At 9 p.m., I received the following press release from a union that represents the interests of Arizona Department of Public Safety officials.

Officer Safety Compromised After Hackers Release Confidential DPS Information

Association wants individuals prosecuted to the highest degree of the law

Phoenix, AZ – The Arizona Highway Patrol Association (AHPA) was made aware that hackers, that identify themselves as LulzSec, released confidential information from the Department of Public Safety’s (DPS). AHPA is concerned that the files released could jeopardize the safety of many DPS officers and employees.

“Law enforcement officials go to many lengths to protect their identities,” states Jimmy Chavez, President of the AHPA. “These individuals maliciously released confidential information knowing the safety of DPS employees, and their families, would be compromised. A threat to release more DPS files demonstrates how heinous the hackers are willing to act. The AHPA would like to see the people brought to justice and prosecuted to the highest degree of the law.”

Founded in 1958, the AHPA’s mission is to promote the positive role of Law Enforcement Professionals, and to protect and secure rights and benefits for their members through effective representation with local, state and national governments.

What do you think?

TechCrunch is reporting that the hacker group LulzSec — whose Twitter profile calls themselves “the world’s leaders in high-quality entertainment at your expense” — has leaked a stream of Arizona law enforcement data. The group has framed the leak as a gesture of retaliation against SB 1070, which the state legislature passed last year. Many people protested the law on the grounds that it required police officers to engage in racial profiling. The provisions are largely on hold pending U.S. Supreme Court review. The Arizona Republic has a team working on the story.

From the press release:

We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement. We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona.

The documents classified as “law enforcement sensitive”, “not for public distribution”, and “for official use only” are primarily related to border patrol and counter-terrorism operations and describe the use of informants to infiltrate various gangs, cartels, motorcycle clubs, Nazi groups, and protest movements.

Every week we plan on releasing more classified documents and embarassing personal details of military and law enforcement in an effort not just to reveal their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities fighting an unjust “war on drugs”.

Hackers of the world are uniting and taking direct action against our common oppressors – the government, corporations, police, and militaries of the world. See you again real soon! ;D

I’ve downloaded the files, and they appear—at least at first glance—legitimate, though all I’ve read so far are dispatches from supervisors working the Wallow Fire. Nothing incriminating there. Just a few phone numbers that at an earlier point in the reporting of the fire would have been helpful. I’ll keep you posted as I wallow in the docs.

Here’s the link to the torrent file if you’re interested in wallowing yourself.

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An interesting observation from one pertinent Department of Homeland Security document, though it’s hardly sensitive information:

Despite the rising tide of murders in Sonora, analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) data indicates that no widespread violence has spilled into Arizona; indeed, overall violent crime is down in Arizona. Homicide statistics from 2006 through 2009 show that homicides trended downward in Glendale, Mesa, Phoenix, and Tucson; remained flat in Nogales; and increased slightly in Peoria and Yuma. While some of these deaths may be drug-related, available information does not attribute any of these murders to Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.

Also, from a bit later in the same document, “Mexico: Sonora-based Threats to U.S. Border Security,” from August 2010:

Drug and alien smuggling from Sonora, along with drug-related violence, almost certainly will continue at current or even higher levels over the next several years. Attempts to counter corruption and professionalize police forces may eventually pay dividends, but improvements will require years of sustained effort.

And

The vast resources of the cartels—estimated by U.S. authorities at $18-38 billion a year—dwarf those of government entities, which are playing a catch-up game in improving technological tools and building effective institutions.

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My impression thus far is that the source of much of this information is the news media, Mexican and American.

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It’s interesting that there are at least a couple of documents warning officers about iPhone and Android apps that could be used in crime or used against them. Who knew you could use an iPhone as a digital scale?

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FoxNews.com is reporting an interesting dynamic—another hacker group trying to expose LulzSec, which also claimed responsibility for, among other things, the recent hacking of the PBS website.

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The LulzSec website is down.

The Sunlight Foundation recently announced a new tool: Inbox Influence. It’s a browser add-on that allows you to see the political contributions of people who send you email. That is, if you use Gmail. I tested it out this morning, and it’s pretty amazing, though on this particular morning I made no especially notable discoveries. The foundation put out the video I’ve embedded below to show how Inbox Influence works.

If you’re someone who is very concerned about Internet privacy, this tool will likely freak you out. The Sunlight Foundation does need access to your email to make this work, though it pledges not to read or store your emails. This is clearly an issue of personal comfort, but the tool will keep political influence on your daily radar. This may also induce paranoia in some, but for most, it is a worthy reminder of how the world works.

Why do you think?

So I know I promised a weekly column about a fix, but this week I simply want to bring your attention to news from SeeClickFix itself. SeeClickFix just last week announced a brand new Facebook application. The company’s CEO, Ben Berkowitz, described the the rationale in a press release.

Facebook has proven to be a powerful platform for encouraging people to plant virtual trees and improve virtual neighborhoods. When considering recent events, like the revolutionary wave in the Middle East, it’s also proven to be a powerful tool for organizing around social and political issues.

The app takes what many see as a boring and likely useless exercise in civic duty and turns it into a game. Community Manager Emma Richards describes the idea like this:

The app is a comprehensive SeeClickFix platform available directly within users’ Facebook accounts. Facebook has proven to be a powerful platform for organizing groups of people online to effect change offline. We hope our deepening integration with Facebook will empower citizens to help themselves and those around them. With FarmVille, users can collaborate with virtual ‘neighbors’ to plant and harvest virtual crops. With the SeeClickFix app, however, users will be able to connect with their real neighbors to plant real trees in their real communities.

As an incentive for using the app, participants will receive Civic Points, and who doesn’t want those? Check it out. Receiving those points is more satisfying than you might think. You get 60 just for signing up. Did you file any of the reports visible below? If so, let me know.

Announcing a new regular feature on Social Citizen — The Fix. Each Tuesday, I will post the most recent SeeClickFix reports and write a story about a lingering complaint or a recent repair.

SeeClickFix is a social forum for reporting problems to local government, and the city administration is taking notes. Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup’s aide Andrew Greenhill is active in the Gov. 2.0 movement, and he has advocated the use of SeeClickFix as a tool for prioritizing city problems. City residents can both report problems and vote for the reports they think need the most immediate fix. City officials then know an issue’s exact location and how dire it is. Through this regular feature, I’ll track just how well the pipeline is working.

If you have suggestions or would like your work to be featured, send an email to carli.brosseau@tucsoncitizen.com or tweet me @carlibrosseau.

Twitter logo

A Shorty Award is to go to the best journalist on Twitter. You get to vote. Right now, William Bonner is in the lead. Interesting – a Brazilian twitteiro, even though Larry King and Anderson Cooper are suggested as popular journalists on the awards Web site.

I want to hear from you, too, though you don’t necessarily have to vote. What makes a good tweet? What makes a good tweet from a journalist? Comment here or send me a tweet @TucsonCitizen.

PBS’s MediaShift has posted a really interesting article about the current state of online people searches. I know that in my household, the past few phone books that have been delivered have gone straight into the recycling bin. As a reporter, I almost always check to see if my sources have Facebook pages or Twitter handles. Many people are easier to get a hold of that way.

But online identities have implications for privacy. In some ways, our identities are more controlled – we decide what to put on our Facebook pages and in our tweets. But we also have little control over what other people post about us online. A friend of a friend of mine couldn’t get a job after college because someone had posted pictures of her topless all over the Internet. She spent quite a sum employing companies that specialize in controlling online identities to help her scrub her online reputation.

The coverage of the Jan. 8 shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Judge John Roll, 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green and 16 others is a prime example of the use of social media as a reporting tool. I posted earlier about @caitieparker, but there have been others, as well, located and interviewed and, some have argued, harassed over the Internet.

Which brings us to the question: How much control should we have? How has your privacy been affected by your online dealings?

Carli Brosseau

I learned that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her staff and constituents had been shot while I was washing the dishes Saturday morning. I heard my friend Peter Michaels on the radio, and his voice was shaky. He sounded rattled. I believed the news because I believe Peter Michaels. I mention this not because my personal story is important, but because it is universal. We relate to friends in more concrete terms than we relate to strangers. We believe them because we know them, and in knowing them, we know ourselves. We become through reflection and refraction. We are prisms of our basic and daily interactions with the world.

My first reaction when I heard the news was to log on. I checked to see who was reporting what; I told my friends, via Facebook. I reached out to those links for confirmation that my reality was theirs. They also confirmed that I had a task. My role was as social media editor for a Web site that bills itself as the Voice of Tucson, the voice of a city to which now all eyes were turned, a city whose name will long be associated with one of our democracy’s darkest moments. My goal was to make that voice relevant and real and useful with whatever tools I had. I posted updates for more than 12 hours and woke at 3 o’clock the next morning, unable to turn off the stream of questions: What does it mean to be a part of a community where this can happen? What can I do in this situation that matters?

The posts that I and others made about the minutia of the investigation and politicians postulating were useful in the quest for information and I, as a journalist, am not one to downplay information. But in this time, I can’t help think that it’s almost beside the point, perhaps because the attacks did hit so close. In five days of reporting, I have yet to talk to anyone who didn’t at least have a friend who knew one of the shooting victims or a story about how the victims indirectly touched his or her life. Each conversation seems so fragile, each participant so vulnerable, and I remember that it is a conversation, that that’s how we relate to each other, and that those links hold us together. Those links keep us from falling apart.

It is perhaps because I had been musing on the subject of links, networks of “friends” and “fans” and “followers,” that President Obama’s speech hit me so hard. We ought to remember that we live for each other. We owe each other. We depend on each other not only for political or economic or even cultural reasons. We depend on each other to know ourselves. It was when President Obama turned to Daniel Hernandez, the intern whose quick response may have saved the congresswoman’s life, that my nose began to run. Heroes, I think, are the ones for whom the links are closer to the surface. Hernandez surely qualifies. But if we all paid more attention, we might each qualify too.

My belief in journalism, whatever the immediate state of the industry, hinges on the link idea. It is, I think, an ability to appeal to commonality and a baseline decency that makes a good reporter. You  have to be someone to whom people want to tell stories, and stories are the link. When Joan Didion wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” it was in all seriousness. Much has been made of social media: that it is a fantastical money-making machine, that it can dismantle disagreeable regimes, that it cements the power of despots, that it increases our alienation from each other and ourselves. We don’t really know yet, but we know the secret’s in the links. May they be real and true.

I earlier mentioned the plight of @caitieparker, who mentioned on Twitter that she knew Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, killing six and wounding more than a dozen others. There have been several interesting accounts of what happened since then. Here are a few:

Seeking out sources, made transparent on Twitter

On twitter journalism, cronkite and sausage making

How incorrect reports of Giffords’ death spread on Twitter

Thoughts?

Thousands of people from Tucson and across the world turned to social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, to get the latest news about the January 8 shooting that has thus far claimed six lives. Within moments of hospital officials uttering a body count or condition update, the facts and figures would be Tweeted and Facebooked (by yours truly among many others). [As updates go, the current tally is 20 shot, six dead, one (Congressional District 8 Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) in an intensive care unit, three in serious condition and several others still in the hospital, though in hospital units that care for people who are less acutely sick.]

If it was not already obvious, it should now be crystal clear to Tucsonans how news coverage has changed. The flow of words is immediate, and that has implications, some more obvious than others. TucsonCitizen.com blogger David Morales posted a sentence to his blog, The Three Sonorans, minutes after the shooting happened. He was at a Pima County Democratic Party meeting when he got the news via text message. Two other people at the meeting got a similar message so Morales posted what he knew to his blog. “Gabrielle Giffords shot in the head in Tucson,” the headline read. The post was immediately picked up by Google News, among others, and soon TucsonCitizen.com was down, overrun by people looking for news. That was approximately five minutes after the shots.

Minutes later, NPR reported that the congresswoman had died. That news was instantly retweeted and reposted, with prayers going out across the Internet before it became clear, also through a tweet, this time from University Medical Center public affairs staff, that Giffords was not in fact dead, but rather in surgery. The AP reported that the suspect’s name was Jared Laughner, which was retweeted (again by yours truly, among others) – misspelling intact. While misinformation is transmitted within seconds, so are corrections. In my case, a commenter alerted me to the error.

And meanwhile, before it was clear what the health status was of the 20 people shot, a seemingly limitless number of commentators set in. Some criticized heated rhetoric, but plenty more dished it out. It seemed almost as likely a comment would say something to the effect of “Giffords was a bad representative” as it would communicate prayers or coordinate a candlelight vigil. Or blame the Tea Party.

At this point, almost all the information we have about the suspect, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, who is now in federal custody, was discovered through the Internet. None of it necessarily communicates a motivation, though it does communicate a state of mind. Nobody has spoken for Loughner. While we could electronically look up his address and property records, his parents haven’t spoken. We’ve seen Jared Lee Loughner’s YouTube channel (“let the bodies hit the floor,” whispered, on repeat), we may have seen his MySpace page (if we were fast enough; it’s been taken down) and if we missed any of that, we can defer to Praetorian Prefect who collected a mess of Loughner-related posts. Loughner’s posts seem almost to plea for attention (“Goodbye friends … don’t be mad at me”). But what did we really learn? More importantly, what does it mean?

While words flow free and fast in the social media universe, they stick around a long time, given a shelf life perhaps unmatched to the thought put into the utterance. Written or spoken comments that might have earlier been more ephemeral are searchable, linkable and like-able. They take on a new life and a new context. The results are often eerie. For example: a Twitpic search of photos related to Giffords; Gifford’s last tweet, announcing the start of the “Congress on Your Corner” event; an MSNBC interview after Giffords’ Tucson office was vandalized in March 2010. We make meaning from the curation of bits of information gathered. This was always true, but pre-Internet there were fewer bits of personal information out there. I’m brought back to the question: how do we make meaning? How does the shifting context change things?

Then there is the issue of people found and interviewed through social media outlets. Among the most instantly famous was @caitieparker, who tweeted that she knew Loughner and then was barraged with media interviews and new followers. At last check, she had posted: “This has become something way out of hand. I’m not doing ANY more interviews, or tweets about Jared. So might as well just unfollow now ”

To end on a (slightly) more positive note: Members of the Tucson community have used social media adeptly to bring people in mourning together. The graphic at the top of the post went viral hours after the first reports of the shooting. While I haven’t yet tracked down who created it (perhaps you know), it spread from Facebook profile to Facebook profile with a simple cut and paste. An act of unity. [Ed. Note: Apropos for this story, the answer to the question has been provided via social media (and the internet) the creator according to former Tucson Citizen courts reporter A.J. Flick is Michael Joplin] for Tucsonan Diana Uribe said about 1 p.m. today that about half of her friends were using the graphic. Blogger Ted Prezelski of the blog Rum, Romanism and Rebellion created a Tumblr page that is serving as a kind of online memorial, not to mention the prayers for Gabrielle Giffords Facebook page.

That was not the way I had planned to introduce myself, but that’s the news. I’m Carli Brosseau, TucsonCitizen.com’s social media editor. I was previously a reporter at the newspaper the Tucson Citizen, and I’m a graduate of the journalism school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I plan to post frequently on subjects related to social media and journalism, as observed in and from Tucson. I have a lot of questions. I hope you have some for me too. You can contact me @TucsonCitizen, at Facebook.com/TucsonCitizen.com, and at carli.brosseau@tucsoncitizen.com. I look forward to hearing from you.