SA Police Service Website Hacked

With some disastrous consequences:

Nearly 16 000 whistle-blowers have had their personal details published online after a cyberattack on the SAPS website.

Hundreds of police officers’ names, ranks and contact details were also uploaded by the hacker, who said the attack was in retaliation for the Marikana shootings.

The hacker appeared to have performed a data dump last Friday when complainants’ details were downloaded from the SAPS website’s e-mail server and uploaded on to another site.

Many of the 15 767 e-mails were detailed with incidents of crimes such as rape, murder and robbery, as well as the names and contact details of the whistle-blowers.

The hacker took to social media to claim the online attack.

“South African Police saps.gov.za e-mails Leaked… #OpMarikanaMiners We Did Not Forget #Anonymous,” tweeted @DomainerAnon.

His profile picture is a man wearing a mask, similar to that used by the anarchist character “V” in the film V for Vendetta. He says he is from “OZ (Australia) but currently on walkabouts”.

The mask is based on the face of Guy Fawkes, the best-known member of the gang of men who tried to blow up the House of Lords in London in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Above the list of the officers’ details, a message reads: “The reason for this action is to serve as a reminder to the government regarding the murders of 34 protesting miners outside the Marikana platinum mine by police. To date no officers have been brought to justice… This situation will NOT be tolerated.”

By 8am on Wednesday, the data had been downloaded 330 times.

“I’m very worried about this,” one of the whistle-blowers told The Star, on condition of anonymity.

He had sent an e-mail to the police saying that the police were not properly investigating the rape of a 14-year-old girl in KZN.

He said he was still in the dark about the investigation.

National police spokesman Brigadier Phuti Setati said this morning that there would be a media briefing at 1pm today.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” said Dr Johan Burger, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.

He said it was a “huge breach of police security systems” and could have serious ramifications for whistle-blowers if the information fell into the hands of criminals…

 

What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

 

Stats for the Day…

So far… (Just in case you thought this blog wasn’t that widely read.)

[...]

Nice to be back.

Sorry if that disappoints some…

 

More on Blogging Priests

Fr Anthony Chadwick reflects:

Fr Stephen Smuts has reflected one of my closely-held convictions, that blogging can be a true Christian ministry… As I have experienced, the blog (or for that matter other social media like Facebook and Twitter) can be used for good or evil. If used for the purpose of pastoral ministry and Christian teaching, then it is excellent and should be encouraged by bishops and religious superiors.

It is spiritually and emotionally wearing, especially when we have to deal with conflict, in an environment where a person would be more evil or lacking in empathy in his or her expression than he or she would dare in a face-to-face situation. In a way, this is reassuring to the priest who asks himself whether blogging really is a true ministry…

You can read the whole post here.

There are more and more of us priests doing it and writing blogs on our own account as well as on behalf of our Churches. Many bishops are only beginning to discover what the Internet really is and what it is not. Church websites are vital, but the dynamism of the blog is what keeps it interesting to follow…

He understands the concept and medium of blogging well.

 

Priests on the Blogs

A thorny issue… for some… Priests and blogs. The new media. The room for evangelism is tremendous.  Furthering the cause of Christ. For others, this is simply a no-brainer:

The Pope Emeritus gets it.

“Priests stand at the threshold of a new era… as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, priests are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word…

Give a ‘soul’ to the fabric of communications that makes up the ‘Web’.”

Patriarch Kirill gets it.

“Blogs and social networks give us new opportunities for the Christian mission” at a time when the Church comes under attacks more often than before, the patriarch said. “Not to be present there means to display our helplessness and lack of care for the salvation of our brothers.”

“Now that social media shows a huge interest, although not always a sound one, in church life, our duty is to convert it for a good cause, to create conditions for young people to know about Christ, know the truth about the life of people inside the Church,”

These guys (Anglican Catholics) get it.

Speaking of the Anglican Catholics, Fr Ed Bakker, today, asks the question: How should one behave as a Priest on a blog?

With so many Priests being involved in blogging I think it would be good if we had a guideline how to behave , especially when we deal with those, who just happen to disagree with us and make comments, which perhaps are not appropriate…

For the rest, go here.

He concludes with the Collect of Purity. We need a lot more purity and charity, all-around.

Again, the cause of Christ and His Gospel must be furthered. There are souls to be saved!

Blog, Priests, blog!

The Church should be building platforms of social influence that extend well beyond the four walls of the Sunday experience.

All God’s people: Go forth into the digital world and proclaim the good news!

 

So I See, Google Reader

Is to retire soon! I get most of my feeds there.

News that service will be taken down sparks online petitions and protest site.

Google is killing off Google Reader, its less-than-mainstream RSS aggregation tool, citing declining popularity.

The service will be taken down on 1 July. In a Google blogpost on the company’s “spring clean”, the firm’s senior vice-president of technical infrastructure, Urs Hölzle, said Reader launched in 2005 to help people track updates on their favourite sites, and it will be retired despite a loyal following.

“Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months,” he wrote.

RSS, which stands for either rich site summary or really simple syndication, became a familiar fixture on news sites in particular, encouraging users to subscribe to updates in their RSS reader via its distinctive orange button.

I should protest too!

BTW has anybody got any alternative aggregator suggestions? Just in case…

 

Pope’s Twitter Success Praised as Evangelisation Breakthrough

CNA:

Pope Benedict’s mass of 2.5 million followers in eight languages during his first month on Twitter has one Vatican priest calling the pontiff’s online presence “a new frontier” of evangelization.

Father Paolo Padrini, a collaborator of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said it is good that the Pope has so many followers, but it even more important that the Pope “seeks to co-exist and share on Twitter.”

“Being present in social media is evangelizing, if just for the fact that he is present with his words,” he told CNA Jan. 11.

“It’s a great joy to see the Pope’s words being disseminated, a joy that is held by all believers.”

Twitter is a social media service that allows users to send out 140-character messages, called “tweets,” to other users who follow their accounts. Followers and others may then share these tweets with their own followers with a “re-tweet.”

The Pope’s first tweet on his personal account went out on Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Over 64,000 people retweeted his introductory message on his English-language account “Pontifex,” while over 33,000 did so for his Spanish-language account “Pontifex_es.”

As of Jan. 11, he has sent out only 21 tweets. He has shared his favorite memory of Christmas, asked for prayers for an end to the Syria conflict and exhorted others to look to Jesus Christ.

“Following Christ’s example, we have to learn to give ourselves completely,” the Pope said on Twitter Jan. 9. “Anything else is not enough.”

Anyone on Twitter may interact with any other user. Those who have replied to the Pope range from the devout, the appreciative and the inquisitive to the flippant, irreverent and even obscene.

The Pope’s followers are numerous indeed. His English-language account has over 1.4 million subscribers, his Spanish-language account has 575,000 and his Italian-language account has 265,000.

His tweets also go out in French, German, Polish, Portuguese and Arabic. His Arabic-language account is the least popular but still has a respectable 18,000 followers.

By comparison, President Barack Obama has acquired 25 million followers in almost five years. The Dalai Lama has about six million followers on Twitter…

The Pope’s Twitter following quickly surpassed Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who has 72,000 followers.

Claire Diaz Ortiz, Manager of Social Innovation at Twitter, said the company is “thrilled” any time a leader joins their network to connect with his or her followers.

“For the Pope, the decision will be a way for him to better connect his flock of 1.2 billion. That many of those interactions can now take place on Twitter is an inspiring fact for believers everywhere,” she told CNA Jan. 11.

She said that the company has seen a wide range of spiritual leaders form large followings on Twitter.

“Many religious leaders have embraced Twitter to minister to their community, listen to their concerns and share meaningful content,” she said.

Diaz said the Pope’s Twitter debut showed an “incredible emphasis” on internationalization…

Fr. Padrini, who has developed and implemented pontifical council communications initiatives like the website pope2you.net and the iPhone app iBreviary, said that he thinks the Pope’s success on Twitter is “major.”

“It has really warmed my heart. It’s a beautiful thing. But I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that it would be successful,” he said.

Judging from what he has read and heard in informal conversations, he thinks the Pontifical Council for Social Communications must be “very happy” that Pope Benedict’s communications are “more widespread than ever thanks to social media.”

The priest was optimistic about Twitter as a medium, even though little can be said in a single tweet.

“One hundred and forty characters are few but the number of years of Jesus on earth were also few,” he said. “The important thing is to be present and to do so with quality.”

Fr. Padrini added that the Pope has helped inspire others on the internet.

“I feel that because of the Pope’s presence online, all of the work of all of us who work in evangelization online is also valued.”

 

Patriarch Kirill Urges Christian Bloggers to Stop Insulting Each Other

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has said that the diversity of ideas inherent in church circles sometimes assumes absurd forms in the Internet environment.

“In the web space groups of church liberals and conservatives are appearing that are not looking for the truth, divine truth but a means of finding fault, stinging each other. This is a very sad tendency,” he said at a diocesan assembly in Moscow ahead of New Year.

He said that divisions and feuds within the church “are evidence of infantility, childishness in faith which sometimes assumes ruffian forms.”

“But if for the media format of contacts such phenomena are quite natural as they comply with modern ideas of the freedom of though, they are deeply alien to our centuries-old church tradition, as they are alien to the very spirit of Evangelical teaching,” the Patriarch said.

Source

 

Websites:The New Front Door for Every Church

Speaking of technology, this is something we need to accept:

… People don’t use the Yellow Pages to find a church anymore, nor do they glance at the church ads in Saturday’s newspaper. They’re not going to drive around town looking for the most attractive church building, either. Potential guests to your church will most likely Google for churches in their community and check out their websites. If your website is ugly, outdated, neglected or amateurish, discerning church shoppers will likely pass you by before ever setting foot in the real door of your church.

I remain convinced that personal invitation is the best way of attracting new people to your church, whether that invitation is to worship, join a small group, or participate in an outreach project. But even the friends, family members, co-workers and neighbors whom you invite will likely also check out your church’s website…

Read the whole piece here.

 

 

Welcome to 2013

Happy New Year!

Thank you to all those who read and interacted with this weblog.

I do hope FrStephenSmuts.com continues to be a useful resource in 2013.