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MICROSOFT
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COMPUTER News:
20080914
 Sarah
Palin -  Rove
-  Abramoff
-  E-Mail
- Secrecy
-  Government
-  Archive
-  Politics
-  Legal
-  Investigation
-  Computer
-  Internet
-  Tech
-  Alaska
- 2008
Election
"Even
before VP nomination, Palin's e-mail use questioned."
... "Moments after [2008 Election Republican Vice Presidential Candidate
and Alaska Governor] Gov. Sarah Palin's first speech as Republican [2008
Election Presidential Candidate] John McCain's running mate, she sat with
her kids backstage, thumbing one of the two BlackBerrys that are always
with her." ... "The tech-savvy governor has one of the devices (which allow
users to read and send e-mails) for state business and another for personal
matters, but those worlds intertwine." ... "Palin routinely uses a private
Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor's
office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts, too." ... "The practice
raises questions about backdoor secrecy in an administration that vowed
during the 2006 campaign to be "open and transparent."" ... "Even before
the McCain campaign plucked Palin from Alaska, a controversy was brewing
over e-mails in the governor's office. Was the administration trying to
get around the public records law through broad exemptions or private e-mail
accounts?" ... "The governor's Yahoo account is "the most nonsensical,
inane thing I've ever heard of," said Andree McLeod, who is appealing the
administration's decision to withhold e-mails." ... ""The governor sets
the tone and the tone that has been set by this governor is beyond the
pale," McLeod said. "Common sense tells you to use an official state e-mail
account for official state business."" ... "State lawyers say that the
governor's e-mails about public business should be treated like any other
public record, even if she's sent them through a private account such as
Yahoo." ... "Some of her aides also routinely use Yahoo, but even messages
sent from one private account to another should be public, if they concern
public business, said Dave Jones, an assistant attorney general." ... ""The
difficulty is finding out they exist," Jones said." ... "The [Republican
President] Bush administration has drawn heat over revelations that more
than 80 White House aides, including senior Bush adviser Karl Rove, used
private GOP e-mail servers for government business. The controversy surfaced
during congressional investigations into White House contacts with convicted
lobbyist Jack Abramoff and into the firings of U.S. attorneys." -By
Lisa Demer -ADN.com
via -McClatchyDC.com
20080806
Hacking
-  Business
- Computer
- Consumer
- Data
- Identity
Theft -  Privacy
-  US
-  Ukraine
-  China
"Theft
ring accused of hacking 41 million credit card numbers."
... "Eleven people, including a U.S. [United States] Secret Service informant,
have been charged in connection with the hacking of nine major retailers
and the theft and sale of more than 41 million credit- and debit-card numbers,
the Justice Department announced Tuesday." ... "The data breach is believed
to be the largest hacking and identity-theft case ever prosecuted by the
Department of Justice, which said the suspects were charged with conspiracy,
computer intrusion, fraud and identity theft." ... "Three of those charged
are U.S. citizens, while the others are from places such as Estonia, Ukraine,
Belarus and China." -StarTribune
20080621
China
- Hackers
- US
- GOV
- Lawmakers
- Human
Rights - Politics
-  Military
- Intelligence
- Investigation
-  Va
-  NJ
-  Ill
"More
congressional computers hacked from China." ... "More
Members of Congress have had their computers infiltrated by hackers within
China than initially suspected, a lawmaker has revealed." ... "[Representatives]
Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va. [Republican-Virginia), Chris Smith (R-N.J. [Republican-New
Jersey), and Mark Kirk (R-Ill. [Republican-Illinois]) admitted to having
data removed from their Capitol Hill computers last week, but Wolf says
there are more." ... "“I would suspect that the Foreign Affairs, Armed
Services, Intelligence, (and) Appropriations committees would all be top
targets,” Kirk said." ... "Wolf and Smith said they believe the hackers
focused on them because of their continued objections to China’s human
rights violations, and suspected that the hackers were looking for information
on dissidents." ... "The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] asked the
lawmakers not to speak publicly, fearing that if they did, they would be
unable to track the IP addresses of the hackers, Kirk said." ... "“When
you’re in the middle of a criminal investigation, you try not to alert
the criminal of what’s happened so you can track it down,” he said." -By
Jordy Yager -TheHill.com
20080612
 Health
- Science
-  Environmental
-  Safety
- Laws
-  Manufacturing
- Industries
-  EU
- US
-  Global
- Consumers
- Government
- Politics
- Computer
- Privacy
-  Newborns
"Chemical
Law Has Global Impact: [European Union's] E.U.'s
New Rules Forcing Changes By [United States] U.S. Firms." ... "Europe this
month rolled out new restrictions on makers of chemicals linked to cancer
and other health problems, changes that are forcing U.S. industries to
find new ways to produce a wide range of everyday products." ... "The new
laws in the European Union require companies to demonstrate that a chemical
is safe before it enters commerce -- the opposite of policies in the United
States, where regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before it
can be restricted or removed from the market. Manufacturers say that complying
with the European laws will add billions to their costs, possibly driving
up prices of some products." ... "The changes come at a time when consumers
are increasingly worried about the long-term consequences of chemical exposure
and are agitating for more aggressive regulation. In the United States,
these pressures have spurred efforts in Congress and some state legislatures
to pass laws that would circumvent the laborious federal regulatory process."
... "Adamantly opposed by the U.S. chemical industry and the [Republican
President] Bush administration, the E.U. laws will be phased in over the
next decade. It is difficult to know exactly how the changes will affect
products sold in the United States. But American manufacturers are already
searching for safer alternatives to chemicals used to make thousands of
consumer goods, from bike helmets to shower curtains." ... "The European
Union's tough stance on chemical regulation is the latest area in which
the Europeans are reshaping business practices with demands that American
companies either comply or lose access to a market of 27 countries and
nearly 500 million people." ... "From its crackdown on antitrust practices
in the computer industry to its rigorous protection of consumer privacy,
the European Union has adopted a regulatory philosophy that emphasizes
the consumer. Its approach to managing chemical risks, which started with
a trickle of individual bans and has swelled into a wave, is part of a
European focus on caution when it comes to health and the environment."
... "A study by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found an average
of 200 industrial chemicals in the cord blood of newborns." (1, 2)
-By Lyndsey Layton -WashingtonPost
20080611
Secret
- Surveillance
-  Cellphone
-  Tracking
- Technology
- Internet
- Financial
- Data
- Electronic
- Intelligence
-  Counterterrorism
- Investigation
- Law
- Politics
"Secret
Spy Court Repeatedly Questions FBI Wiretap Network."
... "Does the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] track cellphone users'
physical movements without a warrant? Does the Bureau store recordings
of innocent Americans caught up in wiretaps in a searchable database?
Does the FBI's wiretap equipment store information like voicemail passwords
and bank account numbers without legal authorization to do so?" ... "That's
what the nation's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] wanted
to know, in a series of secret inquiries in 2005 and 2006 into the bureau's
counterterrorism electronic surveillance efforts, revealed for the first
time in newly declassified documents." ... "The inquires are the first
publicly known questioning of the FBI's post-9/11 surveillance activities
by the secret court, which has historically
approved nearly every wiretap application submitted to it. The
court handles surveillance requests in counterterrorism and foreign espionage
investigations. The inquiries add to questions surrounding how the FBI
has used the broad powers handed to it by Congress in the 2001 USA Patriot
Act, including the FBI's admitted
abuse of so-called National Security Letters to get stored telephone
and financial records." ... "Among other things, the declassified documents
reveal that lawyers in the FBI's Office of General Counsel and the Justice
Department's Office of Intelligence Policy Review queried FBI technology
officials in late July 2006 about cellphone tracking. The attorneys asked
whether the FBI was obtaining and storing real-time cellphone-location
data from carriers under a "pen register" court order that's normally limited
to records of who a person called or was called by." ... "Separately, the
secret court questioned if the FBI was using pen register orders to collect
digits dialed after a call is made, potentially including voicemail passwords
and account numbers entered into bank-by-phone applications." ... "EFF's
Bankston says it's clear that FBI offices had configured their digit-recording
software, [Digital Collection System] DCS 3000, to collect more than the
law allows." ... "For more on the FBI's sophisticated wiretapping technology
and how it links in with the nation's phone and internet infrastructure,
see Point,
Click, Eavesdrop." -By Ryan Singel
-27B/6 -Wired
20080507
-
Secret
- Government
- Intelligence
- Terrorism
- Politics
- Illegal
- Surveillance
- Investigation
- Internet
- Archive
-
 Library
- Electronic
- Civil
Liberties - Brewster_Kahle
- Censorship
- San
Francisco -  California
-  Student
- Health
- Consumer
- Telephone
- Electronic
- Data
- National
Security Letter - "FBI
Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses."
... "The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the
web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act
order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the
order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning." ...
"On November 26, 2007, the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] served
a controversial National
Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet
Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the
library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity
on the site." ... "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive's
lawyers, fought the NSL [National Security Letter], challenging its constitutionality
in a December 14 complaint
(.pdf) to a federal court in San Francisco [California]. The FBI agreed
on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some
of the documents available to the public." ... "The Patriot Act greatly
expanded the reach of NSLs, which are subpoenas for documents such as billing
records and telephone records that the FBI can issue in terrorism investigations
without a judge's approval. Nearly all NSLs come with gag orders forbidding
the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, except to a lawyer."
... "Brewster Kahle called the gag order "horrendous," saying he couldn't
talk about the case with his board members, wife or staff, but said that
his stand was part of a time-honored tradition of librarians protecting
the rights of their patrons." ... ""This is an unqualified success that
will help other recipients understand that you can push back on these,"
Kahle said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning." ...
"Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally
ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests
for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports
also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since
2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week,
the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued." -By
Ryan Singel -Wired
-
 Scott
J Bloch
- Criminal
- Government
- Computer
- Censorship
- Politics
-  Workers
- Law
- Virginia
- "Federal
Agents Raid Office of Special Counsel." ... "Nearly
two dozen federal agents yesterday raided the Washington headquarters of
the agency that protects government whistle-blowers, as part of an intensifying
criminal investigation of its leader, who is fighting allegations of improper
political bias and obstruction of justice." ... "Agents fanned out yesterday
morning in the agency's building on M Street, where they sequestered Office
of Special Counsel chief Scott J. Bloch for questioning, served grand-jury
subpoenas on 17 employees and shut down access to computer networks in
a search lasting more than five hours." ... "Bloch, who was nominated to
his post by [Republican] President Bush in 2003, is the principal official
responsible for protecting federal employees from reprisals for complaints
about waste and fraud. He also polices violations of Hatch Act prohibitions
on political activities in federal offices." ... "Bloch has long been a
target of criticism, some of it by his agency's career officials, but the
FBI's [Federal Bureau of Investigation's] abrupt seizure of computers and
records marked a substantial escalation of the executive branch's probe
of his conduct. Retired FBI agents and former prosecutors called the raid
an unusual, if not unprecedented, intrusion on the work of a federal agency."
... "Agents from the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general's
office, who have been investigating Bloch for more than two years, visited
his home on Stockade Drive in Alexandria [Virginia] yesterday. They left
carrying boxes of files." ... "Complaints from [whistle-blowers lawyer
Debra] Katz's clients and others ultimately prompted the inspector general
at the Office of Personnel Management to begin examining Bloch's treatment
of workers and his handling of cases involving whistle-blowers at other
agencies. During the probe, Bloch hired the technology service Geeks on
Call to erase his computer hard drive and those of two aides, giving rise
to new allegations that he was obstructing justice." (1, 2)
-By Carrie Johnson and Christopher Lee with contributions
by Stephen Barr and Daniela Deane and research editor Alice Crites
-WashingtonPost
-
Scott
J Bloch
-
 Lurita
Alexis Doan - Illegal
- Political
- Government
- Workers
- Hatch
Act - Computer
- Censorship
- 2004
Election - Travel
- "FBI
seizes Doan, Rice case files in raid of OSC chief's office."
... "About 20 FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] agents and administrative
investigators executed search warrants Tuesday on the U.S. [United States]
Office of Special Counsel in a daylong raid that appeared at least partly
focused on finding information on the office's high-profile investigations
into alleged illegal political activity by [Republican President] Bush
administration officials." ... "Last year, the OPM IG's office began looking
into Bloch's hiring of private computer technicians to remove files from
his office computer and those of aides. The files had been sought by investigators,
but Bloch has described the files as personal and not relevant to the probe."
... "But OSC employees said the grand jury subpoenas seek a wide range
of information that goes beyond Bloch's deletion of computer files or treatment
of agency employees." ... "Investigators have demanded all files on OSC's
investigation last year into allegations of improper political activity
by Lurita Doan, the former head of the General Services Administration,
who was forced to resign last week by the White House." ... "OSC found
that Doan, in a January 2007 meeting to discuss Republican congressional
races with the agency's political appointees and a White House political
operative, violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from using
government resources for partisan politics. But the finding generated criticism
from House Republicans, who accused Bloch of leaking results of the Doan
investigation to the news media." ... "During Tuesday's raid, investigators
did not seek files from the wider Hatch Act probe, but they subpoenaed
at least two OSC employees who are part of the unit looking into the suspected
political activities. They also sought Bloch's expense and credit card
records, information regarding his use of storage facilities or safety
deposit boxes and material related to testimony he has delivered at congressional
hearings." ... "In addition, investigators demanded documents related to
OSC's investigation into allegations that Secretary of State Rice used
federal resources to travel to campaign appearances supporting President
Bush's re-election in 2004. Bloch's office closed the case, finding no
violation by Rice." -By Dan Friedman
-CongressDaily
via -GovExec.com
-
Scott
J Bloch
-
 Karl
Rove - Criminal
- Government
- Workers
- Politics
- Hatch
Act -  History
- Computer
- Data
- Censorship
- "FBI
Raids Special Counsel, Seizes Data." ... "Federal
agents raided the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency involved
in several high-profile and politically sensitive investigations. The agents
seized computer files and documents from its chief, Scott Bloch, and his
staff." ... "Mr. Bloch, who was appointed by [Republican] President Bush,
has been under investigation since 2005 by the Office of Personnel Management
for employee claims that he abused his agency's authority, retaliated against
its staff and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination."
... "The Justice Department joined the case as the inquiry was widened
last year to include possible obstruction of justice, which is a criminal
offense. The Wall Street Journal reported [November] Nov. 28 that in the
midst of the inquiry Mr. Bloch used an agency credit card to hire a commercial
firm, Geeks on Call, to erase data from his computer and those of former
staff." ... "The Office of Special Counsel, created in the 1970s in the
wake of the Watergate scandal, probes sensitive personnel and whistleblower
claims by government workers. It also enforces the Hatch Act, which forbids
the use of federal resources for partisan political purposes." ... "Among
the office's recent inquiries was whether former [Republican President
Bush] White House political director Karl Rove and others improperly used
U.S. [United States] agencies to help elect Republicans." ... "Mr. Bloch's
investigation of the White House political operation began after a Rove
deputy gave a series of political presentations to government agencies
on Republican prospects in specific congressional races. Mr. Bloch's office
wanted to know whether such presentations violated the Hatch Act." -By
John R. Wilke -WSJ.com
20080421
-
Corporate
- Hackers
- Manufacture
- Electronics
- Technology
- California
-
 Texas
- US
- Global
-  TV
- Telecom
-  Media
-  Copyright
- Enforcement
-  German
-  Canada
-  UK
-  Israeli
- Intelligence
- Spying
- "Rupert
Murdoch Firm Goes on Trial for Alleged Tech Sabotage."
... "Did a Rupert Murdoch company go too far and hire hackers to sabotage
rivals and gain the top spot in the global pay-TV war?" ... "This is the
question a jury will be facing in a spectacular five-year-old civil lawsuit
that is finally being tried this month in California but which has, oddly,
received little notice from U.S. [United States] media." ... "The case
involves a colorful cast of characters that includes former intelligence
agents, Canadian TV pirates, Bulgarian and German hackers, stolen e-mails
and the mysterious suicide of a Berlin [Germany's capital] hacker who had
been courted by the Murdoch company not long before his death." ... "On
the hot spot is NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm that makes smartcards for
pay-TV systems like DirecTV. The company is a majority-owned subsidiary
of Murdoch's News Corporation. The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused
of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards
and systems for EchoStar's Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further,
it’s alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit
NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network's programming for free."
... "NagraStar and one of its parent companies, EchoStar, are seeking about
$101 million for damages for piracy, copyright infringement, misconduct
and unfair competition. The list of witnesses in the case includes EchoStar's
founder and CEO Charlie Ergen; several hackers and pirates; and Reuven
Hazak, an Israeli who heads security for NDS and is a former deputy head
of Shabak, or Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency (the equivalent
of Britain's MI5)." ... "According to court documents, the scheme began
to unravel in 2000 when law-enforcement agents in Texas seized suspicious
packages containing CD and DVD players stuffed with more than $40,000 in
cash. Parcels similar to this were being sent almost daily from Canada,
via Texas, to a hacker in California named Christopher Tarnovsky, who was
working for NDS as an engineer. The money was allegedly part of the conspiracy
between Tarnovsky and NDS Group to sabotage NagraStar's cards." -By
Kim Zetter -Wired
20080321
-
Government
- E-Mail
- Computer
- Data
- Archives
- History
- Presidential
Records Act - Law
- Politics
- Secrets
- "White
House: Computer hard drives tossed." ... "Older [Republican
President Bush] White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the
White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions
of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005." ... "The White House revealed
new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade
a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery
plan that the court proposed." ... ""When workstations are at the end of
their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite
to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House
said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. [United States] Magistrate
Judge John Facciola." ... "At a House committee hearing last month, a computer
expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system
"primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that
data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived."
-By Pete Yost -AP
via -Yahoo
20080318
-
Presidential
Records Act - Government
- E-Mail
- Archives
- Computer
- Technology
- Politics
- US
-
 Iraq
- Military
- History
- "White
House E-Mail Battle Heats Up: Judge: [Republican
President Bush's] White House Has Three Days to Explain Why It Shouldn't
Have to Copy Its Computer Hard Drives." ... "The White House has three
days to explain why it shouldn't be required to copy its computer hard
drives to ensure no further e-mails are lost, a federal judge ordered Tuesday."
... "Already, e-mails between March and October 2003 appear to have been
lost, Judge John M. Facciola noted, because they were improperly archived
and no backup copies exist. That period includes the U.S. [United States]
invasion of Iraq." ... "E-mails by White House staff are considered part
of the nation's historical record, and federal law [the Presidential Records
Act] requires they be preserved. The White House has admitted that potentially
millions of e-mails from the past eight years have been erased, although
it has provided conflicting accounts on how many may still exist on backup
tapes." -By Justin Rood
-ABCNEWS.com
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