The suspects have been placed under house arrest for the time being while searches are conducted on their respective properties. The operation, named ‘Tango Down’ by Italian police, was a countrywide crackdown led by the General Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome. Italian police released a statement saying the four individuals were part of the hacktivist movement and were responsible for attacks on Italian government bodies and the Vatican. However, investigators added that the group also carried out criminal activities using the name of Anonymous as a mask to hide behind.“We have demonstrated that this branch of Anonymous Italy was a criminal organization that used the name of Anonymous as a pretext to carry out their own activities that are not connected to the political agenda of the Anonymous movement in other parts of the world,” said the police statement. According to police information the four individuals hacked into businesses, only to then contact them and sell their own IT solutions as anti-virus software. Anonymous has yet to make a statement regarding the arrest of the four individuals. Last year the Vatican’s website was taken down by the hacktivist group who cited the “corruption” of the Roman Catholic Church as the principle motivation for the cyber-assault. “Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organization spreads around the world,” said a statement posted on the Italian website of the Anonymous movement.”This attack is not against the Christian religion or the faithful around the world but against the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church.” Anonymous rose to prominence in late 2010 when it executed a series of cyber-attacks against companies that were trying to prevent the disclosure of information by whistleblowing site WikiLeaks. More recently the group has carried out attacks on Israeli government websites and shut down media accounts and official sites in North Korea. … Read More
Presidential Human Rights Council backs proposed amnesty for 2012 rioters
“We call upon you to support the draft statement on granting amnesty to all suspects within the so called Bolotnaya Square case,” reads the address from the council members to the Lower House MPs published on the council’s web-site.The HR activists go on to claim that the prosecutors’ theory of a premeditated mass riot does not appear credible to those who attended Bolotnaya Square on May 6 2012, and that the Bolotnaya protesters hold that the clashes must be blamed on law enforcers.The council members then say that the continuation of investigations and court cases would only prevent the possible ‘settlement in the society’ and aggravate the supposed stand-off between the authorities and the “peaceful civil opposition”. Continuation could lead to more radical protests and undermine the citizen’s trust to the courts and the state system in general.The suggestion of an amnesty for all the suspects was first voiced at the end of April by two Communist Party MPs – Anatoly Lokot and Boris Kashin. They suggested the move to mark the 20th anniversary of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (that will be marked on December 12) and promised to formally submit the proposal in mid-May, after the holiday period.The two communists said that the amnesty would become a signal to society that the state is ready for a dialogue.Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov who is heading the pro-business party Civil Platform also supported the call for an amnesty saying that this would be the most reasonable step in the current situation.The riots on Bolotnaya Square took place on May 6 last year during a major protest rally against alleged elections violations.Authorities started about two dozen criminal cases against alleged rioters, one of which has ended in a conviction and a 4 and a half year sentence.Investigators also started a separate case into the suspected preparations for the riots claiming that several leftist activists, including one of the street opposition’s leaders Sergey Udaltsov plotted and prepared the unrest and financed their activities from money provided by Georgian spin doctor Givi Targamadze. Targamadze was also charged in absentia as part of the case but hopes for a trial are slim as Georgia and Russia currently have neither diplomatic relations nor an extradition agreement.One of the suspected plotters – Konstantin Lebedev – was convicted on April 25 and sentenced to two and a half years in a prison colony. … Read More
Brian Brown: Same sex marriage worse than death or divorce
Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, on Wednesday compared same-sex marriage to the death of a parent. In a prepared statement, Brown lashed out at the Rhode Island legislature for approving a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry. “For the first…
Israeli airport security given green light to search tourist emails
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein defended the practice in a statement, saying that such searches “are performed only in exceptional instances, after other relevant incriminating indications are found.”He added that travelers were not required to give security officers their password, but instead open the accounts on their own.But Marc Grey, an attorney for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), said the situation has little to do with passwords.”Passwords are not the issue, email accounts are about as private as it gets,” he told Reuters.Although Weinstein added that the traveler is given every right to object the search, he made clear that doing so “will be one of the considerations taken into account when the authorities decide whether to allow his entry into Israel.”The attorney general then took security to the next level, stating that “a person who isn’t an Israeli citizen has no vested right to enter Israel. The authority for allowing entry lies with the competent authority.” He added that the authority will “naturally take into account the security of the public and the state.”The attorney general also clarified that Shin Bet’s authority to conduct searches at border crossings is detailed in the General Security Service Law – not in the Criminal Procedure Ordinance, as ACRI had previously stated.Weinstein’s comments were in response to a complaint by ACRI, which was filed after reports emerged that Israel’s Shin Bet security service was demanding access to personal emails of tourists with Arab names in 2012.Lila Margalit, an ACRI attorney, said that demands for travelers to give access to private accounts were not justified.”A tourist…to Israel [who is] interrogated at the airport by Shin Bet agents and told to grant access to their email account, is in no position to give free and informed consent. Such ‘consent’, given under threat of deportation, cannot serve as a basis for such a drastic invasion of privacy,” she said in an email.In May 2012, two female US citizens of Palestinian origin were interrogated at Ben-Gurion Airport. Security officers searched through one of the female’s email accounts, reading emails which contained key words such as “Palestine,” “Israel,” “West Bank” and “International Solidarity Movement.”After five hours of interrogation, the women were told they had to wait three more hours, after which they were told they would be refused entry into Israel, Haaretz reported.Margalit has called the practice “invasive,” and “not befitting of a democracy.” … Read More
FoxConn will pay Microsoft royalties to produce Android, Chrome phones and televisions
Taiwan tech giant Hon Hai, parent company of FoxConn, will pay royalties to Microsoft to ward off a lawsuit over its production of devices using rival Google’s Android and Chrome platforms. A Microsoft statement late on Tuesday did not reveal the amounts the US company will be paid however….
Sukhoi Civil Aircraft to sue Armenia’s Armavia over $1.4 million debt
The Russian aircraft manufacturer is planning to go to the International Commercial Arbitration Court, Gazeta.ru reports referring to an unnamed source in the company. “The lawsuit will be filed in the next few days. The plaintiff’s claim totals around $1.385 million,” the source is quoted as saying.In December last year the Armenian national carrier released its financial statement for 2012. According to the document the company’s debt was 540 million roubles ($17 million). The owner of the troubled airline Mikhail Bagdasarov blamed the carrier’s financial problems on the global economic crisis and losses from the use of the Russian SSJ-100.The Armenian airline became the first customer of the Sukhoi Superjet-100 airliner. Under the terms of the contract, the liner was mortgaged with SCAC until the full price was paid by Armavia. However the carrier failed to pay the full sum for the aircraft and decided to terminate the sales contract and return the aircraft to the manufacturer. The airline sealed an amendment to the sale contract and returned the airplane to Sukhoi Civil Aircraft. According to a SCAC statement Armavia mortgaged the aircraft to third parties while it was in their possession. The manufacturer hopes the International Commercial Arbitration Court will help solve the disparities. “Taking into account the financial state of the Armenian airline and a high probability of its bankruptcy, the prospects for a full implementation of the above-mentioned contract look rather uncertain,” SCAC statement says. “In case of bankruptcy, the courts in Armenia may seize the aircraft…”Armavia halted flights on April 1 and launched bankruptcy proceedings. Armavia had 14 aircraft making more than 100 flights a week to 20 countries.Armavia is owes money to Russian airports, banks and Russia’s civil aviation authority. According to the authority the carrier owes $1.4 million to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and smaller ammounts to two other airports in southern Russia. VTB bank has already filed a lawsuit against Armavia and Mika Limited owned by Mikhail Bagdasarov to claim a reported debt of $22 million. The bank was refinancing the airline’s loan for the purchase of the SSJ-100 airplane. Mikhail Bagdasarov, announced his intention to sell the company last year, however he failed to find a buyer. … Read More
HHS Officially Delays a Key Part of ObamaCare’s Small Business Exchange Program
It’s official: At least one
part of ObamaCare’s system of health insurance exchanges definitely
won’t be open on schedule: On Monday, the Department of Health and
Human Services confirmed that the small business health options
program (SHOP)—which was intended to provide insurer choice to
small businesses—will be
delayed by one year.
Small businesses will still have the ability to purchase a
health plan for their employees through a health insurance exchange
set up under the law. But the employees won’t have a choice of
plan. Originally, the law called for the small business exchanges
to let small employers pick a benefit tier to offer their
employees; workers would then be able to select from a variety of
plans within that tier. Because of the day, the 33 exchanges run by
the federal government will only allow employers to pick a single
plan to offer all employees. States running their own exchanges
will have the option to offer choice, but won’t be required to do
so.
What that means is that exchanges in the majority of states
won’t be offering health plan choice to small business owners. For
all practical purposes, then, the law’s exchanges will offer
nothing to small business owners and employees. As health policy
professor (and ObamaCare supporter) Timothy Jost noted in
Health Affairs when the delay was first proposed, the
choice option was the “primary benefit” offered by the law’s small
business exchange system. Without that option, he
wrote, it’s “unclear what advantage” those exchanges would
actually offer to small employers over currently available
insurance options. The Chamber of Commerce seems to agree. As
USA Today notes, it issued a statement saying that because
of the delay, small business insurance purchased in the health
exchange, “will be of little or no value to employers, or by
extension, their employees.”
Why the delay?
According to The New York Times, the administration is
citing unnamed “operational challenges.” Some reports suggest that
insurers were not able to come up with plans that worked within the
law’s guidelines in the time they had. Insurers, according to the
Times, blame the administration “because it did not
provide detailed guidance or final rules for the small-business
exchange until last month.”
In other words, despite
repeated
assertions from senior administration health officials that the
exchanges would be open on time, at least one key component clearly
won’t be. The administration and the insurers it’s working with
couldn’t manage the technical and logistical hurdles of the
implementation fast enough. The nuts-and-bolts work of constructing
ObamaCare’s complex infrastructure is turning out to be more
difficult than the law’s backers anticipated.
The administration continues to maintain that the bulk of
implementation will be ready on schedule. But you can already
see their confidence slipping. The Medicare official heading up
the exchange creation process recently told insurers that “it’s
only prudent to not assume everything is going to work perfectly on
day one,” and indicated that the administration was preparing
contingency plans in case some exchanges aren’t ready for prime
time. The official in charge of the law’s information technology
build out, meanwhile, said he was “pretty nervous” about the
opening of the exchanges. At this point, I would be too. ; … Read More
