Since this is a technical community most of you can grapple the idea of return on investment. SEA using scripts to find flaws is easy, taking good advantage of them is way trickier. But in the end when hacking news services, they are seeking to disseminate false propaganda using the lowest investment with the most impact as possible.
What I have been doing, stitching videos together to wider images, panoramas, takes more than a touch of technical skill. Stepping through these events that occurred in reality takes a toll.
I honestly wish people would look past poorly written text, look away from the technical feet of propaganda hacking various services.
Look into one doctor's face, whom I will never meet but will never forget[1].
I am done here, you can go back to contemplating how to push iPad CPA offers via 'advanced new marketing techniques.' There is no network of hackers using information yielded from Bluecoat hardware to track and kill dissidents, they are just doing things like pestering Twitter, yep.
That is part of the problem, in my opinion. I've tried my hardest to stoke conservation away from the possible legalities of this and that and push it towards the ultimate outcomes of the technology when put into use.
Also, there is no single source. If you want to read a lovely edited story try the storyful link, once done I have much additional content of the detainees being slaughtered by Assad's loyalists and families.
Or you could try the 'understanding war' link which details the forced depopulation under shelling and tank fire of Sunnis, repopulation of Alawites to boost military supply lines. Nicely written too.
edit: Thanks for the suggestions without being dismissive.
I have been in a few copyright wrangles where videos were wrongly taken down. FSA petting cats, while others, the heart eater was left up. I do rather suspect something about that, but here is a direct story about copyright I was foolish enough to share with HN but received positive gratitude for(thanks.) It may help explain why my nose is so deep in this issue[1].
Some time ago I became engaged in the Syrian conflict, before it was a conflict.
There was a time when a multitude of cities rose up in peaceful demonstration. Civilian organizations took root to make clear cases for ways and means of reforms, both on the local and national scale. These local coordination committees were most publicly visible by foreigners on the net, being prolific in uploading of media, mainly during Friday protests after prayer. These local orgs, mainly teens, found sites like bambuser.com and youtube.com highly effective for disseminating and spreading word of solidarity for towns spread miles apart, those miles just may as well be worlds apart much like how it is in the US and other nations.
Well I helped disseminate these events, my favorite were those broadcast live on bambuser as it gave viewers a much more personal feeling for those demonstrating on the other end. Much respect to Hans Eriksson[1] who used his position at bambuser in a positive way, embracing these broadcasts and himself helping disseminate the broadcasts to the world.
These weekly mass demonstrations took a bloody turn, and while many stopped looking the coordination committees kept witness, services like bambuser kept showing live feeds even though they were turning increasing violent as Assad's forces began publicly gunning down crowds.
Ever see the GPS trail of someone fleeing with a crowd of his neighbors during a live broadcast, while they were being shot at? I have. Here is a profile of a martyr who fought with his camera to show the world his life[2].
What does this have to do with copyright? Well those early days of mass demonstrations are valuable evidence of the true origins of the Syrian civil war, peaceful defiance met with violence.
During my monitoring and dissemination of other people's hard fought media, I began processing some into panorama as the narrow field of view provided by handheld cams reduced much of the true impact of what the recorder meant to show to others. I made stitched images from video showing tanks awaiting a push into so-called 'infected' cities[3]. I made images of the days during the fraudulent elections, of BMPs chasing unarmed civilians through the streets[4]. Later, I've stitched together images of war crimes that I can never remove from my thoughts. After doing this for many images I had video of which I also processed and began uploading those of potential interest, video of Assad's troops hurling IEDs onto residential neighborhoods from helicopters for instance[5].
But the video that involves this discussion of copyright, is one held dear to many of the early activists. Held dear to many of those now deceased. It was a song sung by someone who himself, was killed in those early days of mass demonstrations.
Ibrahim Qashoush, a fireman and a poet from Hama Syria[6].
Ibrahim coined a song that became popular during these mass demonstrations in Hama, singing them in a multitude of breathtaking shows filled the entire town square (remember when towns had those?) with the families that lived there. Time passed, and after becoming depressed at the daily slaughter I decided to go back and make a stitched image[7] of that night in Hama, when Ibrahim sung before his throat was slit[8] for daring to sing.
After uploading the video to Youtube, marking the video as not copyrighted, then the image to imgur as usual I received a copyright complaint from CDBaby[9]. Apparently they thought that due to an artist of theirs including a sample of the protest audio, they retroactively owned the original protest song themselves.
I lodged a rebuttal saying that the video was clearly not theirs, and Youtube agreed. Attempts to contact CDBaby were futile. Having the copyright claim removed I was somewhat happy with the vindication that this dead man's song was indeed not CDBaby's, but infuriated that this company made ABSOLUTELY NO DUE DILIGENCE AS TO THEIR CLAIMS. Most of the time people, if they notice, can contact them saying a company like CDBaby was in the wrong. But in this case the man they wronged had his throat slit for the media CDBaby was now claiming as their own. Cue the rage.
Youtube removed the claim from my copy of the video[10] but when linking the original copy that I processed I noticed that CDBaby's claim was still on their video. Looking further I found _ALL_ copies of this dead man's voice claimed by CDBaby.
This is around the time I started making a stink on Twitter making sure to include CDBaby's handle while pummeling them for stealing a murdered man's voice.
Of course after this I finally had CDBaby contact me.
The response from their support 'manager' said simply that my upload has had the claim removed, she was completely unaware or ignorant of what I was referencing since I never said my video was the problem. The fact they were blanket claiming without due diligence or occasional follow-ups to check the accuracy of their claims was the problem.
Only after displaying their absolute pathetic avoiding of the topic of legal ramifications for false claims online did I receive a simple follow-up from CDBaby support 'management':
"All claims have been removed," and indeed they were, for now.
My position on copyright shifted in those months of shouting into the copyright void that is the Youtube/CDBaby scheme.
I will break every copyright possible without care.
Not just for those who died bravely singing songs for others to be motivated by, but because for-profit entities display far less due diligence in their corporate position than a marijuana smoker does in his hobby.
Now I sometimes listen to Ibrahims song, thinking of how many of those people in Hama in the crowd no longer are alive. I think of CDBaby profiting off it and who knows how many others, think of Google's complicity in the mess, think of the lawyers who profit off it keeping the situation rolling. I think of the militant US government who is coming closer and closer to making copyrights worse than violent crime, and I get really depressed.
I also commented on a neighborhood off of Damascus called Zamalka, above it is 'al-Assad,' military housing for a base in the mountains behind it. Zamalka was scene of one of the gas attacks that killed multitudes.
Before this attack I covered Zamalka, and an attack on it from al-Assad perched above the neighborhood. Forgive me for yet another re-post but this is very important as far as what the SEA is, what the end result of their campaigns are, the reality of the technological side of surveillance.
Repost:
I wondered why Zamalka was so familiar as I was writing my previous comment up, turns out I covered it before.
There has been persistent shelling from Assad loyalist neighborhoods down onto Zamalka below it. One video of such volleys of indiscriminate fire captured the essence of the situation, so I took frames of the video and stitched them into a panorama with a wider field of view than what the video provided[1].
The neighborhood with what most likely is howitzers is al-Assad,[2] and I say howitzers due to the neighborhood being military housing for the military artillery base north of it. This is very striking to what was documented to happen on the other side of Damascus to the west, where another set of military housing was scene wanton violence.
In Jdaidat Artouz civilians were taken by Assad's military officers and lynched to death in a heap at the military family housing block either in or near the town (Jdaidat Artouz or Moadamiyet al-Shams). Video taken by some of the offenders shows the victims unloaded from a military truck being struck while shouted at by military and civilian persons. Later video shows the the pile of victims mostly motionless. Even later video shows them being further crushed with a tractor, throats slit.
Both cases have the military feeding off victim populations as if they were supermarket meat, there for picking and abuse. With offenders deployed from military housing. The latter case documented by the offenders themselves.
I am at a loss, I've helped disseminate live video of protestors being shot up. No more than a 40 second delay. I feel no sympathy from most, only the will to look away. Specially if looking away is as easy as a 'report' button.
For those interested in what the internals of government monitoring of communications is like, do check out the BlueCoat logs leaked by Telecomix which I linked below.
A vast multitude of hits relate to families, sexual habits, religious affiliations.
What SEA does with news orgs is derail them as much as possible. There is very much an internal campaign to 'cleanse' the terrorists, repopulate parts of Homs with Alawites.
This is real. Please don't hell ban me for it again.
On the topic of the on-going war, I also added once more into the void.
Repost:
Fair bit of warning edward, these articles get banned from HN rather quick. Even thought I have attempted to keep talk on things such as the "Syrian Electronic Army" and their hacks discussion has been forcefully muted.
In a now deaded article on the probable chemical attack on Zamalka Syria, I made some comments about my covering the area before[1]. I detailed the location of some of the aggressors on the suburb as well[2].
In the second comment I linked to some footage from Zamalka years ago when open protest was still allowed, much like other Syrian cities people were out in mass after Friday prayer.
In the first comment I posted a panoramic stitch[3] I made from video of an attack on Zamalka from al-Assad neighborhood above it, there is military and officer housing along with artillery and howitzer army space behind it[4].
I also spoke of sectarian cleansing that has been documented in Homs and other areas,[5] where general bombardment and artillery siege displaces Sunnis while Alawite families are moved in to shore up military supply lines.
This latest attack on the fringes of Damascus represent something significant, obvious now due to the reactions it has obtained from other nations. Neighborhoods like al-Assad and Moadamiyet al-Shams have loyalist housing where civilians where brought back to be lynched,[6] and they are now nearing the direct lines of fire. So all attempts are being made to halt the advance to where Assad's war criminals roost, such as mass gassing of residential neighborhoods around it.
I have written about the SEA a multitude of times, including their use of western hardware like Bluecoat ISP proxy to track dissidents. Every account hell banned, quite annoyed.
Repost:
The prolific SEA[1] has been responsible for many hacks when their aim went wider than tracking domestic dissidents via internet monitoring with hardware from BlueCoat[2]. Logs[3] leaked by dissident supporting Telecomix[4] from this BlueCoat hardware for example show filters set to monitor the religious and sexual habits of all traffic routed through the datacenter they were installed in.
After Assad deployed his military forces SEA started to become a more public facing entity, taking on media firms due to perceived slights in reporting and others to cull more user information to further track targets. A short time-line from Wikipedia:
April 2013: The SEA hijacked the Associated Press Twitter account and falsely claimed the White House had been bombed and President Barack Obama injured.
May 2013: The ITV news London Twitter account was hacked on the 24th May 2013 by the SEA. The Android applications of British Broadcaster Sky News were also hacked on 26 May 2013 on Google Play Store.
July 2013, Truecaller servers were allegedly hacked into by the Syrian Electronic Army.
August 2013: Advertising service Outbrain was hacked by the SEA via a spearphishing attack. This allowed them to place redirects into the websites of The Washington Post, Time, and CNN.
Their history has been starkly pro-Assad, even going as far to defend indiscriminate bombing runs on the more rural cities in Syria of which the hackers are not likely to live in. While villages far away from the loyalist strongholds of Mezzeh 86 or al-Assad housing are more easily cast off of 'nests of terrorists' to be 'cleansed' it has to be harder to rationalize the same when the bombing runs are striking neighborhoods within visible range of these loyalist strongholds.
A SEA affiliated twitter account became highly critical after a chemical weapons attack on the outside suburbs of Damascus, the user posted a video of the event along with the message:
"We are calling for all members of SEA to focus their attentions on the political elite that is the scourge of our country."
What I have been doing, stitching videos together to wider images, panoramas, takes more than a touch of technical skill. Stepping through these events that occurred in reality takes a toll.
I honestly wish people would look past poorly written text, look away from the technical feet of propaganda hacking various services.
Look into one doctor's face, whom I will never meet but will never forget[1].
[1] http://imgur.com/gallery/gXCREGj
I am done here, you can go back to contemplating how to push iPad CPA offers via 'advanced new marketing techniques.' There is no network of hackers using information yielded from Bluecoat hardware to track and kill dissidents, they are just doing things like pestering Twitter, yep.