Just because you're paranoid...

With the news full of stories of the massive digital surveillance of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Apple and other companies' servers by the US NSA and of shadowy spy systems, with names like Prism and Echelon, perhaps we should all be a little more paranoid. Jacob Appelbaum, a key developer of Tor, gave a keynote speech at 29C3 (29th Chaos Communication Congress) last year. Yes, he seemed a bit paranoid, but with hindsight, not so much. [Only the intro to the video is in German]

Hactivists to the rescue

Here's a local story (to me) from the New Zealand Herald who report that "Internet avengers track down mean-spirited hacker." It seems that a hacker called @AnonVoldemort took down the website of a charity that provides free school breakfasts to children in New Zealand. It's owner asked via Facebook for help and the infamous hactivist collective Anonymous duly responded and passed him the contact details of a hacker in Spain. The police are now investigating. Hacktivists have a code of ethics, you don't attack charities that help children.
    Inside Child Poverty still has a Facebook page, but it may be awhile before their website is up and running.

#Anonymous wins vote for Time magazine's most influential person

The hacktivist collective Anonymous has won the popular vote by readers for Time magazine's "most influential person" of 2012. Time magazine revealed yesterday that Anonymous had polled 395,7943 votes in comparison to the runner-up Eric Martin who polled 264,193 votes.
   Notwithstanding the results of their poll Time has declared Jeremy Lin (no I hadn't heard of him either - he's a basketball player) as the most influential person, and ranked Anonymous 36th. If I were chief of network security for Time magazine I don't think I'd be sleeping too easy, as who knows how the hacktivists (and they are legion) will take to this blatant disregard of the peoples' voice. Of course some people are suggesting that Anonymous may have hacked the poll and others are saying that they're not eligible anyway since they're not a "person." The former argument may be true, but the latter isn't since in 1982 Time named the home computer "Person of the Year."