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Patriot hacker 'The Jester' attacks nations offering Snowden help

'Tango Down' crows contra-hacktivist, as Ecuador tourist agency cops it

Soi-disant patriot hacker "The Jester" is taking aim at nations seen as offering aid and comfort to NSA sysadmin turned whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The Jester claimed responsibility for taking down a government-run Ecuadorian tourism site and the email server of the Ecuadorian stock exchange on Monday, before turning his attention to other potential targets.

"‪en.ecuador.travel ‬ - TANGO DOWN - Because fuck you Equador - Harboring Assange and hoping to give asylum to ‪#snowden‬," the contra-hacktivist said in a Twitter update.

Snowden applied for asylum to 20 countries in Latin America, Asia and Europe earlier this week. An additional request to apply for asylum in Russia was withdrawn after President Putin said he should stop "harming our American partners" as a pre-condition for a possible asylum request in Russia. Ecuador granted Snowden temporary travel documents that allowed him to travel between Hong Kong and Moscow two weeks ago but has since cooled on the possibility of offering asylum.

Several other countries rejected the possibility of granting Snowden asylum outright, while European nations mostly said that asylum requests can only be made by people physically in their territories, so further narrowing Snowden's options.

After Venezuela emerged as a likely candidate for refuge for Snowden, The Jester turned his attention towards the south American country.

"There's 52 VENEZUELEN Government servers visible to the internet, including 27 email servers. Who knew? ‪http://goo.gl/5kh2i‬," he tweeted.

The Jester is known for denial of service attacks against Jihadist recruitment websites as well as his antipathy towards Wikileaks in general, and founder Julian Assange (still lurking in Ecuador's London embassy) in particular. The Jester claimed responsibility for knocking Wikileaks servers offline back in late 2010, shortly after it began the controversial release of US State Department cables.

“As jihadis groom Muslims online to commit acts against us, so [Julian Assange] grooms government personnel like [Army private and accused leaker Bradley] Manning and Snowden to do his dirty work,” the Jester told FoxNews.com. ®

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