gotfork writes "As some Russians protest the results of the recent election, several commentators (Russian), have started looking at the results which are posted to the election commission web site and there's very strong evidence of fraud. Voter turnout correlates strongly with percent voting for the ruling party, United Russia, and there are a lot of polling stations with nearly 100% turnout and 100% voting for United Russia in some unusual places. The raw data is posted so you can do your own analysis."

angry tapir writes "Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, have released a draft version of the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act and posted a copy at KeeptheWebOpen.com. The act is intended to be an alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act."

tsu doh nimh writes "It appears that thousands of Twitter accounts created in advance to blast automated messages are being used to drown out Tweets sent by bloggers and activists this week who are protesting the disputed presidential elections in Russia. Trend Micro first observed on Wednesday the bogus tweets flooding popular hashtags being used by Russians protesting the election and the arrests of hundreds of protesters, including prominent anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny. Today, blogger Brian Krebs posted evidence that thousands of accounts apparently auto-created in mid-2011 were being used to flood more than a dozen hashtags connected to the protests, and appear to be all following each other and one master account, presumably the botnet controller."

First time accepted submitter loic_2003 writes "Iranian TV has broadcast footage of an advanced U.S. drone aircraft that Tehran says it brought down using electronic methods to override its controls. The BBC's James Reynolds watched the footage and said the fact that the drone appeared undamaged provided some evidence to support Tehran's version of events. The film was captioned 'RQ170 — advanced U.S. spy plane' and carried on the Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1 channel."

bonch writes "Less than 12 hours after the U.S. launched a virtual embassy for Iran, the Iranian government blocked access to the website, directing visitors to a government page proclaiming the site illegal. The White House condemned the move, calling Iran's internet policies 'an electronic curtain of surveillance and censorship around its people.'"

30 Republicans and 14 Democrats are running for president in the New Hampshire primary this year, the largest number since 1992 when 62 candidates ran. Among other factors, the meager $1,000 fee to get one's name on the ballot makes New Hampshire an attractive place for unusual candidates. This year we have home-builder John Davis who "has budgeted $500,000 to visit all 3,143 counties in the U.S. in a 43-foot live-on bus emblazoned with a photo of himself brandishing a femur-size wrench and the slogan 'Let's Fix America.'" The oddly hatted Vermin Supreme of Rockport, Mass. is a perennial candidate who plans to run on a platform of mandatory tooth brushing and zombie preparedness. Vermin also promises a pony for every American. From the article: "If ever there were a year for has-beens, wannabes and neverwillbes pushing oddball solutions to serious problems and serious palliatives for problems no one has yet postulated, this may be it."

jfruhlinger writes "One of the great banes of election season is that any politician can shell out a few pennies per voter and phone-spam thousands of people who'd rather not hear a recorded pitch. But turnabout's fair play, and now a service called reverse robocall will deliver your recorded message to elected officials as often as you'd like for a nominal fee. If there's a representative you'd like to call repeatedly, check them out."

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a report at Al Jazeera "The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has launched a virtual embassy for Iran in what it said was a bid to promote dialogue with the Iranian people in the absence of formal diplomatic ties. The web-based embassy went online on Tuesday in English and Farsi, offering visitors what it described as 'another perspective' for Iranians who 'remain hungry for information about the United States.' 'This website is not a formal diplomatic mission, nor does it represent or describe a real U.S. embassy accredited to the Iranian government,' the U.S. state department said in an introductory note. 'But, in the absence of direct contact, it can work as a bridge between the American and Iranian people.'"

First time accepted submitter Cmdrm writes with an article about Kaspersky Lab quitting the BSA over their (now lukewarm) support of SOPA. From the press release: "Kaspersky Lab would like to clarify that the company did not participate in the elaboration or discussion of the SOPA initiative and does not support it. Moreover, the company believes that the SOPA initiative might actually be counter-productive for the public interest, and decided to discontinue its membership in the BSA as of January 1, 2012.'"

dotancohen writes "Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading 'Hey' and 'Easy' on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country. Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures, ordered by French authorities after a tsunami ravaged Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant earlier this year, was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors."

K7DAN contributes this excerpt from the intersection of politics, regulation, and high technology: "Sen. Charles Grassley is standing by his threat to place a hold on two nominees to the Federal Communications Commission over concerns about a controversial new wireless network the agency has allowed to move forward. The Iowa Republican this week accused the FCC of refusing to comply with his requests for information on its discussions with Virginia company LightSquared regarding its next-generation national wireless network. Some fear the network would hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS systems — used by the military, farmers and others. Grassley also raised questions about the involvement of Harbinger, the hedge fund behind the project and founded by Democratic donor Philip Falcone."

theshowmecanuck submits this news from Russia, where "Websites which exposed violations in Russia's parliamentary elections were inaccessible Sunday in a hacking attack they said was aimed at preventing them revealing the extent of election day fraud." Further, says the linked article, "Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose United Russia party is expected to win Sunday's polls but with a reduced majority, has denounced non-governmental organisations like Golos, comparing them to the disciple Judas who betrayed Jesus. Russia has seen an upsurge in Internet penetration since the last elections in 2007, and analysts have said the explosion of critical material on the web poses one of the biggest challenges to United Russia's grip on power."

mrquagmire submits a link to the Jerusalem Post's report that an American reconnaissance UAV has been captured by the Iranian military. "'Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran,' Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying. 'The spy drone, which has been downed with little damage, was seized by the Iranian armed forces.' ... 'The Iranian military's response to the American spy drone's violation of our airspace will not be limited to Iran's borders any more,' Iran's Arabic language Al Alam television quoted the military source as saying, without giving details."

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that with 4,000 people killed in Syria since March, the government has banned the iPhone and threatened confiscation and prosecution for anyone found with an iPhone as the government tries to control information getting out of the country. Most international media have been banned from Syria since the uprising began, so footage of the violent crackdown has primarily come from activists filming material themselves and posting it on the internet. A mobile app for the iPhone called Souria Wa Bas (which roughly translates as 'Syria and That's All') covers the actions of opposition groups, including the Local Coordination Committees which claim to have members across the country and includes links for news, videos, and a map of opposition hot spots. The app's creators say they produced Souria Wa Bas to counter regime accounts of the opposition's activities. 'Under the fast-moving events in Syria and the deliberate attempts to distort the facts by some. We have compiled the most important Syrian news sources available,' say creators of the app at the Apple store."

Miniaturized stealth submarines purpose-built for smuggling are an impressive example of how much technological ingenuity is poured into evading the edicts of contemporary drug prohibition. Even more impressive to me, though, is news of the communications network that was just shut down by Mexican authorities, which covered much of northern Mexico. The system is attributed to the Zetas drug cartel, and consisted of equipment in four Mexican border states. "The military confiscated more than 1,400 radios, 2,600 cell phones and computer equipment during the operation, as well as power supplies including solar panels, according the Defense Department," says the article. Too bad — a solar-powered, visually unobtrusive, encrypted cell network sounds like something I'd like to sign up for. NPR also has a story.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue."

oik writes "NPR's Fresh Air this week had an interesting interview with Jeffrey Rosen, one of the authors of Constitution 3.0 , which addresses a number of issues to do with interpreting the US Constitution in the face of new technologies (both present and future). Many of the topics which he touches on come up on Slashdot a lot (including the GPS tracking cases). It's well worth listening to the program (link in the main page), of which the linked article is just a summary."

Harperdog writes "Politico has a piece on how the Patriot Act is interfering with U.S. firms trying to do business overseas in the area of cloud computing. Here's a quote: 'The Sept. 11-era law was supposed to help the intelligence community gather data on suspected terrorists. But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft: Put your data on a U.S.-based cloud, they warn, and you may just put it in the hands of the U.S. government.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Economics trumps the environment. The emission targets set by the Kyoto Protocol will expire next year, and negotiators are fighting to keep UN climate talks on track while efforts to save the Euro push the struggle to save the planet down the priority list. In the United States, seen as the biggest single obstacle to a new global climate deal, academic opinion says an 'iron law' means economics trumps the environment in times of crisis. Meanwhile, some leading voices on climate science have suggested the Kyoto Protocol be put to pasture, since clinging to hopes of a renewal of that agreement does more harm than good in achieving meaningful dialogue on how to fight climate change. When the agreement was negotiated in the 1990s, the world was more clearly divided into 'rich and poor' countries. However, China and India have seen unexpectedly strong economic growth since then, and currently make up 58 per cent of global emissions. 'Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that countries such as Japan, Canada and Russia adamantly refuse to assume new binding targets unless the other major economies at present outside Kyoto's reach — most notably, the United States and China — do so as well,' writes Elliot Diringer, executive vice-president of the U.S.-based Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. 'And for now, the odds of that happening are nil.'"

New submitter Talisman writes "Kay Hagan (D) from North Carolina has introduced a bill to the Senate that would eliminate overtime pay for IT workers." The bill is targeted at salaried IT employees and those whose hourly rate is $27.63 or more. It seems comprehensive in its description of what types of IT work qualify — everything from analysis and consulting to design and development to training and testing. The bill even uses "work related to computers" as one of the guidelines.