2. CUBAN government Website hacked
HAVANA, Cuba, March 9 (Perico Perez / www.cubanet.org) -
Hackers recently entered a Cuban government Web site and
posted a statement criticizing restrictions on access to the
Internet by Cubans.
The statement, which appeared for two days on www.cubasi.cu,
said in part: "The idea behind this hacking arose from
government restrictions on Internet access using national
currency. With this hacking, we're sending a message that we're
alive, that we're Cubans, that policy doesn't matter to us and
that we did this in order to learn more and study more every
day."
Those aware of the hacking assumed it was done by students at
the University of Informatics Sciences, established two years
ago by Fidel Castro at the former Soviet espionage center. The
idea behind the center was to produce software.
However, the hackers denied that they were students or graduates
of the university.
3. HACKED PASSWORDS
The students, officials added, also distributed hacked
passwords belonging to authorized Internet users. A meager
nine out of every 1,000 Cubans are estimated to be Internet
users, most of them linked to the government.
None of the suspended students' activities were political, but
university officials cautioned that at any moment they could
have taken a turn against the Cuban revolution.
''We have to be very careful of these semi-clandestine chats
which are not official chats,'' university chancellor Melchor Gil
Morell, former vice-minister of Information and
Communications, said on the video.
``The majority wind up hurting the revolution and conducting
illegal acts.''
He said the government will revise its penal code to make
illegal Internet access punishable by up to five years in prison.
4. Among those leading the meeting on the video are student leader
César Lage, the son of Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, who urged
students who have computers to use the Web to spread positive
aspects of the government.
The newly released video comes amid the Cuban government's
complaints that the U.S. trade embargo prevents Cuba from riding the
information highway. Cuban delegations have turned to international
forums to argue that Cuba would offer the Internet more broadly, were
it not for the fiber optic cable connections it lacks.
''The war the enemy has against the revolution takes place on many
fronts, including the Internet,'' Gil said.
The video, filmed Feb. 17, was shot two weeks after Cuban dissident
journalist Guillermo Fariñas began a hunger strike to demand Internet
access. His e-mail account was cut off by the government after Fariñas
was quoted in a Miami Herald article.
Fariñas has been fed intravenously for more than four months and is in
critical condition, dissidents said.
GİZEM ORUÇ & SEZEN GERÇEK
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