St. Louis TV News Anchor “Advised” By His Station’s Ownership Not To Make Statements, Post on Facebook, Concerning IRS Discrimination of Conservatives

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - KMOV anchorman Larry Conners has been “advised” by KMOV’s parent company Belo Corp. to not make statements, post on Facebook, or participate in interviews concerning a recent controversy over Facebook comments he made about the Internal Revenue Service.

Conners has hired St. Louis attorney Merle Silverstein. Silverstein issued a letter to media outlets claiming that the corporate order “is the only reason for his silence.”

Conners wrote Monday night that shortly after he interviewed President Obama and his wife in April of 2012, the IRS “started hammering” him.

“At the time, I dismissed the ‘co-incidence’, but now, I have concerns … after revelations about the IRS targeting various groups and their members,” Conners wrote.

Conners issued a brief explanation of his post during the 6 p.m. news Tuesday night, stopping short of apologizing but explaining that his troubles with the IRS started years prior to his 2012 interview with President Obama.

“Any issue he has with the IRS are personal issues. They have nothing to do with our television station KMOV or him as a journalist,” Mike Valentine, vice president for content at Belo, told the website BuzzFeed earlier this week. “As a news anchor, he owes a duty to our viewers to report in an unbiased manner. His Facebook post and his Twitter posts, as a result, were inappropriate. And we don’t condone personal posts that jeopardize the journalistic nature of our business. It’s really that simple.”

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China’s Changing Internet Landscape

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The number of Internet users in China is expected to pass 600 million in 2013. Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe

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By Bill Bishop
DealBook
New York Times

China was on vacation much of last week for the May 1 Worker’s Day holiday, but executives at two of China’s most important online companies were busy completing a deal that could reshape the country’s Internet.

Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce and online payments firm, announced that it had bought an 18 percent  stake in Sina’s Weibo subsidiary for $586 million in a deal expected to jump-start Sina’s revenue through social commerce. Weibo, a microblogging service somewhat akin to Twitter, is one of China’s biggest social networks. Think Amazon or eBay investing in Twitter.

China’s top three Internet companies, known as the BATs, are Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Baidu, listed on the Nasdaq market, has a market capitalization of just under $30 billion. Alibaba is private but an eventual initial public offering, likely in either the United States or Hong Kong, could make the company one of the most valuable Internet firms in the world. Tencent is listed in Hong Kong and is worth nearly $65 billion, or almost as much as Facebook.

Mobile Internet usage is growing rapidly in China, in large part because of the proliferation of Google’s Android and cheap smartphones made in China. Sunday’s CCTV Evening News dedicated the first three minutes of the broadcast to a report about surging smartphone use and the benefits to China’s economy from the increasing consumption that the mobile Internet is expected to drive.

Weibo’s several hundred million users now access the service more from mobile devices than from PCs. The deal with Sina is part of Alibaba’s strategy, along with other initiatives like developing a new mobile operating system, Alibaba Mobile OS, to become the leading mobile firm in China. According to a report in Monday’s issue of Caixin, one of China’s top business magazines, Baidu was also negotiating with Sina for a Weibo deal. A Baidu representative declined to comment on that claim.

Tencent has its own Weibo service (weibo is the Chinese word for microblogging) as well as WeChat, a mobile messaging and social networking service that has several hundred million registered users. In December, this column cited WeChat as one of the eight trends to keep an eye on in 2013.

All this activity and wealth creation is happening inside of what the Economist magazine, in an excellent recent report on China’s Internet, termed a “giant cage.” But there are recent signs that the government is concerned the cage may need strengthening.

The previous column noted that the government appears to be reining in the more salacious online exposes of corruption that occurred over the last few months in favor of channeling them into official outlets.

On May 2, China’s State Internet Information Office declared war against online rumors because they “have impaired the credibility of online media, disrupted normal communication order, and aroused great aversion among the public.” One report suggests the regulators have some of the most influential users of Sina Weibo, those with millions or tens of millions of followers, in their sights. Online rumors have been a real problem, but crackdowns against them can be used for broader goals.

Last week’s announcement follows a new rule to tighten media controls, especially in regards to Weibo, issued in April, and an essay titled “How Is the Party to Manage the Media Well in the New Era?” by a propaganda official who in 2010 wrote the influential book “The Art of Guiding Public Opinion.”

There have been campaigns against online rumors before. The most concerted efforts to reign in Weibo began after the sixth plenum of the 17th Party Congress in October 2011 when official media declared that “Internet rumors are like drugs” and propaganda work should focus on “strengthening the channeling and control of social media and real-time communication tools.” That campaign was followed by the December 2011 requirement for real name registration of Weibo users.

Strict implementation does not always follow rule promulgation in China, and the real name registration requirement was largely ignored. Sina admitted as much in its 2011 and 2012 20-F annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here is what the company wrote in the recent 2012 filing:

We are required to, but have not, verified the identities of all of our users who post on Weibo, and our noncompliance exposes us to potentially severe penalty by the Chinese government.

The regulators may not always succeed the first time, but it would be a mistake to assume they will not keep pushing the issue, especially when propaganda work and ideology are so core to the party’s control. At the end of March, the State Council released its task list for the next five years, and one of the items is an Internet real name registration system by June 30, 2014.

The Alibaba deal is about strengthening mobile positioning and spurring social commerce. The government would probably be pleased to see Weibo shift from being a hotbed of social and political commentary and critiques to more of an online shopping arcade that, through integrated online payment functionality, has the voluntary real name registrations of many users.

Just as China’s leadership is clear it will pursue economic reform without structural political reform, so it also appears intent on building a commercially vibrant yet managed Internet, an “Internet with Chinese characteristics.” Given the scale of business activity and wealth creation on the Chinese Internet, the cage looks quite gilded and may prove far more robust than many expect.

Bill Bishop publishes the daily Sinocism China Newsletter from Beijing. You can follow him on Twitter @niubi and Sina Weibo @billbishop

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/chinas-changing-internet-landscape/

Teenagers, Social Media, and Terrorism: A Threat Hard to Assess …. Plus: FBI May Be Recording All Phone Conversations

Are social networks like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook being used to assist terrorists?

By Mark Guarino | Christian Science Monitor

Authorities are leaning more toward zero tolerance of teenagers who fling around online threats about acts of violence or terrorism. As a result, what might have once merited a slap on the wrist may today result in criminal charges

The case of teenager Cameron Dambrosio might serve as an object lesson to young people everywhere about minding what you say online unless you are prepared to be arrested for terrorism.

The Methuen, Mass., high school student was arrested last week after posting online videos that show him rapping an original song that police say contained “disturbing verbiage” and reportedly mentioned the White House and the Boston Marathon bombing. He is charged with communicating terrorist threats, a state felony, and faces a potential 20 years in prison. Bail is set at $1 million.

Whether the arrest proves to be a victory in America‘s fight against domestic terrorism or whether Cameron made an unfortunate artistic choice in the aftermath of the Boston bombing will become clear as the wheels of justice advance. What is apparent now, however, is that law enforcement agencies are tightening their focus on the social media behavior of US teenagers – not just because young people often fit the profile of those who are vulnerable to radicalization, but also because the public appears to be more accepting of monitoring and surveillance aimed at preventing attacks, even at the risk of government overreach.

Dias Kadyrbayev, left, is seen with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at an unknown location in this undated picture found on Kadyrbayev’s VK page./ VK

VK (Originally VKontakte, Russian: ВКонтакте, literally “in contact”) is a social network service available in several languages but popular particularly among Russian-speaking users around the world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_network)

RECOMMENDED: Quiz: How much do you know about terrorism?

“When I was young, calling a bomb threat to your high school because you didn’t want to go to school that day was treated with a slap on the wrist. Try that nowadays and you’re going to prison, no question about it. They are taking it more seriously now,” says Rob D’Ovidio, a criminal justice professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia who specializes in high-tech crime.

Teenagers are generally blissfully unaware that law enforcement agencies are creating cyber units to track and investigate developing ways that criminals, or would-be criminals, research, socialize, and plot nefarious actions, from child molestation to domestic terrorism. The Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, fit this profile: They [each??] maintained a YouTube page and Twitter feed that promoted the teachings of a radical Muslim cleric[both did? please confirm.] alongside innocuous postings about music and sports. For law enforcement officials, filtering what does and does not constitute a threat is a delicate balancing act that, since the April 15 bombing, may be tilting to the side of additional caution over individuals’ free speech.

“The danger of this in light of the tragedy in Boston is that law enforcement is being so risk-averse they are in danger of crossing that line and going after what courts would ultimately deem as free speech,” Mr. D’Ovidio says.

Want your top political issues explained? Get customized DC Decoder updates.

Three people were killed and at least 260 injured in the two bomb blasts near the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15. Since then, questions have been raised about how authorities missed signals, especially after alerts from Russian intelligence, that one of the bombing suspects had become radicalized. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed after a gunfight with police, had been under surveillance by Russia for six months when he traveled there in 2011 and 2012[those details correct??], besides his activity on social media.

“The bottom line is that the public wants to know, after the fact, why [an attack] was not stopped.… Most Americans are prepared to maintain a sophisticated watch on this without [government] overreach, but most Americans also feel if these things can be stopped before they begin, they want to see that happen,” says Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security.

Some authorities say that zooming in on unusual behavior online fits squarely with how police have conducted random searches on the street.

“The greatest mystery in life is the human mind. We don’t know what other people do until it becomes known. Our job is to figure it out, but we need indicators to know something’s not right,” says Sgt. Ed Mullins of the New York Police Department, who is also president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the city’s second-largest police union.

Using a zero tolerance approach to track domestic terrorists online is the only reasonable way to analyze online threats these days, especially after the Boston Marathon bombing and news that the suspects had subsequently planned to target Times Square in Manhattan, Mullins says. The way law enforcement agencies approach online activity that appears sinister is this: “If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it,” [he says?].

“This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is,” Mullins adds.

That method can result in arrests of teenagers whose online activity may be more aptly characterized as stupid pranks.

In February, Jessica Winslow and Ti’jeanae Harris, two high school girls in Rapids Parish, La., were arrested and charged with 10 counts of terrorism each after they allegedly e-mailed threats to students and faculty “to see if they could get away with it,” detectives told a local television news station. “We take every threat in our schools as a credible threat, and I am happy to say we have made these arrests,” Sheriff William Earl Hilton told reporters.

In January, Alex David Rosario, a high school student in Armada Village, Mich., was charged with domestic terrorism after he allegedly threatened to shoot fellow employees at the Subway shop where he worked. He [told police???] it was a joke. “We feel threatening to kill somebody is not a joke. It doesn’t appear the prosecutor takes it as a joke either and the judge certainly doesn’t,” said Armada Police Chief Howard Smith.

Then there is the case of Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, a Chicago-area teenager arrested last year after trying to join, over the Internet, a Syrian militant group linked to Al Qaeda. Last week, a federal judge allowed Mr. Tounisi home confinement while awaiting trial. He is pleading guilty to his single charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.[if he's pleading guilty, why is there a trial?][also, any of the other cases resolved yet?]

Militant and hate groups are known to use the Internet to lure teenagers “to gain their sympathy” through video games, music, or rhetoric that plays to themes of alienation, D’Ovidio says. Connecting with terrorists would have been impossible in the past, but today, as is alleged in the Tounisi case, anyone with a grudge or curiosity, or both, and an Internet connection can open that dialogue. Foolishly, the teens perceive that they are operating anonymously and within a safe environment, D’Ovidio says.

“We know these groups are catering and looking for these individuals,” he says. “They create the right environment for experimentation for kids who may have a proclivity of being disgruntled toward the US government.”

Easy access to online media, plus the urge to rebel, is a combustible mix that should make parents vigilant, cautions Stephen Balkam, chief executive officer of the Family Online Safety Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington that wants teenagers to be better informed about the outcomes of what they post, tweet, or upload online.

“Every generation of teenagers has figured out a way of rebelling against their parents, or giving it back to ‘the man.’ What I think is unprecedented is the very ‘man’ and the system they want to rebel against can track them and find their digital footprints online,” Mr. Balkam says. “In a sense, it’s good that we can catch kids who are getting radicalized sooner than later, but by the same token, it’s a challenge for kids to grow and develop, which is their job as a teenager, if they are being scrutinized too much.”

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FBI May Be Recording All Phone Conversations

From the Daily Mail

A former FBI counterterrorism agent has  hinted at a vast and intrusive surveillance network used by the U.S. government  to monitor its own citizens.

Tim Clemente admitted as much when he  appeared on CNN Wednesday night.

Discussing the Boston Marathon attack and  past telephone conversations of Katherine Russell and her now deceased husband,  suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Clemente said that those conversations would be  available to investigators.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2319789/ALL-phone-calls-US-recorded-accessible-government-claims-FBI-agent.html#ixzz2SRYyhZDe Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

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A former FBI agent admitted that U.S. citizens are under  constant surveillance and that all communications are recorded

Clemente discussed the issue in this exchange  with host Erin Burnett, as recorded by the CNN transcript.

BURNETT: ‘ Tim, is there any way, obviously,  there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at  this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they  actually can find  out what happened, right, unless she tells them?’

CLEMENTE: ‘No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national  security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that  conversation. It’s not  necessarily something that the FBI is going to want  to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to  questioning of  her. We certainly can find that out.’

BURNETT: ‘So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is  incredible.’

CLEMENTE: ‘No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as  we speak whether we know it or like it or not.

Secretive agencies are likely recording all digital  communications, from phone calls to emails to chat records

He reiterated those statements again on CNN  on Thursday night, adding that ‘all digital communications in the past’ are  recorded and saved.

He stressed that no digital communication was  secure.

More…

• EXCLUSIVE:  National Rifle Association president scolds Obama for blaming Mexican violence  on American guns: ‘The fact of the matter is, he knows better’
• ‘These  allegations are completely false and are made by two men who until yesterday I  regarded as friends’: Deputy Speaker denies gay rape claims after he was  released on bail

 

The Guardian noted that such practices have  been hinted at before, such as when AT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that  the company had helped build a special network for the National Security Agency  to have total access to all data about telephone calls.

And Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Mark  Udall have said for years that the public would be ‘stunned’ to learn the  lengths its government went to  monitor them.

 

 

In a poll, some Americans felt that they were losing  civil liberties in the war on terrorism

The Total Information Awareness program has  been slowly instituted in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks with  little controversy.

However the actual government practices have  been kept secret.

Some new polls suggest that Americans have  become increasingly concerned that they are giving up civil liberties to the war  on terrorism.

Read more:

• Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible  to the US government?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2319789/ALL-phone-calls-US-recorded-accessible-government-claims-FBI-agent.html#ixzz2SRZ6Owow Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friends hid damning evidence, feds say

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Friends in low places: Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat  Tazhayakov (left and center) were identified as the two friends of Dzhokhar  Tsarnaev (right) who have been held in Boston jail since April 20

Three college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were arrested and accused Wednesday of removing a backpack containing fireworks emptied of gunpowder and a laptop from Tsarnaev’s dorm room three days after the attack to try to keep him from getting into trouble.

From CBS News

• Newly-arrested friend of alleged Boston bomber was in U.S. illegally

Video:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57582393/accu
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amning-evidence-feds-say/

In court papers, the FBI said one of them threw the items in the garbage after they concluded from news reports that Tsarnaev was one of the bombers.

On “CBS This Morning” Thursday, CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano reported from Boston that investigators recovered the laptop and the backpack last week in a New Bedford, Mass., landfill.

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From left, Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, from Kazakhstan, with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Times Square in New York in this undated picture added April 18, 2013, to the VK page of Dias Kadyrbayev./ AP Photo/VK

Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by concealing and destroying evidence. A third man, Robel Phillipos, was charged with lying to investigators about the visit to Tsarnaev’s room.

In a court appearance Wednesday afternoon, Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev waived bail and agreed to voluntarily detention. Their next hearing is scheduled for May 14.

Phillipos was ordered held pending a detention and probable cause hearing scheduled for Monday.

CBS Boston station WBZ-TV reports that federal Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler admonished Phillipos in court, telling him to pay attention and not look down during the proceeding.

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Robel Phillipos talks in a YouTube video uploaded in 2012 for a class project. Phillipos is one of three college students being held by police for hiding evidence in the Boston bombing case.

/ YouTube

Late Wednesday afternoon, the attorneys for the suspects spoke outside of the Federal Courthouse in Boston. They say their clients had no idea the attack was being planned.

“He is just as shocked and horrified by the violence in Boston that took place as the rest of the community is,” said lawyer Robert Stahl on behalf of Kadyrbayev. “He did not know that this individual was involved in the bombing. His first inkling came much later. We’ll be looking forward to proving our case in court. He did not have anything to do with it.”

“Azamat Tazhayakov feels horrible and shocked that someone he knew at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth was involved in the Boston Marathon bombing,” said Tazhayakov’s attorney Harlan Protass. “He has cooperated fully with the authorities and looks forward to the truth coming out. He considers it an honor to be able to study in the U.S., and that he feels terrible for the people who have suffered as a result of the bombing.”

Meanwhile, the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth said that Tazhayakov has been suspended “pending the outcome of the case.” The university said Kadyrbayez and Phillipos aren’t enrolled and that it’s cooperating fully with authorities.

41 Photos

Boston bombing suspects

17 Photos

Boston bombings shootout

Three people were killed and more than 260 injured on April 15 when two bombs exploded near the finish line. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with police days later. His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, was captured and lies in a prison hospital.

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev, who are from Kazakhstan, have been held in jail for more than a week on allegations that they violated their student visas by not regularly going to class at UMass. All three men charged Wednesday began attending UMass with Tsarnaev at the same time in 2011, according to the FBI.

The three were not accused of any involvement in the bombing itself. But in a footnote in the court papers, the FBI said that about a month before the bombing, Tsarnaev told Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev that he knew how to make a bomb.

Investigators have not said whether the pressure cooker bombs used in the attacks were made with gunpowder extracted from fireworks.

Play Video

What can FBI learn from bombing suspect’s friends?

As for what the FBI hopes to learn from the suspects, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reported that if the agency gets its way, it is likely going to use the charges as leverage to press the suspects for more information about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and what he was doing before the attack: ‘Who was he in contact with?’ ‘Did he ever talk about actually building bombs?’ ‘Did he ever travel to a remote site maybe for test explosions?’ Investigators also want to know what Dzhokar knew about his brother’s radicalization and his possible association with terrorists overseas.

If convicted, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov could get up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Phillipos faces a maximum of eight years behind bars and a $250,000 fine.

• Special Section: Boston Marathon Bombing
• Criminal complaint against Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov (PDF)
• Criminal complaint against Robel Phillipos (PDF)

Authorities allege that on the night of April 18, after the FBI released surveillance-camera photos of the bombing suspects and the three men suspected their friend was one of them, they went to Tsarnaev’s dorm room.

Before Tsarnaev’s roommate let them in, Kadyrbayev showed Tazhayakov a text message from Tsarnaev that read: “I’m about to leave if you need something in my room take it,” according to the FBI.

• Details emerge in case against alleged Boston bomber’s friends

When Tazhayakov learned of the message, “he believed he would never see Tsarnaev alive again,” the FBI said in the affidavit.

It was not clear from the court papers whether authorities believe that was an instruction from Tsarnaev to his friends to destroy evidence.

Once inside Tsarnaev’s room, the men noticed a backpack containing fireworks, which had been opened and emptied of powder, the FBI said.

The FBI said that Kadyrbayev knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the bombings and decided to remove the backpack from the room “in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble.”

Pictured here are fireworks recovered by federal agents from a landfill in New Bedford, Mass., April 26, 2013./ FBI

Kadyrbayev also decided to remove Tsarnaev’s laptop “because he did not want Tsarnaev’s roommate to think he was stealing or behaving suspiciously by just taking the backpack,” the FBI said in court papers.

After the three men returned to Kadyrbayev’s and Tazhayakov’s apartment with the backpack and computer, they watched news reports featuring photographs of Tsarnaev.

The FBI affidavit said Kadyrbayev told authorities the three men then “collectively decided to throw the backpack and fireworks into the trash because they did not want Tsarnaev to get into trouble.”

Dias Kadyrbayev, left, is seen with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at an unknown location in this undated picture found on Kadyrbayev’s VK page./ VK

Kadyrbayev said he placed the backpack and fireworks along with trash from the apartment into a large trash bag and threw it into a garbage bin near the men’s apartment.

When the backpack was later found in a landfill last week, inside it was a UMass-Dartmouth homework assignment sheet from a class Tsarnaev was taking, the FBI said.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov lived at an off-campus apartment in New Bedford, about 60 miles south of Boston, and got around in a car registered to Kadyrbayev with a souvenir plate that read “Terrorista (hash)1.” The car was pictured on Tsarnaev’s Twitter feed in March.

The plate was a gag gift from some of Kadyrbayev’s friends, meant to invoke his penchant for late-night partying rather than his political sentiments, a lawyer for Kadyrbayev said last week.

Michael McKeown, 20, went to high school with Dzhokjar and Phillipos and served with Phillipos on the Cambridge Kids’ Council.

“He wasn’t a stupid kid,” the Boston University sophomore said of Phillipos. “I’m surprised he would do something this foolish.”

Meanwhile, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s relatives will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said. The body of Tsarnaev, 26, has been at the medical examiner’s office in Massachusetts since he died after a gunfight with authorities more than a week ago.

Amato DeLuca, an attorney for his widow, Katherine Russell, said Tuesday that his client had just learned that the medical examiner was ready to release Tsarnaev’s body and that she wants it released to his side of the family.

Tsarnaev’s parents are still in Russia, but he has other relatives in the U.S.

Much more:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57582393/accus
ed-boston-bomber-dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-friends-hid
-damning-evidence-feds-say/

Texts: When the group arrived at the dorm, Dias  Kadyrbayev (far top) showed Tazhayakov (near top) a text from the bomber that said  ‘I’m about to leave if you need something in my room take it’

Mark Zuckerberg’s Political Status: It’s Complicated

ABC News – Mark Zuckerberg’s Political Status: It’s Complicated (ABC News)

Less than three weeks after Mark Zuckerberg officially launched his pro-immigration reform group, the billionaire technology mogul seems to be experiencing the Facebook equivalent of a liberal de-friending.

Progressive activists have been voicing their disapproval after two Zuckerberg-backed groups unveiled television ads last week that praise lawmakers for opposing Obamacare and supporting an expansion of the Keystone oil pipeline and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The ads are meant to provide political cover for senators to cast politically risky votes in favor of immigration reform.

One of the ads, airing on behalf of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate’s bi-partisan “Gang of Eight,” features clips of the South Carolina Republican repeatedly disparaging President Obama. Another ad touts Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich‘s work to open ANWR to drilling.

Those television commercials led the Sierra Club to post a message to the environmental group’s Facebook page on Monday urging Zuckerberg to “re-think his priorities.”

“Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is bankrolling political ads that push dangerous, dirty projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in America’s pristine Arctic Refuge,” says the message accompanying a thumbs-down graphic dripping with oil.

“Just last week, the Sierra Club announced our support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — so we know how important immigration reform is to the future of our country,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement to ABC News. “The way to achieve reform, however, isn’t by pushing dirty fuel schemes that threaten our future and our families. Mark Zuckerberg has made comments in the past recognizing that we need to pursue a clean energy future, and there is no reason he needs to trade those principles for a few political points.”

In addition to Graham and Begich, an off-shoot of Zuckerberg’s group, FWD.us, is financing a television commercial supporting Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — the only one of the three ads that specifically mentions immigration reform.

FWD.us is funding two subsidiaries that are running the ads — the Republican-leaning, “Americans for a Conservative Direction” and the Democratic-minded, “Council for American Job Growth.”

Each group has a board of directors separate from FWD.us, which last week added the backing of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and its CEO Steve Ballmer as well as technology entrepreneur Sean Parker to an already impressive list of Silicon Valley leaders who have signed on as supporters.

Former New York Congressman Scott Murphy, former Clinton administration White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, and former Obama campaign official Alida Garcia are listed as board members for the Council for American Job Growth.

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former George W. Bush administration official and Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan campaign adviser Dan Senor, and former National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Rob Jesmer sit on the Americans for a Conservative Direction board.

“Maintaining two separate entities, Americans for a Conservative Direction and the Council for American Job Growth, to support elected officials across the political spectrum — separately — means that we can more effectively communicate with targeted audiences of their constituents,” FWD.us spokeswoman Kate Hansen said in a statement.

Although none of the ads imply that either Zuckeberg or FWD.us support policies like expanded oil drilling, detractors see little distinction between the group and its subsidiaries or between the group and Zuckerberg.

Their view that the ends (in this case, comprehensive immigration reform) do not justify the means (controversial political ads), has led at least two other groups — CREDO Action, the liberal arm of CREDO Mobile, a cellular phone company, and the “climate safety” organization, 350.org — to publicly lash out at Zuckerberg. A CREDO spokeswoman said 18,5000 people signed on an online petition condemning the ads and, along with 350.org, they are planning a protest outside Facebook headquarters in California on Wednesday.

Although FWD.us supporters include John Doerr, a prominent Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist; Reid Hoffman, executive chairman of LinkedIn; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google; Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix; and Marissa Mayer, chief executive officer of Yahoo!, so far the progressive ire has been focused almost exclusively on Zuckerberg.

Complicating matters are the Facebook founder’s somewhat mysterious political views. Zuckerberg and other technology leaders, for example, dined with President Obama in February 2011 and he hosted the president at a friendly town hall meeting two months later at Facebook’s offices.

But he also threw a fundraiser earlier this year for Gov. Chris Christie, the New Jersey Republican and potential 2016 presidential contender. (At the time CREDO Action organized a protest outside of Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home.)

According to the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg is registered to vote in Santa Clara County but did not state a party preference. Campaign finance records show he donated a total of $10,000 in 2011 and 2012 to Facebook’s political action committee.

In a Washington Post Op-Ed announcing his new advocacy group earlier this month, Zuckerberg expressed support for three major policy goals: “comprehensive immigration reform”;  “higher standards and accountability in schools”; and “investment in breakthrough discoveries in scientific research.”

“We will work with members of Congress from both parties, the administration and state and local officials,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We will use online and offline advocacy tools to build support for policy changes, and we will strongly support those willing to take the tough stands necessary to promote these policies in Washington.”

Russia had elder Boston bombing suspect under surveillance; Tied him to Canadian Islamist rebel in Dagestan

In this undated photo provided by the Dagestani branch of the Federal Security Service, the Canadian William Plotnikov, right, poses with Islamist rebels in the south Russia area of revolt.  Plotnikov apparently had ties to the American Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the key suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013.  Photo credit: Associated Press/Dagestani branch of the Federal Security Service via NewsTeam

By ARSEN MOLLAYEV and LYNN BERRY | Associated Press 

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) — Russian agents placed the elder Boston bombing suspect under surveillance during a six-month visit to southern Russia last year, then scrambled to find him when he suddenly disappeared after police killed a Canadian jihadist, a security official told The Associated Press.

U.S. law enforcement officials have been trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was indoctrinated or trained by militants during his visit to Dagestan, a Caspian Sea province that has become the center of a simmering Islamic insurgency.

The security official with the Anti-Extremism Center, a federal agency under Russia’s Interior Ministry, confirmed the Russians shared their concerns. He told the AP that Russian agents were watching Tsarnaev, and that they searched for him when he disappeared two days after the July 2012 death of the Canadian man, who had joined the Islamic insurgency in the region. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

Security officials suspected ties between Tsarnaev and the Canadian — an ethnic Russian named William Plotnikov — according to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which is known for its independence and investigative reporting and cited an unnamed official with the Anti-Extremism Center, which tracks militants. The newspaper said the men had social networking ties that brought Tsarnaev to the attention of Russian security services for the first time in late 2010.

It certainly wouldn’t be surprising if the men had met. Both were amateur boxers of roughly the same age whose families had moved from Russia to North America when they were teenagers. In recent years, both had turned to Islam and expressed radical beliefs. And both had traveled to Dagestan, a republic of some 3 million people.

The AP could not independently confirm whether the two men had communicated on social networks or crossed paths either in Dagestan or in Toronto, where Plotnikov had lived with his parents and where Tsarnaev had an aunt.

After Plotnikov was killed, Tsarnaev left suddenly for the U.S., not waiting to pick up his new Russian passport — ostensibly one of his main reasons for coming to Russia. The official said his sudden departure was considered suspicious.

Plotnikov’s father told the Canadian network CBCNews on Monday that his son had broken off contact when he returned to Russia in 2010 and he had no way of knowing whether his son knew Tsarnaev.

In an August interview with the Canadian newspaper National Post, Vitaly Plotnikov said his son, who was 23 when he died, had converted to Islam in 2009 and quickly became radicalized. But he said he fully understood what his son was up to in Russia only when he received photographs and videos after his death.

In one photo, a smiling William Plotnikov is shown posing in the woods, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and a camouflage ammunition belt around his waist. In the videos, which the National Post reporter watched with the father, the younger Plotnikov talked openly of planning to kill in the name of Allah.

Plotnikov had been detained in Dagestan in December 2010 on suspicion of having ties to the militants and during his interrogation was forced to hand over a list of social networking friends from the United States and Canada who like him had once lived in Russia, Novaya Gazeta reported.

The newspaper said Tsarnaev’s name was on that list, bringing him for the first time to the attention of Russia’s secret services.

Novaya Gazeta, which is part-owned by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and wealthy businessman Alexander Lebedev, has regularly criticized the Kremlin. One of its best known reporters, Anna Politkovskaya, angered the Kremlin with her reporting from Chechnya, and her 2006 murder in a Moscow elevator was widely presumed to have been in connection with her journalistic work.

The Islamic insurgency in Dagestan grew out of the fierce fighting between Russian troops and separatists in neighboring Chechnya that raged in the 1990s. Attacks now are carried out almost daily in Dagestan against police and security forces, who respond with special operations of their own to wipe out the militants.

As recently as Sunday, two suspected militants were killed in a shootout after being cornered in a house in the Dagestani village of Chontaul, according to police spokeswoman Fatina Ubaidatova.

Plotnikov was among seven suspected militants killed on July 14 during a standoff with police in the Dagestani village of Utamysh, according to the official police record.

After Plotnikov’s death, Russian security agents lost track of Tsarnaev and went to see his father in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, who told them that his son had returned to the U.S., Novaya Gazeta said.

The agents did not believe the father, since Tsarnaev had left without picking up his new Russian passport, and they continued to search for him, the newspaper reported.

The Russians later determined that Tsarnaev had flown to Moscow on July 16 and to the United States the following day, the newspaper said. Tsarnaev arrived in New York on July 17.

Russian migration officials have said they were puzzled that Tsarnaev applied for the passport but left before it was ready.

His father, Anzhor Tsarnaev, said last week that his elder son stayed with him while waiting for the passport to be processed. He could not be reached Tuesday for comment on the Novaya Gazeta report.

The Tsarnaev family had lived briefly in Dagestan before moving to the United States a decade ago. Both parents returned to Dagestan last year.

The official with Russia’s Anti-Extremism Center said Tsarnaev was filmed attending a mosque in Makhachkala whose worshippers adhere to a more radical strain of Islam. The official would give no further details about what the Russian security services knew about Tsarnaev’s activities in Dagestan or about any possible connection to Plotnikov.

The AP was unable to determine whether the official was the same one who provided the information to Novaya Gazeta.

Plotnikov had settled in Utamysh, a small village about 70 kilometers (40 miles) from Makhachkala. It was not known whether he had spent any significant amount of time in Dagestan’s capital.

Novaya Gazeta said Tsarnaev was also seen in the company of Mahmud Nidal — a man who was both Palestinian and Kumyk, one of the dozens of ethnic groups living in Dagestan — and who was believed to have ties to Islamic militants in the southern Russian region.

Nidal was killed in May 2012 after refusing to give himself up to security forces that had surrounded a house in Makhachkala, according to official police records.

Shortly after Plotnikov identified Tsarnaev during his December 2010 interrogation, the Russian secret services, the FSB, studied Tsarnaev’s pages on social networking sites and asked the FBI for more information, the Russian newspaper said.

The FBI has acknowledged receiving the request. The U.S. agency said it opened an investigation, but when no evidence of terrorism was found and no further information from the Russians was forthcoming, the case was closed in June 2011.

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Berry reported from Moscow.

Our thanks to the Russian FSB

Panel pushes to expand wiretaps, surveillance of online activity

By Ellen Nakashima

The Washington Post  

A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Face­book and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort.

Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications.

Rather than antagonizing companies whose cooperation they need, federal officials typically back off when a company is resistant, industry and former officials said. But law enforcement officials say the cloak drawn on suspects’ online activities — what the FBI calls the “going dark” problem — means that critical evidence can be missed.

“The importance to us is pretty clear,” Andrew Weissmann, the FBI’s general counsel, said last month at an American Bar Association discussion on legal challenges posed by new technologies. “We don’t have the ability to go to court and say, ‘We need a court order to effectuate the intercept.’ Other countries have that. Most people assume that’s what you’re getting when you go to a court.”

There is currently no way to wiretap some of these communications methods easily, and companies effectively have been able to avoid complying with court orders. While the companies argue that they have no means to facilitate the wiretap, the  government, in turn, has no desire to enter into what could be a drawn-out contempt proceeding.

Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A company that does not comply with an order within a certain period would face an automatic judicial inquiry, which could lead to fines. After 90 days, fines that remain unpaid would double daily.

Instead of setting rules that dictate how the wiretap capability must be built, the proposal would let companies develop the solutions as long as those solutions yielded the needed data. That flexibility was seen as inevitable by those crafting the proposal, given the range of technology companies that might receive wiretap orders. Smaller companies would be exempt from the fines.

The proposal, however, is likely to encounter resistance, said industry officials and privacy advocates.

“This proposal is a non-starter that would drive innovators overseas and cost American jobs,” said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, which focuses on issues of privacy and security. “They might as well call it the Cyber Insecurity and Anti-Employment Act.”

The Obama administration has not yet signed off on the proposal. Justice Department, FBI and White House officials declined to comment. Still, Weissmann said at the ABA discussion that the issue is the bureau’s top legislative priority this year, but he declined to provide details about the proposal.

Increased urgency

The issue of online surveillance has taken on added urgency with the explosion of social media and chat services and the proliferation of different types of online communication. Technology firms are seen as critical sources of information about crime and terrorism suspects.

“Today, if you’re a tech company that’s created a new and popular way to communicate, it’s only a matter of time before the FBI shows up with a court order to read or hear some conversation,” said Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie’s Washington office who represents technology firms. “If the data can help solve crimes, the government will be interested.”

Some technology companies have developed a wiretap capability for some of their services. But a range of communications companies and services are not required to do so under what is known as CALEA, the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Among those services are social media networks and the chat features on online gaming sites.

Former officials say the challenge for investigators was exacerbated in 2010, when Google began end-to-end encryption of its e-mail and text messages after its networks were hacked. Facebook followed suit. That made it more difficult for the FBI to intercept e-mail by serving a court order on the Internet service provider, whose pipes would carry the encrypted traffic.

The proposal would make clear that CALEA extends to Internet phone calls conducted between two computer users without going through a central company server — what is sometimes called “peer-to-peer” communication. But the heart of the proposal would add a provision to the 1968 Wiretap Act that would allow a court to levy fines.

Challenges abound

One former senior Justice Department official, who is not privy to details of the draft proposal, said law enforcement officials are not seeking to expand their surveillance authorities. Rather, said Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security from 2006 to 2008, officials are seeking “to make sure their existing authorities can be applied across the full range of communications technologies.”

Proponents say adding an enforcement provision to the 1968 Wiretap Act is a more politically palatable way of achieving that goal than by amending CALEA to redefine what types of companies should be covered. Industry and privacy experts, including some former government officials, are skeptical.

“There will be widespread disagreement over what the law requires,” said Albert Gidari Jr., a partner at Perkins Coie’s flagship Seattle office who represents telecommunications companies. “It takes companies into a court process over issues that don’t belong in court but rather in standards bodies with technical expertise.”

Some experts said a few companies will resist because they believe they might lose customers who have privacy concerns. Google, for instance, prides itself on protecting its search service from law enforcement surveillance, though it might comply in other areas, such as e-mail. And Skype has lost some of its cachet as a secure communications alternative now that it has been bought by Microsoft and is reportedly complying with wiretap orders.

Susan Landau, a former Sun Microsystems distinguished engineer, has argued that wiring in an intercept capability will increase the likelihood that a company’s servers will be hacked. “What you’ve done is created a way for someone to silently go in and activate a wiretap,” she said. Traditional phone communications were susceptible to illicit surveillance as a result of the 1994 law, she said, but the problem “becomes much worse when you move to an Internet or computer-based network.”

Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division, said good software coders can create an intercept capability that is secure. “But to do so costs money,” he said, noting the extra time and expertise needed to develop, test and operate such a service.

A huge challenge, officials agree, is how to gain access to peer-to-peer communications. Another challenge is making sense of encrypted communications.

Thomas said officials need to strike a balance between the needs of law enforcement and those of the technology companies.

“You want to give law enforcement the ability to have the data they’re legally entitled to get, at the same time not burdening industry and not opening up security holes,” he said.

Facebook founder Zuckerberg reaped $2.3B gain on stock options

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg realized $2.3 billion gain on exercise of stock options last year

Associated Press 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reaped a gain of nearly $2.3 billion last year when he exercised 60 million stock options just before the online social networking leader’s initial public offering.

The windfall detailed in regulatory documents filed Friday saddled Zuckerberg, 28, with a massive tax bill. He raised the money to pay it by selling 30.2 million Facebook Inc. shares for $38 apiece, or $1.1 billion, in the IPO.

Facebook’s stock hasn’t closed above $38 since the IPO was completed last May. The shares gained 71 cents Friday to close at $26.85.

The 29 percent decline from Facebook’s IPO price has cost Zuckerberg nearly $7 billion on paper, based on the 609.5 million shares of company stock that he owned as of March 31, according to the regulatory filing. His current stake is still worth $16.4 billion.

Zuckerberg, who started Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004, has indicated he has no immediate plans to sell more stock.

The exercise of Zuckerberg’s stock options and his subsequent sale of shares in the IPO had been previously disclosed. The proxy statement filed to announce Facebook’s June 11 shareholder meeting is the first time that the magnitude of Zuckerberg’s stock option gain had been quantified.

The proxy also revealed that Zuckerberg’s pay package last year rose 16 percent because of increased personal usage of jets chartered by the company as part of his security program.

Zuckerberg’s compensation last year totaled nearly $2 million, up from $1.7 million last year. Of those amounts, $1.2 million covered the costs of Zuckerberg’s personal air travel last year, up from $692,679 in 2011.

If not for the spike in travel costs, Zuckerberg’s pay would have declined by 17 percent. His salary and bonus totaled $769,306 last year versus $928,833 in 2011.

Zuckerberg will take a big pay cut this year. His annual salary has been reduced to $1 and he will no longer receive a bonus, according to Facebook’s filing. That puts Zuckerberg’s current cash compensation on the same level as Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page, whose stake in his company is worth about $20 billion.

The Associated Press formula for determining an executive’s total compensation calculates salary, bonuses, perquisites, above-market interest that the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits or stock option gains such as those recognized by Zuckerberg did last year.

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• Zuckerberg has been revealed to have made  $2.3 billion from selling stock options just before last May’s IPO
• The windfall also left the Facebook CEO with  a whopping $1.1 billion tax bill
• Known for his prudent spending habits,  Zuckerberg and is wife are currently enjoying a no-frills holiday in Kauai

By  Matt Blake and Associated Press Reporter While Mark Zuckerberg continues to enjoy his  budget holiday in Hawaii, it has been revealed the Facebook CEO is even richer  than previously thought after he gained $2.3 billion from selling 60 million stock options just before his company’s  initial public offering last year. The famously frugal billionaire is currently enjoying a  no-frills holiday in Kauai with his Harvard-educated doctor wife on their latest trip to Hawaii, where they are  rumored to be on the look out for real estate on the  island. Despite his latest windfall, sport-shorts wearing Zuckerberg remains focused on the  simple things in life. Rather than indulging in lavish dinners and  extravagant  outings, he has been spotted eating burgers and surfing in recent days.

Weary: The couple were photographed trudging wearily up  the beach after a hard afternoon of sun, sea and surf, both grimacing under the  weight of their massive boards Zuckerberg isn’t the first frugal  billionaire, Warren Buffet is another who would prefer to keep his wealth in the  bank rather than spend it on extravagant purchases. He famously still lives in  the same modest home he bought in 1958 for $31,500. Facebook’s CEO has another reason to keep his  vacation cheap and cheerful. According to regulatory  documents filed Friday, he  has also been saddled with a massive $1.1  billion tax bill. Money he raised by  selling 30.2 million  Facebook shares for $38 apiece in the IPO. Facebook’s stock hasn’t closed above $38  since the IPO was completed last May. The shares gained 71 cents Friday to close  at $26.85.

More…

• Google  Glasses are the ‘weirdest thing’ and could be ‘inappropriate’ according to  company chairman Eric Schmidt
• The  couple who Facebooks together, stays together? How those who ‘tag’ each other in  photos online are closer in real life
• The  future of bedtime, or the lazy parent’s way out? ‘Smart’ pajamas for children  can be scanned to launch stories via iPad app

The 29 percent decline from  Facebook’s IPO  price has cost Zuckerberg nearly $7 billion on paper,  based on the 609.5  million shares of company stock that he owned as of  March 31, according to the  regulatory filing. His current stake is still worth $16.4  billion. Zuckerberg, who started Facebook in  his  Harvard University dorm room in 2004, has indicated he has no  immediate plans  to sell more stock. The proxy statement filed to announce  Facebook’s June 11  shareholder meeting is the first time that the magnitude of  Zuckerberg’s stock option gain had been quantified.

Sun safe: But while Priscilla embraced the rays in a  bikini, Zuckerberg, famed for his unambitious wardrobe, opted to keep his black  t-shirt firmly on

Low key: Zuckerberg has been enjoying a low key holiday  in Kauai with his Harvard-educated doctor wife on their latest trip to Hawaii,  where they are rumoured to be on a reconnaissance trip for real estate on the  island

The proxy also revealed that  Zuckerberg’s  pay package last year rose 16 percent because of increased  personal usage of  jets chartered by the company as part of his security  program. Zuckerberg’s compensation last year  totaled nearly $2  million, up from $1.7 million last year. Of those  amounts, $1.2 million covered  the costs of Zuckerberg’s personal air  travel last year, up from $692,679 in  2011. If not for the spike in travel costs, Zuckerberg’s pay would have declined by 17 percent. His salary and  bonus  totaled $769,306 last year versus $928,833 in 2011. But despite being worth $13.3billion,  Zuckerberg enjoys life’s simple pleasures. Earlier this week he and his wife  were spotted chatting with friends at picnic tables while snacking on Kauai’s  famous Bubba burgers and smoothies.

Newtworking: Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan  chat with friends as they take a stroll on Kauai

Relaxed: The couple were seen enjoying food from Bubba’s  Burgers at a picnic table with friends

The billionaire enjoyed snacking on Kauai’s famous Bubba  burgers and smoothies

The couple, who are notoriously  down-to-earth, sported casual wear and Mark wore his now-famous sandals, which  are parodied by Jesse Eisenberg in the film about Facebook, The  Social  Network. ‘We try to stick pretty close to what our  goals are and what we believe  and what we enjoy doing in life – just simple  things,’ Chan has previously told The New  Yorker. As the couple headed to their beach front  house, they were seen walking past Shave Ice Paradise – a favorite of the Obama  family when the First Family vacations in Hawaii. It is just the latest trip to Hawaii for  Zuckerberg and Chan, who switched web surfing for wave surfing in Maui last  December. They were seen chatting with beach goers and enjoying lessons in the  water. And while the couple do not appear to be  splashing out this trip, it was reported that Zuckerberg did go on a spending  spree in the area in January, when he bought several luxury condos in  Honolulu.

Stroll: Zuckerberg and his wife laughed as they passed  Shave Ice Paradise – an Obama favorite

Taking it easy: The couple, who enjoyed smoothies with  friends, also visited Hawaii last December

Vacation: The high-flying couple is staying at a beach  house Kauai, Hawaii, pictured

He was reportedly interested in buying  several units in a 23-story ultra-luxury condominium under development.  Each  unit costs $1.6 million – with penthouse suites reaching $9  million. The couple met at a college party in 2003 as  they stood in line for the bathroom at Zuckerberg’s Jewish  fraternity at Harvard University, Alpha Epsilon Pi. ‘He was this nerdy guy who was just a little  bit out there,’ Chan told the New Yorker. They married in May last year in Zuckerberg’s  backyard in Palo Alto, California – after telling their unwitting guests the  celebration was solely to mark Chan’s graduation from medical school. As well as family and friends, they were  joined by their dog Beast and serenaded by Green Day’s Billie Joe  Armstrong. Zuckerberg was no doubt ready for a holiday  following his first foray into politics this month.

Low key: Zuckerberg was seen sporting his sock sandals -  which were parodied in the film about Facebook, The Social Network, by Jesse  Eisenberg (right) who plays the Facebook founder

Wedding day: The couple were married last May at their  Palo Alto, California home With other Silicon Valley leaders, he launched a political group aimed at revamping immigration policy,  boosting  education and encouraging investment in scientific research. Zuckerberg announced the formation of Fwd.us  (pronounced ‘forward us’) in an op-ed article in The Washington Post two weeks  ago. In it, he said the U.S. needs a new approach  to these issues if it is to  get ahead economically. This, he wrote, includes  offering talented,  skilled immigrants a path to citizenship. ‘We have a strange immigration policy for a  nation of immigrants, Zuckerberg wrote. ‘And it’s a policy unfit for today’s  world.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315574/Faceboo k-founder-Mark-Zuckerberg-revealed-landed-2-3-billion-dollar-stock- windfall-continues-treat-wife-Priscilla-frills-Hawaii-vacation.html#ixzz2RfPsQq9N . Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Says $200M Should Go to Building a Social Network for the Youth

By Anh-Minh Do | Tech in Asia 

Last month, there was a considerable amount of online chatter about Vietnam’s prime minister planning to throw down $200 million to build a social network for the youth of Vietnam. Yeah, that’s more than the amount Coc Coc plans to pump into beating Google in Vietnam in the next decade.

It still remains unclear where the $200 million will come from and how the Vietnamese government plans to allocate that money to building such a huge and possibly bloated product. It’s also unsettled what the goal of such a project would be. Either way, we do know that it’s been allocated to the Ministry of Information and Communication.

In the midst of the rumors, some people have speculated that the as yet unlaunched Thanh Nien Vietnam, which literally means Vietnam’s Youth and appears to be a website for the government-sponsored national youth organization, was actually the $200 million project. But ICTnews.vn just debunked this. It’s not the $200 million project.

According to the Thanh Nien Vietnam website, the project won’t launch for another 253 days. Who knows what they’re doing for over a year when it took Zuckerberg one month to code the first version of Facebook. But I guess they want to be careful. It’s also not clear yet what the features for this website will be beyond what the CEO Le Quang Tu Do says is to bring the youth together in meaningful ways.

But there’s still no official word on the $200 million project and if it’s really starting up.

The Vietnamese government has made some significant steps in getting more involved in social media, like with Go.vn, which previously required Vietnamese citizens to enter their national identity numbers in order to get an account, but has since slowly spun off into a super platform that includes music, e-commerce, video, news, and education. Zing Me from VNG, on the other hand, still remains the biggest teen social network.

The post Vietnam’s Prime Minister Says $200M Should Go to Building a Social Network for the Youth appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Russia asked FBI to investigate bomber after spotting him with ‘a militant’ on trip to Dagestan

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Gadzhimurad Dolgatov  – a Dagestani jihadist who died in 2012 after a vicious stand-off with Russian  security services

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Grabs of videos believed to have been deleted from  Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube account that are reportedly of Gadzhimurad Dolgatov  – a Dagestani jihadist who died in 2012 after a vicious stand-off with Russian  security services

• Russian  authorities contacted FBI in November with questions about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, police source  said
• It came after he was seen  meeting with a person involved in militant Islamic underground movement in  Dagestan
• FBI never responded to  the concerns, the source claimed
• Tsarnaev’s mother said the FBI had trailed him for five years amid fears he was inspired by Russia’s Bin Laden

By  Leslie Larson and Lydia Warren

Speculation is growing that one of the Boston  bombers met a known Jihadist terrorist in 2011 – as it emerged the FBI failed to  follow up on a Russian tip that he was seen with an Islamic militant six  times.

On a YouTube account widely believed to  belong to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, there are two videos on a playlist called  ‘terrorists’ created five months ago that since have been deleted.

Both videos appear under the name, ‘Amir Abu  Dujana rabbanikaly’ which is also the name used by Gadzhimurad Dolgatov, a  notorious Dagestani terrorist.

Investigators are pouring over the YouTube  account to see if they can confirm whether Tsarnaev had any links with Dolgatov,  who was killed by Russian security forces in Makhachkala in December 2012, after  a fierce gun battle.

These latest revelations question the  adequacy of the U.S intelligence community, who failed to spot the national  security threat posed by suspect Tamerlan  Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar, despite the repeated  warnings.

On Sunday, a Dagistani police official source  revealed to NBC  News that the Russian  internal security service contacted the FBI in November with some questions  about Tamerlan and handed over a copy of a case file on him.

The 26-year-old Chechen, who was living in  the U.S. after being granted refugee status in 2002, first caught the eye of  authorities after he was spotted meeting with a person involved  in the militant Islamic underground movement in Dagestan. They met at a mosque on  six occasions, the source said.

The source told NBC the militant and  Tsarnaev disappeared before authorities  could speak with them; they added that the FBI never responded. A senior law  enforcement official said that the FBI’s earlier investigation did not turn up  anything and they did not have the legal authority to keep tabs on  him.

The question law enforcement officials will  be asking themselves is, did Tamerlan meet Dolgatov when he visited Makhachkala  in 2011?

However, Christopher Swift, professor of  national security studies at Georgetown University told CNN that these videos  and the fact they were deleted reveal nothing concrete – just  yet.

‘There is no evidence that these young men  were seeking to make a point about Chechnya per se.’

He said he believes it is more likely that  they were trying to make a point about themselves, as if to say: ‘We are  warriors. we have been wronged, people do not understand us and we must be  heard.’

Tsarnaev was  killed by police in Watertown, Massachusetts on Friday following a gun battle  with authorities. Pictures of him and his brother allegedly attending the Boston  marathon and planting packages had been released by the FBI on Thursday. His  brother was injured and remains in hospital.

Suspect: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, left in 2010, was identified  as a main suspect in the Monday bombings at the Boston Marathon after he was  spotted in surveillance footage, right) at the race. He was killed in a gun  battle with police in Watertown, Mass. on Friday morning

Captured: Tsarnaev’s 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar, left  in April, was captured by police late on Friday in Watertown, Mass. after a  nearly 24 hour manhunt. He was dubbed ‘Suspect Number Two’ in surveillance  footage, right, taken on Monday at the race

The FBI has confirmed that Russia alerted the  agency in 2011 that Tsarnaev had ties to ‘radical Islam’ groups in his homeland.  Homeland Security  sources have also revealed the agency received tips in 2012  about his  ties to extremists connected to a Boston mosque.

Congress is now promising a full  inquiry  into what intelligence had been unearthed on the suspected  bombers that could  have alerted authorities.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the Chairman of  the  House Homeland Security Committee, called it ‘disturbing’ that the  Chechen  immigrant was ‘on the FBI radar’ in 2011 but was deemed to not be a risk to  national security.

More…

• Eldest  Boston bomber was thrown out of his mosque for ‘raged filled rant’ against  Martin Luther King three months ago – as FBI hunts mysterious religious leader  who ‘brainwashed’ him
• Was  Boston bomber inspired by Russia’s Bin Laden? Mother claims FBI tracked older  brother ‘for FIVE YEARS’ after being told by Moscow of links to Chechen  terrorists
• Caught  just in time: Police reveal Boston bombers were about to plant MORE devices as  video is released of grenade barrage that stunned wounded brother into  submission
• Bomber  ‘put gun in his mouth and fired as he was cornered in boat’ and wounds mean he  may NEVER be able to be quizzed

Congressman McCaul, a Republican in the House  of Representatives from the state of Texas, noted  that ‘the attack on the Boston Marathon is  indicative of the shift in  terrorists’ tactics in recent years to  inspire people who are living in the  United States to strike.’

‘While several plots of this nature  have  been thwarted, this is the first to succeed,’ he said in a statement  after  Tamerlan’s  brother, Dzhokhar, was apprehended late on Friday.

‘In the  coming weeks the Homeland Security  Committee will begin to ask how this  happened, and how we can prevent it from  happening again,’ he said,  urging Americans to ‘not back down in the face of  terrorism.’

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Questions: Rep. Michael McCaul, the Chairman of the  House Homeland Security Committee, called it ‘disturbing’ that the Chechen  immigrant was interviewed by federal officials in 2011 but after a thorough  review he was deemed to not be a risk to national security

Sen. Lindsey Graham added that the FBI  dropped the ball in investigating Tsarnaev in 2011.

‘Once you’re brought to attention by a  foreign government, I think you should have a red flag put then, to be taken off  later,’ Graham said on CNN’s State of the Union.

‘The ball was dropped in one of two ways -  the FBI missed a lot of things, [or] there’s one potential answer [that] our  laws do not allow to follow up in a sound solid way. There was a lot to be  learned from this guy. He was on websites talking about killing Americans. He  went overseas… he was clearly talking about radical ideas. He was visiting  radical areas.’

The FBI revealed on Friday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the subject of an agency investigation two years ago.

The Russian government requested in 2011 that  the U.S. federal agency carefully review Tamerlan’s  possible connections to Chechen  extremists.

‘The request stated that it was based on  information that he was a  follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and  that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United  States for  travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground  groups,’ agents said.

Officials said they reviewed the man’s  associations with suspected extremists,  his travel and education history and  concluded that there wasn’t  incriminating information to prove he had extremist  leanings.

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Past: The brothers grew up in Kyrgyzstan, in the town of  Tokmok, home to a Chechen community in the Central Asian nation. The family left  Kyrgyzstan and moved to the Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus region.  From there they traveled to the United States in 2002, when they were granted  refugee status

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‘Inspiration’: One theory is that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was  inspired by Doku Umarov, a Chechen terrorist known as Russia’s Bin Laden

‘The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev  and family members. The FBI  did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or  foreign, and those  results were provided to the foreign government in the  summer of 2011.’

One theory into the motive for the bombings  is that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar  may have been ‘inspired’ by a rebel leader known  as Russia’s Bin Laden.

Doku Umarov, like the Tsarnaev brothers, is  an ethnic Chechen from the war-torn Caucasus region that lies  between Europe  and Central Asia. He has been accused of masterminding  some of the worst  terrorist atrocities in Russia, including suicide  bombings carried out by two  women on Moscow’s Metro system in 2010 which killed at least 40.

Security sources have also said that that  officials at the Department of Homeland Security became interested in  Tamerlan in  2012, after he spent seven months in Russia, from January to July

When traveling to Russia last year, he may  have done so under an alias, according to chairman of the House Intelligence  Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers.

The visit ‘would lead one to believe that  that’s probably where he got that final radicalization to push him to commit  acts of violence and where he may have received training’ in terrorist  techniques, Rogers told NBC.

A DHS source suggested to MailOnline that  Tamerlan was  on  the radar of agents in Boston after he returned to the U.S. Federal law  enforcement officials reportedly received tips in 2012 expressing  concern over  radical, anti-American Muslims at a mosque in Boston, the source said.

Allegations: Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, left the mother of  Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, told the media on Friday that the FBI had been monitoring  her oldest son, Tamerlan. The boys’ father Anzor Tsarnaev, right, similarly told  the media that officials in the U.S. had questioned his 26-year-old son, who  died on Friday after a gun fight with police

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Family: The brothers, pictured as children, were very  close and as the older son, right, reportedly developed extremist ideas his  younger brother, center, is said to have followed his lead

Tamerlan was said to have been named as one  of the radicals that came to  attention of an informant working with an agency  attached to the  Boston-area Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).

A second source, formerly assigned to a U.S.  JTTF, confirmed to  MailOnline that ‘there is some very quiet discussion in the  Boston JTTF  about this’.

After the Russia trip, Tamerlan  was also reportedly thrown out of his  local mosque for ‘crazy’ behavior after getting involved a ‘shouting match’ with  his imam according to one member of the congregation.

He was ejected from the Islamic Society of  Boston Cultural Center three months ago for claiming that Martin Luther King Jr.  was not a man Muslims should look to emulate. His imam had mentioned the civil  rights leader during a prayer service.

‘You cannot mention this guy because he’s not  a Muslim!’ the congregation member recalled Tamerlan shouting, shocking others  in attendance.

One national security expert told the MailOnline that is might be too early to judge whether or not the FBI  is to  blame for dropping the ball on monitoring Tamerlan for  alleged extremist ties.

Though a foreign government might  express  concern over an individual’s ideological leanings, little can be done without  proof a person violated U.S. law by providing material aid to terrorists,  Professor Ron Sievert, who teaches  national security law at Texas A&M, told the Mail.

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Justice: Officials apprehended Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on  Friday night in Watertown, Mass.

‘It is hard to say before the FBI reviews the  details whether or not mistakes were made in 2011. My  guess, therefore, is that [Tamerlan]  was on  their radar and was checked on to  a degree, but that there was not  enough information to warrant 24 hour  surveillance,’ said Professor  Sievert.

‘Under U.S. law we could not arrest Tamerlan  just because he was linked with  Islamists by a foreign government, and we could  not arrest him just  because he accessed Islamist sites on the net. Under our  First Amendment we could not arrest him for making pro Islamist or anti American  statements. (In fact our courts have not prevented bomb making sites  from  being placed on the net.)’

Amidst the calls for scrutiny into what the  FBI did or did not do, Sievert  expressed his confidence in the leadership of  FBI Director Robert  Mueller.

‘Bob Mueller is undoubtedly the best FBI Director I have observed in 30 years working law enforcement and  national  security matters. No one demands more of his agency and has  been as successful  in a very difficult environment,’ he said.

On Friday afternoon, as the city of  Boston  was under a security lock down while hundreds of law enforcement  officials  hunted for the remaining bombing suspect, the Tsarnaev’s mother told  the media that her older son had been on the FBI’s radar and claimed that they  were afraid of him.

In an interview with Russia  Today, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, alleged that  the FBI had been  monitoring Tamerlan for  being a ‘leader’ in a religious politics  movement.

‘My son Tamerlan got involved in  religious  politics five years ago. He started following his own  religious aspects,’ she  said. ‘They used to tell me that they were  controlling him, he was a serious  leader and they were afraid of him.’

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Evidence: Investigators gather evidence at a backyard  boat on Saturday at the home where the 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing  suspect was captured

His father, Anzor Tsarnaev, similarly said that officials had been closely watching  Tamerlan,  claiming that FBI agents had visited the brothers in  Cambridge, Massachusetts  on five occasions, most recently 18 months ago.

‘They said there were doing preventive work.  They were afraid there might be some explosions  on the streets of Boston,’ the  father said.

He added to the Channel 4  News that Tsarnaev had told his parents that the FBI called him  in the days after the  bombings to accuse him of the attacks, and he simply  responded to them:  ‘That’s your problem.’

Channel 4 News suggested that, while  the  claim was likely not true, it was perhaps his way of preparing his  parents for  the news of his involvement.

Relatives have said how Tamerlan began to  develop radical religious ideas in 2009.

The suspect’s uncle, Alvi Tsarnaev, told the  Boston Globe his nephew, Tamerlan,  visited his father in the Republic of Dagestan, which borders  Chechnya.

The brothers grew up in Kyrgyzstan, a former  republic of the Soviet Union, in the town of Tokmok, home to a  Chechen  community.

The family left Kyrgyzstan and  moved to the  Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus region. From  there they traveled to  the United States in 2002, when they were granted refugee status. The two  suspects lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Worship: A banner reading ‘United We Stand For Peace on  Earth’ stands outside the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, where  the two suspects occasionally worshiped

Related:

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Boston Bombing Aftermath: Life is more about what we do to prove what we stand for — not what we say we stand for

Dzhokhar became a naturalized citizen on  September 11, 2012 while his brother Tamerlan was in the U.S. on a  Green Card.  Their parents have since returned to Dagestan, where they still live.

Chechnya has been the scene of two  wars  between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands  were killed in Russian bombing.  It has spawned an Islamic  insurgency that  has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the  region, although not in the  West.

Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, was not a subject of the 2011 FBI investigation but  those  who knew the 19-year-old said that he was heavily influenced by  his older  brother and reportedly began embracing Tamerlan’s ideological  leanings.

‘He talked about his brother in good ways,’  Pamala Rolon, an residential adviser in the dorm where Dzhokhar  lived at the  University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, told the  Washington Post.  ‘I  could tell he looked up to his brother.’

Now federal officials are trying to piece  together what motivated the Tsarnaev brothers to allegedly plant explosives in the crowd of the Boston  Marathon,  killing three in the blast and injuring more than 180.

President Obama assured the American people  on Friday, after the surviving suspect was captured, that a full investigation would be  launched to determine the motivation behind the deadly attacks.

While committing extensive resources to the  investigation, the president also urged  that caution be used before reaching conclusions about the suspects.

‘It’s important that we do this right,’ he  said. ‘That’s why we have  investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the  facts. That’s  why we have courts. And that’s why we take care not to rush to  judgment – not about the motivations of these individuals; certainly not about  entire groups of people.’

Read more:

• Charges likely Sunday for Boston Marathon bombing  suspect

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