Thanks for messing it up, CSI

CSI has left its viewers “simultaneously over-informed, under-informed and misinformed about forensic investigation science by prime-time cop shows.”

Now, since everyone and their mom watches it, they either go and sit on juries and bring their pseudo knowledge of and misinformation on forensics with them. OR they go and commit a crime and change their behavior so that “even as the criminals leave fewer traces of themselves behind, a backlog of cold-case evidence is building up.”

Result: an “unfortunate legal train wreck.” (BoingBoing)

Dear CSI: make up some blatantly wrong forensic scientific techniques and use ‘em in your show. Do us all a favor.

H/T: Rhetorican (via Insty). The Rhetorican has a popular blog on media, technology, and politics – give him a visit.

Iran allegedly tests new missiles

CNN: Iran has reportedly tested 5 new coast-to-sea and sea-to-sea missiles in a last stage of its military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf. The missiles allegedly were fired simultaneously and struck a single target at the same time.

Hossein Salami, Deputy Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard told Iranian media that the exercises were geared toward demonstrating Iran’s “strength, will and national resolve to defend independence and territorial integrity.”

16 arrested after attacks on Riverside County task force

@ nationalterroralert.com: On the heels of recent booby trap attacks on an anti-gang task force in Hemet, CA, Riverside County police made 16 arrests and seized 16 firearms after raiding 35 locations.

Hemet City Manager Brian Nakamura: “We’ve apprehended the individuals we believe are related to this crime.”

Can algorithms generate the best intelligence?

Can Iarpa’s “computational model enhance human predictive skills”? @ Wired Danger Room.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”: Mexican cartels join forces

AP: reports that long-time rival Sinaloa and Gulf cartels have reportedly joined forces with La Familia to combat the Zetas, a gang of hitmen that has grown into a drug trafficking organization with a reach extending into Central America.

Intelligence reports indicate the Gulf cartel has recruited its former rival, La Familia, to crush the Zetas gang in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of the anti-narcotics division of Mexico’s federal police.

Chinese ISP hacks internet (again)

ComputerWorld:

On Thursday morning, bad routing data from a small Chinese ISP called IDC China Telecommunication was re-transmitted by China’s state-owned China Telecommunications, and then spread around the Internet, affecting Internet service providers such as AT&T, Level3, Deutsche Telekom, Qwest Communications and Telefonica.

“There are a large number of ISPs who accepted these routes all over the world,” said Martin A. Brown, technical lead at Internet monitoring firm Renesys.

The bad routes may have simply caused all Internet traffic to these networks to not get through, or they could have been used to redirect traffic to malicious computers in China.

Data theft traced back to China

Joint Canadian and U.S. computer security experts have been spying on an espionage network for eight months, watching as the “spy operation they called ‘The Shadow Network’”  hacked into government office computers on various continents.

The attacks look like the work of a criminal gang based in Sichuan Province, but as with all cyberattacks, it is easy to mask the true origin…the spy operation appears to be different from the Internet intruders identified by Google and from a surveillance ring known as Ghostnet, also believed to be operating from China.

For more on this NYT story click here.

Residents of Mexican border town flee after cartel death threats

…”the cartel has threatened to kill children in schools across the border unless parents paid $5000 pesos.”

This is how bad it is getting. (@ nationalterroralert)

H/T: Rhetorican.

U.S. governors receive mail threats from extremist group

NYT: the DHS and FBI confirm that governors across the U.S. received letters from an extremist group calling itself the Guardians of the Free Republic “warning that they might be forcibly removed from office if they did not step down within three days.”

On its Web site, gotfr.com, the Guardians of the Free Republics sets forth a plan to “restore America.” It describes the plan as “a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war.”

This whole forcible-removal deal seems at odds with their plan of “behind the scenes reconstruction…without violence.” Sounds like a terrorist,* walks like a terrorist,* so I tag it as “terrorist.”

*Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d) defines “terrorism” as premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant (1) targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

Brits oust ageing spies who can’t handle social media

Guess they’d force a George Smiley to retire, then. Somehow that seems wrong.

Click here for story.