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Emergent, a blog about security.

Fall of the House of Hubris

Few things are as satisfying as watching a bully go down. I have been following Murdoch since I read Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard. It was pretty clear years ago that News Corp was breaking the law. There is no legal way News Corp properties could have gotten access to phone conversations of members of the royal family. Once the royal family brought a suit it was just a question of time before the discovery process would begin the great unravelling.

Of course what changed the tide was the revelation that News of the World reporters had hacked the cell phone of a murdered girl. All of a sudden ordinary British people began to realize that secret police journalism did not just apply to politicians, members of the royal family, and celebrities. Suddenly they realized that they could be spied on by News Corp operatives.

I really don't see how the Murdoch family survives this. Now American celebrities are bringing action against News Corp and the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation. The investigation has taken on a life of its own.

Those of us who were in Washington, DC the summer of 1973 recognize all the signs of a great implosion. At first it seems incredible that such a bully can be brought down until it seems inevitable.

Major kudos to The Guardian, who has been with this story from the beginning and persevered when everyone else was too intimidated to touch it.

Mark Steel has a hugely entertaining take on this, but I have to disagree with this part:

So the newspaper will investigate itself, the police will investigate themselves and the politicians will be investigated by an inquiry set up by themselves. They are all keen on stringent law and order so maybe this is their plan to speed up the justice system. Instead of costly trials the accused will be told to hold an inquiry into themselves, and come back in three years and let us know if they did anything wrong or not.

No, not this time. As I said before, the investigation has taken on a life of its own. As I write this advertisers are fleeing, investors are dumping stock, institutional investors are questioning the role of members of the Murdoch family. And that does not even allow for News Corps' continuing legal troubles. This is somewhere between Watergate and Enron. I can't see the corporate survival of the Murdoch family and I would not be surprised if the corporation itself is broken apart, unless if falls apart.

Edit - Murdoch's Pirates: Before the phone hacking, there was Rupert's pay-TV skullduggery

FounderCorps

Tein Wong alerts us to a new organization for entrepreneurs:

Managed by experienced technology entrepreneurs for the benefit of entrepreneurs, FounderCorps has already assisted a number of community groups and Universities in business formation and mentorship activities, including George Mason University, George Washington University, University of Maryland, Startup XLR8R and others.

This sounds very exciting and I am going to try to find out more.

Happy Fourth of July

How not to recruit your sock puppets

First of all, don't use sock puppets. Cultivate your human online supporters.

Second of all, don't use Craigslist. You will get caught.

Use LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, Twitter, etc. That is what they are there for.

Also, don't use sock puppets, human or bots. It is just pathetic.

The problem with conference sponsors

Dustin Marx

One of the most significant stories leading up to last year's JavaOne was Google's withdrawing from participation. Although the conference turned out to be a huge success in terms of quantity and quality of technical content, this content would undoubtedly have been enhanced by the availability of Google-led presentations.

This is the first I have heard of this and obviously do not have any opinion about it; save that it illustrates one of the difficulties of working with sponsors.

Congratulations Scott Pelly

CBS: Scott Pelley named anchor of "CBS Evening News"

From Scott Pelly's interview with Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke:

Asked if it's tax money the Fed is spending, Bernanke said, "It's not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing."

"You've been printing money?" Pelley asked.

"Well, effectively," Bernanke said.

That, right there, captures the essence of Warren Mosler's book and Modern Monetary Theory. With any luck, Pelley will have a chance to develop that on CBS Evening News.

Federal IT miscellany

Netspectives on my favorite subject: How Adoption of Open Standards Can Benefit Federal Agencies

Grant Gross reports that the FCC should deny AT&T spectrum buy, groups say

James Staten: AWS and OpenStack: An Interesting Contrast Worth Considering During Cloud Selection

Enterprise 2.0: E2 Santa Clara 2011 Call for Papers Now Open!

Via Fedspere

New to me local tech blogs

Learning .NET, from Christopher Steen

Privasoft FOIA Blog, Through software and services, Privasoft transformed the way information disclosure teams, like FOIA & ATIP offices, comply with legislative, regulatory and internal requirements.

The MurkyGrey blog, Survive and thrive in software startups

Project Performance Corporation, part of the AEA Group

Sharing documents with Google Docs

Until this past month I was a great believer in Google Docs. I use them extensively, they are ideal for collaborating on press releases and similar documents.

And then this past month I started having troubles with the share function. When I send email permissions to share documents, the recipient cannot gain access. This is true even for recipients with whom I have previously shared documents.

Anyone else having similar difficulties?

Call for speakers and the day's Health IT news

The Healthcare IT Guy: Speakers needed for Business Intelligence & Analytics for Healthcare Conference & Exhibition (July 11-12 in San Diego)

Medgadget: Pathogen Covered Scrubs Bring Style to Your Clinic

EMR and HIPAA: Operating System of Healthcare IT

Healthcare Technology News: Direct Project Specifications Achieving Widespread Adoption: Could Positively Impact Care Coordination Soon for Millions of Americans

Via HITsphere

Aeolus String Quartet

The Aeolus String Quartet will be preforming works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Bartok on March 20th at 2 PM at The United Church.

Be there or be square.

Today in Federal IT

Mark Amtower has some thoughts on defending your marketing budget in hard times.

Tom Temin finds out how his broadband service measures up courtesy of the FCC.

John Zyskowski gives us a wrap up of the recent RSA conference.

William Matthews: CIA blames 'technical difficulties' for website crash

NASA Now: Solar Storms.

Via Fedsphere created by Netspective.

Effective book promotion?

Clients From Hell is running a contest; retweet their book promotion and you have a chance to win a MacBook Air. They are getting plenty of retweets, and I suspect traffic to their site; but is it translating into interest in the book?

If it does we may be seeing more opportunities to win a MacBook Air.

Assessing credibility

I must dissent from Jim Horton on this one. Mere anonymity, or the more common pseudonymity, does not necessarily detract from an author's credibility.

As a reader I ask myself does the writer offer a basis for their consclusions? Are their sources on the record? Do they refer to documents that are publicly available? These are the kinds of things that weigh with me.

Health IT blogging, HIMSS edition

David Blumenthal addresses HIMSS Interoperability Showcase

ePrescribing, incentives and penalties

Lab Soft News: When to send out health alerts; it's complicated.

Fierce Health IT: HIMSS Analytics survey shows uptick in hospital readiness for meaningful use

Neil Versel: Video: athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush at HIMSS11

eHealth: Social Media at HIMSS

HISTalk: HIMSS wrap up.

From HITShpere, via Shahid Shah.

Cheap shot dot com

The Guardian

A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a "churn engine". It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a "churn rating", show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material.

First of all, congrats to the PR team at Churnalism for such a great story placement.

There is nothing wrong with using a press release in a news article. The test should be the information in the press release news; that is, is the material accurate, new, interesting, relevant, and compelling. If so an editor should use it; it not an editor should discard it.

UPDATE: Shel Holtz said this so much better.

Prank phone calls

It seems a pro-union activist, pretending to be David Koch, called Gov. Scott Walker and recorded the result. How much of an embarrassment this will be I cannot say; but it demonstrates the range of activities open to online activists and the sort of thing we need to prepare our clients for.

I believe that it is illegal in Maryland and a few other states to record a phone conversation without the consent of both parties.

The power of social media and the Internet

Clearly social media is extremely powerful, otherwise the Egyptian government would not have cut access to the internet, neither would the US government put out solicitations to subvert it.

Honestly, astroturf is for amateurs.

Marylene Dosse to play the high romantics

French pianist Marylene Dosse will preform works by Franz Liszt, Schumann, Rachmaninov, and Chopin on March 4 at 8 PM at The United Church.

I am looking forward to it.