Rep. Kucinich calls for end to Federal Reserve

bet you didn’t see this on the news

Representative Dennis Kucinich on the House floor May 31, 2011. text transcript of what he says in this 1-minute video:

“Why are we in debt? We borrow trillions for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq… trillions for tax cuts for the rich. We borrow billions from China and Japan. We have plenty of money for war, Wall Street, and welfare for the wealthy. But when millions of honest Americans need jobs, need wage increases, need health care, need education, need retirement security – they’re told ‘no, we don’t have the money’.

How is it that the Fed can create trillions of dollars to give to the banks, but the U.S. can’t meet its needs without going into debt to banks? The financial system works for a few at the expense of the many. The founders did not intend for America to be run by big banks and Wall Street. The Constitution put the ability to create money in the hands of Congress. The Fed took away that power in 1913. We need to get that power back – to invest in our economy, to create jobs, to put America back to work, to rebuild America without going into debt. We must reclaim our destiny, by reclaiming control over the money system.”

via portland imc – 2011.06.11 – Rep. Kucinich calls for end to Federal Reserve May 31, 2011.

3 hackers arrested in spain, alleged to be “leaders” of anonymous

Three people suspected of being involved in attacks against websites belonging to Sony, Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia, Italian energy company Enel, and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia, and New Zealand have been arrested in Spain. All three were claimed to be the leadership of hacktivist organization Anonymous in Spain.

The individuals are accused of performing and organizing large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that took their victims’ Web servers offline. The detainees were also claimed to have attacked the websites of Spain’s Central Electoral Board on May 18, and later the sites of the Catalan police and the UGT trade union.

The arrests were made after investigation work by the Brigada de Investigación Tecnológica (BIT), the cybercrime division of Spain’s civilian police force. With these arrests, Spain joins the UK, US, and Netherlands in having taken police action against Anonymous members. During the investigation, more than 2,000,000 lines of IRC logs were examined to track down the people involved.

The three were arrested in Almeria, Barcelona, and Valencia. One of those arrested was said to have set up an IRC server in their home, and this server was used by all three to coordinate their various hack attacks. Those attacks were DDoS attacks, performed using Anonymous’ preferred LOIC tool; LOIC has an automatic mode that uses IRC for command and control. Also found were malware creation tools and WiFi cracking software; two of the people arrested apparently had no Internet connection themselves, instead depending on the WiFi connections of others.

Though Sony was one of the organizations victimized by the hacktivists, the official statement issued by the police did not indicate any suspicion of involvement in the hacks that forced Sony to take Playstation Network offline for weeks, nor the subsequent hacks made on Sony Web properties by LulzSec. Rather, the three hackers appear to have been involved with the denial of service attacks of early April. Vocal Anonymous faction AnonOps has long denied that Anonymous had any involvement with the broader, more serious attack against Playstation Network.

When news of the arrests became public, AnonOps was swift to issue a warning to the Spanish authorities: Expect us.

via Law & Disorder – Tech Policy News.

IMF: We wuz hacked

The New York Times reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been hit with what is described as “a large and sophisticated cyberattack whose dimensions are still unknown.” The breach happened before the IMF’s managing director was accused of trying to rape a hotel worker.

The fund, which manages financial crises around the world and is the repository of highly confidential information about the fiscal condition of many nations, told its staff and its board of directors about the attack on Wednesday. But it did not make a public announcement.

Several senior officials with knowledge of the attack said it was both sophisticated and serious. “This was a very major breach,” said one official, who said that it had occurred over the last several months, even before Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French politician who ran the fund, was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a chamber maid in a New York hotel.

via IMF: We wuz hacked – Boing Boing.