US Pressures Ecuador to Cut Off Wikileaks Internet During Colombia Negotiations
Julian Assange lost internet access in an apparent attempt by the US government to prevent further leaks during Colombian peace negotiations. Assange lost internet access over the weekend, prompting the release of several hashes, which initially led to some speculation that he had been killed. Wikileaks tweeted the outage on Monday: According to Wikileaks, Ecuador cut off access under pressure from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who sought to stop the publication of additional leaks regarding Hillary Clinton while peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels....
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Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, still confined in the Ecuador embassy in London, revealed interesting bits of WikiLeaks - and Bitcoin - history in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) open Q/A session on Reddit today. The AMA was dedicated to Assange's new book "When Google Met WikiLeaks." Julian Assange Saves Bitcoin from WikiLeaks. In a comment on Reddit, Julian Assange says he has written about Bitcoin in his new book, and highlights the following footnote: On 5 December 2010, just after VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon, and other financial companies started denying service to WikiLeaks,....
Intelligence agencies from all over the world are spying on each other, and there is a lot of information being withheld from the public to see. When WikiLeaks came around, that paradigm was turned on its head, as the general public got access to all kinds of classified information. Yet for some reason, Julian Assange is not keen on releasing any intel he found on Ecuador. Even smaller nations, such as Ecuador, have developed their own tools and software to spy on other countries. While the United States, China, and most European countries are facing a lot of scrutiny for their spying....
Over the weekend, CCN reported on the government of Ecuador's decision to ban Bitcoin, along with all other cryptocurrencies, via a National Assembly majority vote on July 23rd. An outright ban placed on Bitcoin by one nation, or another, has always been inevitable. What is more interesting (and unexpected), in the case of Ecuador, is its concurrent announcement of plans to create its own national cryptocurrency. Ecuador is small South American country situated in the Andes, between Peru and Colombia. The country's booming mining economy and hydro-electric output is sizable and in 2013,....
It was just last month that the small Latin American country of Ecuador banned Bitcoin. The Ecuadorian National Assembly voted to pass a monetary and financial reform law introduced to the Assembly by Ecuador's President, Rafael Correa. While the outright ban of Bitcoin and other decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin is news in and of itself, the new sparkly gem of Ecuador's new stance is their intention to create their own digital currency. Most recently, Ecuador's e-money presentation, which provides more details on the new Ecuadorian National digital currency has been posted to....
Colombia may ban Bitcoin transactions next week. El Tiempo is reporting that Colombia is planning to ban all Bitcoin-related transactions next week. This news comes as quite a shock because the fact of the matter is Colombia is not exactly the first country that people think about when it comes to hotspots of cryptocurrency. The Finance Superintendent of Colombia has claimed that virtual currencies are not safe because they have no backing from government. He claims that Colombia already has a safe and useful currency and there's no reason for people to use bitcoins. The El Tiempo article....