Twitter, Wikileaks Data named in U. S. Court Orders

Talk about the cat that ate the canary. Remember when Twitter  was just a funny sound birds made? Wikileaks, the Australian website now synonymous with expose information on the scale of the infamous Pentagon papers, is in the news again. Wikileaks, Wix, for short, is surely the domain hybrid of the decade, marrying the Wikipedia lexicon of data integrity to a brand of Internet age journalism. Wikileaks is now the target of a privacy demolishing attempt by the United States Government to acquire Twitter data in the form of messages form and to its principal news sources.

But if Wikileaks is Australian and America is another nation, how can Uncle Sam breach privacy with such a long sword? The Wix (Wikileaks) site now says the U.S. wants private messages, contact information and personal details of founder Julian Assange, Pfc. Bradley Manning and others. Wix also claims that Uncle Sam ordered Twitter not to disclose its court order action to Assange or any of the others under investigation. Remember when Twitter was just a funny sound birds made? Now it’s the faith and hope of new media freedom, like Iceland.

Twitter, one of many social network and media messaging sites that utilize wireless high speed technology for communications between individuals with private accounts, affirmed its practice of disclosing investigation and interest of government into their account . Webmasters and domainers everywhere are watching the Internet privacy of history sniffing, data trading, and marketing programming for abuses against individuals without their knowledge.  While such actions are draped in the mantle of august justice, they actually wear the mantle of an embarrassed administration as well.

The Twix scandal (Twitter plus Wikileaks) and legal machinations trying to oust Wikileaks sources will be closely watched by all citizens interested in preserving and protecting their rights to privacy. Birjitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic citizen, got news of her subpoena Friday. The Virginia court that landed its order in San Francisco based Twitter has no known link to the newly dead Pentagon official John Wheeler, killed by a homicide this week. Found in a Delaware landfill, the former Pentagon official (and West Point alumni) is still a mystery.

Wheeler, 66, had been working on promoting discussions about cyber-defense among governments, industry and academia, according to a company statement. A veteran of the Reagan, Bush and Dubya administrations. Wheeler is characterized by media statements as outspoken and a true patriot”.He even started a discussion forum online which had a host of curiously posthumous entries, as late as December 28th (2010).  Wheeler’s 225 pound body was found December 21st, 2010. Wheeler’s phone, which he was known to post on his site from, has been found. (Authorities may want to check his Twitter account).

FaceBook Makes the Cover of Time

When is a website a socially defining cultural phenomenon? When it begins to define the way we live. The cover of Time magazine and the interior article by Dan Fletcher explores not only the popularity of this website that started as a domain name, and encompasses the vast scope of social interaction as the Internet has changed it forever.

FaceBook has 500 million users. There are entire countries whose hosting capability doesn’t have the capacity to host that kind of traffic. On page 37 of the current edition of TIME there is a global penetration diagram showing how Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook share world domination. But the real news is how the evolving practices of online sharing and information architecture delimit security and privacy in an increasingly transparent internet social living space.

DomainGang.com Hacked?

Well, unless you enjoy flat Times New Roman displays of the DomainGang site cgi-bin, the game is afoot over at the DomainGang.com website. First there was the cgi-bin file, then the blank white screen. The Twitter page for the blog site has comments allegedly by the admin regaridng the domain password getting stolen. Has our favorite snarky Domaining site been hacked? Is nothing sacred?

Bing has SEO Fling, Twitted on Facebook

 

 

Michael Jackson Death nearly crashes Web

A major force in popular culture, contemporary music, visual media, and modern dance has died and the world is the poorer for it. Michael Jackson at 50 has died entirely too soon to suit hundreds of millions of people on earth. But they all rushed to the internet to talk about it, proving once again that social networking operates as a universal benchmark of what people are cocnerned about.

Michael Jackson’s death Thursday afternoon has brought enough world emotional impact that individuals across the planet looking for more information and consolation crashed Twitter and the Michael Jackson’s Wikipedia entry. Emotion ran high and fans erected memorial sites. Facebook and Youtube participated in each other’s bandwidth helix of shutdown pain.