilled to find out wikileaks didn’t have anything to do with this. I would settle for wikileaks PUBLICLY stating that they want anonymous to quit this. I would be happy for wikileaks to distance itself from anonymous. It’d be early Christmas. ;)

bersl2

You do understand that this would just give the DDoS efforts even more attention, and would not stop them?

Anons are, at heart, attention whores and trolls. They’d continue in spite of being told to stop. I think Wikileaks understands this, and I suggest that many (if admittedly not all) actions taken under the name of Anonymous would make more sense if viewed in this light.
- RigelK
  
  OK, I think you may have a decent point there. Thank you for tilting my perspective a little bit. *thumps up*
  
  I’m just so frustrated!
jeffguevin

@RigelK, no one who knows anything about wikileaks and 4chan–or hell, just 4chan–thinks there’s collusion between the two.

My sympathies to those hurt by this action. I hope it ends soon, with the /b/tards feeling that they’ve made their statement, and drawn attention to the less-than-stellar behavior of the involved financial institutions.

@Niklas #52: It’s not so hard to see how these two sorts of “information flow” are not equivalent. There’s a lot that’s stupid about the DDoS, but your criticism doesn’t really hit the target.
- RigelK
  
  I’m really interested what more you have to say on this. Can you you give me details, please? What is it you know that I don’t. Please teach me. I am sincerely interested.
  - jeffguevin
    
    @RigelK
    It seems others are already expressing the same idea here. If 4chan is new to you, a little searching will tell you more than I can in a short summary. But without pretending to summarize the “character” of 4chan or Wikileaks, my simple answer to your laying blame at Wikileak’s door is: 4chan has frequently acted in support of, but independently of, organizations that would not approve of those actions. To my knowledge, Wikileaks as an organization has made no statements that would in any way implicate them in the DDoS.
    - RigelK
      
      Question for jeffguevin: IN YOUR OPINION, do you think folks like anon/4chan felt encouraged toward something like this attack by wikileaks earlier behaviors like having people download and store their insurance files so there would be hell to pay if wikileaks got shut down? The spirit/sentiment of wikileaks urgings? Not sure if I asked that clearly enough, but hopefully, you’ll get my gist.
    - jeffguevin
      
      @RigelK
      
      No, I don’t see the link there. To me, the distribution of the encrypted “insurance” file is a move by a small group of people who know they very well may be out of business–possibly incarcerated–very soon, but don’t want the information they’ve gathered/found/been given to disappear if that happens. It’s a defensive move, and to me doesn’t have much in common with the protest/punishment nature of the 4chan attack.
      
      I don’t love Wikileaks. I don’t love Anonymous. I just objected to the way in which you linked the two.
    - RigelK
      
      Fair enough. I’m just trying to pick your brain because I like how you say what you have to say.
    - Anonymous
      
      To my knowledge, Wikileaks as an organization has made no statements that would in any way implicate them in the DDoS.
      
      They don’t need to. People can make their own minds up, and whether real or not, many of them *will* see an association between the site and it’s supporters.
      
      And they won’t see it as legitimate protest – they’ll see it as mindless vandalism, a bunch of dangerous idiots striking out. And it’ll be seen – not just by the lunatic fringe, but by the moderates – as supporting claims that Wikileaks should be treated as a terrorist organisation.
- Niklas
  
  Please, enlighten me as to one “kind” of information from an organization that wants it to be available should be free and one “kind” of information from an organization that wants it to be available should be prevented from being expressed.
  - jeffguevin
    
    In one case, we’re talking about information about massive criminal action, corruption, and embarrassing stupidity on the part of the government. The US government is doing its clumsy best to prevent the dissemination of this information, and, barring that, trying to informally punish the responsible parties, and create disincentives for others to engage in future leaks of the same sort.
    
    In the other case, the “information” is “data”–specifically, financial transaction data–which is temporarily being slowed or stopped.
    
    Other than using the word “information” to make them seem similar, I’m at a loss as to how you could equate the two.
- Anonymous
  
  no one who knows anything about wikileaks and 4chan–or hell, just 4chan–thinks there’s collusion between the two.
  
  And what makes you think people *do* know anything about 4chan? There’s a big world of people out there, you know – billions of them.
joeposts

So they’re guilty of being involved until they publicly deny involvement? Makes sense.

…

…

…

…NOT!

Anonymous

I think there is a reason that http://www.paypal.com still works rather than paypal.com. The point gets across, but you can still access the website. So stop getting all mad about it.

Jack

It’s kinda felt as Mastercard, Visa and Paypal have now all commited the same wrongs by refusing to process transactions for Wikileaks, while still continuing with groups like the KKK.

Telephone companies provide the same services to saints and sinners. Good folks drive cars down the same roads as bad folks. Do you believe in net neutrality? Do you know what the concept of being a â€œcommon carrierâ€Â is?

Censorship stinks. But you canâ€™t counter it with more censorship.

Living a good life is the best revenge. Seriously.

RigelK

Jack, that was so well stated! *raises cup of soda to toast you*
- Jack
  
  Might as well go for a soda.

Delaney

Also, could we please stop equating 4chan with Anonymous? It makes us look like noobs. These attacks are done by anonymous. The fact that some of them occasionally visit or used to visit 4chan is irrelevant. It would actually be slightly more accurate (but wrong) to say these attacks are perpetrated by IRC.

bersl2

4chan is actually great practice for building practical volunteer botnets. I’ve seen at least one in action (not LOIC, but the command and control seems to run on the same principle) crapflooding threads to the image limit.

Continuing pro-Wikileaks DDOS actions, Anonymous takes down PayPal.com

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