Web of Hate [Documentary]

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In February 2012, Melbourne schoolgirl Catherine Bernard took her life, after suffering depression and falling prey to cyber-bullying. Catherine is not the first victim. According to a recent global poll, Australia rates number one in the world for bullying on social networks like Facebook, with nine in 10 families reporting a child’s brush with bullies online.

The surge in cyber-bullying takes harassment from the playground directly into victims’ bedrooms, becoming an incessant and ongoing form of public humiliation that for victims seems impossible to escape.

 

Breakingviews: Barnes & Noble's big brother

by ReutersVideo

Senator Marco Rubio Discusses Cuba and Technology

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Yoani Sánchez y José Luis Antúnez en SATS

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Anonymous attacks 'alarming,' says security adviser

Michael Isikoff , NBC News/

The  vigilante group known as  Anonymous has claimed credit for yet another of its weekly cyber  attacks, fueling high level concerns among U.S. national security officials that the so-called “hackivists” are posing an increasing threat to government and private sector websites and computer systems.

“What we’ve seen from Anonymous is alarming,” Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center and a member of a US. Government advisory board on cybersecurity, said in an interview. “Their  ability to repeatedly take down government websites and potentially penetrate those websites shows that the group is quite committed — and growing in its ability to perpetrate cyber attacks.”

In keeping with its pledge to launch cyber attacks every Friday, hackers associated with Anonymous today took credit for defacing a website associated with InfraGard, an organization that partners with the FBI to share information about potential cybersecurity threats.

“We broke into their webserver, perused their assorted presentation materials, and finally deleted everything and vandalized their website,” according to a statement posted on the Ohio chapter of InfraGard. The group describes itself as an association of businesses, academic institutions and law enforcement agencies that shares intelligence “to prevent hostile acts against the United States.” The hackers in their statement called InfraGard  a “sinister alliance between law enforcement, corporations, and white hat wannabees.” (InfraGard did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.)

The attack is the latest in a series of weekly strikes  that appear to have confounded U.S.  cyber security officials and prompted an ever expanding probe by the FBI. These have included temporarily shutting down the CIA’s public web site, penetrating a transatlantic FBI conference call with Scotland Yard about ongoing  investigations into hackers, taking down  the Federal Trade Commission’s website and penetrating the computers of a Washingto area law firm and dumping thousands of its private emails — including some with members of Congress onto the Internet.

In a statement last week, hackers calling themselves AntiSec — an Anonymous affiliate — vowed to  keep up the strikes. “Yes, each and every Friday, we will be launching attacks ... with the specific purpose of wiping as many corrupt corporate and government systems off our Internet,” the group stated.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, recently privately warned White House officials that Anonymous hackers could have the ability to cause a limited power outage within the two years through a cyber attack on the U.S. electrical grid. The warnings were reportedly conveyed in a meeting chaired by John Brennan, President Obama’s chief homeland security advisor. (A White House spokeswoman said in an email  she could not discuss “interagency deliberations” but that the “the Administration has made cybersecurity a top priority and we are working tirelessly to protect ourselves from the threats we face.”) More >>

Post-WikiLeaks Network Monitoring Takes Shape

Secrecy News/ by Steven Aftergood

The heightened surveillance of classified government information networks that was a predictable response to the unauthorized disclosures published by WikiLeaks is becoming more clearly discernible.

“USSTRATCOM/USCYBERCOM is monitoring use of the SIPRNet and now has a mechanism for reporting certain anomalous behaviors for appropriate remediation,” said Thomas A. Ferguson, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence) and Teresa Takai, DoD Chief Information Officer.

“We have established the first formal security oversight and assessment program to determine levels of compliance” with rules of access to classified networks,” they said in response to questions for the record from a March 10, 2011 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on “Information Sharing in the Era of WikiLeaks.”

“Simply understanding that we have this monitoring capability creates deterrence of willful mischief,” they added.

“We will improve our ability to individually track users through enforcement of strong user authentication on classified networks, ensure responsible controls on removable media, and provide strong website authentication for classified fabrics — all to provide greater control over access to classified information,” wrote Corin R. Stone of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in her own answers to questions for the record from the same hearing.

“The FBI and CIA have robust insider threat programs in place for tracking the specific information accessed by users of their systems and detecting, to varying degrees, suspicious user behavior (e.g., excessive file accesses or data downloads) and alerting security personnel to take action.  Several agencies (e.g., NGA, NSA, NRO) are maturing their audit and insider threat capabilities, while others still lag behind,” Ms. Stone wrote.

“The WikiLeaks disclosures highlighted the need to ‘raise the bar’ in terms of these capabilities,” she wrote.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess said that “The potential for trusted US Government and contractor insiders using their authorized access to personnel, facilities, information, equipment, networks or information systems in order to cause great harm is becoming an increasingly serious threat to national security.”

V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai: The inventor of e-mail

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Why Facebook’s IPO Matters

Getty Images/ Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

 

business.time.com/ Justin Sullivan

Facebook’s initial public offering later this spring will create a billion-dollar windfall for its founders and early investors, so it’s easy to be cynical and view the IPO as another example of insiders cashing in on the latest web phenomenon. But the significance — and symbolism  — of Facebook’s IPO goes much deeper. Facebook’s astonishing rise is an apt metaphor for the emergence over the last two decades of the Internet itself as a tool for individual self-expression and collective organization. It’s also a dramatic example of a generational shift taking place among the entrepreneurial class, one that elevates social change as a priority along with commercial success. Perhaps most importantly, Facebook’s success is a powerful argument to the transformational impact that a free, open Internet can have on society and commerce.

Facebook’s IPO — the largest in Internet history — is a once-in-a-generation milestone in the evolution of the web. It represents a coming-of-age moment for the second major phase in the development of the Internet as a widespread platform: the rise of the social web. In the initial phase, large portals such as America Online and Yahoo established the web as a repository for vast amounts of information. It wasn’t until Google indexed the web with its search engine that this phase reached maturity, allowing users to quickly find information across the Internet, beyond the borders of these centralized communities. But even as Google democratized the web by enabling ordinary people to exercise their voices and become accessible to the broader online world, the Internet remained a largely individualized experience.

Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/02/02/why-facebooks-ipo-matters/?iid=biz-main-lede#ixzz1lKUdA9ib

Do you like Google? Announces privacy settings change across products, users can’t opt out

The Washington Post/ Cecilia Kang

Google said Tuesday it will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a radical shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices.
The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes.

The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log-in to Google accounts when they activate their phones. More >>

Muslims Pray Times! Top Rated Alerts & Updates on Firefox

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Internet 'may be changing brains'

By Helen Briggs Health editor, BBC News website 

Social network sites may be changing people's brains as well as their social life, research suggests.

Brain scans show a direct link between the number of Facebook friends a person has and the size of certain parts of their brain.

It's not clear whether using social networks boosts grey matter or if those with certain brain structures are good at making friends, say researchers.

The regions involved have roles in social interaction, memory and autism.

The work, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, looked at 3-D brain scans of 125 university students from London.

 

Grey matter

Researchers counted the number of Facebook friends each volunteer had, as well as assessing the size of their network of real friends.

A strong link was found between the number of Facebook friends a person had and the amount of grey matter in certain parts of their brain.

“Start Quote

We cannot escape the ubiquity of the internet and its impact on our lives, yet we understand little of its impact on the brain, which we know is plastic and can change over time”

Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust

The study also showed that the number of Facebook friends a person was in touch with was reflected in the number of "real-world" friends.

"We have found some interesting brain regions that seem to link to the number of friends we have - both 'real' and 'virtual'," said Dr Ryota Kanai, one of the researchers from University College London.

"The exciting question now is whether these structures change over time. This will help us answer the question of whether the internet is changing our brains."

One region involved is the amygdala, which is associated with memory and emotional responses.

Previous research has shown a link between the volume of grey matter in the amygdala and the size and complexity of real world social networks. Grey matter is the brain tissue where mental processing takes place.

Three other areas of the brain were linked with the size of someone's online social network but not their tally of real-world friends.

'Plastic' brain

The right superior temporal sulcus has a role in perception and may be impaired in autism. The left middle temporal gyrus is associated with "reading" social cues, while the third - the right entorhinal complex - is thought to be important in memory and navigation.

The data

• Volunteers were asked questions such as: How many friends are in your phonebook? How many friends have you kept from school and university? How many people would you invite to a party? How many friends do you have on Facebook?
• These questions led to an estimation of someone's social network size

Professor Geraint Rees, from UCL, who led the research, said little is understood about the impact of social networks on the brain, which has led to speculation the internet is somehow bad for us.

"Our study will help us begin to understand how our interactions with the world are mediated through social networks," he said.

"This should allow us to start asking intelligent questions about the relationship between the internet and the brain - scientific questions, not political ones."

Cause and effect

Facebook, the world's most popular social networking site, has more than 800 million active users around the world. The site allows people to keep in touch with friends, from a handful to a thousand or more.

Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust, which funded the study, said: "We cannot escape the ubiquity of the internet and its impact on our lives, yet we understand little of its impact on the brain, which we know is plastic and can change over time.

"This new study illustrates how well-designed investigations can help us begin to understand whether or not our brains are evolving as they adapt to the challenges posed by social media."

Although the study found a link between human brain structure and online social network size, it did not test cause and effect.

Dr Heidi Johansen-Berg, reader in Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford's Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, said the study found only a weak relationship between the number of Facebook friends and the number of friends in the real world.

"Perhaps the number of Facebook friends you have is more strongly related to how much time you spend on the internet, how old you are, or what mobile phone you have," she said.

"The study cannot tell us whether using the internet is good or bad for our brains."

On red alert over cyber-espionage in China

By Ellen Nakashima and William Wan

Packing for business in China? Bring your passport and business cards, but maybe not that laptop loaded with contacts and corporate memos.

China’s massive market beckons to American businesses — the nation is the United States’ second-largest trading partner — but many are increasingly concerned about working amid electronic surveillance that is sophisticated and pervasive.

Security experts also warn about Russia, Israel and even France, which in the 1990s reportedly bugged first-class airplane cabins to capture business travelers’ conversations. Many other countries, including the United States, spy on one another for national security purposes.

But China’s brazen use of ­cyber-espionage stands out because the focus is often corporate, part of a broader government strategy to help develop the country’s economy, according to experts who advise American businesses and government agencies.

Read more > 

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Tiene o no Yoani Sanchez Internet en su casa???: UNA FOTO

En el sitio web del Committee to Protect Journalists aparece una cronica del 10 de septiembre del 2009 firmada por  Carlos Lauría y María Salazar Ferro, refiriendose al crecimiento de la blogosfera en Cuba [Ver 

Special Report: Chronicling Cuba, bloggers offer fresh hope ...]

La misma esta ilustrada con varias fotos, entre las cuales una muestra a Yoani Sanchez en su "despacho" del piso 14, donde se puede apreciar claramente la existencia de un ADSL modem para conexiones a internet. Como quiera que Yoani siempre ha construido historias sobre las serias dificultades que sufre para sencillamente subir sus 3 parrafitos dos veces por semana sobre lo que todos sabemos, las mil y una tretas que tiene que emplear para burlar la seguridad  de los hoteles donde navega, asi como los  enormes gastos que ello le acarrea, debe resultar de interes publico apreciar el dispositivo con todo su cableado. 

China Shut Down 1.3M Websites in 2010 [STUDY]

mashable.com 
by Zoe Fox

China shut down more than 40% of websites based in the country between 2010 and 2009, according to a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-sponsored think tank.
Despite the 1.3 million Chinese sites that were shut down, the study insists there is a high level of Internet freedom in China.
“This means our content is getting stronger, while our supervision is getting more strict and more regulated,” Liu Ruisheng, a Chinese researcher told the BBC.
The Chinese government has tightened regulations on websites and the content they post. Even though China’s constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the government is able to shut down websites under a “subversion of state power” clause and if their content is deemed unfit. Human rights groups have dubbed this effort the Great Firewall of China. In June, the UN declared disconnecting people from the Internet a violation of human rights.

Death of Free Internet is Imminent: Canada Will Be Test Case

Kevin Parkinson
Reality Check

In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet.

In the upcoming weeks watch for a report in Time Magazine that will attempt to smooth over the rough edges of a diabolical plot by Bell Canada and Telus, to begin charging per site fees on most Internet sites. The plan is to convert the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and then pay to visit sites beyond a cutoff point.

The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community. The free transfer of information, uncensored, unlimited and untainted, still seems to be a dream when you think about it. Whatever field that is mentioned- education, commerce, government, news, entertainment, politics and countless other areas- have been radically affected by the introduction of the Internet.

And mostly, it’s good news, except when poor judgements are made and people are taken advantage of. Scrutiny and oversight are needed, especially where children are involved. However, when there are potential profits open to a corporation, the needs of society don’t count.

Take the recent case in Canada with the behemoths, Telus and Rogers rolling out a charge for text messaging without any warning to the public. It was an arrogant and risky move for the telecommunications giants because it backfired. People actually used Internet technology to deliver a loud and clear message to these companies and that was to scrap the extra charge. The people used the power of the Internet against the big boys and the little guys won.

However, the issue of text messaging is just a tiny blip on the radar screens of Telus and another company, Bell Canada, the two largest Internet Service Providers (ISP’S) in Canada. Our country is being used as a test case to drastically change the delivery of Internet service forever. The change will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access.

In the upcoming weeks watch for a report in Time Magazine that will attempt to smooth over the rough edges of a diabolical plot by Bell Canada and Telus, to begin charging per site fees on most Internet sites. The plan is to convert the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and then pay to visit sites beyond a cutoff point.

From my browsing (on the currently free Internet) I have discovered that the ‘demise’ of the free Internet is slated for 2010 in Canada, and two years later around the world. Canada is seen a good choice to implement such shameful and sinister changes, since Canadians are viewed as being laissez fair, politically uninformed and an easy target.

The corporate marauders will iron out the wrinkles in Canada and then spring the new, castrated version of the Internet on the rest of the world, probably with little fanfare, except for some dire warnings about the ‘evil’ of the Internet (free) and the CEO’s spouting about ‘safety and security’. These buzzwords usually work pretty well.

What will the Internet look like in Canada in 2010? I suspect that the ISP’s will provide a “package” program as companies like Cogeco currently do. Customers will pay for a series of websites as they do now for their television stations. Television stations will be available on-line as part of these packages, which will make the networks happy since they have lost much of the younger market which are surfing and chatting on their computers in the evening. However, as is the case with cable television now, if you choose something that is not part of the package, you know what happens. You pay extra.

And this is where the Internet (free) as we know it will suffer almost immediate, economic strangulation. Thousands and thousands of Internet sites will not be part of the package so users will have to pay extra to visit those sites! In just an hour or two it is possible to easily visit 20-30 sites or more while looking for information. Just imagine how high these costs will be.

At present, the world condemns China because that country restricts certain websites. “They are undemocratic; they are removing people’s freedom; they don’t respect individual rights; they are censoring information,” are some of the comments we hear. But what Bell Canada and Telus have planned for Canadians is much worse than that. They are planning the death of the Internet (free) as we know it, and I expect they’ll be hardly a whimper from Canadians.

It’s all part of the corporate plan for a New World Order and virtually a masterstroke that will lead to the creation of billions and billions of dollars of corporate profit at the expense of the working and middle classes. There are so many other implications as a result of these changes, far too many to elaborate on here.

Be aware that we will all lose our privacy because all websites will be tracked as part of the billing procedure, and we will be literally cut off from 90% of the information that we can access today. The little guys on the Net will fall likes flies; Bloggers and small website operators will die a quick death because people will not pay to go to their sites and read their pages. Ironically, the only medium that can save us is the one we are trying to save- the Internet (free).

This article will be posted on my Blog, www.realitycheck.typepad.com and I encourage people and groups to learn more about this issue. Canadians can keep the Internet free just as they kept text messaging free. Don’t wait for the federal politicians. They will do nothing to help us.

I would welcome a letter to the editor of the Standard Freeholder from a spokesperson from Bell Canada or Telus telling me that I am absolutely wrong in what I have written, and that no such changes to the Internet are being planned, and that access to Internet sites will remain FREE in the years to come. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to write to the media, ask questions, phone the radio station, phone a friend, or think of something else to prevent what appears to me to be inevitable.

Maintaining Internet (free) access is the only way we have a chance at combatting the global corporate takeover, the North American Union, and a long list of other deadly deeds that the elite in society have planned for us. Yesterday was too late in trying to protect our rights and freedoms. We must now redouble our efforts in order to give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance in the future.

Prepare to Have Your #Email Read by the NSA

Adam Clark Estes
Atlantic Wire
June 18, 2011

With a new major hacking incident seemingly daily, the Department of Defense is scrambling to find the right shield against future for attacks. But why hide behind a shield when you can charge onto the battlefield underneath the invisible but ironclad cloak of the National Security Agency? That’s exactly how the DoD is mounting it’s first strike back at the hackers–a preemptive strike that will increase online surveillance at defense contractors by partnering with internet service providers for privileged access to the rivers of data flowing through their cables. AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink are all on board.

Giving the NSA more access to the same internet tubes that power your Gmail account sounds a little invasive. At least that’s what James X. Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the civil liberties watchdog group the Center for Democracy and Technology. “We wouldn’t want this to become a backdoor form of surveillance,” Dempsey told The Washington Post, referring to the pilot program that DoD insists will remain limited to the contractors working closely with the government.

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A sinister cyber-surveillance scheme exposed

Barrett Brown
The Guardian
June 23, 2011

When President Eisenhower left office in 1960, he provided the American people with a warning.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Sixty years later, the military-industrial complex has been joined by another unprecedented centre of what has increasingly proven to be “misplaced power”: the dozens of secretive firms known collectively as the intelligence contracting industry.

Last February, three of these firms – HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico, known collectively as Team Themis – were discovered to have conspired to hire out their information war capabilities to corporations which hoped to strike back at perceived enemies, including US activist groups, WikiLeaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald. That such a dangerous new dynamic was now in play was only revealed due to a raid by hackers associated with the Anonymous collective, resulting in the dissemination of more than 70,000 emails to and from executives at HBGary Federal and affiliated company HBGary.

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