Facebook and Twitter don’t believe Kim Dotcom is real

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is already in a fight with the FBI, but now he’s going up against some other entities that know about everyone in the US. Dotcom says he can’t convince Facebook and Twitter that he’s the real deal.

The 38-year-old self-proclaimed “Freedom Fighter” and founder of the now defunct Megaupload.com file storage site says he’s being misrepresented by a number of fake accounts on social media sites, but his pleas to Facebook and Twitter to have his personal profiles verified are falling on deaf ears.

In an exchange with the website TorrentFreak, Dotcom shows that his efforts to have his official @KimDotcom Twitter account verified by the microblogging site have been by and large ignored by the Silicon Valley company.

“Here is the reply I received [from Twitter] after I sent them a copy of my Hong Kong international driving license with photo and government stamp,” Dotcom tells TorrentFreak, which he accompanies with a screenshot of an email addressed from the Twitter Trust and Safety division. In their response, a Twitter representative writes that they cannot confirm Dotcom’s identify, despite his inclusion of internationally recognized documentation.

“@Twitter declines to certify me. I faxed an ID. They think it’s fake. A search for my name shows imposter as the first result. Might quit!” he adds in a post of his own to his Twitter stream.

Although Dotcom, born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, has over 113,000 Twitter followers, a search for his screen name on the site returns several other fake accounts first, including those for @KimDotcomTruths, @KimDotComFree and @KimDotComPR.

In last ditch attempt to have his screen name authenticated, he tells Twitter in a follow-up Tweet, “Hey … it’s really me. Please certify my account and disable the imposter.”In his last tweet, Dotcom offers his plea along with an Instagram photo of himself mugging for the camera next to a homemade sign that reads “Twitter. It’s really me.”

His problems don’t stop there either, though. Dotcom tells Torrentfreak that Facebook has rejected his official identifications as well and insist that “Dotcom” isn’t his legal name — Wired reports that he successfully filed the paperwork to go sans Schmitz and adopt this new alias all the way back in 2005, though. Nevertheless, Facebook says they won’t assist him with opening an account under his legal identity, because “Facebook requires all users to use their accurate first and last names.”

Since going public with his pleas, Dotcom’s account of his struggle for verification have been shared numerous times over the Web, which might not necessarily make life easier for him, who was indicted on conspiracy and copyright infringement charges earlier this year by the FBI. Although Twitter has not taken a stance for or against Dotcom’s legal battle, they have been relatively open about how they’ve conducted their own relationship with the federal government. Last month Twitter revealed that they handed over information on registered users to the US government around 75 percent of the time the feds requested intel on accounts last year alone. A Reuters report in 2011 concluded that Facebook had been repeatedly served in years’ past with warrants for the personal messages and contacts of its registered users as well.

A trial to have Dotcom extradited to the United States was recently moved back to March 2013. Dotcom, meanwhile, calls America’s approach to the legal fight unjust, and Tuesday morning tweeted once more that the US government’s strategy “is to appeal every court victory we have while sitting on our assets.”

“No funds = No defense = Unfair advantage,” he tweets.

‘Seinfeld’ star Alexander posts tweet calling for gun control in wake of Colorado shooting

Larry McShane
nydailynews.com 
July 25, 2012

There was no yada-yada at all when “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander’s took to Twitter with an impassioned — and certainly more than 140-character — call for a ban on assault-style weapons.

Alexander, in a message to his 135,725 followers, said the movie theater rampage that left 12 dead in Colorado convinced him to write the posting that drew both applause and insults.

“These are the weapons that maniacs acquire to wreak murder and mayhem on innocents,” Alexander wrote in the piece, which went up on Sunday. “They are not the same as handguns to help homeowners protect themselves from intruders.

Read more

Misinformation campaign targets USA TODAY reporter, editor

WASHINGTON – A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.

Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names.

The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY’s reporting on the military’s “information operations” program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan —campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored.

STORY: U.S. ‘info ops’ programs dubious, costly

STORY: Congress members call for probe of information ops program

For example, Internet domain registries show the website TomVandenBrook.com was created Jan. 7 — just days after Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook first contacted Pentagon contractors involved in the program. Two weeks after his editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story, someone created a similar site, RayLocker.com, through the same company.

If the websites were created using federal funds, it could violate federal law prohibiting the production of propaganda for domestic consumption.

“We’re not aware of any participation in such activities, nor would it be acceptable,” said Lt. Col. James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman.

A Pentagon official confirmed that the military had made inquiries to information operations contractors to ask them about the Internet activity. All denied it, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiries were informal and did not amount to an official investigation.

The websites were taken down following those inquiries. Various other sites and accounts were removed for violating their providers’ terms of service.

“I find it creepy and cowardly that somebody would hide behind my name and presumably make up other names in an attempt to undermine my credibility,” Vanden Brook said.

The activity is the work of what online reputation expert Andy Beal calls a “determined detractor.”

“It’s like a machine gun approach. They’re trying to generate as much online content as they can,” he said. “The person who’s behind this, we can give them a lot of credit here and assume they’re very sophisticated about reputation attacks.”

It can cost $10 to register a domain name, but $50 to pay for a proxy service to hide the owner’s identity, as was done with two of the websites. A third was registered to a non-existent address in Pueblo, Colo.

“This is the work of somebody who knows what they’re doing. They have some experience of covering their tracks. This is probably not the first time they’ve done something like this,” said Beal, CEO of Trackur, an online reputation tracking service.

Some postings merely copied Vanden Brook’s and Locker’s previous reporting. Others accused them of being sponsored by the Taliban. “They disputed nothing factual in the story about information operations,” Vanden Brook said.

On Feb. 8, as Vanden Brook continued to ask questions of contractors, a new Wikipedia user attempted to create an entry on him, alleging he “gained worldwide notoriety” for his “misreporting” of the 2006 Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia.

Early reports from the scene, relying on faulty information from the governor and mine operators — said 12 of 13 miners were found alive, when in fact only one was. Many news outlets — including the Associated Press, The New York Times and USA TODAY — conveyed the inaccurate reports in early editions.

Wikipedia took down the page and banned the user, but similar comments started populating Internet message boards and blogs. In one case, the fake @Tomvandenbrook Twitter account defended his Sago reporting to another apparently fake account.

Vanden Brook said he’s continuing to pursue the propaganda story. “If they thought it would deter me from writing about this, they’re wrong.”

“This is a clear attempt at intimidation that has failed,” Locker said.

Anonymous Global Communique – There is NO "War" With WikiLeaks

Anonymous Global Communique – There is NO “War” With WikiLeaks Saturday – July 14, 2012 2:00 PM ET USA We will now address your latest article regarding some sort of supposed feud between WikiLeaks and Anonymous. The article in question is here: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/362768/20120713/wikileaks-anonymous-war-anonymousirc-syria-files-stratfor.htm “The Anonymous hacking collective has declared war on whistleblowing website WikiLeaks following a furious Twitter row over the disclosure of two million e-mails from Syrian political figures, ministries and companies.” This statement is complete rubbish and typical of the journalistic hyperbole so prevalent amongst you reporters. Frankly we are a bit appalled as we expected better of you. If we continue to see such nonsense from you, our respect will diminish considerably. As your article goes on to state rather accurately, what REALLY happened here was a spat between ONE SINGLE Anonymous related Twitter account and the staff of WikiLeaks. Hardly a war, and one account certainly does not represent the Global Collective. The Anonymous account in question (@AnonymousIRC) is angry because all the contents of the “Syria Files” are not being instantly published. This is due to the fact that the individual behind this account is not in the decision loop regarding our handing over these files to WikiLeaks. Here’s the knowledge this individual lacks: The primary reason Anonymous decided to allow Wikileaks to manage the disclosure of the “Syria Files” is that we were unable to deal with the important processing that must take place for any disclosure on such a large cache. For example, we discovered at least 42,000 attachments in the cache that contained malicious code (viruses), and we expect there are many more we didn’t find. In addition to weeding out and cleansing malicious code from all 2.4 million, some effort must be made to authenticate the cache. After those tasks are complete, a thorough review of every message must be done – and any messages that could have a powerful and immediate impact on the genocidal Assad regime must be highlighted on the main Wikileaks site and a separate press release done for those messages. Remember, this isn’t just ANY leak – this monster is killing hundreds of his own people everyday. There is a sense of urgency to find and bring forth anything that might have an immediate impact on the conflict. Finally, the cache must be made into an indexed and searchable format. Only after the entire process described above is completed for the entire 2.4 million messages can the entire cache be released online. This is an ENORMOUS task, which even for a few thousand messages would take considerable time. But for a disclosure of this magnitude, which may well be the largest leak in history – it will take a great deal of patience. I have spent considerable time working directly with the staff and volunteers of WikiLeaks that are involved in this endeavour and I assure you they are working as hard as then can night and day to complete this important and historic task. At no point did the people in Anonymous who actually made this decision expect anything else but exactly this. There was always an expectation that this would take considerable time and patience. And as a final back-up plan, if for any reason WikiLeaks should fail in it’s task – a back-up copy of the “Syrian Files” was delivered to the AP as well. To ensure that for the historic record these files will never be lost. There is NO war between WikiLeaks and Anonymous, nor could such a stupid thing ever happen. There is NO misunderstanding or disappointment in the speed of WikiLeaks disclosure of the “Syrian Files”, this was expected by those of us who made the decision to hand over the files to WikiLeaks and indeed the reason for the delay IS the reason we gave the files to them in the first place. In the future, as we have advised journalists publicly before – do not take the actions or words of one single Twitter account as the voice of Anonymous Global. Instead, follow MANY Anonymous related accounts and aggregate the message to see what the true consensus of the collective is. Here are some accounts we would highly recommend for this purpose. @YourAnonNews @AnonPR_Network @PLF2012 @AnonCollective @Anon_Central SINCERELY — Anonymous ——————— http://www.AnonymousGlobal.tk

Anonymous Takedown Bharatiya Janata Party, wants people to protest against ‘web censorship’

A day after messing with servers maintained by Reliance Communications, Anonymous, an international hacker collective, defaced two websites belonging to BJP on Sunday. Through its Twitter account (@opindia_back) it announced that http://www.mumbaibjp.org and http://www.bjpmp.org.in were hacked by the group. After the hacking, the group posted a message to web users, asking them to organize protests against “web censorship” in India on June 9.

While the message was displayed on the homepage of http://www.mumbaibjp.org, on http://www.bjpmp.org.in it was inserted as a page at www.bjpmp.org.in/ads/anon.html. On Mumbai BJP website the message was accompanied by a catchy tune embedded through a YouTube link.

“Today they took away your right to use a few websites… day after tomorrow they will take away your freedom of speech and no one will be there to speak for you. Speak Now or Never,” the message read. The hackers said that people should print out or buy Guy Fawkes Masks and wear them while protesting against web censorship in Bangalore, Mangalore, Kochi, Chennai, Vizag, Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad on June 9.

TOI reached out to Anonymous though Twitter, asking why it defaced BJP websites. “”Just needed a website to display our message,” said the person managing @opindia_back.

The Ion, who is likely a part of Anonymous and who uses @ProHaxor alias on Twitter, added, “BJP are the opposition they should have stopped this or should have organised a protest they did not do any.”

Incidentally, CERT-IN, the nodal agency in India for monitoring security and hacking incidents within the country’s cyberspace, said in a report on Sunday that hackers are targeting Indian websites. “It is observed that some hacker groups are launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on websites of government and private organizations in India,” the report said and asked network administrators to keep vigil.

Anonymous started attacking websites belonging to government agencies and companies likeReliance Communications last week after internet service providers blocked several websites in the country on the basis of an order by Madras high court. Anonymous says the blocking of websites is illegal and suppression of freedom of speech. On Friday it held a virtual ‘press conference’ and released a list of websites that were allegedly blocked on the internet service provided by Reliance Communications even though there was legal requirement for the ISP to do so. The hackers said they stole the list from Reliance’ servers. At the same ‘press briefing’ the group called on Indian people to organize protests against web censorship on June 9.

In the last few months, Anonymous has organized or played a dominant role in real world protests against what it perceives censorship and abuse of power. The most popular of these protests has been Occupy Wall Street in the US. Though there were a number of groups and individuals involved in these protests Anonymous had played a key role in spreading the word.

Anonymous: Apple could be a target, too

On Twitter, Anonymous said Apple could become a target, but for now the members were busy with other hacking targets.

The Anonymous hacker group claimed that it had stolen a small number of internal passwords and user names from an Apple server.

The data was reportedly stolen from a server used for Apple’s online surveys and did not belong to Apple’s own customers. It was publicly posted on a file-sharing web site, pastebin.

Source: Venturebeat 

New Bill Would Make It Legal To Target Propaganda And “Psychological Operations” Directly At U.S. Citizens