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FBI May Shut Down Your Internet Access March 8th

trojan horse computer graphic
© n/a
This March 8th, the FBI is planning to unplug DNS servers it set up to help eliminate malware from over half of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies still infected in early 2012.

The change could potentially leave a great number of Internet users without access to the Web.

InfoWorld reports:
...the feds replaced the criminals' servers with clean ones that would push along traffic to its intended destination. Without the surrogate servers in place, infected PCs would have continued trying to send requests to aim at the now-unplugged rogue servers, resulting in DNS errors.
The malware, called DNSChanger Trojan, is said to illegally redirect traffic and prevent users from accessing the updates necessary to remove it. Without access to these critical patches, these large companies, government agencies, and home users are said to be more susceptible to hackers.

Handcuffs

Dozens Arrested in Turkey Anti-Terror Probe

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© ReutersKurdish demonstrators shout slogans and hold flags with portraits of jailed PKK leader Ocalan during a protest in Brussels early January 2012
Turkish police have arrested about 100 people in a new nationwide operation targeting union leaders and activists because of alleged links to Kurdish rebels. The operation was part of a wider legal offensive against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), a union regarded by the authorities in Ankara as the political wing of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

In early morning raids across Turkey, police arrested more than 100 people as part of an ongoing anti-terror probe against the Kurdish rebel group, the PKK. Kurdish political activists were among those detained, as were trade unionists and a Kurdish film maker.

The headquarters of three of the countries main civil service trade unions were also searched.

The crackdown was strongly criticized by pro-Kurdish member of parliament, Ertugral Kurkcu, of the BDP party. He says the arrests have nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but are instead aimed at stifling democratic opposition to the government.

"There are no weapons on the table, there are no incidents of violence which those people are involved in. So this is an arbitrary raid against the Kurdish popular movement," Kurkcu said.

Eye 1

Google Offering to Pay Web Users to Track Their Every Move

Google
© Antonio Manfredonio]
Less than a month after announcing a controversial new privacy policy that shares user data across all its sites with no opt-out option, Google is introducing a system to monitor all online activity of those who participate in a program called Screenwise. In exchange for unrestricted access to information on your every online move, the search and software giant is offering financial compensation.

By signing up for Screenwise and installing a browser plugin (only Google Chrome is supported at present), you'll be given $5 in store credit on Amazon. For every three months you continue to provide Google with browsing data, you'll earn an addition $5 gift card, up to a total of $25. Only those over 13 can participate and, perhaps not surprisingly, signups are currently on hold due to overwhelming interest.

Star of David

Israel Blames Iran After Attacks on Embassy Staff

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© Reuters/Parivartan SharmaPeople examine a damaged Israeli embassy car after an explosion in New Delhi, February 13, 2012.
Israel accused arch-enemies Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind twin bomb attacks that targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia on Monday, wounding four people.

Tehran denied involvement in the attacks, which amplified tensions between two countries already at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear program, and accused Israel of carrying out the attacks itself. Hezbollah made no comment.

In the Indian capital New Delhi, a bomb wrecked a car taking an Israeli embassy official to pick up her children from school, police said. The woman needed surgery to remove shrapnel but her life was not in danger.

Her driver and two passers-by suffered lesser injuries.

Israeli officials said an attempt to bomb an embassy car in the Georgian capital Tbilisi failed, and the device was defused.

MIB

Steve Jobs Held Top Secret Security Clearance

Late Apple co-founder and CEO at one point held a Top Secret government clearance, was targeted for extortion in 1980s. Bob Orr reports then Charlie Rose speaks with the author of Inside Apple, Adam Lashinsky.


Laptop

Iran Blocks Email, Restricts Net Access: Reports

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© Agence France-Presse/Atta KenareIranians surf the internet at a cafe in Tehran in 2011.
Iran has further restricted access to the Internet and blocked popular email services for the past few days, in a move a top lawmaker said could "cost the regime dearly," media reports said on Sunday.

Millions of Iranians have been unable to log onto their accounts on popular email websites such as Google's Gmail, Yahoo's Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail since Thursday without any official explanation, the Arman newspaper reported.

But the Mehr news agency said the restrictions were not related only to email.

"It has been a while that Internet users have had difficulty accessing domestic and news websites as well as foreign search engines and email services," it said on its website.

These difficulties include "low speed, outage and blocking" of websites, Mehr said.

A top conservative lawmaker, Ahmad Tavakoli, criticised the new "annoying" filtering and said it should be explained.

Newspaper

Best of the Web: Revealed: How Syngenta Investigated the Press and Shaped the News About its Controversial Weed-Killer Atrazine

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© Alternet
A new investigation shows the global chemical company spent millions spinning news coverage and tracking journalists as concern grew over potential health risks of atrazine.

Documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, recently unsealed as part of a major lawsuit against Syngenta, reveal how the global chemical company's PR team investigated the press and spent millions to spin news coverage and public perceptions in the face of growing concerns about potential health risks from the widely used weed-killer "atrazine."

This story is part of a new series about this PR campaign to influence the media, potential jurors, potential plaintiffs, farmers, politicians, scientists, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the midst of reviews of the weed-killer's potential to act as an endocrine disruptor, over the past decade or so.

Bad Guys

Dow and Monsanto Team Up on the Mother of All Herbicide Marketing Plans

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© Rastoney/FlickrExpect to see lots of this stuff blanketing the Midwest for a long time if Monsanto and Dow get their way.
During the late December media lull, the USDA didn't satisfy itself with green-lighting Monsanto's useless, PR-centric "drought-tolerant" corn. It also prepped the way for approving a product from Monsanto's rival Dow Agrosciences - one that industrial-scale corn farmers will likely find all too useful.

Dow has engineered a corn strain that withstands lashings of its herbicide, 2,4-D. The company's pitch to farmers is simple: Your fields are becoming choked with weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. As soon as the USDA okays our product, all your problems will be solved.

At risk of sounding overly dramatic, the product seems to me to bring mainstream US agriculture to a crossroads. If Dow's new corn makes it past the USDA and into farm fields, it will mark the beginning of at least another decade of ramped-up chemical-intensive farming of a few chosen crops (corn, soy, cotton), beholden to a handful of large agrichemical firms working in cahoots to sell ever larger quantities of poisons, environment be damned. If it and other new herbicide-tolerant crops can somehow be stopped, farming in the US heartland can be pushed toward a model based on biodiversity over monocropping, farmer skill in place of brute chemicals, and healthy food instead of industrial commodities.

Bad Guys

Ongoing Atrocities by NATO-Installed Libyan Regime

Mustafa Abdul Jalil
© Reuters/ Max RossiHead of the Libya's rebel Transitional National Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil
The Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) regime installed by the US-NATO intervention in Libya last year is responsible for ongoing atrocities, particularly against black-skinned Libyans, detainees and other alleged supporters of the previous Gaddafi government.

One of the most recent incidents occurred on February 6 at a former naval base in the Janzour district of the capital, Tripoli. The base is being used as an internal refugee camp for about 1,500 predominantly dark-skinned former residents of the town of Tawergha. The camp inhabitants told Reuters that militiamen from the coastal city of Misrata arrived, searched the camp and attempted to remove several young men. When the unarmed refugees protested, the militia opened fire, killing at least five people.

Female camp resident Huda Bel-Eid told Reuters: "Around 15 of them started shooting us. All the women escaped but the young men stayed. My brother was there and I went to help him because he was shot in the head and neck, then they shot me (in the leg)."

A woman and an elderly man were confirmed dead at a morgue in Tripoli, both with gunshot wounds to the chest. A resident of Janzour told Reuters: "We found two bodies of black people who had been shot on the beach. We told the police, and they have taken them now."

Gear

Best of the Web: Officer Accuses U.S. Military of Vast Afghan Deception

afgan soldier training
© flickr-isafmedia-61
An internal report on the occupation of Afghanistan, penned by an active-duty military officer and published weeks ago - but not released by the Pentagon - was leaked on Friday by Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings, who called the 84-page examination "one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years."

The document, written by Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, explains there has been a 12-year-long cover-up of the reality on the ground in Afghanistan. Davis was the source of a New York Times feature last Sunday, which cited his report but did not release it.

The Pentagon has since launched an investigation of Davis for possible security violations.

Davis reportedly wrote two versions - one classified and one not - and briefed four members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat. Senior Pentagon officials also have the report, but they've decided not to release it. For that reason, the unclassified report was published by Rolling Stone on Friday afternoon.