The British Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), has announced plans to provide pro-West Islamic groups with search engine optimization (SEO) training, to help them to acheive higher search engine rankings in Google search than their more radical and terror-focused counterparts.

Gary McKinnon, the self-confessed pot-smoking, Asperger’s-diagnosed British hacker who went by the nickname “Solo”, and who hacked into several U.S. military computer systems (including at the Pentagon and NASA) and now faces extradition to the U.S. to stand trial, has none other than former hostage and Anglican envoy Terry Waite pulling for him.

Forget terrorists using Google maps to find targets; criminals are already way ahead in that game, using Google Earth maps to find their next victims – even stealing the very roofs off buildings that they have found using Google maps!

The BBC is under fire today for a stunt that it pulled a few days ago, in which it rented a Russian bot net (also sometimes called a spam bot), and then sent millions of pieces of spam, and DOSed a corporate server.

The Internet can be used for all kind of great things, and certainly one of those great things has been the development of the microlending sites – where users contribute a small amount of funds, and then the microlending site extends a small business loan (typically up to a few hundred dollars) to individuals to allow the recipient to get on their feet by starting or furthering a small business. However, one site is funding cock fighting, which is not only a horrible blood sport, but is illegal here in the United States. Perhaps more astonishingly, the CEO of the site, Kiva.org, is justifying the practice!

Two giant communications satellites crashed over Siberia, Russia, earlier this week, sending debris flying. In addition to the physical fall-out from the sattelite crash, communications for the Iridium portable satellite phone – or “sat phone” – system which was serviced by one of the crashed satellites were disrupted.

Google’s controversial Street View feature – often accused of invading privacy – is back in the news again. A few weeks ago, the Google StreetView van caught a woman in Madrid, Spain squatting behind a parked car and, well, relieving herself. Yes, Google published an image of a woman urinating. Here it is.

In stark contrast to the United States, where mobile phones for kids seem routine, and cell phones designed for children are seeing increasing marketshare, the government of France has decided to ban cell phones for children.

The government of Vietnam is getting ready to clamp down on the thriving Vietnamese blogging culture. In fact, the Vietnamese government is putting in place new regulations aimed at curbing just about any form of free speech in Vietnamese blogs. The new regulations, approved this month, include rules that ban all posts that the government feels undermine the national security of Vietnam or that disclose Vietnamese state secrets. The rules, written by the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications, also ban any posts that contain “inaccurate information” that could potentially damage the reputation of individuals and organizations.

If you are having trouble with Internet connections between Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), India, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Taiwan, Yemen, or Zambia, you’re not alone. Three undersea cables were cut this morning, leading to a global disruption of Internet connectivity. And this is the second time this year this has happened.

An Australian court has allowed someone to be served with notice of a lawsuit – by message on Facebook!

By now just about everyone has heard the story of the “Bush shoe thrower” – the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush, and called him a “dog”, while Bush was talking at a press conference in Baghdad. Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw both his shoes and the epithet at Bush before denouncing him as having brought death and sorrow to Iraq as a result of six years of war. What is amazing about this story – among other things – is how quickly that incident made it around the world. And that is because of the Internet.

Inq Mobile has released the INQ1, which is being touted as “The Facebook Phone”. That is because the Facebook Phone’s functionality is actually built around Facebook, and other social networking. In essence, it’s a social network device first while, oh yeah, it’s also a mobile phone.

A British doctor working in the Congo has saved the life of a teen by amputating his arm following instructions that were texted to him by a colleague back in the UK.

The government of China has had developed its own version of Linux – dubbed “Red Flag Linux” – and is requiring Chinese Internet cafe owners to replace their current Internet cafe operating systems with the Chinese Red Flag Linux.