Update II: Last night, Sunday April 5th, Lesley Stahl issued an on-air correction about her mistakes from the previous week’s story about Conficker. She called it a correction, but it wasn’t even that much. Here is the transcript of her apology which lasts all of about 21 seconds as a part of the introduction to Andy Rooney’s weekly blathering.

“A correction now. We made a mistake last week in using a photograph in a story we called “The Internet is Infected,” about the computer worm known as Conficker. I described the picture as a gang of young Russian hackers. They were not. The photo was provided to us by an Internet security company that appeared in the story.”

I have included below the video of the correction with the original piece just below. However, please note that I have had to include the original story from YouTube (I’ve only listed the second half) because CBS has edited the video on its website to cut any mention of the photo, any hacker by the name of Tempest and other things which were proven to be incorrect. The portion of edited video on CBS’s website occurs at the 10:36 mark. You can see the cut portion, lasting 19 seconds, in the YouTube video below.

But tell me, what should CBS have done in this circumstance? Instead of simply acknowledging the mistake, apologizing to the Finnish kids defamed in the story and moving on, the 60 Minutes team decided on a different route. They made a mistake, attempted to correct it but in the process also deleted any evidence of the mistake from their website. If CBS wants to be taken seriously as a news organization, this crap cannot continue. We know CNN falsifies transcripts and inputs video from Hungary in a story about Serbian rioting, but for CBS to now stoop to this level is unacceptable.

Watch CBS Videos Online

The Internet is Infected, part 2:

From the pages of Photography is Not a Crime:

“In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment – which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.”

You can read more from the local paper here. All I have to say is that at least they don’t kill bloggers here, like they do in Russia.

While reviewing some of the statistics on my last post about the CBS/Symantec agreement the scrare the crap out of us and dump on some Finnish school kids, I came across some interesting things. The most interesting being a Finnish BBS site that linked to my blog. There, people are discussing the 60 Minutes story, the Finnish kids in the picture and the actual Russian hackers. However, it appears that people are also posting Trojan Horses on the site as well. Just to be clear, if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t click on random links with your computer. This is advice Lesley Stahl could have given on Sunday evening in her report and it would have made for a better broadcast than what she ended up with.

As a side note, if you think you might be infected with this nasty crap than go to this link from Symantec (given to me by an employee who works on the team in charge of this stuff) and have your stuff cleaned. Either that or make sure your backup is current and reformat your system. Have fun!!

http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-030614-5852-99&tabid=2

From TechCrunch:

“Online media network Current TV has so far remained deafeningly silent over the arrests of two of its reporters, Chinese-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee, who were detained by the North Korean military earlier this month after crossing the border between China and North Korea while they were reporting on refugees fleeing poverty. Reports about the arrests surfaced last week, when the NY Times reported the detention.”

The post goes on to discuss the latest speculation that the two journalists have been moved to the capital, Pyongyang. This is not a good situation any way you look at it, but I’m wondering what would have happened had Ling and Lee been working for the New York Times, NBC, the BBC or some other large news organization. First, would they have been allowed to cross the border by their superiors? Blow-back is more severe and more costly the larger the organization (not to mention consequences from the chain of command).

However, my more pressing question is whether or not the North Koreans would have detained the two for more than a few hours or days had they been on assignment for a large news organization. My guess is no; the larger organization would have worked to arrange their release sooner than Current TV is doing. Of course, it doesn’t even appear that Al Gore, the Chairman of Current TV and one of its primary investors, has had any affect on the situation (either out of choice or not). I’m sure the diplomatic back channels are buzzing because of Gore’s connection, but take a circumstance where the independent journalists don’t have the backing of a former Vice President. Do you think the same thing would be playing out? There are examples of this out there for sure. In Russian it doesn’t matter how big or small your backing is, but in African countries or other locales where the central government isn’t as powerful as in Moscow or Pyongyang, would it make a difference? What about in China where economic policy seems to trump all? When NBC has the backing of GE, does that matter? What do you think? Are small and independent news organizations more susceptible to political pressure with diminished resources for negotiation and the inability to apply appropriate political pressure?

I’m not sure how many people in the States or elsewhere around the world, actually realize the importance of this story, but its significance bears repeating. Over the weekend a Russian blogger and webmaster was shot in the head while in police custody. As for most people who get shot in the temple with a gun, he died. The Russian police in the southern city of Ingushetia, acknowledged that there was an incident and initial reports mentioned a scuffle of sorts. How an unarmed man gets shot in the head in the backseat in a scuffle is a bit hard to fathom.

Most news organizations mentioned that Magomed Yevloyev ran the website ingushetiya.ru, that he was an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and Putin, and even mentioned that he was a journalist. While there is no excuse in any country for a journalist to die at the hands of the police (a gunshot wound to the “temple area” is not exactly a mistake), this is more significant than just that. Journalists critical of the Kremlin have died before (see this New York Times article for more background information), but this is the first time we can recall where a blogger has been targeted. Journalists are generally people who write in printed material, perhaps augmenting that online. However, for someone who writes solely online to get knocked off, this is a big step in the wrong direction for the Putinites.