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Anonymous Releases Restricted NATO Document
angry tapir writes "Anonymous has released a document marked 'restricted' from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The 36-page document, which is dated Aug. 27, 2007, appears to be budget and equipment outlays for what was termed a new 'HQ ISAF JOINT CIS CONTROL CENTRE.' NATO's press office could not be immediately reached. Anonymous claimed on its 'AnonymousIRC' Twitter handle that it has 1GB of material from NATO but said that most would not be published because it would be 'irresponsible.'"
You heard!
It's the lowest level of classification, just above Unclassified. Doesn't prove anything so far as Anonymous hacking skills. They make it seem like they're taking a bug risk but they aren't.
just like your mom. :(
Jeezz! They've probably ran into pretty nasty bits there.. .. :D
Or they are actually becoming responsible
OOOR Anon is trying some cool PR stunt!
So I RTFA. What I didn't see was whether there was a point to it or not, unless it was to point out insecurities.
Since when does the Anonymous care if something they do is irresponsible?
"most would not be published because it would be 'irresponsible.'"
The Anon's get a conscience? Ha ha! Best laugh I've had all day!
NATO "restricted" is about a low as you can get on the secrecy scale in NATO docs, it's just a bit short of publishing in public forums! Now when they get hold of docs marked "top secret" or is it the mysterious "J" grading I beileve, then I'll pay attention!
It's an interesting idea that it would be 'irresponsible' to release these documents in full.
I call dropping bombs on innocent people in Afganistan irresponsible. I call killing one million people in Iraq for oil and dollar supremacy irresponsible. If you are going to use conventional, State / MSM thinking to restrict and control your actions, then apply this thinking evenly; the State is dropping bombs on people for the 'greater good' (to 'spread peace and democracy') and so releasing these documents for the greater good of preventing millions of deaths is completely justified and not at all irresponsible. It is in fact, the only responsible thing to do, since more people will be spared a horrible death for no reason, than could possibly be harmed by the release of the information.
That being said, the documents are under their control, they took the massive risk in getting hold of them and its entirely up to them what they do with them.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
We don't want your crap.
Put it on the recycle.bin, or /dev/null
Thanks (not).
--Internet.
Releasing secrets is often good, as many secrets just protect the asses of corrupt vested interests. But why do we see no releases of secrets from potential threats to free societies? Like China, various idiot countries like N. Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc? Just sayin'...
Funny, whenever some talks about the bytes obtained rather than the number of documents, it tends to indicate that the information obtained was useless. Perhaps they found a 700MB Access file with the commercial ship traffic in the Atlantic Ocean.
Chances are it's not important what they found. NATO is a collection of countries with diverging view (e.g. Turkey&Greece, France&UK&US) and with a lot of attention-seeking military personnel who have been shunted to this multi-national effort. Anything juicy or of significance would have been exploited by internal personnel a long time ago.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
NOT IRRESPONSIBLE AT ALL.
FWIW, this is not a classified document. NATO restricted is the equivalent of US UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO.
While any release of restricted information is not helpful to NATO, please keep this in perspective -- this is the equivalent of an unauthorized release of an office memo.
Maybe they got better security in place?
A lot of the Anon hacks seem to rely on simple SQL injection and other exploits. Could it be that these countries (aside of NKor, which probably is not connected to the internet at all) have better security standards in place?
They might not consider a budget that big of an issue when dealing with petty things like security.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because they're not "technologically advanced" enough to digitise their top secret files and make them available to any interested script kiddies?
which is totally what she said
Tired of people saying its not irresponsible and they should post the rest of the documents. You don't know what the rest of the documents are. Maybe the documents are an assessment on whats the best way is to acquire and sneak a nuclear device into your country. Do us a favor and stop speaking out of ignorance.
Iran never tries to put down free speech or illegally imprisons people for rallying for freedom. They definitely would not kill or torture such people. Nothing to see here folks. Move along and keep hacking the US. Yep.
I guess they actually draw the line at actually sensitive information. Troop numbers and movement information cost lives. I doesn't matter, the bolder they get the more severe the charges will be when they get caught. I am waiting for the first executions on the grounds of treason.
I reckon Anonymous could turn out to be the modern Internet's worst enemy.
Before you flame me, hear me out.
Historically, first-world politicians have not really understood the Internet. What they have understood is that while it's a fantastically useful tool, it has aspects that (to society as a whole) are less desirable. Child porn is the obvious one that gets banded about fairly regularly, but by regularly hacking high-profile targets, Anonymous are practically guaranteeing that national security will also wind up on the political radar.
Many on /. will say "Well then, the likes of NATO should hire someone better to secure their networks" - and while there may be some logic to that, I can see a lot of politicians suggesting a rather different solution - one involving censorship and tracking people online. We pretend that the Internet is immune to much of this, but China, Iran and Tunisia have proven that this is not true.
What we have here is the technological equivalent of a bunch of kids causing a great deal of disturbance in their school lunch hall - and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it dealt with using the age-old technique of "If we can't figure out who the troublemakers are, we'll instigate a bunch of new rules which inconvenience everyone."
The KKK started as a group of men bullying delinquent-men who weren't taking care of their wife, kids, family.
E.g. Frustrated men who took the law into their own hands.
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets.
Could it be that these countries (aside of NKor, which probably is not connected to the internet at all) have better security standards in place?
Or maybe the penalties for violating security are a little more severe?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Maybe they're not storing everything on computers? Or maybe they didn't trust a US-based closed-source software vendor with their secrets and preferred to use a harder-to-hack OS instead?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
But why do we see no releases of secrets from potential threats to free societies? Like China, various idiot countries like N. Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc?
The world is a complex and deceitful beast.
I suspect you're from the US. The French (especially their companies) may not have the same opinion about Iran. Spain may feel differently about Venezuela. China is the "new Soviet Union" (tm); NATO would most likely not confront or expose them directly especially when Western Europe and the US are competing for the same oil fields, grain, and minerals across the world.
because that stuff isn't in english
How boring. Put your skills to real use.
Now that we've established that private individuals can hack real secrets out of the government, how fun would it be to plant false information among the nuggets of truth? Nothing outlandish like aliens and mind-control, I mean stuff that's completely plausible and realistic but you would require proof of it being real. For example, I think it would be completely awesome if they leaked something about a special group taking care of "Renegade's Kenya question." The Birthers would splooge all over themselves at that!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Releasing secrets is often good, as many secrets just protect the asses of corrupt vested interests.
But why do we see no releases of secrets from potential threats to free societies?
Like China, various idiot countries like N. Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc?
Because those secrets are not in English. So it's harder to find them. You need Chinese speaking people to enter those systems. Even if their servers are linux or windows based, still you need to know where to look. So you think you can just download a user directory, or download all word-documents. True, but you still need to be on the right server. And then, if you have those documents, you need to translate them to English, to gain the attention of the West.
All those non-latin languages, forget about it if you cannot read them. English is still the language where it all happens.
A few points:
- If hacks rely on social engineering, or even being able to understand what a page, for example, an admin page, is saying to figure out whether there's something you an exploit there, then language may be a massive barrier. Then even if they did leak it their Western audience wouldn't be able to understand it. It's challenge enough trawling through a dump of Western documents when you know the language to spot something important, let alone in a foreign language. Let those who know that language deal with that.
- The West is much more interested in documenting things because it believes it's the right thing to do in terms of accountability, but then never follows through on releasing said documents in response to controversal incidents and covers it up anyway- effectively it often becomes a box ticking exercise, to say "We're transparent and accountable". Other nations like Iran, North Korea etc. just drop the charade and don't even waste their time pretending to be accountable/transparent, or at least don't bother digitising everything
- There have been some foreign leaks, IIRC anonymous grabbed about 10,000 Iranian interior ministry files or similar not so long ago.
- These hackers are really mainly just interested in cleaning up their own backyard first- they're sick of government encroachment on their lives, or government spending their tax dollars on wars the citizens of said nation don't really agree with etc. and want to deal with that primarily.
Or maybe nobody would be really "suprised" hearing about human rights violations by North Korea, and all such a publication of documents would cause is answers of "well, water is wet, what did you expect"? No hacker worth his salt would volunteer losing time for such a let-down. Better try to embarass countries which are supposed to be democratic...
Why would a hacker in New Jersey or Finland care about the penalties for violating Chinese state security?
It should be obvious that most Anon's are foreign nationals, or from places like Europe, China, Russia, etc.
Most Anon's are focused only on hacking the US/Western establishment. That being said there have been Anon's who were American nationals.
Which would explain why the US government is usually the target.
Because they're not "technologically advanced" enough to digitise their top secret files
Arrogance will be the fall of the Western Hemisphere.
Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran have a lot more capability (and money) than you realize. The first two have the ability to seriously harm your US economy is they threw hissy fit (OPEC).
Please smarten up.
Releasing secrets is often good, as many secrets just protect the asses of corrupt vested interests.
But why do we see no releases of secrets from potential threats to free societies?
Like China, various idiot countries like N. Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc?
Just sayin'...
Actually, Wikileaks did just that, and I don't think it's entirely coincidental that the Arab Spring uprising followed shortly afterwards.
A lot of dirt got exposed to the light of day, and while there were few "smoking guns", a number of suspicions were confirmed. The US made such a big deal about THEIR secrets, but we can stand some embarrassment. And should, to keep us humble.
Countries which are less free can't afford to be embarrassed, though. It destroys what little credibility they could claim, and despots aren't big on any humor that doesn't involve battery cables, simulated drowning, and so forth.
The problem with your examples, all but is very vague, is that there are at least two sides to every story.
In the case of your specific claim, I am quite sure that NATO does not purposefully target innocent people in any country. If anything it is because it is so uncommon for them to kill a large number of innocent civilians that it gets so much press. The greater good is not always about "spreading peace and democracy" ... the greater good can be also removing the ability of a specific aggressor to continue their ways.
So it is not completely justified to releasing all documents. Some yes, but not all. We read the results of the Afghan dump which revealed sources of intel and such, was that responsible? I think not.
Your openly declaring that there is no reason behind the deaths caused by NATO. I say there is justifiable reason, it all comes down to. Are we protecting a greater good. Yes there are going to be accidental deaths and those are to be regretted. But does the possibility of accidental deaths excuse of from acting to prevent hundreds if not thousands of deaths?
Tell me, when does it become responsible to ignore genocide or mass murder? How many have to die before its not irresponsible for NATO or America to act? I am curious as to the limits. We ignored hundreds of thousands of Africans dieing in the 90s, we do it even to this day for the most part completely glossing over the violence in Sudan and Ethiopia. We seem quite content to ignore the hundreds dieing in Syria and no one bats an eye at what goes on in Lebanon.
Flame on, I have karma to burn. Strawmen and hyperbole are all you are.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
All these attacks do is ensure there will be less and less 'freedom' in the future. All these anarchists will achieve is creating more and more laws to squash freedom just like the Patriot Act. We'll get something 10x worse when they feed some bullshit law down on us.
And for those saying these are 'secret' documents. These are 'restricted' which is much different than secret or top secret documents. Restricted documents are only one notch above unclassified information. So basically any that makes a reference to something that may in some way mean something useful, they tag restricted. 99% of the information in that document and the other 1GB of documents is all normal unclassified BS. This is much ado about nothing.
As soon as anyone starts choosing and picking what they release to the public, then they are doing the exact thing as those who hide the information. If your are going to break a law (no arguments as to whether it should be a law or not, but it is) then decide to only post the part that tells the story you want told, then it is clear you have an agenda, and it is no longer about letting the information be free. if people get hurt because of it, well then maybe none of it should have been published. as of now, the only thing anonymous stands for is whining.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
'AnonymousIRC' Twitter handle that it has 1GB of material from NATO but said that most would not be published because it would be 'irresponsible.'"
I often wonder if the real reason they don't post these documents is that they are simply not interesting. Lulzsec and Anonymous are both quick to say that they've hacked into servers, and as they've shown, they've been very good at exploiting holes. However, they seem to be finding holes into low level information, and the "scandal" they find is generally nothing more than mundane information. Do you recall Chinga La Migra? They released tons of personal emails against the Arizona police department, and the only thing that these emails showed is that they were a pretty normal operation, including the fact that this department, too, hires idiots who like to send chain mail through email. So in the end, they found a few gigs of unprotected email, bragged about it, and never bothered to realize that this wonderful treasure trove of information was essentially trash. At best, they created harassment for the officers who, as far as the documents show, weren't involved in anything illegal. The most damaging release of information so far has been usernames and passwords of a porn site, which only exposed the dangers of having the same log in and password information for multiple sites.
Slashdot had an article not too long ago saying China's defensive security is actually quite bad. China has a huge bureaucracy that provides many opportunities for people to screw up security so inevitably they do.
The researcher quoted in the article attributes the lack of attention to the language barrier. English-speaking script kiddies doing a mass search for SQL injection vulnerabilities won't even know what they've found if they manage to break into a Chinese government website.
Still, the researcher himself has found and publicized several vulnerabilities in Chinese government websites, so I think the other aspect of this is just the attention paid by the media. If Anonymous hacks NATO, that fits into an ongoing news narrative about "The US Government vs. Hacktivists". If a white hat responsibly discloses a bug in Chinese SCADA systems, it won't make any headlines.
Ok seriously.....they aren't releasing all the documents because it would be irresponsible? Do those words sounds like the words of a suicide hacker to you? Or the words of a badly trained actor pretending to be a suicide hacker? Only a suicide hacker would go after the US government. I have read the laws pertaining to internet hacking for the US (Or as much as I could since it was written in some strange form of english called legaleeze) And the laws are so extreme that you could go to jail for even pinging a US government server. Does anyone else see the rather large gaps in logic here?
Western democracies are less likely (though it does happen) to use an extrajudicial method against troublemakers overseas so long as they don't constitute a material threat. However that sort of attitude is not so true of totalitarian autocracies with terrible human rights records. If somebody managed to upset China enough, an agent or mercenary might find a way for the hacker to have a 'tragic accident'.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Perhaps targetting western governments like this is their attempt at improving them. Doesn't seem to far fetched. NATO is doing the same in Libya, but with bombs. And does anyone believe the Taliban fight just because they like to hurt people?
It's just a radical form of "affirmative action"
First, I'm not American, nor do I live in the US.
Second, my post was just a joke, which managed to fly way, way over your head apparently. While we're talking about "smartening up", please go and read up on the uses of quotation marks, and the definition of irony before reading my previous post. Then read them again and read your own post. Then hang your head in shame.
which is totally what she said
This is at least the second time they've done this. They announced they would released Sun/News of the World/News International but then they back down.
This "just wait till you see what we have" is getting old fast. It's not a good symptom at all, it reminds me of when Julian Assange announced Wikileaks was "about" to release documents from a major American bank. Turned out it was just an empty threat - probably not what the whistle-blower who leaked the documents to Wikileaks had in mind.
I have a lot of admiration for some of the things Anonymous and Wikileaks have done, but they're both drunk on their own fame now. They need to sober up and keep their inflated sense of self importance in check. It would make them a lot more efficient.
Don't tell us you have important data/documents, either release or shut up. What ever happened to "Anonymous delivers"?
To further expand on the China scenario specifically, one of the few places where there are both persons with the requisite technical skill and the political passion to oppose the CCP directly is Taiwan. However, the Taiwanese, even independence extremists, know that if they publicly hacked and released secrets from the Chinese mainland it would quickly be used by the Chinese as a pretense for war. Many would die and Taiwanese autonomy would be crushed, and if the US actually went through with OPLAN 5077 it could damn well bring about WW3.
The stakes for hacking China are much higher for something which is ultimately less interesting. As callous as it is, everybody already knows China is doing bad things to otherwise innocent people, so there is not really any surprise to reveal. However, if all their dirty laundry were aired, it might provoke a disproportionate response, either personally in an extrajudicial attack to punish the hacker(s), or geopolitically to the point of even open war.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I'd bet it's more likely that most Anon hackers don't read Korean, Chinese, or Russian, which is kind of important if you want to make sure you are stealing important documents, and not a PDF format of "Gone With the Wind," or really even to know what computer you hacked into.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Who really cares about budget and equipment outlays from Nato. These Anonymous guys are probably not dumb and know when a story gets to big. Maybe they ARE clever enough to remain undetected (I doubt that), but even then it's surely not a good feeling walking around and knowing the military is after you because you just unfolded the next two or three strategic operations. Thats not fun anymore.
Ummm... how about "Hey guys, here's what we found, anyone able to translate it?"
For centuries, people have put their faith in the heavens, why shouldn't we have faith in the cloud just because we're atheists? :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Possibly because none of these hackers actually speaks those languages which would make figuring out what they were actually going after very difficult.
It's not a matter of should they hack foreign government websites, but so far it seems lulzSec/anon hasn't hacked ANY foreign language website. There is no particular reason to be afraid of McDonald's Taiwan, so I assume mainly they choose their targets based on the language they understand, English; not because of a fear of a foreign government that poisons with Polonium.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's actually a valid security approach; US DoD uses it all the time.
Nathan's blog
For making weapons that can destroy city blocks . Then any idiot could become a death ray of violence.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who the f**k are Anonymous? Oh wait...
NATO RESTRICTED is about the same level as For Official Use Only in the US. You don't even need a security clearance to get access.
Do you read Chinese? How about Korean? Spanish? Arabic? Farsi? If you don't, why do you assume the people in Anonymous do?
But - here's a completely different motive. I'll let you guess where I plucked this from:
Domestic enemies are not just armed criminals. I, for one, have a hard time looking at the banking scandal as a friendly action.
Now, you may argue that it was accidental, but considering what has been put forth about it, that is a bit like putting up a mine field, putting toddlers in said mine field and then saying "woops", whenever you hear a loud noise.
Sony ... well, they seemed intent on being greedy and careless - sort of like the bankers. NATO ... well, not everyone agrees that the US should be in NATO, or rather that the rest of NATO should up their involvement rather than relying on the US to shoulder the burden.
Or maybe they just like to watch the world burn, and it's hard to find a bigger flammable target than the US.
On a completely different tangent - the biggest threat to free societies aren't external, they are internal.
* Who decided you had to take off your shoes while going through airport security?
* Who decided that you aren't allowed to bring liquids?
* Who decided that you should be arrested at the airport, if you don't want to be groped or subjected to essentially nude photography, just because you decided, on a whim, to go flying a few hours before arriving at the airport?
* Who decided that you need to be detained, questioned and treated like a criminal, just because you have a lump of cash on us?
* Who decided that you should be labeled as a sex offender for life, because you took a nude picture of yourself and gave it to your boyfriend or girlfriend? The same boyfriend or girlfriend that you are legally allowed to fuck no less! You can fuck them, but don't look at it, don't sketch it, don't write about it, don't tell anyone about it.
Those are really big encroachment on your freedoms, and none of them came from external enemies.
I would guess that most of the people carrying out the attacks are English speakers. They might not be too hot on Korean or Arabic.
Releasing secrets is often good, as many secrets just protect the asses of corrupt vested interests.
But why do we see no releases of secrets from potential threats to free societies?
Like China, various idiot countries like N. Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc?
Just sayin'...
You forgot to mention the US in that list of yours.
While those countries in the list minus US have secrets, they don't have as many as the US, since they don't have their nose stuck in so many layers of s*it, which a lot of it is produced on its own.
NATO is an international organization. what law do they operate under? what court system recognizes it?
what, exactly, is the alleged crime here?
NATO is not a part of the US government. Would NATO be covered under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? I dont think so.
So, you're saying that the CIA is not responsible for a fair share of 'tragic accidents', operating "tour agencies" for a long, long "vacation" in guantanamo, or forcing regime change in roughly 50 countries, 30 of them democratically elected.
embitters them and causes a wave of mass popular support for terrorist groups?
oh right i forgot. all of NATO's airstrikes are with 'smart bombs', nobody ever dies unless they are bad.
and the population loves NATO for doing this.
"Lancet survey reported 601,027"
and
"Anyway, considering all the evidence, it seems likely that less than one million people died in Iraq as a result of the US intervention. (not taking into account the first Gulf War)"
Ignoring at first the Irak body count which is very conservative in its counting, since irak population is around 35 million, we are speaking of anywhere between 1.8% to 3% of the population died. For those in the US / Europe, imagine that from all your neighbor/family, 1 out of 55 died, or at worst 1 out of 33. Saddam did not directly order a kill or torture anywhere near that number. Now imagine how pissed off you would be at the country having started the killing, and marked many of you off as "collateral damage" while that country was not even being targeted by fake WMD by yours to begin with.
Now maybe you are near to understand why some of us said that the war of Irak generated a breeding ground for terrorist wanting to recruit people hating the USA for what they did to them/friend/neighbor/family. It did not increase world wide security, it decreased it severely.
billions of innocent people got killed, all thanks to Julian Assange. i mean, evidence is all over the place. just go to JulianAssangeBodyCount.net
there you can watch video of a Wikileaks helicopter gunship killing a bunch of civilians.
somehow i dont think that killing a suicide bomber is going to get their allies to the negotiating table.
whatever NATO is doing, its working perfectly!
just another ten years is all they need before they finally eliminate terrorists from afghanistan.
if only it weren't for Wikileaks. i mean, look at how many innocent civilians have been killed in the war, then compare it to the millions killed by Julian Assange.
$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.2 lasershark
127.0.0.3 coffebreak
A blackhat who speaks only English has enough information here to make an educated guess as to which server looks like it might contain data worth One Beelyun Dollars, and which one is more likely to host the company cafeteria menu.
If those host names were entirely in Chinese, all he can do is yell "throw me a frickin' bone" and guess.
Unfortunately, the reverse doesn't hold up nearly as well: a Chinese blackhat, even one who speaks no English whatsoever, knows simply by virtue of having used a computer for a few years, that a big file named "core" is (probably) less interesting than a big file named ".tar.gz", even if he doesn't know about "core memory", "tape archives", GNU, or the .z as a birdflip to the .Z extension associated from the patent-encumbered UNIX "compress" program.
Ike was the commander of allied forces during WWII.
he warned us about the military industrial complex influencing our policy.
i think he knew what he was talking about.
Why would a hacker in England care about the penalties for violating US state security? Oh, wait...
I wouldn't trust the UK not to extradite me to China.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Or maybe Anonymous isn't as good at SQL injection in Chinese?
"But why do we see no releases of secrets from potential threats to free societies? Like China, various idiot countries like N. Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc? Just sayin'..."
Because they are serious about deterring leaks and will do Bad Things to leakers.
Compared to their methods, Gitmo is a joke.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Like China, various idiot countries like N. Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc?
How many (non-CIA-affiliated) western hackers do you think can read Arabic, let alone Korean and Farsi?
Anonymous may have some terrific hackers, but these guys probably couldn't tell TOP SECRET from TODAY'S CAFETERIA MENU if it's written in Korean.
There is no bigger idiot, and no bigger threat to world peace than the US, And Nato is one of their tools. For months, civilians dying in Libya are the result of Nato bombing "to protect civilians" (by killing them), bombing their schools, hospitals, homes, rebels, etc. The same can be said of many other places everywhere the US puts its nose.
N. Korea is isolated and does no harm unless messed with, such as doing stupid and unnecessary war games in front of them...
Venezuela is simply trading with those willing to. The US banned military sales? Well the Russians didn't; plus others are willing to transfer their technology unlike US corporations. Free market you know...
The Saudi monarchy is the biggest US ally in the middle east, freedom to the people is not important as long as they play... Just like nuclear weapons backed Pakistan.
Iran, without nuclear weapons, is constantly being harassed, and even sabotaged, inline to an Israeli agenda; has proven respectful to other countries, unlike Nato, has not invaded or attacked anyone and only threatens those who threaten.
Anonymous has not been targeted by any of those countries you mention, the US has. You do pick your enemies...
If the US doesn't like a government, it is none of their business meddling with. Its the people living there and only theirs. But the US has a global policy of interfering every nation in the planet (even allies), as shown by the wikileaks evidence; thus perpetuating conflict.
IMO, the US should be kicked out of the UN (for debt), and the headquarters moved to neutral grounds elsewhere. Then, as the entire world sides rightfully against the US, some sort of balance can be restored. Otherwise its up to the Chinese to fill the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
I see a few options:
1. Because they aren't developed enough to store such information in computer networks. (N.K.?)
2. Because they can actually secure their information properly (e.g. no links to Internet on networks with secure data).
3. Because any would-be whistleblowers are deterred by the knowledge that their death will be long and nasty indeed should they get caught.
It frustrates me that the media is treating the recent arrests http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/07/fbi-confirms-arrests-anonymous-hacking-case/40153/ as some sort of major blow against Anonymous. The people arrested accessed the LOIC from their home IP addresses! This is not the work of master criminals. The picked up a few morons who blindly followed Anonymous's call.
We have extradition treaties with our allies. So if you commit a crime against the US, the UK will extradite you. We have no such treaties with our enemies.