Why the Latest, Hottest Hacker Group May Never Have Existed. I’ll admit it. Like many of my colleagues, I’m a sucker for a great story. Sure, I run it through the standard fact-checking traps, and try to question and independently confirm each detail. And always, I remind myself that if it smells too good to […]
Saving Lives Wirelessly
Mobile Devices Are Saving Lives and Money Rosanne Skirble | Washington, D.C. World Health officials have released the most comprehensive global survey to date of how mobile phones and other wireless communication technologies are improving health care delivery around the world. The World Health Organization survey notes that there are more than five billion mobile […]
UPDATE: Syria Cuts The Internet
Why Nations Block The Web, And What May Follow UPDATE: 1500 hours UTC Friday: Earlier we posted about the near flat-lining of Internet traffic within Syria, wondering whether Damascus was adopting a tactic tried earlier this year by Egypt. As detailed earlier this year, Egyptian authorities squeezed the Border Gateway Protocols – the road maps […]
Fingers in the Dike
Did Washington Block Discussion of a Security Patch? Should It Have? Reports of cyber-attacks and security hacks have been filling the Net lately. Sony’s “Playstation Network” has suffered a very public series of crippling hacks that may have compromised the personal information of the network’s 100 million users – and cost the electronics giant over […]
Syria’s Internet Hijack
Using a “Man-in-the-Middle” to Target Activists Given the civil unrest roiling the Middle East, Syria’s recent decision to unblock Facebook seemed…well, puzzling. After all that’s been made of the social network’s role in helping organize the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings, why would Damascus choose this moment to open it up? Perhaps now we have the […]
The Conspiracy Factory
“Conspiracy theory is pornography for lazy researchers.” – Chip Berlet
Alive In Benghazi
Libyans Sharing Stories From The Front Lines The video is as direct as its story is powerful. A young Libyan, Ali Salem Ali Milad Shaoud, looks directly into the camera – and, by extension, into the eyes of everyone watching him online. He’s wearing a kafiya, a black t-shirt, a green flak vest…and a bandage […]
The Web Reacts to a Tsunami
Reporting and Responding to a Massive Earthquake & Tsunami Friday morning’s historic 8.9 magnitude earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan, and the resulting tsunami that tore into the Japanese coastline, set the Internet into overdrive across the entire Pacific basin. Even more than the 2004 Indian Ocean or “Boxing Day” tsunami, the first fierce […]