Suffolk Occupy activist Lauri Love 'terrorist hacker' arrest

[TonyGosling]

NONE of the mainstream medi news report mentioned his OBVIOUS connections to occupy as demonstrated quite clearly for them all to see on Lauri's facebook page https://www.facebook.com/lauri.love?ref=ts&fref=ts


British activist Lauri Love charged with hacking US army database

Joint investigation leads to arrest of 28-year-old at his home in Suffolk village
Kunal Dutta

Monday 28 October 2013
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/british-activist-lauri-love -charged-with-hacking-us-army-database-8909484.html

A young activist with ties to the Occupy movement has been arrested at his home in Suffolk and charged with hacking into US government systems including Nasa, the Army and the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency in an alleged effort to steal confidential data.

Lauri Love, a former student at Glasgow University, was charged in New Jersey with allegedly infiltrating thousands of US computer systems from his home in the village of Stradishall in East Anglia.

The 28-year-old was arrested by officers from the UK's National Crime Agency after an international investigation led by the US army's criminal investigation command. News of the arrest emerged after prosecutors filed an indictment in a court in New Jersey accusing him and three unnamed co-conspirators, believed to live in Australia and Sweden, with disrupting the operation and infrastructure of US government.

Mr Love was described in the indictment as a "sophisticated and prolific computer hacker with specialist knowledge in gaining access to the computer networks of large organisations, including government agencies."

He is understood to have studied physics, maths and computing at Glasgow University and was active in Scotland during the Occupy protests that erupted in cities around the world in 2011.

In one online chat dated October 7, 2012, and described in the indictment, Love discussed the hacking of an Army Corps database that might have yielded 400,000 email addresses, and asked a co-conspirator to "grab one email for curiosity."

He told another alleged co-conspirator on July 31, 2013, after a hacking: "This ... stuff is really sensitive. ... It's basically every piece of information you'd need to do full identity theft on any employee or contractor for the (agency)," the indictment said.

The charge comes at a sensitive time for US-European relations, amid the stream of European surveillance revelations by America's National Security Agency that have been disclosed by Edward Snowden. It also coincides with the effort of Tory MPs to reform the extradition treaty with America to give more protection to Britons such as Gary McKinnon, who successfully fought extradition to the US after a 10-year legal battle.

US attorney Paul Fishman, who announced the charges, said: "As part of their alleged scheme, they stole military data and personal identifying information belonging to servicemen and women. Such conduct endangers the security of our country and is an affront to those who serve."

Love, who has not been charged in the UK, has been released on bail until February. On Monday, Mr Love said he could not comment on the case. "I only just got home after being at government headquarters today,” he told reporters outside his four-bedroom semi-detached home, which he shares with his parents in Suffolk. "I don't even know what's happening myself to be honest, I need to call my lawyers.

"My dad is ill and my parents both work at the prison so it wouldn't be fair on them to talk about what's going on with all this just at this moment. My dad has a heart problems and I'm not well myself."

Mr Love's father Alexander Love, 50, works as a vicar at HMP Highpoint North and his mother Sirkka-Liisa Love, 49, works at the same prison as a teacher.

Neighbour Keith Strudwick, 32, said: "They are a really nice family. I don't know much about Lauri, but he seems alright and he's been brought up by good parents."

Another neighbour reported seeing police remove a computer from Mr Love's home on Friday evening.

Andy Archibald, spokesman for the NCA, said: "This arrest is the culmination of close joint working by the NCA, Police Scotland and our international partners. Cybercriminals should be aware that no matter where in the world you commit cybercrime, even from remote places, you can and will be identified and held accountable for your actions."

[TonyGosling]

On Tuesday this week (29/10)the Financial Times carried this headline on its front page.

“British citizen charged with massive theft of official US data”.

It was the wrong headline.

It should have been

“US Corporations charged with massive theft of official UK Government data”.

In June this year the Guardian revealed that the US had extended its spying activities to the entire internet, across the planet. One of the ways that the US Government did this was by placing secret court orders on most of the major American internet and web giants, ordering them to hand over all their customer data, the so called meta data, to the US Government. Some of this was done under a programme called Prism, and started as long ago as 2007.

A number of American corporations, including Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook, have admitted the existence of those orders but claim that they can’t say what the orders are, because of secrecy imposed by the court. Several of the corporations have advanced the claim that everything they did was legal, because it was court ordered. None of the corporations have mentioned, in that statement, that the court was the secret FISA court, a court that has no jurisdiction in the United Kingdom or outside the United States. The orders to steal the data were invalid orders, in any country outside the United States. American law does not run in the UK, or anywhere else.

Beginning at the end of July this year, each of the four named corporations, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, were approached, in writing and challenged as to the legality of using the FISA orders in the UK. They were each asked whether, in accordance with the FISA orders, they had transferred data , private, commercial and governmental, from the UK to the USA. It was pointed out to each of the four companies that if they had done so they had potentially broken both the Official Secrets Act and the Data Protection Act. Microsoft and Google said that they were acting on court orders. They just didn’t say which courts. The other two companies made no reply.

On the 30th July the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee Sir Malcolm Rifkind, , was told of the enquiries made to the American companies. He has failed to reply to the letter. The Intelligence and Security committee does not appear to be a Parliamentary committee at all, having no phone number in Parliament and being run by the Cabinet Office from Great Smith Street.

On the advice of the Cabinet Office press office, the Metropolitan Police were contacted at the end of July. "The Met’s job is to investigate crime" the Cabinet Office said. Since early August the Met Office has refused or failed to reply. On Tuesday this week, and very day since, the National Crime Agency, the UK FBI were asked, verbally and in writing, what they were doing about conceivably the largest scale crime ever committed in the UK. The NCA promised a reply on Tuesday, Wednesday and today, Thursday. So far no reply. Total silence. The same response that has been made by the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, all of them potential victims of this crime.

Behind the scenes in Whitehall this matter, the legality or otherwise of what the US corporations did, is the hottest topic there is. The State Department in Washington has been burning the wires to the Foreign Office, at the behest of the US corporations, begging, pleading and then threatening all sorts of reprisals, if the corporations are investigated, never mind charged. Instead, the UK charges a hapless 28 year old from Suffolk, with hacking the global hacker, the US Government.

Kevin Cahill

Global & Western News

1400 Thursday 31st October 2013