The Day Obama's Facebook Page Went Down, and Other Campaign Security Lessons From 2012
BY Sonia Roubini | Tuesday, August 5 2014
In Fall 2011, during the Obama 2012 campaign, the Barack Obama Facebook page with 34 million "likes" disappeared. Visitors to Facebook.com/BarackObama were automatically directed back to the Facebook homepage, and online searches for the page came up blank. Recalling the incident, Laura Olin, the campaign’s social media manager recently told techPresident that before it happened, she had considered “the possibility of someone hacking accounts and posting inappropriate things, but not the page disappearing altogether." She added, "Facebook said that the problem was internal, but it wasn't clear if someone had disappeared the page intentionally or if it had been a mistake.” As we head into the heat of the 2014 midterm elections, and with 2016’s national campaigns beginning to coalesce, the problem of cyber-security for online political campaigns is just simmering beneath the surface. As is the question of how the press will cover the issue. There are real threats out there, and also plenty of room for confusion. Read More
First POST: Disruptors
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, May 20 2014
How the NSA collects every phone call made in the Bahamas; why the FCC's proposed rulemaking on net neutrality is problematic; how Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to upgrade NYC's broadband; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Vitam Et Bello
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, February 5 2014
The British government is reportedly using DDOS against Anonymous; the chair of the House Intelligence Committee seems to think professional journalism equals thievery; Syria's opposition activists are losing their Facebook pages; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Civicus
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, December 4 2013
The nitty-gritty on Knight Foundation's new report on the state of civic tech investment; more from Pierre Omidyar and Jay Rosen on NewCo; waiting for heads to roll over HealthCare.gov; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Kinks
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, October 22 2013
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers:: The HealthCare.gov website mess is getting uglier; StopWatching.us comes under criticism from the liberal-left; Bloomberg's tech legacy for his successor; and much, much more. Read More
Google Ideas Map Shows What Cyber Warfare Looks Like Today
BY Jessica McKenzie | Monday, October 21 2013
DDoS attacks on October 21, 2013
A swirling vortex hovers over Washington D.C. and brightly colored dots pour into the city from above. Elsewhere—in China, France and Brazil, for example—less impressive streams penetrate their capital cities as well. What looks at first glance like an image from the classic alien attack film Independence Day is actually a new visualization from Google Ideas and Arbor Networks. Called the Digital Attack Map, it depicts Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks around the world and will be updated with new data on a daily basis. The map was launched today as part of the Google Ideas' “Conflict in a Connected World” summit.
Read MoreLawyer for Hacktivists: U.S. Law Criminalizing Cyberattacks Should Be Modified
BY Lisa Goldman | Monday, October 8 2012
Jay Leiderman, the California based attorney who represents notorious hacktivists like Anonymous, spoke to the Atlantic about why he represents some of his clients pro bono, why he thinks the law criminalizing DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service Attacks) should be modified and why he once described certain variations of this type of "cyberattack" as "the equivalent of occupying the Woolworth's lunch counter during the civil rights movement." Read More
Rep. DeLauro Signs Change.org's Call for Clinton to Condemn China DDoS Attacks
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, April 26 2011
Change.org, the increasingly high-profile political petitioning site, has really banging pots around the story that its systems are being targeted by "Chinese hackers" angered by the more than hundred thousand ... Read More
Change.org Asks for State Department Help Fending Off Chinese Hackers
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, April 19 2011
Photo credit: sanfamedia.com Change.org says that they're the victim of a distributed denial of service attack perpetrated by "Chinese hackers." The target, it seems, is a petition that is calling for the ... Read More
Attacks on Russian Blogosphere Quash 'Online Parliament' Initiative
BY Nick Judd | Friday, April 8 2011
Also subjected to DDoS attacks on the Internet infrastructure supporting political dissent in Russia: Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper that the BBC describes as "often critical of official policies:" A spokesperson for Novaya ... Read More