Tag Archives: Federal

The federal government has been called on to urgently intervene to save the canned 2026 Commonwealth Games.

The recommendation forms part of a Senate inquiry into Australia’s preparedness to host the Commonwealth, Olympic and Paralympic Games, which tabled its interim report to federal parliament on Thursday.

“The committee recommends that the Australian Government takes on a facilitation and coordination role in order to salvage the 2026 Commonwealth Games being held in Australia,” the report reads.

The report calls on government to establish an intergovernmental forum by the end of 2023 to bring together representatives from federal, state and local government, business associations and community groups, to examine options to salvage the 2026 Games.

          LOS ANGELES – An Illinois man was found guilty today by a federal jury for running websites that allowed paying users to launch powerful distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks that flood targeted computers with information and prevent them from being able to access the internet.

          Matthew Gatrel, 32, of St. Charles, Illinois, was found guilty of three felonies: one count of conspiracy to commit unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and one count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.

          According to evidence presented at his nine-day trial, Gatrel owned and operated two DDoS facilitation websites: DownThem.org and AmpNode.com. DownThem sold…

Greenbelt, Maryland – U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang today sentenced Eric Eoin Marques, age 36, of Dublin, Ireland, to 27 years in federal prison, followed lifetime supervised release, for conspiracy to advertise child pornography on the dark web.  Marques, a dual national citizen of the United States and Ireland, pleaded guilty to that charge on February 6, 2020, after he was extradited by Irish authorities.  Marques arrived in the United States on March 23, 2019, to face federal criminal charges filed in Maryland on August 8, 2013. 

According to his plea agreement, between July 24, 2008 and July 29, 2013, Marques conspired to advertise child pornography by operating a free, anonymous web hosting service (AHS) located on the “dark web”, an area of the Internet that…