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Terms and conditions
The Country Club (the "Service"), operated by Frankly Media, Inc., and KWWR-FM (together, Frankly Media, Inc. and KWWR-FM are referred to as "we", "us" or "our") is provided to you ("you," "your" or "User") under the following terms and conditions, including any amendments thereto and any additional terms and conditions, rules or policies that may be applicable to particular offerings made in connection with the Service (collectively, the "Terms and Conditions"). We reserve the right to update or change these Terms and Conditions from time to time. Any such changes shall be reflected in an updated version of the Terms and Conditions posted on this site. By continuing to use the Service following the posting of any such change, you will be deemed to have agreed to the amended version of the Terms and Conditions. Any failure to comply with these Terms and Conditions by you may result in the termination of your account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Points you have accrued in the Service. BY REGISTERING TO USE THE SERVICE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, SO PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY.
Description of the Service
The Service is a program where registered users can accrue Points by engaging in certain activities and can redeem Points for certain offers ("Rewards"). Points accrued in the Service are non-transferable to other users or accounts and have no cash or monetary value. Some Rewards provided through the Service by way of auctions, sweepstakes, or trade-ins are promoted regionally or nationally to users of other rewards services. Rewards that are promoted and accessible only to users eligible to participate in this Service are noted as such by the display of the reward type 'L' on the page displaying the material terms for that sweepstake, auction or trade-in. Rewards promoted and accessible to users in multiple Services within this market or across multiple markets are noted as such by display of the reward type 'MM' on the page displaying the material terms for that sweepstake, auction or trade-in.
Unless otherwise specified in connection with particular offerings, participation in the Service is open only to natural persons who are 13 years of age or older. Employees or agents of KWWR-FM, Frankly Media, Inc., and each of their respective affiliates, and immediate family members of or persons domiciled with any such persons are not eligible to participate.
Reservation of Rights
The Service and its benefits are offered at our discretion, and we have the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service, including the Points levels, in whole or in part for any reason, at our sole discretion. We may, among other things, withdraw, limit, modify or cancel any Reward; increase the Points required for any Reward; or modify or condition the transferability of Rewards or benefits. You agree that we will not be liable to you or any third-party for any modification or discontinuance of the Service, in whole or in part.
Membership registration
In consideration of your use of the Service, you agree to provide true, accurate, current and complete information about yourself as prompted by the registration form and to maintain and promptly update your personal data to keep it true, accurate, current and complete. If you provide any information that is untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete, or if we or any of our service providers have reasonable grounds to suspect that such information is untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete, we have the right to suspend or terminate your account and to refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof) by you. You may not register with a disposable email address. Only one member account per person and two member accounts per household. If you are 13 years of age or under you cannot post information about yourself on the website or complete the registration process. You can, among other things, review your accumulated Points, review the Terms and Conditions as amended from time to time, and review redemption options at countryclub.kwwr.com .
Account security
You will receive a password and account designation upon completing the registration process. You agree to maintain the confidentiality of your password and account, and that you are fully responsible for all activities that occur under your password or account. You agree to immediately notify us of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of security, and to exit from your account at the end of each session. We will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to comply with these conditions. If for any reason your account is terminated by either you or us, all of your Points accrued will be forfeited.
To earn Points, you must undertake an activity described in a Service-authorized promotion for earning Points, which may include, but is not limited to: streaming media on a designated media player, completing certain surveys, visiting certain retail locations or Internet Web sites, registering for a designated product or service or engaging in other online activities for which Points will be awarded in connection with the Service. You also will be rewarded a percentage of the total Points that your primary referrals earn on their use of the Service. We expressly reserve the right to change the rate at which referred Points are credited and to limit the amount of referred Points credited to your account each week to an overall maximum number of Points that may be less than the number of member referred Points that would have been credit based on the current percentage being paid. We also expressly reserve the right to establish additional means of accruing Points, to delete any or all of the means currently in effect, to exclude specific types of transactions from the accumulation of Points or to specify periods after which unused Points will be forfeited. Points can be accrued only for activity actually taken and completed by you or by your primary referrals and can be applied only to your account. You may earn Points from only one computer or network access point at any given time; simultaneous activity on multiple computers for one account will not be credited. Streaming activity is further limited to one stream at a given time. You may accrue Points simultaneously for non-streaming activity, provided it is in accordance with the conditions regarding network access Points and multiple computers. Points posted to your account for transactions that are subsequently voided will reduce the Points accrued in your account by the number of Points earned for the corresponding voided transaction. We will use reasonable efforts to allocate earned Points to each user's account. However, you are responsible for ensuring that your Points are properly credited. If you believe that Points have been earned but not credited, or in cases where we deem verification is required, we reserve the right to require proof of accrual, including, but not limited to, copies or receipts or similar documentation verifying any transactions claimed to have been performed. We must receive any claims of Points by you and proof of accrual within three months after the date such Points are claimed to be earned. Points will be maintained in your account until they are redeemed for a Reward or for 6 months or are forfeited whichever occurs first. Each month, all Points that are more than 6 months old will be deleted from your account. All decisions regarding point balances, rewards, and forfeitures, and the identity of the individual accessing an account, are within our sole discretion.
You may redeem Points accrued in your account for Rewards, provided that your account is in good standing at the time of the redemption request. You may use your Points to submit Sweepstakes entries, each of which is subject to their own official rules available on the entry screen. You are required to be 18 years or older to bid in certain auctions, to be eligible for certain trade-ins or to submit certain Sweepstakes entries. Some Rewards provided through the Service by way of auctions, sweepstakes, or trade-ins are promoted regionally or nationally to users of other rewards services. Rewards that are promoted and accessible only to users eligible to participate in this Service are noted as such by the display of the reward type 'L' on the page displaying the material terms for that sweepstake, auction or trade-in. Rewards promoted and accessible regionally or nationally to users of this Service and other rewards services are noted as such by display of the reward type 'MM' on the page displaying the material terms for that sweepstake, auction or trade-in. In these cases, users of other rewards services in multiple cities will have the ability to participate in auctions, sweepstakes, and trade-ins available through the Service, which in turn may further limit the availability of the items offered to you through the Service. All active bids and sweepstakes entries will remain active and eligible for winning prize until the member is outbid or the sweepstakes entered closes. For these purposes, items will be deemed to be received on the date that you receive notice of an item being awarded in an auction or trade-in or a prize being awarded in a sweepstakes. Points earned in two or more different accounts may not be combined to redeem or bid for any Reward. Some Rewards have limited availability and all Rewards are subject to availability and other terms and conditions. Dependent upon availability, we may substitute Rewards of greater or equal value. In some cases, Rewards you select are sent to you directly by the merchant, who is solely responsible for the quality and performance of the goods supplied. Any rules of the merchants relating to returns and exchanges apply, but no Points will be re-credited to your account. You are responsible for taxes, if any, due on Points or Rewards. We reserve the right to modify or cancel any Reward offering at any time. Redeemed Rewards are not refundable, exchangeable, replaceable, redeemable, or transferable for cash, credit, other Rewards, or Points under any circumstances.
To play some of the games offered through the Rewards Service (including, but not limited to, scratch and win games, blackjack-style games, and slots-style games), you must submit the required number of Points, at which time the Points will be deducted from your account. The minimum number of Points required for a game play will be determined separately for each game, but typically range from 25 to 5000 Points . Once submitted, your game play cannot be deleted, canceled or modified, except by the Operator. In the event of a dispute as to game play submitted by multiple individuals using the same computer, an entry will be deemed to have been submitted by the authorized registrant of the Rewards Service username and password from which the game play is made. The authorized registrant is deemed to be the natural person who is assigned a username and password, and all decisions regarding the identity of the authorized registrant shall be made by Operator in its sole discretion. You may also participate in games that require Points to play through an offline method. No Points are required for an offline play. To play a game offline, you must mail a 3" x 5" card to Frankly Media, Inc., 2110 Powers Ferry Road., Suite 470, Atlanta, GA 30339. Limit one card per outer postmarked envelope. The card must include the following information in legible, hand-printed or typed English: your full legal name, complete home postal address, home telephone number with area code, the user name and email address you entered when you registered for the Service, your age, gender, [insert name of station and/or Rewards Service], and the name of the game you wish to play. Each offline submission will entitle you to the number of Points needed to play the game identified in your offline submission once. Operator will deposit that number of Points into your account, and then you can play the game by submitting those Points in the manner described above. Operator is not responsible for any incomplete, late, lost, misappropriated, illegible, damaged, postage-due or misdirected mail-in entries or game play requests, or for failure to receive online entries or game play requests due to transmission failures or technical failures of any kind, including, without limitation, malfunctioning or unavailability of any network, hardware or software, whether originating with sender or Operator.
Privacy Policy
By participating in the Service, you agree that we may collect and use information about you that you provide to us in accordance with our Privacy Policy. For more information the privacy policy is located here. By using the Service, you agree to be bound by the terms of our Privacy Policy.
Gaming or Fraud
Gaming, fraud or abuse relating to the accrual of Points or redemption of Rewards may result in forfeiture of accrued Points as well as the termination of your account. You are solely responsible for any fraudulent use of your Points that could occur due to the theft of or sharing of your password. The Service is provided to individual users who are natural persons for their own personal use. Machines, scripts or automated services may not be used to access any part of the Service, accumulate any Points, or participate in any other aspect of the Service. IT WILL BE CONSIDERED FRAUDULENT AND A VIOLATION OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS IF YOU ACCESS ANY OTHER REGISTERED USER'S ACCOUNT TO TAKE ANY ACTION, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ENTERING CODES, TRIVIA ANSWERS, COMPLETING SURVEYS, OR REDEEMING Points FOR PRIZES AND AWARDS, EVEN IF THE OTHER REGISTERED USER IS A FAMILY MEMBER. IT WILL BE CONSIDERED FRAUDULENT AND A VIOLATION OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR ANY MEMBER TO SHARE WITH OTHER MEMBERS CODE WORDS, TRIVIA ANSWERS OR OTHER INFORMATION THAT CAN BE REDEEMED FOR Points. IT IS CONSIDERED FRAUDULENT AND A VIOLATION OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR ANY MEMBER TO REDEEM CODE WORDS, TRIVIA ANSWERS, OR OTHER INFORMATION THAT CAN BE REDEEMED FOR Points THAT WAS RECEIVED FROM OTHER MEMBERS. ANY MEMBER SHARING IN THIS MANNER OR REDEEMING INFORMATION SHARED IN THIS MANNER WILL HAVE THEIR ACCOUNT DELETED AND WILL NOT BE AWARDED ANY REWARDS. IT WILL ALSO BE CONSIDERED FRAUDULENT AND A VIOLATION OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL OR COMPANY TO DIRECT, ENCOURAGE, OR ALLOW INDIVIDUALS TO USE A SINGLE ACCOUNT FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACCUMULATING Points FOR COMPANY USE. VIOLATIONS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.
Limitation of Liability, Indemnity and Release
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL WE BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES (EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), ARISING FROM THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE OR ANY OTHER PROVISION OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. BECAUSE SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, IN SUCH STATES, OUR LIABILITY IS LIMITED TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. BY USING THE SERVICE YOU AGREE THAT OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY ACTION, CLAIM OR JUDGMENT, REGARDLESS OF THE NATURE OF THE CLAIM OR THEORY OF LIABILITY, SHALL BE LIMITED TO YOUR ACTUAL OUT OF POCKET EXPENSES INCURRED IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, BUT IN NO EVENT ATTORNEY'S FEES. You accept all responsibility for, and hereby indemnify and hold us harmless from and against, any actions taken by any user authorized to use your account, including, but not limited to, accrual of Points, redemption of Points, and disclosure of passwords to third parties. We are not responsible for any incorrect or inaccurate information, whether caused by data entry errors by us, website users or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the Sweepstakes or by any technical or human error which may occur in the set up or processing of the service. We assume no responsibility for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of entries. We are not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer on-line-systems, servers or providers, computer equipment, software, failure of email or players on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any website or combination thereof, including injury or damage to participants or to any person's computer or data related to or resulting from participating or downloading materials in this Web site. We are not responsible for cheating or fraud by any members. By using the Service, you release us, our subsidiaries, and affiliates from any and all liability regarding the redemption of Points, use of Rewards, or other participation in the Service.
Violation of the Terms
You understand and agree that in our sole discretion, and without prior notice, we may remove Points from your account as a penalty, terminate your access to the website or deactivate your membership account if we determine that you have violated our Terms and Conditions.
You agree to indemnify and hold us, our subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents and other partners and employees, harmless from any loss, liability, claim or demand, including reasonable attorney's fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the website, including, without limitation, any information or content you post to the site or any interference with the operation of the site.
These Terms and Conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Georgia, without giving effect to any conflicts or choice of laws rules (whether of Georgia or any other jurisdiction). The invalidity or unenforceability of any provisions of these Terms and Conditions shall not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision. In the event that any provision of these Terms and Conditions is found to be invalid or unenforceable, these Terms and Conditions shall be construed in accordance with their terms as if the invalid or unenforceable provision was not contained therein. The Service and its components, including all trademarks, trade names and logos, are the property of Frankly Media, Inc. and/or its licensors, which reserves all rights to such property.
Privacy Statement for Country Club
KWWR-FM and Frankly Media, Inc. (collectively, 'us', 'we', 'Operators') have created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for the Country Club website ('Site').
Your privacy is very important to us. Because we gather certain types of personally identifiable information ("Personal Information") from users of our website and for various business activities, operational and business purposes, we feel you should know how we collect, use, disclose, manage, and store the Personal Information that you may voluntarily provide us and the Personal Information that is collected passively through the use of cookies or image tags on our website. This Privacy Policy is a part of the Site's Terms and Conditions, which is binding on all Site users. This Policy applies only to the Personal Information collected by the Operators and does not cover any such information collected by its corporate parent(s), affiliates, or any other company, unless specifically stated.
If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not participate in the Country Club's online or off-line activities and services that require you to provide your Personal Information. (The type of Personal Information collected is listed below.) This Policy provides information regarding your choices to either Opt-out or Opt-in when your Personal Information is used for various promotional and marketing purposes by the Operators, Site, its corporate affiliates, and/or our generous advertisers, sponsors, or promotional partners (collectively, "Advertisers"). For example, for the Operators, Site or our corporate affiliates use of your Personal Information for marketing and promotional purposes, we provide you with the right to Opt-out. However, the choice for sharing your Personal Information with Advertisers may be different. Please see details in the "Disclosure to Advertisers" section below.
We use your Personal Information to provide you with the features, services, or goods you request and to respond to billing and/or other such questions related to the Operators or Site. We will also use your Personal Information to notify you about updates, new features, programming and activities on behalf of the Operators, Site, or our Advertisers that may be of interest to you. (We explain below in the next section what our policy is for the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information to Advertisers.)
We may also use your information for hiring, operational and business purposes, or to find out how we can improve our Site via surveys or online tracking mechanisms. We use aggregate Personal Information to help us to evaluate and modify existing services and features. We also use your Personal Information to develop new services and features that may be of interest to you.
We will not sell, exchange, rent, lease or otherwise disclose your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information to other third party marketers or any such persons that are not associated with the Operators as Advertisers unless it is necessary to: 1) conform to regulatory and legal requirements or to comply with legal process; 2) to protect the safety and security of our users, employees, or property; 3) to defend the rights of the Site or the Operators; or 4) to enforce the Terms and Conditions of the Site.
It is also necessary that we share your Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information with our operational service providers, the specialists that provide internal support to the Operators operations and activities and/or for Site design, development, hosting and operations including maintenance, management, storage and/or fulfillment of our membership and e-mail clubs, various contests, sweepstakes, services, events and online stores. We use operational service providers to efficiently provide the full range of content, activities and membership services we bring to you and we request that our operational service providers also protect your privacy and not disclose your Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information to third party marketers that are not associated with the Operators or website. Additionally, such providers are not to use your Personal Information for their own marketing or promotional purposes.
In the event that the assets or stock of the Operators, their corporate licensees or parent company(s) are sold or transferred, merged with a different company or entity, restructured, or subject to other fundamental corporate changes, we reserve the right to disclose any and all databases compiled from Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information collected by the Operators to such successor. We will seek to obligate the Operators' successor to agree to the terms of the Privacy Policy, as it may hereafter be modified, but cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so or that the successor company will comply with this obligation.
We reserve the right to collect Personal Information using any new technology yet to be developed and to use such technology to provide new services and features to you, as well as for marketing and promotional purposes. Specific information regarding your choice to Opt-in or to Opt-out to such use, or for sharing your Personal Information with Advertisers, will be provided once the new technology, service, or feature is introduced.
Your IP address is used to gather broad demographic information. We use cookies to deliver content specific to your interests, to save your password so you don't have to re-enter it each time you visit our site, and for other purposes.
Our Site's registration form requires users to give us contact information (like their first and last name, mailing address, phone number, and email address) and demographic information (like their zip code, age, or gender). We use customer contact information from the registration form to send the user information about the rewards service, and to notify and ship prizes to the winners of auctions, sweepstakes, or contests as well as mail checks for cash earned on purchases made through the rewards service. The customer's contact information is also used to contact the visitor when necessary. We give users the option to remove their information from our database, to not receive future communications, or to no longer receive our service, by submitting your request to Member Support. Demographic and profile data is also collected at our site. We use this data to tailor the visitor's experience at our site, showing them content that we think they might be interested in, and displaying the content according to their preferences. This information is shared with advertisers and other third parties on an aggregate basis.
Unless stated otherwise, we do not request contact information for a mobile phone, text messaging or any wireless device that includes a domain name address (such as ".net" or ".com") as part of the contact information. Federal law prohibits the sending of commercial email messages directly to a wireless device that uses a domain name, unless you have first given your affirmative consent. We may inadvertently collect a wireless device number that includes a domain name when you send us an inquiry or register for a contest or membership club. However, we will not knowingly use that contact information for sending commercial email. We reserve the right to respond to user inquiries or requests sent via a wireless device that uses a domain name as such messages are not deemed to be commercial email and therefore, are not regulated by Federal law. However, when "computer to phone" commercial emails are prohibited by law, we may reject your wireless device contact information when such information is submitted for certain Site features or services. We will attempt to notify you if we will need new contact information.
For specific purposes (such as the purchase of goods and services) we may request a type of confidential personally identifiable information which shall be called "Sensitive Personal Information" and is defined as any individual's: (1) social security number; (2) driver's license number or state identification card number; or (3) account number, credit or debit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code or password that would permit access to an individual's financial account. This Sensitive Personal Information will only be used to implement the specific activity or event it was submitted for. We will not share your Sensitive Personal Information with Advertisers.
However, more general Personal Information will be used to implement the specific activity or event and will also be used for the marketing of additional events, services and merchandising for this Site and the Operators.
If you sign up for an email newsletter or alert, we will use your email address to deliver the newsletter or alert requested. To opt-out of any newsletter or alert, click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email or alert you received or go to Subscriptions and uncheck the box or boxes for the newsletters or alerts you wish to opt-out of.
Advertising support allows us to offer, free of charge, many great activities and services to our users such as contests, sweepstakes and special events. Therefore, we may also use your Personal Information for the marketing of events, products or services of our generous Advertisers. There are two ways users may receive such information from Advertisers, either indirectly via newsletters, email or direct mail from the Site, or directly from the Advertiser. We may use one or both methods depending on the activity and the Advertiser.
Our opt-in program allows you the opportunity to request to be contacted with additional information, to receive special offers and/or to receive materials from Advertisers. If you elect to opt-in to receive information, materials or special offers from these third parties, you give the Operators permission to transfer your personal information to our partners so they can fulfill your request. We will only share your information with those Advertisers or category of Advertisers you specifically opt-in to. Our third party partners have separate privacy and data collection practices; the Operators have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies.
If you do not want your personal information shared with Advertisers, please select the option to not participate in our opt-in program.
You have the option of completing online surveys as a part of the rewards service. Among other things, our surveys ask for demographic information (like income level). The information collected through these surveys is used to tailor our visitors' experience at our site and may be shared with advertisers and other third parties on an aggregate basis.
Our Site also provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us and our Advertisers at the point where we request information about the visitor.
We give users the option to remove their information from our database, to not receive future communications, or to no longer receive our service, by submitting your request to Member Support.
We conduct the collection, management, maintenance and storage of website user information in a secure and commercially reasonable manner using acceptable industry standards of security technology and practices (such as electronic security systems and password protections) to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of Personal Information. We also request that our operational service providers take such precautions. The Operator databases are accessible only by authorized personnel.
However, please note that when users transmit Personal Information over an unsecured Internet connection, the Site is not responsible for the security of that information during the transmission stage as your email or registration could be copied or intercepted by unknown third parties. We use a secured connection only for the collection of Sensitive Personal Information, which is necessary for the purchase of goods or services, but we do not use a secured connection for other types of activities. Therefore, you understand, acknowledge, and agree that you transmit certain Personal Information over this Site at your own risk.
Although persons of all ages may visit our Site and participate in activities that do not require the collection of Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information, we do not knowingly or intentionally collect Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information from children under the age of 13. Except for the limited circumstances listed below, we will automatically reject and delete the registration or entry of any person we believe in good faith to be underage. Any false or fraudulent registration or entry from a minor will be deemed to be ineligible and will disqualify the minor from the receipt of a prize, benefit, or other participation.
Except to meet Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"), or other regulatory and legal purposes, we will not use, store, or disclose any child's Personal Information to a third party without prior parental consent.
This Site may have contests and prizes that could appeal to children. However, we do not knowingly or intentionally collect personal Information from children. If we unintentionally receive Personal Information from children under the age of 13 in relation to this activity, we will comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA") and reject and destroy such correspondence upon knowledge of such collection, except for the limited circumstances above. For more information about COPPA, please see the Federal Trade Commission's website: www.ftc.gov.
Your California Privacy Rights
Residents of the State of California, under a new provision of the California Civil Code, have the right to request from companies conducting business in California a list of all third parties to which the company has disclosed Personal Information during the preceding year for direct marketing purposes. Alternatively, the law provides that if the company has a privacy policy that gives either an Opt-out or Opt-in choice for use of your Personal Information by third parties (such as advertisers or affiliated companies) for marketing purposes, the company may instead provide you with information on how to exercise your disclosure choice options.
The Operators of Atlanta's Rock Rewards qualifies for the alternative option; it has a comprehensive privacy policy and provides you with details on how you may Opt-out or Opt-in to the use of your Personal Information by third parties for direct marketing purposes. Therefore, we are not required to maintain or disclose a list of the third parties that received your Personal Information during the preceding year for marketing purposes.
If you are a California resident and request information about how to exercise your third party disclosure choices you must send a request to the following address with a preference on how our response to your request should be sent (email or postal mail). You may contact us in two ways. Send email to Privacy Administrator at the email address listed in the Contact Us section below. Alternatively, you may contact the Operators at the physical address listed below in the Contact Us section of this privacy statement.
For requests sent via email, you must put the statement "Your California Privacy Rights" in the subject field of your email. All requests sent via postal mail must be labeled "Your California Privacy Rights" on the envelope or post card and clearly stated on the actual request. For all requests, please include your name, street address, city, state, and zip code. (Your street address is optional if you wish to receive a response to your request via email. Please include your zip code for our own recordkeeping.) We will not accept requests via the telephone or by facsimile. We are not responsible for notices that are not labeled or sent properly, or do not have complete information.
To all other users of this Site, if you have other questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact our Privacy Administrator at the email address or physical address listed below in the Contact Us section of this privacy statement.
Unless specified otherwise on the Site, all users must be at least 13 years of age and a legal resident of the United States to participate in any activity that requires the submission of Personal Information. This Site is designed and targeted to United States (U.S.) audiences and is governed by and operated in accordance with the laws of the United States. We make no representation that this Site is operated in accordance with the laws or governed by other nations. By your participation in our Site activities, you certify that you are at least 13 years of age and located in the U.S. If you are located in the European Union or elsewhere outside of the U.S. and you participate in activities on this Site contrary to our policy that only U.S. residents are eligible for certain activities, you do so at your own risk and initiative, and are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. Please be aware that any Personal Information you transfer to us will be transferred to the U.S and subject to U.S. law. By using this Site, participating in any Site activities, and/or providing us with your Personal Information, you consent to this transfer of Personal Information to the U.S., and waive any claims that may arise under your own national laws. All users of the Site are required to provide true, current, complete and accurate Personal Information when prompted and we will reject and delete any entry that we believe in good faith to be false, fraudulent, or inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.
Your continued participation on this Site indicates your acceptance of this Privacy Policy and of the collection, use, disclosure, management and storage of your Personal Information as described below. We may from time to time, transfer or merge any Personal Information collected off-line to our online databases or store off-line information in an electronic format. We may also combine Personal Information we collect online with information available from other sources, including information received from Advertisers, or marketing companies. This Privacy Policy covers all such Personal Information and will remain in full force and effect as long as you are a user of the Site or a participant in Operators activities. We reserve the right to revise this policy at any time by updating this posting without advance notice to you. Such revisions shall be effective to you immediately upon posting. Therefore, we encourage you to check this Privacy Policy often.
Cookies/Image Tags
The use of cookies is an industry standard and they are currently used on most websites, including this Site. Cookies are a small text file containing a unique identification number that is transferred from a website to the hard drive of a user's computer so that the website administrator or a third party operational service provider may identify the computer and passively track the user's activities on the website. Image tags work in conjunction with cookies and are small image files that may be located on select pages of our Site, or with-in web-based email newsletters that we may send. (Image tags are also called web beacons, web bugs, clear GIFs or single-pixel GIFs.) Tracking is important because we can better understand what parts of our website are used the most, when to launch new services and how to enhance current offerings. We may share the information we receive from cookies and image tags with third-parties and our Advertisers in aggregate form, which means that such information does not contain specific Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information about any one visitor.
In short, cookies and image tags collect a user's Internet protocols and server information. Such data files allow our Site to remember your web browser when you visit our Site and are necessary tools for quick and efficient access to the Site. A cookie will not allow the Site to learn any Personal Information (such as your real name and email address) or Sensitive Personal Information that you have not otherwise disclosed. Cookies and image tags allow the Site to remember important information that will make the Site easier for you to use and helpful in our administration of various activities. We do not use cookies or image tags to collect other Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information unless you give us permission to do so.
You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie or image tag is being sent, or efficient and enjoyable - like the features mentioned above - and some of our other services will not function properly.
This Privacy Policy does not cover third party advertising or third party content that may be present on the Site. This Site may provide banner and general advertising, in addition to other content provided by our Advertisers or operational service providers. Users may from time to time purchase goods or services offered through, or otherwise participate in or send messages concerning such advertising, promotions or third party content offered through the Site. Such correspondence, transactions and agreements are solely between the user and the Advertiser or the third party content provider and do not involve the Site. Also, Advertisers and such third party content providers may not have the same privacy policies that we do and you are encouraged to read their privacy policy first.
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Rick Santorum's presidential campaign has just put up one of the cleverest ads of 2012. (Of course, we're only less than two months into the year.)
The humorous ad called "Rombo", intended to inoculate Santorum in Michigan and elsewhere against the expected bombardment of negative ads from Mitt Romney and his superPAC allies, shows a Romney lookalike with a mud-filled paint-gun stalking and shooting at a cardboard cutout of Santorum in an empty warehouse. The fake Romney misses every time. An excerpt of the ad's copy:
"Mitt Romney's negative attack machine is back at full throttle. This time Romney's firing his mud at Rick Santorum. Romney and his superPAC have spent a staggering $20 million brutally attacking fellow Republicans..."
(h/t Politico's Mike Allen on the ad.)
Meanwhile, Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney superPAC, has a new ad of the very sort Santorum hopes to neutralize as the contest for the Republican presidential nomination heads towards primaries in Michigan and Arizona at the end of the month. An excerpt from the anti-Santorum ad:
"How did Rick Santorum actually vote? Santorum voted to raise the debt ceiling five times. And for billions of wasteful projects, including the 'bridge to nowhere'..."
The ad even tries to link Santorum with Hillary Clinton, saying they both as U.S. senators voted to let convicted felons vote.
That recycled charge is one that PolitiFact found to be misleading and half false since Santorum actually voted to restore voting rights to those who had already served their sentence, not imprisoned convicts.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

subset: commoncrawl


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Homeowners, businesses, and insurance companies are still assessing the damage from the storm in much of the eastern U.S. But some early estimates are in.
And as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports, Hurricane Sandy inflicted heavy economic damage.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: If you had to choose a day for a super storm like this, better on a Friday or over a weekend. Businesses will be closed and have time to clean up for the next week. Instead, Sandy did the bulk of its damage on Monday, and that means a lot of this week is ruined. Sandy also cut a path through some of the most densely populated and most expensive properties in the country.
GREGORY DACO: So you're talking in the range of, you know, 30 to $50 billion in total economic losses.
NOGUCHI: That's Gregory Daco, an economist at IHS Global Insight. About half of that is lost business, shipments and sales that never happened, restaurant and airline cancellations and the like. But, for example, damaged roads and bridges will also create activity in its wake.
DACO: Some of that will be repaired, reconstructed, so there will be, you know, offsets in terms of that and that may actually turn out to be a plus for the economy because you're actually rebuilding.
NOGUCHI: Daco estimates that, at most, the damage will likely slow down the economy by half a percentage point in the fourth quarter. It won't be lasting damage, but he says any damage to a slow economy like this one will hurt. Loretta Worters is vice president of the Insurance Information Institute. She says those likely to see the biggest financial damage are residents and businesses without flood insurance or what's known as business interruption insurance. Worters says sometimes it's not the property damage that kills businesses, it's that some don't carry insurance on sales that are lost while they repair.
LORETTA WORTERS: It's definitely gotten better and I think, for New York, 9/11 was a good - you know, people learned from that, unfortunately, but they learned from that.
NOGUCHI: She estimates it will take up to a month to assess the real price of the damage. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Wild, Wild Web: Policing An Early, Lawless Internet
Today's Internet users have become accustomed to stories of hacking, identity theft and cyberattacks, but there was a time when the freedom and anonymity of the Web were new, and no one was sure what rules — if any — applied to its use.
Related Topics
Other segments from the episode on August 20, 2013
August 20, 2013
Guest: Nate Anderson
DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Computers, smartphones and Internet use are part of our lives now, and we've become accustomed to stories of hacking, identity theft and cyber attacks. In his new book, our guest, technology writer Nate Anderson, takes us back to the early days of the Internet, when the freedom and anonymity the Web offered were new and we weren't sure what rules, if any, would apply to its use.
Many thought the Internet was beyond government regulation and that its very chaos was a source of creativity and strength. Anderson's book shows how the opportunities the Web offered to snoops, scam artists, spammers and pornographers inevitably drew the attention of law enforcement, which had to try and master Internet technology to find and catch their targets.
Nate Anderson is a senior editor at Ars Technica. His work has also been published in The Economist and Foreign Policy. His new book is called "The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online and the Cops Followed." Well, Nate Anderson, welcome to FRESH AIR. Early in this book, you describe an attempt to establish an Internet haven.
Back in the earlier days of the Internet, when a company wanted to be able to offer Internet services to anybody for any purpose pretty much, free of any government restriction - there's a fellow named Ryan Lackey. He picks a remarkable place to actually site the business. Do you want to tell us about this?
NATE ANDERSON: So back in the 1990s and the early years of the 2000s, one of the great dreams of people associated with the Internet was this idea that this new invention, these new technologies that were now global, had basically done away with the old national political boundaries. And you see this most remarkably with the case of Sealand, which was this rusting fort in the North Sea a few miles off the coast of the United Kingdom in which some Americans went over there, brought some computers, got an Internet link established from out there, you know, in the water on this platform, and decided to offer hosting services to anyone in the world.
So if your country said pornography was illegal, if your country said gambling was illegal, if your country said certain kinds of political speech was illegal, no problem. Come to us, we'll host it. And the idea was that no one could do anything about this, right? Anybody can access anything on the Internet. Once it's on there, you know, there is no possibility of control.
And so this was an attempt to evade national law, and a lot of people believed at the time that these kinds of attempts could succeed. And it turns out they were wrong.
DAVIES: Now, I want you to describe this. I mean people don't picture a fort being out in the middle of the ocean. Describe this place. It was called Fort Roughs, right, built, what, for World War II?
ANDERSON: Roughs Tower, yes, it was built in World War II as a gunnery platform that was trying to take out Luftwaffe bombers coming in during the battle of Britain. And it was essentially a giant platform that stood out of the water on huge legs. Up on top the guns would go. There was a small sort of office, house place. But the men lived in the legs themselves, which were hollowed out, and as you can imagine were windowless and sometimes below the water line.
So it could be a very creepy, claustrophobic place to be, and that's where these guys decided to try to set up this data haven that could basically write its own laws, even as it dumped this traffic on the global Internet.
DAVIES: Right, so these guys would be, if this worked, would be living inside this 25-foot-wide concrete cylinder into the ocean with no windows, as you say. What were conditions in there like, you know, decades after it had been abandoned as a military use?
ANDERSON: So it was heavily rusted. The tower had been - had a crazy history. It had been sort of taken over several times by pirate radio operators in the U.K. And the current family, who still controls it, had taken it several decades ago and managed to hang on to it.
The reason that this place was chosen was because at the time it was taken, it was outside U.K. territorial waters, and so the claim has always been that it is essentially its own country and not under U.K. jurisdiction, even though it's just a few miles offshore, and you can easily get your supplies and things from the U.K.
DAVIES: Alright, so this guy Ryan Lackey establishes this company. Was it HavenCo? Was that what it's called?
ANDERSON: HavenCo, that's right.
DAVIES: And there was this piece, I think in Wired magazine, in which the vision was laid out of what it was going to look like. Kind of describe a little bit what the plan was.
ANDERSON: Well, the vision was fairly grandiose. It was going to be - you know, the legs of this tower were going to be filled with computer servers. They were going to be filled with an unbreathable gas, making it very difficult for saboteurs or anyone else to enter the tower. Your data would be totally safe.
It was suppose to have high-speed Internet links, you know, back to the U.K. and to other points on the European continent. It was - you know, these guys had guns, they had a security force in case, you know, anybody came knocking on the door. It was really designed as kind of a fortress bunker out there in the sea that would simply be resistant to any attempt to take down, you know, your content.
DAVIES: So Ryan Lackey, the guy with this vision to establish this Internet service physically free of any government regulation, he gets this platform, which was run by this fellow Roy Bates, who had been a pirate radio operator, had taken it by force. And there's this vision for, you know, nitrogen-filled chambers that hold all these servers and provide services to all kinds of people. What was the experience? What actually happened?
ANDERSON: Well, the vision that they had was one of total freedom. And they found themselves - they thought they had a place that was not bound by law. They quickly learned, within a couple of years of attempting this experiment, that they actually wanted law because they got into a dispute with the Bates family, who controlled this tower. And in the end there was nothing they can do about it.
I mean the flipside of going to a place without courts, without police, without the jurisdiction of a regular nation-state, is that there's no one to enforce this contract that you thought you had. And so the whole thing ended in acrimony, with Lackey and - leaving the tower, the Bates family taking control of what was there, and it also came out, you know, Lackey admitted that much of what had been said, especially in this Wired magazine article, was - I guess optimistic would be the nicest way to put it - it was done for PR purposes. It was done with a hope to this is where they could get someday. It was never a flourishing operation. It was always fairly small-scale. They tended to host a few online gambling sites, especially those that wanted to reach the lucrative U.S. market, where online gambling was illegal, and for a while they also hosted the government of Tibet's website, which had angered the Chinese.
DAVIES: A lot of what your book tells us is that the reality is there is all kinds of illegal and harmful activity on the Internet, and thus law enforcement recognized that and took to fighting it on the Internet. You tell the story of some interesting investigations into child pornography rings, and one of them begins with videos in Australia. Tell us how that story started.
ANDERSON: So one of the lessons that law enforcement learned was, you know, they weren't just going to throw up their hands and say, hey, that's right, you know, law is basically - doesn't apply anymore. And so it took them a while, but they did begin to learn how to do things on the Internet.
One of the things they learned was the power of international cooperation over this new international medium. So this case that I profiled was, at the time of its takedown in 2009, was the largest such takedown the U.S. had ever conducted. It began back in Australia, where some police, during a raid, found a video depicting child pornography. They were able through the accents of the people involved, who were speaking in the video, to understand that it was Flemish or Belgian in some way, and they passed it to the Belgian police.
From there it spawned something called Operation Koala, which became a massive, European-wide, you know, manhunt for people. They actually identified the person who was being abused. It was a father who was abusing his two children by taking them to a studio in the Ukraine, which had been set up for these kinds of activities.
So they got the guy involved. They managed to get his email list of people who are interested in these kinds of videos he was producing. They kept all the European addresses and staged a massive raid over 20 countries, and they passed all the U.S. addresses to their counterparts here, where a wide variety of agencies got together to track these guys down, generating hundreds and hundreds of leads, and eventually a massive bust of people that showed them whole new chat rooms, whole new places where these kind of people hung out.
DAVIES: In the book you describe this child pornography investigation and how it ended up resulting in the arrest of a lot of people. You describe one interesting character in Baltimore, a guy who'd run for mayor once before, and the arrest there. One of the things that you describe that authorities used in this investigation of Internet child pornography was that when arrests were made, they wouldn't just box up the computers and take them away, but while the suspect was there, would sometimes have the technicians going through the computers right then and there. The phrase was on-scene computer triage. Explain what that is. What was the point?
ANDERSON: Right. Well, so the old technique was to go in and treat this as a normal crime scene, right. Don't contaminate the evidence. Be very careful. You know, unplug everything, shut it down, bag it up, tag it. Take it back to the lab. Go through it slowly, carefully, methodically to build your court case. And that works, but you lose a lot by doing it.
For instance, when police might enter a house looking for somebody, that person might be on their computer and logged in to certain chat rooms or websites or communities right then, and if you shut down the computer, you might need passwords to boot it up again or to enter these communities again.
So what they began doing - and this investigation was one of the first times this was widely deployed - was starting to look, right there - they would still box it all up and take it back to the forensic lab later. But you could learn things right away by spending an hour with the running computer right there, and especially if you could convince the person that you had just busted to give you passwords or to tell you things.
And they would do this all the time. They would sometimes convince people that, hey, you know, we're going to break this one way or the other. You might as well just tell us. Maybe things will actually go easier for you when it comes to sentencing, et cetera. There were all sorts of techniques for getting information out of people.
And it was remarkably successful. They would find new communities they didn't know existed. And if they had waited a month, those kind of communities would often get suspicious at a member's absence and shut them out. So it opened all sorts of new doors to new communities of child pornography, to immediately finding out these guys' friends and their connections with the outside world, and preserving evidence that might have been erased if they had shut down the computers.
DAVIES: One of the interesting things about the description of this child pornography investigation is that, you know, one of the things that makes the Internet safe for this kind of criminal activity is its anonymity. I mean, people - you log on, you get this horrible stuff, but nobody knows who you are. But once the investigators get - nail somebody, then if they can get that person to give them their password, suddenly, the police enter the networks, taking advantage of the anonymity, and the other child pornographers think they're dealing with somebody they trust. In fact, they're dealing with a cop. It's a fascinating kind of reversal of anonymity working in favor of the criminals.
ANDERSON: Yeah. It can be very difficult to know who you're dealing with online in any sort of real firm sense. And so - especially in these communities that don't want others to know that. They tend to operate just simply on these usernames. You know nothing about someone beyond this name you see on the screen.
And so what police did in this case - and have continued to do in many other cases since - is when they bust somebody, they could get most of these guys to plead guilty. In this particular bust, despite how large it was, only one guy went to trial. Everyone else plead guilty. And as part of those deals, often what the government requested was that they turned over their passwords in these communities and their usernames, and then federal agents assumed those identities.
And to the outsiders, you know, there's almost no way to tell that you're now dealing with a fed. So that encouraged a lot of paranoia and suspicion within these communities, especially when somebody would be gone for a few days, or maybe their tone or choice of words change after a while.
Well, you think to yourself: Is that just normal, or am I suddenly - have we been infiltrated? Am I dealing with a cop?
DAVIES: Right. So when this investigation ran its course, how big of a child pornography operation did it expose?
ANDERSON: It varied over time. I believe when they finally shut down - this place was called the Cache, and when they finally shut down the Cache, I believe there were 500 people or so involved. But there had been a couple thousand a year or two earlier. They had - they had been spooked, in fact, by some action that the feds had taken, and many people had left. But I guess enough people didn't get the message and continued.
And so there were mass arrests. Most people plead guilty, as I said. This one guy went to trial, and that meant that all of this information about how the government had, you know, infiltrated and exposed these guys came out then at trial and provided, you know, most of my data for reconstructing this really fascinating narrative about what had happened and how.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Nate Anderson. He is a deputy editor of Ars Technica. His new book is called "The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed." We'll talk some more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, our guest is Nate Anderson. He's a deputy editor for Ars Technica. He's written a new book about crime on the Internet and how police have gotten more active pursuing it. It's called "The Internet Police."
You have some interesting cases that you describe where folks were targeted, essentially spied upon, using their home computers. Do you want to give us an example on what, you know, what the impact was on these folks?
ANDERSON: Yeah. So maybe I could talk about two different cases, because one of the key points that my book is making is that you really can't differentiate between good and bad techniques on the Internet. What you get are techniques, and they can be used by anyone, for any purpose.
So one of the stories that I cover in the book involves a substitute teacher in Ohio who had purchased a stolen laptop from a student at her school. She claims she didn't know it was stolen. The police knock on her door a few days later, and they have in their hand pictures of her topless chats with her boyfriend at the time that they have printed out on sheets of paper.
She is amazed. It turns out that the computers - which had been owned by the school district - had tracking software on them, and were accessed by an investigator who was looking for this one and happened to grab screenshots of what this woman was doing on her computer at the time, and he passed them to the local police, who showed up at her door, knocking on it, holding these things.
And the whole experience really - at least in her telling in the court documents - really devastated her. It made her almost borderline paranoid about surveillance, about clicks on her phone, about - I mean, if people could do that, they could do almost anything, it seemed like.
DAVIES: And, in this case, it was the police. The tracking software was there to help the school district recover stolen computers. This actually happened in a school district around Philadelphia recently. But why did the police then use that, rather than simply going and getting the stolen computer? Why would they then barge in and confront her with these embarrassing, though legal, pictures, and then they arrested her?
ANDERSON: Well, that's a good question. And she sued the police department over this case, and it was settled privately. She was arrested for receiving stolen goods, but the prosecutor declined to move forward with the case. So my sense is that the police there knew they had overreached and tried to make this situation go away.
You know, but what you see also is that hackers do the same thing. I mean, this technique has been around for years in hacking circles. And so I cover another story in the book of this guy out in California who turns out to be a disabled immigrant. He's in a wheelchair. He knows computers. He's been to some local community college classes and programming things. He becomes something of a hacker.
He starts hacking into computers of young women all around California, and more broadly. By the end of - you know, by the time police arrest him, he has gotten his software installed on the machines of several hundred young women. He was able to watch the webcams on their computer. He was able to turn on the microphones in their computer, listen to what was happening in the rooms where these computers were.
He was able to see what they were doing on their screens, on their computer, what websites they were visiting. And he could see every file on their computer, and he delighted in finding nude pictures that many of them kept on their machines. And he would then toy with his victims.
He would show up on instant messaging networks knowing all sorts of things about them, having these pictures, and being able to tell them about conversations they thought they had had privately inside a room, that suddenly this random guy on the Internet knows about. It was absolutely unnerving to these young women, you know, this terrifying experience.
But it's now the same kind of thing that the police do, that private organizations do. We know the FBI has this capability. A major scandal erupted a year or two ago in Germany, when it became clear that the German government was using this sort of technology.
So, you know, you have this technique, and once it's out there, it can really be used for just about anything. And there's almost no way to say, you know, this is going to be used for good, and not for bad. It is kind of a free-for-all.
DAVIES: Nate Anderson's book is "The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed." He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. We're speaking with technology writer Nate Anderson, whose new book traces the growth of crime on the Internet and the increasingly sophisticated techniques law enforcement employs to fight it. Anderson is a senior editor at Ars Technica. His new book is called "The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed."
Before the break, Anderson described some cases where hackers tapped into the home computers of women, using their webcams to spy on them and rifling their computer files for personal information and intimate photos.
You describe how emotionally shattering it was for women to suddenly be confronted with these things they thought were private. But tell us a little bit about how that worked. I mean, is there technology that someone can easily get that will allow them to get inside and control somebody else's computer?
ANDERSON: Absolutely. I mean, you do not have to be a quote-unquote "hacker" to do this anymore. In some research I did after writing the book, I spent some time in an entire Web community that exists around this practice, which they call ratting - R-A-T, remote administration tool. These are basically pieces of software that, once you can get them on someone else's computer, provides you total access to their machine, but surreptitiously. They don't know it's there. They don't know it's running. And...
DAVIES: And you get them to install the software by what - enticing them to open an email or something?
ANDERSON: You can do that. You can approach them on instant messaging, pretending to be a friend of theirs. You can put fake, you know, songs out there to pop music on peer-to-peer file sharing networks that then people download thinking they're getting a song, turns out to be one of these files. One of the things these guys do is spend a lot of time sharing their techniques for how they spread this stuff widely, how you pick up quote-unquote "slaves," which is what they refer to the people who install their software.
DAVIES: This is just so creepy. I mean, if you have, you know, one of these major antiviral, you know, protection systems for your computer, are you protected against things like this?
ANDERSON: All of the major antivirus, anti-malware systems now do look for these sorts of toolkits - these remote administration tools. But, you know, they're tweaked all the time for the purpose of avoiding these things. So it's hard to say for certain that any given implementation of one of these is going to be caught by, you know, any given tool that you might have, especially if your antivirus software is out of date or a bit older.
DAVIES: You know, in the cases the book, where you describe these women being targeted by someone who had taken control of their computer, and then looked through their photos and watched them through the webcam, you know, the police - we know about this because the police investigated and found some of the people that were engaged in this activity. Are they doing a lot of that, and should we feel good about that? It's sort of puzzling, because you don't want the police spying on you, and yet, on the other hand, you want the police protecting us, you know, from people peering into our lives.
ANDERSON: Yeah. The FBI has essentially coined a term related to this activity that they call sextortion, because most of these cases turn out to involve these guys will watch usually women, but I have seen a couple of cases involving men or even boys. And once you either get access to their computers, you can get them to give you nude the photos and things, and then you can start blackmailing them and get them to do more and more things for you. And, yeah, it's kind of depressingly common, and it's now - you see busts related to this activity with some frequency. I wouldn't say it's an epidemic, but, you know, if you visit some of these communities and you see people just sharing images of these people that they're spying on from all over the world, no idea they're being watched, you know, it's deeply creepy. And, you know, I just think it's worth knowing that this is a possibility on your machine. I mean, many people are not aware that something like that is even possible. But it's hard to quantify just how much something like that happens.
DAVIES: And before we leave this subject, is there any way you can protect yourselves? I mean, should you turn off your computer? Should you - I don't know, anything you can do?
ANDERSON: Yeah. There's a couple of things. Running a good anti-malware, antivirus program will help catch many of these. You know, don't download dodgy files on peer-to-peer networks. Don't accept, you know, files from people you don't know over instant messaging. And get a computer that has a light, you know, hardwired to your webcam. Many computers do now. And if they webcam is ever activated, a small light next to it will go on. That usually cannot be bypassed. So those kinds of techniques can at least let you know, you know, when it's happening.
DAVIES: You know, a lot of your book deals with serious and troubling stuff like, you know, kiddy porn and extortion and identity theft. You also write about spam, which kind of most of us think of as, you know, a nuisance. Why is spam serious enough for the FBI to get involved in?
ANDERSON: Well, it's more than just a nuisance, because most of the spam you get, you may not want it, but the products that it's selling are often or even usually are fraudulent, as well. So in addition to being unwanted, you're often dealing with a fraudulent situation. So you will find that the kingpins behind spam can often be making substantial incomes from this activity. I mean, you might find it hard to believe that anyone would click on one of these emails and give their credit card information to the website that comes up, but it happens all the time. Because spam is so prevalent, you need such a small success rate - I mean, in the .1 percent or less - and you can still make real money.
DAVIES: You do write about a fascinating case involving one, you know, mega-spammer, a guy who the FBI nailed when he went to a conference in Las Vegas. Tell us about him and how big his operation was.
ANDERSON: So this case is fascinating, because it shows another one of the key ways that cops have learned to operate online. You know, a lot of spam and some of these other online ills originates now from Eastern Europe and Russia. And Russia famously does not extradite its citizens. It doesn't matter why. And they often show less interest in prosecuting some of these cases, as well. So one of the lessons that the U.S. has learned is if we find somebody who appears to be kingpin, they appear to be in Russia, what are we going to do? We are going to wait. Eventually, they're going to come to a friendly country. They're going to fly through a friendly country or they're going to come to the U.S. for some reason, and when they do, we're going to grab them.
So, in this case, this is guy, Oleg Nikolaenko. He's 23, 24, a young Russian guy, had started becoming a major spammer. He had a botnet, which essentially means he controlled hundreds of thousands of people's private computers around the world by installing small software on them that could then send out spam from their machines, making it hard to block, because it came from, you know, 200,000 different places, not one.
DAVIES: Whose owners had no idea they were part of a spam network.
ANDERSON: No idea their computer is in the background sending out these messages for this guy in Russia. So he runs this botnet, spammers pay him to deliver their message. He's a distributor. He doesn't write the spam. He doesn't send out the herbal supplements. You know, he just distributes messages, makes a ton of money. He also loves cars. So the FBI out of Milwaukee is investigating this guy, and they wait until he comes to the U.S. to visit an auto show in Las Vegas. And as soon as he crosses, you know, U.S. Passport Control - I believe he touched down on JFK on his way there - they know about it. They find out where he's staying. They call the FBI team in Las Vegas, and they arrest the guy in his hotel room. So he thinks he's coming to the U.S. for, like, this three-day, you know, car show, from Russia. He ends up, like, two days later sitting in a jail cell in Milwaukee, where he stays for more than a year.
DAVIES: And how big was his operation, and how much money was he making?
ANDERSON: So, at his height, this guy was estimated to be controlling more than 500,000 machines, which he would use to send his spam. This was, you know, at its height, probably the largest botnet in the world for while. It may have accounted for up to 30 percent or so of all the spam in the world. And we know from the records of this investigation that eventually came out that he made $464,000 in 2007, and that was just in six months. And that was apparently just from one client, and he had multiple clients. So this guy, who is like 23, 24, is making serious, serious money.
DAVIES: Nate Anderson's book is called "The Internet Police." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, we're speaking with writer Nate Anderson. His new book is called "The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed."
You also write about how easy it was for you to buy heroin or ecstasy over the Internet at a site that was called Silk Road. And what's interesting about this was that you said that they were able to do this with impunity because of a multilevel encryption system - if I have this right - that was essentially developed by the U.S. government? Is that right?
ANDERSON: That's right. The basic technology that protects this site and other sites like it is called Tor. It used to stand for The Onion Router. Now it's just a word on its own. But it essentially involves a system which, you know, your traffic is passed through layers of different computers, passed from one to the next to the next to the next to the next, until finally, the last computer in the chain dumps it back onto the public Internet. And by that time, it is supposed to be essentially untraceable, mixed in with all this other traffic passing through the Tor network, and there should be, you know, no way to trace it back to you.
Now, this is really useful if, for instance, you know, you are a diplomat or, you know, a military officer or something stationed in a foreign country, and you need secure communications back to the U.S., or if you're an the FBI or a DEA agent here in the U.S. and you need to, you know, pretend to be a drug dealer or something online, you need to disguise where your computer is, where you're coming from. So this tool had all sorts of uses. But it is now developed privately, and while it's still used by the military and by others, it is also used by plenty of people to host child photography, is one popular one. But then the new thing is these drug markets. Silk Road is the best-known. It's still around. It's been operating for a couple of years with apparently almost total impunity. And it enables - it's like Amazon, but for drugs. You can find hundreds of sellers from all over the world who will mail you just about anything. And you can leave feedback on them, how their product was, how their service was. It's quite a remarkable thing. And the guy who runs it has some of these - you know, he's a libertarian, with strong ideas about freedom, who goes by the name Dread Pirate Roberts. And we know the government is after him, but, I mean, in a testament to how well the software works, they haven't caught him yet.
DAVIES: OK. But if this was developed by the government, how does it get into the hands of all these other folks?
ANDERSON: So the U.S. government - the Navy, actually, did the preliminary research on what is known as Onion Routing, the basic technique that is used here. But the actual software is developed now by a foundation, the Tor Project. And they receive money from all sorts of governments, government agencies, even some Christian groups. Because the thing about these tools, as I've said before, is you can never to limit them to certain uses you think are good or that you think are bad. And so this tool in particular provides, you know, an incredible encryption for people who need to bypass surveillance. Well, that can mean criminals, but it can also mean political dissidents. It can mean religious, you know, dissidents in countries where, you know, freedom of religion is not accepted. It can mean all sorts of uses that one branch of the government - say, the State Department - might say are good, but another branch might - like the FBI - might see things being used in it that are bad. But they don't - but nobody wants it shut down.
DAVIES: Yeah. You make the point that, you know, the State Department, I think Hillary Clinton and some others have said that you need this kind of technology for secure, anonymous communication. I mean, people in Mexico who want to be able to communicate without being discovered by, you know, drug cartels, political dissidents. And so, in some respects, it's government policy to permit this kind of communication, to encourage and enable it.
ANDERSON: Right. And I think it shows you that, you know, speaking of the government is often not a helpful thing to do when it's that, you know, as broad as the U.S. government. There are so many competing interests. So, yes, state has been a huge backer of these programs. They've traveled, especially in Eastern Europe, they've stirred up quite a bit of controversy by going over there and teaching activists and dissidents how to use tools like Tor to avoid state surveillance. But those exact same tools can avoid state surveillance here in the U.S., whether it's by the FBI looking for drug dealers or child pornographers, whether it's the NSA looking for terrorists, you know, there's just no way to limit the sort of technology in the way the government would prefer to do. And so what you have in this very strange situation where some aspects of the government are encouraging the same sorts of tools that other aspects of the government aren't very happy about.
DAVIES: Is - you know, I guess this is what we have an Executive Branch for, to kind of look at these conflicting policy goals and methods and make some wise decisions about, you know, what we want to do. Is there any attempt to sort of, I don't know, mediate and get an overall policy that makes sense?
ANDERSON: Well, I think U.S. policy on this is very widely - back in the 1990s we famously tried to control encryption and anybody exporting strong crypto, as it was called, was under all sorts of restrictions. They couldn't send it to all sorts of different countries. And eventually, we realized that wasn't going to work. I mean, these guys who dreamed about the Internet being global and breaking down geographic barriers, you know, may have had a limited vision but they weren't totally wrong either.
And so what the U.S. found was we were essentially just putting ourselves at a disadvantage because other companies on Earth weren't abiding by these rules. They were selling products with strong crypto. So what customers around the world said was, hey, why are we going to buy from the U.S.? And I think it's the same sort of backlash you're already seeing around some of this - the NSA revelations.
Countries are - and companies around the world and even individuals are saying, you know, hey, I don't know that we trust these U.S. Internet companies anymore. And in the '90s the NSA actually backed down from this position and we kind of gave up on trying to control encryption. And I think things have maybe swung back the other way since then.
DAVIES: You know, you mentioned the National Security Administration revelations recently, and I guess a lot of that broke after you'd probably finished the book. What's your take on all of these revelations about, you know, the surveillance of both, you know, telephone or other electronic communication? Do we need reforms? Does this tell us - what does it tell us?
ANDERSON: Well, I think it tells us a couple of things. One, is it tells us exactly what electronic surveillance in the Internet age looks like when the gloves come off. I mean, the NSA operates under certain restrictions, clearly. It is not totally indiscriminate surveillance. But, you know, the rules are far, far different and much, much looser than anything that is legally allowed to happen domestically.
So my book basically looks at how local police, how the FBI and how international policing, you know, handle these things. But they operate under a very different framework. And what you see with these NSA revelations is just how incredible are the data trails we leave. How, with relative ease, they can be scooped up, put back together, dumped into massive databases.
And I think the lesson is that the Internet, which was supposed to be this tool of incredible freedom, of anonymous communication, providing a publishing platform to everyone, has sort of at the same time provided one of the most amazing electronic surveillance platforms the world has ever known.
DAVIES: There's a lot of discussion now about new regulations on the NSA, about changes in the FISA court, about independent review of what these government agencies do. I mean, what's your take? Is that needed? Do you have a view on it?
ANDERSON: I think one of the things that the NSA revelations are going to finally do is open people's eyes to just how dramatic this sort of surveillance looks like in practice. It's one thing to talk about electronic surveillance and it's another thing to really understand just how wide-ranging the Net can be when you have computers scooping up data from fiber optics taps, when you get every phone call made by everyone in the U.S.
You know, we're going - the NSA is going to look a lot more like some of these hackers in the book who are operating without many rules. And I think that has already made people uncomfortable. So my sense is we're going to see some rule changes intended to promote greater comfort in this. Even President Obama has indicated those are in progress.
You know, whether that is going to satisfy the critics of what's been going on, I think will really depend on the strength of the public reaction, you know, to mobilize a bipartisan agreement in Congress.
DAVIES: Well, Nate Anderson, it's been really interesting. Thanks so much for spending some time with us.
ANDERSON: Thanks for having me.
DAVIES: Nate Anderson's new book is "The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online and the Cops Followed." Coming up, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews some recordings of the English saxophone trio S.O.S. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has been listening to some previously unreleased recordings from the 1970s by the English trio S.O.S., the initials of saxophonists John Surmon, Mike Osborn and Alan Skidmore. Kevin says this sparsely documented group pointed the way for other modern bands.
KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: The trio S.O.S. was formed in 1973 and made only one LP a couple of years later. They didn't last long but they were the first of many horn choirs born in the '70s and '80s, mostly saxophone quartets. S.O.S.'s trio voicings sometimes eerily anticipate the World Saxophone Quartet that came along a bit later.
WHITEHEAD: S.O.S. in 1974. The trio was tight and maneuverable, changing direction as one like birds in flight. That precision stemmed from extensive rehearsing, close listening on the bandstand and playing a little Bach. S.O.S. might sound like more than three players by moving the voices around, even when two reeds are riffing behind the other.
WHITEHEAD: Tenor player Alan Skidmore is a Londoner, the son of a jazz saxophonist. Altoist Mike Osborne and multi-instrumentalist John Surman grew up closer to the countryside. There was always a strong whiff of agrarian roots and the English folk revival about S.O.S. They might literally break into an Irish jig. Their theme "Country Dance" was perfect for a romp around the maypole.
WHITEHEAD: John Surman on soprano sax. A lot of '60s and '70s English jazz has that bagpipe-y energy. In the trio S.O.S., that strain was reinforced by Surman occasionally setting up electronic drones or loops to underpin the saxes. He used sequencers like The Who on "Who's Next?" That side of S.O.S. looks ahead to many overdubbed solo records that John Surman has made since then where those folk elements ring out.
WHITEHEAD: This music is from a double set of unreleased S.O.S., "Looking for the Next One" recorded in concert and the studio in 1974 and '5. It more than doubles their output on record and amply makes the case for a too little known trio that could sound timeless, of its time, and ahead of its time. Maybe now is their time.
DAVIES: Kevin Whitehead writes for Point of Departure, Downbeat, and EMusic and is the author of "Why Jazz?" He reviewed "Looking for the Next One" by the English trio S.O.S. You can download podcasts of our show at freshair.npr.org. Follow us on Twitter @nprfreshair and on Tumblr at nprfreshair.tumblr.com.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.


text:
It certainly has been a while since I last had a pizza and lately I have been craving one. I have a fairly large list of pizza ideas to try and next up on that list was a taco pizza. The basic idea being a pizza with all of your favourite taco flavours. It seemed only natural to use a spicy salsa in place of the pizza sauce as salsa is almost a required ingredient in your basic tacos. I went with my salsa ranchera which is a quick and easy to make salsa but you could easily use your favourite store bought salsa instead. Next up was the meat and I decided to go with ground beef seasoned with a taco seasoning blend , though I was also thinking that seasoned shredded chicken or even seasoned black beans for a vegetarian version would also work well. I finished the pizza off with some shredded jack and cheddar cheese.
When I made the Thai chicken pizza with spicy peanut sauce I found out that topping a baked pizza off with fresh ingredients can be really nice and it is the perfect way to get more of your favourite taco condiments into this taco pizza. I kept things simple and went with shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and a drizzle of sour cream. I could also see going with a freshly home made pico de gallo or some diced avocado. The sky is the limit here and you could go for pretty much any of your favourite tacos condiments here.
I have to say that this taco pizza turned out amazingly well! The pizza was great all by itself with the tasty salsa ranchera, seasoned beef and ooey gooey melted cheese but adding the lettuce, tomatoes and sour cream really took it over the edge. It was just like eating tacos and almost as messy with the topping spilling off with every bite! Once again the fresh toppings on the pizza worked fantastically well and I will have to keep that in mind when making other pizzas.
Taco Pizza
A taco pizza with a spicy ranchera sauce, seasoned ground beef and ooey gooey melted cheese, topped with lettuce, tomato, and sour cream.
- 1/2 pound ground beef
- 1 tablespoon taco seasoning or 1/2 store bought packet
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 pizza dough
- 1 cup salsa ranchera or your favourite salsa
- 1 cup cheddar cheese, grated
- 1 cup monterey jack cheese, grated
- 2 cups lettuce, shredded
- 1 large ripe tomato, diced
- 1 handful cilantro
- sour cream to taste
- Brown the meat in a pan and drain the grease.
- Add the taco seasoning and water and simmer until the liquid has evaporated.
- Spread the pizza dough out on the baking sheet and top with the salsa ranchera, seasoned ground beef and cheese.
- Bake in a preheated 500F/260C oven until the cheese is bubbling and the edges are golden brown, about 5-10 minutes.
- Let cool a bit and top with the lettuce, tomato, cilantro and sour cream.
Taco Quesadilla Pizzas
Thai Chicken Pizza with Spicy Peanut Sauce
Thai Chicken Pizza with Sweet Chili Sauce
BBQ Chicken Pizza
Taco Salad
Taco Rice
Taco Pasta
Taco Burger
Taco Stuffed Shells
Taco Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Corned Beef and Cabbage Pizza
Shrimp Scampi Pizza
Cheesy Taco Pasta
Taco Egg Casserole
Chicken Taco Tortilla Roll Ups


text:
Smashing through walls and yelling "Oh, Yeah!" apparently aren't cool enough for Kool-Aid Man anymore.
Kraft Foods Group has decided that the pitcher pitchman needs an new look that plays up his "undeniably fun personality."
So he's now "technologically advanced, CGI-generated and more interactive and colorful than ever." And, of course, he has a Facebook page.
It seems that formerly rather terse Kool-Aid Man (a guy in a costume) will now be a bit of a chatterbox in his ad spots. In one, for example, he'll be seen thinking about which mix he should "wear" and saying that, "I put my pants on one leg at a time. Except my pants are 22 different flavors. I've got grape pants, I've got watermelon pants."
The good news for fans of the old guy: According to The Associated Press, "Kraft isn't abandoning trademarks of its past campaigns in the new ads, which were developed by the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. At the end of the commercial, the Kool-Aid Man heads out to work by calming busting through the front door. When he emerges, he waves cheerily to two awestruck kids riding their bikes past his front lawn."
Still to come: How Family Guy will react to this news. As KpopStarz notes, on Family Guy "every time a character says 'Oh Yeah,' " a reasonable facsimile of Kool-Aid Man "will come bursting through whatever wall may be near by."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
Please send tell me please. This makes very little sense. Is this Engrish brought to us by semi-fluent Asians? Nope. This is a phrase used quite often by normal players all over the English servers.
PST was an acronym for "please send tell." It was a quick way to be polite, which is ironic since politeness so often involves not rushing interactions. A combination of time and not paying attention to what words mean has caused it to shift to lose the specific meaning. Now it is a verb, rather than a full phrase for a request. It effectively has the meaning "send a tell to" and is part of the new phrase: pst me plz which can be interpreted as "send a tell to me, please."
In our new world we're seeing language change, as it always does. In many ways this is good. New situations call for new words, new phrases, and new meanings for old words. It would be cumbersome to say "We are looking for one more person for our group for heroic mode Utgarde Keep. This person should be able to survive and avoid damage better than average." Why say that when "lf1m, tank, H UK" says the same?
It doesn't say the same. Not just what we say, but how we say it, affects the perceptions of others. You might have heard "If you say plz because it's shorter than please, then I'll say no because it's shorter than yes." The idea here is "Slow down, use full words, I consider it rude that you cannot fully communicate with me. I'm going to be rude in return." This is entirely the fault of the reader, not the typist. There was no intention to be rude, that was entirely added by the expectations and standards of the reader.
Change itself is not bad. It is not the gutting of a language. It is the natural evolution. Change can be quite good, as in the case of the faster way to look for a tank. It can also be bad when change comes faster than people are learning it, especially when the new words don't add efficiency or meaning. "Pst me plz" adds no efficiency compared to simply "PST" and only adds one meaning: "I don't know/care what PST means."
Here's a list of words that are now used as substitutes for good: badass, sick, bad, sweet, the shit, awesome, fucking awesome, sweet-ass, great, leet, pwnage. I must admit to having used more than one item on that list. Why? None of these add meaning beyond "good" and if the context isn't just right, they can be very confusing as well.
3 comments:
- Unknown said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- October 30, 2009 at 3:12 PM
- Leah said...
hmm, I thought pst was the sound you make when you want to quietly motion someone over... shows how much I know :P
- October 30, 2009 at 6:39 PM
- Klepsacovic said...
@Leah: pssst (number of s varies) is an onomatopoeia for that sound, so you're right in a way but the origin of it is the acronym. I was trying to look at it more as a form of speech in which it would be a verb which is done to a person as in "pst me."
- October 30, 2009 at 8:48 PM
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