Scientology protest group 'Anonymous' celebrates founder's birthday worldwide; At least three detained by police

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The Internet group Anonymous today held protests critical of the Church of Scientology.

The global protests started in Australia where several hundred protesters gathered at different locations for peaceful protests.

In a global speech, the internet protest movement said Scientology "betrayed the trust of its members, taken their money, their rights, and at times their very lives." The protesters welcomed the public interest their protests have led to, and claimed they witnessed "an unprecedented flood of Scientologists [joining] us across the world to testify about these abuses." The group said it would continue with monthly actions.

At least three protesters were detained by police in Buffalo, New York and questioned after taking photographs and video of the Church from across the street. Police approached the three and began to "yell" at them. One protester was told by police that "the Church want you arrested. Now how am I going to avoid that." The protester then willingfully handed over his videotape of the church and asked not to be arrested. Subsequently all three were released without being charged. They were filming only the areas of the church that were visible from across the streets.

In a press statement from its European headquarters, Scientology accused the anonymous protesters of "hate speech and hate crimes", alleging that security measures were necessary because of death threats and bomb threats. This also makes the Church want to "identify members" of the group it brands as "cyber-terrorists".

Wikinews had correspondents in a number of protest locations to report on the protests.

>>Click here for the full EXCLUSIVE story and photos from around the globe.

Wikinews International: You report "The Ides of March" 'Anonymous' protest against Scientology

That's right...we want you to be the reporter for the protest of "The Ides of March", 'Anonymous' VS. The Church of Scientology and to cover the celebrations of the Church's founder L. Ron Hubbard's Birthday.

Are you going to be in or near any of the following areas on March 15th 2008? If so, we want your pictures, your audio, video and interviews of the days protest:

Please add you name and information such as whether you plan to use video, audio, still photography, or all of the above by clicking here.

The protests are scheduled to take place on March 15 at 11:00 a.m. (YOUR local time) at any Church anywhere.

Wikinews international report: "Anonymous" holds anti-Scientology protests worldwide

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Here is what is most likely to be the most extensive international report on the 2008 Anonymous protests against Scientology. Wikinews was in nearly 15 different countries and over 50 cities throughout the globe to bring you the most extensive, in-depth and opinion free reporting anywhere on the net. We hope you enjoy this article, the reports, video and photos, as much as we enjoyed bringing them to you. Thanks everyone for your hard work and contributions. They are greatly appreciated.

The Internet group Anonymous today held protests critical of the Church of Scientology. The protests marked what would have been the 49th birthday of Lisa McPherson, who is claimed to be a victim of the Church of Scientology's practices. Lisa died in 1995 during a running of what Scientologists refer to as an Introspection Rundown, a procedure intended to help Church members deal with a psychotic or deeply traumatic event.

Protests were planned throughout the day in 14 countries and over 50 different cities. The estimation of total protesters world wide for Feb. 10, 2008 is 9,250 people.

Wikinews had correspondents at a number of protest locations to report on the events. This article was updated throughout the day with reports from around the globe.

Wikinews Picture of the Year 2007

The winner has been announced in the 2007 Wikinews Picture of the Year election. The photo was taken by Wikinews reporter and photographer David Shankbone, and captures the protest in front of Columbia University, that marked the controversial debate with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in September.

Invited to participate in a debate during his visit to New York City this week to address the United Nations General Assembly, Ahmadinejad engaged University president Lee Bollinger on a number of topics, including his country's human rights record, opinions on Israel and the Holocaust and the role of nuclear weapons and terrorism on the global stage.

The images of the event are gathered in a designated category on Commons.

Church of Scientology website being attacked by hackers

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Wikinews has learned that according to an internet posting made just over 24 hours ago, the Church of Scientology's website is being attacked by hackers, causing the site to shut down.

The attack was launched on Wednesday by a user calling himself "Anonymous", on the website "Project Chanology". The "History" section of the site explains, in a satirical fashion, that the incident was prompted by the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove the Tom Cruise video from YouTube.

"Someone emailed me earlier today talking about a tool a group’s been using to attack the scientology website. It’s an interesting tool, created to overload/create malformed strings and crash a website’s database," said the post by an unknown author on pigmy.

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Users insert virus source code into Wikipedia pages

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In an exclusive report, Wikinews has learned that on Wednesday two users, one anonymous and the other only known as MODX, added code on the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia for a computer virus known as the LoveLetter or ILOVEYOU virus.

The users inserted the VBScript code into various pages including the Wikipedia Sandbox, a page used for editorial testing. This was relatively harmless, as the code could not be activated despite causing some antivirus software to issue an alert.

A Wikipedia administrator began blocking the users and reverting their edits. "I went further and deleted the contributions of these editors where I could in the hopes of preventing follow-up attacks, copycat actions, and random editors stumbling into viral traps whilst walking through a page history", said Scientizzle, the administrator who found the code and attempted to clean up the additions.

However, a major problem arose when he tried to delete the edits from the sandbox. This involves deleting the entire page and restoring good revisions, but the sandbox has such a "massive revision history" that this caused Wikipedia's servers to overload for half an hour, locking countless users out of editing the encyclopedia.

Read the full, exclusive report.