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USA Edition | Today Is Saturday, May 18, 2013 |
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Welcome To Newsroom Magazine
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Thanks To You We're Growing Faster Than Ever Before
Chances are you've noticed that Newsroom Magazine is a very different publication.
We care about journalism -- and we're well aware many other organizations do it far better than we.
Our editorial standards, rules of custody, and skeptical editing for everything we produce, disseminate or expose to public viewing reflects a seriousness of purpose.
Six years after our founding, Newsroom Magazine continues to evolve the online publishing and preservation model we pioneered.
There is good news to share: Newsroom Magazine is is thriving.
And some less good news: Our limited resources, both journalistically and financially, are limiting our expansion of content.
Online News Preservation
In the six years since its founding, Newsroom Magazine has extended the field of news publishing into previously uncharted areas.
We take a long range view of news -- one that considers both timeliness and historical merit.
What we do, and how we do it, was not possible in the print media era -- for our content is both timely and timeless in the sense that we share the power of immediacy with all online media plus the perseverance of an encyclopedia.
Newsroom Magazine's publishing model goes beyond immediacy -- for unlike the newspaper era -- what we publish is permanently preserved. And tagged, indexed, and constantly updated by automated sitemap sharing with Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Sogou, Ewatch, Alexa, Facebook, and others at home and far away.
All of our content, is meant to be preserved. Thanks to the capture and storage of our content at Google, including all updates and changes, and full collection archiving by the U.S. Internet Archives, everything we say, write, opine -- whether wise, foolish, or inconsequential-- is preserved.
Newsroom Magazine content remains forever online, searchable and accessible 24 hours a day worldwide.
What's Hot Is Rarely What Matters
What we publish today is rarely as timely as the more traditional publications and online newspapers. What we choose to publish, sometimes days or months after a story first breaks, or on a subject neglected by most commercial media, is chosen to reflect one aspect of an ongoing reality for long term preservation.
From a handful of English-only readers when we published our first article -- the 1958 Edward R. Murrow speech before the Radio Television Directors Association in Chicago -- we have grown and wizened about our responsibilities to our readers and our own limitations and shortfalls.
Our most read article so far this year, The Adventures Of Bernie In Wonderland, was published November 23rd, 2009. The article consists of the unexpurgated SEC interview of Harry Markopolos in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi swindle case. It is not very interesting reading and it is very long -- but we published it in the belief that what it revealed was important and unlikely to remain online in its original format.
Newsroom Magazine's Storehouse Grows Every Day
The number of publications who devote themselves to publishing credible, responsible and probative content for posterity has dwindled.
Today Newsroom Magazine publishes a storehouse of credible, probative and relevant content -- well over 5000 articles including commentaries, essays, definitions, photographs, stories, reviews, discussions, tutorials, and logical explanations.
Our readership is nearly three times was it was only last year. Few might come to our content for entertainment -- for our purpose is otherwise.
If You Publish, They Will Come
We are read on Capitol Hill, along K Street, and in the halls of government inside the beltway and around the world.
We are read daily on college campuses at home and abroad. We're visited from military ships at sea. We serve law-firms, major corporations, Wall Street the UK Parliament, state governments and cities with credible useful information.
Some of the world's most prestigious news organizations use Newsroom Magazine for fact-checking.
Government Information Unfiltered, Sometimes Imperfect
The amount of official news proffered each day by government, whether at home or abroad, is accelerating. Some of it newsworthy, most of it not.
Our job is to thoughtfully choose what's worthy of the attention of our readers.
About 1% of government issued news we receive each day qualifies as newsworthy. Only the most relevant, or reflective of government at its best, or at its worst, or evidence of overreach, or ineptitude makes it newsworthy.
We leave the issue of deciding which if any of these qualifications applies to what we publish up to the reader.
Formatted For People On The Go, Or On The Hunt
All of our government news content includes above the headline call out meant to convey the principal facts, action or information for those with little time to read a long document.
Our job is to carefully and skeptically choose relevant governmental content for our readers -- and to include the unexpurgated original source material, whose chain of custody we control.
Online Editorial Standards, Ethics And Purpose
Our commitment to time-honored journalistic standards and a clear statement about the ethics to which we agree to be held today and tomorrow, Newsroom Magazine began publication when the Internet was young -- 2006.
Our prime mission then, as now, is to publish non political ideas, definitions, essays and editorials.
To speak to the state of this honorable calling.
And to inform the public about those things, events and ideas that matter most to us all.
Today, tomorrow, forever.
Editorial Standards & Policies
CART consists of nearly 500 highly trained and certified special agents and other professional personnel working at FBI Headquarters, throughout our 56 field offices, and within the network of Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories across the nation. They analyze a variety of digital media—including desktop and laptop computers, CDs/DVDs, cell phones, digital cameras, digital media players, flash media, etc.—lawfully seized as part of our investigations.
Washington
Piecing Together Digital Evidence — The Computer Analysis Response Team
January 8, 2013
In a case involving the round-up of dozens of suspects indicted on public corruption and other charges, investigators were faced with processing large numbers of seized cell phones, desktop computers, and laptops belonging to the suspects. In another case, key evidence against a terror suspect arrested for attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction included data found on his computer. And after a U.S. Congresswoman was wounded and six people killed in Arizona, vital evidence was found on security camera footage, computers, and cell phones.
The Roots of CART
In 1989, the FBI—along with the Environmental Protection Agency and several state agencies—investigated multiple corruption and environmental allegations at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant (above) just outside Denver. A search of the facility was conducted. Two days into that search, investigators realized that documentary evidence crucial to the case may have been stored on numerous computer systems. A call to the technical services division at FBI Headquarters resulted in an ad hoc group of computer experts being put together and flown out to Denver to assist with the computer searches. Ultimately, the company that ran the facility pled guilty to 10 criminal counts of environmental law violations and paid a multi-million dollar fine.
At the time of the Rocky Flats investigation, the question of how to deal with computer evidence had already been percolating at the Bureau. Congress had passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986, giving us the authority to investigate computer intrusions, and the FBI Laboratory had been receiving a growing number of requests from the field to examine digital evidence.
In 1991, an FBI working group began meeting to examine the investigative issues surrounding computer crime. One of its recommendations was to create a team of specially trained computer specialists capable of examining digital evidence. And in 1992, CART—the Computer Analysis Response Team—was officially created.
Reflecting a trend that has become increasingly commonplace for law enforcement, all three of these cases involved the need to recover digital evidence. And our Computer Analysis Response Team, or CART, is the FBI’s go-to force for providing digital forensic services not only to our own investigators but also in some instances to our local, state, and federal partners.
CART consists of nearly 500 highly trained and certified special agents and other professional personnel working at FBI Headquarters, throughout our 56 field offices, and within the network of Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories across the nation. They analyze a variety of digital media—including desktop and laptop computers, CDs/DVDs, cell phones, digital cameras, digital media players, flash media, etc.—lawfully seized as part of our investigations.
During fiscal year 2012, CART—while supporting nearly 10,400 investigations—conducted more than 13,300 digital forensic examinations involving more than 10,500 terabytes of data. To put that last figure into perspective, it’s widely believed that the total printed content in the Library of Congress is equal to about 10 terabytes of data, so imagine the printed content of approximately 1,050 Libraries of Congress!
CART examiners are experts at extracting data from digital media…even when the media is damaged by the forces of nature or defendants attempting to prevent any data from being recovered.
The cases that CART examiners work span the gamut of FBI program areas: from cyber crimes and computer intrusions to violent crimes, financial crimes, organized crime, and national security matters. And once they have finished their forensic work, CART examiners are also available to testify in court as expert witnesses on their findings.
One of the six CART mobile labs with state-of-the-art capabilities for acquiring, processing, and analyzing digital evidence…even while the vehicle is in motion.
Because we come across computers and other digital media so often in the course of our investigative work, our CART examiners can’t possibly handle every piece of media. That’s why CART created a basic digital evidence training course and developed easy-to-use examination tools for field investigators—to give them the technical and legal knowledge they need to process simpler and more basic digital evidence from their cases without altering or damaging the data—which allows CART examiners to focus on more technically complex cases.
While much of CART’s work is done in stationary facilities in the field or back at our national Headquarters, we also have six mobile CART laboratories around the country. These mobile labs are especially valuable when time is of the essence, enabling digital evidence to be examined on the spot.
