Can the fat lady sing?

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Angry Birds Seasons 

out for Android and iOS today, free to Halloween users

 

Rovio confirmed this morning that its highly anticipated Christmas version of Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons,

is now available for Android and iOS. The Android version is available now from the Android Market or GetJar for free. This version is still ad-supported but Rovio confirms that it is working on a paid version of Angry Birds for those that prefer their games to be ad-free.

Rovio doubles your fun by including both the Christmas edition and the Halloween edition into its Android version. The Christmas episode is dubbed “Season’s Greedings” and includes 25 daily surprises to help you pass the time until Christmas. “Trick or Treat” is the Halloween episode and includes 45 new levels of season-themed Angry Birds game play.

According to Rovio, the iOS version of Angry Birds Seasons is also ready to roll. It has been approved by Apple and will take a few hours to finally appear in the App Store. As of the writing of the post, it is not yet available but could appear at any moment.

[Via Rovio]

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SPOKANE, Wash. -- An electronic crosswalk sign near the Maple Street Bridge is apparently showing its disapproval of either the weather and / or local drivers by giving people the "Bronx Salute."

 The crossing sign, located in downtown Spokane in the northbound lanes of Maple south of the Maple Street Bridge, has been somehow modified so when the "Don’t Walk" hand is displayed, only the upraised middle finger is visible.

City of Spokane spokesperson Marlene Feist says that street department personnel think the electronic sign may have snow somehow wedged into the sign, obscuring all but the palm and raised middle finger.

Feist added that clearly the display is “unintentional.”

As to when that packed snow will get removed so the sign will no longer be giving drivers a Bronx salute, the people responsible for fixing the sign – the city’s Streets Department – are keeping busy unpacking snow off roads in Browne’s Addition.

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TSA now at a Bus Station near you

 Remember Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano hinting on November 22, 2010, that those invasive body searches may be coming to trains, subways, and boats?

Well, it is happening.

Your friendly TSA goons are now in bus terminals in Florida.

It's not difficult to envision the day where anyone wishing to take mass transportation in this country will have to first submit to a government checkpoint, show ID, and answer questions about any excess cash, prescription medication, or any other items in his possession the government deems suspicious. If and when that happens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won't happen overnight. It'll happen incrementally. And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable.

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WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US political pressure

Site hosting leaked US embassy cables is ousted from American servers as senator calls for boycott of WikiLeaks by companies

 

WikiLeaks's website cablegate.wikileaks.org,

 which was hosted by Amazon. 

The United States struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in an apparent reaction to heavy political pressure.

The main website and a sub-site devoted to the diplomatic documents were unavailable from the US and Europe on Wednesday, as Amazon servers refused to acknowledge requests for data.

The plug was pulled as the influential senator and chairman of the homeland security committee, Joe Lieberman, called for a boycott of the site by US companies.

"[Amazon's] decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material," he said.

"I call on any other company or organization that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them."

The department of homeland security confirmed Amazon's move, referring journalists to Lieberman's statement.

WikiLeaks tweeted in response: "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free – fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe."

The development came amid increasingly angry and polarized political opinion in America over WikiLeaks, with some conservatives calling for the organization's founder, Julian Assange, to be executed as a spy. Availability of his website has been patchy since Sunday, when it started to come under a series of internet-based attacks by unknown hackers. WikiLeaks dealt with the attacks in part by moving to servers run by Amazon Web Services, which is self-service.

Amazon.com would not comment on its relationship with WikiLeaks or whether it forced the site to leave. Messages seeking comment from WikiLeaks were not immediately returned.

The fury building up among rightwingers in the US, ranging from the potential Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to conservative blogsites such as Red State, contrasted with a measured response from the Obama administration.

The White House, the state department and the Pentagon continued to denounce the leaks, describing them as "despicable". But senior administration officials, with a sense of weary resignation, also called on people to put the leaks into context and insisted they had not done serious damage to US relations.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, shrugged aside as "ridiculous" a call by Assange, interviewed by Time magazine, via Skype from an undisclosed location, for the resignation of the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, over an order to spy on the United Nations. "I'm not entirely sure why we care about the opinion of one guy with one website," Gibbs said. "Our foreign policy and the interests of this country are far stronger than his one website."

John Kerry, the Democratic head of the Senate foreign relations committee, on Sunday denounced the leaks but he sounded more sanguine at an event in Washington on Tuesday night. He said there was a "silver lining" in that it was now clear where everyone stood on Iran. "Things that I have heard from the mouths of King Abdullah [of Saudi Arabia] and Hosni Mubarak [Egyptian president] and others are now quite public," Kerry said. He went on to say there was a "consensus on Iran".

But others, particularly rightwingers, are seeking retribution, with Assange as the prime target. Legal experts in the US were divided over whether the US could successfully prosecute Assange under the 1917 espionage act. Sceptics said the US protections for journalists would make such a prosecution difficult and also cited pragmatic issues, such as the difficulty of extraditing Assange, an Australian.

Huckabee, who was among the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and is likely to stand again in 2012, told the Politico website: "Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty."

His later comments suggest he had in mind Bradley Manning, the US private in Iraq who is suspected of leaking the information and is under arrest in Virginia, rather than Assange. Another potential Republican candidate for the presidency, Sarah Palin, had earlier called for Assange to be hunted down. Conservative blogs and commentators are full of ire directed at Assange, and criticism of the Obama administration for its seeming inability to do anything about it.

Typical is a blog by lexington_concord on Red State, a popular rightwing site, in which the writers says Assange is a spy.

"Under the traditional rules of engagement he is thus subject to summary execution and my preferred course of action would [be] for Assange to find a small caliber round in the back of his head."

The attorney general, Eric Holder, this week hinted at legal action but did not clarify whether he had in mind Manning or Assange. A department of justice spokeswoman failed to clarify this : "He [Holder] said the department would pursue those to be found violating the law."

The Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, interviewed on Fox, suggested Holder's reference had been to Assange. Asked why the US was not mounting a cyberattack on WikiLeaks, Morrell said the disclosures were awkward and embarrassing but these were not sufficient grounds for offensive action.He referred back to comments made the previous day by the defense secretary, Robert Gates, who attempted to put the leaks in perspective. Gates said: "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy: I think fairly modest."

A former defense secretary under Bill Clinton, William Cohen, echoed Gates, saying that the information was probably not fatal. Cohen joined the chorus calling for Assange to be prosecuted, provided he can be found.

"He may be hiding in a cave with Osama bin Laden. We don't know where he is but I am confident we will find him in the near future. He will be arrested and brought to justice," Cohen said.

Ruth Wedgwood, a former federal prosecutor and Johns Hopkins law professor, said, in an email exchange, that Assange, an Australian, could prosecuted. "A person who steals or knowingly receives and transmits protected national security information is not exempt from US criminal law merely because he is foreigner. The Espionage Act has been used to prosecute foreign defendants as well as Americans.

"Freedom of the press and the First Amendment would not shelter someone who deliberately steals tens of thousands of closely-held communications containing national security and defence information, and wantonly publishes them to both friends and foes alike, with heedless disregard for the damage that is caused."

Floyd Abrams, the constitutional expert who has argued before the supreme court on the First Amendment, which enshrines press freedom, was more sceptical. He said the government had a plausible case under the Espionage Act, which is phrased very broadly.

The government had looked in 1971 at prosecution of the New York Times over the Pentagon Papers leak and decided against. "Here I think it is a closer call. The documents are much more current and they have the potential to do more harm, for example the reference to the King of Saudi Arabia urging the US to bomb Iran," Abrams said in an phone interview.

"I think for the government it must be a close call. On the one hand, the leaks are of such magnitude and involve topics of such sensitivity and currency, it must be tempting to consider prosecution but on the other hand the government would be forced to address difficult and sensitive issues of whether a journalist could be accused of violating the law."

He added that Assange was not a journalist but does some of the things associated with journalism.

Another legal expert, Scott Silliman, a professor at the Duke University School of Law, said: "A US prosecution of Assange would be possible, but it would be fraught with problems for the government. The applicable statute, section 793(e) of the Espionage Act, is somewhat ambiguous when dealing with a case of this type where the accused claims to be part of or allied with the media. Further, there will probably be difficulties in having Assange extradited to the United States for trial."

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Pentagon: We could have shut down Wikileaks 

but chose not to.....

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US State Department tells employees not to read WikiLeaks

 

The US State Department has pushed employees toward "digital diplomacy" with Twitter and iPhone apps, but the department has banned all employees from using WikiLeaks.

 

The US State Department has directed its staff around the world not to surf the WikiLeaks website, according to employees.

The ban is in response to WikiLeaks' decision to published classified material, including US diplomatic cables. It’s not clear when the policy first began but it joins a similar order by the US Department of Defense put in place since the leaking of Iraq and Afghanistan war documents earlier this year.

Analysts suggest the State Department is temporarily falling back on traditional bureaucratic protocols in the face of a crisis that is emblematic of the shift to an online world. As the dust settles, the WikiLeaks upheaval may push to the fore tensions between new “digital diplomacy” efforts that use Twitter and smart-phone apps, and an older culture of classified cables.

“They need to engage with the broader public, which is empowered with web 2.0, but at the same time keep confidentiality, which is a huge tension that organizations like the State Department have to address,” says Jovan Kurbalija, an expert in diplomacy and information technology based in Geneva.

Tech-savvy State Department?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pushed for more integration of Internet advances in US diplomacy. She supported young, tech-savvy officers who were developing huge Twitter followings.

In East Africa, the State Department supported a competition called "Apps 4 Africa" that challenged software developers to come up with a socially beneficial phone application. The winner was "iCow," an application that helps farmers track animal breeding cycles.

“That’s at the heart of what this digital diplomacy is,” says Sam DuPont, a policy analyst with NDN, a think-tank in Washington. “Using this incredibly powerful global network to bypass traditional government-to-government, diplomat-to-diplomat relationships and use the technology to reach people you couldn’t reach before.”

The transparency conundrum

But the embrace of modern communications has not necessarily included the underlying philosophy of information openness. Much diplomatic work still depends upon confidential conversations, and the WikiLeaks crisis has, so far, moved the agency toward more information restrictions.

The State Department is undertaking an effort to gain more control over the information flowing in and out of its network. Spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters Tuesday that the State Department has “temporarily severed” the connection between an internal database and another classified network

The State Department is undertaking an effort to gain more control over the information flowing in and out of its network. Spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters Tuesday that the State Department has “temporarily severed” the connection between an internal database and another classified network.

 “We want to make sure that our documents are adequately protected and that we have the ability to detect if anything like this occurs in the future,” said Mr. Crowley. The agency “has narrowed, for the time being, those who have access to State Department cables across the government.”

Asked about the ban on surfing the WikiLeaks site, another State Department spokesperson said it could not be confirmed at this time.

A matter of principle?

One diplomat says the ban has no impact on the ability to follow what’s going on since the cables can be accessed elsewhere online and read about in news reports. The ban, the diplomat says, is more about standing on principle that the cables should still be treated as classified documents.

“The idea of it being based on principle is strange,” says Mr. DuPont. “We don’t keep things classified [just] on principle.”

Digital diplomacy experts appear nonplussed that the State Department went from iCow to a ban on a website with content that comes from the State Department, and seem to doubt the directive came from its technology squad.

A stated purpose for the Defense Department's ban, meanwhile, is to keep information properly organized.

“Department of Defense military, civilian, and contractor personnel have been advised that they should not access the WikiLeaks website to view or download the publicized classified information. Doing so could introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks,” writes Dave Thomas, spokesman for the National Defense University, in an e-mail.

As a military institution, the Washington-based university has given the same “guidance” to its students, staff, and faculty.

The ban on downloading, printing, and reposting the cables from WikiLeaks could also be motivated by the potential for website downloads to harbor malicious code, known as malware, used for gaining unauthorized access to a computer.

“There’s always a worry. I guess it’s possible that somebody could put malware there. [But] it’s a safe site to surf to,” says Gadi Evron, a cybersecurity expert.

WikiLeaks, meanwhile, has been hit by suspected cyberattacks known as distributed denial of service attacks that clog up a site’s ability to be accessed

 

 

 

 

 

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