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SAN DIEGO — A sergeant will be discharged for criticizing President Barack Obama on Facebook in a case that called into question the Pentagon’s policies about social media and its limits on the speech of active duty military personnel, the Marine Corps said Wednesday.
Sgt. Gary Stein will get an other-than-honorable discharge and lose most of his benefits for violating the policies, the Corps said.
The San Diego-area Marine who has served nine years in the Corps said he was disappointed by the decision. He argued that he was exercising his constitutional rights to free speech.
“I love the Marine Corps, I love my job. I wish it wouldn’t have gone this way. I’m having a hard time seeing how 15 words on Facebook could have ruined my nine-year career,” he told The Associated Press.
Gary Kreep, an attorney for Stein, said he would pursue administrative appeals within the Marine Corps but anticipates the effort will fail. He said he planned to file an amended complaint in federal court.
“As long as he wants to pursue this, we will be supporting him,” said Kreep, who is executive director of the United States Justice Foundation, an advocacy group.
The Marines acted after saying Stein stated March 1 on a Facebook page used by Marine meteorologists, “Screw Obama and I will not follow all orders from him.” Stein later clarified that statement, saying he would not follow unlawful orders.
Brig. Gen. Daniel Yoo, the commanding general of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, said in a brief statement Wednesday that evidence supported an administrative board’s recommendation to discharge Stein.
Tom Umberg, a former Army colonel and military prosecutor, said Stein persisted even after being warned.
“The Marine Corps gave him the opportunity to think about his actions, yet Sgt. Stein continued to undermine the chain of command,” said Umberg, who was not involved in Stein’s case. “I think his purpose was to leave the Marine Corps in a dramatic fashion in order to begin a career in talk radio or what have you.”
Umberg believes the decision to discharge Stein will have limited impact because the vast majority of Marines would never consider such postings.
“I think 99 percent of the soldiers and Marines currently on duty understand the duties of supporting the chain of command and understand their rights of free speech are limited,” he said. “To that 1 percent who don’t know their rights to free speech are limited once they take the oath, this is a loud and clear message.”
During a hearing, a military prosecutor submitted screen grabs of Stein’s postings on one Facebook page he created called Armed Forces Tea Party, which the prosecutor said included the image of Obama on a “Jackass” movie poster. Stein also superimposed Obama’s image on a poster for “The Incredibles” movie that he changed to “The Horribles,” military prosecutor Capt. John Torresala said.
At the hearing this month at Camp Pendleton, Torresala argued that Stein’s behavior repeatedly violated Pentagon policy and he should be dismissed after ignoring warnings from his superiors about his postings.
The military has had a policy since the Civil War limiting the free speech of service members, including criticism of the commander in chief.
Pentagon directives say military personnel in uniform cannot sponsor a political club; participate in any TV or radio program or group discussion that advocates for or against a political party, candidate or cause; or speak at any event promoting a political movement.
Commissioned officers also may not use contemptuous words against senior officials.
Article source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57421825/marines-discharge-sergeant-for-facebook-posts/
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Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebook-discipline-what-do-you-think/2012/04/26/gIQAA1XZjT_story.html
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Facebook is reportedly making its own smartphone. The HTC Status (pictured above) was the first phone to have Facebook integration in its hardware and software. Photo: Jon Synder/Wired 
We heard it five months ago and we’re hearing it again: Facebook is working on its own smartphone. It’s a rumor that sends the mind reeling with speculation. What, exactly, would a super-social phone even look like?
According to a Wednesday DigiTimes story, Facebook has partnered with HTC on the development of a smartphone. The report says the phone will run on a Facebook-exclusive platform built on top of Google’s Android operating system, and will integrate all of the features and functions available on the social networking site.
On top of that, the smartphone will be fully Facebook-branded — this isn’t just another Facebook-optimized HTC phone like the ChaCha (previously known as the Status) or Salsa. Consumers won’t see the device until the third quarter of 2012 at the earliest, the DigiTimes story states.
The DigiTimes report lines up with an AllThingsD story from last November that stated Facebook codenamed the project “Buffy.” Facebook could certainly have changed the codename since November, though — perhaps to another late 90s/early 2000s TV show? Two employees who reportedly worked on the “Buffy” team, Chamath Palihapitiya and Joe Hewitt, have left the company, so it stands to reason that there’s a new team in place, along with a refreshed version of the ultra-secret phone.
While all reports are pointing to an Android-based OS, it seems strange that a Facebook-branded phone would run on Google’s mobile OS. After all, Google+ competes directly with Facebook in the social space, and Google competes directly with Facebook in the larger, all-encompassing Internet platform battle. Both companies want your daily online visits, your advertising-friendly eyeballs, and (ultimately) your credit card numbers.
Then again, the tech industry does have its share of awkward bedfellows. Samsung and Apple are in constant litigation, yet a Samsung spin-off company still makes displays for iOS devices.
“The Facebook phone will go in one of two routes,” Derek Kerton, principal analyst of The Kerton Group, told Wired. “One, it’s an Android phone with Facebook overlay, like the current HTC Sense overlay on Android. Two, it takes Amazon’s Kindle Fire approach and forks Android for Facebook.”
But what about the possibility that Facebook would create its own mobile OS from scratch? “I absolutely don’t think it would make any sense,” Kerton said.
Julie Ask, Forrester analyst, agrees: “It’s unlikely at this stage,” Ask told Wired in an email. “They would need some serious mobile and computer science talent, which they may or may not have. It would delay their time to market. Then there is the whole ecosystem issue of developers — both Blackberry and Windows struggle with this today.”
But doesn’t Facebook have the necessary computer science talent to develop an OS? And while building its own platform wouldn’t make sense in terms of time and effort, does it make any more sense for Facebook to piggyback on a direct competitor’s platform in its first self-branded smartphone?
Kerton says yes.
“It’s a beautiful jiujitsu move,” Kerton said. “Using your enemy and their power, and using that against them. The world is full of competition, and there’s no reason you can’t take Android and put your social application front and center.”
Whether the Facebook phone runs on Android, its own OS or something else (WebOS or Mozilla’s B2G?) the phone will naturally be centered around the social network’s features. One can easily imagine all of Facebook’s features on a smartphone, where the phone’s contacts, messages and photos all tie into a user’s Facebook friends, messages and photos (Instagram much?). A Facebook phone would also make it incredibly easy to see your news feed, post status updates, ‘like’ posts, and directly upload photos to your status feed or albums.
According to earlier reports, the Facebook phone will include HTML5 support for applications. The social networking giant already has an ecosystem of developers willing to create apps for the web-based Facebook, so it’s in a good position to nudge developers in this direction.
It’s also easy to imagine that Facebook phone users would be able to play games made by Zynga, listen to music through apps likes Spotify, and get their morning headlines from newsreader apps from the Washington Post, Yahoo and others. (Of course, not everyone is a fan of Facebook apps in their current incarnation, so we can only hope that a mobile experience will be different.)
“If we really want to get visionary about this, then we could talk about NFC and Facebook Credits thereby turned into a universal mobile wallet, used seamlessly for both online and offline purchases,” Aapo Markkanen, ABI Research analyst told Wired in an email. “They could even loan you money one day, profiling your credit-worthiness according to your social graph.”
“But that’s admittedly a little futuristic,” Markkanen added.
In terms of hardware, don’t expect a HTC ChaCha lookalike with a QWERTY keyboard. The phone will most likely look similar to recent Android and Windows Phone smartphones, featuring a large touchscreen and minimal physical buttons. And considering the company’s recent Instagram purchase, it would make sense for the phone to have a high-quality camera.
Though we’re pretty sure the Facebook phone is happening, the details are all speculation until Facebook and its hardware partner, whether its HTC or another manufacturer, reveals its plans.
When asked about its smartphone project, Facebook provided Wired with the same statement it provided five months ago:
“We don’t comment on rumor and speculation.
Our mobile strategy is simple: we think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”
HTC provided a similar statement, “HTC does not comment on rumors or speculation.”
Article source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/what-a-facebook-phone-will-look-like-features-and-os/
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Move over football, soccer is taking over Twitter.
The Champions League, soccer’s marquee tournament, has surpassed America’s biggest sporting event, the Super Bowl, in the Twitterverse.
The social-media company said Wednesday that Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final second-leg match between Barcelona and Chelsea broke the tweets-per-second record for a sporting event.
Twitter said activity during the game — a 2-2 draw that saw Chelsea progress to the final after winning the first leg in London 1-0 — peaked at 13,684 messages per second. That beat out the previous record for a sporting event, the 12,233 tweets per second during the climax of February’s Super Bowl between the NFL’s New York Giants and New England Patriots, which saw New York win 21-17 after scoring a touchdown with less a minute remaining.
The Super Bowl saw a total 13.7 million tweets. A Twitter spokesman said the company did not calculate the total number of messages sent during Tuesday’s soccer match.
The tweets-per-second metric reflects the rapid rise of Twitter use: During 2008′s Super Bowl the rate peaked at 27, while the peak for 2011′s game was 4,064.
Soccer taking over twitter should come as no surprise as the sport has the world’s most followed athlete on the social media site.
Known as the king of the sporting Twittersphere, Brazilian soccer star and Real Madrid midfielder Kaká became the first athlete to amass 10 million followers on the social networking site on Wednesday.
“Thank youuuuu. To celebrate I’ll make a twitcam” wrote the 30-year-old Kaká, who at the last count had 10,012,862 Twitter fans.
He’s nowhere close to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber — who each have more than 20 million followers — but it’s not a bad haul for a player whose career appears to be on the wane after becoming a superstar in a golden six-year stint at AC Milan in Italy.
Kaká describes himself as a “Christian, husband and father who loves football” and tweets in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
With Reporting by the Associated Press.
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Article source: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/sports/2012/04/26/soccer-taking-over-twitter-breaks-super-bowls-record-has-sports-most-followed/
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Within moments after Obama finished his remarks, Twitter users had written more than 20,000 posts containing “#dontdoublemyrate” — enough for Twitter to declare it a Top 10 worldwide “trending topic.”
The six-year-old microblogging site came into its own this presidential cycle, but the past few weeks have demonstrated how clearly it has become the tool of choice for getting something into the political bloodstream, from manufacturing a battle over who can be called a working mom to building a movement around a piece of legislation.
And the fact that the president is now incorporating hashtags into his speeches shows how Twitter is redefining the means by which politicians shape, distribute and refine their messages. Campaigning in 140 characters or less provides almost instant feedback, which campaigns use to figure out what is working and what isn’t, even before it hits the blogs, much less the traditional media outlets.
But as both sides are learning, once they enter the Twitterverse, the digital currents can sweep in many directions.
Conservatives seized upon Obama’s #dontdoublemyrate hashtag to complain about gas prices and unemployment. And the GOP-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce quickly bought space on Twitter to assure that everyone searching for the hashtag saw its tweets at the top of their computer screens.
Within 45 minutes of Obama’s speech, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had picked up the hashtag on his Twitter feed — to argue that Democrats, not Republicans, were responsible for the fact that student loan rates are set to double.
“Twitter has become the ultimate real-time engagement tool for our campaign,” said Zac Moffatt, digital director of GOP nominee Mitt Romney, whose operation has grown noticeably more aggressive in its use of the social media service.
In the past, for instance, the campaign might have sent out a mass e-mail to protest if a Democratic cable television pundit accused the candidate’s wife of never working a day in her life. And quite likely, it would have sunk without a ripple.
But when that happened at 8:43 p.m. on April 11, Ann Romney issued her first tweet: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.” And it caused a sensation that threw the Democrats on the defensive on women’s issues.
Where almost no one on Twitter had been mentioning Ann Romney or the strategist Hilary Rosen’s name when Rosen made her comment on CNN, the number quickly jumped to more than 150 tweets per minute. And by noon the next day, more than 2,800 Twitter users had sent Ann Romney’s tweet on to their tens of thousands of followers.
Twitter is dwarfed in size by Facebook, with 24 million active U.S. users at the end of last year, compared with nearly 133 million for Facebook, according to an estimate by the research firm eMarketer. But it is growing more than twice as fast, at 31.9 percent last year.
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/twitter-becomes-a-key-real-time-tool-for-campaigns/2012/04/26/gIQARf1TjT_story.html
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Washington Capitals winger Joel Ward says the use of Twitter to direct racial slurs at him “doesn’t faze me at all.”
“We won, and we are moving on,” he told USA Today. People are going to say what they want to say.”
— Three Stars: Ward leads the way; Who are No. 2 and No. 3?
— Spector: Capitals use grit—and Braden Holtby—to advance
Ward, a black Canadian born to parents who emigrated from Barbados, beat Bruins goalie Tim Thomas in overtime to eliminate the defending champs. Afterward, a small, predictable portion of Twitter users reacted disgustingly. Those tweets were eventually picked up and rebroadcast by media outlets.
The end result: A reminder that racism still exists and that people are often cowardly pigs. Nothing new—but still disheartening.
— Previously: Fan throws banana at Wayne Simmonds
Ward, who has carved out an professional career despite going undrafted by both the CHL and NHL, said he’d never had racist remarks directed at him in the NHL.
“There is no lying about it. …I’m definitely the one black guy in a room with 20 white guys,” Ward said. “There are definitely some cultural differences, such as taste in music, but I’ve neard heard anything derogatory.”
Joel Ward says he’s moving on. (AP Photo)
He says he has no concern about his safety moving forward in the playoffs.
“I’m pretty laid-back and I get along with a lot of people,” Ward said. “I don’t fear anything like that, and I have a good group of guys to protect me.”
Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, in a blog post about the situation, called people making the comments “unforgivable.”
“I hope they are now publicly identified and pay a huge price for their beliefs,” Leonsis wrote. “There should be zero tolerance for this kind of hate mongering. Their messages should now stay glued into the algorithms to place a forever warning and a mark upon these people and their actions. They shouldn’t be able to escape their keystrokes.”
The Bruins also said they were “very disappointed” in the comments.
“These classless, ignorant views are in no way a reflection of anyone associated with the Bruins organization,” read a team release.
Several of the tweets were aggregated at Chirpstory.com; by Thursday afternoon, many of the offending accounts had been deleted.
The comments started shortly after the 31-year-old Ward, in his first season with the Capitals, backhanded Mike Knuble’s rebound past Thomas, giving Washington a 3-2 win.
“When I saw the puck there, I just took a whack at it,” Ward said after the game. “It was a sense of relief, a great accomplishment.”
Article source: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nhl/story/2012-04-26/joel-ward-twitter-washington-capitals-boston-bruins-racist-tweets
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The San Diego-area Marine who has served nine years in the Corps said he was disappointed by the decision. He argued that he was exercising his constitutional rights to free speech.
“I love the Marine Corps, I love my job. I wish it wouldn’t have gone this way. I’m having a hard time seeing how 15 words on Facebook could have ruined my nine-year career,” he told The Associated Press.
Gary Kreep, an attorney for Stein, said he would pursue administrative appeals within the Marine Corps but anticipates the effort will fail. He said he planned to file an amended complaint in federal court.
“As long as he wants to pursue this, we will be supporting him,” said Kreep, who is executive director of the United States Justice Foundation, an advocacy group.
The Marines acted after saying Stein stated March 1 on a Facebook page used by Marine meteorologists, “Screw Obama and I will not follow all orders from him.” Stein later clarified that statement, saying he would not follow unlawful orders.
Brig. Gen. Daniel Yoo, the commanding general of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, said in a brief statement Wednesday that evidence supported an administrative board’s recommendation to discharge Stein.
Tom Umberg, a former Army colonel and military prosecutor, said Stein persisted even after being warned.
“The Marine Corps gave him the opportunity to think about his actions, yet Sgt. Stein continued to undermine the chain of command,” said Umberg, who was not involved in Stein’s case. “I think his purpose was to leave the Marine Corps in a dramatic fashion in order to begin a career in talk radio or what have you.”
Umberg believes the decision to discharge Stein will have limited impact because the vast majority of Marines would never consider such postings.
“I think 99 percent of the soldiers and Marines currently on duty understand the duties of supporting the chain of command and understand their rights of free speech are limited,” he said. “To that 1 percent who don’t know their rights to free speech are limited once they take the oath, this is a loud and clear message.”
During a hearing, a military prosecutor submitted screen grabs of Stein’s postings on one Facebook page he created called Armed Forces Tea Party, which the prosecutor said included the image of Obama on a “Jackass” movie poster. Stein also superimposed Obama’s image on a poster for “The Incredibles” movie that he changed to “The Horribles,” military prosecutor Capt. John Torresala said.
At the hearing this month at Camp Pendleton, Torresala argued that Stein’s behavior repeatedly violated Pentagon policy and he should be dismissed after ignoring warnings from his superiors about his postings.
The military has had a policy since the Civil War limiting the free speech of service members, including criticism of the commander in chief.
Pentagon directives say military personnel in uniform cannot sponsor a political club; participate in any TV or radio program or group discussion that advocates for or against a political party, candidate or cause; or speak at any event promoting a political movement.
Commissioned officers also may not use contemptuous words against senior officials.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/marine-corps-to-discharge-sergeant-for-facebook-posts-critical-of-obama/2012/04/25/gIQArGNDhT_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop
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IDG News Service - The hacker who stole Facebook’s source code has gone public with a deeper explanation of how he penetrated the world’s most popular social network.
Glenn Mangham, of York, England, posted a lengthy writeup on his blog and a video, saying that he accepts full responsibility for his actions and that he did not think through the potential ramifications.
“Strictly speaking what I did broke the law because at the time and subsequently it was not authorized,” Mangham wrote. “I was working under the premise that sometimes it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.”
Mangham implied he meant to contact Facebook once he had noticed the social-networking site had observed his intrusions, which he did little to hide. He didn’t use proxy servers because he said it made auditing take longer due to the time delay between each request made to a server. He was also hoping that even when he got caught, Facebook would let him off the hook.
That didn’t happen. He was charged and eventually pleaded guilty to three counts of unauthorized access to computer material and unauthorized modification of computer data, according to The Press newspaper in York.
Mangham was sentenced to eight months in prison in February, but the sentence was reduced to four months by an appeals court earlier this month. He was then eligible for release, subject to electronic monitoring and restrictions on his internet use.
Mangham used a vulnerability to download Facebook’s source code, arguably the company’s most valued and secret intellectual property.
Mangham portrayed himself as a security researcher who continued to probe Facebook because he wanted to look deeper for other security issues, since most systems have “a tough outer shell and a soft inside.” He wrote that in the past he had been paid by Yahoo for finding vulnerabilities.
He said he took steps to prevent damage to Facebook’s systems, hard-coding a delay in scripts he used to extract the source code to prevent “throttling of the server and impeding its availability.”
After he knew Facebook was on his trail, Mangham wrote he “panicked because I knew how bad it looked without sufficient context.” He maintained that “almost nobody” knew he had a copy of the site’s source code, and that he kept it “physically detached from the internet.”
“In many respects, it was better secured than the original,” Mangham wrote.
Mangham’s copy of the source code would surely have been of interest to cybercriminals who attempt to use Facebook to perpetuate scams. But he wrote he had no intention of selling the code.
“It is also worth mentioning that I had the source code for just over three weeks with absolutely nothing to prevent me from making copies and redistributing it, this was more than enough time to have caused significant damage to Facebook or to find a buyer, if that had ever actually been my intention but quite clearly it was not,” Mangham wrote.
“When you consider that the only thing that stood between Facebook and potential annihilation were my ethics then I think the fact that it’s all still in good working order should serve as some proof that I’m really not one of the bad guys,” he wrote.
Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com
Article source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226600/Facebook_hacker_comes_clean
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A group of middle school girls kicked out after threatening to kill their classmates on Facebook are taking their school to court, with the help of the ACLU.
The civil liberties organization is suing on behalf of the eighth graders who were booted from Griffith Middle School, claiming the comments were “clearly meant to be humorous”.
The ACLU filed the case against the school district this week, more than four months after the students were suspended.
The comments were posted on Jan. 24 and the 14-year-olds were all expelled in February.
“Any reasonable person could see the conversation was purely in jest and could not be interpreted seriously,” said ACLU of Indiana Staff Attorney Gavin M. Rose in a statement.
“Free speech rights under the First Amendment, even when it’s speech we don’t like or agree with, must still be protected, and schools do not possess infinite reach into the private lives of their students,” the group said.
The accused students insist the comments were taken out of context by another student and school officials.
Kennedy Fortier told CBS Chicago one of the girls in the group began the conversation by calling herself ugly, sparking the conversation that eventually got them expelled.
“Another girl said, ‘I want to kill all the ugly people,’” she explained.
Her mother, Tabitha Fortier, said she didn’t approve of what was being written on her daughter’s Facebook wall, but thinks the conversation wasn’t worthy of expulsion.
“I wasn’t happy,” she told the TV station. “None of us moms were happy with the conversation that the girls were having.”
The students point to their use of emoticons and terms like “LOL,” which means laughing out loud, as proof that it was all in jest.
But school officials told the local CBS New station that the comments violated their policies against bullying and harassing, which has proved to be an increasingly bigger issue as incidents of online bullying have increased.
The ACLU said in a statement that the school’s resources could be better placed.
“Our children would be better served if schools modeled the values embodied in the Constitution,” ACLU of Indiana Interim Executive Director Frank Young said.
“When schools behave in ways that oppose these values, they fail to teach students an important part of their American heritage.”
With News Wire Services
Article source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/aclu-files-suit-behalf-students-expelled-facebook-comments-article-1.1067834?localLinksEnabled=false
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USA TODAY is sitting down with international soccer star Thierry Henry and we are turning to Twitter to ask questions.
Tweet your questions to @USATODAYsports (use hashtag #HenryQuestion) and check back in the evening to watch Henry’s answers.
The New York Red Bulls have stumbled early due to injuries and suspensions, but Henry has sparkled, leading all MLS in scoring with 8 goals and adding 5 assists.
After a midweek trip to Spain to attend Barcelona’s upset loss to Chelsea in the UEFA Champions League semifinal, hear Henry’s thoughts on his old club’s performance, his return to Arsenal, the Red Bulls hopes for an MLS Cup and anything else you want answered!
Follow USA TODAY Sports on Twitter
Article source: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2012/04/thierry-henry-answers-your-questions-on-twitter-usatodaysports/1
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