A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor who lives with his mother sit in a prison in southern Mexico, facing possible 30-year sentences for terrorism and sabotage in what may be the most serious charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account.
Prosecutors say the defendants helped cause a chaos of car crashes and panic as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children because of false reports that gunmen were attacking schools.
The number of rogue SSL certificates issued by Dutch CA DigiNotar has balooned from one to a couple dozen to over 250 to 531 in just a few days.As Jacob Appelbaum of the Tor project shared the full list of the rogue certificates, it became clear that fraudulent certificates for domains of a number of intelligence agencies from around the world were also issued during the CA’s compromise – including the CIA, MI6 and Mossad.
Additional targeted domains include Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter, Tor, WordPress and many others.
He received the list from sources in the Dutch Government, which has retracted its statement about trusting DigiNotar’s PKIoverheid CA branch, announced to its citizens that it cannot guarantee the security of its own websites, and taken over DigiNotar’s operations and immediately organized audits of its infrastructure.
Goldman Sachs is launching an internal investigation into the culprit behind the @GSElevator Twitter account, the New York Post reported citing an unnamed source.
A source told us that following “a failed attempt to force Twitter to freeze the account, they are investigating who is behind it.
The Twitter account, which describes itself as “Things heard in the Goldman Sachs elevators do not stay in the Goldman Sachs elevators,” launched a few weeks ago.
So far it’s garnered more than 5,000 followers. Goldman wants it to stop.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy said tweets on Twitter and postings to blogs will be monitored for groundless and inaccurate information that could inflame and mislead the public (=Waking the people up).
“The agency said it is trying to “track down inaccurate information (=Truth) and to provide correct ones (=More disinformation, lies and cover-ups) instead.”
Nice!
‘Accurate’ information below the following article.
While the government defends its new monitoring program of online postings concerning the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to stem the spread of “inaccurate” information, critics say it harkens back to Big Brother.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy said tweets on Twitter and postings to blogs will be monitored for groundless and inaccurate information that could inflame and mislead the public.
The agency said it is trying to “track down inaccurate information and to provide correct ones instead.”
Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said that “really inflamatory, inaccurate” messages on Twitter were mainly to blame for the disorder. “Social media and other methods have been used to organise these levels of greed and criminality,” he said at a press conference on Monday afternoon.
Ah, right, just like vocal cords, pamphlets, telephones and other communication tools “were mainly to blame” for previous riots. Hint to the Metropolitan police: if you’re going to always blame the tool, you’re not going to do a very good job dealing with riots. If people want to speak out, they’ll figure out a way to speak out. It’s not the technology that is to blame. The technology is just a tool, and if you block off one path, you can be damn sure that they’ll figure out another path instead.
Friday, July 15, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (METI) – Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, opened a call for bids (tender) regarding the “Nuclear Power Safety Regulation Publicity Project”, for contractors to monitor blogs and tweets posted about nuclear power and radiation.
Among the participants was Mr. Takumi Aizawa, a school worker at Kusano Elementary School in Iitate-mura in Fukushima Prefecture, which has been designated as “planned evacuation zone” by the national government. Mr. Aizawa told the demonstrators, “After the earthquake there was no information. Then a university professor sent by the government came to the village and said, “You can eat vegetables harvested in the village if you wash them”. Children, who had been evacuated, then started to come back [on that reassuring word] and they got irradiated.”
What? And who was this professor? I suspected Dr. “100 millisieverts” Yamashita, but it turned out to be his younger sidekick, Dr. Noboru Takamura of Nagasaki University. The powerful duo was all over Fukushima Prefecture in March and early April, preaching “safety” of radiation and radioactive fallout to the worried residents of Fukushima as the official radiation advisors for the prefecture.
Dr. Takamura went to Iitate-mura on March 25, and told the concerned villagers these soothing words (from Iitate-mura flyer on March 30, in Japanese):
Thyroid cancer from radioactive iodine only affects children and young mothers. People over 40 do not need to worry. Wear a mask outside, and wash your hands when you come home, and you’ll be OK. There will be no ill effect on health living in the village as long as you observe basic hygiene.
Then, he went back to Iitate-mura on April 6, and apparently told the villagers this (from a tweet by @rainbow3342):
Nagasaki University Graduate School Professor Noboru Takamura said during the April 6 meeting in Iitate-mura to explain the risk of radiation, “Rain and typhoon will quickly wash away the radioactive materials. If the radiation is below 10 microsieverts/hour, it’s safe even for children.”
So what else this good doctor and his boss Dr. Yamashita were saying back in March? The collection of tweets were found on this Japanese blog, and they paint a propaganda effort by the Japanese government that would make Goebbels and Edward Bernays proud.
Right after the disaster, the professor who was probably asked by the Fukushima prefectural government said in the lecture in Fukushima City, “it’s safe up to 100 millisieverts”. People in Fukushima were relieved. No one doubted the professor. The recording of the lecture was played everywhere endlessly – radio, inside the buildings, on the street. There must be many in the countryside who still believe him. They don’t have enough information.
Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.
The US government really needs to further control the internet before the greatest financial collapse in world history happens, because this may not be good enough:
@foxnewspolitics began tweeting the information to its 33,000 followers at about 2am local time, with the posts rapidly being shared around the internet.
“Oh how they once begged to attend my perfect banquet in the nude,” Sheen intones. “Now they just beg for the keys to my gold.”
He calls himself the “Malibu Messiah” and repeatedly refers to himself as a warlock.
…..
Chuck Lorre, the creator of the program that starred Sheen for eight years, comes in for the greatest abuse.
“I see you, you little worm, I see you behind your plastic smile, your bitchy pout, and your desperate need to be liked,” Sheen says, calling the TV executive “Chuck E. Cheese Ball,” not using Lorre’s full name.
He accuses Lorre of “narcissism, greed (and) hatred of yourself — or women,” one of several moments in the video that should give armchair psychiatrists plenty of material to mine.
He says of CBS chief executive Les Moonves: “You gave me your word so you gave me nothing. It must really suck being your missus,” again mangling the name.
“A high treason has occurred,” he concludes. “The scales of justice are in a state of radical disarray. Together we must right this infantile wrong. Stay tuned, good soldiers. I’ll see you all on the battlefield. Dogspeed.”
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Actor Charlie Sheen, who has been accused of anti-Semitism, claims that he is Jewish and proud of it.
During a morning phone call March 4 to the Access Hollywood Live show, Sheen told hosts Billy Bush and Kit Hoover, “My mom [actress Janet Templeton] is Jewish. Here’s where it gets confusing — we don’t know who her father was.
“But she is, in fact, Jewish. So I guess that would make me Jewish and my children Jewish. And Brooke [Mueller], my ex-wife, is Jewish. So I guess I should have rolled that out, too.”
A perplexed Bush told Sheen, “You’re getting accused of anti-Semitic remarks — you might want to say, ‘By the way, I’m Jewish!’ ”
Sheen responded, “I know, I know — stupid me. I just got caught sleeping, caught napping, which is rare for me. Anywho … But I’m proud of it. There you have it.”
Charlie Sheen Could Teach Wall Street a Lesson
Mar. 8 (Bloomberg) — It would take most of us a few dozen lifetimes to amass 2 million followers on Twitter. And yet Charlie Sheen managed it in less than a week.
Last month, CBS Corp. (CBS) discontinued the hit comedy show “Two and a Half Men” after Sheen’s public jousting with senior management over a binge that the wild-man actor has described as “epic” and “radical.” Since then, he has become one of the biggest names on the planet.
What is fascinating about this whole fandango isn’t Sheen’s public dramas. It is the way he has given us a master-class in modern media promotion and how Wall Street shareholders, who ultimately own his former employer, have allowed themselves to be so completely outwitted.
On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn’t end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: “Use live ammunition.”
From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were “political enemies” and “thugs“ who were “physically threatening legally elected officials.” In response to such behavior, he said, “You’re damned right I advocate deadly force.” He later called me a “typical leftist,” adding, “liberals hate police.”
As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he’s vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator’s mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an “incompetent and treasonous” enemy of the nation to comparing “enviro-Nazis” to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi “brownshirts” on multipleoccasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as “a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up” by local police. A “sensible policy for handling Afghanistan,” he offered, could be summed up as: “KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!“
Early Sunday, Mother Jones sent an email to Cox’s work address at the Indiana attorney general’s office, asking if the Twitter and blog comments were his, and if he could provide context for some of them. He responded shortly after from a personal email address: “For ‘context?’ Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else’s. And I can defend them all.
“[Y]ou will probably try to demonize me,” he wrote, “but that comes with the territory.”
To be sure, in the current political climate, partisan rhetoric has run hot online—and the Constitution guarantees everyone’s right to such rhetoric. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general’s office, Bryan Corbin, told Mother Jones that Cox’s statements were “inflammatory,” and he promised “an immediate review” of the matter. “We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone,” Corbin added.
Major acquisition: Purchase of £7.5billion Twitter would be a big buy for £30bn rated Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
Technology giants Google and Facebook are reported to be in talks to buy Twitter, the popular social networking site.
Executives at the two companies have been engaged in low-level discussions with Twitter for months, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Twitter, which is favoured by the famous to send out snippets of information, is said to be valued at up to £7.5billion.
The takeover of company, which only launched three years ago, would mark the first major acquisition by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
His own social media site started in a Harvard University dorm room seven years ago has experienced an explosion in popularity and is now worth said to be worth £30bilion.
Twitter is the social networking site that allows users to send short, 140-character messages to each other.
Scores of celebrities including John Cleese, Stephen Fry and Piers Morgan are active users of Twitter which was started in 2007.
Even President Obama has a Twitter account and there are estimated to be more than 190milion users worldwide.
Latest figures show there are over 65 million ‘tweets’ a day.
This is Webster Tarpley’s opinion and I do not agree with all of it.
Obama White House NSC Russia Director Michael McFaul Deploying IMF Shock Therapist Boris Nemtsov as Wheelhorse of Feeble “Stop Putin in 2012? Bid
Awareness is growing around the world that the Wikileaks-Julian Assange theater of the absurd is radically inauthentic – a psyop. Wikileaks and its impaired boss represent a classic form of limited hangout or self-exposure, a kind of lurid striptease in which the front organization releases doctored and pre-selected materials provided by the intelligence agency with the intent of harming, not the CIA, nor the UK, nor the Israelis, but rather such classic CIA enemies’ list figures as Putin, Berlusconi, Karzai, Qaddafi, Rodriguez de Kirchner, etc. In Tunisia, derogatory material about ex-President Ben Ali leaked by Wikileaks has already brought a windfall for Langley in the form of the rare ouster of an entrenched Arab government.
At Foggy Bottom and Langley, a manic fit has been building since the flight of Ben Ali. US imperialist planners now believe they can re-launch their shopworn model of the color revolution, CIA people-power coup, or postmodern putsch against a whole series of countries in the Arab world and far beyond, including Italy. The color revolutions had been looking tarnished lately, as a result of the failure of the Twitter Revolution in Iran back in June 2009. Previously, the Cedars Revolution of 2005 had failed in Lebanon. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine had been rolled back with the ouster of NATO-IMF kleptocrats Yushchenko and Timoshenko. In Georgia, the Roses Revolution was increasingly discredited by the repressive and warmongering regime of fascist madman Saakashvili.
US Seeks to Mobilize a New Generation of Young Nihilists Across the Globe
But now, NSC, State, and CIA believe that the color revolution has a new lease on life, thanks to their estimate that the United States, because of Wikileaks and Assange, has captured the imagination of a new generation of young nihilists across the globe who are described as the post-9/11 generation, estranged from governments and opposition parties, and thus ready to follow Langley’s peroxide Pied Piper.
Assange started his intensive deployment phase this year with video of a Class A US war crime in Iraq, which was very graphic but which dealt with an incident which was already widely known. The second document dump focused on Iraq, but now the targeting had shifted to Prime Minister Maliki, and the Iranian asset whom the US by some strange coincidence was trying to oust as leader of Iraq in favor of the US puppet Allawi. With the third document dump, this time involving State Department cables, we found out much derogatory gossip about such classic CIA targets as Russian prime minister Putin, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, the Russian-Italian strategic alliance, President Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, and President Karzai of Afghanistan, along with jabs at supposed US allies who need to be kept off-balance and dependent, including the Saudi Arabian royal family, French President Sarkozy, and others. Wikileaks thus directs the vast majority of its fire against figures who are part of the CIA’s enemies list.
No Equal Time for CIA Covert Operations
Assange also provides a splendid pretext for draconian censorship and limitations on the freedom of the internet. The totalitarian liberal Senator Feinstein wants to bring back Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Espionage Act of 1917 in honor of Assange. Assange must be seen not as an activist, not as a journalist, and not as an entertainer, but rather as a spook. John Young of Cryptome, according to some reports, has denounced Wikileaks, to which he formerly belonged, as a CIA front. In a December 29 RT interview, Young described the internet as “a very large-scale spying machine.”1 The internet is indeed a vast battlefield, where the intelligence agencies of the US-UK, China, Israel, Russia, and many others clash every hour of the day, with commercial spies, hackers, anarchists, cultists, mercenary trolls, and psychotics all getting into the act as well. Intelligence agencies deliberately feed real and doctored material to various websites, sometimes using their own disgruntled employees as cutouts, conduits, and go-betweens. This means among other things that Bradley Manning cannot be taken at face value, although it is also clear that he like anyone else should not be tortured.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, said last night on Twitter that the “USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?”
She said she was starting a legal fight to stop the US getting hold of her messages, after being told by Twitter that a subpoena had been issued. She wrote: “department of justice are requesting twitter to provide the info – I got 10 days to stop it via legal process before twitter hands it over.”
One of the worst things that is bound to happen in the next few years is the inevitable Big Government clampdown on the world’s last stronghold of free speech: the internet.
Reykjavik calls for explanation of Justice Department’s move to access account of politician caught up in WikiLeaks inquiry
Birgitta Jonsdottir – Iceland MP and former WikiLeaks collaborator. The US Justice Department is seeking access to her Twitter account as it tries to build a criminal case against WikiLeaks Photograph: Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty Images
The American ambassador to Iceland has been summoned to explain why US officials are trying to access the Twitter account of an Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks collaborator.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, revealed last week that the US justice department had asked Twitter to hand over her information. The US authorities are trying to build a criminal case against the website after its huge leaks of classified US information.
“[It is] very serious that a foreign state, the United States, demands such personal information of an Icelandic person, an elected official,” the interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, told Icelandic broadcaster RUV. “This is even more serious when put [in] perspective and concerns freedom of speech and people’s freedom in general,” he added.
Iceland’s foreign ministry has demanded a meeting with Luis Arreaga, the US ambassador to Reykjavík. No one at the US embassy in Reykjavík was available for comment.
Birgitta Jonsdottir brands efforts by US justice department to access her private information ‘completely unacceptable’
Birgitta Jonsdottir, the Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks volunteer, who is now fighting a US justice department attempt to get hold of her private messages on Twitter Photograph: Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty Images
A member of parliament in Iceland who is also a former WikiLeaks volunteer says the US justice department has ordered Twitter to hand over her private messages.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, said last night on Twitter that the “USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?”
She said she was starting a legal fight to stop the US getting hold of her messages, after being told by Twitter that a subpoena had been issued. She wrote: “department of justice are requesting twitter to provide the info – I got 10 days to stop it via legal process before twitter hands it over.”
She said the justice department was “just sending a message and of course they are asking for a lot more than just my tweets.”
Jonsdottir said she was demanding a meeting with the US ambassador to Iceland. “The justice department has gone completely over the top.” She added that the US authorities had requested personal information from Twitter as well as her private messages and that she was now assessing her legal position.
“It’s not just about my information. It’s a warning for anyone who had anything to do with WikiLeaks. It is completely unacceptable for the US justice department to flex its muscles like this. I am lucky, I’m a representative in parliament. But what of other people? It’s my duty to do whatever I can to stop this abuse.”
WikiLeaks is urging the public to download a mysterious ‘insurance’ file said to contain information to be released if Julian Assange is killed.
In a Twitter post today (pictured below) the whistleblowing service published a link to the Pirate Bay file sharing site with the comment: ‘Now is a good time to download some ‘history insurance’.
The giant file, nearly 2GB in size, is said to contain thousands of secret U.S. documents aimed at embarrassing the nation’s government, and potentially causing harm to the United States’ relations with allies.
The file has been around since this summer and is heavily encrypted.
In the event of Mr Assange’s death (or some other unspecified reason), the secret key would be released — exposing the documents to all who have downloaded and obtained the key.
It is uncertain why WikiLeaks is now urging users to download the file, but it just may be that they’re planning to release the key soon.
* 3 million documents set to go online
* Bombshell leak thought to include U.S. assessments of Gordon Brown
* Secret talks on return of Lockerbie bomber to Libya may also be leaked
* Allegations ‘include U.S. backing of Kurdish terrorists’
* U.S. diplomats face being kicked out of countries in backlash
* Corrupt politicians expected to be named and shamed
Blowing the whistle: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks (pictured earlier this month), is said to be preparing to release more sensitive documents
David Cameron was warned last night by America that damaging secrets of the ‘special relationship’ are about to be laid bare.
The U.S. ambassador to London made an unprecedented personal visit to Downing Street to warn that whistleblower website WikiLeaks is about to publish secret assessments of what Washington really thinks of Britain.
The website is on the verge of revealing almost 3million documents, including thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables sent to Washington from the American embassy in London.
The bombshell leak is thought to include U.S. assessments of Gordon Brown’s personality and his prospects of winning the General Election, and secret discussions on the return of the Lockerbie bomber to Libya.
Assessments of David Cameron’s election chances and his private assurances to U.S. officials may also be included, Government sources believe.
They fear they will emerge on Sunday in co-ordinated releases in newspapers in Britain, Germany and America.
The British government is so worried that last night it issued a D-Notice, warning that publishing the secrets could compromise national security.
The website has previously released secret details of allied military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Revelations of American brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan created shockwaves, made WikiLeaks notorious and led to its founder Julian Assange – an Australian-born computer hacker – being vilified by governments around the world. He is now wanted for alleged rape in Sweden.
In total, around 2.7million confidential messages between the U.S. government and its embassies around the world are to be released.
Expose: WikiLeaks’ posts on its Twitter page showing how the U.S. government, in anticipation of an imminent expose, is briefing its allies on what to expect
The U.S. State Department warned that the leaks would damage relationships around the world.
Spokesman P?J?Crowley said: ‘These revelations are harmful to the U.S. and our interests. They are going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world.’
BEIJING – China has sentenced a woman to a year in a labor camp for “disrupting social order” by retweeting a satirical message urging Chinese protesters to smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, an international rights group said.
Cheng Jianping, 46, re-posted a message from the social networking site Twitter last month hinting that Chinese protesters should smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and adding on the message “Angry youth, charge!” according to Amnesty International, which condemned the sentence in a statement late Thursday.
Amnesty and Cheng’s fiance said her retweet was meant as satire, mocking anti-Japanese protesters who had grown in number since tensions between the countries increased after a dispute erupted in September over islands claimed by both Japan and China.
“Sentencing someone to a year in a labor camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person’s clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China’s repression of online expression,” Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director Sam Zarifi said in a statement.
Cheng’s fiance, Hua Chunhui, said he thought the government reacted the way it did to the tweet was because they are activists. The two had planned to get their marriage license Oct. 28, the same day Cheng was detained.
“My personal opinion is that this sentencing wasn’t about this one statement. The government wants to make an example of us activists,” said Hua, who lives in Wuxi in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu. “The government doesn’t like what we do. We actively communicate with other Chinese activists and celebrated on Twitter Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel prize.”
Hua told The Associated Press that he posted the original tweet because he was mad at all the anti-Japanese protests.
“So I posted that message on Twitter, satirically saying that if they really want to do something big, they should just get on a plane and attack the Japan pavilion at the expo. Of course, that is not possible.“
Law enforcement agencies are digging deep into the social media accounts of applicants, requesting that candidates sign waivers allowing investigators access to their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other personal spaces.
Some agencies are demanding that applicants provide private passwords, Internet pseudonyms, text messages and e-mail logs as part of an expanding vetting process for public safety jobs.
More than a third of police agencies review applicants’ social media activity during background checks, according to the first report on agencies’ social media use by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the largest group of police executives. The report out last month surveyed 728 agencies.
“As more and more people join these networks, their activities on these sites become an intrinsic part of any background check we do,” said Laurel, Md., Police Chief David Crawford.
Privacy advocates say some background investigations, including requests for text message and e-mail logs, may go too far.
“I’m very uneasy about this,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Where does it all stop?”
Federal Agents Urged to ‘Friend’ People on Social Networks, Memo Reveals
Josh Mayeux, network defender, works at the Air Force Space Command Network Operations & Security Center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado (REUTERS)
(Fox News) — A privacy watchdog has uncovered a government memo that encourages federal agents to befriend people on a variety of social networks, to take advantage of their readiness to share — and to spy on them. In response to a Freedom of Information request, the government released a handful of documents, including a May 2008 memo detailing how social-networking sites are exploited by the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS).
As of Thursday morning, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Digg had not commented on the report, which details the official government program to spy via social networking. Other websites the government is spying on include Twitter, MySpace, Craigslist and Wikipedia, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed the FOIA request.
“Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuel a need to have a large group of ‘friends’ link to their pages, and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don’t even know,” stated one of the documents obtained by the EFF. “This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities,” it said.
According to the EFF, this memo — which specifically details how the government evaluates potential citizen requests — suggests there’s nothing to prevent an exaggerated, harmless or even out-of-date offhand comment in a status update from quickly becoming the subject of a full investigation.
With this revelation, the government joins a growing list of groups using social-networking sites for purposes other than social networking. As these sites have gained popularity, scammers and spammers have become rampant, and hackers are increasingly turning to networks such as Facebook to spread viruses and Trojan Horses.
The EFF also uncovered efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to monitor social media during the inauguration of President Obama. According to the documents, the DHS collected a massive amount of data on individuals and organizations explicitly tied to the event.
The DHS notably attempted to ensure that its use of social networks was appropriate while gathering data online. The newly released documents cite the Fair Information Practices Principles, a 2008 policy memo by the Department of Homeland Security’s chief privacy officer that set guidelines for ensuring online privacy during the collection of information.
• Death threats and murders silence traditional reports
• Catalogue of horror posted by bloggers and on Twitter
Soldiers carry the coffin of one of 72 migrants killed by drug traffickers in Tamaulipas, Mexico, last month. Photograph: Reuters
A small army of bloggers and tweeters is filling the gaps left by traditional media in Mexico that are increasingly limiting their coverage of the country’s drug wars because of pressure from the cartels.
“Shots fired by the river, unknown number of dead,” read one recent tweet on a busy feed from the northern border city of Reynosa, #Reynosafollow. “Organized crime blockade on San Fernando road lifted,” said another. “Just saw police officers telling a group of narcos about the positions of navy checkpoints,” ran a third.
Nothing of this kind appeared in the city’s papers which, along with most media outlets in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, have become better known for what they do not publish than for what they do.
Tamaulipas is one of the most intense battlegrounds of the drug wars being fought in Mexico between the federal forces and at least seven cartels.
Gun fights lasting hours, grenade attacks in shopping streets, military swoops on suspected kingpins – all ignored. Six local journalists in one city disappeared in two days, and there was hardly a word from their terrified colleagues.
One editor on a regional paper – who does not want to be named for security reasons – has meticulously followed directives from the dominant local traffickers ever since a story she published about a shoot-out, based on an official report, earned her a death threat a couple of months ago.
She does not even dare complain too openly about this to colleagues, in case they are in the pay of the gang. But every now and then she cannot resist tweeting. “Sometimes the emotion of a story gets to me and I put it on Twitter,” she says. “Especially when I know it won’t get out otherwise.”
Earlier this month, she revealed the kidnapping of a former local mayor who is also a cousin of Mexico’s biggest media magnate.
Sometimes people seem to forget that Twitter is Twitter.
Octavia Nasr, Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs, has decided to leave CNN after a “conversation” with higher ups at the company. Why? Because she expressed sorrow, via a Tweet, about the death of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who many consider to be affiliated with terrorism.
Since she made the July 4th Tweet, outrage has ensued, prompting an apology and an explanation from Nasr, who explained that what she respected was Fadlallah’s stance on women’s rights in the Middle East. Though she didn’t say she regretted the sentiment, she does regret tweeting “such a simplistic comment.”
Seems that wasn’t enough for critics and CNN. (via the Village Voice)
Internal memo said Twitter tribute to Hezbollah’s spiritual leader had compromised senior Middle East editor’s credibility
A CNN veteran of 20 years, Octavia Nasr called her tweet about Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah ‘an error of judgment’. (CNN)
Twitter, with its strict 140-character limit, was never going to be the best medium to make a nuanced point about Middle East politics. But Octavia Nasr gave it a go.
The offending tweet was sent on Sunday morning following the death in Beirut of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who was instrumental in the establishment of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Using her official CNN Twitter account Nasr wrote: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”
The tweet was immediately picked up by supporters of Israel, to which the Islamist group is bitterly opposed. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US released a statement demanding Nasr “apologise to all victims of Hezbollah terrorism whose loved ones don’t share her sadness over the passing of one of Hezbollah’s giants”.
The text was swiftly removed from her Twitter feed, but by then it had been heavily circulated, with criticism mounting.
Nasr responded on Tuesday with a blog on the CNN website, calling her initial message “simplistic” and “an error of judgment”. Her respect for the ayatollah, who she had interviewed for Lebanese television in 1990, was owing to his stance on women’s rights, notably his demands that “honour killings” stop, she explained.
But this was not enough. The next day, Nasr was reportedly called in to see her bosses at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta. The New York Times quoted an internal memo from a senior vice-president, Parisa Khosravi, which said: “We have decided that [Nasr] will be leaving the company.”
The memo added: “At this point, we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward.”
Are you tired of living in public, sick of all the privacy theater the social networks are putting on, and just want to end it all online? Now you can wipe the slate clean with the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. (Warning: This will really delete your online presence and is irrevocable). Just put in your credentials for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or LinkedIn and it will delete all your friends and messages, and change your username, password, and photo so that you cannot log back in.
The site is actually run by Moddr, a New Media Lab in Rotterdam, which execute the underlying scripts which erase your accounts. The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is a digital Dr. Kevorkian. On Facebook, for instance, it removes all your friends one by one, removes your groups and joins you to its own “Social Network Suiciders,” and lets you leave some last words. So far 321 people have used the site to commit Facebook suicide. On Twitter, it deletes all of your Tweets, and removes all the people you follow and your followers. It doesn’t actually delete these accounts, it just puts them to rest.
The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine runs a python script which launches a browser session and automates the process of disconnecting from these social networks (here is a video showing how this works with Twitter). You can even watch the virtual suicide in progress via a Flash app which shows it as a remote desktop session. You can watch your online life pass away one message at a time. Taking over somebody else’s account via an automated script, even with permission, may very well be against the terms of service of these social networks.
From the FAQs:
If I start killing my 2.0-self, can I stop the process?
No!
If I start killing my 2.0-self, can YOU stop the process?
No!
What shall I do after I’ve killed myself with the web2.0 suicide machine?
Try calling some friends, take a walk in a park or buy a bottle of wine and start enjoying your real life again. Some Social Suiciders reported that their lives has improved by an approximate average of 25%. Don’t worry, if you feel empty right after you committed suicide. This is a normal reaction which will slowly fade away within the first 24-72 hours.
The light-hearted video below explains the benefits of committing Web 2.0 Suicide and disconnecting from “so many people you don’t really care about.” Unplugging from your social life online will leave you more time for your real life, which you’ve probably been neglecting. With the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, you can “sign out forever.” Not that we are recommending you do this in any way. But you may enjoy the video.
(NaturalNews) The US government has issued a new report that recommends blocking access to popular websites during a pandemic outbreak in order to preserve internet bandwidth for investors, day traders and securities clearing house operations. The concern is that a pandemic would cause too many people to stay at home and download YouTube videos and porn, hogging all the internet bandwidth and blocking throughput for investment activities, thereby causing a stock market meltdown.
This isn’t an April Fool’s joke. It’s all based on a public report issued by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), available from their website at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d108.pdf
In this article, I’m going to explain how a pandemic outbreak could theoretically bring down Wall Street. But to get to that, you’ll first need to find out what the GAO said in its curious report (see below). Parts of this article are presented as satire, but the underlying facts quoted here are all true and verifiable (links are provided to all sources).
This report in question is entitled, “GAO Report to Congressional Requesters, INFLUENZA PANDEMIC” and includes this subtitle: Key Securities Market Participants Are Making Progress, but Agencies Could Do More to Address Potential Internet Congestion and Encourage Readiness.
As the report explains:
In a severe pandemic, governments may close schools, shut down public transportation systems, and ban public gatherings such as concerts or sporting events. In such scenarios, many more people than usual may be at home during the day, and Internet use in residential neighborhoods could increase significantly as a result of people seeking news, entertainment, or social contact from home computers. Concerns have been raised that this additional traffic could lead to congestion on the Internet that would significantly affect businesses in local neighborhoods, such as small doctors’ offices or business employees attempting to telework by connecting to their employers’ enterprise networks.
America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates – even check out your book reviews on Amazon.
In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using “open source intelligence” – information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.
Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.
“That’s kind of the basic step – get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill.
At the White House presser on Wednesday, several correspondents questioned the way the Oval Office selected questions from the public for today’s virtual town hall.
President Barack Obama answered pre-selected questions Wednesday afternoon about health care sent in from emails, Facebook and Twitter. CBS’ Chip Reid and columnist Helen Thomas thought this reflected a lack of transparency at the White House.
“It feels like the concept of a town hall, I think, is to have an open public forum. And this sounds like a very tightly controlled audience and list of questions. Why do it that way?” asked Reid.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs deflected the question, but that only raised the ire of Helen Thomas, UPI’s veteran correspondent who has long been at the top of the White House press corps totem pole.
“We have never had that in the White House,” Thomas said, referring to the degree that press events are pre-scripted in the Obama administration. “I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who called for openness and transparency…”
That’s when things got testy, and Gibbs looked very uncomfortable as Reid and Thomas took turns attacking his evasive answers.
“Calling reporters the night before, telling them they’re going to be called on – that’s shocking,” Thomas said, referring to an incident last week when Huffington Post blogger Nico Pitney was given advance warning that he would be called on to ask a question on behalf of the Iranian public.
This video is from C-SPAN, broadcast July 1, 2009.
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