AnonGhost Team, an Anonymous subsidiery identified as supposedly being a Muslim hacktivist group, has been singled out by a Cyber Intelligence team for making a thread recently to launch cyberattacks against Israel. They went as far as to offer an exact date of the attack, April 5-7, 2014.

Shortly after the AnonGhost announcement, other groups, such as AnonGhost Tunisie and the Norwegian Ghost Cyber Attackers opened event-pages on anti-Israel Facebook.

It’s suspected that the primary targets by most of these groups are government websites. DDoSing has been the weapon of choice for most Anonymous groups, but concerns have been raised about potential database exploits leading to the leak of sensitive information.

via Sensecy

Reports from local German media have indicated that the US have been unable to meet the demands of the German government over a ‘no-spy’ agreement. It was revealed last October that the NSA was secretly conducting surveillance on Chancellor Angela Merkel. For the past several months the two countries have been working on an agreement to reduce the extent of unauthorized surveillance from the US.

Germany is expecting the US to provide access to the surveillance centers located on the top of the US embassy in Berlin and explain how Merkel’s phone was tapped.  The US however, isn’t so keen on complying with these terms. The head of the German foreign intelligence agency has stated that he’s willing to not sign the agreement if there’s no improvement.

via Russian Today

Photo courtesy of  Blu News

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Gottfrid Svartholm, also known by his many supporters as Anakata, is currently being held in a Danish prison under solitary confinement. Svartholm was extradited to the country last November from Sweden to face several hacking changes.

An online petition addressed to the prime minister of Denmark is requesting the government to pardon and release the alleged hacker in addition to lifting the restriction that prohibits reading and educational material. The Danish government is worried that Svartholm could discover information that impacts the charges if granted such material.

“While the Swedish upper level court dropped charges related to the Nordea hacking, and reduced his overall sentence to half on 25th of September 2013, so that Anakata should be freed by now, he was nevertheless extradited to Denmark, and is now locked up in high security prison under constant surveillance, while reduced to bare minimum, almost no outside contact. Even his Mother cannot visit him during the Holiday Season, since there are not enough guards for that. His total contact with other inmates cannot exceed 9 hours a week”, writes on the petition.

You can sign the petition here.

Photo courtesy of Nicolas Vigier on Flickr

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Who says Silicon Valley is restricted to software? Planet Labs is a Valley “startup” hoping to build something out of this world (we apologize).

Planet Labs are a group of social entrepreneurs planning on launching a host of satelights to low-earth orbit, in order to monitor and track the world and offer real-time information about our planet to us. In doing so, they hope to increase awareness and urgency for gloabl environmental concerns.

Silicon Valley is making what, in any other decade, we’d call spy satellites. A few governments will sell imagery from their spy satellites to you. A new age of controversy and technological policymaking is on it’s way.

via The Atlantic

Business was booming for tech-startup Rootal 2 years ago, until a car bomb was set off just a few blocks awat from its Damascus headquarters. It’s been two years since Rootal was keyed in on the Syrian government hitlist, but the geolocation company is still going strong. How?

You can thank the United Kingdom’s Refugee policy.

Without his duel citizenship, Rootal founder Adnan Al-Khatib would likely be wasting away in a Syrian jail somewhere. Although lambasted over the last few years for suspected xenophobic policy, London has accepted thousands of refugees form Syria, including Adnan and his fledgling tech startup.

“I remember sitting there and reading that there was fighting up north, which seemed far away,” he recalls. “The next day it’s in Homms, which is closer. A few weeks later it’s moved into the suburbs of Damascus and I managed to convince myself that too was a long way away. Then a bomb blast goes off in my neighborhood and a car goes up, with firefights right in front of my home. You find yourself not caring, because the bullets aren’t coming in. You just become desensitized.”

via Forbes