MUFON Journals - The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project

Now, this is a great resource tool: namely, all of the back-issues (from the late 1960s to the present day) of the Mutual UFO Network’s monthly magazine posted online at John Greenewald’s Black Vault in handy, PDF format for download.

Hat tip to Nick Redfern at UFOmystic.com

Woman Sues RIAA For Racketeering 

A lawsuit that accuses the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) of racketeering, fraud and illegal spying was revived Friday after a federal judge dismissed the case a month ago. An Oregon woman, Tanya Andersen, originally counter-sued the RIAA after she was served with notice of an RIAA lawsuit falsely alleging copyright infringement and demanding penalties. A judge tossed Anderson’s first case, but her amended lawsuit, filed Friday in Oregon U.S. District Court, seeks to represent thousands of people in a class-action suit as attorneys claim they have been wrongly targeted for music piracy by the RIAA.

Andersen’s suit seeks class-action status to represent “those who were sued or were threatened with suit by defendants for file-sharing, downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged in actual copyright infringement.”

Read Article Here: FMQB: Radio Industry News, Music Industry Updates, Arbitron Ratings, Music News and more

The National Security Agency was once known for its skill in eavesdropping on the world’s telephone calls through radio dishes in out-of-the-way places like England’s Menwith Hill, Australia’s Pine Gap, and Washington state’s Yakima Training Center.

Today those massive installations, which listened in on phone conversations beamed over microwave links, are becoming something akin to relics of the Cold War. As more communications traffic travels through fiber links, and as e-mail and text messaging supplant phone calls, the spy agency that once intercepted telegrams is adapting yet again.

Recent evidence suggests that the NSA has been focusing on widespread monitoring of e-mail messages and text messages, recording of Web browsing, and other forms of electronic data-mining, all done without court supervision. Taken together, those activities raise unique privacy and oversight concerns greater than those posed by large-scale monitoring of voice communications.

Documents released last week by a security consultant (PDF) indicate that an unnamed major wireless provider has opened its network to the U.S. government, allowing customers’ e-mail, text messaging, and Web use to be monitored. And Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein said last week that surveillance of e-mail was the real concern raised by the debate over amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

That led some high-ranking House Democrats, including Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, to circulate a letter (PDF) advising their colleagues to look skeptically at a Republican proposal that would grant retroactive immunity to companies that illegally let the Feds plug into their networks. The Republicans’ blanket of retroactive immunity would likely cover e-mail providers, search engines, Internet service providers, and instant-messaging services too.

NSA shifts to e-mail, Web, data-mining dragnet | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com — Update

By Kevin PoulsenMarch 11, 2008

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, “Oops!!!”, which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he’d been shut down for “suspicious activity.”

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com — Update | Threat Level from Wired.com

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

“What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment,” Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told Threat Level. “I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that.”

Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier — Congress Reacts | Threat Level from Wired.com

Hollywood mega-director Steven Spielberg is reportedly setting up a social network for people interested in paranormal and extra-terrestrial activity, inspired by his own personal experiences with the unknown.

The focus of the network will be on people who have an interest in, or have experienced paranormal phenomena, and the network may feature multimedia content of UFO sightings, paranormal activity and user-based content. 

Stories of Speilberg’s own personal experiences with ghosts are widely known; his stay in the Excelsior House led him to become so frightened by alleged ghosts that he fled the room and moved 20 miles away, forming the inspiration for the movie ‘Poltergiest’.

The network may have been originally in development with Yahoo, but the project was abandoned before it was launched. But reports suggest that the idea lives on, and a team of developers are aiming for a mid-year launch.

LIVENEWS.com.au > Entertainment > Spielberg to launch UFO and paranormal social network?