Hackers strike at MasterCard to support WikiLeaks (AP) : Technet

Hackers strike at MasterCard to support WikiLeaks (AP)
Review: Facebook fans will 'like' RockMelt browser (AP)
Visa becomes next target for WikiLeaks backers (AP)
The caps-lock key: WOULD YOU MISS IT? (Ben Patterson)
Broadcast networks, ESPN are top must-haves for would-be cord-cutters (Ben Patterson)
WikiLeaks: Winning the Info War Despite Assange's Arrest (Time.com)
Remains of the Day: It ain't over 'til it's over (Macworld)
Intel says tablets and phones on the way in 2011 (Reuters)
The best personalized newspapers to freshen up social media (Digital Trends)
Plasma vs. LCD: The State of the HDTV (PC World)
Twitter Places API Gains New Data Partners (Mashable)
Google unveils Chrome web app store (Appolicious)
Is Mobile Broadband Ready for Chrome OS? (PC World)
Red Hat rises on upbeat report (Investor's Business Daily)
Microsoft plans to ramp up browser privacy (Reuters)
Why Nokia Is in Deep Trouble With MeeGo (PC World)
WikiLeaks backers hit MasterCard and Visa in cyberstrike (Reuters)

Hackers strike at MasterCard to support WikiLeaks (AP)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 06:30 PM PST

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Raphael G. Satter And Jill Lawless, Associated Press – Wed Dec 8, 9:30 pm ET

LONDON – Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Visa, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank, Sarah Palin and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange.

Internet "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing severe technological problems at the website for MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks a day ago.

The online attacks are part of a wave of support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity for the group, while the site's Facebook page hit 1 million fans.

Late Wednesday, Operation Payback itself appeared to run into problems, as many of its sites went down. It was unclear who was behind the counterattack.

MasterCard is the latest in a string of U.S.-based Internet companies — including Visa, Amazon.com, PayPal Inc. and EveryDNS — to cut ties to WikiLeaks in recent days amid intense U.S. government pressure. PayPal was not having problems Wednesday but the company said it faced "a dedicated denial-of-service attack" on Monday.

Meanwhile, a website tied to former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin came under cyberattack, she said. In a posting on the social networking site Facebook last week, Palin called Assange "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands." An aide said staff moved quickly to secure the website and no data was compromised.

WikiLeaks' extensive releases of secret U.S. diplomatic cables have embarrassed U.S. allies, angered rivals, and reopened old wounds across the world. U.S. officials in Washington say other countries have curtailed their dealings with the U.S. government because of WikiLeaks' actions.

PayPal Vice President Osama Bedier said the company froze WikiLeaks' account after seeing a letter from the U.S. State Department to WikiLeaks saying that the group's activities "were deemed illegal in the United States."

Offline, WikiLeaks was under pressure on many fronts. Assange is in a British prison fighting extradition to Sweden over a sex crimes case. Recent moves by Swiss Postfinance, MasterCard, PayPal and others that cut the flow of donations to the group have impaired its ability to raise money.

Neither WikiLeaks nor Assange has been charged with any offense in the U.S., but the U.S. government is investigating whether Assange can be prosecuted for espionage or other offenses. Assange has not been charged with any offenses in Sweden either, but authorities there want to question him about the allegations of sex crimes.

Undeterred, WikiLeaks released more confidential U.S. cables Wednesday. The latest batch showed the British government feared a furious Libyan reaction if the convicted Lockerbie bomber wasn't set free and expressed relief when they learned he would be released in 2009 on compassionate grounds.

Another U.S. memo described German leader Angela Merkel as the "Teflon" chancellor, but she brushed it off as mere chatter at a party. American officials were also shown to be lobbying the Russian government to amend a financial bill they felt would disadvantage U.S. companies Visa and MasterCard.

The most surprising cable of the day came from a U.S. diplomat in Saudi Arabia after a night on the town.

"The underground nightlife of Jiddah's elite youth is thriving and throbbing," the memo said. "The full range of worldly temptations and vices are available — alcohol, drugs, sex — but all behind closed doors."

The pro-WikiLeaks vengeance campaign on Wednesday appeared to be taking the form of denial-of-service attacks in which computers are harnessed — sometimes surreptitiously — to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission.

Per Hellqvist, a security specialist with the firm Symantec, said a network of web activists called Anonymous — to which Operation Payback is affiliated — appeared to be behind many of the attacks. The group, which has previously focused on the Church of Scientology and the music industry, is knocking offline websites seen as hostile to WikiLeaks.

"While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons," the group said in a statement. "We want transparency and we counter censorship ... we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy."

The website for Swedish lawyer Claes Borgstrom, who represents the two women at the center of Assange's sex crimes case, was unreachable Wednesday.

The Swiss postal system's financial arm, Postfinance, which shut down Assange's bank account on Monday, was also having trouble. Spokesman Alex Josty said the website buckled under a barrage of traffic Tuesday.

"Yesterday it was very, very difficult, then things improved overnight," he told the AP. "But it's still not entirely back to normal."

Ironically, the microblogging site Twitter — home of much WikiLeaks support — could become the next target. Operation Payback posted a statement claiming "Twitter you're next for censoring Wikileaks discussion."

Some WikiLeaks supporters accuse Twitter of preventing the term "WikiLeaks" from appearing as one of its popular "trending topics." Twitter denies censorship, saying the topics are determined by an algorithm.

Twitter's top trending topics are not the ones people are discussing the most overall, but those they are talking about more right now than they did previously, Twitter explained in an e-mail Wednesday. If tweets were ranked by volume alone, the weather or other mundane topics would dominate the trends.

WikiLeaks angered the U.S. government earlier this year when it posted a video showing U.S. troops on a helicopter gunning down two Reuters journalists in Iraq. Since then, the organization has leaked some 400,000 classified U.S. war files from Iraq and 76,000 from Afghanistan, which U.S. military officials say could put people's lives at risk. In the last few weeks, the group has begun leaking a massive trove of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

U.S. officials have directed their anger at Assange, but others have begun to ask whether Washington shares the blame for the diplomatic uproar.

"The core of all this lies with the failure of the government of the United States to properly protect its own diplomatic communications," Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said Wednesday, criticizing the fact that tens of thousands of U.S. government employees had access to the cables.

Assange, meanwhile, faces a new extradition hearing in London next week where his lawyers plan to reapply for bail. The 39-year-old Australian denies two women's allegations in Sweden of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion, and is fighting his extradition to Sweden.

In a Twitter message Wednesday, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson shrugged off the challenges.

"We will not be gagged, either by judicial action or corporate censorship ... WikiLeaks is still online," Hrafnsson said.

___

Malin Rising in Stockholm, Frank Jordans in Geneva, Jamey Keaten in Paris, Cassandra Vinograd in London, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Brian Murphy in Dubai, Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem, Michelle Chapman, Peter Svensson and Barbara Ortutay in New York and Anne Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report.

Review: Facebook fans will 'like' RockMelt browser (AP)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 11:10 AM PST

By ERIC CARVIN, Associated Press Eric Carvin, Associated Press – Wed Dec 8, 2:10 pm ET

NEW YORK – There's a lot to keep track of online.

You probably have a Facebook account and an e-mail address or two. You might use Twitter or another service to share where you are or what you're reading, thinking or doing. You follow the news and do some old-fashioned Web browsing.

I do all of the above (and more), so I'm always looking for ways to wrangle my tangle of online accounts.

That's what I was hoping for when I tried RockMelt, a new Web browser backed by Marc Andreessen, who was behind the Web's first commercial browser, Netscape. RockMelt aims to bring together social networking, news feeds and Web browsing.

Does it do the job? Mostly if you rely on Facebook for social networking.

RockMelt, which is available on an invitation-only basis for now, is built on the same foundation as Google Inc.'s 2-year-old Chrome browser. For general browsing purposes, you can expect Chrome's pros (speed, stability) and cons (some sites don't work, including the one for paying my cable bill).

Once you install RockMelt, you set it up by giving it permission to integrate your Facebook account. You don't need to create a new account the way you do with Flock, a competing "social browser" that's been around for five years. You can then choose to add Twitter and Gmail accounts. RockMelt stores information in the "cloud," so your settings will automatically follow you to other computers.

On the right of the main browser window is what RockMelt calls the App Edge, where buttons offer access to social-networking sites and other websites. On the far left side is the Friend Edge, a column of buttons representing Facebook friends. Above the Friend Edge is your Facebook profile picture — click to send a Facebook status update or tweet.

The buttons in the App Edge point out unread updates or Gmail messages for each account at a glance, an approach I like. However, to actually read Gmail or see private messages sent through Facebook and Twitter, you must still go to those sites. Eric Vishria, and co-founder of RockMelt, said future updates will address this.

Flock has an advantage on this front: Facebook and Twitter messages show up there, though they can easily get lost in the barrage of other updates.

For most websites, clicking on the App Edge button calls up a rectangular panel where you can read the latest posts. Similar panels appear for search results and chat sessions, allowing you to chat and browse without disturbing the main browser window.

The panels start out anchored to the side of the browser, but you can click and drag to make them separate browser windows, which lets you keep several open at once.

I like this approach, but the panels have no "X" button to close them. To make them disappear, I had to find a blank spot in the main browser window and click. This slowed me down until I figured out that I could also hit "Escape."

Google search results, meanwhile, were annoying for another reason: If you accidentally click in the main browser window, the search results panel vanishes.

The App Edge reveals a key difference between Flock and RockMelt: Flock integrates social networks and other website updates into one stream, while RockMelt gives each feed its own button. I like choosing which to examine at a given moment, but others may prefer a single stream.

You can drag a link from the main browser window into the Friend Edge to share it; you can also click on a friend's name to launch a panel where you can chat, write on the person's Facebook wall or see and comment on their recent posts.

This is an improvement over Flock, where you can respond to friends' tweets and posts at they come in, but you need to go to the websites or use other tools such as TweetDeck if you want to see existing Facebook comments or start an interaction.

Flock, aware of its competition, released a major upgrade on Dec. 1. I like the way it lets you create custom groups of friends from different social networks. On RockMelt, only Facebook friends are included in the Friend Edge, and you only have two choices for how they're displayed — everyone online at the moment or all the friends you designate as "favorites."

From RockMelt's address bar, you can search the Web and your list of Facebook friends. RockMelt could do better here; in Flock, an address bar search also checks tweets and people you follow on Twitter.

RockMelt performed smoothly overall, though it did crash twice, once when accessing Twitter and once when I tried to share a link. Sometimes I'd click a button and nothing would happen, so I'd impatiently click again, which made the feed disappear as soon as it loaded.

Sometimes the App Edge vanished, leaving me hunting through menus to re-enable it. And the edges themselves take up so much screen real estate that I sometimes had to scroll sideways to see an entire Web page.

RockMelt's biggest shortcoming is its inability to sync with networks other than Facebook and Twitter. Vishria said more will be added, but for now, Flock is several steps ahead with links to YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr accounts.

A growing number of social networks are designed to be used on mobile devices, which raises another drawback: RockMelt is strictly a desktop browser, though I'm told the developers are considering a mobile version.

So should you try RockMelt? If you rely on Facebook for social networking, sure. You'll find this a fast, stable browser that's rich with Facebook-friendly features — many more than are available on Flock, though the gap is narrowing with the latest version of the latter.

If you're a social media power user, you'll find yourself relying on other tools that do the many things RockMelt doesn't. While you're waiting for RockMelt to incorporate more sites, try Flock instead — it brings more of the social media universe to your fingertips than any other browser on the market.

___

Online:

http://www.rockmelt.com

http://www.flock.com

Visa becomes next target for WikiLeaks backers (AP)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 05:35 PM PST

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Dec 8, 8:35 pm ET

NEW YORK – The websites for Visa and MasterCard were inaccessible for parts of Wednesday, likely the result of attacks by WikiLeaks supporters who are angry that the credit card companies had stopped processing donations to the organization.

Both MasterCard and Visa said that cardholders' accounts were not at risk and that people could continue using their credit cards throughout the day.

Supporters of the WikiLeaks, which has released thousands of classified government documents in recent weeks, said they would attack companies and groups hostile to the site and its founder. An Internet group operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility for the MasterCard and Visa problems in messages on Twitter and elsewhere.

MasterCard's troubles began in early morning Eastern time and by mid-afternoon, its website was once again operational. But the hacker group appeared to be preparing for its next target, Visa Inc., and by about 4 p.m. EST the company's corporate website was inaccessible. The site appeared to be functioning once again after 6 p.m. EST.

Spokesman Ted Carr said Visa's processing network, which handles cardholder transactions, was working normally.

The hacking group Anonymous, known for previous attacks on the Church of Scientology and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, is distributing software tools to allow anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to join in the attacks as part of "Operation Payback." Such tools are widely available on the Internet and can easily launch a large number of attacks on targeted websites, said Dean Turner from the computer security firm Symantec.

MasterCard acknowledged "a service disruption" involving its Secure Code system for verifying online payments, but spokesman James Issokson said consumers could still use their credit cards for secure transactions. Consumers can use credit card companies' websites to find information about the cards, but applying for one and accessing existing accounts are done through the banks that issue the cards.

The credit card companies' troubles took place the same day of attacks on websites for Swedish prosecutors, the Swedish lawyer whose clients have accused founder Julian Assange of sexual crimes and the Swiss authority that froze Assange's bank account. Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican candidate for vice president, said her political action committee's website also came under attack from WikiLeaks supporters.

Besides Visa and MasterCard, a string of U.S.-based companies — including Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc.'s PayPal — cut ties to WikiLeaks amid intense U.S. government pressure. In a statement, PayPal confirmed that its website has been attacked, which at times slowed the site down but did not "significantly" affect payments.

In a statement, MasterCard said its systems have not been compromised. Earlier Wednesday, the company said the problems appeared to be "the result of a concentrated effort to flood our corporate web site with traffic and slow access."

Such an attack, known as a denial of service, is analogous to thousands of people all calling the same phone number at once, resulting in busy signals for the few who are legitimately trying to get through.

The term "hacktivist" is now widely used to describe politically motivated hackers such as the WikiLeaks supporters, said David Perry, global director of education at security company Trend Micro. Earlier this year, an Ohio college student was sentenced to 30 months in prison for hacking into the websites of conservative pundit Ann Coulter and of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Operation Payback itself appeared to run into problems Wednesday as many of its sites went down. It was unclear who was behind the counterattack. And Facebook banned the group's page from its site, saying in an e-mailed statement it takes action on content that "promotes unlawful activity." Spokesman Andrew Noyes would not comment on whether Facebook banned any individual users and pointed out that the Wikileaks page does not violate the company's policies and remains up.

On Twitter, Operation Payback's site also appeared to be suspended Wednesday evening. A Twitter spokeswoman said the company had no comment.

A British judge sent Assange to jail on Tuesday, denying bail after he vowed to fight efforts to be extradited to Sweden in a sex-crimes investigation.

___

AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman and Technology Writer Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this story.

(This version CORRECTS times to EST)

The caps-lock key: WOULD YOU MISS IT? (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 01:35 PM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Wed Dec 8, 4:35 pm ET

Losing the spinning hard drive from its Chrome OS laptops is one thing, but the news that Google would jettison the caps-lock key from its upcoming notebooks REALLY got the tech world in a twist.

"We expect this will improve the quality of comments across the Web," joked Chrome project head Sundar Pichai during Tuesday's unveiling, provoking some gasps, a few titters, and even a cheer or two. (Oh, and the function keys are getting thrown out with the bathwater, too.)

I admit that the news caught me a little off-guard. No caps-lock key? How would I live without it? Then again … when was the last time I really used the caps lock — besides the times I've hit the key by accident? Would I — or anyone — really miss it? (Incidentally, Google says you can turn the "modifier" key on its test Cr-48 Chrome netbook into a caps-lock key by tweaking the correct settings.)

The caps-lock key has been standard-issue on PC keyboards for decades. All too often, though, it's been used to write BLARING E-MAILS AND COMMENTS that look LIKE SOMEONE'S SHOUTING.

All-caps shouting isn't restricted to blogs, of course. Newbies and trolls have been yelling (intentionally or not) in e-mail and in Usenet forums (remember those?) well before the Web.

There are even a couple of Web-based campaigns against the caps-lock key (CAPSoff and anticAPSLOCK) as well as a contrarian, somewhat tongue-in-cheek site (PROCAPSLOCK) that argues in favor of the widely hated key. And in case you missed it, International Caps Lock Day was observed just a few weeks ago. (HURRAY!)

CAPSoff traces the history of the caps-lock key back to the first IBM PC keyboards in the early 1980s, with the key relegated to a relatively out-of-the-way spot to the right of the space bar, below the shift key.

By 1986, however, IBM rolled out an "enhanced" keyboard, which moved the caps-lock key to its more prominent, now-standard position, directly below the tab key.

Before the caps-lock key, of course, was the "shift-lock" key, which dates back all the way to the era of manual typewriters. Heck, I remember using shift-lock on my old manual typewriter when I was a kid: You had to mash it down to lift (or shift, hence the "shift" key) the array of metal character strikers (a.k.a., the typebars) into their secondary position for capital letters, symbols and so on.

The shift-lock key came in handy on manual typewriters and other pre-PostScript relics, when adding italics wasn't an option. It also worked well for the titles of my grade-school book reports. Come to think of it, even the daisy-wheel printers I used with my dad's Apple II back in the early '80s (yes, I'm dating myself here) couldn't do italics.

Nowadays, of course, writing in italics is a piece of cake, which means the all-caps key is only needed for … uh, what's it needed for again, besides yelling in blog comments and punching in your Microsoft Office registration code? (I'm all ears, seriously — please don't yell TOO LOUD, though.)

Anyway, I ask you, netizens: Would you miss the caps-lock key? (Let the avalanche of all-caps comments begin.)

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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Broadcast networks, ESPN are top must-haves for would-be cord-cutters (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 10:03 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Wed Dec 8, 1:03 pm ET

There are few things I'd like more than to be able to cut the pay-TV cord once and for all. What's stopping me? Four letters: ESPN.

I could easily live without "The Closer" on TNT (which you can always download, anyway) or the three-hankie weepies on Lifetime Movies, or all those cooking shows on the Food Network. And as far as the major broadcast networks go, there's always all those streaming episodes available on Hulu and Netflix.

But losing my ESPN — home of "Monday Night Football," "SportsCenter" and the talking (or yelling) heads on "First Take" — well, that's just not in the cards, or at least not for me. (Yes, there's ESPN3 on the Web, as well as the new ESPN channel on Xbox Live, but you can't watch a simulcast online stream of ESPN unless your cable ISP has inked a deal with ESPN parent Disney. Oh well.)

Turns out I'm not the only slave to ESPN. According to a recent survey of about 300 viewers by Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin (as reported by paidContent), more than 20 percent of respondents named ESPN as a TV channel they couldn't live without.

ESPN was the only basic-cable channel to break 20 percent in the survey. Topping the list of must-have channels (or, to be precise, the channels "you must have available online for you to turn off your TV subscription") was CBS with 35 percent, followed by ABC at 34 percent, with Fox and NBC tied at 31 percent.

The most popular channels after ESPN in the survey included Discovery (19 percent), the History Channel (14 percent), HBO (11 percent) and Comedy Central and Food Network (tied at 10 percent). In the single digits were cable networks like Nickelodeon, TBS, CNN, HGTV, MTV, Lifetime and Bravo, along with a couple of broadcast networks: the CW and PBS. (If you noticed that the percentages add up to more than 100 percent, that's because respondents were allowed to pick more than one must-have channel.)

Of course, the relative popularity of ESPN as reflected in Martin's survey isn't lost on ESPN parent Disney, which charges cable and satellite carriers $4 a month per subscriber to carry the legendary 24/7 sports network, compared with a modest 28 cents a month for Lifetime.

Anyway, back to the original point: the TV networks we'd absolutely, positively still want to be able to watch — online, over the air or elsewhere — before cutting the cord.

Some might have a hard time tuning out the continuous babble of headlines from CNN and Fox News, for example, although you could always go to their respective websites for plenty of online clips and streaming feeds. Or perhaps there are some old war documentaries on the History Channel that you simply can't get on Hulu or Netflix. (Are there?)

I suspect that sports, however, remains the No. 1 reason that many of us are still reluctant to cut the cord, although the gap is closing. More and more sporting events (like NCAA March Madness, Wimbledon and "Sunday Night Football," for example) are available for free online streaming, and you can always subscribe to paid online packages for out-of-market Major League Baseball or NBA games. And as for your home teams, you can always catch them on your local broadcast stations over the air.

So, here's my question for those of you who want to cut the cord but haven't quite yet: Is the prospect of losing your favorite TV network (or networks) holding you back? If so, which ones?

Related: Which TV Channels Can't Cord-Cutters Live Without? [PaidContent.org]

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

Follow me on Twitter!

WikiLeaks: Winning the Info War Despite Assange's Arrest (Time.com)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 08:35 PM PST

By MASSIMO CALABRESI / WASHINGTON Massimo Calabresi / Washington – 1 hr 25 mins ago

There was a time when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's voluntary surrender to the British authorities might have put an end to the crisis created by the Internet provocateur's dissemination of tens of thousands of state secrets. But in the upside-down world of transnational crowdsourcing unleashed by WikiLeaks, in which thousands of activists around the globe can be rallied to defend and extend its work, Assange's arrest is a win, not a loss, for his organization.

The asymmetrical info war initiated by the WikiLeaks dump of diplomatic cables is all about spectacle - the more Assange is set up by world powers, the more powerful his own movement becomes. "The field of battle is WikiLeaks," wrote John Perry Barlow, a former Grateful Dead lyricist and founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the First Amendment advocacy group, in a message to his followers. "You are the troops." WikiLeaks admiringly forwarded the post to 300,000 of its own followers. As the U.S. and other governments attempted to close down WikiLeaks over the past week, those "troops" have fought back. And so far, it doesn't look like much of a contest. (Read TIME's interview with Julian Assange.)

First, the U.S. government pushed WikiLeaks off the servers of Amazon, its U.S. host - thanks in part to an effort by the office of Senator Joe Lieberman, who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee. After the rogue site was pushed off a smaller, backup host in the U.S., it moved first to a Swiss domain, then to a simple numeric one. WikiLeaks has complained, and some news outlets have reported, about apparent hacker attacks against the website. The effect of all that pressure, however, was very much like cutting the head off the mythical Hydra. By Tuesday evening, WikiLeaks listed 507 Web addresses that it said were hosting the site worldwide.

The U.S. and its allies have taken other steps to curb WikiLeaks' activities. The French Industry Minister Eric Besson called for the site to be banned from French servers. Swiss bank PostFinance announced it had frozen $41,000 in an account set up as a legal-defense fund for Assange. The bank said it took action because Assange had claimed Geneva as his domicile when opening the account, but this had proved incorrect and he could not show that he is a Swiss resident. PayPal, MasterCard and Visa have all blocked donations to WikiLeaks. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks' backers are fighting back, though their hacker attacks on some of the sites that shut off WikiLeaks funding may be less effective. (See all of TIME's WikiLeaks coverage.)

Assange's detention is not without its costs to him and WikiLeaks. Swedish prosecutors say he has been accused of having had unprotected sex with a woman, identified only as Miss A, despite her insistence that he use a condom, and that he had unprotected sex with a second woman, Miss W, while she was asleep. Both scenarios would be crimes in Sweden, and the attention to the charges has divided some of his supporters. Assange has not been formally charged with any crime and denies any wrongdoing.

But the principal effect of his arrest has been to rally the troops. Assange, who was in hiding in England, turned himself in to British police on Tuesday morning. That afternoon, he faced a hearing in which his British lawyer pledged to appeal again against extradition to Sweden. Several people present offered tens of thousands of dollars worth of bail, but the judge ordered him held without bail. Supporters cheered Assange as he left the courthouse. (Read "WikiLeaks' War on Secrecy.")

And the David vs. Goliath stagecraft continues. Assange's Swedish attorney, Bjorn Hurtig, told Reuters on Friday that he suspects "somebody has an interest in getting [Assange] to Sweden and maybe asking for him to be extradited to another country [from there]." In fact, extradition from Europe to the U.S. is hard, and even if Assange could be extradited it's not clear what he could be charged with.

There is, of course, a limit to how much Assange can win. In the U.S., officials are finding that while there were certainly structural reasons like expanded technology and overclassification behind the theft of the leaked documents, practical reasons were equally important. Thanks to an imperative from then commander of the U.S. Central Command David Petraeus and others to share information with allies on improvised explosive devices and other threats, the Central Command allowed the downloading of data from its secret in-house network, SIPRNet, to removable storage devices, officials tell TIME. The information was then carried to computers linked to secret networks used by allies and uploaded. The process was derisively called "sneaker net," because it was so inefficient, although it replaced the prior need to manually retype all information into the allied computers. (Comment on this story.)

New restrictions on downloading media have been imposed over the past six months, restoring the restrictions that existed before the leaks. That may be one victory for the U.S. in its attempts to fight WikiLeaks. Meanwhile, Assange's lawyer said Tuesday that a new editor in chief of WikiLeaks would step in during Assange's absence.
- With reporting by Eben Harrell / London

Read "WikiLeaks' Assange: Under Arrest, Fighting Extradition."

See the top 10 leaks.

View this article on Time.com

Paper.li

Paper.li lets you organize either your Twitter or Facebook account into a digital newspaper. The Twitter edition let you choose a list, hashtag, or username (including its followers) for your paper, and you're presented with the daily edition of everything under that domain. It's easily an easy on the eyes layout, complete with images and videos.

The Facebook version, currently in beta, allows you to name your publication and choose topics for more focused results. This service works by compiling results from public posts from your account. Of course, this is a third-party application which you have to grant access to. After it's finished, you get a newspaper full of links, videos, and photos that are ranked based on your topic search.

For the moment, these papers are public – meaning anyone can find your personalized paper, but there is a possibility of future privacy. There also could be a numerical count of users reading your personal publication, giving you insight on how many people out there are enjoying your paper.

The Twitter Tim.es

This site gives you a "real-time personalized newspaper" by pulling content from your Twitter account. It focuses the Tweets it chooses around major publications, so that the customized newspaper you're getting actually contains verifiable sources. It also has a "Featured Newspapers" section, with popular generated publications for you to browse. Twitter especially has a UI that isn't particularly friendly for prolonged reading, and Twitter Tim.es makes it a much more enjoyable process.

PostPost

PostPost (no relation to the super glitchy Twitter and Flickr aggregator PostPo.st) arguably has the most eye-pleasing presentation and competes with Paper.li for most effective feature. It simply minimizes the time a user spends scrolling through the News Feed for those few and far between interesting posts, instead collating them onto one page. It also allows users to alter the size for viewing ease (Take that, Facebook's new font size!) and block unwanted content. Unlike the other sites, PostPost fills up your entire screen and best replicates the feel of an actual online media source – just this one happens to be dedicated to you and your friends.

The only caveat we can find in PostPost is that it demands a little more of your data than the other sites. While they all request usersâ€™ basic information and posts in your News Feed, PostPost also wants to be able to post any content it wants to your wall.

Ninuku Archivist

This site takes the social media aggregator business to a whole new level. Instead of just reformatting your Facebook information on another site, Ninuku is in the business of organizing all your activity into a printable PDF. While part of its purpose is to allow users to collect and cherish their Facebooks as scrapbooks, it's also to give you the option of wiping your information out of Facebook's servers. It obviously isn't a daily solution, but those in need of some serious digital cleanup might be interested.

Unlike the other sites, this one isn't free – Ninuku's services cost $24 a year, and of course you're allowing it a great deal of access to your account. But if all that sounds good, then get ready to sit down with your own tangible version of Facebook.

Plasma vs. LCD: The State of the HDTV (PC World)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 06:00 PM PST

Patrick Miller Patrick Miller – Wed Dec 8, 9:00 pm ET

HDTVs (or rather, their owners) rivals classic tech wars such as Apple versus Microsoft and Nintendo versus Sega in its ability to destroy friendships and alienate loved ones. As with any good tech fight, however, the skirmishes that occur in review comments and home theater enthusiast forums across the Internet are typically characterized by fans exchanging glib one-liners (in this case, about black levels and refresh rates). And many of those one-liners haven't been updated since 2002.

Don't buy a new TV based on outdated information. Here's where plasma and LCD HDTVs stand today.

Blacks, Brightness, and LEDs

Traditionally, plasma displays have been able to produce higher contrast levels, meaning that their blacks are blacker and their whites are whiter than those of their LCD brethren. This point is particularly important for TV and movie enthusiasts, since you're not going to see too many dimly lit scenes watching Monday Night Football.

It shouldn't matter what you watch, though--in theory, since the human eye has more light-sensitive photoreceptors (rods) than color-sensitive photoreceptors (cones), we're drawn to displays with higher contrast ratios no matter what material we're watching.

The reason plasmas were able to achieve better blacks in the past was that they were better able to control how and where the display was lit than their LCD-based rivals, which used cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) behind the LCD layer to light the display and couldn't completely block that light out when displaying a black scene.

Enter the LED-backlit LCD, which has made a tremendous splash in the HDTV market over the past two years. LED-backlit LCD TVs have several advantages over CCFL-backlit LCDs: They're thinner, they use less power, and they generate less heat.

For movie buffs, however, the most important feature is "local dimming," which lets the TV selectively turn the LEDs on and off. When an LED-backlit LCD shows a dark scene, it can turn the lighting off in the black parts of the image while leaving the lighting on for the other parts, generating deeper blacks and better contrast.

Of course, how good your screen looks depends a lot on the room you watch it in. Plasmas typically looked best in pitch-black rooms, since the nature of plasma display technology requires a glass screen, which reflects more light than a matte LCD panel. That made plasmas perfect for home theater enthusiasts, but not so great for anyone who watches TV in a room with sunlight or in a mixed-use room where the lights have to stay on.

These days, however, some LED-backlit LCDs use glass panels combined with a glossy coating that makes them just as hard to see in a lit room as any plasma, and in the meantime plasma TV manufacturers have been working to improve their antireflective glass panels. As a result, we can't generalize quite so easily about the two TV technologies.

PCWorld conducts TV testing in a dimly lit room, and we found that the LED-backlit Sharp LC-52LE820UN was horribly reflective, while all three plasmas we tested at the same time (the Panasonic TC-P42G25 and TC-P46G25, plus the LG 50PK950) looked just fine.

The verdict: Plasma diehards may still insist that theirs is the superior technology, and LCD fans may hail LEDs as their savior. When it came down to blacks, viewing conditions, and contrast, though, we didn't find a significant difference between the two display types as a whole, just differences between individual models.

Plasma Burn-In

Early plasma sets had a problem with "burn-in," where a TV that had shown a static image (a heads-up display in a video game, for example) would continue to show a faint outline of that image after the display had changed to something else. The effect appeared because the phosphors in that part of the display would overheat and lose some luminosity, producing a shadow.

Strictly speaking, burn-in is still possible in modern plasma TVs. Today's plasmas, however, use less energy than those that first hit the market, which means it's harder to overload the phosphors and cause burn-in, especially if you're using the Home viewing mode instead of the Store mode.

Even in-store display models, which often show the same image for a while on the high-intensity Store display mode, almost never exhibit burn-in. You shouldn't have a problem playing games, but it's best to be safe and turn the TV off when you're not using it--your manufacturer's warranty generally doesn't cover burn-in issues.

The verdict: Burn-in isn't as big a deal as it used to be, but it can still crop up. Turn off your plasma set when you're not watching it, and you should be fine--or buy an LCD model to ensure that you won't get burned.

Wikipedia article about motion blur is a pretty good resource), but the two primary issues facing LCD HDTVs have been the time it takes for a pixel to change color ("response time") and the number of times the TV refreshes the image per second ("refresh rate"). If the response time isn't quick enough, the TV can't change colors fast enough to keep up with the on-screen action.

Refresh rate, however, is a little more complicated, which is why we have a whole article devoted to sorting it out--read "LCD HDTV Motion Features: How Do They Work?" for more. Suffice it to say, current LCDs don't really have a problem with motion blur anymore, though a new class of image quirks and artifacts accompany the techniques that manufacturers have used to eliminate motion blur.

One thing that the increased refresh rate does is make pretty much everything look smoother. If you view the same panning shot side-by-side on a 240Hz LCD TV and a plasma TV, everything on the LCD TV will look as if it's gliding along, making the plasma seem choppy by comparison.

Whether that gliding effect looks better or worse than the motion on a plasma TV is really a matter of personal preference--dedicated moviegoers probably won't like it (some call it the "soap opera effect," since it doesn't look as cinematic), as it's not quite so faithful to the source material. On the other hand, casual TV watchers might prefer a 240Hz LCD.

The verdict: Motion blur isn't really an issue nowadays. The various engineering techniques used to fix motion blur in LCDs can lead to a few strange image issues, though, and if you don't like the overly smooth look of a 120Hz or 240Hz LCD set, stick to a plasma.

3D Plasma Versus 3D LCD

Sony Bravia 40HX800 despite the latter's costing nearly twice as much. To show a high-quality 3D image on an LCD, you need the higher-end features, such as LED backlighting and a 240Hz refresh rate, while a standard plasma set can handle 3D just fine.

The verdict: Both TV technologies can produce a good-looking 3D image, but plasmas don't have to work so hard for it. If you want a cheap 3D TV, plasma is the better bet. Read "How to Show Off Your 3D TV" for more tips on 3D.

Still the Same: Price, Viewing Angle, Power Consumption

HDTV roundup, we found that plasma sets from LG and Panasonic used two to three times as much electricity than most of the tested LCD models did, even LCDs in larger size classes.

You'll find energy hogs on the LCD side of things, too, however--the Mitsubishi Unisen LT46265 LCD used only about 8 percent less power than the Panasonic TC-P46G25, a plasma in the same size class. If you're looking to slash your electricity bill, start by checking our reviews; we post the power-consumption test results in the PCWorld Lab Results section (just click the link that says Show Complete Lab Results, and scroll down to the 'Power Off' and 'Power On' listings.).

Plasmas are still cheaper, as well. A plasma display by a major manufacturer, such as LG, Panasonic, or Samsung, typically costs up to $1000 less than a similarly equipped LCD set of the same size (read "Cheap HDTVs for Black Friday and Beyond" for more on inexpensive TVs). And while LCD TVs' viewing angles are good enough for most living-room setups, plasmas still win out handily in that respect.

Buying a TV that meets your needs and fits your budget isn't easy--and if you aren't able to sort out the facts from the fiction, it can get much, much harder. Be sure to read our HDTV Buying Guide and our HDTV Holiday Shopping FAQ for more advice on finding the right set for you.

Twitter Places API Gains New Data Partners (Mashable)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 03:51 PM PST

Christina Warren Christina Warren – Wed Dec 8, 6:51 pm ET

Twitter has just expanded and enhanced the location layer of its API.

The changes will make it easier for developers to interface with various datasets and offer better location-based experiences within their apps.

When Twitter Places launched back in June, it was clear that with the right implementations, the implications of a geo-aware Twitter could be vast.

Over the course of the last six months however, the location layer within tweets really hasn't been used beyond the official apps and a smattering of services. Location-based networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla could associate a check-in tweet with Twitter Places; but for external apps, surfacing this data hasn't really been possible.

As Developer Advocate Matt Harris posted to the Twitter API Announcements Google Group, that may soon change.

Twitter now has more extensive information for finding tweets about places using the place operator in the Search API.

Here's the interesting part: This operator isn't limited just to the Twitter Places data set. Rather, developers can also call up data sets from a variety of partners, including A&E Television Networks and History, Gowalla, OpenTable, TomTom, Yellow Pages Group (Canada) and Zagat.

This means developers, using the data set alias for any of these providers, can access search information about a specific location.

Where this really has immediate potential is with developers who are already interacting with one of the partner data sets. For instance, if your web app already plugs into OpenTable to offer restaurant information, you can now easily add recent tweets from that location to your app.

Interestingly, two of the biggest data sets, Facebook Places and Foursquare, are not on Twitter's partner list. Facebook we can understand; Facebook Places is very much a mobile offering at this point in time. Foursquare's omission is less clear. Foursquare data can still be mapped to Twitter Places when a checkin is tweeted by Foursquare, so we don't understand the omission of the data set on the other end.

Perhaps the rumored upcoming Foursquare API extension will answer some of these questions.

[via WebProNews]

Google unveils Chrome web app store (Appolicious)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 10:20 AM PST

Is Mobile Broadband Ready for Chrome OS? (PC World)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 03:04 PM PST

Jeff Bertolucci Jeff Bertolucci – Wed Dec 8, 6:04 pm ET

Chrome OS is grabbing headlines this week, as Google reveals more details about its cloud-based operating system for mobile devices. Netbooks running Chrome OS won't ship until mid-2011, however, which allows us plenty of time to speculate on potential shortcomings.

For instance: How well will Google's Internet-oriented OS work via today's mobile broadband infrastructure, which isn't always rock-solid reliable?

Wireless networks continue to evolve and improve, but questions remain as to whether they're reliable enough for Chrome OS, an operating system dependent on the cloud for basic tasks, such as accessing applications and files.

Google officials point out that many Chrome apps, including those available at the new Chrome Web Store, will run offline. However, a Chrome OS-based netbook shut off from the Internet would be less capable than one running a local OS like Microsoft Windows.

3G network performance tests, conducted in early 2010, show that 3G broadband performance in the U.S. is improving. In fact, average reliability of the four major wireless carriers now tops 90 percent:

Those reliability figures probably won't change much in the coming months, however, as carriers focus on building out their 4G networks.

"We wouldn't expect 3G mobile broadband reliability to change significantly between now and the time that Chrome OS-based devices come to market, and so 3G connectivity will remain an issue for Chrome-based devices." writes IDC mobile analyst Susan Kevorkian in an email.

Kevorkian adds: "4G mobile broadband may improve on 3G's reliability, but most likely won't be broadly available when Chrome-based devices come to market."

Chrome OS users relying on Wi-Fi networks will face hurdles too. Wi-Fi has a limited range, and Wi-Fi hotspots aren't always available when you need them.

Google's cloud-centric operating system sounds intriguing. But is it ahead of its time?

Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci ) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com .

Red Hat rises on upbeat report (Investor's Business Daily)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 03:37 PM PST

– Wed Dec 8, 6:37 pm ET

The Linux software developer could rise 20% in the coming year on better-than-expected revenue, RBC Capital Markets said. RBC also boosted its 12-month price target from $40 to $57, saying Red Hat (NYSE:RHT - News) is having success renewing contracts of big customers like Amazon.com (NMS:AMZN), IBM (NYSE:IBM - News), Qualcomm (NMS:QCOM) and Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (NYSE:NTT - News). RBC says sales could top RBC's Q3 forecast range of $227.1 mil-$229 mil and Red Hat's forecast of $226 mil-$228 mil. Red Hat rose 1% to 47.99.

Microsoft plans to ramp up browser privacy (Reuters)

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 02:19 PM PST

– Tue Dec 7, 5:19 pm ET

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp plans to give users of its new Internet browser the ability to stop certain sites from gathering information from users as the company looks to head off federal online privacy legislation.

The opt-in feature, called "tracking protection", is based on technology developed for Microsoft's current browser. It was downplayed as the world's largest software company tried to balance consumers' demands for privacy with advertisers' desire to gather data about users.

Microsoft said the technology was based on InPrivate Filtering, a little-used feature in Internet Explorer 8 that allowed certain sites to be blocked, but had to be switched on each time a new browser session was launched.

There is growing concern over websites and advertisers using technology to track sites on the Internet to build up profiles of users, generally without their knowledge or explicit consent.

Last week the Federal Trade Commission backed creation of a "do not track" option that would limit advertisers' ability to collect consumers' data online.

Advertisers generally oppose the idea, and several Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives next year, have criticized legislation as a potential drag on Internet commerce.

Microsoft is trying to satisfy the millions of users of the world's most popular browser while ratcheting up revenue from advertisers as it tries to catch up with Internet leader Google Inc.

Many ads or invisible elements on Web pages, from weather information to stock quotes and embedded videos, can automatically load a user's Internet address and Web page being viewed. Using "cookies," or strings of data saved by the browser, websites can build a profile of a user over time.

Microsoft said its "tracking protection" feature would meet demands being discussed by the FTC by allowing users the option of blocking content from certain advertisers within a Web page. Users can build their own lists of sites to block, or subscribe to lists prepared by outside sources.

Microsoft likens its new feature to a "do not call" list used to prevent unsolicited telephone marketing.

Once a user blocks a site or element within a site, the browser limits data requests to that site to prevent exchange of information.

The new feature will be included in IE9, the latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, expected to be released some time next year. Microsoft's browser has about 60 percent market share.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; editing by John Wallace)

Why Nokia Is in Deep Trouble With MeeGo (PC World)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 10:32 AM PST

Keir Thomas Keir Thomas – Wed Dec 8, 1:32 pm ET

Beware open source. Just ask AOL. All it wanted in the late 1990s was a killer browser to destroy Microsoft's Internet Explorer. They figured the best way of getting this was to make Netscape open source. Four long years later, AOL finally got what it wanted, just about, but the world had changed almost beyond recognition. Internet Explorer was dominant; the game was over.

In those four years the open source guys had entirely rebuilt Netscape from the ground up, defining technical standards still in use today. They built a world-class bug filing system too. The trouble is that AOL really, really needed a killer browser as quickly as possible. If ithad received it, computing history as we know it today might be very different.

I'm starting to think that Nokia might be in an AOL's former situation with MeeGo, the operating system for mobile devices that was created by the merger of the Maemo and Moblin projects. It's true that as a project, MeeGo is relatively young, but it's based on established and mature technology that first saw the light of day in 2005 as something called Maemo.

Since that time, Nokia has been heralding Maemo and then MeeGo as the future of its phone business, and in doing so have put significant faith in the open source universe.

What Nokia really needs right now is a killer smartphone OS--n phones it's selling at this very moment, during this holiday season, which is sure to go down in history as being the defining moment for smartphone sales. The revolution starts here, but Nokia isn't 100 percent present.

Until MeeGo produces the goods, Nokia is stuck with Symbian, an aging, creaking operating system that's stretched almost to breaking point in Nokia's latest phone releases.

Nokia is one of the chief sponsors of MeeGo, which is slated for its first phone release in the middle of next year. By that time Android and Apple's iOS will be extremely well established. It'll be game over for any other competitor because history has shown that most technology marketplaces only support two main players.

What's rather strange is that lots of people are expecting MeeGo to be a blockbuster of an OS that will finally show the world how mobile phones should work.

Again, this sounds familiar, and it's wise to question the proclamations of open source people. For example, the Linux kernel was considered a temporary measure for a significant part of its history. It was believed that something called GNU Hurd would eventually take its rightful place at the centre of the open source operating system world.

The trouble is that Hurd kept getting redesigned, with ever more ambitious ideas getting mixed in, and it never actually got close to completion. Even now it still isn't finished.

Open source developers have a terrible tendency to believe that those two birds in the bush are worth more than one in the hand, and they have an insane faith in the beauty of perfection.

God help any corporation that relies on open source to deliver the goods quickly.

As such, it was immensely depressing to hear the comments of Marko Ahtisaari, senior vice president of design at Nokia, who spoke Wednesday about how MeeGo would revolutionize smartphones. He talked of one-handed phone use, and how MeeGo would somehow reduce the amount of time users spent staring at the screen.

Call me a cynic, but this sounds like extremely characteristic open source waffle: lots of cool ideas, but essentially vaporous. Why isn't MeeGo here right now? Seriously. A lot is riding on this. How close is it to release? Where are the phones that feature it? In short, where's the beef?

As far as I can tell, only one actual phone on the planet is able to run MeeGo at the moment: the Nokia N900, an entertainingly expensive Internet tablet/phone hybrid mostly bought by hobbyists. And the N900 doesn't even run MeeGo in any official capacity. The N900 is simply serving as a testbed for MeeGo programmers. Nokia doesn't officially support any consumer who runs MeeGo.

It's not just Nokia that's betting the farm on the ghostly spectre of MeeGo. Intel and AMD are hoping it will inject some life into their mobile phone chip businesses. Both are stunningly far behind market-leader ARM which, via the chip designs it licenses to third-party manufacturers, has the mobile phone market pretty much sewn up.

I wish the developers of MeeGo all the luck in the world, really, and as a longtime user of Maemo (which MeeGo is based on) I have a lot of respect for their work. But it's time that Nokia woke up and smelled the coffee. Android is the future. There isn't any question. Nokia has fallen into the trap of believing open source hype. It's backing the wrong horse, and there's no dishonor involved in cancelling the bet before the horse limps home.

Keir Thomas has been writing about computing since the last century, and more recently has written several best-selling books. You can learn more about him at http://keirthomas.com and his Twitter feed is @keirthomas.

WikiLeaks backers hit MasterCard and Visa in cyberstrike (Reuters)

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 03:13 PM PST

By Keith Weir Keith Weir – Wed Dec 8, 6:13 pm ET

LONDON (Reuters) – Credit card giants MasterCard and Visa came under intense cyber attack on Wednesday as supporters of WikiLeaks retaliated for moves against Julian Assange after the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that angered and embarrassed Washington.

The Swedish prosecution authority, whose arrest order for Assange over accusations of sexual offenses led a British court to remand the 39-year-old WikiLeaks website founder in custody, also said it had reported an online attack to police.

Assange's online supporters hit the corporate website of credit card firm MasterCard in apparent retaliation for its blocking of donations to the WikiLeaks website.

"We are glad to tell you that http://www.mastercard.com/ is down and it's confirmed!" said an entry on the Twitter feed of a group calling itself AnonOps, which says it fights against censorship and "copywrong."

Visa Inc's site was temporarily unavailable late on Monday in the United States and the same group claimed responsibility for bringing it down.

Sources told Reuters that WikiLeaks' next release may highlight U.S. government reports on suspected militants held at Guantanamo Bay, which some U.S. officials fear could show some detainees were freed despite intelligence assessments they were still dangerous.

Mark Stephens, Assange's principal lawyer in London, denied the WikiLeaks founder had ordered the cyber strikes, which appeared to target companies seen as cooperating with efforts to rein in Wikileaks.

Assange "did not give instructions to hack" the company websites, Stephens told Reuters.

MasterCard, calling the attack "a concentrated effort to flood our corporate web site with traffic and slow access," said on Wednesday all of its services had been restored and that card holder account data was not at risk.

But it said the attack, mounted by hackers using simple tools posted on the Web, had extended beyond its website to payment processing technology, leaving some customers unable to make online payments using MasterCard software.

Assange spent the night in a British jail and will appear for a hearing next Tuesday.

CARRY ON

Assange, who has lived periodically in Sweden, was accused this year of sexual misconduct by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers. The pair's lawyer said their claims were not a politically motivated plot against Assange.

"It has nothing to do with WikiLeaks or the CIA," said lawyer Claes Borgstrom, whose website also came under cyber attack, according to officials.

Assange has angered U.S. authorities and triggered headlines worldwide by publishing the secret cables.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the people who originally leaked the documents, not Assange, were legally liable and the leaks raised questions over the "adequacy" of U.S. security.

The U.S. State Department said that while the U.S. government did have responsibility for the leaks, it was important to highlight that the Wikileaks releases "put real lives and real interests at risk."

WikiLeaks vowed it would continue making public details of the confidential U.S. cables. Only a fraction of them have been published so far.

Assange has become the public face of WikiLeaks, hailed by supporters including Australian journalist John Pilger and British filmmaker Ken Loach as a defender of free speech, but he is now battling to clear his name.

Some supporters appear to want to help him. While most denial of service attacks involve botnets, programs that hijack computers and use them to target individual websites and bring them down, the current cyber attacks seem to be different.

"In this case... they seem to be using their own computers," he said. Asked what that said about how many individuals might be involved: "Probably hundreds at the least, could be thousands," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of Finnish software security firm F-Secure.

For Visa and MasterCard, the world's two largest credit and debit card processors, the attack raised questions about the vulnerability of core operations -- and consumers' ability to use credit, debit and online payments instead of cash.

Nevertheless, investors in both companies largely reacted with a shrug. Shares of both companies closed up over 1 percent, although Visa slipped slightly in after-hours trading.

"You don't see this being a long-term or terminal situation where they can't find a fix," said Michael Nix, principal at Greenwood Capital Associates, which owns Visa shares.

A spokesman for Visa did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Online payment service PayPal, which was among companies which suspended WikiLeaks' accounts used to collect donations, said it had acted at the behest of the U.S. government.

"On November 27th, the State Department, the U.S. government basically, wrote a letter saying that the WikiLeaks activities were deemed illegal in the United States and as a result our policy group had to make the decision of suspending the account," Osama Bedier, PayPal's vice president of platform and emerging technology, told a conference in Paris.

Swiss Postfinance, the banking arm of state-owned Swiss Post, which also closed a WikiLeaks donation account, said it had taken countermeasures and an earlier wave of cyber attacks appeared to be waning.

"The community around Julian Assange have said, 'We're leaving it now, we've shown what we can do. The community has decided to go for MasterCard and Visa now,' Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty said.

REVELATIONS CONTINUE

As Washington continued to assess the impact of Wikileaks' release of thousands of classified embassy cables, which include damagingly candid assessments of foreign leaders, some officials were bracing for their next headache.

U.S. government sources said there was concern Assange's next batch of material could center on suspected militants held at Guantanamo Bay, and include "threat assessments" by U.S. intelligence agencies gauging the likelihood that specific detainees would return to militant activities if set free.

Those could cause further embarrassment for the Obama administration if they show that detainees deemed likely to return to terrorism were nevertheless released and subsequently involved in anti-U.S. violence.

The original source of the leaked cables is not known, although a U.S. army private, Bradley Manning, who worked as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, has been charged by military authorities with unauthorized downloading of more than 150,000 State Department cables.

U.S. officials have declined to say whether those cables are the same ones being released by WikiLeaks.

(Additional reporting by Michel Rose and Peter Apps in London, Emma Thomasson in Zurich, and Patrick Lannin in Stockholm; Mark Hosenball in Washington and Maria Aspan in New York; Writing by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Matthew Jones and Eric Beech)

Technet

Wednesday, December 8, 2010