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Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Friday, November 9, 2012
Q&A: Browns CEO Joe Banner discusses personnel decisions ...
New Browns CEO Joe Banner began working at the team?s headquarters Oct. 31 and attended its 25-15 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday at Cleveland Browns Stadium. In an interview today with the Beacon Journal, Banner addressed a number of topics, including personnel decisions, his philosophies on running a franchise and stadium enhancements.
Here are some of the highlights from the discussion with Banner, the former president of the Philadelphia Eagles:
Q: Has the enormity of the challenge sunk in during your first week on the job?
A: ?It?s both sides. There is a huge challenge here. I consider that kind of good news because that?s what I thrive on. But I?ve confirmed what I knew. I was at the game on Sunday. It?s the first game I?ve been at. The team is 2-6, gets off to a bad start and the crowd is still rabid and loud and positive. That?s everything you hear about it before you come here. I?ve gotten lots of e-mails from fans kind of greeting me. I?ve been involved on the edge of a few the events we?re doing just to see. People don?t realize a part of the fun of working for one of the teams is all the energy and passion from the outside coming toward the team. So you hear about it and you kind of know that?s the reputation. You can see some stats on attendance or something. But getting here and feeling it is a whole other experience. That?s been really fun. I just know that if we can do the right things to get the team on track it?s just gonna be an amazing ride for everybody. That?s the good part. And I do feel like there?s confirmation that the team has made good moves and is on the right track and I think everybody also realizes has a ways to go. But the beginning of a foundation to build off of is certainly here. So those are really the two most important things and, in my mind, they?re both positives. Day-to-day work there?s a lot to do here. Some of it is just different ways I approach things that I want to convert us to. It?s not like they were wrong and I?m right or anything. It?s just different. And some of the things I do think that we can do even better or have a bigger awareness of. So that parts a very big job.?
Q: You and owner Jimmy Haslam have said you?ll wait until the end of the season to evaluate coaching staff and front office and make personnel decisions. With the team?s record 2-7 at the bye, does that plan still stand?
A: ?Yeah. I mean obviously we?re watching and our opinions are kind of moving forward in terms of having more knowledge to contribute to them. But we?re gonna sit down together at the end of the season and that?s when we?ll decide what we think we need to do to be who we want to be, frankly, down the road.?
Q: What will you ultimately weigh when facing those decisions?
A: ?I think the question is fairly simple. I think the answer is hard. But I think the question is fairly simple. We want to put together an organization in every way that?s capable of working at a championship level. That doesn?t mean you win the championship every year. We know that?s not gonna happen. So evaluating who is here who can perform to that level ? football-wise, non-football-wise, it could be charity-wise, it could be marketing-wise. But really evaluating as we look to the future. So we?re not evaluating the moment. We?re not stuck on exactly how many games we win between now and then. We?re wanting to see the qualities and the decision making at any level of the organization that we think says that person or that group two years from now as we implement our systems, our culture can function at a championship-caliber level. So that question we think is very easy, very clear to us. Now the answer and the evaluation, we?re luck to have some time, but it?s a relatively short time to make major, important decisions. It?s very hard. So hopefully we?ll get it right. We?re gonna try to be objective. We?re gonna be thorough. By having each other, we kind of have a sounding board to increase the chances that we?re not missing something, that we?re thinking about it the right way. But it?s gonna be hard. We?re not gonna get all of them ? I?ll tell you that ahead of time. But hopefully we get the most important ones right and we have a decent batting average.?
Q: Most people assume coach Pat Shurmur and General Manager Tom Heckert will be gone after this season. Is that fair?
A: ?I?m aware of the perception, and it?s not fair. We?re gonna make an objective evaluation. The outcome is not predetermined. I?m aware that the perception is out there. I can?t tell you that?s not a possible outcome. But anybody thinking that that?s a predetermined outcome is on the wrong track.?
Q: Wins and losses obviously matter, but how do you evaluate the big picture when it comes to Shurmur and Heckert?
A: ?First of all, it?s two separate answers. So you have a sense of what is it in the most successful coaches currently and historically ? what are the qualities about them? How do they lead? How do they think? How do they strategize? What kinds of players do they like? Do players grow under them? What?s the quality of their staff? So it?s a lot of things you can look at if you look at past successful coaches to see, ?OK, in a head coach, this is generically, what am I looking for to find somebody who?s really good?? And then as you watch somebody like Pat in the role, you make a determination in terms of those key qualities, so to speak, how is he? And it?s a separate set of characteristics, but you?ve got a similar thing with Tom. What are the characteristics you think you?ve seen in general managers who have contributed to building championship-caliber teams. And again, player evaluation is important, but it isn?t the only thing. So then you evaluate him on what you consider kind of those key criteria. And hopefully we have the right key criteria and then we evaluate them correctly as it relates to those criteria.?
Q: What do you consider the key criteria for a general manager?
A: ?Well, I mean it?s things like I just mentioned in a head coach. Even a layman, if you looked at the really successful head coaches, you would say they were extremely strong leaders for example. You?d say they have hired very, very good staffs, and they?ve managed those staffs very well. They?re extremely hard workers themselves, not just the people are them. They tend to have strong conviction about their philosophies. Sometimes they get accused of being stubborn, but I actually welcome people that have thought it through and have strong convictions about what they do. Those are just some anecdotal examples, but it?s those kinds of things. They?re not deeply studied, frankly. Most fans who watch the NFL, if you say to them, name the three or four coaches over the last 10 years you think have been most successful and tell me what you think their characteristics are, they?d be similar to the things I just rattled off.?
Q: Are Shurmur and Heckert a package deal?
A: ?No. There are things about them that you need to evaluate together. There are things about them that you need to evaluate together ?cause none of us were in the room to know who was for or against what decisions. And then there are independent aspects of different qualities you?re looking for in the positions because they?re two different positions. In one, for example, leadership is a much more important element. Leadership matters in both positions, but in one position, it?s much more important than the other. So there are aspects of it in which they are linked, so to speak, and there are aspects in which you?ll do a very independent analysis.?
Q: There?s a perception that you were OK with Heckert leaving the Eagles to become general manager of the Browns and that your relationship with him wasn?t great. Can you address that?
A: ?The second part is false. I?ve always had a very good relationship with Tom. I still have a very good relationship with Tom. I like him as a person. I respect him professionally. As far as I know, that?s mutual. Tom?s leaving the Eagles was a little bit similar to my leaving the Eagles. He reached a point where he was looking for something different. In his case, it was more authority. In my case, it was kind of a new challenge. The organization was lucky enough to have some very good people in place. So when he expressed that interest and had an opportunity, the organization, including myself, was fine supporting him leaving and taking that opportunity and felt the organization was still in good hands. When I had the same interest and the organization had, in that case, Howie Roseman and Don Smolenski to kind of split the job that I had and kind of take it over. The organization was supportive of my interest in pursuing something like this. So there was nothing negative in either my or Tom?s departure from the Eagles. It was more a reflection of our desires and the organization being well structured and having a lot of levels of quality people that left it OK for that kind of move. So in that sense, I was OK with it because it was what Tom wanted and we were in good shape in terms of replacing him. But I?ve always had a very good relationship with Tom and we like each other. That hasn?t been different and isn?t different here.?
Q: Can you outline your vision for your role in football and roster decisions and your philosophy for how the organization should make those types of decisions?
A: ?Well, my philosophy is kind of simple. If you put a group of smart, knowledgeable people in a room -- and a number of them, not one or two, but in this kind of a case, probably four or five ? you create an environment where everybody feels free and safe to express their point of view and if need be argue or debate opinions, you increase the chances of getting a higher percentage of the decisions right by having that quality of intelligence, that number of people and an open dialogue and debate to come to conclusion. You want to create consensus, which -- I?ve been in this league a long time -- you can do almost all the time. I know the public is skeptical of that, but that?s really the reality. Because then you have everybody pulling in the same direction and make sure it?s the right decision. My history is we rarely do things which we don?t have consensus. There are too many things that you can get consensus about to go do the thing that maybe half or you or for and half of you are against. So that?s what I?m used to doing. Whether it?s a business decision or a football decision, I think that?s how you make smart decisions. I don?t care, it could be politics, whatever it is, get a group of smart people together, get all the information, have a good, honest, open dialogue where everybody feels safe saying what they think and then making a decision about which there?s a consensus, so everybody?s motivated to make it work. That?s what I?m used to. That?s how we?ll make decisions here in all areas of running the Browns, and I think that will lead us to having a good batting average. That does not mean that we?ll get them all right. The best teams in the league in the draft are hitting 50 percent of the time. This is a business by it?s very nature in which you?re gonna have a fair number of mistakes for people to point at if they want to. But what you want to do is maximize your chance of getting it right. I think philosophically that?s what we?re gonna do here, and that?s what gives you your best chance.?
Q: Would you prefer the coach or the general manager to have final say on roster decisions or do you not have a preference?
A: ?I think it relates to the people. I do think when you get to the 53-man roster, who?s dressing each week, who?s playing, you certainly want to give the coach an awful lot of freedom. Whatever he me contractually have, I think when you get down to that level, I think you really want to have the coach either deciding or having an overwhelming influence over it. But if you had somebody in personnel that was particularly strong and a coach was comfortable with that, you don?t have to etch that in stone. You can kind of wait and see people?s strengths and weaknesses, but I go in with a slight bias that the coach has to play a big role on those things.?
Q: Jason La Canfora of CBS reported the Browns are considering hiring NFL Network?s Mike Lombardi to help with personnel. Can you comment?
A: ?Well, since I haven?t even decided whether the people that are here are staying or going, I think speculation that I?m actually deciding or have decided who I?d bring in if we made a chance is not right. And then getting into comments about who we would be looking at if we made a change when we haven?t made a decision whether to make a chance is not anything I?d engage in.?
Q: How do you view the roster?
A: ?I think there?s a foundation in place to move forward. I think there?s some good, young players here. I do think there?s a ways to go in terms of starting to talk about winning the division, advancing through the playoffs, winning championships. There are young players we need to take time to see what they?re gonna be. We have a projection but you don?t know. But I?ve seen people take over a franchise in which you looked at the roster and you?re like, ?Oh, my God. There?s nothing here to build on.? This is not the case here. Exactly how many of those players we can build on, exactly how good some of the younger players are gonna be, some of that we have to project, some of that time will tell. But this is certainly not one of those situations where you look at the roster and you?re kind of like, ?Oh, my God. I?m just starting from scratch here. Or what am I gonna do and how long is this gonna take?? There?s clearly a foundation of players that you can start to add to and move forward from as opposed to needing to get to begin with.?
Q: You?ve said you needed to learn about the game experience at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Is there anything that stuck in your mind when you were there Sunday that made you say, ?Wow, we should do this. We need to look at this.?
A: ?Well, it?s more of the latter. I can?t get to the point that quickly with what we need to do. I don?t think I?m telling anybody anything they don?t know that there were longer lines at the concession stands than ideally we?d like to have there be. We?ll probably increase some of the varieties of food options. I think there?s some pedestrian and car traffic issues that we can enhance to help people get in and out of the building faster. I know we?re gonna do an evaluation of the number of gates and the opportunity there to maybe streamline lines. These are just headlines of things we?re gonna work on. I don?t want anybody that in a couple of games at the end of the season that a whole lots gonna happen. But you?re starting to make observations of things you want to assign people to study deeper or in the offseason, we?ll have to get into. So there are very basic experiential issues. Once you get past satisfying kind of the base issues -- clean bathrooms, reasonable food choices, reasonable length of line. It?s a football stadium. There?s gonna be a line. We want to try to mitigate it as much as we can. Then I think you just get into the on-field aspect of the fans? experience. So is the scoreboard as interesting and compelling as it can be? Are we showing other game scores often enough? For people who play fantasy football often enough, are we putting that information up often enough. About our own game, down and distance and who made the tackle and how many yards has [Trent] Richardson run for so far in the game. Is that kind of information readily available? Is it a consistent place that people can get used to? Is the security staff well trained? Are the guest-services people friendly and knowledgeable enough to help people when they need it? I think there?s questions that we want to look at and figure out how can we get even better in every single one of those areas. I hope by the beginning of next season, people aren?t gonna walk in and have some radical [change in experience], but I hope at least people are at least feeling some change and attention to some details and some of he experiential things that enhance their experience. I didn?t have an experience that makes me feel to the contrary, but I want people to feel that the stadium is incredibly clean and comfortable to them. Some stadiums you go into and it just doesn?t have that kind of air about them. To me, it?s really important that people come, if people want to bring their kids that they feel like it?s a comfortable place to come, it?s a safe place to come, they can take them to the bathroom, they can get them something to eat. So those are the kind of things that we?re gonna look at to start and then make some improvements and then grow from there.?
Q: Haslam said architects would be brought in to evaluate the possibility of a retractable roof, changing the scoreboards and other potential stadium enhancements. Has that happened yet?
A: ?No. We?ve started to have a few conversations with the architects about what we?re thinking and that we?d like to bring them in and have to find a free time kind of a thing. But we have not actually had meetings with anybody yet.?
Q: What are your thoughts on those possible enhancements like a retractable roof and scoreboards?
A: ?It?s hard for me to evaluate any particular option. A scoreboard is a very complicated thing to evaluate and an extremely expensive option to look at the pros and cons and things that could justify that cost. I mean I?m kind of inherently, personally, an old-fashioned you know play-the-game-outdoors-and-deal-with-it person. But there may be some rational, so we?re gonna have a full menu and frankly look at the thing from scratch on all aspects. Now clearly in the area of technology as it relates to scoreboards and sound systems, things have advanced so far from when these systems came from. I don?t want to prejudge anything, but it?s inconceivable we won?t be making some very dramatic changes there. But we?re gonna go into the thing with kind of a wide open menu of what kind of things could we do to make this better, enhance the experience, modernize it? I don?t mean that in kind of a look way. It?s more of a technology and sound when I say that.?
Q: The scoreboards that feature high-definition screens make quite a difference.
A: ?Yeah, I think that if you?ve only experienced a game in a stadium that only has the older scoreboard and you haven?t seen this HD technology or the sound systems that come with them, you really can?t appreciate it. It?s like your TV at home. If you put the old TV next to the HD TV, then you go, ?Wow, that?s a huge difference.? If you just have the old TV and you?ve never seen HD, you don?t really appreciate how much the enhancements are. So those are the kinds of things that are kind of at the top of the list of things we?re likely to do.?
Q: What about the stadium?s lack of wireless Internet access? It?s a complaint among many fans.
A: ?Yeah, same thing. It?s a complicated issue on how to fix it, not in the sense if you just wanted to do something better than we have at the moment. Easy to do. It?s just a matter of taking the time to do it and investing in it. What?s harder to do is where are things gonna be three, five and eight years from now so we actually create a Wi-Fi solution that has the ability to be long term? But, absolutely, we?re aware of it. I?m sure it?ll be part of our moving forward. You can?t run kind of a modern, full, in-person sports experience without those kinds of things being part of the building. We?ll have Wi-Fi in the building. Now will we have it by next year, meaning 2013? I hope so. It depends upon how it fits into the more comprehensive changes. But there?s no question that in the relatively near future ? if you give me a little liberalization on that timing ? we won?t go on without a Wi-Fi building for much longer. But those are the kinds of things I?m talking about when I talk about fan experience. In 2012, we should have a Wi-Fi building. But it may take a year to get there, or we may have it by next season.?
Q: Not only did you push to have a new stadium built for the Eagles, but you also drove the deal to get a new practice facility. What do you think of the Browns? headquarters in Berea?
A: ?I think it?s a good place. I think it?s like what I?m saying in general: As technology changes and philosophies about management and leadership change, if I was starting from scratch, there are some things I?d do differently. But what you really want is a building that?s conducive to people being able to work together, feel like they?re in it together, have an environment that supports the notion that we?re trying to be the best, have your players feel like whether it?s the training space, the weight room, the fields that you?re giving them the chance to grow to develop, to be the best they can be. In that sense, this place [the team?s headquarters] is outstanding. The stadium has more variation from if you were starting from scratch what you?d like to see than what you have, and trying to figure out what to do about that will be one of our big challenges and frankly, from a long-term perspective, is one of the most important issues the organization has to deal with. You want from a player, from a fan, from a business, from a community-relations perspective, to have a stadium that gives us the opportunity to do everything the best it can be and to do so going forward, not just in the moment. We?ll have to figure that out.?
Q: Is it fair to say you?re in the phase of determining which facets of the organization will change and how drastic those changes will be?
A: ?My first evaluation is really just people. What?s the right organizational chart? Who are the people who that fit into it properly? I know the public?s focus is football, and it obviously includes football, but it really is the whole organization. Where do we have the right people to kind of plug there to be performing at the level we want to be in a year, two, three years? And where don?t we? Where do we have good people but we need more people? Are there people here that are not in the best department to take advantage of what we want to do and what their strengths are? That?s really almost all of my time the first couple of months. Other than just what absolutely has to be done day-to-day or answers or directions people need, that?s really what I?m spending all my time on.?
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Next archbishop of Canterbury announcement Friday
FILE - In this Nov. 11, 2011 file photo, the Bishop of Durham, the Right Reverend Justin Welby. The next archbishop of Canterbury will be officially introduced Friday, Nov. 9, 2012 with the expectation that the new leader of the world?s Anglicans will be former oil company executive Jason Welby. (AP Photo/PA, Owen Humphreys, File) UNITED KINGDOM OUT, NO SALES, NO ARCHIVE
FILE - In this Nov. 11, 2011 file photo, the Bishop of Durham, the Right Reverend Justin Welby. The next archbishop of Canterbury will be officially introduced Friday, Nov. 9, 2012 with the expectation that the new leader of the world?s Anglicans will be former oil company executive Jason Welby. (AP Photo/PA, Owen Humphreys, File) UNITED KINGDOM OUT, NO SALES, NO ARCHIVE
LONDON (AP) ? The next archbishop of Canterbury will be officially introduced Friday, with the expectation that the new leader of the world's Anglicans will be former oil company executive Jason Welby.
Welby made an unusual mid-career shift from the oil industry to the clergy. He has said he faced conflicts between his beliefs and how companies acted ? and has made business ethics and standards part of his work.
"I don't believe in good human beings," Welby said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper in July. "But I believe you can have structures that make it easier to make the right choice or the wrong choice."
He has impeccable establishment credentials, having been schooled at Eton College and Cambridge University. His mother was a private secretary to Winston Churchill. But his father went to the United States during Prohibition and became a bootlegger, Welby was quoted as saying by the Mail on Sunday newspaper in July.
If British press reports are correct, Welby, 56, is set to become leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans.
Government and church officials declined Thursday to confirm speculation about the choice. But The Times and The Daily Telegraph have reported it will be Welby, and two British betting agencies stopped taking bets earlier this week after a flurry of wagers backing him.
Prime Minister David Cameron's office said the official announcement will be made Friday morning.
Welby declined to say 'yes' or 'no' to the swirl of speculation. "I am not able to comment, only Lambeth Palace can," he told reporters, referring to the church's headquarters.
The next archbishop will replace Rowan Williams, who is retiring after a turbulent decade dealing with the Anglican Communion's deep divisions about gay bishops and homosexuality.
Before he steps down, Williams is pressing hard to resolve a dispute over whether women can serve as bishops, the issue preoccupying the Church of England. A vote is set later this month by the church's governing General Synod.
Welby favors female bishops.
He serves as ethical adviser to the Association of Corporate Treasurers and was recently appointed to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which is examining possible reforms of the industry.
Welby was praised Thursday by a U.S. colleague. Bishop Shannon Sherwood Johnston of Virginia, who has been working with Welby on a reconciliation project with dioceses in parts of West Africa, described him as a positive, friendly person.
"He's extremely amiable. He's a man of very deep faith and profound learning, but he is most approachable," Johnston said. "His diplomatic skills will be very important. "
Before seeking ordination, Welby worked six years for French oil company Elf Aquitaine and then as treasurer of exploration company Enterprise Oil in 1984.
His views on corporate responsibility, he has said, "came out of working in an extractive industry often in developing countries where ethical questions were very frequent."
"During my time there I came to realize there was a gap between what I thought, believed and felt was right in my non-work life and what went on at work."
In 1989, he resigned to study for the priesthood, but only after a struggle.
Welby has recalled being interviewed by a bishop who asked why he wanted to be a priest. "I said: 'I don't, but I can't get away from the feeling it is the right thing to do.'"
His dissertation in theological college was published under the title "Can companies sin?" He believes they can.
Following ordination in 1993 he was a parish priest for nine years before moving to Coventry Cathedral, as co-director of international ministry. In 2005, he became co-director of the cathedral's conflict reconciliation ministry in Africa, where he had experience in the oil industry.
"I have had to establish relationships with killers and with the families of their victims, with arms smugglers, corrupt officials and more," he once said.
In 2007 he was appointed dean of Liverpool Cathedral, Britain's largest church, and in November last year he was elevated to Durham, the fourth-ranking diocese in the church of England.
His business background still serves him well, Welby has said.
"Treasury teaches you to be decisive. Markets don't allow you to hang about and vacillate," he said in an interview in The Treasurer, the magazine of the Association of Corporate Treasurers. "And treasury teaches you about teamwork and working collaboratively. In treasury you are there to serve the company and the operating departments."
Welby and his wife Caroline have two sons and three daughters. Their first child, a 7-month-old girl, was killed in a traffic accident in 1983.
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Rachel Zoll in New York contributed to this report.
Associated PressThursday, November 8, 2012
Obama victory infuriates Pakistani drone victims
Mohammad Hussain / AP
Supporters of cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan's party raise their hands during a peace march protesting U.S. drone strikes on the outskirts of Tank, Pakistan, on Oct. 7.
By Reuters
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The roars celebrating the re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama on television give Mohammad Rehman Khan a searing headache, as years of grief and anger come rushing back.
The 28-year-old Pakistani accuses the president of robbing him of his father, three brothers and a nephew, all killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack a month after Obama first took office.
"The same person who attacked my home has gotten re-elected," he told Reuters in the capital, Islamabad, where he fled after the attack on his village in South Waziristan, one of several ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border.
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"Since yesterday, the pressure on my brain has increased. I remember all of the pain again."
The whole world was watching as America chose its president, and the general sentiment appeared to be a sigh of relief. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
World leaders welcome Obama's 2nd term - but many challenges loom
In his re-election campaign, Obama gave no indication he would halt or alter the drone program, which he embraced in his first term to kill al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan without risking American lives.
Drone strikes are highly unpopular among many Pakistanis, who consider them a violation of sovereignty that cause unacceptable civilian casualties.
"Whenever he has a chance, Obama will bite Muslims like a snake. Look at how many people he has killed with drone attacks," said Haji Abdul Jabar, whose 23-year-old son was killed in such a bombing.
Analysts say anger over the unmanned aircraft may have helped the Taliban gain recruits, complicating efforts to stabilize the unruly border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That could also hinder Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014.
A group of 32 American anti-drone activists will join a march to Pakistan's tribal areas, where U.S. strikes have killed thousands of people over the last eight years. NBC News Amna Nawaz spoke to some of them.
Americans ignore 'great risks,' travel to Pakistan to protest US drone strikes
Obama authorized nearly 300 drone strikes in Pakistan during his first four years in office, more than six times the number during the administration of George W. Bush, according to the New America Foundation policy institute.
Since 2004, a total of 337 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have killed between 1,908 and 3,225 people.
The institute estimates about 15 percent of those killed were non-militants, although that percentage has declined sharply to about 1-2 percent this year. Washington says drone strikes are very accurate and cause minimal civilian deaths.
The Pakistani government says tens of thousands of Pakistanis have been killed in the fight against militants. Many were civilians caught in suicide bombings. Others were killed by the Pakistani army.
In Pakistan's largest city, 'Old Glory' is flammable and profitable
Getting accurate data on casualties and the effects of drones is extremely difficult in the dangerous, remote and often inaccessible tribal areas. The Taliban often seal off the sites of strikes.
Muhammed Muheisen / AP
Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.
While the aerial campaign has weakened al-Qaida, its ally, the Pakistani Taliban, remains a potent force despite a series of Pakistan army offensives against their strongholds in the northwest.
Seen as the biggest security threat to the U.S.-backed Pakistani government, that faction of the Taliban is blamed for many of the suicide bombings across Pakistan, and a number of high-profile attacks on military and police facilities.
For many Pakistanis, 'USA' means drones
"We are amazed that Obama has been re-elected. But for us there is no difference between Obama and Romney; both are enemies. And we will keep up our jihad and fight alongside our Afghan brothers to get the Americans out of Afghanistan," Pakistan Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said.
On Thursday, a suicide bomber rammed the gates of a military base in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, killing at least one soldier and wounding more than a dozen people.
Pakistan's 'Generation Y' battles to shape country's future
Pakistanis were largely indifferent in the run-up to Tuesday's election, expecting little change to the drone attacks regardless of whether Obama or Republican challenger Mitt Romney won.
"Any American, whether Obama or Mitt Romney, is cruel," Warshameen Jaan Haji, whose neighborhood was struck by a drone last week, told Reuters on the eve of the election. "I lost my wife in the drone attack and my children are injured. Whatever happens, it will be bad for Muslims."
Pakistani politician Imran Khan, a vocal critic of U.S. drone strikes, said he believed Obama stepped up the attacks in his first term so he wouldn't look weak on national security.
Despite security concerns, presidential candidate Imran khan leads an anti-drone rally, including 30 Americans, into Pakistan's badlands. Amna Nawaz reports.
"I think Obama essentially has an anti-war instinct," he told Reuters. "Without the worry of being re-elected, he will de-escalate the war, including the use of drones. This is positive."
Can social media propel 'rock star' politician Imran Khan to power?
But for Mohammad Khan, who is not related to the former cricketer, the damage is already done.
The February 2009 drone attack that destroyed his home left him as the main provider for 13 family members, forcing him to move to Islamabad and work with a real estate company.
"When the Sandy hurricane came, I thought that Allah would wipe away America," he said. "America just wants to take over the world."
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Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Factbox: Implications for different U.S. sectors post-election
(Reuters) - The result of Tuesday's U.S. presidential election will separate winners and losers across economic sectors and could determine which stocks will advance or decline in equity markets.
Below is a breakdown of the possible implications by sector of a victory by either Democratic President Barack Obama or his challenger, Republican Mitt Romney.
AN OBAMA VICTORY
* Alternative Energy: Obama has said he will continue to support development of renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind, but he will need the support of Congress to extend or renew tax breaks that have underpinned the growth of those industries.
* Chemicals: Producers are concerned that an Obama victory would mean a host of new regulations they say add undue costs and burden onto their businesses.
* Coal: The industry feels that tougher Environmental Protection Agency regulation under Obama has stifled the coal industry. Industry groups say coal plants that make up 3 percent of U.S. power generation capacity are due to be retired and there is no scope for new plants to be built under an Obama-run EPA.
* Finance: Financial reforms in the Dodd-Frank Act would likely be implemented more strictly for insurers and investment banks. Favorable tax policies for dividends and capital gains could change, affecting the profits of private equity firms.
* Healthcare: Hospitals and health insurers will benefit from the phased-in implementation of Obama's healthcare act, which requires most individuals to have health insurance.
* Rundown: Under a Democratic government the industries most likely to benefit include healthcare facilities and services, food and staples retailers, homebuilding and life sciences tools and services, according to a note from LPL Financial.
A ROMNEY VICTORY
* Chemicals: Producers are concerned that a Romney victory would mean that recent work to reauthorize existing chemical plant security standards would be voided by a plan to rework and re-legislate the standards.
* Coal: Romney signaled firm support for coal, along with natural gas and oil, on the campaign trail. He has said that under a Romney administration, the EPA would loosen industry regulations. But a victory may not be a clear one for coal. In 2003, as Massachusetts governor, Romney railed against a coal plant in the state as one that "kills people."
* Defense: A Romney victory would put an end to $500 billion in defense budget cuts scheduled to take effect early next year and would increase spending on weapons and warships.
* Healthcare: Romney has pledged to undo Obama's healthcare legislation on the first day of his presidency, but has not identified which parts of the legislation he would keep in place. Confusion over changing regulations would likely weigh on the shares of hospitals, insurers and drugmakers in the months to come.
* Technology: Giant tech companies such as Cisco Systems and Microsoft Corp, which each have more than $40 billion in cash overseas, could gain from a Romney victory since he would likely end or reduce the capital repatriation tax, according to UBS.
* Rundown: Under a Republican government the industries most likely to benefit include coal, oil and gas exploration and drilling, diversified financial services, specialty retailers and health insurers, according to a note from LPL Financial.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos and David Randall in New York; Editing by Jennifer Merritt and Andre Grenon)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/factbox-implications-different-u-sectors-post-election-182955376.html
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Security through obscurity: How to cover your tracks online | CIO ...
Thinking about the bits of data you leave behind is a one-way ticket to paranoia. Your browser? Full of cookies. Your cellphone? A beacon broadcasting your location at every moment. Search engines track your every curiosity. Email services archive way too much. Those are just the obvious places we're aware of. Who knows what's going on inside those routers?
The truth is, worrying about the trail of digital footprints and digital dustballs filled with our digital DNA is not just for raving paranoids. Sure, some leaks like the subtle variations in power consumed by our computers are only exploitable by teams of geniuses with big budgets, but many of the simpler ones are already being abused by identity thieves, blackmail artists, spammers, or worse.
Sad news stories are changing how we work on the Web. Only a fool logs into their bank's website from a coffee shop wi-fi hub without using the best possible encryption. Anyone selling a computer on eBay will scrub the hard disk to remove all personal information. There are dozens of sound, preventative practices that we're slowly learning, and many aren't just smart precautions for individuals, but for anyone hoping to run a shipshape business. Sensitive data, corporate trade secrets, confidential business communications -- if you don't worry about these bits escaping, you may lose your job.
Learning how best to cover tracks online is fast becoming a business imperative. It's more than recognising that intelligent traffic encryption means not having to worry as much about securing routers, or that meaningful client-based encryption can build a translucent database that simplifies database management and security. Good privacy techniques for individuals create more secure environments, as a single weak link can be fatal. Learning how to cover the tracks we leave online is a prudent tool for defending us all.
Each of the following techniques for protecting personal information can help reduce the risk of at least some of the bytes flowing over the internet. They aren't perfect. Unanticipated cracks, even when all of these techniques are used together, always arise. Still, they're like deadbolt locks, car alarms, and other security measures: tools that provide enough protection to encourage the bad guys to go elsewhere.
Online privacy technique No. 1: Cookie management
The search engines and advertising companies that track our moves online argue they have our best interests at heart. While not boring us with the wrong ads may be a noble goal, that doesn't mean the relentless tracking of our online activities won't be used for the wrong reasons by insiders or websites with less esteemed ideals.
The standard mechanism for online tracking is to store cookies in your browser. Every time you return to a website, your browser silently sends the cookies back to the server, which then links you with your previous visits. These little bits of personalised information stick around for a long time unless you program your browser to delete them.
Most browsers have adequate tools for paging through cookies, reading their values, and deleting specific cookies. Cleaning these out from time to time can be helpful, although the ad companies have grown quite good at putting out new cookies and linking the new results with the old.?Close 'n Forget, a Firefox extension, deletes all cookies when you close the tab associated with a site.
Standard cookies are just the beginning. Some ad companies have worked hard on burrowing deeper into the operating system. The Firefox extension?BetterPrivacy, for example, will nab the "supercookies" stored by the Flash plug-in. The standard browser interface doesn't know that these supercookies are there, and you can delete them only with an extension like this or by working directly with the Flash plug-in.
There are still other tricks for sticking information in a local computer.?Ghostery, another Firefox extension, watches the data coming from a website, flags some of the most common techniques (like installing single-pixel images), and lets you reverse the effects.
Online privacy technique No. 2: Tor
One of the simplest ways to track your machine is through your IP address, the number the Internet uses like a phone number so that your requests for data can find their way back to your machine. IP addresses can change on some systems, but they're often fairly static, allowing malware to track your usage.
One well-known tool for avoiding this type of tracking is called Tor, an acronym for "The Onion Router." The project, developed by the Office of Naval Research, creates a self-healing, encrypted supernetwork on top of the Internet. When your machine starts up a connection, the Tor network plots a path through N different intermediate nodes in the Tor subnet. Your requests for web pages follow this path through the N nodes. The requests are encrypted N times, and each node along the path strips off a layer of encryption like an onion with each hop through the network.
The last machine in the path then submits your request as if it were its own. When the answer comes back, the last machine acting as a proxy encrypts the Web page N times and sends it back through the same path to you. Each machine in the chain only knows the node before it and the node after it. Everything else is an encrypted mystery. This mystery protects you and the machine at the other end. You don't know the machine and the machine doesn't know you, but everyone along the chain just trusts the Tor network.
While the machine acting as your proxy at the other end of the path may not know you, it could still track the actions of the user. It may not know who you are, but it will know what data you're sending out onto the web. Your requests for web pages are completely decrypted by the time they get to the other end of the path because the final machine in the chain must be able to act as your proxy. Each of the N layers was stripped away until they're all gone. Your requests and the answers they bring are easy to read as they come by. For this reason, you might consider adding more encryption if you're using Tor to access personal information like email.
There are a number of ways to use Tor that range in complexity from compiling the code yourself to downloading a tool. One popular option is downloading?the Torbutton Bundle, a modified version of Firefox with a plug-in that makes it possible to turn Tor on or off while using the browser; with it, using Tor is as simple as browsing the web. If you need to access the internet independently from Firefox, you may be able to get the proxy to work on its own.
Online privacy technique No. 3: SSL
One of the easiest mechanisms for protecting your content is the encrypted SSL connection. If you're interacting with a website with the prefix "https," the information you're exchanging is probably being encrypted with sophisticated algorithms. Many of the better email providers like Gmail will now encourage you to use an HTTPS connection for your privacy by switching your browser over to the more secure level if at all possible.
An SSL connection, if set up correctly, scrambles the data you post to a website and the data you get back. If you're reading or sending email, the SSL connection will hide your bits from prying eyes hiding in any of the computers or routers between you and the website. If you're going through a public wi-fi site, it makes sense to use SSL to stop the site or anyone using it from reading the bits you're sending back and forth.
SSL only protects the information as it travels between your computer and the distant website, but it doesn't control what the website does with it. If you're reading your email with your web browser, the SSL encryption will block any router between your computer and the email website, but it won't stop anyone with access to the mail at the destination from reading it after it arrives. That's how your free web email service can read your email to tailor the ads you'll see while protecting it from anyone else. The web email service sees your email in the clear.
There are a number of complicated techniques for subverting SSL connections, such as poisoning the certificate authentication process, but most of them are beyond the average eavesdropper. If you're using a local coffee shop's wi-fi, SSL will probably stop the guy in the back room from reading what you're doing, but it may not block the most determined attacker.
Online privacy technique No. 4: Encrypted messages
While Tor will hide your IP address and SSL will protect your bits from the prying eyes of network bots, only encrypted mail can protect your message until it arrives. The encryption algorithm scrambles the message, and it's bundled as a string of what looks like random characters. This package travels directly to the recipient, who should be the only one who has the password for decrypting it.
Encryption software is more complicated to use and far less straightforward than SSL. Both sides must be running compatible software, and both must be ready to create the right keys and share them. The technology is not too complicated, but it requires much more active work.
There's also a wide range in quality of encryption packages. Some are simpler to use, which often makes for more weaknesses, and only the best can resist a more determined adversary. Unfortunately, cryptography is a rapidly evolving discipline that requires a deep knowledge of mathematics. Understanding the domain and making a decision about security can require a doctorate and years of experience. Despite the problems and limitations, even the worst programs are often strong enough to resist the average eavesdropper - like someone abusing the system admin's power to read email.
Online privacy technique No. 5: Translucent databases
The typical website or database is a one-stop target for information thieves because all the information is stored in the clear. The traditional solution is to use strong passwords to create a wall or fortress around this data, but once anyone gets past the wall, the data is easy to access.
Another technique is to only store encrypted data and ensure all the encryption is done at the client before it is shipped across the Internet. Sites like these can often provide most of the same services as traditional websites or databases while offering much better guarantees against information leakage.
A number of techniques for applying this solution are described in my book "Translucent Databases." Many databases offer other encryption tools that can provide some or all of the benefits, and it's easy to add other encryption to the Web clients.
In the best examples, the encryption is used to obscure only the sensitive data, leaving the rest in the clear. This makes it possible to use the nonpersonal information for statistical analysis and data-mining algorithms.
Online privacy technique No. 6: Steganography?
One of the most elusive and beguiling techniques is steganography, a term generally applied to the process of hiding a message so that it can't be found. Traditional encryption locks the data in a safe; steganography makes the safe disappear. To be more accurate, it disguises the safe to look like something innocuous, such as a houseplant or a cat.
The most common solutions involve changing some small part of the file in a way it won't be noticed. A single bit of a message, for instance, can be hidden in a single pixel by arranging the parity of the red and green components. If they're both even or both odd, then the pixel carries the message of 0. If one is even and one is odd, then it's a 1. To be more concrete, imagine a pixel with red, green and blue values of 128, 129, and 255. The red value is even, but the green value is odd, meaning the pixel is carrying the message of 1.
A short, one-bit message can be hidden by taking a file, agreeing upon a pixel, and making a small change in either the red or green value so that the pixel carries the right message. A one-bit change will be tiny and almost certainly not visible to the human, but a computer algorithm looking in the right place will be able to find it.
If this technique is repeated long enough, any amount of data can be hidden. An image with 12 megapixels can store a message with 12Mb, or 1.5MB, without changing any pixel by more than one unit of red or green. Judicious use of compression can improve this dramatically. A large message like this article can be snuck into the corners of an average photo floating around the internet.
Tweaking pixels is just one of the ways that messages can be inserted in different locations. There are dozens of methods to apply this approach - for example, replacing words with synonyms or artfully inserting slight typographical mistakes into an article. Is that a misspelling or a secret message? All rely on inserting small, unnoticeable changes.
Steganography is not perfect or guaranteed to avoid detection. While the subtle changes to values like the red and green component may not be visible to the naked eye, clever algorithms can sometimes find the message. A number of statistical approaches can flag files with hidden messages by looking for patterns left behind by sloppy changes. The glare off of glass or chrome in a picture is usually stuffed with pixels filled with the maximum amount of red, green, and blue. If a significant number of these are just one unit less than the maximum, there's a good chance that a steganographic algorithm made changes.
These detection algorithms also have limits, and there are a number of sophisticated approaches for making the hidden messages harder to find. The scientists working on detection are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the scientists looking for better ways to hide the data.
Source: http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/tech/security-through-obscurity-how-to-cover-your-tracks-online
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