Eeyore's News and View

Again it goes along with the article yesterday, we are hacked it seems constantly. We need to be as virulent as possible to with our web activities. Personal mail is another bug-a-boo, make sure you don't just throw your junk mail away but shred it all.
Hackers hit Monster.com's customer data again
Monster.com (MNST) said Tuesday that it will impose a mandatory password change for all North American and Western European users of its popular employment website by the end of this week.
The precaution comes after Monster quietly posted an online notice Friday disclosing that its customer databases had been hacked for the second time in six months. Thieves took user IDs, passwords, e-mail addresses, names, phone numbers, birth dates, ethnicity and state of residence for an undisclosed number of job seekers and employers, spokeswoman Nikki Richardson said.
BLOG: Victims may not be notified
Richardson said a criminal investigation is underway. She declined to confirm or refute a report by The Times of London that 4.5 million British users of Monster had their data stolen. She noted that the thieves did not swipe Social Security numbers, résumés or customer transaction data.
The theft underscores how cybercriminals are intensifying attacks on data storehouses. Last week, Heartland Payment Systems disclosed that hackers broke into the system it uses to process 100 million payment card transactions a month. "Data is king," says Don Leatham, senior director of solutions and strategy at security firm Lumension. "We will continue to see an uptick in targeted attacks in 2009."
Security and privacy experts say millions of Monster's patrons are in a particularly vulnerable state. Typing a stolen user ID and password gives an intruder access to everything available to the member job seeker or employer. Crooks "hoover up" such data, says Avivah Litan, banking security analyst at Gartner. They then correlate it with other information, stolen elsewhere, and use it to hijack bank accounts, break into systems and do other scams.
A data thief could type in a stolen user ID and password, gain access and then change the password to secure permanent access to the account, says Sam Masiello, vice president of information security at security firm MX Logic. "Considering many users are not always active, this leaves a huge potential for many accounts to be compromised," Masiello says.
Los Angeles attorney and privacy advocate Mari Frank says Monster users should feel violated. "Here they are, trusting that the information they give up is going only to prospective employers, and now the criminals have it. It's such a betrayal."
Richardson countered that Monster strives to "provide the best practical security we can."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2009-01-27-monster-data-hackers_N.htm

3 Russian warships visit Cold War ally Cuba
HAVANA: A Russian anti-submarine destroyer and two logistical warships docked in Cuba on Friday, a thumb-your-nose port call aimed at Washington in waters just 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida.
The arrival extends a tour that included stops in Venezuela and Panama and shows Moscow's desire to flex some muscle in America's backyard. It comes even as President Raul Castro reaches out to the U.S., offering to negotiate directly with President-elect Barack Obama and proposing an unprecedented swap of political prisoners.
"That is Cuba's diplomatic specialty, playing both sides, or all sides, on every issue," said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
Russian sailors in white and tan dress uniforms stood at attention on the deck of the Admiral Chabanenko destroyer, which chugged into Havana Bay amid a cloud of gray smoke. The ships will be moored here until Tuesday, and the crew planned a tour of Havana that includes a trip to a Cuban naval school.
A Cuban cannon fired a 21-blast salute that rattled the windows of nearby buildings, and a naval band waiting on a cruise ship dock played the Russian and Cuban national anthems. A hulking barge that frequently ferries U.S. food to the island happened to be waiting in the area but had to move to make room for the Russian warships. It was unclear whether it had any American cargo aboard.
Today on IHT.com
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Stimulus plan set to pass, despite Republican critics
Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo prohibits American tourists from visiting Cuba, but the U.S. has allowed cash-only sales of its agricultural products to the island since 2000 and has long since become the country's largest source of food.
Erikson, author of a new book called "The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution," said he was not surprised to see Russian ships come to Cuba at the same time the communist government is promoting a thawing in its relations with Washington.
"Cuba has always been a country that wants to have its cake and eat it to," he said. "They want to keep the United States as the No. 1 enemy and at the same time benefit from U.S. travel and trade."
The Soviet Union provided billions of dollars in trade and annual subsidies to Cuba before its 1991 collapse. Relations soured after that, but the Cold War allies have become close again, with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visiting Havana in November.
Friday marked the first time Russian military ships have visited Cuba since the end of the Soviet era. About 100 Cubans — as well as tourists from Russia and other foreign destinations — watched the arrival from a nearby sidewalk. The crowd grew so large that police blocked off the right lane of a crowded boulevard adjacent the bay.
"This shows relations with Russia never deteriorated," said Eric Hernandez, a naval administrative employee who left his office across the street for a closer view. "Russia is a brother nation to Cuba, and Cuba has brother nations all over the world, despite what the United States wants."
But another onlooker, retired airport employee Jorge Fernandez, said he hoped the Russian visit wouldn't send Washington the wrong signal.
"The new president of the United States wants peace and tranquility with Cuba," he said. "This is positive for Cuba and Russia. But they might not agree in the United States."
The Russian ships arrived as Castro was set to return from his first state visit to Brazil, where he said Thursday he would consider releasing some jailed political dissidents as a gesture to opening talks with the Obama administration. Castro's trip also included a stop in Venezuela, where he met with U.S. critic Hugo Chavez.
Erikson noted that "the U.S. is important for Cuba, but it's not the only international relationship they're trying to manage."
"To some degree, the Cuban government says 'There's no way of knowing what the U.S. will do ultimately so we better have relationships with Russia, Brazil and China in our back pocket,'" he said. "It's hard to imagine Cuba saying 'We don't want Russian warships to come,' because they don't know what the U.S. will do."
The Russian ships' trip to Cuba has largely failed to register in Washington, but State Department spokeswoman Heidi Bronke rejected Castro's offer of a prisoner swap, saying the more than 200 jailed dissidents should be released immediately without conditions. Castro said the U.S. would need to release the so-called "Cuban Five," who were convicted in 2001 on U.S. espionage charges.
Cuban human rights activists also have panned the notion of a prisoner exchange, saying the jailed activists, independent journalists and political dissidents should not be used as bargaining chips.
In a statement Friday, the country's best-known political opposition leader, Oswlado Paya, called on Castro to free political prisoners without asking for anything in return, saying doing so "would be an act of justice for the people of Cuba, and is a moral and political obligation for the government."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/12/19/news/CB-Cuba-Russian-Warships.php

These next two price winning idiots were probably bright and shining stars in there departments. You might think it strange that they waited so long to bust them. They were probably enjoying the show he was providing them, but seriously they have to build an air-tight case. The entitlement of being an government employee are amazing and you have to catch them in the act and even then most of them won't even get a repremanded. Look at former President Clinton.
Exclusive: CIA Station Chief in Algeria Accused of Rapes
"Ugly American"? Spy Boss Allegedly Drugged Muslim Women, Made Secret Sex Videos
By BRIAN ROSS, KATE McCARTHY, and ANGELA M. HILL
January 28, 2009
The CIA's station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam, was ordered home by the U.S. Ambassador, David Pearce, in October after the women came forward with their rape allegations in September.
Watch "World News with Charles Gibson" TONIGHT at 6:30 p.m. ET for the full report.
The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.
The U.S. State Department referred questions to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment.
"It has the potential to be quite explosive if it's not handled well by the United States government," said Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in women's issues in the Middle East.
"This isn't the type of thing that's going to be easily pushed under the carpet," she said.
The CIA refused to acknowledge the investigation or provide the name of the Algiers station chief, but the CIA Director of Public Affairs, Mark Mansfield, said, "I can assure you that the Agency would take seriously, and follow up on, any allegations of impropriety."
It can be a crime for government officials to reveal the identity of a current covert intelligence officer, and CIA officials would not comment the status of the person under investigation.
One of the alleged victims reportedly said she met the CIA officer at a bar in the U.S. embassy and then was taken to his official station chief residence where she said the sexual assault took place.
The second alleged victim reportedly told U.S. prosecutors that, in a separate incident, she also was drugged at the American's official residence before being sexually assaulted.
Officials Say One of the Alleged Victims is Seen On Tape
Both women have reportedly given sworn statements to federal prosecutors sent from Washington to prepare a possible criminal case against the CIA officer.
Following the initial complaints, U.S. officials say they obtained a warrant from a federal judge in Washington, D.C. in October to search the station chief's CIA-provided residence in Algiers and turned up the videos that appear to have been secretly recorded and show, they say, the CIA officer engaged in sexual acts.
Officials say one of the alleged victims is seen on tape, in a "semi-conscious state."
The time-stamped date on other tapes led prosecutors to broaden the investigation to Egypt because the date matched a time when CIA officer was in Cairo, officials said.
Pills found in the CIA residence were sent to the FBI crime laboratory for testing, according to officials involved in the case.
"Drugs commonly referred to as date rape drugs are difficult to detect because the body rapidly metabolizes them," said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant. "Many times women are not aware they were even assaulted until the next day," he said.
A third woman, a friend of one of the alleged victims, reportedly provided a cell phone video that showed her friend having a drink and dancing inside the CIA station chief's residence in Algiers, which officials told ABC News provided corroboration the CIA officer had indeed brought the woman to his residence.
The officer in charge of the CIA station in Algiers plays an important role in working with the Algerian intelligence services to combat an active al Qaeda wing responsible for a wave of bombings in Algeria.
In the most serious incident, 48 people were killed in a bombing in August, 2008 in Algiers, blamed on the al Qaeda group.
The Algerian ambassador to the United Nations, Mourad Benmehid, said his government had not been notified by the U.S. of the rape allegations or the criminal investigation.
Repeated messages left for the CIA officer with his parents and his sister were not returned.
No charges have been filed but officials said a grand jury was likely to consider an indictment on sexual assault charges as early as next month.
"This will be seen as the typical ugly American," said former CIA officer Bob Baer, reacting to the ABC News report. "My question is how the CIA would not have picked up on this in their own regular reviews of CIA officers overseas," Baer said.
"From a national security standpoint," said Baer, the alleged rapes would be "not only wrong but could open him up to potential blackmail and that's something the CIA should have picked up on," said Baer. "This is indicative of personnel problems of all sorts that run through the agency," he said.
"Rape is ugly in any context," said Coleman who praised the bravery of the alleged Algerian victims in going to authorities. "Rape is viewed as very shameful to women, and I think this is an opportunity for the US to show how seriously it takes the issue of rape," she said.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=6750266&page=1

Grassley launches porn inquiry
By ANDIE COLLER | 1/28/09 4:11 AM EST Updated: 1/28/09 12:05 PM EST
Chuck Grassley knows it when he sees it.
The “it,” of course, is pornography. And Grassley has seen it deep in a demurely titled section of a report from the National Science Foundation — a report that says NSF employees have been spending significant amounts of company time on smut sites and in other explicit pursuits.
Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, on Tuesday fired off a letter to the NSF’s inspector general requesting all documents related to the “numerous reports” and seven investigations into “Abuse of NSF IT Resources” cited in the foundation’s 68-page semiannual report.
Despite the less-than-lurid sound of the probes, the employees in question weren’t just logging onto their Facebook accounts or buying birthday gifts on Amazon.com. The report says they were watching, downloading and e-mailing porn, sometimes for significant portions of their workdays, and over periods of months or even years.
In one particularly egregious case, the report says one NSF “senior official” was discovered to have spent as much as 20 percent of his working hours over a two-year interval “viewing sexually explicit images and engaging in sexually explicit online ‘chats’ with various women.”
Investigators calculated the value of the time lost at more than $58,000 — for that employee alone.
Following an initial wave of incidents, the grant-making agency — which has an annual budget of $6.06 billion, and was created by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science; advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; secure the national defense — reveals that probers then “selectively sampled” a single internal server and found even more workers harboring everything from software that can allow users to set up camera-to-camera connections to hard-core images and titillatingly titled bookmarks.
Committee investigators also learned from sources that one employee even had camera-to-camera software to facilitate his on-the-job sexcapades – and that the employee had complained to the IT specialist that his camera was working too slowly.
The foundation has since installed filtering software to prevent employees from accessing inappropriate websites and is currently trying to address the fallout from the agency’s adult-entertainment problem. This includes finding ways to support staffers who were “acutely embarrassed” by the filth-filled environment — like the employee who learned of a co-worker’s adventures in porn via sounds overheard from said co-worker’s computer speakers.
Grassley’s office has asked the foundation to turn over all “specific reports of investigations, audit reports, evaluations and information supporting the examination of the NSF network drive” by Thursday in an effort to “ensure that NSF properly fulfills its mission to strengthen scientific and engineering research, and makes responsible use of the public funding provided for these research disciplines.”
The semiannual report raises real questions about how the National Science Foundation manages its resources, and Congress ought to demand a full accounting before it gives the agency another $3 billion in the stimulus bill,” Grassley said.
An NSF spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report or its content.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18070.html

I linked together four or five articles a while ago on this, as the recessions (depression) deepens people will become more desperate and more violent. As gas went up there was more and more thefts of fuel from cars. Now they will become more violent.
U.S. recession fuels crime rise, police chiefs say
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Police chiefs in the United States say the economic downturn is fueling a rise in crime and warn that cuts to their budgets could handcuff their efforts to tackle it, according to a report on Tuesday.
Of 233 police agencies surveyed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law enforcement organization, 44 percent reported a rise in certain types of crime they attributed to the United States' worst economic and financial crisis in decades.
The survey, conducted in late December and early January, also found that 63 percent of the departments were making plans for overall cuts in their funding for the next fiscal year.
"We are not saying there is going to be a crime wave, but we are saying this is a wake-up call and we anticipate the situation will continue to deteriorate," PERF executive director Chuck Wexler told Reuters in an interview.
There has long been debate over the connection between crime and the economy, but criminologists, sociologists and police chiefs interviewed by Reuters in October predicted a rise in crimes as the United States sinks deeper into recession.
Crime has increased during every recession since the late 1950s, sociologists said.
"We know that when police departments saw increases in violent crime in 2005 and 2006, they were able to respond quickly by using overtime to flood crime hot spots with additional patrols and sending specialized units in," Wexler said in a statement.
"This helped to bring crime back down again in 2007 and the first half of 2008. The threat posed by the economic crisis is that a lot of departments will no longer have these options available to keep crime and violence down."
Of the 100 agencies who linked crime rises to the economic crisis, 39 percent said they had seen an increase in robberies, 32 percent an uptick in burglaries and 40 percent an increase in thefts from vehicles.
The PERF said on average the agencies who participated in the survey were planning a 6.24 percent cut in their overall funding, while many had already reduced funding in many areas.
Miami police chief John Timoney said police departments were normally the last agencies to be affected by a downturn in the economy because local authorities saw public safety as a top priority.
"The fact that most police departments currently are being asked to make cuts is an indication of how badly this recession is affecting local tax bases," Timoney said.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
http://frc4u.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=248