Dangerous, Intrusive, Illusive - The Hacking Team

If you are a reader who harbours concern about personal privacy breaches from just about every government on the planet, this writer has no doubt that you will have heard of the Hacking Team.

For those who are not aware, the Hacking Team are an IT company based in Milan, Italy that sell intrusion and surveillance software to governments and law enforcement agencies across the world.

The technology developed by the Hacking Team allows governments to monitor communications of internet users, record Skype and other voice over IP communications, decipher their encrypted files and emails and remotely activate microphones and webcams on targeted computers.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it really is as disturbing as it sounds. These people have developed technology that can be used to spy on you. There is no doubt that having security agencies read though your personal communications or watch you through your own webcam is a disturbing thought. It is an invasion of privacy of the highest order.

However, in the hard worn argument for privacy vs safety, there is light. For this week, Wikileaks has released a database of one million emails from the Hacking Team, revealing in candid detail the hacking company's various nefarious dealings.

The Anonymous Logo

As to whom stole the emails, various clues have pointed to the infamous Anonymous organisation, with some reports indicating that Anonymous activists physically broke into the Hacking Team headquarters in Milan. While this remains unconfirmed, this writer can only say that, whether it is down to Anonymous or not, whoever stole these emails from the Hacking Team has done the public an incredible service.

The Hacking Team emails have been compiled in a database on the Wikileaks website; a link will be provided below.

This writer would encourage any and all readers to go and have a brief scroll through some of the Hacking Team's emails, for it is an incredible opportunity to examine, in uncanny detail, the truly disturbing things that the IT company has done.

From acting as technology based mercenaries for governments in Sudan and Ethiopia to making $800,000 deals with the FBI. The information is there, waiting for you to read through it. For a person cannot make an informed decision, without information.

Again, this writer would urge any readers to take a look at the Wikileaks database of emails and would again like to explicitly thank whoever acquired this emails and gave them to Wikileaks. Whoever they are, they've done the world as a whole an incredible public service and exposed the shading dealings of an untrustworthy company,

The Wikileaks Website
The Hacking Team Database

Stealing Secrets: The International Effect

The leaders of the G8

The previous week has been a truly tumultuous time for the international community, especially the European Union. Diplomatic relations between numerous countries have been tested, and many of those tensions have originated within the United States of America.

On the 30th June, the deadline for Greece to repay their debts to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) passed. Greece both failed to secure a new deal and failed to repay what they owed, leading to concern amongst the leaders of the European Union, tensions over the state of the Euro and anxiety within the Greek Populace. 

However, during the run up to the deadline, a series of documents released by the non-profit organisation Wikileaks revealed some very concerning NSA operations. Espionnage Élysée refers to Wikileaks continued publishing of classified documents, the most recent of which were revealed on the 29th of June, the day before Greece's deadline. 

These documents, the latest in particular, have revealed that America's National Security Agency (NSA) have covertly spied on three administrations of the French Government, including the Presidencies of Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) and the current incumbent, François Hollande. 

One of the intercepts in particular revealed that French President Hollande, dismayed over German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refusal to budge over the Greek Financial Crisis, planned meetings with the Merkel's opposition. 

German Chancellor
Angela Merkel

A further set of documents revealed by Wikileaks today, on the 3rd of July, have revealed that the USA has also been spying on the German Government, including Angela Merkel. 

It has also been revealed that the US allowed the "Five Eyes" partners to view the information they had gathered. The Five Eyes consists of the five main English speaking nations, namely the United States, the New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, who are a a member state of the European Union, along with France and Germany. It has been strongly implied that the United Kingdom has benefited well from the information they have received.

French President
François Hollande

The situation seems even more dire when we fit it into the current context. All of these leaks have been revealed directly in the run up to the Greek IMF negations. No doubt, this has had an incredible effect on the internal tensions between various governments involved. At some point this week, it is understood that an American Representative was summoned to speak with the German Chancellor, though it must be stressed that this is unconfirmed. 

And yet, a further event transpired this week, that quite possibly revealed weaknesses within the French Government. 

Shortly after the revelation regarding the NSA's monitoring of France, a French minister implied that she would "Not be surprised" if Paris offered Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, political asylum.

Julian Assange has been confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he has been granted asylum, for three years now, avoiding extradition to Sweden regarding sex offences he is alleged to have committed. The sex cases against Assange are highly complex, due to varying reports, media distortion and the perception that it is largely a United States field witch hunt against Assange for documents he leaked in 2010.

Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief
of the non-profit organisation Wikileaks

Julian Assange's crimes are cited as "sexual coercion" and "sexual molestation." In reality, Assange had sex with two different women, but either refused to wear a condom, purposefully ripped the condom during sex or both. When these two women discovered they had both slept with Assange, they demanded he take an AIDs test, lest they go to the police. 

By the time Assange had agreed to the test, it was too late and the girls had already gone to the Swedish Police. At first, one of the girls cases was closed, but then suspiciously reopened by the Swedish authorities.

Julian Assange, following much encouragement, submitted a formal request for asylum to France... Which, today, on the 3rd of July, was rejected by the French Government. Today is also Julian Assange's 44th birthday. No doubt, it is difficult to celebrate in the wake of such disheartening news. 

The French Government's refusal to grant Assange asylum could be considered a distinctive show of weakness, it could be considered that they are bending over backwards to honour their, admittedly strained, ties to the United States. It is a well known fact that the US apparently has a secret court case against Assange being constructed in Virginia, where they are trying to find a way to indict him under the Espionage Act. 

Great British Prime Minister
David Cameron

Of course, it is not just France who has refused to grant Julian Assange asylum. The British Government have vowed to arrest Assange if he should ever step out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, in London, and onto British soil. Presumably, they will then send him for questioning in Sweden. 

Most curiously, the Swedish authorities have offered numerous times to question Assange in the UK, which Assange has been more than open to, though last month the Swedish Police backtracked, deciding they would rather question the man in Sweden. 

Many believe that Julian Assange is the victim of a United States witch hunt, and that there may well be a secret relationship between the USA and Sweden.

Regardless, as the situation stands, it doesn't look like Julian Assange will be able to escape the US witch hunt anytime soon, or leave the Ecuadorian Embassy. 

One can only imagine how dismaying it must be, to have their application for asylum be rejected on their birthday. It is even harder to imagine how it must feel to see a government that you have specifically helped with your leak turn their back on you so coldly. 

If you wish to read more about the developing stories on the Wikileaks website, please click one of the links below:

The Wikileaks Website

Espionnage Élysée

The Euro Intercepts

Wikileaks

The flow of information in our modern society, dominated by social networks; the internet and other forms of communication,  is a truly fascinating phenomenon. Every minute, there are 100,000 new Tweets, 277,000 Facebook logins and over 2 million searches on Google; 639,800 GB of IP Data are transferred globally. Human beings willingly share the most intimate details of their day, read the thoughts and feelings of others, are exposed to media of varying forms. 

However, perhaps what is more interesting is the information that the human race is not exposed to. For example, illegal activities by banks such as Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands, or 570,000 pager intercepts on the day of 9/11, hidden and stored by the United States Government for over 8 years. As mind boggling as the amount of information the public is exposed to is, the information that is hidden from us is infinitely more staggering. 

What happens in one internet minute?

Since the registration of the domain name wikileaks.org on the 4th of October in 2006, one non-profit organisation has been endeavouring to shed some light on the dust secrets, hidden from the public by our governments, our corporations.

The aim of the Wikileaks organisation is to, in their own words, "bring important news and information to the public... One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth."

Julian Assange, originally from Australia, is the founder and current editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. Between 2007 and 2010, Assange spent much of his time travelling across the world on Wikileaks business, visiting North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. He came to national attention in Iceland, when he and Wikileaks exposed a 210 page internal document from Kaupthing bank which revealed the bank had loaned billions of euros to its own major shareholders, contributing heavily to its collapse. Assange and Wikileaks played an important role in the formation of Iceland as a free press haven, after a news piece on the Kaupthing story was blocked by a court injunction. 

Julian Assange

In 2010, Wikileaks rose to international acclaim, having released a video dubbed by Julian Assange as"Collateral Murder." It exposed the murder of Iraqi journalists by an AH-64 Apache helicopter, while the United States servicemen who perpetrated the act laughed.

It was later revealed that Wikileaks had in their possession over a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables, as well as war logs from both Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In a joint collaboration with the British newspapers The Guardian and The Times, United States newspaper The New York Post and Germany's Der Spiegel, Wikileaks exposed many of the documents, though they were carefully redacted. 

The information revealed exposed purported war crimes by the United States and other allied forces in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. 

Currently, Julian Assange resides in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, England and has political asylum there. He is wanted by the Swedish police for questioning regarding sexual "misconduct charges," though it is believed once in Sweden, he may be extradited to the United States of America. 

If you wish to learn more about Wikileaks, you can view their website here, or even donate to their cause:

https://www.wikileaks.org/index.en.html

Please note: Though Visa and Mastercard WILL process donations to the Ku Klux Klan, they WILL NOT process donations to Wikileaks. 

Stalin: The Television Movie

Theatrical poster for Stalin (1992)

As part of a homework for my GCSE History research into Stalin's reign of the USSR, my teacher suggested that I watch the 1992 film Stalin, starring Robert Duvall (who also played Tom Hagen in The Godfather). Initially, I was apprehensive about watching the film, due to the fact that often, when a film is made about a historical figure, it is inaccurate. However, in watching Stalin, this was not the case.

The film, which has entirely superb acting throughout, begins at the time of the abdicating of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, during the time of the Russian Empire. After the Tsar falls, the Bolshevik Communist Party - of which Stalin, then known as Koba, was a member - takes control of Russia from the Provisional Government through the March (or November, dependant on which calendar you judge it by) Revolution.

Over the course of 2 hours and 52 minutes, Stalin tells the story of how the young revolutionary Koba becomes the Supreme Leader of the Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin. With surprising accuracy, the film portrays the appalling crimes of Stalin against his own people, the unwavering loyalty of his people, the horror of the German Invasion of Russia and more. Most shockingly, the film displays the unique relationship between Stalin and his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva right up to the point of her suicide.

Robert Duvall as Joseph Stalin

Perhaps what is most amazing about Stalin is the scope of the filmmaking involved. Filming took place in Budapest and Hungary. Additional filming was completed in Moscow, Russia and the cast and crew were given extraordinary access to buildings within the Kremlin, due to the collapse of the USSR.

In the role of Joseph Stalin, Robert Duvall was instrumental. His emotional range was supreme, he always stole the scene and definitely looked the part. He managed to slip into the Russian accent, even if he struggled slightly to emulate Stalin's natural Georgian twang.
Duvall's chemistry with Julia Ormand (who played Nadezhda Alliluyeva) was unique, when they were in a scene together, they worked as if they were symbiotic. Duvall and Ormand mastered the complex and, later, disturbed relationship between Stalin and Alliluyeva. The relationship of a ruthless dictator and his horrified wife, who would later be driven to suicide.

Special mention must be given to the late Maximilian Schell as revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin and David Massey as Stalin's nemesis, Leon Trotsky. They, as with most of the cast, embodied their roles incredibly well, even if they were not prevalent in much of the film.

Joseph Stalin

Primarily, the films focus was on the behaviour of Stalin and the after effects of his often harsh decisions. It depicts the evolution, the transformation of the young Koba into the fearsome Stalin.

The part of the film that stuck in my mind most of all was the section depicting the Nazi invasion of Russia. In stark detail, it contrasted Stalin's inept approach to the Nazi attack, while the supporting cast displayed perfectly the bumbling politicians and generals who refused to lift a finger without the divine permission of Stalin. It showed Stalin's ten day disappearance and his subsequent nervous breakdown, during the period of which the entirety of the government and military failed to react to the German invasion. What this section of the film showed perfectly was the USSR's utter devotion to their "Supreme Leader." It was an ideal illustration of just how terrified those who knew of Stalin's crimes were of the man himself and just how devoted the Russian citizens who'd been subjected to his propaganda were.

Stalin received many awards, with Robert Duvall bagging the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film. Meanwhile, Maximillian Schell received Best Supporting Actor and Julia Ormand snagged Best Supporting Actress. Stalin also received four Primetime Emmy Awards.

If you wish to watch the film on Youtube, I shall post the video below

Nouvelle/Nouveau - The Elisa Lam Conundrum

Elisa Lam, found dead on the 19th February 2013

The Cecil Hotel, a budget hotel with 600 rooms in Downtown Los Angeles. Built in 1924, the hotel was intended to attract business customers. However, it has since garnered a much darker reputation.

The hotel today is known for several suicides, criminal activity (which includes three murders) and most notably served as lodgings for Richard Ramirez in 1985 and Jack Unterweger in 1991. It is also, supposedly, one of the last places where Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia) was said to have been sighted.

However, on the 19th February 2013, Canadian Student Elisa Lam was found dead and naked in one of the water tanks on the roof of the Cecil. Most of her clothes and other personal possessions were found floating about her person, however her mobile phone was not recovered.

Elisa Lam was a 21 year old student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and was the daughter of two immigrants from Hong Kong. Her parents owned a restaurant in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. But, Lam was not registered at the UBC when she departed in January 2013 for what she called her "West Coast Tour," a trip to Southern California, which she spoke about on her Tumblr blog, titled "Nouvelle/Nouveau."
Lam had intended to visit San Diego, LA, Santa Cruz and San Francisco. She mentioned wanting to visit San Louis Obispo, but had been unsure if she could.

Elisa travelled on her own, using intercity busses and Amtrak. Prior to arriving in LA and checking into the Cecil Hotel, Lam had posted photos of a visit to San Diego Zoo on social media. She arrived at the Cecil on the 26th January, 2013.

Several years before embarking on her trip across the West Coast, Lam had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had been prescribed such medication as Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Seroquel and Effexor as a means of dealing with her condition. Lam's family (who had reportedly been keeping her bipolar disorder a secret) Elisa had no history of suicide attempts, nor self harm. However, there was some indication that she had, at a previous time, gone missing for a period.
Lam maintained a blog from mid 2010, entitled "Ether Fields," through to 2012. Over the course of this time, she posted various things on her blog, mostly involving accounts of her life and struggle with her disorder, as well as models in fashionable clothes.
On the 27th July 2012, Lam made a post titled "Tumblr" on Ether Fields informing her followers that:

"I am much more active on tumblr. This is going to stay as a reminder of what I was thinking."

Lam's new blog featured less of her own words, focusing more on models, fashion and found photographs. The epigraph for her new blog was the same as her old one, a quote from Chuck Palahniuk, "You're always haunted by the idea that you're wasting your life."

While on her travels, Elisa kept in touch with her parents back in Vancouver, speaking with them on a daily basis. However, when Lam was supposed to check out of the Cecil Hotel on the 31st January, her parents panicked and contact the Los Angeles Police Department. After she was reported missing, Elisa's family flew to Los Angeles to help with the search effort.

Hotel staff who had seen Lam on the day of her disappearance had reported that she was alone, but Lam had purchased a book from a nearby bookstore, managed by a woman called Katie Orphan.
Ms Orphan had described Elisa as

"She was outgoing, very lively, very friendly"

Ms Orphan told CNN that

"[Elisa was] talking about what book she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy to carry while she was travelling."

Police searched The Cecil Hotel to the extent that they legally could, but noted that they could not search every room in the hotel unless they probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed within the room. On the 6th February, Lam had been missing for a week and so the LAPD decided that they'd need more help. Flyers with her image were posted in the local area and online, social media was ablaze and brought the disappearance to the attention of the media.

After a second week of searching, the LAPD decided to release a video taken by a CCTV camera on the 1st February in one of the hotel's elevators. The video garnered worldwide attention and has been deeply analysed and discussed.

Viewers of the video have described it as deeply disturbing and many have posed the theory that Lam had been suffering some sort of psychotic episode, linked to her bipolar disorder. Others have suggested that she was trying to escape a pursuer and even that she was experiencing some form of paranormal activity. Other viewers have argued that the video had been tampered with prior to being released to the public, even going as far as to suggest that a whole minutes worth of footage had been edited out.

Whilst the case was earning itself more and more attention in the media, guests at The Cecil Hotel began to complain of low water pressure in their rooms. Some complained of discoloured water with an odd taste and so employees of the establishment began to investigate.

It was on the morning of the 19th February that one of the hotel employees went up to the roof, to investigate the four 1000 gallon water tanks that were stored up there. The tanks were pumped from the cities water supply and supplied the guests rooms and the coffee shop downstairs. The man investigating the tanks found Elisa Lam's naked, dead body in one of the tanks. Immediately, the police were informed of this development.

The four water tanks on the roof of the hotel

All of the Cecil's short term guests left, horrified that they had been drinking water contaminated by a decaying corpse for two weeks. While the county health department found that the water had not been contaminated, they issues a "Do Not Drink" order nonetheless.

According to a long term guest, there had been a flooding on an upper floor following Lam's disappearance. 

How Lam got into the water tank remains undetermined. The doors and stairs leading to the roof are locked, only accessible to the employees of the hotel. Any attempt to force them would have triggered an alarm. However, the fire escape of the hotel would have allowed Miss Lam to bypass the security measures, had she been privy to that information. 

It was further questioned whether she could have gotten into the tank by herself. Each of the water tanks were 4-by-8 foot and were propped up on concrete blocks. There was no fixed access to the entrance hatch on top of the tanks and hotel workers had to use a ladder to get up there. The tanks are protected by heavy lids and would have been incredibly difficult to put back in place once inside. 

The autopsy on Lam's dead body reported that they had found Lam's death to be an accidental, noting her bipolar disorder as a significant factor. The full report was released a whole four months later, in June, after it had been postponed several times. It was reported that she had been found naked in the water tank, with her clothes, watch and room key and they were coated in a "sandy particulate."

Elisa's body was "moderately" decomposed, bloated and greenish. There was marbling evident on the abdomen and skin separation was evident. The pathologists found no evidence of physical trauma or sexual assault, although rape and fingernail tests were done. There was no evidence that Lam had committed suicide. There was no alcohol or recreational drugs found in Lam's system, but they did find traces of her medication, as well as well as nonprescription drugs such as ibuprofen and Sinutab. 

However, the autopsy report itself has frequently been questioned. It does not say what the results of the rape and fingernail tests were, it records significant pooling of blood around Lam's anal area, which some observers said was an indicator of sexual assault; however, one pathologist noted it could have been caused by the decomposition of Lam's body. Even the pathologists appeared to be unsure as to their conclusion that Lam's death was accidental. One page of the report requires the pathologists to check whether the death was homicide, natural, accidental or undetermined. The accident box was checked and dated as June 15th, but the undetermined box was checked instead three days later.

Since her death, someone has been updating Lam's blog on tumblr. Her phone was not found in Lam's hotel room, nor on or around her body. Many have assumed that her phone was stolen sometime around her death. It remains undetermined whether or not the updates to her blog are the result of a hacker or if the person (or persons) unnamed who stole her phone are making them. It is also unknown whether the blog updates are related to Lam's death.

The questions revolving around Lam's disappearance and death did not stop post-mortem, she remains a question in peoples minds to this day. Various theories have sprouted online, some linked to the Cecil's dark past, others linked to Lam's bipolar disorder. Paranormal activity, a psychotic episode and other possibilities have been raised regarding the whole event, with the "elevator video" particularly fresh in peoples mind.

What has always captivated this blogger, regarding the elevator CCTV footage, is the way that Lam's hands and arms move when she gesticulates. At certain parts, it does not look so much as if she is talking to someone, but rather as if she is trying to feel around for something, as if her vision had been impaired. Furthermore, when Lam returns to the elevator and pushes the buttons for a second time, it also appears as if she is struggling to visualise them.

While no recreational drugs were found in Lam's system, some have asserted that they may have been lost during the bodies decomposition and so could not be detected in a toxicology screening. This may go some way as to taking a step in the direction of an explanation of the CCTV footage. However, as is obvious, there is no definitive way to prove that such assertions are correct.

While I assert all of this, I accept the fact that my theory is just that. A theory. I believe it is damn near impossible to ever explain the way Lam was acting during the CCTV footage and I would be surprised if anyone ever finds concrete proof to back up any particular theory.

However, the questions that still continue to vex are these: Who has access to Elisa Lam's Tumblr blog? How did she get into the water tank and, if she was assisted, who helped her?

You've clicked on this blog, well done!

Well look at that, you're visiting my blog and reading this post!
I'd hug you, but considering that we're total strangers at this juncture, it would probably be a little awkward. That, and the fact that this is over the internet so it's, y'know, physically impossible.

Nonetheless, allow me to introduce myself.
I'm an English Schoolboy, with aspirations of being an author and who just so happens to be "out of time" as some might term it. By that I mean, I was born into a generation I don't belong in.
I don't wear hoodies, I don't know about the latest rap stars (or whatever the cool, hip thing is at the moment). To put it frankly, I don't fit in with people my age.

I'm out of the ordinary, I'm erratic and different and not like anyone else I know.
Which is generally the point of this blog, I don't fit in with the people around me so I've taken to the internet to vent my insanity.

So, allow me to elaborate on my earlier statements about myself. I've told you what I don't get, don't like and whatnot, let me tell you what I do like.
For someone in my mid-late teens, I'm surprisingly old fashioned.
I like The Beatles (especially John Lennon, I identify most with him, but all in good time), I like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane. But I'm also a huge 80's/90's club music fan. Confusing, isn't it?
I absolutely adore old films, The Godfather, Scarface, movies like that.
That said, my favourite film directors are definitely Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock. Martin Scorsese comes in at a close third.


This blog will be filled with my abnormal musings, bizarre updates about my day, late night nattering or ranting and (more often than not) genuine, fun insanity.
I'm hoping that I'll occasionally be able to put up some of my creative writing, as I'm an avid writer. It just depends on if I get the time for it all between schoolwork and sleeping.

Anyway, let's hope this blog actually gets some views.
Thanks folks, here goes nothin'