Today I have some squid geopolitical news.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here.
SpaceLifeForm • December 9, 2022 6:56 PM
Twitter Implosion
You do not want to get trampled in the exodus from the birdhouse. Over 1 Billion will be leaving soon.
Besides Elton John leaving,
3 Members Of Twitter’s Trust And Safety Council Just Resigned
‘https://www.huffpost.com/entry/twitter-trust-safety-council-resign_n_63938a7fe4b09e0de4930034
[I was not aware they had 4. I know of one still. I’ll give her a few more days]
Ismar • December 9, 2022 7:33 PM
New , more stealthy, VPN from Proton Mail
https://protonvpn.com/blog/stealth-vpn-protocol/
Raphael Khoury • December 9, 2022 8:54 PM
A new paper on the ethics of madatory backdoors, published to IEEE Technology and Society Magazine.
Clive Robinson • December 9, 2022 9:10 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Re : Twitter Implosion
“Besides Elton John leaving”
Speaking of famous singers, do you remember Johnny Cash?
One song he made famous was “burning ring of fire”, it kind of springs to mind for Hell-on Rusk, –as he flies down in a spiral trailing smoke– with the chourus of,
“I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire”
JonKnowsNothing • December 9, 2022 9:20 PM
@Clive, SpaceLifeForm, All
Over on Marcy Wheeler’s site, she has a post in reference to a US Court Case involving Classified documents and information. It’s related to many disclosures of the last decades and has significant impacts for current court cases involving Classified items.
It’s fairly convoluted but the US Gov Legal Argument runs something like this:
Zho, here’s the chain…
Someone, aka a whistleblower, has access to a document that they determine needs to be in the public sphere. The whistleblower takes the document (home, car, RV). The whistleblower contacts a Journalist, Newspaper, Researcher, Technical Specialist who maybe able to “do something” about not only the document but the contents (the paper is boring, it’s what’s written on the paper that’s interesting). The Journalist or Specialist reads the document and the Newspaper prints a story about the document and the contents of the document. This story is printed in hard copy or on the internet viewed by many people, thousands of people, millions of people.
Every one in the chain is guilty of a criminal offense. Everyone in the chain is guilty of espionage. Every one in the chain can be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act.
Using this same chain and legal argument, the US Gov position is that there is no difference between a journalist and a spy. They are legally one and the same.
Yep. That’s it in a nutshell.
I don’t think there is enough room in Gitmo for everyone that’s read about the contents of such documents, or read reports about of such documents, or read books about the reports on such documents, or seen facsimiles of such documents in print or on the internet.
===
h ttps://www.emptywhee l.ne t/2022/12/09/if-a-bear-shits-in-a-cipa-conference-does-it-expand-the-espionage-act-to-the-nyts-readers/
note: Some of the comments are worth reading too. Legal representatives for clients, who cannot access public information because of how it was disclosed.
(url fractured)
Clive Robinson • December 9, 2022 9:46 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing,
Re : Legal Argument.
In many places the prosecution would have to show,
1, The defendant had knowledge of the information status.
2, Had intent to use it unlawfully.
So if some one “acquires a document” from some place/person and retypes it without classification as a plain *.txt file or print out and passes it on without refrence to it’s origin to another person…
How would that person know it was “clasified” in some way?
But more importantly,
Lets say I type in some thoughts to this blog, and some sad sack in the US Government puts it in a doccument as a quote. The document is classified am I guilty?
How about say you reading this blog and likewise copying my thoughts from this blog. As they are entirely unbeknown to you or I now in a classified document, does that also make you guilty?
Basically the US Government argument is not just immoral, unethical and moronic, it can be used to “create a crime” that never existed.
Such prosecutorial reasoning should be chucked out by the judge immediately and without question.
But you and I both know that is unlikely to happen…
Lick it & stick it! Wholesome fun for everyone! • December 9, 2022 10:03 PM
I Like to lick it & stick it!
Lick it and stick it.
MarkH • December 9, 2022 10:56 PM
@JohnKnowsNothing, Clive:
Thanks to Jon for calling attention. Yes of course, document classification applies to the content rather than the physical record. That’s one reason why Agent Orange’s claim that he declassified stuff by stealing it is absurd.
I don’t see anything on emptywheel suggesting that there would be a violation by a person who didn’t know the information was restricted.
My main takeaway is that the judge (in a sort of tactful way) was expressing intense skepticism toward the government’s argument.
I would not assume that the court will accept it.
Though judges are not applied mathematicians, they use a counterpart to “proof by falsification” — they can reject an argument because its general application would lead to untenable consequences. Courts do this all the time.
JonKnowsNothing • December 9, 2022 11:48 PM
@Clive, @MarkH, All
re: How deep does the chain reach
If I understand the Classification Issue in relation to the current cases of Shulte (Vault7), Julian Assange (lots of accusations), and on down to Edward Snowden (did he request help in leaving US jurisdiction either directly, indirectly, financial or legal support), it’s not about the first contact (group1) in the chain (Shulte, Snowden), it’s about all the other people in the chain.
The first recipients like Assange, Laura Poitras etc (group2) who looked at, read, vetted the information and then on down to the folks they discussed it with (group3) like The Guardian, Other News Outlets, Greenwald, our Host, news reporters, editors, technologists, reviewers. Then the tail end of the dog, is those who read the news, the reports, the analysis, saw the slides, video, chat logs, audio clips aka The Public.
In order to reach Assange for many cases, the US Gov has to get the chain to reach farther than the whistleblower.
In Snowden’s case that includes all the people that helped him book a flight out of Hong Kong, start the applications for asylum in Germany which was blocked at the Russian border. People directly in the link who refused or did not give any assistance might get off on part of it. Laura Poitras is mentioned in both chain links as is Glen Greenwald, since they may not have given any assistance other than to take the archives from him. But they both fall into the other chain section of Knowledge Of and Dissemination of that Knowledge (eg they learned of the archive and they told the news organizations about it).
You can see how this would apply to lots of a cases. It’s all rather complicated and most of it is Ex Parte hearings (Prosecution Only). In the last decades, a great deal of things that were Never Heard Of became The Legal Law of the Land, like: Relevant means All.
So, if Relevant means All, then we might get Looked is Hooked and Know to Show. (1)
===
1) Looked to Hooked is already a favorite of LEAs globally. Salted websites, images, documents are scattered about waiting for someone to Look. Just looking is enough to land you in prison. In some cases you don’t need to have looked or even know: possession on a a hard drive or device is enough.
The case of the decorated UK Police person is still being kicked around. After being convicted for having something illegal on an official device but never looked at, being cashiered, imprisoned for the unknown information, the courts decided the officer was wrongly convicted and was to get their job back.
afaik that has not happened yet or at least not to their previous rank.
SpaceLifeForm • December 10, 2022 1:41 AM
@ JonKnowsNothing, Clive, MarkH, ALL
Re: Classified documents
Here is my thinking.
If someone tries to show you a classified document, and you can spot the classification markings, and, this is important, if you are not at that classification level, or are not read into that specific program, then the smart thing to do, is to turn the document upside down, and immediately contact the FBI.
If you are not read in, and have no need to know, then, you do not want to know. DO NOT EVEN LOOK AT IT. Someone may use the knowledge of the fact that you looked at the document against you. Do not give them that attack angle.
Someone leaking classified intel to you may be up to no good. They may be trying to trap you. If you do not have proper clearance, consider that they may be trying to trap you, so turn it upside down. If you feel like you are under duress, tell them you will look at it later. Flat out lie to them. So they will leave your presence. Then call FBI.
Jonathan Wilson • December 10, 2022 2:54 AM
Apple is introducing end-to-end encryption for iCloud data including photos, notes and other stuff:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-advances-user-security-with-powerful-new-data-protections/
FBI calls Apple’s move a bad thing:
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/08/fbi-privacy-groups-icloud-encryption/
Robin • December 10, 2022 4:21 AM
@Ismar: Proton VPN Stealth not yet available on Windows.
Clive Robinson • December 10, 2022 8:02 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm, JonKnowsNothing,
Re : Not to be trusted.
“Someone leaking classified intel to you may be up to no good. They may be trying to trap you.”
How would or even could you know the information is classified?
It’s actually a logical absurdity, not that, that has ever been an impediment to some in the judicial process.
I think you missed my points of why this is so dangerous (that is the FBI et al are by definition of the way they function are dishonest and untrustworthy).
To understand my points, on the “information” side you first need to understand “information” has no inherant physical properties so the best you can do is impress/modulate it onto matter/energy then “containerize” –lock in a box– the physical medium but not the actual information.
Also the more complex understanding that,
“Trying to add informational properties to information that does not already have them fails.”
As they properties always remain distinct and separable. That is they can not be amalgamated as that is a physical not informational behaviour.
So you again can only “containerize” information impressed/modulated on other objects that at their core have to be physical to be,
1, Stored
2, Communicated
3, Processed
Returning to this nonsense the prosecuters are trying to put before the judge is a variation of the “Intellectual Propperty” argument that has made lawyers and other rent seekers rich by monopoly for centuries.
As I pointed out a few hours ago[1] to @Bruce about “owning” physical resources like land,
“You can “own” something in either of two basic ways,
1.1 Control information about it.
1.2 Control physical access to it.If you keep knowledge of a resource secret than those unaware of it can not take it away from you. That is secrecy is an evolutionary advantage that long predates spoken and written language.”
Whilst that kind of works for physical objects that are by definition each unique in substance, it does not work for information objects where there is no “unique in substance” as there is no “physical substance” to information as I’ve indicated above (and several times on this blog before).
This “issue” has been known for thousands of years. Many people have tried to control information but you can not and “The laws of Nature can not help you”.
It’s why in most places the convention of “patents of monopoly” rules out things not related to physical objects. That is whilst you can patent a physical product, what it does, and one or more physical processes to make a physical product or it’s parts, you were not alowed to own the ideas because it’s nonsensical to a rational mind. All you got was a time limited monopoly to make the physical items without competition.
But… Importantly to get the protection of the rules of patent you had a mandatory duty to “publish to record” such that it could be recognised and protected from that point of time. Likewise all other forms of IP have a requirment to disclose at a point in time. In short,
“IP legislation requires ther be no secrecy.”
Something the prosecutor is trying dishonestly to keep hidden.
The legal rule that if you want time limited ownership of a physical process or object created you can not keep the information secret is long established. Going back atleast to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and parliment issuing “Patents of Monopoly” at the end ot the 1500’s, which became more formalized some two decades after her death by the English “Statute of Monopolies” of 1623.
What the prosecutor wants is the judge to swallow the absurdity of “inherant secrecy” for information. Which the judge should realy toss out as it will do great harm if alowed to stand unchallenged.
To see why, the first point to understand is no information is classified by default, it simply exists and comes to notice (like gravity or the view of a landscape).
Therefore information has to be not just “noticed” it has to be “recorded” by “imprintment on a medium” in some way, but the recording be actively made classified by someone at some point in time after it is made (remember as with looking out of a window what one person sees and notes any number can look out see and note, and not just from that window. Information has no physicallity requiring work to be done to duplicate it, even though the recording process does).
The second point to note is that no actuall information can be inherently classified as a property of the information. If you try to “add such” it can just as easily “be removed”.
Hence you can only talk of “containers of information” being clasified, nothing else makes any rational sense.
So if I notice / discover information so can anyone else with the same skills. It’s why we say,
“Ideas come of age”
And as importantly,
“Ideas before their time”
Showing that whilst information is in effect temporally independent and just exists in some way. The fact that it is noticed or becomes useful very definately has a temporal component. That is information only becomes knowledge thus useful at some point in time, but not of necessity by place or person. Therefore can be “discovered” in multiple places by multiple people who simply just “notice” it’s relevance at around the same point in developmental time.
Once you accept that, which you realy have no choice over, you start to see what King Canute was acutely aware of back almost exactly a thousand years ago. That despite the mentally aberrants “Wants” some things you can not have as,
“The laws of nature do not alow them”
But as a certain recent Australian Politician so embarrassingly showed the “mentally aberrant” fail to learn that,
“They can not have simply because they want.”
This applies even when they have created “Laws of Man” the “laws of nature” will always trump them, something that many legislators and others in the judiciary should dwell upon intently.
[1] The concept of “ownership” can be shown to have come about due to an aberrant mental formation or perverted evolutionary process and comes about when a physical resource is for some reason scarce. Once established the mentally aberrant fight with violence to extend it no matter what, even if there is nolonger a scarcity or need.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/hacking-trespass-law.html/#comment-413658
MK • December 10, 2022 11:28 AM
@Clive
“Lets say I type in some thoughts to this blog, and some sad sack in the US Government puts it in a doccument as a quote. The document is classified am I guilty?”
Many years ago, when the Russion Bison bomber was still classified information, a fellow found a plastic model kit of the Bison while driving home from his job at the Pentagon. He purchased it and spent all night assembling it. The next morning he took it to work and put it on his desk.
It was confiscated.
JonKnowsNothing • December 10, 2022 12:14 PM
@@Clive, SpaceLifeForm, MarkH, All
re: Run to…
There are (at least) 2 versions where you can get snagged without doing much at all.
A) If someone says “hey I want to share a classified document…”, you are already done. The current application in question means: You just learned of a classified document.
A1) You might have a security clearance, so you are OK, until you see the classification. If the classification is higher than your own level, then you are done.
A2) You do not have a security clearance (lots of folks never had one), just hearing the statement “classified document”, you are done.
B) Someone hands you a paper to read. They don’t tell you anything about it. You take the document and read it. If there are any security clearance markers on it, you are done even though you didn’t know anything about the document.
The extension of the chain goes a bit further, it’s a combo of A and B.
A+B) When government documents (any government, any documents) find their way into The Public Domain, the facsimile of the document generally retains markers of the type of document and redacts (sometimes) names or other identifiers. Identifying persons who are not high ranked government officials is definitely a criminal action (sometimes).
The title of an article might be: NSA data harvesting of US Citizens OKed by FISC .
This accusation has been around for 40+ years but until Snowden, the NSA was able to hide and/or reputation destroy, persons making this claim. Lots of folks never believed the splitter existed in the SF Telecom building, or the splitters had been added to the undersea telecom+internet cables at their landing zones, nor the indication of assistance in splitting satellite communication or hacking into Belgacom to gain access to EU telecom streams. We were the Good Guys in the White Hats and We Don’t Shoot First (1).
So, the proofs of all of the above where in tranches of USA NSA 5EY security documents published globally. Maybe not everyone read them, but lots of techies did. We knew what was needed and how to do it. We found that M$, Yahoo, G$$ and the rest did it without the knowledge of the majority of employees and had been doing it for years. It was all on the graph. That graph carried markers and was published as proof the information was not faked.
We read, We understood, We made changes.
Some of us attempt to educate others about not exposing their privacy any more than they have to do. Some folks follow the advice and many do not.
According to the legal proposition, we are all guilty of criminal action because:
===
1) Shooting first in a cowboy movie was a significant sign of Bad Guy. It was used in the Harry Potter movie dueling sequence when Malfoy cast his spell before the count down finished. In the original Star Wars movies, Han Shot First. Later editions of the movie, expunged the part where Han Shot First. In the USA, it’s a big deal. It’s a cultural problem reflected in our New policing policies of Shoot First, Claim Your Life Was In Danger, Saves Time and Resources.
Winter • December 10, 2022 12:38 PM
@All
Russia had a secret plan to wipe Ukraine off the face of the Earth. This report tells why it failed [1]
‘https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/12/04/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-rusi-report/
Dividing Ukrainians into four categories for killing, intimidating, or inducing to collaborate, wargames to hunt down and kill Ukrainian activists, and filtration camps to deport unruly Ukrainians into Russia, all to destroy Ukrainian sovereignty and identity and steal Ukraine’s military enterprises and nuclear power plants. A recent report by the RUSI Institute tells why Russia decided it could pull it off (spoiler: they tested the west’s reaction) and why it ultimately failed.
It all started with the failure to feed the old advice of do not get high in your own supply:
What follows next was confirmation bias of an industrial scale on the part of the FSB which has become routine in Russia’s political system. The surveys conducted by the FSB reportedly “painted a picture of a largely politically apathetic Ukrainian society that distrusted its leaders, was primarily concerned about the economy, and thought an escalation of the war between Russia and Ukraine was unlikely.”
Calling these reports inaccurate and false would be a gross understatement.
[1] The full RUSI report is here:
‘https://static.rusi.org/359-SR-Ukraine-Preliminary-Lessons-Feb-July-2022-web-final.pdf
JonKnowsNothing • December 10, 2022 1:01 PM
@Winter, All
re: wipe … off the face of the Earth
There is no such thing possible. There are 2 problems.
1) Removing large amounts of physical dirt, the size of country isn’t feasible and would just be replaced by magma from under the mantle.
2) Cultural genocide has been tried by many rulers with varying degrees of success. Even with the most determined, it’s hardly 100%. Many times it fails spectacularly later on. Cultures are hard to remove because we retain memories and even if there are not direct memories we re-discover them.
Of course, it would be much nicer world if such things did not occur. Knowing that they are long term failures maybe of some help sorting things out.
re: UKR v RU
This is a Thousand Year War. It will end the same way it has done for 1,000+ years. It will start again the same way it has done every 50-100 years.
No one is going anywhere. The reasons for the 1,000 year war will remain unsolved. No one wants to solve it. It’s very good for business. It always has been, which is why it has lasted 1,000+ years.
re: Hope for a Future
If you would like to have a bit of hope, today is the 30 year anniversary of the Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating giving what is called The Redfern Speech Dec 10, 1992.
Keating was the first Australian prime minister to publicly acknowledge to Indigenous Australians that European settlers were responsible for the difficulties Australian Aboriginal communities continued to face:
It was we who did the dispossessing.
We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
We brought the diseases and the alcohol.
We committed the murders.
We took the children from their mothers.
We practised discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice.
And our failure to imagine that these things could be done to us.
===
Search Terms:
Redfern Park Speech
10 December 1992
Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating
Nick Levinson • December 10, 2022 1:15 PM
@JonKnowsNothing, @Clive Robinson, @SpaceLifeForm, & @MarkH:
Decades ago, I recall a public index by the U.S. Department of Defense of documents, some of which were described in that index as classified. For some of those, the title was classified; for some others of those, it wasn’t. The index was not classified and was specifically available under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552).
I don’t think knowing a document is classified is enough to convict. Neither is possession, although you may have a duty to promptly return or destroy it.
The then-former executive editor of the National Enquirer, first name Ian, in his memoirs, told of a reporter picking up Henry Kissinger’s residential trash against warnings of the Secret Service that he could be jailed (he said, okay, I guess jail it will be, and continued loading the bags into his car trunk and was not arrested or stopped). The Enquirer found a classified document and contacted the CIA, which sent two officers to the publisher. The publisher handed over a razor and said to cut anything they didn’t want shown. They cut and the rest was given back to the publisher. An article was published. That likely was an exception to normal procedure, but probably not an illegal response by the CIA or the publisher.
Nick Levinson • December 10, 2022 1:25 PM
A health clinic in the U.S., having major data privacy responsibilities under HIPAA legislation, has a software stack that can be complex for patients to use, with different software packages for different patient functions, including two apps for making different kinds of appointments, each from a different vendor and each having its own way of authenticating a patient as user. I don’t see a security hole because of this (and haven’t looked for one), but this does hobble usability and therefore delivery of substantive services, especially to patients who are not geeks, probably most patients. I am geeky and I got confused on how to proceed. Security has to be designed so as not to overly complicate substantive service to plain humans with little training or time or interest for being trained.
Nick Levinson • December 10, 2022 1:39 PM
Humor on scams (as accessed 12-7-22).
By the way, I get almost no spam texts. Tips to avoiding them and spam calls: (1) Don’t answer unknown numbers; they more likely come to numbers that have a history of picking up the phones. (2) Don’t buy from any of them, because contact info is passed along and you get more. With direct mail, maybe only 2 in a hundred answer, but that’s enough to make money from the hundred and customers even for other companies are golden (have higher conversion rates). Yes, I know that not everyone can apply these tips.
JonKnowsNothing • December 10, 2022 3:18 PM
@ Nick Levinson, @Clive, @SpaceLifeForm, & @MarkH, All
re: Cutting it out
iirc(badly) The way it is done has 2 flavors.
Flavor A) The organization sends the items in question to the security services for vetting before publication. The security services has a whole team working on such items so they are able to give answers (and directions) back quickly. Sometimes this is an All Nighter, back and forth, on what’s In and what’s OUT.
Flavor B) Some news agencies and reporters have very close relationships with the security services. They co-write the report about a document together for publication. The reporter and news organization get the byline. The security service gets the news they want, how they want, described they way they want it.
It’s pretty tough to determine which Flavor made the cut. Bertie Bots Every Flavor?
Paul Suhler • December 10, 2022 7:29 PM
An excellent history of the development of US government secrecy, in particular nuclear secrecy, is Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2021).
He has a blog: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/
SpaceLifeForm • December 11, 2022 2:46 AM
Twitter Leaking of another kind
‘https://www.mediaite.com/online/new-leak-to-media-elon-musks-letter-threatening-twitter-employees-who-leak-to-the-media/
ResearcherZero • December 11, 2022 3:00 AM
Ooops sorry
“For the customers impacted we understand this is an unacceptable breach of your trust.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-11/telstra-apologises-for-online-data-leak/101759006
–
Not sorry
A computer algorithm couldn’t tell the difference between real and artificially calculated money “owed” in 470,000 cases.
https://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/006-Carney.pdf
More than 2030 people died after receiving a Centrelink debt notice, also known as robo-debt, according to new data released by the Department of Human Services.
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/2030-people-have-died-after-receiving-centrelink-robodebt-notice/10821272
“We’ll find you, we’ll track you down, you will have to pay those debts and you may end up in prison.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54970253
–
@JonKnowsNothing
An International Embarrassment
The WA government has been warned it risks being found in contempt of court for continuing to house juvenile detainees in an adult prison, with a senior Perth judge describing what was happening as “barbaric”, “cruel” and “a form of child abuse”.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-21/judge-warns-wa-government-over-housing-children-at-casuarina/101564162
“What we are talking about here, make no mistake about it, is child abuse.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-24/don-dale-youth-detention-centre-nt-foi-policy-failings/101338742
NSW is using prisoners as political “pawns”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/20/nsw-turns-visiting-un-inspectors-away-from-queanbeyan-detention-facility
“Solitary confinement is an inherently dangerous and damaging practice and the negative psychological and physical impacts on children are particularly pronounced. It’s a practice that should be prohibited, but we know that jurisdictions like Western Australia continue to use solitary confinement regimes on children.”
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/580025f66b8f5b2dabbe4291/58169937bb7f1e05acdfbeea/581699fcbb7f1e05acdfcfa8/1477876220766/TortureConventionStandards_March2015.pdf?format=original
ResearcherZero • December 11, 2022 3:06 AM
The white ibis washes toads before ingestion to prevent poisoning.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-63699884
5-MeO-DMT is thought to be four to six times more powerful than DMT. 5-MeO-DMT is not a cure for mental illness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/us/toad-venom-psychedelic.html
ResearcherZero • December 11, 2022 3:48 AM
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hertz-to-pay-168-million-in-bogus-customers-jail-rental-cars-stolen/
Hertz is using the Palantir Foundry operating system to create a platform that will help the company more efficiently manage and operate its fleet of nearly 500,000 vehicles
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hertz-partners-palantir-drive-operational-120000544.html
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-14/renting-a-car-from-hertz-you-could-wind-up-in-jail
Hi Dad
I rented a car and I have a Centerlink debt
I’m in jail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noJo-bJ5V8A
ResearcherZero • December 11, 2022 3:52 AM
“This case of cyberespionage speaks to the increasingly dangerous context which activists, journalists, and civil society and children alike must navigate today.”
https://www.amnesty.ca/news/news-releases/cyber-breach-statement/
SpaceLifeForm • December 11, 2022 4:53 AM
Apparently ChatGPT got a corpus injection and is now aware that Elmo owns Twitter.
It certainly knows of NYT writing style.
‘https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/109/494/007/587/715/252/original/5100f23943d6fe1e.png
ResearcherZero • December 11, 2022 5:11 AM
Following a series of media reports containing details from leaked diplomatic cables preceding the resignation of Sir Kim Darroch from his post as UK Ambassador to the US, the London Metropolitan Police threatened to treat the publication of leaked documents as criminal.
In February 2017, an alarming Law Commission proposal envisaged replacing the Official Secrets Act with an updated “Espionage Act” that would make it easier to label journalists and others as “spies” with a possible sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
https://rsf.org/en/uk-police-threaten-treat-publication-leaked-information-criminal
The National Security Bill
Despite government reassurances that the new legislation will not affect the activities of genuine investigative reporters, the use of overbroad and vague language in the bill, as well as the absence of meaningful free expression protections means there is a risk that the measures will deter disclosure of wrongdoing by officials and chill public interest journalism.
There should be no situation in which journalists risk being classed as spies or traitors. This perception, reinforced by this Bill, risks legitimising threats made against journalists and media workers and undermining public support for a free media. A free press is one of the conditions of a pluralistic democracy and the UK government should not close down scrutiny of its activities.
As currently drafted, the bill criminalises journalists who handle, obtain, retain, disclose or provide access to “protected information”
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmpublic/NationalSecurity/memo/NSB08.htm
Greek Watergate
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62822366
“Watergate on Steroids”
https://advox.globalvoices.org/2022/09/26/the-greek-spyware-scandal-when-technology-outpaces-governance/
In April, Inside Story reported that Greek financial journalist, Thanasis Koukakis, had confirmed that his phone had been infected with Predator.
https://insidestory.gr/article/greek-state-and-spyware-vendor-intellexa-they-are-acquainted-after-all
According to his own article from 24 October 2022, the Greek investigative journalist Tasos Telloglou was under surveillance between May and August 2022. He was allegedly tailed by unknown individuals who also attempted to access his car, while he was himself investigating the surveillance scandal Predatorgate for the independent media Inside Story.
In the wake of the August revelation that the chairman of the opposition party Pasok-Kinal, Nikos Androulakis, was also wiretapped with Predator, the head of the EYP and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff who oversaw the secret service, Grigoris Dimitriadis, stepped down. Yet, the authorities have repeatedly denied the procurement or use of the Predator spyware.
https://rsf.org/en/greece-government-s-silence-about-new-revelations-surveillance-scandal-deafening
Bit by Bit
Dimitriadis has now brought a lawsuit against Chondrogiannos and other journalists who have been, bit by bit, connecting threads between his business dealings and the dealings of those involved with Intellexa and Predator.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/17/reporters-dig-up-more-links-between-greek-government-and-spyware
Greek bill seems to allow a person who was under surveillance in the past to be informed only three years afterwards.
the bill on suspending the confidentiality of communications, cybersecurity and the protection of citizens’ personal data was unveiled on 15 November
http://www.opengov.gr/ministryofjustice/?p=16477
“Predator was found to have been used in another dozen countries since 2021, illustrating the continued demand among governments and the lack of robust international efforts to limit the use of such tools.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/us/politics/spyware-nso-pegasus-paragon.html
Killed since 1 Jan 2022
54 journalists
4 media workers
Currently in prison
514 journalists
18 media workers
https://rsf.org/en/barometer
Winter • December 11, 2022 7:49 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
There is no such thing possible. There are 2 problems.
Re: Wiping out a culture from the face of the earth.
It tends to be difficult, but there are examples (in no particular order):
A modern culture on the brink of extinction due to official policies are the Ainu in Japan:
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_language
We leave out the many cultures that were wiped out after colonialisation.
If you look at dying languages, there are many examples of cultures dying out completely.[1]
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_extinction
There is a lot of literature on language death. To summarize, when young people cannot use it in daily life, they stop using it and the language dies. Main areas are education, work, radio&tv, periodicals, and books.
[1] When the language is not spoken anymore, all the cultural artifacts, stories, myths, folklore, rites, religion, and heritage become inaccessible. It is effectively dead, even when the people themselves live on.
Clive Robinson • December 11, 2022 8:59 AM
@ Winter, JonKnowsNothing,
Re : Genocide for sport.
There are incidents in the south of the USA of organised murders in the southern states of the US in the past century, some within living memory.
But few know of the English and Irish in Australia.
Look up the “Coniston massacre” that went on from August to October 1928 killing as many as 200 aborigins as proudly told by one of the five in court for the killings. And all the legal whitewashing to keep the “colonial system” in place.
There is a list of such events in Australia you can look down at,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_Australians
Long as that list is, it only shows verified recorded and notable massacres, so is certainly incomplete. Because it is well known that rape and murder were seen as “perks of the job” so quite commonplace out in the bush ranges. With a fire and shallow pit all that was required to get rid of the evidence of “such pleasures”.
The same Australian “Governmental” attitudes to indigenous peoples are still highly prevelent today. You only have to look at the accepted behaviours by Oil and Gas executives and those members of government they effectively own to see this as they quite visably steal billions from East Timor and similar. As for the alleged “Australian Aid” it mostly is not when you look into it. In some cases it’s easy to see it’s actually been designed to kill East Timorians and prevent economic growth via “natural consequences” of putting houses/buildings etc in areas known to be prone to flooding and storms.
fib • December 11, 2022 9:55 AM
@ Winter
The natives from the Iberian before the Romans, most likely Berber people.
I’m Ibero-Italian myself and I’ve always been interested in knowing my origins. The non-European people of the Iberian peninsula were the Turdetani[0] – related to the Phoenicians – in the extreme South.
In the last 2000 years the occupants of Iberia were the Celts [with a special mention to a subgroup called the Lusitanians — “Those who are called Lusitanians are the bravest of all Cimbri”[1]] and Visigoths.
In fact, around the year 700 Iberia was a Visigoth kingdom[]. North and Northwest Iberia are Celtic. The Moors only appeared at the end of the first millennium, in 711 [they were not called Berbers then].
[0]htps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turdetani
[1]htps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitanians
[2]h*tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigothic_Kingdom
Winter • December 11, 2022 12:50 PM
@fib
The non-European people of the Iberian peninsula were the Turdetani[0] – related to the Phoenicians – in the extreme South.
I see my information is seriously outdated. I looked up the timeline myself and it is “complicated”. And Phoenician looks indeed much more likely than Berber.
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_pre-Roman_Iberian_history
Winter • December 11, 2022 12:52 PM
@Clive
Re : Genocide for sport.
I was more thinking of the generations of stolen children in Canada and Australia (and elsewhere).
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations
JonKnowsNothing • December 11, 2022 2:41 PM
@Winter, Clive, FIB, All
re: Stolen Cultures
There are indeed lost cultures and sometimes lost “peoples” or genetic sequences that have died out (climate, war, famine etc).
It isn’t all that rare per se, over the timeline of written and unwritten history. Scorched earth, take no prisoners have all had their toll on our common and shared genetics and varied versions of historical memory.
There are some takeaways when considering if something is truly lost, as sometimes it came be found again (see old Hare Krishna jokes).
Even if you do not know directly, it sits in our vocabularies like hidden gems.
Words ending in “ix” in France are not French words. They come from the time of the Gauls. Caesar may have crushed the tribes but the French peoples have never forgotten Vercingetorix.
Peoples who have had their cultures trod upon and stamped out find a way to remember. Occitan, Breton have some recovery. Welsh is in danger but there are those working to remember.
Lots of Indigenous peoples are striving to recover their languages, their cultures and way of life. American Bison in the USA is no longer a dream. The few remaining Bison were kept in National Parks to be gawked at or kept in feeding pens for supermarket ground mince. There are now Bison roaming Indigenous Lands. The Buffalo has returned. Albeit not in the same numbers and not in the same climate system but they are there all the same.
There are dead cultures but the people do not usually disappear. They merge into other groups. Even after all the destruction by Colonial Europe, the Maya are still here. We can read many of their monuments. There are people fluent in the many language variations of Ancient Egyptians. There are some audio recordings that may give clues on Ancient Egyptian pronunciations that remain hidden in modern language.
Cultures and the conditions that make them arise, continue to make new cultures rise in their place. They hold similarities because people are not that different. We chose to be different but we do not have to be so.
It also plays in to historical and cryptographic issues because some terms or lack of them can be traced to particular periods or epochs. The USA rarely uses the familiar form of Thee-Thou but it is still in available to modern memory. Such lost words are clues to historical source. Once you know a word, you cannot pretend to not know it. The use of a modern word in a historical context is a clue in a puzzle. Light Switch, Light Saber, Lights On, Lights Out (1) mark our own epoch.
Sorting it out can be a fun and intriguing project.
===
1) The is a game called “lights out” where the goal is to take a random (ahem) series of colored lights set into a grid and using specific rules on how to, turn the lights out and darken all the square.
There is also a Bull Rider phrase used when someone is bucked off and knocked out, generally by having a massive front face impact with the skull of the bull.
Dogbert • December 11, 2022 4:14 PM
@clive
CLASSIFIED – TOP SECRET – FOR DOGBERT EYES ONLY
A lot of mischief could be created by labeling all possible things “classified”. After a bit of that, seems like no person could be expected to know if the mark is a real govt classification or just another novelty one. Guess I need to get a red rubberstamp.
Clive Robinson • December 11, 2022 7:09 PM
@ Dogbert,
Re : red rubberstamp
“A lot of mischief could be created by labeling all possible things “classified”.”
We already know it does, which is why certain nut-bar Goverments are increasingly doing it… So just waiting for some kids science project to get the treatment.
But my real concern is the other way around.
The way that pscho-prosecutor want’s it is that just suspicion of knowing “the information” in some way is sufficient to get life without hope of being set free (yup they can kind of do that already in the US without actuall evidence, but it requires the prosecuter to actually do something rather than just hand out “Go to Jail – Do not Pass Go” cards).
So for example I put a piece of paper on your desk face up with just the information and no classification indicators or anything else. I take a photo of you going to and sitting down at your desk with that piece of paper on it…
Congratulations, not even having read it you are now guilty of espionage/treason as far as the prosecutor is concerned…
The FBI has a very bad habit of presenting false evidence to courts and other LE Orgs/Agencies and swearing it is the truth. Yes they sometimes get caught, but mostly they don’t even get a slap on the wrist, just a “better luck next time” from the boss.
Because right from their very first director the FBI has been dirty and along with the nut-bar psychopaths the DoJ attract they have been trying to push whaco “interpretation” as de-facto ever since.
So you want to tourture people, but apparently you are not alowed to. Not a problem find a sociopath lawyer working in government he plays fast and loose with a few word games and gets a law professorship out of it, and amongst other things get to play “drown the obviously innocent” people for sh1ts and giggles…
But hey no worries it’s a “Republic” not a “representational democracy”, so that’s alright then…
You end up trying to work out what the heck is going on, and you get a knock on the door “Congratulations Sir here’s a black bag to go over your head whilst we fill the bath tub”…
JonKnowsNothing • December 12, 2022 7:43 AM
@Clive, @ Dogbert, All
Re : red rubberstamp creating more mischief
iirc(badly) In the USA, the document doesn’t have to be “classified” at the time you looked at it. It could be unclassified or declassified. There have been court cases and convictions were a document was “classified or reclassified” after the person was arrested.
So, looking or not looking, won’t help you if a pscho-prosecutor or government policy wants you imprisoned.
Then there is the policy of superseding indictments. A superseding indictment takes the place of the previously active one. What that means is practical terms is: The longer they have to look at you, the more they can attach to the criminal complaint. Which is why when things get to court, you won’t just be charged with Looking, there will be a laundry list of extra bonus charges.
Clive Robinson • December 12, 2022 7:53 AM
Terrorism or Nature which is worse?
We spend billions if not trillions on “Domestic Terrorism” why I have no idea other than “Pork back scratchings”.
After all which does more damage and how do you “eliminate the threat” if not the actual danger?
You come out of your home and see damge you can not explain, do you “Do a Boston” and call out the men in black. Or do you take a more reasoned approach?
Well,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CHOQME-uW5A
Shows that maybe a well cooked pie might be the solution in some cases.
JonKnowsNothing • December 12, 2022 7:59 AM
@Clive, @SpaceLifeForm, All
re: Zero-Covid evolving to Billions-of-Covid
China is in the process of dismantling their Zero-Covid policy. The testing stations are being dismantled, restrictions or mitigations gone, everything left up to the individuals to deal with. PapaRedFlag won’t be protecting the Children any longer.
The numbers are unreliable, the expected rate of infection is 1:22.
While official numbers are down, reports of hospitals ramping up for what’s coming and the anecdotal number of sick is rising quickly.
In Central California it’s bad but in China it’s going to be … well.. I don’t think there is a word invented yet for what’s about to happen there. The New Year 2023 will be not seen by a lot of folks.
fyi: I did not get the mRNA jab. The healthcare persons that were going to give it were already sick. I’ve self-locked down. Door closed. No one in. Urgent-Emergency travel only. This is what the food stockpile is for.
Clive Robinson • December 12, 2022 10:58 AM
@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,
Re : Doing a Bee Gees, not a Drifters.
It needs to be said from time to time,
“Security of family and home is the highest priority security any non conflict zone person can have.”
Which brings us into,
“I’ve self-locked down. Door closed. No one in. Urgent-Emergency travel only. This is what the food stockpile is for.”
Well I’ve kind of been hinting that people “need a pantry” for a while now. Not just for yet another not unexpected lock-down but because there will be some serious food shortages in the near future and that means panic buying and significant price hikes (as basic economics predicts).
The trick is get ahead of the game and slowly “stock-up” with shelf stable food that might not be your chosen can of premium “chilli-beans with extra red pepper” but is close enough that you can eat it without any issue.
But it’s not just food and water you need to think about. Without doubt people in many places are going to suffer deliberately created energy shortages thus rolling-black outs. As fuel prices are pushed through the roof by both Governments and Energy suppliers as a form of “tax on the poor”.
So your pantry needs to not require energy for storage.
Meat is not shelf stable, and normally you’ld freeze it, but with rolling black-outs are on the cards a freezer is now a luxury that can not be justified. Thus “Cooking-n-Canning” is the way to go. Personally I’d use “fat” not “acid water” as the canning liquid as fats are going to get in short supply as well. The easiest thing to can in jars is sausages. Simmer them on a low heat to cook all the way through. Then Fry them off to get colour if you want, push them as tightly as you can into “cleaned and steamed” sterilized jars then add a boiling liquid or “as hot” fat to them. Pop into a microwave or preasure cooker for a final sterilising blast of heat then with a lot of care put the lids on and let them cool slowly. As long as the lids “pop-in” by themselves and you store out of the light they are good for a year atleast. Using glass jars even ones that hotdogs or other stuff in your supermarket came in are reusable many times with care. So don’t throw such jars out clean them and reuse them, they are essentially free so don’t waste them in the recycling or refuse bin.
Dried beans, peas, lentils, and rice are shelf stable almost indefinately as are most “whole grains” (but not their flours[1]). However “nuts” are not shelf stable due to the lipids oxidizing and going rancid. Yes you can store them with oxygen absorbers but that’s a lot of faff if you don’t know what you are doing.
As for vegtables whilst some like root vegtables, onions, garlic etc are OK to store for a year IF you know what you are doing. My advice is make up plain “stews” or “bases” and similar and can them. That way you can fry off herbs and spices to add the stew/base to and have a multitude of different dishes to stop the taste buds getting jaded. A basic onion&tomatoe base is good for nearly every nations diet, cook it down to near a paste and you’ve a base for ketchup, pizza topping, soup, curry, nacho filling etc etc and something you can stick any protien you can think of into it.
But with rolling-black outs to be a fixtute in many peoples futures especially around meal times you need to get ahead of the game.
Our great grand parents knew all about “hay box” cooking, and it also significantly cuts down on energy use. Think of it as “Slow Cooking on the low energy plan”. Food cooks by the vibration of the molecues within it which is based not on energy but temprature. Put enough energy in to get things upto temprature then keep it there. The most efficient way is with a lot of insulation around the pot you heated up, which is all a hay-box or equivalent is. You can make one at home with next to no dificulty that you can heat the food to boiling on the stove in the morning and have it slowly cook during the day and be still to hot to eat in the pot in the evening when it’s cooked right through.
Use a large metal thermos for tea or near boiling water for coffee, powdered soups, stock cubes and nodels etc.
A similar principle applies to us… Put a duvet on the sofa, put a single bed electric blanket on it put another wool or similar blanket on that, use another blanket as a hood and body wrap like a poncho and when sitting put another duvet over that and you can turn the room heating right down or off. I’ve lived comfortably in -10C and below in an unheated building for quite some time like that. Just be carefull with hot drinks as the steam can cause “black mold” to start growing on the ceiling etc.
Another thing to learn is that creating a sealed air gap across a window with “shrink-wrap” or similar plastic will act as an extra layer of glazing and can keep you a lot warmer. Also “king size duvets” can be hung up as curtains. The heat they will save you will be many times the energy used by modern LED lights. So keep the duvets hanging till the sun shines through the window to give free heat. Some call this “passive heating” well you do need to get up to draw/open.
Likewise our ancestors used to hang tapestries for the same air-gap insulation purposes as well as having heavy drapes on four-poster beds…
Doing these things can make a lot of difference between living moderately well within your means or dying unpleasently due to illness, hyperthermia, or malnutrition.
Our great, great, grandparents can all teach us about surviving when you are not even rich enough to have the luxury of being “Dirt Poor” it’s hard won cultural knowledge we should hang onto.
[1] A few days ago I found a packet of Wheatabix that had fallen down the back of some shelving. It’s expiry date was a little over ten years ago. However the packet was clean, dry and untouched, and the inside wrapper intact and the “biscuits” still crisp and smelling OK. So I made a porridge (like oatmeal) with a couple and it tasted OK… So yeah “shelf life” might be way way longer than you might think. Oh as “white flour” contains a heck of a lot less “wheatgerm” than brown or wholemeal it has a lot less lipids to go rancid, so lasts longer. I’ve had a bag of white flour in the stove cupboard that I use a teaspoon or so at a time as a thickening agent, it’s getting on for five years past it’s sellby date. As for the salt… I next to never use it and it’s the same one I purchased when I moved into my own home “cough, cough” decades ago and yes it’s still fine as is the table sugar from about the same time.
JonKnowsNothing • December 12, 2022 2:22 PM
@Clive, All
re: Storing the Goods
Excellent information. Always appreciated.
@Clive, I have passed on your suggestions many times and for my own part my herb & spice cabinets are overflowing with options. Any time I spot a discount that’s in budget, I take the most exotic things I can find. Amazing tastes. One of the Food Pantries I go to (1) sometimes has a “spice table:take 1”, one of the donors must be a importer shop, so I grab those items when available.
A few add-ons about storage, depending on your climate.
Some dry goods have “unexpected added protein” naturally included. If you don’t want an outbreak of flying things or crawly ones you can try these:
===
1) currently many local food pantries are closed due to the holidays and will reopen in Jan 2023
Firefly • December 12, 2022 6:05 PM
@Ismar
What is the point if you could just detect/block traffic based on the server ip addresses?
Clive Robinson • December 12, 2022 6:45 PM
@ Firefly,
“… just detect/block traffic based on the server ip addresses?”
Who could “detct/block” and “where?”
A properly setup and configured VPN should not leak IP address information from one end to the other end, or the other way around.
So between your computer and your end of the VPN all a third party should be able to see is your encrypted connection to the VPN, not where your tunneled connection is either destined for or coming from at the other end of the VPN. Likewise at the other end your outbound connection should appear to come from the VPN output IP address not that of your computer.
Yes a third party who can see either end of the VPN could do traffic analysis, but there are ways to limit that.
If you are refering to the idea that a third party could hit VPN bound connections with RST packets etc then yes they can stop you connecting but that should not give away the IP address at either end of the VPN to the other.
If you are refering to say an ISP or National firewall you have to go through then yes they can see you trying to connect to the VPN and force the packets to be dropped etc.
However as the Chinese Government have found there are ways an inventive mind can get around that restriction.
However you could set up a personal “first hop” VPN on an AWS or similar service that is “to big to be stopped”.
It’s a bit like using Google Search as a way to control a bot-net without having a control server, which I’ve mentioned before.
Clive Robinson • December 12, 2022 8:45 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing,
Re : Unwelcome dinner guests.
“Some dry goods have “unexpected added protein” naturally included.”
Don’t they just…
The main problem other than what goes in kind of comes out again, even with bugs… is the exoskeleton chitin. Which nearly all bugs have, including prawns and locust (both of which are nice protein inside).
Unfortunately chitin being a tough old polymer of acetylglucosamine is tougher than your fingernails (mum always told you not to chew 😉
It is not just insoluble it’s also quite resistant to nearly all chemicals you will find in an omnivorous digestive tract… (per haps mum did know something)
Whilst some “insectivorous creatures” like some lizards have a chitinolytic enzyme called “Chitinase” –which is as bad as it sounds when you say it– which is secreted by their stomach and pancreas it only occurs in species that eat chitin rich bugs[1].
Which as you can probably tell from our teeth is not us. So as “Mother Knows Best” in these things, not having to chow down on bugs might be currently a good idea.
But when they sort the chitin problem out a nice bug-burger could be on MuckyD’s Specials list… Don’t say you’ve not been warned.
Oh did you know that the US FDA was more lax on bug-bits in sweets/chocolate than other Western countries?
Brings a new meaning to “Hershies Kiss”…
Oh and it’s also the reason there is no such thing as “vegitarian food” it’s occasionaly fun to tell them about the “Chorley Wood Process”[2] when they are eating a sarnie etc.
[1] Of course the question arises as to why I know this apparent trivia… Well it’s called “research”… Many years ago I worked in a Uni at a time when Vegans were some what militant and were going on about “the death of innocent creatures”. Well evidence was coming through that plants not only felt stress they could communicate it. So I’d argue back that just a single blade of grass should be seen in the same way as cute and fluffy baby quadrapeds. Which caused a certain rather cute to my eyes brunette to get a little steamed… It got quite heated one day whilst I was munching what the Stu-U called a “burger special”. Not only had she stolen my chips as a warm up she put me off the glutinous mess the burger, plastic cheese, and witches brew of sauses and pickles, had concealed into on cooling. She made some comment about bread being full of animals –which is true[2] but not for the reason she was giving– and I finally got realy irked and said bugs were the most efficient sources of protein (which is more or less true depending on how you view it). Well it degraded into a real slanging match, two six year olds slinging toys in a sandpit could not have done better. The result very ruffeled feathers and what caused the final “storming off” was her friend saying we were arguing like a pair of old marrieds and should get a room… As a result I retreated to lick my wounds in my lab and the library and researched and wrote a paper titled “The economies of death : Protein chain for apex creatures”. Where I walked through the food chain showing how much human consumable protien you got for each death and how usefull or not that protein was… To cut a long story short Whales and bugs cause the least amount of death to feed humans depending on which way you measure it. But… the problem with eating bug-burgers is not the taste or the yuk factor but that darn chitin… It’s probably the reason come the nuclear missile storm we will be cooked and cockroaches will be snacking on us eyeballs and all..
[2] There is another fun extrusion from the dermis, which is Keratin, which is fingernails and hair. You can break it down into a “flour improver” that puts the bounce in that sliced white bread every one makes sarnies or toast from. Back after WWII there was a very real food shortage, and wheat was a big problem. For various reasons North American hard grain that made good bread was not available. So the UK Government via it’s food research establishment found that all mamailian hair and poultry feathers could be easily turned into what we now call “flour improvers” via the “Chorley Wood Process”. If you think that sounds bad, you do not want to know about what they found out about chicken poop, Mother would most definately not aprove…
SpaceLifeForm • December 12, 2022 10:02 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing, Clive, ALL
re: China dropping zero-covid policy
I believe they had no choice. The protests were getting out of control, and there was no way to stop them any longer.
You have heard about the protests, right? /s
SpaceLifeForm • December 12, 2022 10:07 PM
Smart Criminals
This is how you do it:
Have a secret chat group called “wirefraud”
Have lawyers argue that you are “too big to fail”
Get arrested in Bahamas today.
JonKnowsNothing • December 12, 2022 10:32 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm, Clive, ALL
re: Protesting To Die Faster
It was amazing that China held out so long, given the dynamics and logistics of the problem, coupled with the push-shove from Western Economies, wanting Cheap Chinese Labor Now.
It’s no small achievement to have saved so many lives, after they saw Wuhan and Hong Kong flame out. The general population may have been kept in ignorance about India and Italy and the USA. Some US cities still have their morgue trucks on stand by.
What will happen now, may reveal to the public the reasoning behind lock downs, testing etc. A MSM report reported a person saying “Concerts Here I Come”. We know all about super spread events.
There is an aspect to this sudden “I give up” from China, a stance they normally do not prefer to take in public, that may give us all pause.
We know, even though the information in Western Science is scanty, inaccurate and outright wrong, the rate of C19 mutation is clipping right along with hundreds of variants globally. Omicron died long ago and WHO opted to forget all about Greek Letters ’cause they would have run out PDQ had they continued. So we are left with Pango Lineages (again).
It would not surprise me if the Chinese had discovered a variant for which Nothing Can Be Done.
In Western Economies this is certainly true and we have bet the farm that the only people who will die are the 60+yo. Our bet is not so good ’cause we have a lot of under 10s sick and we have heaps of extra viral loads at the same time. We have millions of Long COVID disabled, an illness that keeps on recurring. It did give a boost to the autoimmune disorder research by showing what MDs had called psychosomatic was nothing of the sort, latent virus’s are there waiting (Epstein–Barr virus).
One way or another… we will know by New Years the outcome of China’s new stance. The same holds true for the rest of us.
Winter • December 13, 2022 1:01 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
What will happen now, may reveal to the public the reasoning behind lock downs, testing etc.
The Chinese approach had outlived it’s usefulness.
First of all, it did not work anymore. The latest variants are simply too infectious for the quarantine measures. They kept cropping up.
The lockdowns were too draconian. People were often locked up with too little food. Often they were locked up away from home. In China, without work, there is no food on the table. This meant that people were locked up indefinitely on their work place as a precaution. But even then, if they got infected eventually, they were still without income. Meaning their families were out of money, kids could not go to school etc.
The perverse consequence of the “success” of the policies was that too few people got their shots. Also, the shots they got were home grown only and not that effective anyway. And the better shots from abroad were not allowed in. That exacerbated the spread.
Over time, the lockdowns have become more frequent instead of less, the effects on people’s livelihood worse instead of better, and there was no political way out of the lockdowns. The virus was there to stay, forever, so the future would simply be just more lockdowns, and still more disease.
And it was obvious that the system was abused for political gains. Cities were punished and political oponents isolated using the laws intended to stop the spread.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is opening up without society collapsing. Taiwan, Korea, and Japan do without these draconian policies and are doing fine.. So, why not China? Chinese TV reported about the soccer World cup without showing the full stadiums. In China, you could watch all games without seeing any fans.
It was just a matter of time before people would demand a solution. And as the ruler was unable or unwilling to implement a solution, the people forced them to stop.
Stupid policies lead to dire consequences. Whether it is Florida or China.
JonKnowsNothing • December 13, 2022 1:50 AM
@ Winter, All
re: The latest variants are simply too infectious for the quarantine measures. They kept cropping up.
The interesting thing about variants is it possible to know exactly where they originated genetically. There were certainly border issues, and VIP issues, circulating around the industrial manufacturing factories (Foxconn/Apple). Those factories had VIP-fast pass entry for overseas boss visits.
The variants are all western variants. They come from countries with no policies at all, and western economies that still peddle “COVID is just a sniffle”.
Which is another way of saying: “too infectious for quarantine measures”.
Winter • December 13, 2022 2:06 AM
@JonKnowsNothing
The interesting thing about variants is it possible to know exactly where they originated genetically.
Everything gets everywhere, eventually. That was true in the 19th century, it is still true in the 21st.
Clive Robinson • December 13, 2022 6:42 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm, JonKnowsNothing, Winter, ALL
Re: China killing zero-covid policy
“I believe they had no choice.”
Correct, but the interesting question is “Why?”
You might remember that some years before C19 I pointed out that the US health care system was stupid. Because healthy prople get ill from sick people. Disease was no respector of money and did not stop at the gate as servents etc went in and out.
Where as neo-con thinking was sick people just got to sick to work so got asset striped and died of a disease called bankruptcy. Without consequence to the neo-cons except the gain of assets and profits at fire sale pricing. Which was incorrect as skill sets and much else died as well.
As I pointed out at the very begining of C19 back when Trump was laughing it off for his cruise ship buddies in the hotel and entertainment sector contageous pathogens,
1, Are spread by hosts moving around
2, Have very short lives measured in hours or days.
I later calculated that a proper shutdown for 35days would have killed C19 off.
You likewise made your,
“Stop the Planes”
statment.
But the blond duo of idiot politicos of the “Trumping Johnny Show” did not and the dark Tetrad deficiencies won out and the rest of the world lost.
Places that did implement solid lockdowns found that they could stop C19 and still function economically. Australia, New Zealand, both started later than the nations around the South China sea that had been hit by SARS-1 so knew what they had to do. But appart from the idiot-Australian Premier eager to please his “travel buddies” for the backhanders he was getting as nations they were hardly touched.
The UK was the dirty man of Europe, and the US well business first and formost even though it was Russian-Roulette with every one being forced to take a daily spin…
I could go on, but China has a couple of things in it’s favour,
1, It’s vaccines though less superficially effrctive had a much broader skirt varient wise.
2, The varients around although around twenty times more infectious, are now mostly non-leathal in the short term.
So yes China will get a “lost Genetation” but that is in their favour as well. They stopped the “one child” policy some time ago and the birth rate is now more balanced. They were always going to have two or three “lost generations” because of “one child” so the extra loss is not going to make any real difference with regards C19 variant lethality.
The problem’s I’ve always highlighted of,
1, What we now call LongCovid
2, The untested Vaccine issues.
Are going to haunt the West for half a century or more. The testing is back mRNA definately damages heart muscle leading in some cases to VF and needless near instant death. It effects the young way way more than it does the old. The mRNA vaccine is now usless as it’s for varients that are now not just extinct, but even if still around could not compeate so would become extinct anyway. So it had no efficacy claim, but it’s proven to kill the young with heart muscle death, so I would expect significant disability will be proved as well. But that will be different to the auto-immune disease C19 is causing which is starting to show as LongCovid. We now have good reason to believe that many chronic diseases are in fact caused by virus disease slowly killing organs by causing the bodies immune system to turn on it’s self. Diabetes and the various Syndrome-XYZ of “20th Century chronic illness” such as being overweight and incapable of loosing it are certainly being credibly investigated, NAFLS and imbalanced cholesterol and similar giving rise to arterial and heart disease again a virus originator is credibly being hypothesized and the hunt is on.
But we now have the Covid Generations who may have lived into their 90’s probably doomed to die at or just before retirment.
I think some already know my view on this, so I won’t repeate it.
But we did know how to kill Covid dead, and we could have done it long long before the vaccines came about. The fact we did not is because of the “Dark Tetrad” of incurable mental defects,
“Narcism, sadism, psycopothy, sociopathy/Machiavellism”
That are so prevelent in the tops of large hierarchies, such as politicians, civil servants, corporations.
They only do what brings them,
“Status, Power, Control”
And the rest of us can,
“Go to hell in a hand bag”.
Whrn I was young we used to have the vaguely joking,
“First against the wall come the revolution”
Maybe we should stop joking about it…
Winter • December 13, 2022 7:21 AM
@Clive
But we did know how to kill Covid dead, and we could have done it long long before the vaccines came about.
I seriously doubt we ever could have done that.
There is solid evidence of SARS2 arriving in Europe before even the first cases were identified in China. [1]
China did a hard lockdown of Wuhan early, but only after the diseases was already spreading. After that “escape”, the disease would eventually have reached every country in continental Eurasia and Africa. Even with closed borders and no air traffic, the disease would continue spreading in person-to-person contacts.
In the end, only the islands (South Korea is effectively and island) were able to keep the disease out. But as the disease will not go away, ever, they had the choice between eternal isolation and living with the disease.
The heart and long COVID problems are just as much part of the disease as of the infection. Using a less effective vaccine will prime you for these complications just as well, or better, than using the mRNA vaccines (because they use the same proteins) and probably as any other vaccine containing these proteins (which is all of them).
The islands got a better start as they could wait for the vaccines before opening up again. The perverse effect of being COVID free was that people did not take their shot and got infected anyway.
China shows us what the cost of long term Zero-COVID policies is: A lot of suffering, but in the end you have to open up anyway. The only hope is that the Chinese are now better prepared for the disease in terms of vaccination (they are not) and treatment (neither). The only hope is that the new variants are less dangerous.
In the end, I think Taiwan might be the country to take as your example. Fast responding, closing up, but being effective and pragmatic. [2]
[1] ‘https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920301643
[2] ‘https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/opinion-taiwan-s-covid-19-containment-strategy-utilizing-innovative-technology-universal-health-coverage/2585824
Taiwan was able to contain the pandemic while having people lead normal lives and achieving positive economic growth through the precise use of technology, information transparency, strict border controls, and accurate screening and case investigation. However, with the worldwide spread of the Omicron variant since the end of 2021, community transmission also began to increase in Taiwan. The variant appears to be much more contagious but causes mild or no symptoms. Trying to block the transmission of every single case would be a vain effort that would greatly affect people’s livelihoods. The government has therefore chosen to aim at eliminating severe cases, managing mild cases, minimizing overall impacts, and caring for moderate and severe cases since April 2022. This new Taiwan Model seeks to allow people to lead normal lives while active epidemic prevention measures remain in place and the country is steadily opening up.
modus phonins • December 13, 2022 12:04 PM
https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/13/us_department_of_energy_fusion/
EV battery crisis solved I guess.
modus phonins • December 13, 2022 12:31 PM
In re above discussion of Covid-19
Clive Robinson • December 13, 2022 4:08 PM
@ modus phonins,
Re : Fussion output.
Fitst thing to remember is that all processes are inefficient, and eventually that inefficiency ends up as the ultimate form of polution unusable heat energy[1].
The “net gain” of energy out over energy in says nothing about just how usefull that energy is, or what fraction that is usable as a precentage of the whole.
But whilst it is a “Technical Milestone” it’s almost entirely not “real world relevant”. Unless the usable energy at the point of use is significant (more than 25%) then it will never be compatative let alone make a profit.
As for the “unlimited energy” that is compleate horse manure as anyone who has done even the lowest levels of teenage schooling should know.
But onto other things, the Queen Mary’s paper you link to, I actually have crossed paths with a couple of the authors on a few occasions and I suspect what they say is valid.
But treat it with caution… The ONS are some of the best stats people in the world, and independent of the UK Gov as much as possible. But they can only work on the information they have which mostly comes via the UK Gov.
As I pointed out early on in C19 you need reliable sources and “Death Certificates” disparity with “Official Government Sources” told me the UK Government were “cooking the books”…
Which is why I’ve looked at the UK “Yellow Card” data and more recently autopsy data.
The fact is that the figures for mRNA vaccines show that they are “killing heart muscle” a lot in the young. But… The mRNA based “boosters” effectively have zero efficacy because the RNA virus they work against nolonger exists. So even a very small number of harmed over zero benifit tells you something quite important. But is it “very small” or just “kept small” in the jumbled figures from the UK Government.
Personally I don’t care, harm with no benifit has been shown in those under their early 30’s. That is,
“Some are killed whilst none can be saved.”
That is not an acceptable position to be in, or wasting very scarce resources on.
[1] So much so that “Heat Polution” creates weather changing micro climatess all by it’s self… For instance London is in the center and entirely surounded on all points of the compass by the “home counties”. It is around 3C/5.5F warmer than the average of the entire home counties. In just the past couple of days, this has made the difference between 6inches/15cm of snow[2] with nearly 24hours of “freezing fog” making roads etc unusable and causing people to stay at home for their own safety (thus millions if not billions of economic loss). Compared to dry roads and mildly cloudy skies towards the center of London.
[2] Just a personal observation on snow,
‘For the young snow might be “clean, white, and bright” like fresh laundery, but I now see it as “cold, wet, and slippery” like a politicians heart, and every bit as treacherous.’
candid • December 13, 2022 7:43 PM
I have no specific comments on this article:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/living-hell-former-federal-inmates-173940555.html
Do you remember when Epstein “committed suicide” in Federal custody?
Just pure helplessness – that is system problem.
SpaceLifeForm • December 13, 2022 7:46 PM
‘https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/12/fbis-vetted-info-sharing-network-infragard-hacked/
InfraGard, a program run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to build cyber and physical threat information sharing partnerships with the private sector, this week saw its database of contact information on more than 80,000 members go up for sale on an English-language cybercrime forum.
SpaceLifeForm • December 13, 2022 9:49 PM
As always, follow the Cryptocurrency money laundering.
‘https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/12/13/follow-the-money-merrick-garland-told-you-so/
BTW, did I ever mention FTX and Elmo?
Winter • December 14, 2022 3:11 AM
@candid
Just pure helplessness – that is system problem.
I remember many occasions where Americans gloated about people being sexually abused in prison. But they mainly refereed to inmates torturing each other.
I also remember Amnesty International publishing reports in 2011(!) about sexual abuse of women in prison:
‘https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/usa-not-part-of-my-sentence-violations-of-the-human-rights-of-women-in-custody/
It surely is “The American Way“
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 4:24 AM
The new Arsenal report says that “by February 2016, the attacker had compromised not just Gadling’s computer, but also the email accounts of multiple defendants in the Bhima Koregaon case.”
According to Arsenal, the attacker made several attempts at compromising Mr Gadling’s computer via email, “sending him identical malware (but packaged differently)” through February 2016. “Ultimately, on February 29, 2016, Mr Gadling executed this malware,” the report reads.
The malware, which is software that is designed to gain access to someone’s computer, was packaged innocuously as emails with attachments from Mr Gadling’s acquaintances.
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/arsenal-consulting-report-stan-swamy-others-said-evidence-was-fabricated-new-report-backs-that-2480532
Between January and October 2019, the HRDs were targeted with emails containing malicious links. … if opened, would have installed NetWire, a commercially available spyware.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2020/06/india-human-rights-defenders-targeted-by-a-coordinated-spyware-operation/
NetWire
https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/modifiedelephant-apt-and-a-decade-of-fabricating-evidence/
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 4:26 AM
Practical bruteforce of “military grade” AES-1024 (128-bit)
https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-r3s/talk/QMYGR3/
ENC Security had been leaking its configuration and certificate files for more than a year.
The data inside the leaky server included Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) credentials for sales channels, the single payment platform’s Adyen keys, email marketing company’s Mailchimp API keys, licensing payment API keys, HMAC message authentication codes, and public and private keys stored in .pem format.
SanDisk, Lexar, Sony, and Western Digital use custom versions of DataVault to offer their customers out-of-the-box data encryption features on their hard disks and pen drives.
Exposing administrator API keys means allowing attackers to explore the organization’s internal network, take over control of servers, and access payment or identification information of clients. Malicious actors could replace files in download servers with laced installers to disseminate malware via the official ENC Security channels.
https://cybernews.com/security/encsecurity-leaked-sensitive-data/
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 4:39 AM
Experts renew warnings about threat of conspiracy and sovereign citizen movements after Queensland shooting
https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/12/14/queensland-wieambilla-shooting-conspiracy-sovereign-citizen/
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, and his family were forced from their home after Elon Musk’s tweets misrepresented Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children. The online mob also sent threats to people Roth had replied to on Twitter, forcing some of Roth’s family and friends to delete their Twitter accounts, according to a person familiar with Roth’s situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about Roth’s safety.
Musk’s followers also directed harassment at professors who reviewed the dissertation that Roth wrote in 2016, as well as at his graduate school, the University of Pennsylvania.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/12/musk-twitter-harass-yoel-roth/
the focus on Musk is a mistake
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/twitters-most-melodramatic-season-yet/672397/
Trying to report on what’s happening by expecting either his abject failure or resounding success and then using his most attention-grabbing tactics as evidence for that thesis is not doing anyone a service.
https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-elon-musk-media/
Clive Robinson • December 14, 2022 7:15 AM
@ ResearcherZero, ALL,
Re : The how of Conspiracy theories.
“Experts renew warnings about threat of conspiracy and sovereign citizen movements “
The problem is “opportunists” can not easily be told appart from plotters…
Part of the reason for this uptick on the “Citizen is Sovereign” movment is what others see as “Cause and Effect” after the issue.
They see what appears to be a “cause” that of a mass-shooting event and because they also see the “effect” of the gun control lobby they assume it is directly causal, thus very unscientifically work the “cause” backwards to “cause was put-up job, by gun control lobby”
So their conspiracy is,
Put-up, massacre, gun control
Where as the more probable event chain is
Massacre, opportunity, gun control
However those main “opportunitists” being the sort of people who either don’t or rarely take responsability for their actions –i.e. Politicos–
will Put-up a diffetent narative, rather than an honest one.
Whilst we can not stop some people going postal, we can point out why the opportunists,
“Create an active pile of manure to bring along other seedlings and weeds.”
Thus are not being at all helpful.
But we must always remember that those who follow “Might is Right” because “We are the Good Guys” idiology are mostly “authoritarian followers” of the whims of politicos… Politicos who actually were voted for, very very rarely represent even close to what those who voted for them want. It is a recipe for disaster one way or another.
JonKnowsNothing • December 14, 2022 8:53 AM
@Clive, SpaceLifeForm, All
re: COVID Tornado
The COVID Tornado is starting in China.
MSM Reports are that the government has/or is ending reporting on COVID infections or COVID details and has already dismantled much of the mitigations. Shortages of medication, hospital access and OTC remedies in Beijing and spreading.
Not everyone will get COVID on this Tornado pass, but the Tornado isn’t going to slow down with reinfections and the inevitable LONG COVID damage.
At least 10% will require serious hospitalization: 84,000,000
At least 1% of these will die: 8,400,000
These deaths will be in hospitals. Deaths outside of hospitals will be more common as, I do not think any hospital system can take an influx of 84 million seriously ill people in 30 days. Many will be turned away. Some won’t even make it to the hospital.
LONG COVID is harder to predict because it comes 30-180 days after initial infection. Reinfections increase the probability of having LONG COVID. Estimates that 40% of COVID cases acquire LONG COVID. LONG COVID can affect anyone having a COVID infection whether or not they have been in hospital. LONG COVID by definition is a disability and these people will be permanently out of the work force for the foreseeable future.
This is “mild COVID”.
After this COVID Tornado has swept over China, the constant waves will continue to erupt in different areas, so these numbers will continue to accrue, the same way they do in Western Countries.
“It’s deeply frustrating. Businesses are having to close due to staff being sick, even though they can legally be open.”
Noah Fraser, Beijing-based managing director at the Canada-China Business Council
Businesses in China better Get Used To It….
Clive Robinson • December 14, 2022 9:35 AM
@ JonKnowsNothing, SpaceLifeForm, Winter, ALL
Re Covid figures.
“At least 10% will require serious hospitalization… …At least 1% of these will die”
Unfortunately those percentages are just guesses and could be quite different in either direction.
From the very start of C19 outside of China we know that the reported figures via healthcare were at best inacurate. The “Death Certificates” showed this, as did the obituary columns in newspapers.
But importantly the figures relate to two things,
1, Host genetics
2, Virus variant genetics.
In short the old saying of,
“What ailes thee, strengthans me”
Applies on a very individual basis.
My concern with current variants is not the middle-aged or old, but the young.
That is the demographics we have seen over C19 show a steady decline in the ages people get seriously or fatally effected based on variant change…
With re-infection now finally recognized as a serious issue people are going to have to change their lifestyle, there is no option on this.
With personal lifestyle changes happening on mass, these become societal changes.
Any business that fails to change with society is kind of doomed to fail, so business likewise need to change, as does education. Both of which effect the young more than the old.
Firefly • December 14, 2022 10:45 AM
test
I recently posted a comment regarding ProtonVPN but after submitting I got some message that my comment is checked for SPAM. It was quite a while ago. How long does it take?
Also testing if I can post atm.
EvilKiru • December 14, 2022 12:27 PM
@Firefly: Sometimes seconds, other times hours, days, or forever.
JonKnowsNothing • December 14, 2022 1:34 PM
@Firefly, EvilKiru, All
re: Road Rash
Recently some astute posters found that some words trip the Road Rash Mechanism. These words have some odd-ities embedded when parsed that are on the prohibited list.
There are some white wines you cannot drink on-line.
Result is: check your post for potential mis-reads, then change them to avoid the tarmac.
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 3:54 PM
@Clive Robinson
They brought in gun control in Australia after some dozy farmer got up on the roof with his old shotgun and tried to have a crack at the Prime Minister. Port Arthur sealed the deal. And considering I had an elephant gun when I was a very small lad, with no visible sign of any elephants, it was probably a good idea.
There were these two crooked cops, and they kept shooting at me. blah, blah blah…
Instead I went through the courts, and built up a very large stash of evidence and public records on corrupt officials. But I’m still deciding what to do with them. Maybe pass them onto the Nation Anti-Corruption Commission, maybe?
I just don’t know what I’ll do with them, as the law can be pretty ineffective at dealing with abuses of power. Perhaps the public might want to see those files instead?
There are some terrible crimes in those files however, and some shocking abuses of power. It might cause more harm than good. People could form the opinion that the legal system has been grossly compromised, and that is not entirely true. There are a lot of good people working in the system and it still functions better than Communist China or Wannabe Imperial Russia.
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 4:10 PM
@Clive Robinson
I could totally sell-out. Cash in on those files. But I’m pretty comfortable, and inappropriately handling evidence would be a crime.
–
Among those attending the inquiry was the mother of a young man who died by suicide in 2019, just hours after learning he owed a Centrelink debt notice.
“I want to see some accountability to see that nothing like this happens again, that there’s some safeguards in there for people with mental health for people applying that have got no income.”
She said she was “appalled” to learn the department had been warned about potential legal issues in 2014, before the scheme came into effect.
“It’s just disgraceful that they had that advice and just continued anyway.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-31/qld-royal-commission-robodebt-inquiry-commonwealth/101596246
76 Warnings
calculations used by Centrelink “could not lawfully support the existence of a debt”
https://gordonlegal.com.au/media/1289/200914-second-further-amended-statement-of-claim-2fasoc-stamped.pdf
“Centrelink would ‘no longer’ exercise its statutory powers to obtain wage records and that the ‘responsibility’ to obtain such information now lies with applicants seeking to challenge a debt.”
It is a basic legal principle that in order to claim a debt, a debt must be proven to be owed. The onus of proving a debt must remain with the department. This would include verifying income data in order to calculate a debt. The committee recommends the department resume full responsibility for calculating verifiable debts (including manual checking) relating to income support overpayments, which are based on actual fortnightly earnings and not an assumed average.
…‘reasonable satisfaction’ should not be produced by inexact proofs, indefinite testimony, or indirect inferences.
https://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/006-Carney.pdf
Peasants working in the fields
Keep their heads way down low
Way down low
Don’t want to let on what they know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bJsuGyQ9Yc
candid • December 14, 2022 4:15 PM
@Winter
Basically there is no difference American, Russian, Chinese prison system regarding real human right protection.
Critics is good when it is constructive.
What I will do being US Top Official and desire really change situation.
2.Establish Office of Human Rights Ombudsman under authority of Congress with authority to access 24/7/365 with random inspections of prisons, jails, mental health facilities, foster family homes, other institutions: federal, state or private where human rights abuse could be covered due to vulnerable status of folks under custody.
Do You think current of future Administration is going to do anything? Nope, they accept those abuses as status quo.
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 4:23 PM
“It is not rare to find a justice system that is compromised….Sometimes the perpetrators get protection from the people who are supposed to hold them accountable.”
“Sometime the perpetrators of the violation get in touch with the investigating personnel. They interfere with the whole process using bribes or threats hence compromising the investigators. Some people use bribes to the people in the justice area to ensure that the person seeking for justice does not get it. The outcome is that the case gets delayed to such a point that the affected person gives up.”
“Some ignore the orders from the courts and take tokens from the accused person. They end up becoming friends and then delay the justice to the persons who are affected….making justice become a lifetime hassle.”
“…various problems arise hence making the work challenging and posing the unreliability challenge. Having some awareness about the possible challenges that arise in the course of getting justice will help to come up with a sober way of getting the solutions.”
https://www.universalhumanrightsindex.org/barriers-to-implementation-of-human-rights-justice/
Kofi Annan, called for the replacement of the Commission by a smaller, permanent and human rights-compliant Council, able to fill the credibility gap left by States that used their Commission membership “to protect themselves against criticism and to criticize others”.
“…With the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, there is much clearer acceptance of the principle of indivisibility under international human rights law.”
https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/international-human-rights-law-short-history
Implementation of Human Rights From the Book: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 21st Century: A Living Document in a Changing World
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt1bpmb7v.14.pdf
Effective implementation:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/effective-implementation-international-human-rights-instruments-development-human-rights-treaty
A protester kneels on the neck of a statue
The statue says I can’t breathe
The protester says now you know how it feels
And kicks it into the sea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAExz5B0qb4
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 4:45 PM
@candid
random inspections of prisons, jails, mental health facilities, foster family homes, other institutions: federal, state or private where human rights abuse could be covered due to vulnerable status of folks under custody
This is what needs to happen, or we cannot claim the moral high ground, while we fail to uphold the foundation that democracy is built upon.
Without proper accountability, and a justice system open to independent scrutiny, we will continue to see the rise of political opportunists who seek to exploit the very system that brought them to power.
Once they understood the reward pattern, two monkeys were paired. After both received cucumbers for a while, one monkey got a grape instead. As is true of humans, monkeys tend to like grapes a great deal more than cucumbers. The monkeys receiving cucumbers were no worse off than before, but they were clearly upset. Angrily, they threw their cucumbers at the experimenter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo
“politicians tend to vote the interests of their wealthy contributors rather than their constituents, who elect them and whom they are supposed to represent. This is why we get “tax reform” that primarily benefits large corporations and the rich, and why the government doesn’t pass legislation supported by a vast majority of citizens and that would aid the general public”
It also generates anger at the political system and a willingness to try something different – even if this makes things worse.
[angrily throws cucumbers at the experimenter]
Nick Levinson • December 14, 2022 10:15 PM
@JonKnowsNothing, @EvilKiru, & @Firefly:
Avoiding strings is impracticable. The string-filter system was likely a good idea when emails were far fewer and legitimate emails were more narrowly written. Nowadays, using banned strings (as opposed to whole words) is so common in legit text, especially when quoting sources, that the filter will generate no end of false positives, and other types of screening should be used instead.
JonKnowsNothing • December 14, 2022 11:05 PM
@ResearcherZero, @Clive, All
re:
Peasants working in the fields
Keep their heads way down low
Way down low
Don’t want to let on what they know
An old joke (sort of)
An enslaved person taught themselves to read, which is against the law.
Driving a carriage, the enslaved person sees a new STOP sign on the corner, but cannot stop because they aren’t supposed to be able to read. There is going to be a huge crash at the intersection.
When the police question the enslaved driver about why they didn’t halt at the STOP sign, the person says I didn’t seen any thing on the octagonal sign…
The police says: Who taught you about octagonal…
ResearcherZero • December 14, 2022 11:33 PM
Scott Morrison ducks, dodges and weaves but finally concedes robodebt was illegal
https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/12/15/scott-morrison-robodebt-illegal/
1 star – I hate musicals. All that happened was his nose grew, and grew, and grew. Can I have my cucumbers back?
(What ever you do, don’t read the transcript, it’s even worse.)
lurker • December 14, 2022 11:43 PM
BlueBird implosion collateral:
Maybe not Elmo’s fault directly but a symptom of the health of the patient:
Ahmad Abouammo wins three and a half years use of an orange jumpsuit for syphoning off users’ PII to a foreign government.
SpaceLifeForm • December 15, 2022 12:04 AM
@ JonKnowsNothing, Clive, Winter, ALL
re: China Covid
From my readings, there is a variant that is unstoppable. CCP has thrown in the towel. Everyone is on their own now. They are saying, if you think you are infected, do rapid test, and stay home. You are not going to get a PCR test. You can not find Cold or Flu medications there anymore (becoming also true in US). There are many businesses that have over 75% of their employees out sick. There are very few businesses that can survive with less than 25% of their normal staff for very long. Especially, if you have no customers because the customers are all sick too.
I suspect Xi will resign at some point.
SpaceLifeForm • December 15, 2022 12:10 AM
AWS S3 dumps.
You may recall that I have lost track.
This flaw may have been going on for the last decade.
https://spyclub.tech/2022/12/14/unusual-cache-poisoning-akamai-s3/
Akamai was observed to load pages from a different origin (i.e., malicious host) than what is specified in the Akamai configuration.
JonKnowsNothing • December 15, 2022 2:27 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm, @ Clive, Winter, ALL
re: COVID Tornado: Everyone is on their own
A few MSM reports detailing how Happy The People are that they don’t have to do anything about staying healthy or away from COVID, they can do whatever they want to do: Party Party Party.
The sad thing is, some of the articles indicate that the people believe that they will get COVID only one time.
Once the COVID Catching Parties take off, either from deliberate self-infection or because the virus load around people will be so great they cannot avoid the virus, the rate of incline rise is going to look like a rocket blast off.
Whatever they have in China, we do not have yet in the West. Nothing has had that kind of infectious profile here for a long time (2020).
Whatever it is, by the time it rolls through 840,000,000 people there are going to be a huge number of mutations all making their way in our direction by the plane load.
In the mean time, the US is getting a bit tetchy about the $130/dose price increase from Pfizer. As Pfizer refused to cut a deal with China to license their tech, and China’s attempts at mRNA vaccine production has been less than stellar, it might be an interesting reverse observation that China has known for much longer than the West, that the mRNA vaccines were Not-WAI.
So the Time Line is 30 days to make the first blowout in China, then somewhere in the next 2-3 weeks we will start to see Incoming from China around major airports in major cities. Adjacent countries to China will get their first impacts earlier: Tibet, Mongolia, Vietnam, and flowing southeast to Pakistan, India, NZ, AU. Then westward into
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and following the trade routes through Afrika. Europe will get it by Plane at all their airports.
As has been well noted in the past
SpaceLifeForm • December 15, 2022 4:08 AM
Re: Twitter implosion and Supply Chain woes
So, Elmo ginned up $3.5B in the last 3 days selling Tesla stock.
As the Tesla stock heads to the bottom, I would not want to own a Tesla.
Where are Tesla cars made? China.
Where are the replacement parts made? China.
How many workers are there that are healthy enough to manufacture?
Will there be enough healthy workers in China to do transportation roles? Truck drivers, dock workers? Even airline ground crews.
Will there be enough IT folk to handle the logistics?
If they are rookie IT people that have not learned the ropes yet due to lack of experience, how many mistakes do you think they can make per week?
If you run into a bad problem with your Tesla car (not drivable), you may not have any use of it for some time.
Clive Robinson • December 15, 2022 5:44 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Re : China Supply Chain
“Where are Tesla cars made? China.”
Hell-on Rusk makes rather more than cars that have “China Parts” in them, so some other vehicles may not be hacing a “stellar performance” in fact they may not get off the ground.
For longer than this blog has been up I’ve warned about the “security” implications and stupidity of gutting your home supply chain to cheap Far East Production.
We had very clear examples of what would happen with Consumer Electronics and motor vehicals from the 1960’s onwards.
Well now “all the eggs are in one basket” in some corner of a far distant land, I guess only the metaphorical chickens will be comming home to roost, and certainly we won’t be “bringing home the bacon” in the West.
I just wonder where the neo-cons will go? Their “backdoor plan” was “The last bus stop” to the south pole, ie in near barran land in South New Zealand… But something tells me most of them will not be welcome there even in a hole in the ground they’ve dug for themselves…
It is a mess entirely of our own making and even knowing how it would play out politicians ignored the issue and looked the other way.
So “Have a happy Xmas” it might be our last…
JonKnowsNothing • December 15, 2022 10:11 AM
@ Clive, @SpaceLifeForm, Winter, ALL
re: So the Time Line is 30 days to make the first blowout in China, then somewhere in the next 2-3 weeks we will start to see Incoming from China…
The US Gov is restarting their Free COVID RAT test program. They had stopped it several months ago because, COVID was mild and nothing to worry about. The Free RAT Test Program is back. (1)
The Feds are also ramping up their Federal Response Triage Support in case of “overwhelmed” Hospitals and Nursing Homes/Care Homes. (2)
The expected COVID Surge in the USA had not previously been reported in these more extreme terms. It may be that the US, CDC etc. has started to include the blow-over from China as part of the Winter COVID Holiday Super Spreader Event Modeling.
There are indications that the China COVID-Tornado was already out of control some time prior to their dropping ZERO-COVID policy. It was rolling weeks before the more recent lock downs in the larger cities. If this is correct, then the COVID-Tornado has already had a good head start on the Chinese population. If so, then it has already started to migrate to other countries too.
===
1) There is a website that will allow ordering the RATs
2) The US Military and United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps can send MDs, RNs and support staff and equipment to bolster State services. In the UK these were called Nightingale Hospitals, in the US they are called Arena Hospitals. Currently, most of these are Tent Hospitals. States can request the construction of such hospitals based on the number of beds required and they can be built in a few days. The problem was and remains there wasn’t any staff for them. The Military can send some MDs but not on a large scale.
SpaceLifeForm • December 15, 2022 8:31 PM
Re: Twitter implosion
Twitter is now suspending accounts of journalists.
@schneierblog is still alive as of this writing.
JonKnowsNothing • December 15, 2022 11:07 PM
@Clive, SpaceLifeForm, All
re: US Military COVID vaccinations are no longer required
There are some interesting economic shifts about COVID prevention and economics in the USA.
The US Gov just passed a military funding bill with oodles more $$ for bullets but rescinds requirements for military to get a COVID jab.
On the surface, first glance, this looks like either a horrible decision or a total cave to the Dec37 crowd, but if you flip the lens a bit you can see another aspect.
Given what we know about the effectiveness of the USA arsenal of vaccines, we might just have saved ourselves not only $140,000,000 dollars for increased cost, but $182,000,000 if we just Stop The Jabs altogether.
re: Just another COVID day in the neighborhood
In California the State is removing a requirement for businesses to continue to pay employees who get sick with “COVID on the job”. The reason is: There’s so much COVID around now, they cannot tell if you got COVID while “on the job” or you brought it into the job.
The Sacramento Crowd is working on a replacement rule, essentially moving COVID into the standard list of illnesses classification and making it eligible for standard sick pay. The big hurdle is not that many companies still offer sick pay. It’s a GIG Economy thing.
Turning this the other way around, it appears that California is also planning on having a normalized relationship with COVID. The rules on sick pay vary, timing, eligibility, duration. It isn’t clear yet if they will classify LONG COVID as a Worker’s Compensation Claim or as Long Term State Disability. It would seem that latter is what they have in mind.
SpaceLifeForm • December 16, 2022 12:10 AM
Re: Twitter implosion
Over 3K new accounts last hour.
If you decide to join, I recommend the infosec.exchange instance because it is well provisioned, well admin-ed by @jerry, and I think, a large majority of infosec folk are there. The other instance I can recommend is mastodon.social . There are many more, but from a performance and stability standpoint, these two are solid.
You only need an email to sign up. No phone number required.
I have not tried any phone apps yet. I use browser only in AWI (Advanced Web Interface) mode (that is a profile setting). Yes, you need to enable Javascript.
Default posting mode is plain text, but you can change to HTML mode, or Markdown mode. Interestingly, unlike here, you can not mix HTML and Markdown. Like here, automagic link creation exists, but only for https links (not http). I have to defang automatic link creation via hXXps though.
If you want to stay on top of news, this is the place to be. You are not going to find better sources these days.
Checking now (I really don’t pay attention to the stats), but I am following 366 and have 79 followers. That is in 3 weeks. And I am still waiting for people to show up.
Yesterday, @Popehat quit the birdhouse. @emptywheel is there also, but not real active. Yet.
Here is a page with links to stuff to help get you started if you are interested.
I hope Bruce creates an account if only to post a short post and to link back to here.
I doubt many are going to read Twitter much more.
Winter • December 16, 2022 1:54 AM
Re: Twitter implosion
So much for “Free Speech” on Twitter if you are not a fascist or ire Elmo
Musk bans live location sharing, says he’ll sue creator of plane-tracking bot
Musk says son X AE A-XII was stalked, blames student who made @ElonJet Twitter bot.
‘https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-bans-live-location-sharing-says-hell-sue-creator-of-plane-tracking-bot/
SpaceLifeForm • December 16, 2022 7:12 AM
Re: Twitter implosion
Twitter is actively blocking tweets that contain a link to any Mastodon instance.
They are not just grepping for ‘mastodon’ anymore.
They are building a list of Mastodon domains, and filtering on that.
For example, using ‘infosec.exchange’ in a tweet will be blocked as of a few hours ago.
Twitter is in full HODL mode (Hold On, Don’t Leave).
Winter • December 16, 2022 7:53 AM
@SLF
Re: Twitter implosion
Twitter is actively blocking tweets that contain a link to any Mastodon instance.
Yeah, Elmo bought twitter the secure Free Speech. As usual, Free is not really free if does not suit him.
Nick Levinson • December 16, 2022 8:34 AM
Perhaps PRChina, by loosening Covid-19 restrictions, is expecting a death toll rise to generate public demand for tighter restrictions again.
If so, PRChina would be counting on the anti-restriction movement being a minority view with a pro-government view being that of what we in the US for a while called a silent majority.
The American Revolution of 1776 had only minority support, albeit at an estimated 40 percent, and after the US gained its independence from the UK the US still was home to many Tories, who were pro-monarchy for government and with whom the US remained more or less officially friendly. While many Chinese likely disliked the Covid-19 restraints, only a minority would have sought hard to have the national government lift the restraints and an even smaller minority would have sought Xi Jinping’s resignation. PRChina may be counting on numbers favoring the government’s view.
Dynasties were involuntarily replaced at times, often when natural disasters, for which supreme beings were blamed, became popular reasons for an overthrow, which let the public avoid blaming individual leaders. The Forbidden City may be wondering if that’s what’s unfolding now.
Clive Robinson • December 16, 2022 8:57 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm, Winter, ALL
Re Twit demise.
“Twitter is actively blocking tweets that contain a link to any Mastodon instance.”
It’s a game that they are going to loose in the long run, and more importantly the Advertisers will use to drive income down thus shareholders to get flighty about and also leave the nest.
I would guess that it won’t take very long for the “short URL” technique to get slightly re-vamped to meet the initial “get the message out” or even simpler say “I’ve been masted” or similar where “masted” will be a code word that changes.
Let’s wait and see, but I’d put the price of a cupper on it changing again as a policy.
Clive Robinson • December 16, 2022 10:04 AM
@ Nick Levinson, JonKnowsNothing, MarkH, Winter, ALL
Re : Suicide Policy or Pact?
“Perhaps PRChina, by loosening Covid-19 restrictions, is expecting a death toll rise to generate public demand for tighter restrictions again.”
The indicated infectiousness and virulence on what is epidemologicaly a “naive population” would in effect become a “fire storm” before any counter protest could bring the lockdowns back in time to do anything.
I can only hope that either the indicated infection rate is way to high or likewise the indicated virulence. Because the implied pathogenicity would be devestating in such a short period of time “coral and shoot on sight” might be effectively the only solution that would get it under control again.
The brutal facts are,
1, Most vaccines are ineffective.
2, We have no real non-institutional medical assistance for the infected.
I’m fairly certain the Chinese Communist Party are well aware of the horrors of it’s neoghbour India where people were dying for want of breath outside hospitals and so many bodies neither the cremitoria or rivers could take them away. That was a naive population with a reported infectiousness of a tenth of that alledged about China’s current variant.
But what we don’t know is the host age this China variant targets, or is most pathogenic to. In the West each variant went for a younger age range untill it was pre-teen and older populations though effected not as baddly as they had been with earlier variants.
Is China going to risk going back to a situation worse than created by the “One child policy”?
I would hope not because that would not be a policy…
lurker • December 16, 2022 12:58 PM
@Clive Robinson, Nick Levinson
re host age and minorities
China has had compulsory testing and compulsory quarantine, but not compulsory vaccination. The unvaxxed are said to be mostly the elderly who still have faith in TCM.
Expecting public demand for lockdowns when they see bodies in the street is a gamble. If it fails then the conditions are ripe for regime change. The key will be the PLA. Traditionally militia aided regime change occurred when the army found a stronger strong man to follow. He seems to be keeping his head well down just now.
SpaceLifeForm • December 16, 2022 8:31 PM
Re: Excess Mortality
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04422-9
The data suggest that during 2020 and 2021, excess mortality was some 2.7 times greater than the official toll,
SpaceLifeForm • December 16, 2022 9:58 PM
Re: Twitter implosion
I forgot to mention an interesting feature of Mastodon.
You do not need an account to be in Read-only mode.
First, you can always find someones posts by just knowing what their account-id is.
For example, mine is infosec.exchange/@SpaceLifeForm
You can read without having an account.
But, not super simple. You need to know which instance they are on, and their handle. But, you need to find them, because you may not know the instance domain name that they are on. The Fediverse is not centralized. That is a feature, not a bug. Think NNTP.
Fortunately, most have the same handle as they used on Twitter, so that helps.
But, maybe not. Marcus Hutchins used @malwaretechblog on Twitter, but he uses @malwaretech on the Fediverse.
But, there is another interesting feature. Clive, pay attention here. 🙂
You can ‘follow’ people thru an RSS reader.
If you know their account-id, then in your RSS reader, you just append .rss to their account-id.
Hope this is useful. If you want to ‘follow’ someone, just ask, I will try to find their account-id. I have built a decent sized list. Well curated. I have only had to unfollow one account out of hundreds.
There really are no trolls and nonsense.
At least, I have not encountered that yet, but then again, I am on infosec.exchange which is well managed.
Highly recommend.
It is really calm and interesting.
SpaceLifeForm • December 16, 2022 10:21 PM
Re: Twitter implosion
Twitter is now blocking DMs that contain links to Mastodon instances.
Let that sink in.
SpaceLifeForm • December 17, 2022 4:19 AM
NIST concedes SHA-1 should be dropped.
But, no hurry. You have 8 more years.
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/12/nist-retires-sha-1-cryptographic-algorithm
Clive Robinson • December 17, 2022 5:35 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm, JonKnowsNothing, MarkH, Winter,
Re: Excess Mortality and C19
It’s actually higher than the estimate for a number of reasons,
1, Non-Persons – higher than thought.
2, Other cause mortality down.
3, Fraud keeping C-19 mortality reporting down.
Both the first turn up with Death Certificates to a certain degree but not all burials/inturnment are recorded especially with fraud.
Non-Persons these are those not on a nations List / Role of citizens to be recorded and counted. The reasons for this are not just low GDP and no local registrar, it’s things like war, political oppression, fear, and in the UK as I know the system “not having a tick box”[1]. Estimates vary but something like a third of the worlds population are legaly Non-Persons. And… as they are usually at or bellow the bottom of the socio-economic ladder can be born, eek out an existance cash in hand and die without comming to official attention especially in large thriving cities.
But “Other cause mortality” is still not being correctly addressed as Governments especially WASP nations try to hide C19 figures. We know that during lockdown non-health issue related deaths went down significantly. We also know that other communicable disease deaths went down as well (remember lockdown may not have made C19 extinct but it did make a strain of flu extinct). But other health related deaths went up due to lack of available resources.
A number of Governments quite falsely argue that these death figures can be traded as they are effectively equall… Because that gives them the ability to reduce the excess death figure thus make the C-19 death figures look less.
Analysis of the figures sugests that in fact lockdown actually saved a lot of lives that would have been expected from communicable disease accident etc (even suicide was down). A lot more than the increased death rate due to resource availability issues.
Then there is fraud… Due to lockdown a lot of rules changed, some of which were “proof of life” for pension and other government payed out benifits etc. Long before C-19 there were horror stories of the lengths some people have gone to to keep receiving such sums of money (and why life expectancy figures in some places might be false). Remember that with fraud like icebergs you only get to see the tip and most icebergs pass unnoticed so even those tips do not get seen. Relaxing of the rules and increased deaths from C-19 no work etc, and the government money being the only income we can expect such fraud to have gone up significantly (we certainly know that C-19 related fraud went up in many places with employers “accidently” double tapping and the like).
So together the adjustments would bring the C-19 figures up. Probably by more than 50% of the current estimate so above 20million but not as high as 30million.
[1] A friend was a “hippy child” and took to the life style and was always moving around from group lodging to group lodging. Eventually she had children of her own and was quite happy doing things “the natural way” which ment home-birth. Only when she went to register her first child did she discover two things, firstly that she was a non-person, secondly because the NHS had no record of her pregnancy or birth, “the computer says No” issue came up. She had to go into hiding for quite some time whilst others sorted trudged through the legal process. Because at the time, the UK had a “cough and deport” policy and as we now know were busy illegally destroying documents to make that even easier.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
lurker • December 9, 2022 6:54 PM
I’ve had an acct with Amazon for about 10 years. Due to my misunderstanding their cross-market exclusion rules earlier this year, I attempted to set up an acct at amazon.uk, and learned that an amazon acct is global.
I have just received a message from amazon.uk warning me of scammers over the holiday season and offering some sane and sensible security tips. In 10 years the parent company never cared if I was scammed …