Reuters hack appears political in nature

It appears that the blogging platform backing up Rueters news source has been hacked twice in two weeks, the most recent being this past weekend with a false death announcement being posted as a result. At the moment Rueters officials have not announced any suspects, nor have they got any information they want to share with the public at the moment. What they do know, though, is that their blue had been hacked once before, earlier this month, when the result was similar – the hackers simply posted a rather legitimate-looking post regarding events closely related to the subject of the newest “attack.”

The folks at eSecurity Planet have several reports being pushed this afternoon on the subject, each of them coming to a bit of a consensus over the source of the attack: none of them have a clue. It may seem relatively obvious to you, the reader, on the other hand once you see the subjects of both of the posts that Rueters did not post, and promptly deleted once they realize they’d been posted. Again, Rueters maintains that they were hacked twice in essentially the same way in two weeks, both times the result being a single news blog post on their site.

The first post, according to CNET, was about “the rebel Free Syrian Army suffering setbacks in their battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.” The second post, according to CBR Online, was “a false reporting that claimed Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died.” Reuters News’ director of global communications Barb Burg had a statement when the first attack occurred which read as follows:

“Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted. We are working to address the problem.” – Burg for Rueters

What do you think, folks? What does a major news network do when their most precious resource – their journalistic integrity – is the victim of an attack?

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New Tool Connects Facebook Friends With Political Campaigns

Starting immediately, Democratic and progressive campaigns will be able to tap into the power of Facebook to take political organizing into the social realm.

Democratic campaigns have long had access to the Voter Activation Network (VAN), a digital database of voter information that helps campaigns stay organized. The VAN includes a wealth of data about individuals in a given area, including their voting history, interactions with a particular campaign, phone number and mailing address.

Now, volunteers and staff working for a particular campaign will now be able to match their Facebook friends to individuals already included in the VAN with a new tool called “Social Organizing.” Once those two worlds are matched up, campaign staff can perform targeted outreach to friends and family of supporters.

The potential power of Social Organizing is impressive: If a campaign wants to recruit some new volunteers — by cross-referencing the VAN and current volunteers’ Facebook friends — it can determine which friends of volunteers are most likely to come onboard as fresh recruits.

SEE ALSO: Google to Political Campaigns: Get Online, Now [INFOGRAPHIC]

“The cool part about this is that supporters have always talked to their friends about the campaign, but they haven’t known exactly who to talk to and what to ask of them,” Stuart Trevelyan, CEO of NGP VAN, told Mashable. “For example, if 10 of your Facebook friends fall into the category of “likely volunteers” [as determined by VAN], you know that you should ask them to volunteer for the campaign.”

If the VAN-Facebook combination sounds a bit like an invasion of privacy, fear not: Social Organizing doesn’t put Facebook users’ information into VAN, it merely identifies campaign staffers’ Facebook friends that are likely to support a particular campaign. And because those friends are more likely to want to get involved, it cuts out the potential awkwardness of bringing politics into a friendship.

“Campaigns are going to be helping [volunteers] identify people that want to be asked,” said Trevelyan. “The tool will help avoid awkward conversations. For each task you can skip individual friends and say ‘hey, I’m not calling Stu because I’m in a fight with him because he stole my girlfriend.’”

Trevelyan said that Republican campaigns have access to similar software, but it only matches Facebook friends to lists of already-confirmed supporters.

“We think that’s a little else helpful because you’re matching to a much smaller universe,” he said.

How else could Facebook change political organizing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Tommydickson

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Keller @ Large: Iowa Exposes Country’s Deep Political Divisions

Electoral official count ballots during Republican caucues in Des Moines, Iowa, January 3, 2012. (Photo credit JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

DES MOINES, Iowa (CBS) - It’s easy to make fun of the Iowa caucuses.

They provide the smallest and whitest voter sample of any state in the presidential nominating process.

And when any group of voters sits through months of debates, speeches, meet-and-greets, ads, and other costly forms of political outreach, but still can’t really make up their minds at the end of it, it’s tempting to sit back and say oh, what a bunch of rubes.

But this year at least, that would be wrong.

Keller @ Large: Disappointing Win For Romney

Iowa Republican caucus voters last night told us a lot about themselves and our country that was honest and very much worth listening to.

For starters, the Iowa vote reflected what we already knew – that when it comes to politics, our country is profoundly divided, and the divisions seems to be getting deeper as time goes on.

You don’t need me to tell you about the yawning gulf between left and right, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

That strife is worse and more corrosive than ever.

But how about the divisions exposed last night within the supposedly homogenous state of Iowa itself?

Romney won some of the more affluent cities, Des Moines, Dubuque and Davenport.

But Santorum won the rural vote, and Ron Paul did well among young and blue-collar voters.

Romney and Santorum split the Republican vote between them; evangelical Christians told Romney to take a hike.

Even worse than all those demographic divisions are the signs of apathy, cynicism and despair.

The candidates all ran around claiming this was the most important election of our lifetimes, but Iowa voters disagreed, and failed to turn out in the predicted numbers.

Even among those who did turn out, voter indecision and skepticism was rampant, a fact reflected in the split vote.

The heartland is heartsick over where we are and hesitant to rally behind yet another political messiah.

And who can blame them?

It’ll be up to our political elites to use this campaign to restore some sense of confidence and unity.

And who among us – in Iowa or elsewhere – is brimming with confidence that they can do it?

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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