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Terrorism fears have spurred the White House to demand that all government agencies erase all sensitive information from their web sites, in particular sensitive information relating to weapons of mass destruction. The fear is that potential terrorists might get their hands on the data and either build or deploy such weapons. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card is asking all government agencies to pull their online public documents off-line and re-examine them to ensure that they contain no sensitive material. The move has made some parties unhappy because it will remove from public view many documents that have been in the public realm for many years.
Anti-Defamation League upgrades internet filter
The Anti-Defamation League has come out with a new version of its browser software that that filters out hate speech. The ADL Hate Filter 2.0 lets internet users block web sites that promote racial and religious hatred, based on a list of such sites that the league maintains. The new version is free and also lets people filter out pornography and violence, a feature that is aimed at parents who want to shelter their children from objectionable content as they surf the internet. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the number of hate sites is growing exponentially, with neo-Nazi, white supremacist and anti-Semitic web pages proliferating. The updated filter comes out not long after the League put a warning out against some computer games that encourage racism.
Elderly Washington writer’s site lands him in jail
Washington state writer Paul Trummel, a semi-retired, 70-year-old reporter and journalism professor in poor health, has been in jail since Feb. 27 on contempt of court charges for continuing to publish a newsletter online and in print form that the court found to be incendiary. A judge in King County, of which Seattle is the county seat, had ordered Trummel to cease publishing the newsletters, which included personal information about Trummel’s foes. The newsletters attacked management and residents of his retirement complex, and he was ultimately booted from the residence for harassment. Trummel complied with an order from Judge James Doerty to cease publication of the incendiary material and to remove the information from his web site, ContraCabal.net. But he circumvented the court order by setting up a so-called international version, ContraCabal.org, which included the offending statements, and that earned him the contempt charge and a trip to the slammer. The site carried a message advising that "State of Washington citizens must proceed no further to this web site until the supreme court decides otherwise." Trummel remains in jail while his case is under appeal.
Rebel fighters devise web game to kill foes
Nowadays everyone has a web site, including the bandit paramilitary gunmen who battle the leftist FARC and ELN rebels in Colombia. Located at www.accubec.org/shooting.html, their contribution to the web space is an online video game that allows users to kill leftist rebels. Perched behind a barbed-wire barricade, the user must take out rebels hiding on roofs and behind doorways with an automatic rifle before they do the same. First-aid boxes and shields assist the user in patching up wounds and deflecting bullets. "The humble population of Aguas Blancas is being attacked by FARC and ELN bandits," the site reads. "Your mission is to stop the police headquarters from being destroyed by killing as many of these heartless delinquents as possible." In just the last decade, nearly 40,000 lives have been taken in the conflict between the leftist rebels, who tax drug producers on large swaths of land won over the years, and the government of Colombia, which has been both helped and hindered by paramilitary groups often found guilty of human rights abuses.
Newspaper marriage proposal pulls thousands
Jesse Rasch, a 26-year-old Canadian dot.com millionaire attracted a little more interest than he bargained for by taking out a full-page newspaper ad to ask his girlfriend to marry him. The ad, which ran in the Toronto edition of the National Post, asked a simple question: "Julie, will you marry me? JR," and listed a web address, JulieAnswer.com. His intended bride gave him an answer by 1:30 p.m., at which point Rasch posted the message, "She is now my fiancée!" on the site. But that was after many thousands of uninvolved parties also checked out the web site. By the time Rasch indicated that his girlfriend would marry him, the site had garnered some 33,392 hits. In all, there were about 34,485 hits, and Rasch got 1,500 emails about his proposal.
March 26, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
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