Posted: March 18th, 2010 | Author:admin | Filed under:Social Media | Comments Off
Reuters
March 18, 2010
Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook’s estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.
The emails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.
If the attachment is opened, it downloads several types of malicious software, including a program that steals passwords, McAfee said on Wednesday.
Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, sending them tainted messages via the social networking company’s own internal email system. With this new attack, they are using regular Internet email to spread their malicious software.
Smart electric grids are championed by the federal government, conservation groups and industry as good for the economy and the environment. The digital meters in homes enable measurement and two-way communication with utilities so consumers can trim electricity use.
But some technology policy organizations worry that smart meters pose a potential threat to privacy and could be exploited by online marketers, government agencies, criminals and others.
In a filing with the California Public Utilities Commission last week, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation presented their concerns and recommended new rules on the collection and use of smart grid data.
Posted: March 17th, 2010 | Author:admin | Filed under:Social Media | Comments Off
TaxProf Blog
March 17, 2010
Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF Posts Documents Detailing Law Enforcement Collection of Data From Social Media Sites:
EFF has posted documents shedding light on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information in investigations. The records, obtained from the IRS and DOJ Criminal Division, are the first in a series of documents that will be released through a FOIA case that EFF filed with the help of the UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic.
One of the most interesting files is a 2009 training course that describes how IRS employees may use various Internet tools — including social networking sites and Google Street View — to investigate taxpayers.
The IRS should be commended for its detailed training that clearly prohibits employees from using deception or fake social networking accounts to obtain information. Its policies generally limit employees to using publicly available information. …
The documents released by the IRS also include excerpts from the Internal Revenue Manual explaining that employees aren’t allowed to use government computers to access social networking sites for personal communication, and cautioning them to be careful to avoid any appearance that they’re speaking on behalf of the IRS when making personal use of social media.
Google is now preparing to leave China as a result of this company’s stubborn refusal to obey Chinese laws. Google is in effect demanding extraterritoriality and immunity to the legal norms of the host nation, a claim which goes back to the unequal treaties imposed by foreign imperialists, notably the British, on China starting in the 19th century. It is not surprising that the Chinese response to this arrogant interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state has been stern.
We must also recall that Google was founded with the help of the US intelligence community, and is now acting as a virtual arm of the US National Security Agency, the electronic espionage department of the US government. Google-NSA’s arrogance and hypocrisy are unbearable, especially when we bear in mind the countless times that Google search engines have been used to suppress exposés of the US governments false flag operations, most notably 9/11, and other sensitive topics.
There are two sides to the conflict between Google-NSA and China. One is the Great Cyberwall erected by the Chinese government against attempts by the US-UK to capitalize on ethnic and social tensions inside China to launch a color revolution, CIA people power coup, or postmodern putsch. The other aspect is Google’s claim that hackers working for the Chinese government raided Google’s e-mail servers. The second charge has been formally denied by the Chinese.
Even as Google prepares to shut down its Chinese operations, something larger and more sinister is looming. The US Wall Street-controlled media are gearing up to educate the public about imminent cyberwarfare and cyber-conflict. We can sense that Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon’s infamous octogenarian Yoda of the Office of Net Assessment, is playing a key role behind the scenes. This effort was formally launched in May 2009 by none other than Obama, who announced a buildup of US cyberwar assets, illustrating his project with the claim that his own campaign websites had been hacked during the 2008 campaign, prompting him to seek the assistance of FBI, CIA, NSA and the rest.
One highlight of this US propaganda campaign has been a two-hour docudrama special recently repeated several times on CNN on Feb. 20-21, simulating a massive cyber attack on the United States, starting with cell phones and then taking over into computers.[1] The impact of this attack is to shut down telephone communications, followed by airports and rail services, and finally to knock out most of the US electrical power grid, causing panic and chaos. The simulation is presented in the form of a meeting of the National Security Council while the US is under attack. Several protagonists of the 9/11 cover-up were among the starring players, including Jamie Gorelick (playing the US Attorney General), John Negroponte (playing the Secretary of State), and Michael Chertoff (in the role of the National Security Council Director).
Another important sign of the times is a Feb. 28 op-ed in the Washington Post by Admiral Mike McConnell, who headed up the NSA under Clinton, and is now a top executive for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the military consulting firms which claims to have the greatest expertise in matters of cyber warfare.[2] Admiral McConnell’s basic idea is that cyber war is now upon us, and that the US must respond using the experience of the Cold War as the relevant model.
The results of this campaign of preparatory propaganda can be summed up under four basic points.
One is the relentless exaggeration of what cyber warfare can actually do in its present state. The public is now expected to believe that computer viruses and denial of service attacks can be used to shut down phone service, cripple airports, prevent trains from running, sabotage nuclear reactors, and paralyze power grids over the quasi-totality of the United States. Many of these claims were launched in relatively obscure articles by CIA officials or Wall Street Journal writers. It is not at all clear that cyber warfare can do what these interested parties are alleging. Rather, the best intelligence estimate right now is that we are in the presence of a new wave of cynical and demagogic fear mongering, similar to the weapons of mass distraction charges made by the neocons against Iraq during the buildup of war hysteria in 2002-2003. The idea that cyber warfare can shut down electrical grids very likely belongs in the same category with Tony Blair’s ludicrous charge that Saddam Hussein had the ability to strike London in 45 minutes. It was a fantastic lie.
A second Leitmotiv is the transposition of the terminology and mindset of the Cold War and nuclear confrontation into the modern cyber arena. The CNN simulation works towards refurbishing notions of deterrence, retaliation, and first strike, dressing them up in the trendy jargon of the computer age. Notions of preventive attack and preemptive attack are also being revamped. One big difference which the propagandists do not point out is that, while nuclear war was considered an unthinkable last resort by most government officials, the new propaganda portrays cyberwarfare as not unthinkable at all, but something that can be indulged in with relative impunity.
Very important legal questions arise in this context. Does a cyber attack constitute an armed attack? Can a cyber attack be casus belli, grounds for issuing a declaration of war? Is escalation from computers to bombs legal? Can a cyber attack represent a threat to international peace and security for the purposes of the United Nations charter? Can a cyber attack be used to invoke article V of the NATO treaty, which calls for common defense?
A third aspect of the current media blitz is that a new cast of enemies is being groomed and brought onstage, even as the shadowy adversaries of yesterday are relegated to a less prominent position – at least as far as cyber-aggression is concerned. In the CNN simulation, there is some discussion of a possible role of “Al Qaeda” and “bin Laden” in the ongoing attack. But this idea is brusquely and almost scornfully dismissed with the reply that those guys are known to live in caves, and therefore could hardly have the equipment necessary to carry on cyber warfare, even though they might desire to do so. For the CNN producers and their intelligence community consultants, the targets are clear: Russia (specifically the city of Irkutsk), China, and Sudan are the three countries mentioned as sources of the cyber attacks shutting down the US economy. With this, we have gone far beyond the narrow confines of the Middle East to target the largest country in the world, the largest country in Asia, and the largest country in Africa. The new target list involves two great powers, and not simply Iraq or Iran. We can see bigger and more lunatic adventures being prepared by the US scenario writers.
The fourth unmistakable overtone of the current propaganda barrage is the danger we can sum up under the heading of virtual flag terrorism. The world of cyber warfare is so opaque and recondite for the average person, and solid confirmation of claims so hard to come by, that rogue bureaucrats in the US and British governments will be able to a surge virtually anything with little fear of being refuted. Google accuses China of hacking without offering any convincing proof, and China denies the charge. What is the average person to believe? What prevents hackers in league with invisible government rogue moles at the NSA from deliberately attacking US facilities, and then blaming it on China, thus ginning up a major international provocation with little risk of being caught?
If millions of people are plunged into the dark, if trains and airliners crash, if other disasters occur, it is child’s play to issue a communiqué blaming hackers in the service of the Russian, Chinese, Sudanese, the Iranians, or other governments. The governments accused can certainly issue denials, but it is not clear how such a charge could be convincingly refuted.
The CNN simulation includes a discussion of the difference between location and attribution, meaning that the mere fact that an attack is launched from the country’s territory does not mean that the government is responsible. “Location is not attribution,” intones Secretary of State Negroponte at one point. But we can already hear the voice of the inevitable neocon warmonger asserting à la Bush that no distinction must be made between the servers spreading a destructive virus and the government whose territory harbors those servers. For the neocon, location and attribution are sure to be the same. This opens the possibility of starting a conflict by infiltrating physical provocateurs onto the territory of the targeted nation, and letting them launch a cyber attack from there. Even easier, so-called botnets of captive computers commandeered by trojans and related viruses can be used to launch the attack.
It goes without saying that the beltway bandits and Pentagon contractors are eager to cash in on the lucrative contracts that are now in the offing. More broadly, cyber warfare can be used as a great alibi for purposes of avoiding civil liability in the age of underfunding and asset stripping. When we have the next crash in the Washington DC metro, the management and the National Transportation Safety Board can ignore decades of underfunding and simply blame everything on Russia, China, and the Sudan, and tell the families of the victims to go and sue those governments. It is therefore time to begin a campaign of counter-inoculation of international public opinion against this new set of ominous lies which is being foisted off on the world.
Posted: March 12th, 2010 | Author:admin | Filed under:Social Media | Comments Off
The Daily Telegraph
March 12, 2010
Darren Mattox, 29, admitted posting a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character when he appeared at Wrexham Magistrates Court.
He used the word in a posting to ex-girlfriend Ashleigh Speed.
He wanted to see his baby son, born last October after their three-month relationship ended in April.
Magistrates were handed printouts of messages sent by Mattox to Ms Speed, her father and her sister, but they were not read to the court.
The Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said: “There have probably been only a handful of cases resulting from offensive material either on Facebook or YouTube.”
Alex Jones’ websites were assaulted by a massive, organized and sustained attack today which is still ongoing as zombie computers around the world were used to launch a denial of service attack which is undoubtedly related to our ongoing efforts to expose the government’s Cybersecurity agenda as the gargantuan threat to Internet freedom it represents.
“It appears to be a Distributed Denial of Service attack, utilizing “zombied” (or hacked) computers all over the world to overwhelm our servers, disabling them from serving normal traffic,” states our Infowars systems administrator.
As Wikipedia explains, a DoS attack consists of “Saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.”
This is precisely what happened to Prison Planet.tv and Infowars.net today, while flagship websites Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com have also come under attack but are still holding up at time of press.
The most likely source for the attack is obviously the inner sanctum of the military-industrial complex that we have been exposing for months as they rush through their Cybersecurity initiative which represents a massive threat to Internet freedom.
It is at times like these that we really need your support to bolster our servers in order to fend off these kind of attacks, either by getting the DVD’s or becoming a Prison Planet.tv member.
As is our habitual response, every time we are attacked we only grow stronger by beefing our servers and launching another website – which is exactly what will happen tomorrow with the birth of the Real Coffee Party initiative.
The enemies of freedom will be defeated in their continual attempt to silence free speech and their attacks will only make us close ranks and become stronger in the fight against the new world order.
The government will not exempt universities, libraries and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week.
This would leave many organisations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access.
Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, told ZDNet UK on Thursday that the scenario described by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in an explanatory document would effectively “outlaw open Wi-Fi for small businesses”, and would leave libraries and universities in an uncertain position.
Posted: February 22nd, 2010 | Author:admin | Filed under:Social Media | Comments Off
Computer scientists at Rutgers University have shown how a familiar type of personal computer security threat can now attack new generations of smart mobile phones, with the potential to cause more serious consequences. The researchers demonstrated how such a software attack could cause a smart phone to eavesdrop on a meeting, track its owners travels, or rapidly drain its battery to render the phone useless.
Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
February 15, 2010
Under the guise of “protecting Americans” and choosing itself in so-called “national security,” the current Obama administration wants to be able to control the ability of people and organizations to access the Internet.
This concept on its face seems very harmless and in the best interest of the country, however, having the ability to “turn the Internet off or shutting down sites that Obama considers “dangerous” including particular political groups, individuals or organizations who espouse differing views has far reaching political, financial, moral and legal implications.
Such a policy imposed under Executive Order to control what enters Internet sites and what is shared daily would stifle free speech in direct violation of the First Amendment rights of all Americans.
During the elections in Iran, its citizens using Facebook and Twitter got out 95% of the news from Iran. In America would our social sites be shut down if enough people using them “dared” to question the current political regime in power at any given time? Sitting ominously in the Senate is the Rockefeller Bill S. 773 to takeover the Internet in emergencies. As we all know, once taken over, we will never get it back the way it was before. This is what elitists have in mind for us.
America’s brightest minds and taxpayers funds made the Internet happen, and now there are indications that the Obama administration is moving quietly to allow control of the web to move from the US to foreign powers. Such a transfer of power and control would change the future of mankind. This would be affected via our Department of Commerce.
America controls the Internet via the Domain name System (DNS), and the servers that serve the Internet. They are managed by IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which operates via the Department of Commerce, being responsible for global cooperation and coordination of the DNS, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol sources. Without these elements one would not have access to the Internet.
Over the years, the UN and others internationally have been pressing the US to give away control and management to an international body. Those thirsting for this power are the UN and the International Telecommunications Union, which coordinates international telephone communications. Their argument is that the Internet has become a powerful and dependent form of communications, that is dangerous and inequitable for one nation to control and manage.
Our President has agreed to relinquish some control over IANA and its governance. Foreign companies and countries would have a greater say in what goes on in the Internet. This is the foot in the door. Before you know it the UN will have control and censorship will begin. No control should be given to any other country or body. It is not only our Internet; it is a matter of national security, which our government is up too. The world has been allowed to share this miracle free and without censorship or restriction. Do we want to end up like the Chinese, where their communist government recently told Google to censor the Internet? Do we want the UN to use the Internet as a source of funding? Do we want the UN or any participant country to restrict what we can say or do on the net? Do we want limitations on free speech? That is what the UN has planned for us. The Internet will no longer be a vehicle of free speech. Why would we want to give away one of our most precious and greatest assets for nothing to a group that is bent on enslaving us via one-world government? Once our control is gone we will never get it back.
The Council on Foreign Relations, literary house organ that we have subscribed to for 50 years, Foreign Affairs, tells us that many governments feel that, like the telephone network, the Internet should be administered under a multilateral treaty. They view ICANN as an instrument of American hegemony over cyberspace and that its private-sector approach favors the US and gives it oversight authority, and that other nations have no say as to what goes on in the Internet. Then again, we did invent it and do own it. Its private construction was deliberately implemented to keep government out of the net, not for the US or any other government or body to control it. South Africa, Brazil and China as stooges for one-world interests are demanding an international treaty, so the UN can control it. Adding to the demands are the intellectually void countries of Zimbabwe, Cuba and Syria. These three paragons of peace and prosperity want the UN to tell us how to run our Internet.
UN bureaucrats and ministers from under-developed nations in particular say the US has undue influence over how things run on line. They want a treaty under which their regimes cannot be criticized. They want Internet surveillance and the power to tax domain names to pay for universal access and, of course, to fund their regimes. They in their protestations have no intention of stopping spam because much of it emanates from their countries. They want all kinds of censorship. Can you imagine what China or Cuba’s demands would be? China and Cuba are both dictatorships. Why would such one-party states be allowed in the UN, never mind telling us how censorship would work? Both jail people for political decent and sometimes execute them. We can also throw Iran in for good measure. This is a nation with one political party that in 2003 jailed 80 journalists and activists. Then Iran wants UN control so that thousands of immoral websites can be banned. This war by the internationalists to control the Internet is not new. It began in 1999. That is when the UN proposed taxing all e-mail messages to pay for development aid.
You cannot legislate morals. That is reflected in our unsuccessful ventures into legislation of alcohol, drugs, sex and tobacco and now the UN wants to legislate all kinds of content. Are we to allow the curtailment of our First Amendment rights? We do not think so. Are we to tolerate Cyber Patrols or Net Nannies?
In addition we now have cyber crime investigators pushing for the creation of a national web interface linking police computers. 89% of police say they want to look into e-mail accounts in a broad push by law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. They want laws requiring Internet companies to store data for up to five years and they want instant access to police inquiries instead of waiting hours or days for responses from Internet companies. They want emergency access like the FBI had and terribly abused that privilege to get phone numbers. In the Internet the police want information now not after a review of whether the request is appropriate.
This is where the President wants to take us and we do not like it. Be sure to contract your house and Senate representatives and let them know how you feel about this abridgment of your privacy and your rights. If you do not act now, it may be too late later.