SOPA 'Stopped in tracks'

(Reuters) - “Lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation in its tracks on Friday, delivering a stunning win for Internet companies that staged an unprecedented online protest this week to kill the previously fast-moving bills.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/21/us-usa-congress-internet-idUST...

Anonymous retaliation: List of victims

C-Net reported that the following list of websites were attacked after an indictment against MegaUpload which resulted in four arrests including Kim Dotcom.

Department of Justice (Justice.gov)
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA.org)
Universal Music (UniversalMusic.com)
Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (Anti-piracy.be/nl/)
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA.org)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI.gov)
HADOPI law site (HADOPI.fr)
U.S. Copyright Office (Copyright.gov)
Universal Music France (UniversalMusic.fr)
Senator Christopher Dodd (ChrisDodd.com)
Vivendi France (Vivendi.fr)
The White House (Whitehouse.gov)
BMI (BMI.com)
Warner Music Group (WMG.com)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57362398-83/what-hath-opmegaupload-wrou...

Both Universalmusic.com and Justice.gov crashed Thursday afternoon and remained down as of 6:50pm ET.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/anonymous-hackers-claim-to-tak...

“If you clicked a link distributed by Anonymous yesterday, you may have unwittingly helped the online activists in their attacks against U.S. government and entertainment industry sites that were organized to protest proposed antipiracy legislation.”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57363103-245/anonymous-tricked-people-...

More from Huff Post:

“Police arrested founder Kim Dotcom and three Megaupload employees on U.S. accusations that they facilitated millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content costing copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/megauploadcom-piracy-charges_n_...

CNN Video:

http://youtu.be/cpTdTBASsBs

Tangled Cyber Saga: blue-haired, right-wing nuts

“Thomas Ryan, the independent security consultant who released a trove of e-mail communications from the Occupy Wall Street protesters, said he has been the target of numerous hacks and has received death threats after revealing information on the protestors plans to authorities.”

“The published archive was picked up by conservative gadfly Andrew Bretibart, a vocal critic of the OWS protests, who encouraged his followers to dig into the e-mail messages for information to discredit the OWS protests. Breitbart's interest, in turn, attracted the attention of media outlets like Gawker who portrayed Ryan as a 'right wing rabble-rouser' engaged in a smear campaign.”

http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/informant-says-hacks-threats-followed-...

“Those may have included a mention on Threatpost about Barr's 'strange trip' to visit Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, where he dyed his hair blue in an attempt to fit in with protesters and see what they were up to. Barr's name also appeared in a set of emails mistakenly released by another cybersecurity analyst he is friends with, Thomas Ryan. Ryan snuck his way onto an Occupy Wall Street email organizing list, forwarding some of those messages to FBI agents and then releasing a batch of them onto the web.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/aaron-barr-cybersecurity-anonym...

Now all of this connects somehow, but it's complicated and since everyone involved is so clever and covert, it might take awhile to do it. The bottom line is that once again the infiltrators are tripping all over each other trying to be inconspicuous, and it looks like the best way to do that is to dye your hair blue (?) Gawker.com pointed out the obvious with the genesis of this saga:

“Conservatives really have a hard-on for 'infiltrating' Occupy Wall Street in an effort to discredit it. Now a computer expert has leaked thousands of emails from Occupy Wall Street organizers and told us he's identified members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous involved in the protest.”

http://gawker.com/5850025/right+wing-rabble+rouser-leaks-thousands-of-oc...

Former police chief Ray Lewis with Eugene Davidovich

http://youtu.be/Ne1fVyGvc6s



More cops . . .

The UC Regents meeting was met with a bunch of protesters, mostly students, who aren't thrilled about rising tuitions. This is compounded by the fact that the major banks make a killing off of student loans. The entire educational system is now saturated with loan offers and creative ways of incurring debt. This is the result:

http://youtu.be/4A0hdq87cOc

UC Regents bolt out the back door after police action:

Obviously deciding to meet in another locations would be more productive, the fearless regents left the building without comment:

http://youtu.be/FlkOmRoCMCs

Grumpy