Wikileaks “Paywall” Angers Anonymous

Cash-strapped leak site Wikileaks.org has enraged Anonymous, the loose group of hackers that has been a key ally, by putting its latest release behind an apparent paywall that asks for a credit card donation before viewing the files.

This week Wikileaks began an election-themed drip release of over 200,000 emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, releasing thousands of emails a day referring to Obama, Biden, Romney and the Republican and Democratic parties.

But the Stratfor files are hidden by a splash page, featuring a video of Obama clips intercut with comments from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, that appeared to require a donation before proceeding to the emails.

Wikileaks has been starved for funding after a financial blockade by banks and major credit cards, but recent court victories have allowed the site once again to receive credit card donations, and the “Vote Wikileaks” campaign was launched to take full advantage of that change.

The move provoked a furious backlash from Anonymous and allied groups, however, not least because the Stratfor emails were supplied to Wikileaks by members of Anonymous affiliate LulzSec who have since been arrested for that hack.

The Daily Dot reported that word quickly spread of work-arounds to avoid making a credit card donation, which some worried could be used to identify Wikileaks supporters:

Within an hour, the word went around Twitter that disabling JavaScript in your browser would get you around it, although that information was nowhere on the Web page. Other users reported that clicking to donate, then backing out before concluding the transaction, worked. Still others found that simply waiting (anywhere from ten minutes to an hour) exempted them from the importuning video. Others, that watching the video got you past it. And the Cryto Coding Collective released its own browser add-on specifically for the leaks.

Ars Technica noted that Wikileaks’ response to the backlash pointed out that the splash page wasn’t technically a “paywall” in the first place:

Justifying the call for donations, Assange wrote that the fund-raising was necessary to fund its “publishing and infrastructure costs,” and further to fund its legal action against the payment processors. WikiLeaks’ Twitter account also said that an overlay that allows you to share, tweet, or wait—or pay—isn’t a paywall anyway.

No, Romney (Probably) Didn’t Hack Facebook

Following a recent spike in Likes on Romney’s Facebook page — and a large number of Obama supporters discovering that their own Facebook pages were partly responsible — conspiracy theories proliferated blaming the phenomenon on a  GOP virus or a hacking campaign, but the truth my be more mundane.

According to an investigation by Mother Jones, “it looks like this issue is largely a result of Facebook’s mobile interface kind of  sucking.”

One security expert MJ interviewed said that the unintended Likes could well be the result of “clickjacking,” by placing a Romney ad underneath an unrelated ad that attracts a click, Facebook checked its database at MJ’s request and ruled out that tactic:

A Facebook spokesman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the issue is unique to mobile  because of the way the app works on small screens, and rejected the idea that the Romney camp was engaging in clickjacking. He added that the company is currently  working to clean up its mobile interface.

The company suggested that some accidental Likes might also result from clicking on a “sponsored story” that the Romney campaign paid to insert in users’ news feed.

MJ also pointed to a Buzzfeed story on a strange spike in Likes for Obama’s Facebook page this week, which saw a one-day gain of over 1.1 million — a jump of 4%.

Many of the commenters on the newly minted “Hacked by Mitt Romney” Facebook page dismiss MJ’s dismissal of the conspiracy theories, but the Obama spike suggests that the issue — whether a feature or a bug — is at least bipartisan.

German Government Spying on Citizens with Faulty Malware

The German Ministry of the Interior routinely uses spyware to monitor its citizens’ online communications, according to the ministry’s response to a parliamentary inquiry.

The detailed disclosure was part of a 43-page response to questions from Left Party MP Jan Korte about the ministry’s expenditures on private service providers.

The list of expenditures revealed that the ministry monitors Skype, Gmail, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Facebook chat with software from private firms.

Last year, Europe’s largest hacker group,  the Chaos Computer Club, reverse engineered one such program — a “state trojan” created by Digitask — which had similar capabilities as the infamous FinFisher spyware used by authoritarian regimes to crack down on activists during the Arab Spring.

The hackers’ analysis showed that the Digitask program lacked the safeguards needed to make the software compliant with the German Constitution, and that it also contained significant security flaws.  The group was even able to create its own program to remotely operate the government spyware.

Korte’s inquiry also revealed that Hesse-based Digitask’s claim of “trade secrets” meant that the Interior Ministry was prevented from examining the spyware’s source code, and so was likely unaware of the program’s potential for abuse.

This lax approach to privacy by the ministry in dealing with Digitask is a sharp contrast the German government’s handling of privacy concerns involving American companies like Google and Facebook.

Google TV Porn Is Coming

Content is heating up on Google TV, with the debut of the first native porn app for the platform.

FyreTV, a porn-streaming subscription service (with a NSFW website), has launched an app tailored to Google TV devices.  You won’t find the app at Google Play, because the official store doesn’t allow adult content, but you can download the app directly from FyreTV’s site.

While this is the first native porn app for Google TV, porn giant Vivid has already launched a Google TV-optimized HTML5 website.

A FyreTV rep told GigaOm.com why the company decided to go native:

“From what we have seen users are more likely to engage with the service when they feel it is a ‘part’ of their device and not just another website.”

With the potential of porn-only search engine Search.XXX to draw as much as 25% of all search traffic from conventional search sites, the FyreTV app could keep some of those eager eyeballs coming Google’s way.

Congress May Ban Some Chinese Telecoms Gear From U.S. Market

A draft report from the House Intelligence Committee recommends that some equipment manufactured by Chinese IT giants Huawei and ZTE be barred from the U.S. Market because of worries that it could enable the Chinese government to spy on America and even disrupt vital infrastructure.

The two Chinese manufacturers “cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems,” the report said.  “U.S. network providers and system developers are strongly encouraged to seek other vendors for their projects.”

Statements from Huawei and ZTE denounced the report’s conclusions as “baseless” and dismissed suggestions that they were under Chinese government control.

Both companies have become major players in the global market for telecoms equipment and have recently stepped up efforts to break into the massive U.S. market. Huawei is the world’s second-biggest maker of telecoms gear after Sweden’s Ericsson, with ZTE coming in fifth.

In September, Huawei vice president Charles Ding testified before the committee that the company’s commitment to global expansion precludes any sort of  collusion that would harm its reputation customers:

“Huawei has not and will not jeopardize our global commercial success nor the integrity of our customers’ networks for any third party, government or otherwise.”

The committee report said that both companies failed to provide sufficient details on their relationships with Chinese government officials and regulators.

TechCrunch notes that Huawei has gone to great lengths to ease security worries in the U.K., even  opening a certification and testing centre in Banbury, Oxfordshire, two years ago, and  hiring the former U.K. government CIO as its global cyber security officer last year.

Some observers suspect that the report has more to do with election-year China-bashing than national security, and worry that the appearance of protectionism could make life harder for U.S. companies’ efforts to expand in China, like Microsoft’s launch of Kinect for Windows into the Chinese market.

The Supreme Court Could End Your Right to Resell Your Old iPhone

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could dramatically restrict your right to sell your own possessions.

The case, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, challenges the century-old “first sale doctrine” that recognizes the right to buy and then resell things like books and artwork, as well as electronics, CDs and DVDs, without needing the prior consent of the products’ copyright holder.  If the Supreme Court upholds a lower court decision, it could become illegal to resell in the U.S. any item made overseas without the permission of the copyright holder.

The case involves a Thai student, Supap Kirtsaeng, who came to America for college in 1997 and saw that his textbooks (published by John Wiley & Sons) were much more expensive in the U.S. than they were in Thailand.  He began importing textbooks and selling them on eBay, making an estimated $1.2 million in the process.

The publishing company sued to halt the business, but Kirtsaeng claimed his operation was protected under the first sale doctrine.  An appeals court sided with John Wiley & Sons, rejecting the long-established legal doctrine in the case of copyrighted products produced overseas.

If the Supreme Court agrees, it would call into question the right to resell any imported item containing intellectual property, including DVDs, iPhones, and even furniture, without first obtaining the permission of the IP owner.

Mitt Wins Most-Tweeted Event — Sees Twitter Score Plunge

In a curious coda to Mitt Romney’s universally acclaimed victory in a presidential debate that sparked more tweets than any political event in U.S. history, the GOP candidate saw his Twitter Political Index score plummet by 14 points.

The index goes through millions of tweets each day, sorting candidate mentions for positive or negative sentiment, to arrive at a daily score reflecting the aggregate opinion of the Twitterati.

The drop in Romney’s score following the debate was his biggest one-day fall in over a month, and his second biggest since early May.

The dramatic plunge can’t be explained as simply a fall-off in glowing debate-night tweets the next day, since the index is compiled and updated every night at 8 p.m.  So Romney’s Oct. 4 score included all of the record-breaking 10 million tweets generated by his spirited performance the night before.

The demographics of Twitter’s user base skew toward traditionally Democratic constituencies, which may be part of the explanation — after all, Obama has more than eight times as many followers than Romney.  But a closer look at the debate tweets suggests a more complicated answer.  Mediabistro’s AllTwitter site points to a “Commander-in-Tweet” infographic compiled by Ignite Social Media breaking down the deluge of tweets during the Oct. 3 debate.

The numbers show that while the Democratic side accounted for nearly three-quarters of mentions, the favorable/unfavorable breakdown between the two sides was nearly identical.  Also, the most retweeted commentator during the debate was pro-Romney conservative Michelle Malkin.  So it appears that most of the negative tweets lobbed at Romney came in the aftermath of the debate, which was marked by heavy fact-checking of many of Romney’s claims by the likes of @factcheckdotorg, and jabs at his vow to downsize Big Bird from an explosion of parody accounts like @FiredBigBird.

Reddit in 3012: LOL Pocket Whales and Pet Raptor Bans

Wonder what the denizens of Reddit might be talking about in a thousand years?  Redditor gonzoblair offers this hilarious take on what could be on Reddit’s front page in 3012, (with the cheeky tagline “Proudly celebrating the same interface for over a millennium!” at the top).

Check out the new trend of putting a slice of bread around the head of your pet “pocket whale” and debate whether Chairman Tylo was really manufactured on Earth.  Donate to save the endangered indigenous tribes of Appalachia and learn about the ancient rupox plague of 2017 that spread through touch screens.   Most importantly, find out if the rumored Half Life 3 release date is legit.

Tumblr Will “Live-GIF” Presidential Debates

In yet another social-media wrinkle to the 2012 election, the social blogging network Tumblr plans to “Live-GIF” the presidential debates.

Starting at 9 p.m. EST on Oct. 3, the night of the first debate, Tumblr staff and select GIF impresarios will be slicing and stacking video frames of meme-worthy moments from the three Presidential face-offs, as well as the Vice-Presidential debate:

“Elevating the discourse as only Tumblr can,[*] we’ll have a crack team of GIF artists cranking out instant animations of the best debate moments, from zingers to gaffes to awkward silences.”

The GIFs will be posted on Tumblr’s new blog, Gifwich, created specifically for the debate live-giffing project. Selected creations will be also be featured on the Guardian’s liveblog and Tumblr’s official Election blog.

*You may recall the most recent Tumblr-driven “elevation” of the discourse, when Romney achieved an unfortunate social-media milestone.

Facebook Courts Controversy With Page That Could Derail Murder Trial

Facebook has refused requests from Australian police to take down a page calling for the public execution of a murder suspect.

The page has garnered more than 44,000 likes since Jill Meagher, a 29-year-old Irish woman, was raped and murdered on Sept. 22 in Victoria, Australia.

Australian authorities and relatives of the victim worry that the Facebook page entitled “Publicly hang Adrian Ernest Bayley” could allow the suspect’s lawyers to argue for a mistrial.

“We’ve got to remember that no matter how horrible this crime is, this gentleman has got to be afforded a fair trial. It’s not for Facebook pages or anyone else to be taking justice into their own hands,” said Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay at a press conference.

After declining to remove the page, Facebook offered this statement:

“We take our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities very seriously and react quickly to remove reported content that violates our policies and also to restrict access to content in a country, where we are advised that it violates local law.”

But the Daily Dot points out that the page could very well violate Australian law:

In the United States, gag orders can only extend to people involved in a trial, but not the news media. Not so in Australia. The country’s contempt of court laws restricts media from publishing material that might influence an ongoing or forthcoming trial. The goal is to prevent potential jurors or others from being influenced by biased media—the so-called “trial by newspaper.”