December 22, 2014

The aftermath - Greenpeace action damages world heritage site

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/56515070/highlight/585039

PBS newshour report.



https://news.vice.com/article/drone-footage-shows-extent-of-damage-from-greenpeace-stunt-at-nazca-lines

December 22, 2014

The FBI told their story about North Korea attacking Sony. Before we retaliate, read what they didn’

Walking it back




http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-these-experts-still-dont-buy-20141221-column.html

December 22, 2014

Wolff on Sony hack: Taking down Goliath

For nearly a generation, it's been an either/or world split between traditional media and digital media, with digital as the obvious choice for progressive thinking people.

In part, this is because the media industry had, over many years, consolidated into what certainly seemed like a hegemonic cartel (hundreds if not thousands of independent companies combined into five major media conglomerates). Hence, new media became the compelling and in many ways inspirational alternative.

Using digital media tools to undermine, or in fact actually steal, the business of old media seemed like something of a liberation movement. Who regretted the destruction of the music industry and its limousine fat cats, except the fat cats themselves? Or newspapers with their old white men? New media was bringing down the establishment.

The most concerted effort by the hoary media establishment — although, by now, much less of an establishment — to defend itself was SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. This was a 2011 bill that would have given the U.S. government clearer wherewithal to fight copyright infringement and that would have curbed parts of the key 1998 legislation, the Digital Millennial Copyright Act, that protected the new digital media industry from onerous infringement penalties (or, put another way, that let it infringe without much risk). SOPA, though, became a digital rallying cry against the old regime: Here it was trying to save itself by breaking the open Internet.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/wolff/2014/12/21/sony-documents-fighting-digital-hegemony/20610925/

December 22, 2014

Why Sony hack isn't front page news in Japan

The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s biggest newspaper, featured a story about Sony Corp. on its website Friday. It wasn’t about hacking. It was about its struggling tablet business.

Over at wire service Kyodo News, just after the FBI formally blamed North Korea for the cyberattack, pop group AKB48 topped headlines online instead.

While American journalists have extensively covered the fallout from the unprecedented hacking attack on Sony Pictures, it hasn’t exactly been massive news here. Stories certainly surfaced after President Barack Obama weighed in on the issue at his year-end press conference Friday. But overall it has received relatively modest attention, mostly in short stories on the inside pages of the major dailies here.

This might all be perplexing to the rest of the world since Sony is one of Japan’s most iconic global brands. But there are a few good reasons why the story hasn’t gotten major play in the mainstream media:

Read More: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/21/business/sony-hack-isnt-front-page-news-japan/

December 22, 2014

U.S. Border Agents Wound Canadian Wielding Gun

Source: NY Times

The federal border agency said Sunday that a Canadian man was shot and wounded after pointing a handgun at guards at the Ambassador Bridge crossing between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.

Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that the man stopped his car before an inspection booth around 3 a.m. on Sunday and starting walking toward border officers while waving a gun.

The officers ordered him to drop the weapon, but the man refused and instead pointed his gun in the officers’ direction, prompting them to open fire.

The man was treated at a hospital before being taken to jail, Kris Grogan, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said in a statement.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/us/us-border-agents-wound-canadian-wielding-gun.html

December 22, 2014

What Will Israel Become?

Uneasiness inhabits Israel, a shadow beneath the polished surface. In a violent Middle Eastern neighborhood of fracturing states, that is perhaps inevitable, but Israelis are questioning their nation and its future with a particular insistence. As the campaign for March elections begins, this disquiet looks like the precursor of political change. The status quo, with its bloody and inconclusive interludes, has become less bearable. More of the same has a name: Benjamin Netanyahu, now in his third term as prime minister. The alternative, although less clear, is no longer unthinkable.

“There is a growing uneasiness, social, political, economic,” Amos Oz, the novelist, told me in an interview. “There is a growing sense that Israel is becoming an isolated ghetto, which is exactly what the founding fathers and mothers hoped to leave behind them forever when they created the state of Israel.” The author, widely viewed as the conscience of a liberal and anti-Messianic Israel, continued, “Unless there are two states — Israel next door to Palestine — and soon, there will be one state. If there will be one state, it will be an Arab state. The other option is an Israeli dictatorship, probably a religious nationalist dictatorship, suppressing the Palestinians and suppressing its Jewish opponents.”

If that sounds stark, it is because choices are narrowing. Every day, it seems, another European government or parliament expresses support for recognition of a Palestinian state. A Palestinian-backed initiative at the United Nations, opposed in its current form by the United States, is aimed at pushing Israel to withdraw from the West Bank by 2017. The last Gaza eruption, with its heavy toll and messy outcome, changed nothing. Hamas, its annihilationist hatred newly stoked, is still there parading its weapons. Tension is high in Jerusalem after a spate of violent incidents. Life is expensive. Netanyahu’s credibility on both the domestic and international fronts has dwindled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/roger-cohen-what-will-israel-become.html

December 21, 2014

U.S. Soldiers (Ground troops) Fight Islamic State in Iraq, Kurds Advance

U.S. soldiers clashed with Islamic State militants, helping the Iraqi army repel attacks against the town of al-Baghdadi in the western Anbar province, Al Jazeera TV reported, as Kurdish forces advanced in the north.

The U.S. troops were from al-Assad military base, the biggest in Anbar, First Lieutenant Muneer al-Qoud from the Iraqi police said by phone. Meanwhile, a U.S. senior military official said there are no U.S. ground troops fighting in Iraq, though forces can engage in self-defense if required.

The clashes may mark the first time U.S. ground forces have engaged Islamic State militants since President Barack Obama authorized air strikes against the al-Qaeda breakaway group in August. A ground conflict would signal a policy shift for Obama, who made pulling the U.S. out of Iraq the centerpiece of his first presidential campaign and oversaw the withdrawal of combat forces from the country in 2011.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-12-20/u-dot-s-dot-troops-fight-islamic-state-in-western-iraq-al-jazeera-says

December 21, 2014

Hillary Clinton slips in presidential poll: Was 2014 a bad year for her?

When a politician drops 10 percentage points in the polls in a year, a reasonable assumption is that it has probably not been a very good year.

Then again, “reasonable” has not really applied to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presumed run for the presidency in 2016.

Since January, Hillary Rodham Clinton has seen the percentage of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents who would vote for her in a primary or caucus drop by 10 points, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Buzz/2014/1221/Hillary-Clinton-slips-in-presidential-poll-Was-2014-a-bad-year-for-her

December 21, 2014

Sony Hackers Guardians of Peace Troll FBI

On Saturday afternoon, Guardians of Peace, the hacking group that’s so far claimed responsibility for wreaking havoc on Sony, posted a message online mocking the FBI’s investigation.

It is as follows:

“By GOP
The result of investigation by FBI is so excellent that you might have seen what we were doing with your own eyes.

We congratulate you success.

FBI is the BEST in the world.

You will find the gift for FBI at the following address.”

Then, they included a link to the following video titled “you are an idiot!”—essentially Rickrolling the FBI. The video opens with some words in Japanese, before cutting to a series of gyrating animated bodies shrieking, "You are an idiot!"



While the FBI, President Obama, and George Clooney seem thoroughly convinced that the Guardians of Peace are the work of Pyongyang—the name “Guardians of Peace” comes from a quote used by former President Richard Nixon describing South Korea—many hackers online have questioned the allocation of blame from Day One, including former Lulzsec hacker turned government information Sabu, who maintains they “don’t have the technical capabilities,” and Anonymous, who wrote, “we all know the hacks didn't come from North Korea,” and threatened to launch further hacks against Sony if they don't release the film online.

Some of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts have also questioned whether North Korea is responsible for hacking Sony, claiming a decided lack of evidence or that it came from a group posing as North Korea as misdirection, such as Brett Thomas, chief technology officer of Redwood City, California-based online services company Vindicia:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/20/sony-hackers-guardians-of-peace-troll-fbi-fbi-is-the-best-in-the-world.html

lulz

December 21, 2014

Infiltration. sabotage. mayhem. for years, four-star general keith alexander has been building a sec

Infiltration. sabotage. mayhem. for years, four-star general keith alexander has been building a secret army capable of launching devastating cyberattacks. NOW IT’S READY TO UNLEASH HELL.

INSIDE FORT MEADE, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.

This is the undisputed domain of General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.

Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger. “What we see is an increasing level of activity on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”

In its tightly controlled public relations, the NSA has focused attention on the threat of cyberattack against the US—the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like power plants and water systems, the susceptibility of the military’s command and control structure, the dependence of the economy on the Internet’s smooth functioning. Defense against these threats was the paramount mission trumpeted by NSA brass at congressional hearings and hashed over at security conferences.

http://www.wired.com/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/all/