November 2011

A crew of Internet bandits devised an international scheme to hijack more than 4 million computers worldwide, manipulating traffic on Netflix, the Internal Revenue Service and other popular websites to generate at least $14 million in fraudulent advertising revenue, federal prosecutors said.

About 500,000 computers in the United States were infected with malware, including those owned by ordinary users, educational institutions, nonprofit groups and government agencies like NASA, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. Bharara called the case "the first of its kind" because the suspects set up their own "rogue servers" to secretly reroute Internet traffic to sites where they had a cut of the advertising revenue. Six of the seven people named in the indictment were Estonians who were in custody in that country, and extradition was being sought, prosecutors said. A Russian remained at large. As part of the takedown, the FBI disabled the rogue servers without interrupting Internet service, authorities said.

On November 4, the Federal Communications Commission’s Consumer Advisory Committee adopted recommendations regarding Lifeline/Link Up reform, public broadcasting funding, and the November 9 test of the Emergency Alert System.

Concerning Lifeline and Link-Up programs, CAC said that that if the FCC wants to reach all intended participants of these programs, any “one per household” rule, if adopted, must legitimately encompass consumers that may be living in group homes or who are homeless. CAC recommends that the FCC not limit but rather expand eligibility and improve service for the low-income community.

The CAC recommended that the FCC, in its interaction with the Administration and with the Congress, support continued federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting so as to enable CPB to continue its support for public broadcast stations, including those providing service to rural, tribal, native, and disability communities.

On the EAS test, the CAC recommended that in addition to assessing the reliability and effectiveness of the public alerting mechanisms of EAS, the FCC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency specifically examine (1) the effectiveness of its outreach efforts to the public (including outreach targeted to persons with hearing, vision, and dual sensory loss disabilities); and (2) the accessibility of information available to consumers (including persons with hearing disabilities) during the National EAS test. The CAC further recommended that FEMA, the FCC, and other EAS partners specifically conduct targeted outreach to, and design future EAS tests and information, to meet the needs of consumers with hearing, vision, and dual sensory loss disabilities.

Public interest in the presidential campaign showed no increase this week, despite the news media’s increasing coverage of sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain.

About one-in-five Americans (22%) say they followed news about the 2012 candidates very closely, little changed from a week earlier (21%), according to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted Nov. 3-6 among 1,005 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Still, the Cain allegations registered widely with the public: 75% say they heard a lot (51%) or a little (24%) about the accusations that Cain sexually harassed several women in the late 1990s when he served as president of the National Restaurant Association. In terms of the week’s top stories, as many followed news about the economy most closely (14%) as followed campaign news most closely (16%). Another 12% cite news about the freak snowstorm that hit the East Coast as their top story. Meanwhile, coverage of the campaign accounted for 29% of all news coverage, up from only 18% a week earlier, according to a content analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). About two-thirds of campaign coverage dealt with the controversy surrounding Cain and its potential impact on the race (20% of all coverage).

As research suggests more than half of children ages 5-8 have used a mobile device such as a smart phone, iPod touch, or iPad, a new report offers recommendations for how policy makers and education leaders can take a more robust and modern approach to helping young students learn and develop in the digital age.

“Take a Giant Step,” from the Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council, finds that the integration of innovative, research-based training models for early childhood educators is a key element missing in the design of high-quality early learning programs. In light of recent reports—such as Common Sense Media’s “Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America“—revealing that today’s children consume up to 7 hours of media daily, some organizations, including the National Association for the Education of Young Children, are updating their professional practices to guide learning and development for today’s digital-age children. “Take a Giant Step” says policy makers can learn from these efforts, and it calls on teacher preparation programs to integrate into their curricula more research on how young children learn. It also recommends that early learning programs take more advantage of free digital assets created by public media (such as PBS) to reach a new generation of digital-savvy learners.