Sally Williams: Wikileaks Infowar Update - Anonymous Launches 'Operation Leakspin'

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Wikileaks Infowar Update - Anonymous Launches 'Operation Leakspin'

Operation Payback is yesterday's news. Today, it's all about Operation Leakspin. Anonymous, the vigilante group commonly associated with 4Chan's /b/ message board, fired their "Low Orbit Ion Cannons" at VISA and Mastercard, temporarily taking down the sites of the two major credit card companies. Today, they've switched from trying to disrupt anti-Wikileaks sites to trying to spread the info from Wikileaks' secret diplomatic cables in as many ways as possible. This new tactic is called Operation Leakspin.

The idea behind Leakspin is to pick out some of the less-publicized Wikileaks info and post it in innocuous locations, in YouTube videos and on message boards. Videos with popular keywords like "Bieber" could turn out be Anonymous members reading from the secret diplomatic cables. Why the sudden change in tactics? Because the mission all along has been to keep the Wikileaks documents online. "They don't fear the LOIC. They fear exposure," says the Op Leakspin poster.

Some sites are suggesting that Operation Leakspin may be a response to the arrest of a Dutch teenager who was one of the coordinators of Operation Payback. This is believed to be the first arrest of anyone involved in the DDoS attacks on Visa and Mastercard, and it may have scared some members of Anonymous away from using site takedown tactics, and inspired the idea of leaking more information instead - which, at least for now, is legal.

Speaking of publicizing interesting Wikileaks info, Reddit has done some digging into the Google search trends for "Wikileaks" and found some fascinating results. Turns out the hottest spot in the country for Wikileaks searches is Herndon, Virginia. What's in Herndon? Well, the CIA, for one thing. Also, a large number of independent intelligence contractors. It's not entirely surprising that they'd be monitoring the online chatter about Wikileaks.

Well, how about taking it one step further? Another Redditor decided to examine the next-hottest place people are Googling Wikileaks: Sterling, VA. Discovering that Sterling is the home of Natural Gas Intelligence, and cross-checking that against references to gas and oil in Wikileaks, this Redditor discovered a chart showing that an enormous amount of Europe's oil flows through one critical pipeline in Russia. That would probably explain why a natural gas intelligence firm is tracking Wikileaks.

Meanwhile, there's turmoil within the Wikileaks organization itself. Some folks within Wikileaks have apparently decided that the focus has drifted from freedom of information to Julian Assange. To get out from under the rather large shadow Assange is casting at the moment, they've formed OpenLeaks, which is being called "a new Wikileaks."