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Two Indiana teenagers have sued their school district after they were punished for posing suggestive photos on MySpace. The girls, 10th-graders at Churubusco High School in Churubusco, Indiana, say they were humiliated after the school banned them from fall semester extracurricular activities and forced them to apologize to the all-male Athletics Board (composed of varsity coaches). The girls also had to attend three counseling sessions. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the girls and all present and future students at the school who participate or may participate in extracurricular activities. The ACLU...

A SATANIST obsessed with teenage schoolgirls invented a fake gothic society online to groom them for sex in the grounds of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery. Daniel William Peckham, 24, lured at least three girls, aged from 13 to 17, into the cemetery on his MySpace blog, "Rookwood Gothic Society". A message on the site read: "If you have hang-ups about getting naked ... you are not welcome." Peckham pleaded guilty yesterday to the aggravated sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl and to using the internet to solicit and transmit naked pictures of young girls between 2005 and 2007. The opening day...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1ST, 2009 AT 1:59 PM New Media Roundup From Across the Administration Posted by Katie Stanton Over the past few weeks, our colleagues from across the Administration have been busy leveraging social media tools to help make government more open and transparent. Here's a quick roundup of new ways to connect and get the latest updates from across the Administration: Today, the Department of Justice announced the launch of the new Justice.gov and new profiles on Twitter, YouTube , MySpace and Facebook. Yesterday, Secretary Salazar...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Sept. 28, 2009) — When the Missouri National Guard delved into the world of social media in February by launching Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace pages all within a single month, no one could predict the impact the sites would have on the way the Guard did business as usual. The one thing everyone was certain of, however, was that the online media movement was much too big to ignore. “Utilizing new media is a great way to spread our messages,” said adjutant general Brig. Gen. Stephen Danner. “It is important that the Missouri National Guard has...

Hey, physicians-in-training: Blabbing about patient care on Facebook and Twitter are Doctor No-Nos. A new survey of medical-school deans reveals that med students' unprofessional conduct on social networking sites and blogs is common, according to Time magazine. Many of the future doctors use YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook to discuss sexual misconduct, post discriminatory statements and talk about patient cases, according to the survey, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It's ongoing even though the students understand patient-confidentiality laws and have been instructed in the ethical standards of their chosen profession, according to the article...

The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet. Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information. "The White House has not been adequately...

The White House is hiring a contractor to harvest information about Americans from its pages on social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. The National Legal and Policy Center, or NLPC, revealed the White House New Media team is seeking to hire a technology vendor to collect data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place where the White House "maintains a presence" – for a period of up to eight years.

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

President Obama's White House does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to personal information and the Internet. In less than one month, the president's new media team has come under fire for asking citizens to report "fishy e-mails" about Obama's health care reform plan and for e-mail messages from David Axelrod that somehow went to people who did not sign up for them.So when the Executive Office of the President seeks a contractor to archive the usernames and possibly other data from social network users, it is certainly worth asking them why. We did. We have not...

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites. The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.” In the course of investigating procurement by the White House New Media office, NLPC discovered a 51-page solicitation of bids that was filed on Friday, August 21, 2009. Filed as Solicitation...

(CNSNews.com) – Anyone who posts comments on the White House’s Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter pages will have their statements captured and permanently archived by the federal government, according to a plan that the White House is now seeking a contractor to carry out. The Executive Office of the President is looking for a private contractor to capture and archive comments and information posted on social networking and new media sites where the White House has established a presence. While the Presidential Records Act (PRA) generally requires that the administration preserve information generated by the president and his staff, the...

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites. The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”In the course of investigating procurement by the White House New Media office, NLPC discovered a 51-page solicitation of bids that was filed on Friday, August 21, 2009. Filed as Solicitation #...

Judging by some of the responses I've received to the previous posts in this health care series, I think it's important to make it clear that the illustrative features I talked about in my last post are not suggested components of some government run health care scheme. I oppose the government takeover of the health sector. It should also be clear from the ideas I've outlined that I oppose perpetuating the third party payer system in any form, whether as a single payer government run approach, or in continuation of the existing private corporate structure. One of the keys to...

Elizabeth Ann Thrasher is being prosecuted under the Missouri felony harassment statute passed in the wake of the Lori Drew case. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports: Elizabeth A. Thrasher, 40, [was involved in] online [bickering] with the 17-year-old daughter of a woman Thrasher's ex-husband was dating.... The teen [then] sent a MySpace message to Thrasher, telling her to grow up. Thrasher ... then created a listing on Craigslist's Casual Encounters section, investigators said. The listing included the teen's picture, employer, e-mail address and cell phone number. Banas said the posting's language would lead people to believe it was an invitation...

I’m highly insulted that I have to discover the purported real age of the president of the United States of America on that official government source, his MySpace page. However by this correction alone Barack Hussein Obama has just set in motion events that will rock this Nation to its core. This is a blockbuster revelation. That’s right! With all of the Obama supports who have called everyday Americans the Liberal coined pejorative “birthers” because we have dared to ask to see some solid evidence about events surrounding Obama’s birth (as if these sycophants knew the truth) the shamelessness of...

If President Obama was born in Hawaii was it while the islands yet remained a territory of the United States? A new wrinkle in the dispute over his birth – and whether he is eligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution's requirement that the president be none other than a "natural born" citizen – appeared today when Obama's MySpace page confirmed his age is 52. That would mean if he was born on the islands that now make up the state of Hawaii it would have been during the archipelago's days as a territory for the United States, the...

An immediate ban on commercial social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace went into effect for all Marine Corps personnel using the unclassified Marine Corps Enterprise Network (MCEN) NIPRNET this past Monday. This ban does not affect the personal use of social media by Marines on their own private computers or wired devices. But perhaps it should. The ban went into effect — according to the memo — because the “very nature of social networking sites creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage.” The stated...

And other social networking sites as the Pentagon weighed a similar prohibition over cybersecurity concerns. The Marines had already banned the use of social media on military networks but issued a more detailed order this week defining which sites were out of bounds and noting possible exceptions to the rule, a Marine Corps spokesman, Lieutenant Craig Thomas said. "These Internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," the Marine Corps said in an order posted on its website. "The...

The U.S. Marines have banned Twitter and Facebook. That the Marines have banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and various other social networking sites comes in an article from Wired magazine. The Marines banned Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as part of a move to protect their systems and personnel, and further keep themselves protected from online influences. The ban isn't limited to just those sites, but many social media and social networking web-sites. The Marines' ban will last at least one year, and has been drawn up as a response to the ever growing concern that these sites can be a dangerous...

Websites such as Facebook and MySpace encourage teenagers to view friendship as a "commodity" and are leading them to suicide, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has warned. Archbishop Vincent Nichols said the sites are leading teenagers to build "transient relationships" which leave them unable to cope when their social networks collapse. He said the internet and mobile phones were "dehumanising" community life. His comments follow the death of 15-year-old schoolgirl who took a fatal overdose of painkillers last week after being bullied on Bebo, another networking site. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the...

Speaking at this week’s Personal Democracy Forum in New York, boyd said that even among people with access to the Net, long-held social divisions of race, class, and income are starting to play out online, particularly among teens now starting to choose which social network they prefer, MySpace or Facebook. “Social media don’t eradicate social divisions,” says boyd, an expert in NextGen behaviors for Microsoft and a senior fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “[Social media are] making the old social divisions obvious in totally new ways.”

A couple of days ago I discovered that when I clicked on MY PROFILE , somebody else's profile which hasn't been accessed in 4 year appears . There is no problem with my HOME page , and all my info / pic links / etc are still in EDIT PROFILE . I contacted MYSPACE but have not heard back from them as yet . Anybody got an idea as to what happened or what I can do about it ?

A Los Angeles federal judge has tentatively thrown out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who ended up committing suicide. In his ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge George Wu has acquitted Lori Drew of misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization. Wu says his ruling will become final when he issues it in writing. Drew was convicted in a trial, but the judge says that if she is to be found guilty of illegally accessing computers, anyone who has ever violated the social networking site's terms of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – MySpace, the social network owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, said it will cut 30 percent of its staff to lower costs as it struggles to stay popular in the face of rising competition. MySpace will be left with about 1,000 employees, it said in a statement released on Tuesday. The company declined to say how many people work at the service, but the percentage suggests that about 400 people will lose their jobs. The cuts, which were presaged in several blog reports in recent weeks, are the biggest move so far by new management at...

As employers make Google searches a routine part of the hiring process, college newspapers are seeing an increase in the number of alumni looking to have their names removed from articles they wrote or were quoted in during their college years. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a growing number of papers are being drawn into controversy about whether to grant alumni requests to rewrite a paper's historical record because certain articles or comments could make finding a job difficult or because they could create difficulties and conflicts of interest in the future. The trend is just one of...

A man who rode his bicycle 180 miles to have sex with a Scranton teen he met on the Internet will serve one to four years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday. William Wagner, 26, 414 Battery Drive, Havre de Grace, Md., met the 15-year-old girl through the social networking Web site MySpace. In June, he biked to Scranton to meet the teen. In February, Mr. Wagner pleaded guilty to unlawful contact with a minor. He slept at Pine Brook baseball field, Sanderson Avenue and Green Place, while he was in Scranton. He took the teen to the baseball field...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Militants and hate groups increasingly use social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube as propaganda tools to recruit new members, according to a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The report released on Wednesday noted a 25 percent rise in the past year in the number of "problematic" social networking groups on the Internet. The report was based on "over 10,000 problematic Web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism." "Every aspect of the Internet is...

London, England (CNS) - Britain's Prince Charles is opening a MySpace account. The 60-year-old royal has turned to the social networking site to warn young people about the dangers of deforestation and climate change.His page is expected to explain why it is vital to preserve rain forests and how cutting down trees emits more carbon in a year than all the cars, planes, boats and trucks in the world.Speaking about his decision to take his eco-crusade online, Charles said: "One of the internet's strengths is that it can enable diverse communities to come together to ensure that everybody's views and...

The most tech savvy administration ever. The White House is now using communication methods that are popular amongst 7th grade girls and sexual predators. We wrote earlier this week about the White House's new Flickr photo account, now consider that the White House now has account on My Space, Twitter, and Facebook. How well is this "communication tool" working? Here's some comments I found from people at the White House's My Space page: "thanx for the add! if you dont mind my sayin so chief i think we ought to legalize marijuana, it would deflate the drug cartels, including the...

Hulu is getting new content and cash from Disney, giving it an impressive line-up of broadcast TV content for its online video site. This announcement comes barely a week after Google’s YouTube video site announced partnership deals with a slew of movie and television studios, including Lion’s Gate and Starz. The deal is a significant boost to Hulu as it seeks to leapfrog Fox Interactive, which owns MySpace, for the second spot in viewership behind YouTube, and could eventually help it overtake the overall market leader. But it still has quite a way to go before that happens.Chris Dale, a...

SNIPPET: "Seems the FBI was concerned about threats - which included a pledge to turn a tax protest into a blood bath - allegedly made by a Twitter user identified as CitizenQuasar. The FBI arrested Daniel Knight Hayden, 52. Hayden’s penultimate tweet at 12:49 AM on April 15 returned to the subject of his martyrdom. “Locked AND loaded for the Oklahoma State Capitol. Let’s see what happens.” The FBI arrested (.pdf) him at his home later that day, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oklahoma City, which otherwise declined to comment on the case."

Rumors proved to be unfounded. HURRICANE W.Va.-- Rumors spread through text messaging and MySpace created some confusion Monday morning at Hurricane High School. School officials say students have been spreading rumors about a threat at the school. They aren't saying the exact nature of the threat. The Hurricane Police Department along with agents from the FBI and the Bureua of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated the claims. They proved to be unfounded, officials said. A police officer was stationed outside of the school today to ease concerns.

LONDON: Fresh research has confirmed what many parents and teachers already feared: social networking sites are damaging students’ academic performance. The researchers discovered that the majority of students who use Facebook every day are underachieving by as much as an entire grade compared with those who shun the site. In order to reach their conclusion, researchers discovered how students who spend their time accumulating friends, chatting and “poking” others on the site may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work. “Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying,” the...

A UNIVERSITY is offering a master's degree in Facebook, MySpace and Twitter but it will cost students more than $9000. For £4400 (49075) Birmingham City University in the UK will teach students how to blog, set up podcasts and make the most of the social media websites for marketing. "It's not for freaks or IT geeks. The tools learned on this course will be accessible to many people," convenor Jon Hickman told The Daily Mail. "It will definitely appeal to students looking to go into professions including journalism and PR." But sudent Jamie Waterman, said it would be a waste...

SNIPPET: "Millions are participating in online social networks in an age of unprecedented self-surveillance (sousveillance). And these sites are pushing criminal investigation into uncharted waters. Two of the most popular networking sites are MySpace and Facebook, each of which boasts over 100 million users."

... A few weeks ago, he posted a description of his mood on a MySpace account. “Devious,” he wrote. The next day, a man accused of carrying a loaded gun would go on trial in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn — and in large part, the case rested on the credibility of Vaughan Ettienne, bodybuilder, Internet user and arresting officer. ...

GwdToday.com is reporting that 37-year-old Angel Simmons Lindle was arrested Friday and charged with second degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor.

Each year, the number of young Internet users continues to grow, as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace become more popular and information for school and research are more accessible. But if parents aren't careful, the Internet can also be a threat to children.

Okay... I can't take it anymore. Who are all these so-called "Christians" with MySpace pages that are filled with profanity, filthy song lyrics, sexual inuendo, and some blatant sexual come-ons, and so forth? What kind of witness is that? Well, truth is I don't believe these people are Christians (you shall know them by their fruit) and I know of no truly repentant and on-their-knees Christian that would ever put that on there. They are smearing the name of Christ. It just infuriates me. One of my nieces is doing this very thing and I'm ashamed for her. She was...

Link only per copyright.

A host of celebrities joined Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to air their 2009 New Year's resolutions and pledges to the new U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday. Stars like Eva Mendes, Nicole Richie, Ashlee Simpson, Courteney Cox, Eva Longoria Parker all agreed to make pledges on camera for a new MySpace.com campaign backed by Kutcher. Inspired by the new President, in the video Simpson pledged to be "a great mother," Mendes offered to "volunteer more of my time to help children battling serious illnesses," and Longoria Parker promised to "plant 500 trees this year to help our planet." Kutcher,...

Police thwart plot to shoot up schoolFriday, January 9, 2009 BREVARD, N.C. — Police in western North Carolina say they have derailed a 15-year-old's plot to shoot up his school, thanks to a tip from a teen in New York. Transylvania County Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Brian Kreigsman said Thursday the suspect told a 16-year-old girl on Jan. 2 about plans to "shoot up" Brevard High School. The pair were chatting on the popular MySpace social networking Web site. Kreigsman said the girl notified her local sheriff's office, which contacted authorities in North Carolina. Officials there found a computer and DVD...

Anthony De La Rosa's public MySpace profile might cause employers or college admissions officers to flinch: The 18-year-old listed "weed" among his interests and posted a photo of himself labeled "joint," in which he looks almost ready to smoke one. Still, the Milwaukee resident doesn't regret broadcasting his behavior online. De La Rosa said, "I do not care what anybody thinks about me." Or who sees his page. But a new study co-led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher suggests not all MySpace users realize how public their so-called private lives are - and many made changes when warned about...

Don't be afraid,you can admit it;)

Conviction on lesser charges in MySpace case Mother guilty of misdemeanor charges in cyber-bullying in which girl died updated 4:38 p.m. CT, Wed., Nov. 26, 2008 A Missouri mother on trial in a landmark cyberbullying case was convicted Wednesday of only three minor offenses for her role in a mean-spirited Internet hoax that apparently drove a 13-year-old girl to suicide. The federal jury could not reach a verdict on the main charge against 49-year-old Lori Drew — conspiracy — and rejected three other felony counts of accessing computers without authorization to inflict emotional harm. Instead, the panel found Drew guilty...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A jury has convicted a Missouri woman of three minor offenses for her role in an Internet hoax that apparently drove a 13-year-old girl to suicide. The Los Angeles federal court jury on Wednesday rejected felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress on young Megan Meier. However, the jury found defendant Lori Drew guilty of three counts of the lesser offense of accessing a computer without authorization. Each count is punishable by up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. The jurors could not reach a verdict on a...

LOS ANGELES — The Missouri mother at the center of the MySpace cyber-bullying case was convicted of lesser misdemeanor charges Wednesday. The news came as the jury told the court it reached verdicts in just three of the four counts in the federal case. Jurors said they can't reach a verdict on Count 1, which alleges conspiracy to access a computer involved in interstate or foreign communications without authorization.

While chief marketing officers are intrigued by social networking sites Facebook and MySpace as potential marketing vehicles, actually using them is another matter, according to the results of a new survey. More than one-quarter (27%) of consumer and B-to-B chief marketing executives surveyed online in late October by GfK Roper Public Relations and Media for marketing services firm Epsilon identified social networking and word-of-mouth as the tools they would most like to introduce to their marketing mix to compensate for anticipated budget cuts--ahead of all other traditional or digital marketing channels. However, more than half (55%) of the 180 responding...

A Petaluma high school teacher was arrested Saturday morning after allegedly setting up an illicit date with a person he believed was a 15-year-old girl, police and prosecutors said. Scott Eugene Dietlin, 34, a teacher at Casa Grande High School, was arrested in San Mateo on Saturday after allegedly showing up for a date with "Jackie," a teenage persona created on MySpace by two teen boys, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. The 15-year-old San Mateo County boys posted the online profile as a joke, Wagstaffe said. When Dietlin allegedly contacted "Jackie" in April, the boys...

LOS ANGELES – The grieving mother of a Missouri girl told a jury Wednesday how her daughter hanged herself with a belt after receiving cruel messages on her MySpace account, some of which were from a boy whose identity was later revealed to have been invented by a neighbor. Tina Meier recounted how "Josh Evans" interacted online with her 13-year-old daughter, Megan, during the first day of the trial against Lori Drew, who is accused of taking part in the Internet hoax that prosecutors say led to Megan's suicide. Meier said after a name-calling exchange between Megan, "Josh," and two...