NOTE: GS(3) Intelligence Briefing is posted on a bi-weekly basis. As circumstances dictate, we may post special editions. The Briefing is organized into five sections: Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, Americas, Global, and Cyberspace. Each issue provides insight on terrorism, cyber crime, climate change, health emergencies, natural disasters, and other threats, as well as recommendations on what actions your organizations should take to mitigate risks. “Words of Power" commentary is also posted on a bi-weekly basis. This commentary explores a range of issues in the interdependent realms of security, sustainability, and spirit. For more information, go to http://www.wordsofpower.net/
Here are highlights from 13 items, including both news stories and op-ed pieces, which provide insight on important global issues and trends, such as global warming, energy security, the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, Bird Flu, economic disparities, and cyber crime. Excerpts and links follow below this summary. Customized analysis is provided for clients.
EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA
Norwegian firm Statkraft says subaquatic sea tide-harnessing machines could in future provide 3 percent of the EU's electricity, as new research shows rising CO2 levels are causing epochal changes in the Arctic seas. The floating machines - 40 metres long by 15 metres wide on the sea surface - are to work by using tidal water movements to turn submerged turbines providing 3 to 5 GWh of electricity per year.
(EUOBSERVER, 6-1-06)
Next month the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations agency, will have to feed 25 percent more people -- 600,000 in all -- in the Palestinian territories because they have no other way of finding food….Palestinians are evidently paying for exercising their democratic choice and voting a Hamas government into power. And it is the poorest among them who will pay the price….’In Gaza we are seeing more people, especially children, begging on the streets. We are in a race against time to reach the most vulnerable with food aid and avoid an escalation of this crisis. Urgent assistance now can really make a difference.
(Inter Press Service, 6-2-06)
ASIA PACIFIC
This "wall of instability" has prevented India from gaining access to vital resources and markets, deterred regional economic integration and security cooperation, and may even undermine investor confidence. India's poor relations with Bangladesh and instabilities in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and in India's northeast have limited direct land access to the markets of China and Southeast Asia. Progress on plans for Myanmar to supply India with natural gas from its Shwe field off the coast of Arakan state has been held up by tensions between India and Bangladesh and Myanmar's close relationship with China….
(Asia Times, 6-1-06)
Indians are economically backward and politically weak compared to Malays who comprise 50 percent of the population and dominate decision making at every level. Ethnic Chinese, who make up another 24 percent, enjoy economic clout and dominate business activity….It is now a common sight to see bulldozers reducing large temples to rubble and workers to smashing deities before the eyes of helpless worshippers….
(Inter Press Service, 6-1-06)
AMERICAS
One of the oddest reactions to Vice President Cheney's now-infamous speech in Lithuania, the one which many Russians believe officially heralded the start of a new Cold War, came from the mainstream American media…..they actually allowed themselves to smell a rat….The rat of course was the insane hypocrisy of a foaming fascist like Dick Cheney suddenly getting all Amnesty International righteous over a bad regime that does bad things. The fact that Cheney flew straight to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan right after squirting over Russia's human rights problems turned the rank hypocrisy into a bad black comedy routine...Cheney lost out in his bid to secure Russia's oil, but the Caspian oil is still being fought over, especially as Kazakhstan hasn't started pumping yet most of its upcoming oil streams. That's what this Cold War hype is about and the bleating about democracy, and the seemingly clumsy display of hypocrisy. It's not a Cold War, it's an oil grab gone bad.
(Mark Ames, The eXile, 6-1-06)
The first shipment of 30,000 AK-103 rifles - out of a total of 100,000 bought from Moscow - arrived on Saturday at the Puerto Cabello naval base 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital and was transported to the Maracay arsenal 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of Caracas….Chavez announced his intention to buy the Russian fighters after Washington's May 15 refusal to sell weapons to Venezuela because of the latter's alleged lack of cooperation in the anti-terrorist fight.…
(Merco Press, 6-5-06)
Within the Bush administration something that senior officials call the "war paradigm" is the central organising principle. They do not use the phrase publicly, but they bend policy to serve it….They believe fervently that the constitution is fatally flawed and must be circumscribed….There is no exit strategy from emergency. In the short run, Bush's defence of his war paradigm may precipitate three constitutional crises….
(Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian, 6-01-06)
GLOBAL
…Purdue scientists found that their results matched earlier work by Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at M.I.T. Dr. Emanuel has argued that global warming, specifically the warming of the tropical oceans, is already increasing the power expended by hurricanes….In the other new study, Dr. Emanuel and Michael E. Mann, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, compared records of global sea surface temperatures with those of the tropical Atlantic and said the recent strengthening of hurricanes was attributable largely to the rise in ocean surface temperature.”
(New York Times, 5-31-06)
Deserts are prime potential locations for solar power generators that do not pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and plants that can thrive in desert conditions could provide food when water runs short. One such, a plant called Nipa found in the Sonoran desert of western Mexico, produces a grain the size of wheat but is drought resistant and even thrives on seawater. "It is a strong candidate for a major global food crop and could become this desert's greatest gift to the world," the report said ….’There is going to be a fight for water -- there already are such fights," Warren said.’
(Reuters, 6-5-06)
The United Nations used World Environment Day on Monday to warn that land turning to desert is a growing obstacle to ending poverty and a threat to peace.….Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose largely-desert country was officially hosting the campaign, urged the adoption of a World Charter on Deserts to help achieve a Millennium Goal of halving poverty by 2015. He said destruction of natural ecosystems and desertification "aggravate conditions of poverty across the world, deepening the crisis". The United Nations says almost a quarter of the world's land surface is already desert, and the share is growing.
(Reuters, 6-5-06)
“A number of countries in the throes of bird flu outbreaks are underreporting the extent of the problem, generally because they do not have the money, veterinary expertise or health systems to track the disease adequately in animals, international health officials said….
(New York Times, 6-1-06)
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a step-by-step plan yesterday, including the rapid mass use of the antiviral Tamiflu, for containing a bird flu outbreak if the virus starts to spread rapidly among humans….Under the timeline laid down, a country should notify WHO of a cluster of suspicious cases suggesting sustained human-to-human spread of the virus within 24 hours of detection.
(Scotsman, 5-31-06)
CYBERSPACE
The Kyoto, Kumamoto and Shizuoka prefectural police Tuesday arrested eight people on suspicion of phishing fraud by creating bogus Yahoo Japan Web sites, the police said….The group allegedly swindled about 700 people out of a total of about 100 million yen….
(Yomiuri Shimbun, 5-31-06)
In yet another large data breach, Texas Guaranteed (TG) a Round Rock, Texas-based nonprofit organization that administers student loans today announced that an outside contractor had lost an unspecified piece of equipment containing the names and Social Security numbers of approximately 1.3 million borrowers….Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn, announced that one of its computers had been hacked, resulting in the potential compromise of personal data belonging to 135,000 alumni and prospective students.
(Computerworld, 6-1-06)
EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA
Norwegian firm Statkraft says subaquatic sea tide-harnessing machines could in future provide 3 percent of the EU's electricity, as new research shows rising CO2 levels are causing epochal changes in the Arctic seas. The floating machines - 40 metres long by 15 metres wide on the sea surface - are to work by using tidal water movements to turn submerged turbines providing 3 to 5 GWh of electricity per year. Statkraft estimates the technology could one day supply up to 100 TWh of power for the EU, with Germany, the UK and the Netherlands already expressing interest in the project. "They are commercially competitive with wind power," the firm's senior advisor Bjornar Olsen told press in Tromso on Wednesday (31 May). "But unlike wind, tidal movements are constant. The waters only stay still for two to four hours each day."
Andrew Rettman, Submarine farms could help EU face climate change threat, EUOBSERVER, 6-1-06
Children rummage through garbage cans for discarded food for their one meal during the day. Families wait to buy discount-priced vegetables left unsold in the evening. These are not locally exaggerated accounts of the situation in Palestinian areas, but an official account by the World Food Programme. Next month the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations agency, will have to feed 25 percent more people -- 600,000 in all -- in the Palestinian territories because they have no other way of finding food….Palestinians are evidently paying for exercising their democratic choice and voting a Hamas government into power. And it is the poorest among them who will pay the price. According to a recent study conducted by the WFP along with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), nearly two million Palestinians, more than half the population, are unable to meet their daily food needs without assistance. "The situation is dragging the exhausted population into deeper poverty and debt," Arnold Vercken, WFP country director in the Palestinian territories, said in a statement. "Loss of earnings and rising unemployment coupled with increased market prices are crippling the poorest sector of society, leading to mounting despair." Vercken added: "In Gaza we are seeing more people, especially children, begging on the streets. We are in a race against time to reach the most vulnerable with food aid and avoid an escalation of this crisis. Urgent assistance now can really make a difference."
Sanjay Suri, Still Some Food in the Garbage, Inter Press Service, 6-2-06
ASIA PACIFIC
While much of the world's attention is on the "rise" of China in the political, economic and military spheres, there remains a relative lack of attention on Asia's other rising power - India, as highlighted by the fact that India has attracted a tenth of the foreign direct investment of China.
Corruption, India's infrastructure bottlenecks, bureaucracy referred to as the infamous "License Raj" and India's unpredictable democracy, which creates precarious coalition governments and changes in policy every time there is a change of administration has led India to becoming subordinate to China among the emerging economies.
However, another factor that has the potential to deter India's rise is the plethora of conflicts and instabilities on its periphery. While China has resolved or shelved most such conflicts, India has active disputes along most of its borders. This "wall of instability" has prevented India from gaining access to vital resources and markets, deterred regional economic integration and security cooperation, and may even undermine investor confidence. India's poor relations with Bangladesh and instabilities in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and in India's northeast have limited direct land access to the markets of China and Southeast Asia. Progress on plans for Myanmar to supply India with natural gas from its Shwe field off the coast of Arakan state has been held up by tensions between India and Bangladesh and Myanmar's close relationship with China….India's own insurgencies in the seven states of the northeast commonly referred to as the "seven sisters" (Assam, Arunachel Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura) where over 100 militant groups operate, have delayed plans for direct energy, trade and transport links between India and Southeast Asia….The Indian government itself has been preoccupied by its northern insurgency in Kashmir….The region's proximity to the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, increasingly Islamic extremist Bangladesh and separatist movements and authoritarian rule in Myanmar have made the northeast insurgencies the final piece in an "arc" of instability stretching from Myanmar to Nepal. …The Norwegian-brokered ceasefire, which was implemented in 2002 between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Ealem (LTTE), appears to be a ceasefire only in name….India's fluctuating relations with Pakistan have prevented access to energy resources and markets in Iran and the Central Asian republics.
Chietigj Bajpaee, India Held Back By Wall of Instability, Asia Times, 6-1-06
Hundreds of worshippers watched in horror as the workers, mostly Muslims, brought down the roof, pushed down the walls and smashed the deities that immigrant Indian workers had brought with them from South India to provide solace in a strange new land. "We are poor and our only comfort is our temples and now we are losing that also," Kanagamah said in Tamil, the language spoken by ethnic Indians who form eight percent of Malaysia's 26 million people and mostly follow Hinduism. Indians are economically backward and politically weak compared to Malays who comprise 50 percent of the population and dominate decision making at every level. Ethnic Chinese, who make up another 24 percent, enjoy economic clout and dominate business activity. Over the years, local authorities have been regularly demolishing temples saying the structures were built illegally. Most were small wayside shrines. However, in recent years, several large 100-year-old temples, built during the British colonial era, were demolished not just because they stood in the way of development but simply because they were classified as "illegal structures." It is now a common sight to see bulldozers reducing large temples to rubble and workers to smashing deities before the eyes of helpless worshippers….''Non-Muslims increasingly feel alien in their country of birth," said Tian Chua, a senior leader in the opposition Peoples Justice Party told IPS. "Unlike before, under Prime Minister Abdullah, there is an increasing tendency for Malays to rally around Islam -- it is a worrying trend." "There's a creeping Islamisation in our society and this poses a danger to our secular, multi-religious and multi-racial country," said opposition leader Lim Kit Siang. "The destruction of any place of worship is unacceptable -- the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi must urgently intervene.''
Baradan Kuppusamy, Temple Demolitions Spell Creeping Islamisation, Inter Press Service, 6-1-06
AMERICAS
One of the oddest reactions to Vice President Cheney's now-infamous speech in Lithuania, the one which many Russians believe officially heralded the start of a new Cold War, came from the mainstream American media. What was so strange? They actually did their job. Instead of simply parroting the Administration's latest pieties, they actually allowed themselves to smell a rat. And what a putrid, bloated, rotting-in-a-flooded-Manila-gutter rat odor it was! You'd have to have been literally brain dead not to have smelled it. The rat of course was the insane hypocrisy of a foaming fascist like Dick Cheney suddenly getting all Amnesty International righteous over a bad regime that does bad things. The fact that Cheney flew straight to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan right after squirting over Russia's human rights problems turned the rank hypocrisy into a bad black comedy routine, barely fit for even a Tom Green. Kazakhstan is a country where opposition politicians and media aren't merely jailed, exiled or cowed as they are in Russia, but are shot and dumped in forests, Miller's Crossing-style, on behalf of a despot whose family runs the country like its own fiefdom. Azerbaijan is even worse, if such a thing can be imagined not only because the Azeri authorities brutally suppress pro-democracy protests, but because it is the first and only post-Soviet state to officially create a despotic family dynasty. After former leader Heydar Aliyev died in office, he passes power (along with control over the country's vast oil wealth) to his son, Ilham Aliyev, in 2003, a dynastic transfer that was then "legimitized" by rigged elections that the Bush administration somehow manages each time to view as a democracy cup 1/100 full rather than 99/100 empty. Incredibly enough, a few members of the mainstream American press were shocked into action by Cheney's crackpipe hypocrisy. On May 9th, the normally anti-Putin New York Times published an editorial titled, "Cheney as Pot, Putin as Kettle," tepidly calling into question Cheney's bizarre meta-irony act: "spearing Russia while flirting with its even more undemocratic neighbors confuses the message, especially when done by a vice president identified with oil interests." Tepid, but at least a rare acknowledgement of Cheney's insane logic….Putin, now completely and forever disabused of any illusions that he would ever be anything to Bush and Cheney but an obstacle standing between Siberian oil wells and Houston oil oligarch bank accounts, has seen his country become wealthier and bolder. He's fighting back, not just in Russia and its neighbors, but also for example by selling weapons to Venezuela and nuclear plants to Iran. Cheney lost out in his bid to secure Russia's oil, but the Caspian oil is still being fought over, especially as Kazakhstan hasn't started pumping yet most of its upcoming oil streams. That's what this Cold War hype is about and the bleating about democracy, and the seemingly clumsy display of hypocrisy. It's not a Cold War, it's an oil grab gone bad.
Mark Ames, Cheney Starts New Cold War Over Oil, The exile, 6-1-06
Chavez said that his government's recent purchases of rifles, helicopters and patrol boats from Russia and Spain "is not an arms race" but rather an effort by Caracas to "modernize" its armed forces. The first shipment of 30,000 AK-103 rifles - out of a total of 100,000 bought from Moscow - arrived on Saturday at the Puerto Cabello naval base 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital and was transported to the Maracay arsenal 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of Caracas….Chavez announced his intention to buy the Russian fighters after Washington's May 15 refusal to sell weapons to Venezuela because of the latter's alleged lack of cooperation in the anti-terrorist fight.…In addition, Caracas last year agreed to buy 10 transport and maritime surveillance aircraft from the Spanish firm CASA and eight patrol boats from Spain's Navantia shipyard for about $2.2 billion. Washington has criticized the Venezuelan arms purchases from Russia and Spain, expressing its "concern" that some of the weapons would wind up in the hands of Colombian guerrillas.
Venezuela: Arrival of Russian rifles is "historic" event, Merco Press, 6-5-06
Within the Bush administration something that senior officials call the "war paradigm" is the central organising principle. They do not use the phrase publicly, but they bend policy to serve it. After September 11 the war paradigm was instantly adopted. George Bush, who proclaimed "I'm a war president", assumed the paradigm as his natural state and right….In the beginning, the elements of the war paradigm appeared to be expediencies, conceived as emergency measures in the struggle against al-Qaida. But their precepts were developed before September 11 by John Yoo, promoted to deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel at the department of justice, where he was tasked to write secret memos on torture, surveillance and executive power.
Once Bush approved them, the clerisy of neoconservative lawyers put them into effect. They believe fervently that the constitution is fatally flawed and must be circumscribed….There is no exit strategy from emergency. In the short run, Bush's defence of his war paradigm may precipitate three constitutional crises. In the first, freedom of the press is at issue. On May 21 Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, announced the possibility that the New York Times would be prosecuted for publishing its Pulitzer prize-winning article on the administration's domestic surveillance….In the second case, a wartime executive above the law may be asserted. Last week the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who charged the vice-president's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice, made plain his intention to summon Cheney to the witness stand to impeach Libby's credibility or else commit perjury himself. But will the administration fight the subpoena as an infringement on a unitary executive that should be immune from such distractions in wartime?
In the third case, if either house of Congress should fall to the Democrats in the November midterm elections, the oversight suppressed during one-party rule would be restored. Would the administration refuse congressional requests for documents as it did when the Democratic Senate in Bush's first year asked for those pertaining to Cheney's energy taskforce, which reportedly included Enron's CEO Ken Lay, last week convicted on numerous counts of fraud?
Bush does not contemplate retreat from the war paradigm, which he embraces as his reason for being…
Sidney Blumenthal, A state of emergency: Bush is a danger to the constitution in his wartime capacity as commander in chief , Guardian, 6-01-06
GLOBAL
In one new paper, to appear in a coming issue of Geophysical Research Letters, Matthew Huber of the Purdue department of earth and atmospheric sciences and Ryan L. Sriver, a graduate student there, calculate the total damage that could be caused by storms worldwide, using data normally applied to reconciling weather forecast models with observed weather events.
The Purdue scientists found that their results matched earlier work by Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at M.I.T. Dr. Emanuel has argued that global warming, specifically the warming of the tropical oceans, is already increasing the power expended by hurricanes….In the other new study, Dr. Emanuel and Michael E. Mann, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, compared records of global sea surface temperatures with those of the tropical Atlantic and said the recent strengthening of hurricanes was attributable largely to the rise in ocean surface temperature.
Climate researchers at Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology separately reported new evidence yesterday supporting the idea that global warming is causing stronger hurricanes, New York Times, 5-31-06
Far from being barren wastelands, the deserts that occupy one quarter of the earth's land surface could be key sources of food and power, the United Nations said on Monday. But these vast open spaces, home to rare and useful plants and animals, are at risk from climate change and human exploitation, the UN's Environment Programme said in a report published on World Environment Day. Deserts are prime potential locations for solar power generators that do not pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and plants that can thrive in desert conditions could provide food when water runs short. One such, a plant called Nipa found in the Sonoran desert of western Mexico, produces a grain the size of wheat but is drought resistant and even thrives on seawater. "It is a strong candidate for a major global food crop and could become this desert's greatest gift to the world," the report said. Rainfall patterns are changing, glaciers that feed important rivers are melting as the planet warms and irreplaceable water from deep desert aquifers is being squandered. Rainfall in Iran's Dashti Kibri desert dropped by 16 percent a decade between 1976 and 2000. In South Africa's Kalahari and Chile's Atacama deserts it fell by 12 and 8 percent respectively, the report said. The Rio Grande river in the United States has dwindled to a saline trickle from a freshwater torrent, and South Africa's Orange river is also shrinking. "The answer to desert water is to stop using it stupidly," said specialist Andrew Warren of University College London…."There is going to be a fight for water -- there already are such fights," Warren said. Pakistan, already one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, is facing even more problems as groundwater levels fall and glaciers retreat. "There will be increased competition for water resources," Warren said. "It is not the most stable region. There will be really nasty implications."
Jeremy Lovell, World's key deserts in danger from climate change, Reuters, 6-5-06
The United Nations used World Environment Day on Monday to warn that land turning to desert is a growing obstacle to ending poverty and a threat to peace.….Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose largely-desert country was officially hosting the campaign, urged the adoption of a World Charter on Deserts to help achieve a Millennium Goal of halving poverty by 2015. He said destruction of natural ecosystems and desertification "aggravate conditions of poverty across the world, deepening the crisis". The United Nations says almost a quarter of the world's land surface is already desert, and the share is growing. "Across the planet, poverty, unsustainable land management and climate change are turning drylands into deserts, and desertification in turn exacerbates and leads to poverty," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a statement. "There is also mounting evidence that dryland degradation and competition over increasingly scarce resources can bring communities into conflict."
World Environment Day marks the date of the first U.N. environmental summit held in Stockholm in 1972. In the U.N. calendar, 2006 is also the year of deserts and desertification. Around the world, planting to slow erosion was planned in countries from Algeria to Bhutan. In Mauritius, a group planned to plant vegetation on dunes to protect beaches from erosion. In Churchill, Australia, activists were collecting computer parts for recycling. A group in southeast Benin were due to march to raise awareness of the risks of cutting down trees. The World Bank said it was becoming "carbon neutral" in its main offices and all operational travel from headquarters. This means the "greenhouse gas" emissions from these activities have been offset by investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The European Union stepped up its campaign against climate change with a publicity drive to convince people that small changes in daily routine can help the environment significantly.
Hamid Ould Ahmed, U.N. warns of conflict risk from growth of deserts, Reuters, 6-5-06
A number of countries in the throes of bird flu outbreaks are underreporting the extent of the problem, generally because they do not have the money, veterinary expertise or health systems to track the disease adequately in animals, international health officials said….[Christianne Bruschke, leader of the bird flu task force at the World Organization for Animal Health] cited African nations as giving inadequate reports, in addition to China and Indonesia, two vast countries battling extensive but poorly defined avian influenza woes. Indonesia's decentralized government system has made controlling the disease particularly difficult, experts from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said, allowing the virus to skip from one village to the next.
Experts fear bird flu not reported enough: Some nations fall short due to lack of resources, New York Times, 6-1-06
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a step-by-step plan yesterday, including the rapid mass use of the antiviral Tamiflu, for containing a bird flu outbreak if the virus starts to spread rapidly among humans. The "rapid response and containment strategy" has a chance of quashing the deadly H5N1 virus only if people in the zone at risk receive massive doses of the drug within three weeks of a confirmed outbreak, it said…."Mathematical models have indicated that a containment strategy, based on the mass administration of antiviral drugs, has a chance of success only when drugs are administered within 21 days following the timely detection of the first case representing improved human-to-human transmission of the virus." Under the timeline laid down, a country should notify WHO of a cluster of suspicious cases suggesting sustained human-to-human spread of the virus within 24 hours of detection.
CYBERSPACE
The Kyoto, Kumamoto and Shizuoka prefectural police Tuesday arrested eight people on suspicion of phishing fraud by creating bogus Yahoo Japan Web sites, the police said. It was the nation's first crackdown on an organized phishing fraud scheme in which perpetrators tried to obtain IDs and passwords of registered members of Yahoo Japan auctions, the Kyoto prefectural police said. The group allegedly swindled about 700 people out of a total of about 100 million yen….According to the police, the group sent e-mails to members of Yahoo Japan, which operates Internet auction services, pretending to be employees of the portal site company. The group reportedly asked the members to reregister their IDs and other personal information, telling them it was to prevent illegal access to the site. The victims accessed designated Web site pages created to look like the real Yahoo site and input the information. The group then used the personal information to access the auction site while posing as the ID holders, placed false bids and defrauded those who responded, the police said….Investigators identified the eight from the access destinations and security camera footage from sites where they withdrew money.
8 held over suspected phishing fraud, Yomiuri Shimbun, 5-31-06
In yet another large data breach, Texas Guaranteed (TG) a Round Rock, Texas-based nonprofit organization that administers student loans today announced that an outside contractor had lost an unspecified piece of equipment containing the names and Social Security numbers of approximately 1.3 million borrowers.
The loss was reported to the company…by Hummingbird Ltd. a Toronto-based company that had been hired by TG to develop a document management system for TG…..Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn, announced that one of its computers had been hacked, resulting in the potential compromise of personal data belonging to 135,000 alumni and prospective students. The breach was discovered…when the university’s IT staff noticed "an anomaly during routine daily maintenance of our computer system," said Funda Alp, a university spokeswoman. A rootkit installed on the system, apparently by an outside attacker, caused it to crash one of the services running on a server containing the information, Alp said
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to http://www.wordsofpower.net/
global warming, climate change,
bird flu, Avian flu, H5N1, geopolitics, terrorism, Peak Oil, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Energy, Sustainable resources, Renewable Resources, Environment Millennium Goals, Alternative Energy
