A day after the whistleblower site WikiLeaks began publishing details from a massive collection of confidential U.S. diplomatic documents, the chorus of criticism from government leaders grew louder Monday.

Top U.S. officials were quick to denounce the publication of the leaked documents Sunday. And the U.K.’s foreign office followed suit Monday, saying it condemned any release of classified documents.
“They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the U.S. [has] said, may put lives at risk,” the office said in a statement.

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The first victims of the leaked cables released Sunday was anyone who shared secrets with American diplomats, especially Arab leaders who saw their private security deals – and their insistence that those deals be kept from their people – published online with undiplomatic bluntness.

But the main effect of the many details of American diplomacy revealed in the thousands of documents obtained and released by WikiLeaks was to deepen the damage to their intended targets: U.S. foreign policy, prestige, and power.

“The impression is of the world’s superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden,” wrote Sir Simon Jenkins in the left-leaning Guardian, one of the publications that were given the documents.

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Shopping online in late July, Clarabelle Rodriguez typed the name of her favorite eyeglass brand into Google’s search bar.

In moments, she found the perfect frames ”” made by a French company called Lafont ”” on a Web site that looked snazzy and stood at the top of the search results. Not the tippy-top, where the paid ads are found, but under those, on Google’s version of the gold-medal podium, where the most relevant and popular site is displayed.

Ms. Rodriguez placed an order for both the Lafonts and a set of doctor-prescribed Ciba Vision contact lenses on that site, DecorMyEyes.com. The total cost was $361.97.

It was the start of what Ms. Rodriguez would later describe as one of the most maddening and miserable experiences of her life.

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The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries.

Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.

The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive” in specific countries. (“Humint” is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,” as well as “internet and intranet ”˜handles’, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.”

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There are numerous videos of possible blog reader interest here related to Anglican news–check it out.

The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”

“President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal,” the statement said. “By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals.”

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Check it out–it looks well worthy of consideration.

Maybe money can’t buy happiness. But can it buy friendliness?

Columbia University is hoping it can. The Office of Residential Programs at the university, sensing that its campus had grown too introverted, this week has tried to encourage casual interactions among students with a game, called “The Social Experiment,” aimed at getting campus strangers to talk to each other. The winner gets $500.

Here’s how it works: Each day of the week all students on campus are given a random word as a prompt. A subset of students is assigned to keep one of several passwords, which they disclose to any student who addresses them with the prompt word. At the end of the week, the person who has collected the most passwords wins the cash. The idea is that in the process of foraging for passwords, seekers will be forced to interact with fellow students whom they do not know.

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In established democracies, the Internet has become a powerful political tool used for mobilizing, fundraising and advertising. The Internet has taken on an important but different role in emerging democracies, such as Malaysia, where its use has been essential in breaking a half-century old monopoly on power by the ruling coalition.

When mainstream media will not or cannot cover important political stories, many Malaysians click toward Malaysiakini, or Malaysia Now, the nation’s most popular news website.

The site attracts 300,000 visitors a day to its text and video content in English, Bahasa, Chinese and Tamil. The languages reflect the main ethnic groups of Malaysia’s 28 million people: roughly 54 percent ethnic Malays, 24 percent ethnic Chinese and 7 percent ethnic Indians.

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Facebook can lead married people astray, says the head of the Living Word Christian Fellowship Church in Neptune, N.J.

So, in his Sunday sermon, the Rev. Cedric A. Miller will announce that married church leaders have to log out for good, or get kicked out.

This thinking runs counter to churches that are embracing social media to reach their flocks.

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On the eve of a pivotal academic year in Vishal Singh’s life, he faces a stark choice on his bedroom desk: book or computer?

By all rights, Vishal, a bright 17-year-old, should already have finished the book, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,” his summer reading assignment. But he has managed 43 pages in two months.

He typically favors Facebook, YouTube and making digital videos. That is the case this August afternoon. Bypassing Vonnegut, he clicks over to YouTube, meaning that tomorrow he will enter his senior year of high school hoping to see an improvement in his grades, but without having completed his only summer homework.

On YouTube, “you can get a whole story in six minutes,” he explains. “A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification.”

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A state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm re-routed around 15 per cent of all web traffic through its own servers during a brief period on April 8, the report said.

The incident has raised fears that China may have harvested highly-sensitive information from re-routed emails.

Another theory is that it could be testing a cyberweapon that could disrupt internet traffic from foreign servers.

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Kathy DeGrego’s T-shirt lets you know right away she isn’t an old-school librarian.

“Shhh,” it says, “is a four-letter word.”

That spirit of bookish defiance has guided the makeover of the suburban Denver library system where DeGrego works. Reference desks and study carrels have been replaced by rooms where kids can play Guitar Hero. Overdue book fines have been eliminated, and the arcane Dewey Decimal System has been scrapped in favor of bookstore-like sections organized by topic.

“It’s very common for people to say, ‘Why do I need a library when I’ve got a computer?’ ” said Pam Sandlian-Smith, director of the seven-branch Rangeview, Colo., Library District. “We have to reframe what the library means to the community.”

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Walt Disney Co. has begun rolling out its plan to spur digital movie purchases by removing the technological obstacles that thus far have stymied growth.

The studio has quietly launched Disney Movies Online, which lets consumers buy or rent digital versions of Disney and Pixar films and watch them on the Internet. The site was conceived as a bridge to gently transition the family entertainment company’s mainstream consumers from the physical to the digital world. It debuted in May without fanfare.

How much without fanfare? Disney still isn’t promoting the site beyond including the Web address on a sleeve inside DVDs and Blu-ray packages. There isn’t even a link to it on the company’s main website.

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In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page.

This is the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.

The labor relations board announced last week that it had filed a complaint against an ambulance service, American Medical Response of Connecticut, that fired an emergency medical technician, accusing her, among other things, of violating a policy that bars employees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves.

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The U.S.-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki made what looks to be his most threatening message yet: calling on Muslims to kill Americans at will, because it is “either us or them.”

The video posted on extremist websites Monday may be Awlaki’s attempt to capitalize on his recent notoriety. Awlaki, who the United States believes is in Yemen, is accused by Yemen of playing a role in the sending of bombs through the mail in packages addressed to Chicago.

“I would think he would see his growing prominence as something he should exploit,” said Robert Grenier, the former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center.

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…a new analysis of Census data being released Monday by the Commerce Department…found that the percentage of households that connect to the Internet using broadband grew to 63.5 percent in 2009 from 9.2 percent in 2001, reflecting increases across nearly all demographics.

The report ”” prepared by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Economics and Statistics Administration ”” is based on a Census survey of about 54,000 households conducted in October 2009….

Among the major findings:
Ӣ 94.1 percent of households with income exceeding $100,000 subscribed to broadband in 2009, compared with 35.8 percent of households with income of less than $25,000.
Ӣ 84.5 percent of households with at least one college degree subscribed to broadband last year, compared with 28.8 percent of households without a high school degree.

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Like most other undergraduates, Anish Patel likes to sleep in. Even though his Principles of Microeconomics class at 9:35 a.m. is just a five-minute stroll from his dorm, he would rather flip open his laptop in his room to watch the lecture, streamed live over the campus network.

On a recent morning, as Mr. Patel’s two roommates slept with covers pulled tightly over their heads, he sat at his desk taking notes on Prof. Mark Rush’s explanation of the term “perfect competition.” A camera zoomed in for a close-up of the blackboard, where Dr. Rush scribbled in chalk, “lots of firms and lots of buyers.”

The curtains were drawn in the dorm room. The floor was awash in the flotsam of three freshmen ”” clothes, backpacks, homework, packages of Chips Ahoy and Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries.

The University of Florida broadcasts and archives Dr. Rush’s lectures less for the convenience of sleepy students like Mr. Patel than for a simple principle of economics: 1,500 undergraduates are enrolled and no lecture hall could possibly hold them.

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I would like to keep all the comments tonight on this thread: what we are interested in is what you are keeping you eye on, data as you can provide it, and source urls and geographical mentions where possible (if you are mentioning a House race for example do not assume people know where the district is unless you tell them).

I plan on another open thread near 11 pm est.

While much about what prompted Chesser’s transformation remains a mystery, he illustrates a growing phenomenon in the United States: young converts who embrace the most extreme interpretation of Islam.

Of the nearly 200 U.S. citizens arrested in the past nine years for terrorism-related activity, 20 to 25 percent have been converts, said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. More than a quarter have been arrested in the past 20 months. The center provided The Washington Post with saved copies of Chesser’s postings, most no longer available on the Web.

“Many of these converts are basically white kids from the suburbs” in search of a community, said Segal, whose group has produced numerous papers on those arrested, including Chesser. They are overwhelmingly male, frequently in their 20s and eager to “become something more than they are, or be part of something greater,” he said.

Their militancy is not a product of the alienation that has sometimes prompted Muslim-born young people in the United States and elsewhere to embrace extremism, particularly in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, has just started blogging, and is the only diocesan bishop to do it: “The great opportunity is that actually we’re connecting with people that we would never connect with in other ways, so there are huge opportunities with people who would never go near a church service.

“Even though it’s very early, it’s very interesting to see that comments come from around the world, straight off. They come not necessarily from people who follow me on Facebook or Twitter. So the speed with which something goes round is something that, well, we’re not up to speed with!”

The Bishop of Buckingham, Dr Alan Wilson, and the Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nick Baines, are both popular blogging bishops, but they are exceptional. Bishop Butler reflects on whether bishops need to be encouraged to get more involved: “I think it would be good if more of us did, but there I think we need to co-ordinate a bit. Mine will particularly focus on issues around children and childhood, because of my brief as advocate for children. The reason I did something on the papal visit was I thought hang on, Alan and Nick weren’t there, and I thought one of us needs to do this. So what I think would be worth us exploring is bishops blogging around different areas, so we’re not repeating each other.”

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The latest exposure by Wikileaks of thousands of secret documents about the aftermath of the Iraq war has once again provoked debate about transparency and the implications of the indiscriminate cascade of disclosure. Exposures like these and notoriously, the MP expenses scandal before the last election, have fostered the belief that transparency is now a necessary condition for a functioning democracy.

Transparency advocates argue that the public disclosure of information is more important than the right to privacy because it is vital to rebuild trust, that this is impossible if politicians continue to “hide secrets” from the public, that democracy is a sham unless it is forced into honesty by radical campaigners like Julian Assange, pictured right.

But does this compulsive desire to publish every note, leak every memo, really do anything to bolster trust in society?

The short answer is that it does the opposite: it fuels mistrust rather than nurturing a climate of trust. It breeds suspicion and fosters secrecy.

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Update: If you missed it, make sure to see “The Web Means the End of Forgetting” by Jeffrey Rosen, which was posted back in the summer, as it covers the theme from another angle.

The Obama administration has adopted new procedures for using the Defense Department’s vast array of cyberwarfare capabilities in case of an attack on vital computer networks inside the United States, delicately navigating historic rules that restrict military action on American soil.

The system would mirror that used when the military is called on in natural disasters like hurricanes or wildfires. A presidential order dispatches the military forces, working under the control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Under the new rules, the president would approve the use of the military’s expertise in computer-network warfare, and the Department of Homeland Security would direct the work.

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A leaked draft of the national security document suggested that military conflict with another state will come only fourth in a list of potential threats to the UK, behind terror outrages by groups like al Qaida, cyber-attacks and natural disasters.

Today’s launch comes just days after the head of the Government’s GCHQ eavesdropping centre, Iain Lobban, warned of the very real danger of cyber-terrorism directed at the UK’s critical computer infrastructure.

He said that there were 20,000 malicious emails on Government networks every month, and significant disruption had been caused to official systems by electronic “worms”. Cyberspace had “lowered the bar for entry to the espionage game for states and criminals”.

Reports suggest that cyber-warfare could receive a £500 million boost in tomorrow’s SDSR.

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If frontlist publishing is a hare dashing to bestsellerdom, then Bible publishing, in the words of one publishing executive, is the tortoise, steadily plugging away toward a better bottom line.

Every publisher would like to have a big Bible or, even better, two. Around 25 million units are sold annually, by conservative estimates. More than 91% of American households own Bibles, and those households own an average of three, according to the Somersault Group, which consults on digital publishing. Widespread distribution started with Gutenberg, and the Bible is today a Kindle bestseller.

The diversity and proliferation in Bible publishing that can challenge retailers and confuse consumers benefits publishers, who can roll out what seems like a limitless number of niche editions offering something for everyone. This year, Catholics and kids are target markets; a new translation is rolling out; a major study Bible releases; and digital publishing is big.

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Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information””in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names””to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.

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Even when, in 2009, this column observed that innovation of the like going on at Soho-based behavioural targeting company Struq was “essential to the online ad industry”, it was scarcely conceivable that less than two years later the start-up would be recording 978 per cent year-on-year growth and is valued in the market at £30 million. But that is precisely what has happened since then. Just as impressively, Struq has artfully dodged any accusations of “snooping” on users, which had been a concern in the wake of the widely reported Phorm disaster.

So what does the company’s technology do, exactly? “Our focus is on delivering more efficient, intelligent and personalised ads on the internet,” says CEO Sam Barnett. ”¨”¨“The technology is based on complex algorithms that learn human behaviour by modelling and adjusting to patterns and trends, in real time.”¨”¨ We can target our ads based on user intent using complex data like time of day, frequency of viewing and basket size to make specific and personal ads that achieve far greater results than standard display advertising. Plus, we only target people that we know have an interest and are most likely to buy.””¨”¨

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