NPR’s Andy Carvin, tweeting the Middle East

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By Paul Farhi, Tuesday, April 12, 7:24 PM

Hold on a second, says Andy Carvin mid-conversation, swiveling to his laptop. He taps away for a few seconds, as quiet as a squirrel. And then he’s back.

Carvin does this 20, 25, 30 times — it’s easy to lose count — an hour. It’s practically second nature now. Often, he doesn’t even interrupt what he’s saying; the typing and the talking happen simultaneously.

Carvin is tweeting, relentlessly. Seven days a week, often up to 16 hours a day. He once went 20 hours straight, pumping out more than 1,400 brief messages on his Twitter account, @acarvin. That’s his guess, at least. It’s easy to lose count.

Since December, Carvin, a social-media strategist at NPR in Washington, has become a one-man Twitter news bureau, chronicling fast-moving developments throughout the Middle East. By grabbing bits and pieces from Facebook, YouTube and the wider Internet and mixing them with a stunning array of eyewitness sources, Carvin has constructed a vivid and constantly evolving mosaic of the region’s convulsions.

At a given moment, Carvin may be tweeting links to fresh video from Libyan rebels, photos of street protests in Bahrain or the highlights of a NATO news conference. His followers, in turn, point him to more material — on-the-ground accounts of the government crackdown in Yemen, breaking reports from Tahrir Square, the latest from Jordan or Syria.

The result is a dizzying, nonstop ride across the geopolitical landscape, 140 characters at a time:

• March 31: “Extremely graphic video of a Libyan man with half his jaw blown off, giving a V for victory sign & trying to talk” [link to video].

• April 11: “Video appears to show victims of shootings in Baniyas, Syria. More cameras than there are corpses” [link to video].

• April 9: “At least 10 casualties from tonight’s assault in Sanaa. Can’t really tell who’s alive and who’s dead” [link to Yemeni photo on Facebook].

And so on, into the thousands. “Is this the world’s best Twitter account?” asked the Columbia Journalism Review about @acarvin last week.

Carvin’s high-beam focus on the region has attracted more than 43,000 followers, essentially the readership of a small newspaper. His flock has more than doubled since he started tweeting about the Middle East in December during the first stirrings of rebellion in Tunisia.

Among those following his prodigious output: Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, actress Morgan Fairchild and Chad Ochocinco, the Cincinnati Bengals’ oddball wide receiver.

“It was very clear to me in December that Tunisia would be a big deal,” says Carvin, a stocky 39-year-old who seems to be constantly clicking, tapping or typing, “but it never occurred to me that this could kick off something much, much bigger. My tweeting kind of revved up with it.”

There isn’t really a name for what Carvin does — tweet curator? social-media news aggregator? interactive digital journalist? — but that may be because this form of reporting is still being invented. By Carvin, among others.

“I see it as another flavor of journalism,” he says. “So I guess I’m another flavor of journalist.”

Carvin likens himself to a radio or TV anchor, introducing the experts, the pundits and reporters. The difference, he hastens to add, is that Anderson Cooper has to go to the scene of his stories — and eventually has to go to sleep.

Not Carvin, whose anchor chair goes where he does and whose metabolism seems permanently set on “Go!” Carvin spends his workdays at a bland cubicle at NPR’s headquarters, but his tweets come from wherever he is (his wife, Susanne, says his iPhone is “pretty much an extension of his palm at this point”). He live-tweeted the first attack on protesters in Bahrain while he waited in line at the men’s room in Zaytinya, the downtown D.C. restaurant. He sent updates while at a Duran Duran concert at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, and at a pirate-themed birthday party in Baltimore with his 4-year-old daughter in tow. He regularly tweets on the Metro during his commute to and from his home in Silver Spring.

It doesn’t seem at all surprising that he suffers from repetitive stress in his hands and wrists and wears a special pair of corrective gloves when he’s planted at his desk at work.

Oddly enough, the one place Carvin hasn’t tweeted about the Middle East is . . . the Middle East. Carvin has been to Tunisia, Egypt, Israel and several other countries in the region, but has not been back since 2005, a time before Twitter.

Even more oddly: Before the tweet gig came along, the closest Carvin came to professional journalism was co-producing a documentary with his wife about Thai kickboxing. He spent more than a decade after college as a Washington policy wonk, specializing in technology and educational issues for such outfits as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the nonprofit Benton Foundation, for whom Carvin headed a project exploring ways to close the “digital divide” affecting poor communities. In 2006, NPR hired him to help the organization’s journalists make use of new media such as Facebook and Twitter. Carvin started tweeting soon after Twitter launched in 2006, mostly as a way to stay abreast of the news and to keep in touch with friends.

Susanne Carvin, a former National Geographic researcher who raises the couple’s two young children, says she understands her husband’s dedication to the story and the nonstop nature of it. “A few years ago, he would have been glued to a desktop,” she says. “Now, since he can do it all on his [iPhone], he can go to the garden with us, be walking along, check in with his contacts overseas. . . . It has become so commonplace, and he does it so regularly that half the time I don’t even realize he’s online.”

The Carvins’ children, meanwhile, take daddy’s wired habits for granted; his daughter and son, who is 2 1 / 2, have accidentally tweeted when he’s left his laptop unattended. So have the family’s two cats.

Part of the attraction of social media, Carvin says, is how it can be used for crowd-sourcing, or tapping a group’s collective knowledge and experience. During the 2008 election, for example, Carvin marshaled his followers to fact-check the presidential debates and provide tips about polling-place irregularities.

The same technique helped Carvin get to the bottom of a story last month. When he heard from a follower that Arab news sources were reporting that Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi had attacked rebels with Israeli-made mortar rounds, Carvin thought the story sounded fishy. He found the reports had a superficial basis: The Facebook page of Al Manara, a Libyan expatriate news service based in the United Kingdom, showed a photo of a munition stamped with what appeared to be a Star of David topped with an odd multi-crescent shape.

“They ID it as Israeli,” Carvin tweeted. “Maybe, maybe not. Need help to ID it. Anyone?”

Within minutes, Carvin’s “tweeps” — his Twitter people — began piecing it together:

“81mm calibre — it’s not eastern. Probably British,” responded one follower.

Another found a photo of a British-made 81mm shell with the same markings. Still another noted that the star logo indicated that it was an illumination round and the crescent signified a parachute, which deploy on such rounds to slow their descent.

This was soon followed by links to photos of similar rounds manufactured in India and France. Another follower posted a page from a NATO weapons manual that instructed member countries to identify their shells with the star-and-crescent markings.

Carvin declared the story “debunked,” even as other news outlets, including Al Jazeera’s Arabic TV channel, continued to report the bogus link to Israel.

“In a lot of ways, this is traditional journalism,” says Mark Stencel, NPR’s managing editor for digital news. Except that Carvin “has just turned the newsgathering process inside out and made it public. He’s reporting in real time and you can see him do it. You can watch him work his sources and tell people what he’s following up on.”

Another benefit is the “social” part of social media — Carvin has developed hundreds of sources through the give-and-take of Twitter. One of his best sources about opposition activities in Yemen is a former Miss Universe Canada contestant, Maria Al-Masani, a member of a well-connected Yemeni family.

Carvin also befriended a Libyan named Mohammed Nabbous, a tech buff who had created a 24-hour live video stream to report on events there. While witnessing fighting near Benghazi last month, Nabbous was killed in the crossfire. Carvin lauded him on NPR as “a pioneer” of an independent Libyan press.

Despite the speed of delivery and breadth of material that Carvin musters every day, the form has its weaknesses. Carvin acknowledges that it’s difficult to know the full context of some of the information he transmits, such as the harrowing footage he linked to last week of a father encountering his dead and disfigured son in a hospital room. The video apparently was from Yemen, but much else — who shot it, under what circumstances and when — was hard to substantiate.

What’s more, Carvin doesn’t speak Arabic or Farsi, which means he must rely on his followers for translations. He’s also never met about two-thirds of the hundreds of sources he uses for tips and tweets.

Carvin candidly notes another potential pitfall: He’s far more likely to get information from rebels than from the regimes. “The majority of people online [in the Middle East] are young, better-educated and skew toward reform,” he notes.

All this makes some observers raise an eyebrow about Carvin’s work. “To have NPR appoint a senior strategist with full knowledge that they are publishing news or information based on tweets of unknown or unvetted sources is troubling,” says Adam Curry, a media critic and vet­eran technology blogger (and long-ago MTV veejay). “Who knows where some of this is coming from? I’m not saying Andy’s a bad guy or has an agenda. But I do think it’s worth asking what NPR thinks it’s doing.”

Actually, NPR thinks Carvin is creating something new. “What you’re witnessing is Andy’s effort to determine the veracity of what’s emerging,” says Kinsey Wilson, the head of NPR’s digital-media division. “It’s not positioned as the definitive sort of piece that you might hear on NPR. It’s a different form.”

In his defense, Carvin says he relies on sources who’ve proven to be reliable and drops those with dubious track records. He’s open about unconfirmed material, flagging some claims with a single skeptical word, such as “Source?” or “Evidence?”

Carvin’s followers also are quick to point out his misfires. When Carvin tweeted a link to what he thought was video of nurses ministering to a wounded girl, his followers jumped in. The girl wasn’t wounded, they told him, she was dead; the women were washing the girl’s body for burial according to Muslim custom. Carvin quickly corrected his tweet.

The key, he says, is disclosing what he doesn’t know and asking others to fill in the blanks.

“It’s a self-correcting mechanism,” he says. “I don’t want to think of myself as a wire service. It’s an open newsgathering operation.”

He pauses, just before plunging back into the Twittersphere once more. “A lot of the time,” he adds, “I’m raising more questions than I’m answering.”


farhip@washpost.com

US report cites worrying trend of governments increasingly trying to control the Internet

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Geeks

By Associated Press, Friday, April , 2:02 PM

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration warned Friday that governments around the world are extending their repression to the Internet, seeking to cut off their citizens’ access to websites and other means of communication to stave off the types of revolutions that have wracked the Middle East.

The State Department’s annual human rights report paints a worrying picture of countries “spending more time, money and attention in efforts to curtail access to these new communications outlets.” More than 40 governments are now blocking their citizens’ access to the Internet, and the firewalls, regulatory restrictions and technologies are all “designed to repress speech and infringe on the personal privacy of those who use these rapidly evolving technologies.”

Presenting the mammoth, 7,000-page report, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said curtailing Internet freedom meant violating the fundamental rights of expression, assembly and association.

“Democracy and human rights activists and independent bloggers found their emails hacked or their computers infected with spyware that reported back on their every keystroke,” Clinton said. “Digital activists have been tortured so they would reveal their passwords and implicate their colleagues.”

Clinton singled out Myanmar and Cuba for government policies that seek to preempt any online dissent by keeping almost their entire populations off the Internet.

But they are far from alone.

The report criticizes Saudi Arabia, a vital U.S. ally but one opposing the Obama administration’s push for democratic reforms in the Arab world, for spying on e-mail and chat rooms, and blocking sites about religions such as Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity. The conservative Sunni kingdom also prevented people from reaching webpages about forms of Islam deemed incompatible with Sharia law and national regulations, according to the report.

During its election, the Sudanese government blocked access to a website monitoring votes.

Vietnamese authorities orchestrated attacks against important sites and spied on dissident bloggers, arresting 25 last year and forcibly entering the homes of others to confiscate computers and cell phones.

And the Chinese government, among the world’s most sensitive to any sign of dissent, tightly controlled content on the Internet and detained people for expressing critical views of the government or its policies.

Clinton noted that the report is being released during a wave of unrest across the Arab world. She said the U.S. has been “inspired by the courage and determination of the activists in the Middle East and North Africa and in other repressive societies, who have demanded peaceful democratic change and respect for their universal human rights.”

In Egypt and Tunisia, activists aided by Twitter and similar websites were able to mobilize massive demonstrations that brought down their long-time leaders. The Internet and mobile phone technologies have helped give voice to similar protest movements in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere. And violence continues in Libya, where strongman Moammar Gadhafi is refusing to heed the call of many nations to leave power.

The unrest has led many governments to reassess how open they want to be, fearful of seeing their authority challenged by individuals determined to gain a greater say in governance.

Michael Posner, U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights, said the Obama administration is spending a lot of time trying to figure out what governments around the world are doing to control the Internet. He said two main methods are being employed.

“Some governments — the Chinese would be an example, the Iranians — put up a firewall,” Posner told reporters. But, “most governments aren’t going to shut down the Internet. They are simply going to go after the people who use it that are dissenters. So they hack into their computers, they take their cell phones when they are arrested and they grab the list of names that are in their address book. They use every technical capacity they have to invade privacy, to monitor what these dissenters are doing.”

To aid people seeking to speak out, the U.S. government is helping to finance circumvention technologies to avoid firewalls, he said. To deal with governments hacking computers or intimidating dissenters, the U.S. government has trained 5,000 people from around the world on how to leave less of a trace on the Internet.

“It’s one of the most innovative things we’re doing,” Posner said. “In a lot of cases, people who are using the Internet in these societies aren’t sufficiently mindful either of what their possibilities are technically to protect themselves, or what the risks are.”

Clinton highlighted a couple of other worrying trends in human rights around the world.

She said there has been a “widespread crackdown” on civil society activists, whose work is vital so that governments understand the needs of their people. Venezuela’s government has intimidated such groups through the courts and new restrictions on independent media. And in Russia, there have been violent crackdowns on campaigners and numerous attacks and murders of journalists and activists, she said.

In other places, the most pressing problem was the repression of vulnerable racial, ethnic and religious minorities, as well as gays and lesbians, Clinton said. She cited Pakistan as a problem country because blasphemy remains a crime punishable by death, and two government officials who sought to change the law were assassinated. Other extremist attacks have killed dozens of people just for practicing their religion in Iraq, Egypt and Nigeria, while Iranian authorities executed more than 300 people last year.

Among the countries which improved their respect for human rights, Clinton cited Colombia, Guinea and Indonesia.

She said the U.S. “will stand with those who exercise their fundamental freedoms of expression and assembly in a peaceful way, whether in person, in print or in pixels on the Internet.”

Internet firms wake up to federal privacy scrutiny

Image via Wikipedia
By Cecilia Kang, Friday, April , 11:10 AM

As LinkedIn prepares to sell its stock to the public, the social network for professionals is warning of a potential threat to its business: Internet privacy laws.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month, the start-up said a push by federal regulators to create privacy rules “could deter or prevent us from providing our current products and solutions to our members and customers, thereby harming our business.”

Silicon Valley is on alert. As federal officials move closer to creating Internet privacy laws, companies that have enjoyed the freewheeling nature of the Internet find themselves under increased scrutiny.

Google, Facebook and marketer Epsilon are among the world’s biggest repositories of digital information, and the giants have long lobbied against privacy laws that would curb their ability to collect and share data. To do so would limit their business prospects, they say, and they argue that consumers want advertisers to slice and dice data to serve up more relevant ads.

Now those concerns are rippling across the entire Internet industry.

“No matter what size the company, they are seeing how a government inquiry can shut down a business or affect the future of others,” said Hemanshu Nigam, founder of the privacy consulting firm SSP Blue and former privacy head for MySpace. “Privacy is now a line item in business plans.”

That’s a change of pace for Web entrepreneurs, who are typically given a long leash by regulators to plug away at new technologies without the distraction of politics and policy in Washington.

But in the past year, Silicon Valley firms have seen a bevy of Web companies swept into federal investigations of alleged consumer protection violations and fraud.

This week, Internet radio site Pandora revealed that it was called into a broad federal grand jury investigation into the alleged illegal sharing of user data by a number of firms that create apps for the iPhone and Android devices. Days earlier, Google settled with the Federal Trade Commission on charges it exposed data through its Buzz social networking application without the permission of users. Last year, Twitter settled with the agency after an investigation found the micro-blogging site’s loose security allowed hackers to access user information.

The damage from those investigations comes in the form of legal costs and, in the case of Google, the mandate of regular privacy audits. But the bigger worry is how those inquiries hurt reputation, said venture capital investor Raj Kapoor of the $2.8 billion Mayfield Fund.

These days, he said, privacy policies have become integral to his decisions about new tech investments. He’s seeing start-ups with just a handful of employees appoint a privacy officer to ensure new products and services are designed with data protection in mind.

Google said last June it had appointed a director of privacy. Yahoo and Microsoft also have chief privacy officers.

“It’s just good business because it engenders customer loyalty,” Kapoor said. “If we don’t make these efforts. the government will enforce regulation, and as much as the private sector can do on our own, the better.”

The FTC wants to create a “Do Not Track” requirement for Web sites. That would allow users to block advertisers from following their movements online.

The idea “could significantly hinder our ability to collect and use data relating to listeners,” Pandora warned in its filing with the SEC.

But companies fighting new rules face a difficult battle as more privacy breaches are found.

This week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to investigate a data leak by Epsilon, an e-mail marketing firm, that exposed information about millions of consumers. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating Google for vacuuming up Wi-Fi user data by cars used to take photos for its Street Views mapping application.

The incidents, privacy advocates say, underscore the need for basic Internet privacy rules. They want the FTC to take a stronger hand in enforcement and are seeking to prevent companies from tracking users online, particularly through location-based services. They want companies to purge the information they collect within months and not share that data with advertisers and apps developers.

But the buying habits, music preferences, demographics and location of users are the kinds of rich details advertisers hunger for as they seek to increase the likelihood an ad for Weight Watchers or Mercedes-Benz will reach the right demographic and turn into real purchases.

Naveen Selvadurai, a founder of Foursquare, said he’s concerned new rules would not take into consideration technologies being developed to help solve security and privacy concerns.

He said keys have been developed in place of passwords for added security. Browser companies such as Mozilla and Microsoft have implemented their own “Do Not Track” technologies that block Web sites from following user activity.

On Foursquare, users’ locations are identified only when a user actively “checks in” to a location, unlike other services that constantly follow users through global positioning services.

“My main concern is that I don’t want people to misunderstand what they are applying rules to,” said Selvadurai. “Many interesting things can be done without over-reaching laws that aren’t fully thought out on the technology side.”

kangc@washpost.com

Related articles

• Pandora Issued a Subpoena for Possibly Violating Internet Privacy Laws (techland.time.com)
• Quick Hits: Feds Investigate Third-Party Mobile Applications (michaelfertik.com)
• Google Privacy Settlement Unlikely to Lead to Big Change (dailyfinance.com)
• Common Issues and Concerns About Internet Data and Network Security (brighthub.com)

Massive Breach at Epsilon Compromises Customer Lists of Major Brands

By Mike Lennon on Apr 02, 2011 

 

Due to the growing list of brands disclosing they've been compromised as a result of this breach, I’m going to go ahead and tag this as a massive breach. And I only expect it to get bigger as more announcements come out from Epsilon customers. Last night we reported on a breach at marketing services provider, Epsilon, the world’s largest permission-based email marketing provider. Initially we wrote that the breach had affected Kroger, the nation's largest traditional grocery retailer.
It turns out that Kroger is only one of many customers affected by the breach at Epsilon.
Epsilon sends over 40 billion emails annually and counts over 2,500 clients, including 7 of the Fortune 10 to build and host their customer databases.
SecurityWeek has been able to confirm that the customer names and email addresses, and in a few cases other pieces of information, were compromised at several major brands including the following:

• Kroger • TiVo • US Bank • JPMorgan Chase • Capital One • Citi • Home Shopping Network (HSN) (added 4/3 @10:22am) • Ameriprise Financial • LL Bean Visa Card • Lacoste • AbeBooks • Hilton Honors Program • Dillons • Fred Meyer • Beachbody (Makers of TRX) • TD Ameritrade • Ethan Allen • Eileen Fisher • MoneyGram • TIAA-CREF • Verizon • Marks & Spencer (UK) • City Market • Smith Brands

• McKinsey & Company  • Ritz-Carlton Rewards  • Marriott Rewards • New York & Company • Brookstone • Walgreens (Again!) • The College Board (added 4/3 @8:20am) • Disney Destinations • Best Buy • Robert Half • Target • QFC • bebe Stores • Ralphs • Fry's •             1-800-Flowers       • Red Roof Inn • King Soopers • Air Miles • Eddie Bauer • Scottrade • Dell Australia • Jay C

Some may dismiss the type of data harvested as a minor threat, but having access to customer lists opens the opportunity for targeted phishing attacks to customers who expect communications from these brands. Being able to send a targeted phishing message to a bank customer and personally address them by name will certainly result in a much higher “hit rate” than a typical “blind” spamming campaign would yield. So having access to this information will just help phishing attacks achieve a higher success rate.
A Marriott Rewards & Ritz Carlton Rewards spokesperson told SecurityWeek that their customer names, email addresses, and member point balances were exposed:

"We recently discovered that one of our third parties’ computer systems was tampered with. Tampering with our systems by an unauthorized person or persons is an illegal act and we reported this incident to a law enforcement agency who is currently investigating this matter. The unauthorized person(s) had access to email addresses and member point balances. They did not have access to member addresses, account logins and passwords, credit card information or other personal data," the spokesperson wrote in an email.

Correction: The Marriott Rewards spokesperson contacted us on Sunday to correct their initial statement, saying that member point balances were not disclosed after all.

Citi also warned customers over Twitter about the incident, Tweeting the following: "Please be careful of phishing scams via email.  Statement from Citi for our valued Customers regarding Epsilon & email" with a link to the following statement: "Because e-mail addresses can be used for "phishing" attacks, we want to remind our customers that Citi uses an Email Security Zone in all our email to help them recognize that the email was sent by us. Customers should check the Email Security Zone to verify that email they have received is from Citi and reduce the risk of personal information being 'phished.'"
As the initial disclosure by Epsilon occurred late in the day on Friday, I expect several more brands to be announcing that they’ve been affected by the breach as well. When asked to comment, Epsilon has refused to provide additional details on what other brands may have been affected.

Plus - 

http://www.securityweek.com/epsilon-confused-about-what-personally-identifiable-information-pii

Epsilon: Confused About What Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Is

By Mike Lennon on Apr 07, 2011

Epsilon’s parent company, publicly traded Alliance Data Systems Corporation (NYSE: ADS), today issued a follow-up statement to the recent massive data breach, but provided little information beyond what the company had already stated in its initial disclosure of the breach.
What’s interesting, however, is that Epsilon continues to claim that no Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was compromised. Being the world's largest permission-based email marketer, I would think that they, more than anyone, would know what PII is AND what can be done with it.
What amazes me is that the subheading of the release dives directly into how no PII was compromised:

“Investigation Continues to Confirm Compromise Limited to Email Addresses and Names; No Personal Identifiable Information (PII) Compromised”

According to the Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information, published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, examples of PII include:

• Name, such as full name, maiden name, mother‘s maiden name, or alias

• Address information, such as street address or email address

According to Wikipedia, Personally Identifiable Information, when used in information security, is defined as “information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual.”
It appears to me that Epsilon is a bit confused on the definitions, and what can be done with the personally identifiable that WAS compromised and in the hands of the attackers.
According to Joris Evers, director of worldwide public relations for McAfee, “The bad news is that clever attackers could use what has been breached to gain more information. The Epsilon breach exposes millions of consumer names and e-mail addresses, potentially associated with particular household brands that these consumers do business with. This collection could be a treasure trove for cyberattackers who could use the information to con unsuspecting individuals out of more valuable information such as credit card numbers and home addresses.”
“While Epsilon is not disclosing the exact number of emails impacted, we’re likely talking about hundreds of millions of exposed email addresses. Because attackers can link these email addresses to banks and retailers the email owner actually does business with, the likelihood of a successful attack is significantly increased,” said Steve Dispensa, PhoneFactor CTO and co-founder. “Phishing emails that appear to come from a person’s bank or a retailer they regularly receive emails from are more likely to be acted upon them. Unfortunately it is very difficult for the average person to distinguish between a dangerous and a safe email. The result is likely an increase in the number of successful phishing attacks over the next few months.”
Josh Shaul, CTO at Application Security, Inc. says people need to pay attention to what is being sent to them. “Everyone should be on high alert that their inboxes will very likely be hit hard with phishing attempts and need to be extra vigilant on what they click on", said Shaul.  “To be safe, we might be better off if we just deleted any and all emails that appear to have been sent from breached companies for the immediate future. Epsilon has an estimated 2,500 customers. So far we only know of 50 that were affected. There are likely to be many more and this has the potential to get very ugly, very fast."
Epsilon said that it’s working with Federal authorities, as well as other outside forensics experts, to both investigate the breach and to ensure that any additional security safeguards needed will be promptly implemented.
Epsilon is in an unfortunate situation. As SecurityWeek columnist Terry Cutler recently wrote, “RSA Breach: Not the First, Not the Last,” and just a few weeks later is the first big event since. You can be sure that the Epsilon breach won’t be the last big breach as well.
Maybe financial details aren’t directly in the hands of attackers. That’s a good thing. But the last time I checked, a name was a damn good way to identify someone.

 

 

 

Two Major New Internet Resources: Full Text Reports, INFOdocket

Image by sylvar via Flickr

• FullTextReports is compiled and edited by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy. The site is free to access.
• Before launching FullTextReports, Price and Kennedy were senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for more than 10 years.
• This website is updated as often as possible during the week and at least once a day on the weekends.
• The sister site to FullTextReports, INFOdocket, offers information industry news, useful websites, search tips and Image via Wikipediatools...and occasional commentry
• FullTextReports is not DocuTicker and INFOdocket is not ResourceShelf. Gary and Shirl are no longer contributors to either of those sites.
• You can contact Shirl and Gary at: FullTextReports@gmail.com or INFOdocket@gmail.com.

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Best Websites to Track Popular and Viral Videos Online

1. First-Hand: Most Popular on Youtube, Viddler, etc

Every major video sharing site has its own trending video section. The 7 coolest ones are:

1. Viddler: Most Popular Today: The list can be sorted by “Most Viewed”, “Most Favorited” and “Most Discussed”
2. YouTube Charts: apart from the ability to set the period of time (popular today / this week / this month / all time), it also lets you sort the list by multiple criteria: “Most discussed”, “Most liked”, “Most Subscribed”, “Most viewed HD videos”, “Most Favorited” and, obviously “Most Viewed”

3. Yahoo Popular Today – Yahoo has also “Popular by Category” section
4. Most Popular Videos on Photobucket (sadly, you can’t set the time frame here);
5. Funny or Die: Most Viewed: You can filter videos by channel and sort by “Most Buzz” (not sure what this one includes), “Most Viewed”, “Most Favorited”, “Highest Rated”:

6. Metacafe – most popular: can be sorted by views and ratings and filtered by time frame: popular this week o this month
7. DailyMotion: Most Viewed Videos: the videos can be filtered by channel, time frame (today, this month, this week), and by video type (featured videos, HD videos, official content, creative content):

2. Viral Video Aggregators

Aggregators use multiple sources (like those listed above) to present you with daily (and sometimes hourly) collections of popular videos at a number of platforms.
Here are a few examples:
1. Viral Video Chart: the tool monitors “most contagious” videos on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Blogosphere. For each video you can click though to “stats” section where you can see the number of Tweets (as long as the list of most influential ones), Facebook shares and blog posts.

2. PoPScreen: the home page features videos which are going to become popular videos “now” (you can switch to “today”, “7 days”, “30 days”). The popularity is determined by “Popscore” which includes “hundreds” of undisclosed metrics including “influencer” score (i.e. powerful online media resources and magazines that reflect the public interest to the current topic). The site thus focuses on delivering videos that are making headlines and the stories behind them.
PopScreen measures online videos from over 10,000 sources, including YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo and DailyMotion as well as content networks like FunnyOrDie and Cracked.

3. Zoofs is a great way to discover YouTube videos that people are talking about on Twitter. Zocial.tv is a similar one that monitors Twitter and Facebook.

3. Regular Viral Video round-ups

Some people love browsing video sharing sites and find best videos on his own, others prefer to go through ready-made manually-compiled round-ups. I for one can do both the ways. The two video round-ups I tend to monitor:

• Viral Video Roundups by Reelseo;
• Viral Videos (with some focus on movies and TV) by Movie Viral

Free E-Books: The Open Library (from The Internet Archive) Launches a Much Improved Online E-Book Reader

Image via Wikipedia

December 9, 2010 20:12

The Open Library (an Internet Archive initiative) has just launched a new version of their online ebook reader (aka BookReader) featuring a new user interface and other tools. It's terrific.

BookReader allows users read/search more than two million digitized books (and other items) available from The Open Library and Internet Archive.

When searching the Internet Archive eBook and eText Collection, look for the link to read the item online in the left column. Users will also notice that books and other items can also be downloaded in a number of formats.

Using Open Library to search, find, and access books, either click the "read icon" on a search results page (online ebook reader will open) or click the cover thumbnail. Users will be taken to a page with several options (read online, download, send to Kindle, etc.).

Once BookReader is open, here are a few of the things you can do:

1. Clicking the "i" (top of reader) provides a list of formats you can download the item in; send to Kindle (very cool), link to provide feedback, and more.

2. Clicking the three circles icon (next to the "i") allows you to get the code to directly link to the book and/or embed (that's right, embed the book*) on a web page or blog.

The embedded BookReader – now includes "expando" button to view the book in a new browser window.

3. Clicking the speaker icon, will provide text-to-speech allowing you to listen to the book. The Open Archive calls it "Read Aloud."

4. On the bottom of BookReader you'll find the navigation bar. Sliding the finger icon will take you directly to a specific page, facing pages, or multiple pages (depending on the view you select).

5. The remaining icons allow users select how pages are viewed (one page, facing pages, multiple pages); increase/decrease type size; and move back and forth throughout the book.

What's listed above is only the beginning. This blog post from the Open Library has information on more features the the ebook reader provides including:

+ Automatically Generated Tables of Contents for Most Books.
Look for the chapter markers appear in the new navigation bar

+ Improved Full-Text Search of Each Item
Wow! Search results are shown on the navigation bar and include a snippet of text near the matched search term. The search box is located on the top-right side of the reader.

+ Touch gesture support – swipe to flip pages in two-page mode, pinch to zoom on iOS.

+ Improved support for tablet devices like the iPad.

Hopefully, support for iPhone and other mobile platforms are in the works.

As you've read, BookReader is full powered but it's also very easy to use (and learn).

Finally, BookReader and the more than 2 million items you can use it to access are free.

Its been a great year for the Open Library with its relaunch and the addition many new features. With this launch, the OL is ending the year on an excellent note. We can't wait to see what's in store in 2011.

Kudos to Brewster, Peter, George, Michael, and the rest of the IA/OL team.

Pew Research Center - Future of the Internet

Future of Internet - Pew Internet Research

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Internet is Latest Battleground in Thailand's Heated Political Landscape

VOA

Ron Corben | Bangkok11 August 2010

The Internet is the latest battleground in Thailand's stormy political climate as the government attempts to shut down Web sites critical of it and the monarchy. The government is using tough laws to silence online criticism, but net users are finding ways to be heard.

During months of political protests earlier this year, the Thai government shut down thousands of Web sites it said fanned the protests or criticized the royal family.

May protests

The protests, which left 90 people dead and more than 1,400 injured, ended on May 19 when the army dispersed the crowds.

But the battle over the Internet continues.

Internet crackdown

Using the Computer Crimes Act and an emergency decree, the government shuts sites it thinks support the red-shirt protest movement. Media rights groups say more than 50,000 Web sites have been closed.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn is a director with Prachatai.com, an on-line news site the government shut down in April. A big concern for the government apparently was the site's discussion boards.

She says Prachatai shut the discussion board in July. Chiranuch faces charges under the Computer Crimes Act and if convicted could go to jail.

"Even I believe in the freedom of expression or free speech but I understand some limitation and we also set up a kind of system to moderate some content that can be considered violate the rights of the people or violate the law," Chiranuch said.

Government position

Government spokesman Panitan Wattanaygorn defends the Internet censorship policy.

"The situation under the emergency decree is very different," said Panitan. "On one hand we still keep the freedom of the media. But on the other hand we do look into certain messages that create tension, confrontation and push people to confront among one another and that activity is monitored."

A decade ago, it was easier for the government to control the media. TV and radio have long been state-controlled.

And newspapers faced attacks during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's administration earlier in this decade.

Tough to control

Chris Baker, an author and political analyst on Thailand, says new technologies are harder to control.

"In the past the government was able to control all broadcast media very closely and generally could influence the press," Baker said. "But that situation has totally changed with cable and satellite TV spinning out of control, community radio and the whole Internet as well."

Prachatai.com is an example of that. Pinpaka Ngamson, an editor for the site, says the government could only shut it temporarily.

"Now it's not difficult for us to work anymore, we know how to cope with this kind of order from the government," said Pinpaka. "We just change our server and use another URL [Uniform Resource Locator] and go on with our work."

Media plea

Thai media commentators have called on the government to rethink on-line censorship. They say it reinforces international opinion that Thailand's media is increasingly less free.

Supinya Klanarong, a media activist, says the Computer Crimes Act is applied too broadly beyond insults against the royal family. Supinya says more media restrictions have emerged since the anti-government protests ended in May.

"It means a general opposition Web site related to the red-shirt movement or the critics of the government are also being blocked as concern for national security, too," Supinya said. "So it's not only about the issue related to les majeste but is also about political Web site in general, especially the dissident point of and the opposition."

Some of the concerns appear to have been heard.

Improvements

Government leaders say they hope to improve draft legislation on the Internet laws.

Panitan, the government spokesman, says the there is a need to balance security and Internet freedom.

"On the one hand we regulate these activities in such a way that it's not going to harm our national interests," Panitan added. "Specific activities may not be allowed to be in those Web sites. But on the other hand we want to keep other communications open."

But media groups such as the Southeast Asian Press Alliance say the government has been intimidating Web users who engage in "sensitive political discussion". The group warns that shutting down Web sites may backfire and lead to the radicalization of those who post political comments on-line.