Monday, April 7, 2008

Reported Dollar Loss From Internet Crime Reaches All Time High

For Immediate Release
April 3, 2008

Washington, D.C. — According to the 2007 Internet Crime Report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 206,884 complaints of crimes perpetrated over the Internet during 2007. Of the complaints received, more than 90,000 were referred to law enforcement around the nation, amounting to nearly $240 million in reported losses. This represents a $40 million increase in reported losses from complaints referred to law enforcement in 2006. All complaints received by IC3 are accessible to federal, state, and local law enforcement to support active investigations, trend analysis, and public outreach and awareness efforts.

“The Internet presents a wealth of opportunity for would be criminals to prey on unsuspecting victims, and this report shows how extensive these types of crime have become,” said FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James E. Finch. “What this report does not show is how often this type of activity goes unreported. Filing a complaint through IC3 is the best way to alert law enforcement authorities of Internet crime.”

Although Internet auction fraud was the most widely reported complaint, others cited in the report include fraudulent activity such as non-delivery of purchases and credit/debit card fraud, and non-fraudulent activity such as computer intrusions, spam/unsolicited e-mail, and child pornography. In an effort to raise public awareness, the report also describes the characteristics of commonly reported scams such as those involving the purchase or sale of pets, check scams, e-mail spam, and online dating fraud.

IC3 is a joint operation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center to serve as a vehicle to receive cyber crime complaints from private citizens and industry, and to develop and refer complaints to law enforcement. The National White Collar Crime Center, a Bureau of Justice Assistance program, provides a nationwide support system for agencies involved in the prevention, investigation, and prosecution of economic and high-tech crimes, and supports and partners with other appropriate entities in addressing homeland security initiatives related to economic and high-tech crimes. More information about the National White Collar Crime Center is available at http://www.nw3c.org/.

The 2007 Internet Crime Complaint Report is available at www.ic3.gov/media/annualreports.aspx. To receive the latest information about the FBI, visit http://www.fbi.gov/ to sign up for e-mail alerts.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Global warming? It's natural, say experts

One of my favorite topics is Global Warming, I found a web site with a number of good articles on the subject. I do wonder why you need to travel to a Newspaper in another country or the Internet to find this kind of information. Seems to me that US Newspapers missed this point of view or did they?

Global warming? It's natural, say experts
by BARRY WIGMORE
Last updated at 22:36pm on 13th September 2007

Some scientists have suggested global warming is due to a natural 1,500-year cycleGlobal warming is a natural event and the effects are not all bad, two respected researchers claimed yesterday.

Authors Dennis Avery and Fred Singer looked at the work of more than 500 scientists and argue that these experts are doubtful the phenomenon is caused by man-made greenhouse gases.

Climate change is much more likely to be part of a cycle of warming and cooling that has happened regularly every 1,500 years for the last million years, they say.
And the doom and gloom merchants, who point to the threat to the polar bear from the melting North Pole, are wrong, the authors say.

Even if our climate is changing, it is not all bad, they suggest, because past cold periods have killed twice as many people as warm periods. Mr Avery said: "Not all of these researchers who doubt man-made climate change would describe themselves as global warming sceptics but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see.
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people.
"It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine, plagues and disease."
Recent flooding in the UK has fuelled fears about global warming, but scientists are debating what has caused it
Mr Singer said: "We have a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it, except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events.
"The models only reflect the warming, not its cause."
The most recent global warming was between 1850 and 1940, the authors say, and was therefore probably not caused by man-made greenhouse gases.

Historical evidence of the natural cycle includes a record of floods on the Nile going back 5,000 years; Roman wine production in Britain in the first century AD; and thousands of museum paintings that portray sunnier skies during what is called the Medieval Warming, and more clouds during the Little Ice Age.

The authors looked at a raft of studies which, they claim, undermine the "scare-mongering" by those blaming man for destroying the planet.
In the current warming cycle, they say there is evidence that storms and droughts have been fewer and milder; corals, trees, birds, mammals and butterflies have adapted well; and sea levels are not rising significantly.

Polar bears are threatened by global warming
Mr Avery is a fellow of the Hudson Institute, an independent U.S. thinktank that tends to side with big business.
He was a senior agricultural analyst at the State Department when Ronald Reagan was president. Mr Singer is a climate physicist.
The pair spent months analysing scientific reports for their book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, to counter claims made by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth.
They argue that variations in the Sun's radiation have far more influence on our climate than humans.
Mr Singer said: "This can all be explained by the Sun's activity."
He added: "The number of the Sun's cosmic rays hitting the Earth affect the number of low, cooling clouds that reflect solar heat back into space, amplifying small variations in the intensity of the Sun."

Here is a link to more information on Global Warming.

http://www.savage-productions.com/debunking_global_warming.html

Fire