The technological and commercial skirmishes over WikiLeaks escalated into a full-blown online assault yesterday when, in a serious breach of internet security, a concerted online attack by activist supporters of WikiLeaks succeeded in disrupting MasterCard and Visa.
The acts were explicitly in "revenge" for the credit card companies' recent decisions to freeze all payments to the site, blaming illegal activity. Though it initially would acknowledge no more than "heavy traffic on its external corporate website", MasterCard was forced to admit last night that it had experienced "a service disruption to the MasterCard directory server", which banking sources said meant disruption throughout its global business.
Later, Visa's website was also inaccessible. A spokeswoman for Visa said the site was "experiencing heavier than normal traffic" and repeated attempts to load the Visa.com site was met without success.
Related to several topics from the censorship / online speech / internet addiction unit...
Sex, drugs more common in hyper-texting teens
By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer – Tue Nov 9, 4:09 am ET
ATLANTA – Teens who text 120 times a day or more — and there seems to be a lot of them — are more likely to have had sex or used alcohol and drugs than kids who don't send as many messages, according to provocative new research.
The study's authors aren't suggesting that "hyper-texting" leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but say it's startling to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and that kind of risky behavior.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101109/ap_on_he_me/us_med_teens_texting
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I get the feeling a lot of people aren't going to notice the difference between correlation and causation...
"...the government has done little to ensure that images taken by the devices are not saved. The TSA has asserted that the machines cannot store pictures, but security personnel at a courthouse in Florida were found to not only have saved images but shared them among colleagues in order to humiliate one of their co-workers."More information National Opt-Out Day: http://www.optoutday.com/ As stated on the site, the goal of National Opt Out Day is to "send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change. We have a right to privacy and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we're guilty until proven innocent. This day is needed because many people do not understand what they consent to when choosing to fly."
I find this article very interesting/entertaining about Google. Somehow it reminds me of the book 1984 by Orwell.
The image states that data is streamed via "smart devices" using body to body networking
This caught my attention today: MySpace has started cracking down on app developers that share personal user data. This is in violation of MySpace's terms of use. I think this fits well with our current class topic of privacy and privacy invasion.
“Defendant Facebook has infringed and continues to infringe one or more claims of the ’682 patent. Facebook is liable for infringing the ’682 patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271 by making and using websites and associated hardware and software to provide alerts that information is of current interest to a user as claimed in the patent.”“Defendant Google has infringed and continues to infringe one or more claims of the ’682 patent. Google is liable for infringing the ’682 patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271 by making and using websites and associated hardware and software to provide alerts that information is of current interest to a user as claimed in the patent.”"
This article is even more relevant to our fellow American 430'ers - but can touch us all as we all use youtube and similar services on a regular basis.. This bill could effectively overturn the recent supreme court decision that prevented Viacom from removing clips of their shows from youtube.com...
"Stop the Internet Blacklist
By David Segal and Aaron Swartz
When it really matters to them, Congressmembers can come together -- with a panache and wry wit you didn't know they had. As banned books week gets underway, and President Obama admonishes oppressive regimes for their censorship of the Internet, a group of powerful Senators -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have signed onto a bill that would vastly expand the government's power to censor the Internet.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced just one week ago, but it's greased and ready to move, with a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee this Thursday. If people don't speak out, US citizens could soon find themselves joining Iranians and Chinese in being blocked from accessing broad chunks of the public Internet.
COICA creates two blacklists of Internet domain names. Courts could add sites to the first list; the Attorney General would have control over the second. Internet service providers and others (everyone from Comcast to PayPal to Google AdSense) would be required to block any domains on the first list. They would also receive immunity (and presumably the good favor of the government) if they block domains on the second list.
The lists are for sites "dedicated to infringing activity," but that's defined very broadly -- any domain name where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are "central to the activity of the Internet site" could be blocked.
One example of what this means in practice: sites like YouTube could be censored in the US. Copyright holders like Viacom often argue copyrighted material is central to the activity of YouTube, but under current US law, YouTube is perfectly legal as long as they take down copyrighted material when they're informed about it -- which is why Viacom lost to YouTube in court.
But if COICA passes, Viacom wouldn't even need to prove YouTube is doing anything illegal to get it shut down -- as long as they can persuade the courts that enough other people are using it for copyright infringement, the whole site could be censored.
Perhaps even more disturbing: Even if Viacom couldn't get a court to compel censorship of a YouTube or a similar site, the DOJ could put it on the second blacklist and encourage ISPs to block it even without a court order. (ISPs have ample reason to abide the will of the powerful DOJ, even if the law doesn't formally require them to do so.)"
