July 1, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

Pro-democracy protesters marched through the streets of Hong Kong on 1 July 2008, demanding full democratic rights from the Chinese government. Organizers claim that approximately 30,000 people marched from a local park to the main government offices downtown; police estimates put the number of protesters at 13,000. Hong Kong retains many of the civil liberties enjoyed during its colonial days — including freedom of the press and the right to hold public protests — but its people still do not have the right to directly elect chief executives or legislative members. The pro-democracy protests are an annual occurrence in Hong Kong on 1 July, the anniversary of the territory’s being handed over from British to Chinese rule.

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July 1, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

A controversial plan to rename many streets in Durban — located in KwaZula-Natal on the eastern coast of South Africa — is scheduled to be implemented on 1 July 2008. In statements earlier this week, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) pledged that “World War III” would break out if the street renaming proceeded as planned. The IFP has since pulled back from this threat, but continues to insist that residents’ “anger cannot be contained” if streets are renamed after controversial international figures, including Yasser Arafat, Che Guevara and Andrew Zondo, the late bomber and member of the African National Party (ANC), which is currently South Africa’s ruling party. The IFP has vowed to continue protests until the renaming is reconsidered. Residents of Umlazi — a township in Durban — have planned to hold a march this week to protest the name changes. The Masakhane committee — appointed by the Durban city council to institute the name changes — insists that it followed all the necessary procedures and that the name changes will come into effect as planned.

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July 1, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

 (GovExec, 6/25/08)
Hostile code attached to e-mail messages is one of the most significant cybersecurity problems federal agencies face today, says an industry analyst and former FBI investigator. “It’s getting scarier and scarier and scarier,” said Michael Gibbons, principal of security and privacy services at Deloitte and former chief of computer crime investigations. “It’s not a case of Chicken Little, ‘The sky is falling.’ The sky is actually falling [and] it’s just a matter of when a piece is going to hit you on the head.”

Long recognized as a serious problem, phishing attacks send messages masquerading as notices from legitimate organizations or persons to computer users, with the expectation that they will click on a link and enter personal information, such as bank account numbers or passwords. More

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July 1, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/27/08)

The action stems from the loss of Dr. El-Ganayni’s security clearance, and hence his job, at Bettis Laboratory in West Mifflin, based on unspecified grounds of “national security.” It does not seek to overturn the revocation, but rather the right to see the alleged evidence against him — he doubts any exists — and the chance to contest the decision “before a nonpolitical, neutral arbiter, as mandated by DOE regulations.” He contends that he never had a clearance problem at work until he began speaking out against the Iraq war and the FBI’s efforts to recruit informants at local mosques. More

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July 1, 2008 by Tim McDowell.

(TG Daily, 6/27/08)
A woman accused of stealing Motorola corporate secrets denies that she is a spy. In a federal indictment, former Motorola software engineer Huanjuan Jin is accused of copying hundreds of documents from Motorola’s internal servers and then trying to board a plane to China. She claims that her supervisor overloaded her with work and that she was merely taking the documents to keep up, but prosecutors say her motives were much more sinister.

Two years ago, Jin took a medical leave of absence from Motorola claiming that she had a life-threatening disease. She flew to China where authorities allege that she met with representatives of a Chinese computer company. Apparently she agreed to steal Motorola secrets and the prosecutors say she downloaded more than 600 documents from Motorola’s servers when she got back – those are some real secure servers you got there Motorola. Jin then copied everything to her laptop, portable hard drives and USB flash sticks and headed to O’Hare airport with a one-way ticket to Beijing. More

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