Los Angeles adopts Google e-mail system for 30,000 city employees

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously today to outsource its e-mail system to Google Inc., making it the largest city in the nation to make the move and handing the Web search giant a major victory in its quest to become a software provider to the world's cities and businesses.

After more than two hours of debate, council members voted 12-0 to approve the $7.25-million contract that would move all 30,000 city employees to Google's so-called cloud over the coming year.

"The City of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the nation, made a world-class decision today to support a state-of-the art e-mail system," said Councilman Tony Cardenas, who made the motion to approve the Google system.

Before the vote, several council members had voiced objections to the contract, including whether the city would see any real cost savings, as Google had contended, and when the new system would be ready to store data from law enforcement, where security standards are more rigorous.

Because Los Angeles will be among the earliest adopters of the Google system, council members expressed concern that the city might be signing on before Google's cloud system was fully proven.

"It's unclear if this is cutting edge, or the edge of a cliff and we're about to step off," said Councilman Paul Koretz.

The contract was approved pending an amendment that would require Google to compensate the city in the event that the Google system was breached and city data exposed or stolen. No such clause existed in the contract.

The vote today ended a nearly year-long process during which Google competed furiously with other software vendors, including rival Microsoft Corp., to secure the city's valuable stamp of approval. Parties on all sides believe that if smaller cities see Los Angeles successfully transition to Google's cloud system, they may be more likely to follow suit.

It is that type of cascade effect that Microsoft lobbied hard to prevent, sending executives and paid advocates to Los Angeles to make the case against Google.

The city plans to complete implementation of the Google system by June and will begin with a pilot period during which a limited number of employees will test the system. City law enforcement agencies including the Los Angeles Police Department will migrate to the new system once they are satisfied with the security and functioning of the system.

Update:  Several readers have asked about the $7.25 million cost of the contract.  That price covers five years of e-mail for the city.

-- David Sarno [follow]

Cyber attack is meant to bury blogger; instead, it makes him a star

This scene from the former Georgian city of Sukhumi is used as a logo by the attacked blogger Cyxymu. Credit: Cyxymu Livejournal.

The massive cyber attack last week that security experts said was aimed at silencing a single blogger in the country of Georgia instead made him a global celebrity.

Cyxymu, as he is known on his mostly anti-Russia blog, has been the subject of news reports worldwide ever since he was identified as the target of the attack that took down Twitter for several hours and crippled other popular online services.

"I am not happy that [my] blogs were attacked," said the blogger, speaking on his cellphone from outside the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. "But it is good that I get famous.

"I think Obama knows about me, because he likes Internet news."

The blogger, who declined to give his last name but said his first name is Giorgy, said he has gotten  messages from people in numerous countries who have read his postings on Facebook. (His main blog on the LiveJournal service is still down.)

It was not the first time his blogs were a target. Giorgy said an attack last year shut down his blog from October to May. Afterward, he got messages that if he continued with his blogging, there would be more attacks to "stop you second and third time," he said.

The attack that began Thursday at about 6 a.m. PDT was so huge -- with a hacker-controlled botnet of computers overloading his sites with various kinds of requests -- that it took down Twitter in its wake.

Beth Jones of the Sophos online security company thinks that the disruption of Twitter was accidental "collateral damage" from the attack. But Open Society Institute fellow Evgeny Morozov, writing in a Foreign Policy magazine blog, said he believed the damage to Twitter was an intentional demonstration, a flexing of the "attackers' cyber-muscles by revealing the kind of leverage that Cyxymu's detractors have on the Internet's most popular sites."

Giorgy said the attack will not stop him from continuing his writings, and he has adapted before by changing addresses, making his online soap box a moving target. One of his strategies for the future is to raise funds for a more stable home for his views.

"I want to create a new Internet blog," he said, to be housed on "a server in America."

-- David Colker

Michael Jackson-related traffic doubled Twitter's update frequency, tripled Facebook's [UPDATED]

Traffic to news sites in North America saw a massive spike as the Michael Jackson story unfolded. Times are EST. Credit: Akamai.

As the news of Michael Jackson's fate unfolded, sites around the Web felt the strain of spiking interest.

On Twitter, the volume of Jackson-related messages – up to 5,000 per minute at peak – put such a demand on the site that it slowed considerably.

“We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in an e-mail response to our inquiry. “This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election.”

"Regarding performance," he added, "there were reports of slowness following the spike in activity. It highlighted an opportunity for improvement which we'll be acting on right away."

Online chatterers reported slowness at other social hubs, including AOL’s popular instant message system and at the blog site LiveJournal. 

The Los Angeles Times website creaked beneath the weight of the story as well, with nearly 2.3 million page views in one hour, more traffic than during any single hour last Nov. 5, the site’s highest-traffic day.

Facebook saw a frenzy of activity, too. A spokeswoman for the company said the number of status updates during the hour after the Jackson news emerged was triple the average. She said Facebook remained free of performance issues.

Traffic to the leading online news sites throughout North America was at least 20% above average, according to Akamai’s Net Usage Index, which monitors online news consumption around the world.

The intense interest among Web users was evident on sites that track which terms are most popular among users. Phrases such as “Rip MJ,” “King of Pop” and “Thriller” were among the most frequently used on Twitter, and on Google.com, “Michael Jackson died” became the most popular query.

Updated, 7:27 p.m.: A statement from AOL noted the following: “At AOL our AIM instant messaging service was undergoing a previously scheduled software update which should normally prove routine.  It proved not to be. There was a significant increase in traffic due to today’s news and AIM was down for approximately 40 minutes this afternoon."

The statement also noted that, "Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

Updated, Friday June 26th, 1:24 p.m.: Yahoo is reporting record traffic too:  "Yahoo! News set a record in unique visitors with 16.4 million UV's in a day.  Our previous record was on election day when we had 15.1 million visitors.Yahoo! News had 4 million visitors come to the site between 3-4 pm, setting an hourly record."

-- David Sarno

Twitter, NTT America hold off maintenance to keep Iran channel clear

Credit: Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA

For a service that limits users to 140 characters, Twitter is finding its influence growing worldwide. The San Francisco company Monday delayed a crucial maintenance operation to accommodate the high volume of information flowing about the explosive election protests in Iran.

People both inside and outside Iran have been sending short text messages about the violence and civil disobedience that has engulfed the nation's capital, Tehran, for the last two days. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defended his reelection last week, but the protests have grown more intense.

In a blog post Monday afternoon, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said his site's scheduled maintenance would be delayed from overnight -- daytime in Iran -- to 2 to 3 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday, which would be the middle of the night in Iran.

The work was "a critical network upgrade [that] must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter," Stone wrote. The servers that undergird the micromessaging site are run by NTT America, a division of Japanese telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Co. 

Stone noted that NTT America recognized "the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran" and was "taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide."

Twitter traffic about the situation in Iran has been dominating the service for the last several days, with topics such as IranElection, Tehran and Iranians among the most actively discussed on Twitter. News tidbits, photos and chatter about the protests have flowed around the world, becoming a key medium for news from the scene.

Twitter users worried that shutting down the service could cut off yet another information channel for those in Iran, where the government had reportedly blocked access to social media sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, in addition to cutting off mobile phone service.

-- David Sarno

Craigslist to remove erotic services section, monitor adult services posts [Updated]

Updated at 10:17 a.m.: This post has been updated to add comments from Craigslist Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster, Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan and a Craigslist spokeswoman.

After weeks of pressure from state and local law enforcement officials, Craigslist is announcing today that it will remove its controversial erotic services section permanently. In its place, the classifieds site has created an "adult services" category for which every new listing will be manually approved. Currently most ads on the site are posted without review.

As of today, the erotic services section will no longer accept new ads and will be removed completely in seven days. Posts to the adult services section will cost $10, twice as much as those for erotic services listings. Craigslist had agreed to donate proceeds from the erotic services listings to charity but says that rule will not necessarily apply to the new ads.

Craigslist Chief Executive officer Jim Buckmaster said in an interview that the site had come to the decision after carefully weighing input from law enforcement, users, legitimate online businesses and free speech advocates. 

"It was a balancing act where we’re trying to respond to feedback to constituencies that we felt were important.  When you’re talking about attorneys general who are the top legal authority in their respective states," he said, "That was feedback that we felt was important to take into account."

"We’re optimistic that we’ve struck the right balance," he added.

Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, one of the most active critics of Craigslist's erotic services section, called the new oversight regime "a fundamental and very significant change to how Craigslist works."

Prostitution will not disappear, Madigan said, but with the tougher new measures, "You’re not going to have the volume of it, you’re not going to have the ease of it."

Madigan added that her office and others would continue to monitor the site. 

"We’ll use law enforcement techniques to determine whether those are legitimate adult services as opposed to just a continuation of prostitution, with a different name."

When asked for a precise definition of legal "adult services," Craigslist spokeswoman Susan Best wrote in an e-mail, "The typical definition (i.e. go look in your office yellow pages under escort and massage) sensual massage, escorts etc."

Though both Madigan and Buckmaster agreed that the deal had been struck on a cooperative note, the San Francisco company argues that the case against it had been exaggerated. Craigslist makes the point in a blog post it plans to publish today and which was provided to The Times.

"Unsurprisingly, but completely contrary to some of the sensationalistic journalism we've seen these past few weeks, the record is clear that use of craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent
crime than print classifieds," the post says. 

"However, with respect to this new paid category for advertising by legal businesses, we will experiment with some of the methods traditionally employed in paid print classifieds."

Law enforcement officials have often complained about the ease with which prostitutes and their clients can arrange encounters on Craigslist. But officials have stepped up their criticism since the slaying of masseuse Julissa Brisman, whose body was found April 14 in a Boston hotel. Police say the killer found her through a Craigslist ad.

Boston University medical student Philip Markoff, 23, is accused of bludgeoning Brisman with a gun and then shooting her. Rhode Island authorities filed additional charges last week, saying he robbed a stripper at a Warwick, R.I., Holiday Inn two days later. He was arrested the following week as he drove to a local casino with his fiancee.

Markoff has pleaded not guilty.

-- David Sarno

'Anonymous' hacker pleads guilty to 2008 attack on Scientology sites

"Anonymous" protester at a February 2008 anti-Scientology march in Hollywood. Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles Times

Remember that cyber-attack on Church of Scientology websites those many moons ago? It was an early volley in the brief but memorable war between the church and a group of young Internet denizens who called themselves "Anonymous."  

Since then, the anti-Scientology movement has mostly petered out, but today a spark traveled through its old circuitry when a 19-year-old New Jersey man admitted having launched the January 2008 attack, which sent Scientology sites down for part of a day.

According to a news release from the Justice Department's Los Angeles office, Dmitriy Guzner of Verona, N.J., pleaded guilty to computer hacking charges related to the 2008 distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) on Scientology websites. That's where hackers get so many zombie computers to visit a site that the server overload becomes crippling and the site crashes.

The department's release mentions that Guzner said he "participated in the attack because he considered himself a member of an underground group called 'Anonymous.' " But when asked whether Guzner was one of several participants or the main culprit, agency spokesman Thom Mrozek responded, "He was the guy."

Mrozek also noted that the church was cooperative in the investigation.

The 2008 protests against Scientology were mostly peaceful assemblages of masked youths, but there were instances in which the church reported bomb threats against it, and even white powder mailed to one or more of its locations. At the time, the FBI said it was investigating those allegations as well*.

Guzner is set to be sentenced in August and faces a statutory maximum of 10 years in prison.

Updated, 7:03 p.m.: Commenters point to this May 2008 video (minute 1:20) where a CNN anchor reported that the FBI did not expect that charges would be filed regarding alleged bomb or death threats.

-- David Sarno

Mia Farrow hits day nine of online hunger strike for Darfur

Mia Farrow has been chronicling her hunger strike on YouTube for eight days, and she says that's just the beginning.

The actress and activist has committed to three weeks of an all-water diet in support of refugees in Darfur, where Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir expelled or shut down 16 aid agencies -- a move that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said put the lives of more than 1 million people at risk.

Farrow has been keeping an irregular video blog of her fast on her own YouTube channel, as well as on the channel of Darfur Fast for Life, an organization that fellow activists put together to draw attention to Farrow's efforts.

As of tonight, 75 other people had signed up on the site to join Farrow in the fast. Some said they would only drink water; others said they would eat the same rations as those in Darfur. 

Participants in the growing online hunger strike have been posting updates to Twitter and posting to YouTube.

Farrow, a slight 64-year-old, said in a recent video that she wasn't sure if she'd be able to last the full 21 days -- she has never fasted before, and her doctor was skeptical.

Still, she was resolved to make a statement. "Of course I don't expect that me on hunger strike is going to do that much," Farrow said in the video. "But if it provides a news hook for newspapers so they can talk about what's really important, then that will be worth it."

Gabriel Stauring, who helped organize the site, expressed concern for Farrow, with whom he said he'd traveled to Darfur last summer. "You’ve seen Mia’s size," he said. "There’s no way she can go that long without doing permanent damage. We want to convince her that if we have somebody else that is famous and that would draw attention, that she should stop." Stauring suggested that more recognizable names might be joining the effort soon.

Also striking is Pam Omidyar, a founder of the philanthropic group Humanity United, and the wife of EBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Omidyar has been eating the refugee meals for 18 days, according to her blog on fastdarfur.org. 

Farrow appeared on CNN's Larry King Live on the day she began the strike, and will reappear on the show Tuesday night, according to Stauring.

-- David Sarno

Swine flu conversation mutates to new level of absurdity

Ignore for a moment the question of whether swine flu is a fearsome plague or a mild annoyance, and let's move on to a more pressing matter: What should it be called?  Scientists are carrying on a heated discussion about whether it's correct to name the H1N1 virus after pigs, given that it also has genetic material from bird and human viruses too. Accuracy first.

Meanwhile, thanks to the reported suggestion of a World Health Organization spokeswoman -- who encouraged the public to come up with a better name for the sickness, Twitter users are trying to solve the problem in their own way. Led by actor Rainn Wilson, the online peanut gallery is engaged in a boisterous game of "Name that Flu" (#namethatflu). The object is not to find the most precise name, but the most ridiculous.

Here are a few examples:

- Hamthrax
- Aporkalypse
- Hypefluenza
- Sowmonella
- Global Hamdemic
- Epigdemic
- "I was thinking Jonothan [sic], or maybe Greg. If it's a girl, then Erin or Amelia."
- Hamageddon
- Baconsumption (obs.)
- Wilburculosis
- Smallporx

Mass hysteria has become ... hysterical.

Corrected: Thanks to readers for pointing out that virus's genetic material is made of RNA rather than DNA, and that National Public Radio originated the name game.

-- David Sarno

1976 swine flu PSAs attempt to scare citizens into getting shots

An enterprising conspiracy theorist on Monday posted a pair of U.S. government PSAs from 1976, urging citizens to quickly get a swine flu vaccine or risk becoming "very sick"-- although that pandemic never materialized.

The two sensational videos attempt to show that anyone and everyone can get the bug and pass it to children, teachers, postal workers, veterinarians and acquaintances. ("Betty's mother gave it to her best friend Dottie, but Dottie had a heart condition and she died.")

The spots were released by the U.S. Public Health Service, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services partially dedicated to minimizing the spread of infectious diseases. 

The agency, evidently, had a taste for scaremongering. As it turned out, its recommendation was unfounded. Not only did the 1976 swine flu scare result in only 200 cases and a single fatality, but the $135-million vaccination effort did more harm than good: The Centers for Disease Control halted the effort after several days after worrying that the vaccine was causing a rare neurological condition that resulted in the deaths of 25 people.

With that background in mind, these PSAs become shrouded in a grim irony.

-- David Sarno

How Obama's lifting of rules for Cuba might affect telecom companies

People using phones in Cuba. Credit: Paul Keller via Flickr

The Obama administration said today that it was changing some U.S. policies toward Cuba, hoping to, among other things, "promote the freer flow of information and humanitarian items to the Cuban people."

The news could create some major changes with regard to cellphones, computers and broadband in Cuba. The administration proposes to let telecommunications companies establish fiber-optic and satellite links between the U.S. and the island, let U.S. carriers enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba's carriers, let U.S. satellite radio and TV companies provide service in the country and allow people to donate consumer telecommunication devices to Cuba without a license.

“This is a big deal. It’s a significant change in U.S. policy,” said David A. Gross, a partner at international telecom firm Wiley Rein who was until January the U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy.

The administration's decision means that Cuban Americans can send ...