So far, the New York City Police Department has made 992 arrests connected to the Occupy Wall Street protests. These arrests have cost the city $3.4 million in overtime for police officers.

The city is certainly facing litigation as a result of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which will also cost the city in both court costs and damages awarded.

Youtube had agreed to remove all videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, but their attempts has been futile. After their effort to remove the content from the website, you can still find hundreds of videos of the cleric that contain everything from standard scriptural commentary or clerical advice to more radical indoctrinating calls for terrorism and jihad. The video content has been posted repeatedly as copies. This struggle is magnified when you consider the vast array of sources online for posting such video content–distribution of any type of content from pirated music to terrorist indoctrination videos can be spread quickly, speedily and with innumerable copies.

Earlier this week, the web hosting company for the website, Amazon, canceled it’s account on the EC2 cloud computing environment, saying that the work of Wikileaks may have contributed to the endangerment of innocent people.

Shortly after, the domain name provider, EveryDNS.net,  for the website terminated it’s domain name.

Wikileaks.org had become victim to massive cyber attacks, which may have been conducted by nations. As a result of these distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), approximately 500,000 other websites were affected.

Paypal joined the attack on Wikileaks by suspending the website’s account, which was it’s primary fund raising tool. The suspension of Paypal’s service was stated to be on account of: “violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.”

Facebook and Google were among the top companies, with whom Director Mueller met on his trip.

The proposal would expand upon a 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, and impose regulations on Internet companies. Currently, Internet service providers are required to immediately respond to wiretap orders. This is not true for Internet companies, and this new proposal would change that entirely.

Some, including the Commerce Department, feel that this could hurt innovation and, by extension, hurt the US innovation-driven economy.

Information independence is becoming a greater concern and need for people, as privacy issues come to light in the news and at the dinner table (so to speak).

Lifehacker recently produced a video (displayed below), which shows how to export all your Facebook friends’ email addresses using Yahoo’s recently awarded access to Facebook data. After exporting your Facebook contacts, you can then freely migrate to another provider.

Birke Baehr -”what’s Wrong With Our Food System? And How Can We Make A Difference?”
Ted Talks: The Next Generation

From the series: Teenagers Inspiring Positive Change

“They are the next generation of thinkers, artists, scientists, social activists and entrepreneurs.”

Some highlights:

• Prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.
• Stops insurance companies from canceling your policy if you get sick.
• removes barriers to receiving emergency care
• Allows the consumer to select any available participating primary care doctor
• Closes the book on annual dollar limits on coverage over the next three years.
• Prevents insurance companies from taking away coverage at the very moment when patients need it most

The Patient’s Bill of Rights will take place this Fall.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/patientsbillofrights/

25,000 barrels – Gulf BP spill

Facebook and other forms of social media have become vital places for politics, political support and interest, and building connection between users, campaigns and political figures.

Facebook already has a similar page for sports and celebrities.