Tech firms âcan and mustâ put backdoors in encryption, AG Barr says
US Attorney General William Barr today launched a new front in the feds’ ongoing fight against consumer encryption, railing against the common security practice and lamenting the “victims” in its wake.
“The deployment of warrant-proof encryption is already imposing huge costs on society,” Barr claimed in remarks at a cybersecurity conference held at Fordham University Tuesday morning. Barr added that encryption “seriously degrades” law enforcement’s ability to “detect and prevent a crime before it occurs,” as well as making eventual investigation and prosecution of crime more difficult.
The existence of encryption means “converting the Internet and communications into a law-free zone” that criminals will happily take advantage of to do more crimes, Barr added, likening it to a neighborhood that local cops have abandoned.
The cost of encryption, he said, is measured in “victims” who might have been saved from crime if law enforcement had been able to lawfully intercept communications earlier.
He also accused tech firms of “dogmatic” posturing, saying lawful backdoor access “can be and must be” done, adding, “We are confident that there are technical solutions that will allow lawful access to encrypted data and communications by law enforcement, without materially weakening the security provided by encryption.”
Remember that weird story about VP Pence suddenly cancelling a visit to NH, and the strange half-response that came out a few days later? Apparently one of the employees at the drug treatment center Pence was to visit was trafficking in fentanyl.
âHe truly believed wild conspiracy theories he read on the internet, many of which vilified Democrats and spread rumors that Trump supporters were in danger because of them. He heard it from the President of the United States, a man with whom he felt he had a deep personal connection. He read it on almost every website he visited. He saw it on Fox News, which he watched at the start and end of his day. And it was reinforced to him on social media,â attorneys wrote.
Under Trump, 26% of Climate Change References Have Vanished From .Gov Sites
A new report documents two years of science being scrubbed from government websites.
The Trump administration has undermined the fight against climate change by suffocating facts and science on government websites, according to a federal watchdog group that monitors thousands of government pages for changes.
A report published by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) on Monday found that language related to climate change has disappeared at an alarming pace since Trump took office in 2016. Across 5,301 pagesâranging from websites belonging to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the US Geological Survey (USGS)âthe use of the terms âclimate change,â âclean energy,â and âadaptationâ plummeted by 26 percent between 2016 and 2018. Of the pages where âclimate changeâ was stricken, more than half belong to the EPA.
@Teve: A couple of weeks ago I was puttering around listening to NPR, and there was a fascinating discussion on Reveal about a National Park scientist who was subjected to incredible pressure to modify her findings. It was a rebroadcast, but absolutely alarming what this scientist was subjected to.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
So why didnât the highly conflicted Robert Mueller investigate how and why Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted and acid washed 33,000 Emails immediately AFTER getting a SUBPOENA from the United States Congress? She must have GREAT lawyers!
7:43 AM · Jul 24, 2019 · Twitter for iPhone
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Joey Liberty
@JoeyNoCollusion
·
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ARREST ROBERT MUELLER, HILLARY CLINTON AND EVERY DEMOCRAT WHO IS INVOLVED IN HELPING THEM COVER UP URANIUM ONE!
CC
@ChatByCC
·
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@realDonaldTrump
GET EM BOSS!
Itâs time to expose their corruption and crimes!
Baconet i Koshermackan
@koshermackan
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The whole Jew apparatus wanted her as its president. And ZOG still supports her by all means necessary.
In cognitive biases and/or logical fallacies, is there something like a “first and done” bias/fallacy?
What this means is that often people will take up the first explanation or statement they hear about something, and it will lodge in their minds as absolutely and unshakably true, even if they are given, or find out, a correction later; and by later I mean as little as five seconds.
For example, one time in vegas I got into an elevator at the lobby after a man with a suitcase got in. We were going to the same floor. We got to talking, he was just checking in, and asked whether I knew where his room was. It was like three doors down from mine. So I told him, “just turn left at the hallway. Wait, no. Turn right.” He asked “Just turn left?” “No,” I said. “Turn right.”
When we exited, he turned left.
There are other concrete examples, but I won’t go through them. Things like rumors that get debunked, but people still believe them. Simple rumors like someone died, then you see them alive on TV, but keep thinking they died (seriously). Or someone makes a claim that is proved to be not true or accurate, but people keep believing it is. Things like that.
@Teve: Trump really is freaking out. What is it he thinks Mueller may have on him? I had to look up ZOG. And they say Ilhan Omar is the real antisemite. Vote Blue, no matter who.
@gVOR08: And they say Ilhan Omar is the real antisemite.
Since Trump’s tweets about “The Squad”, Trump has ratcheted up the lying about Omar’s supposed anti-semitism. He has now gone to saying that she used the term “evil Jews”, when in reality she used the phrase “evil doings of Israel” in reference to the 2012 conflict between Israel and Gaza, in which between 57 and 105 Palestinian civilians were killed and four Israeli civilians were killed. He also is claiming that AOC referred to Americans as garbage, when this is what she actually said:
Weâve strayed so far away from what has really made us powerful, and just, and good, and equitable, and productive. All of these [progressive economic policies] sound radical compared to where we are, but where we are is not a good thing. This idea of 10 percent better from garbage shouldnât be what we settle for.
It is pathetic that he lies so often, and worse that his supporters seem to love him in part because of those lies.
âIâve seen things you people wouldnât believe…
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the TannhÀuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time,
like tears in rain.â
@Kathy: I don’t know of a particular argument classification but I just so happen to be taking a psychology class this summer. In psychology they call trouble encoding new longterm memories based on prior knowledge: proactive interference. (wikipedia)
When Donald Trump spoke in front of a presidential seal on Tuesday, it appeared to have been edited to look like Russiaâs coat of arms. At a student summit hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA, the president stood in front of an image of the seal, which looked at first glance to be perfectly normal. But a closer look shows the eagle has two heads, like Russiaâs national symbol, and the bird is holding golf clubs instead of its usual arrows. Neither the White House nor Turning Point knows how the apparent practical joke on the president got on the screen or who created it, The Washington Post reports. A Turning Point spokesman said: âIt was a last-minute A/V mistake… and I canât figure out where the breakdown was… but it was a last minute throw-up, and thatâs all it was… I canât figure out who did it yet.â
Older voters handed Donald Trump the presidency, and now his campaign is looking for a repeat. According to Axios, the presidentâs campaign is directing close to half of its Facebook ad budget at Americans 65 years old and older, far more than his potential Democratic challengers are spending on the same demographic. The campaign is reportedly targeting the group with ânativist language around immigrantsââan attempt, it seems, to exploit older Americansâ vulnerability to hyper-partisan messaging online. âWe assume Trump is making a huge play to hold an advantage he had in 2016 with older white voters,â Ben Coffey Clark, a partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive, which provided data on the 2020 candidatesâ Facebook spending, told Axios.
According to the data, the Trump campaign is spending 44 percent of its Facebook budget on older Americansânearly double the spending of Democrats, whose base is younger and more diverse. And while Dems have largely focused their Facebook advertising on fundraising and other policy issues, according to the report, Trumpâs campaign is using 54 percent of its ads to stoke fears about immigrants. Such nativist content may not hold much appeal beyond his base, but the campaign appears to be betting that appealing to older Americans, who tend to be more active in civic life, could once again deliver Trump a victory. âThe one thing the Trump campaign has proven time and again,â said Zac Moffatt, C.E.O. of the conservative public affairs firm Targeted Victory, âis that they follow the results and optimize for outcomes and not the general consensus.â
As his rhetoric in recent weeks suggests, Trump seems to be planning a full-scale fear-mongering campaign in the lead-up to 2020, similar to his efforts ahead of 2018 midterms. But the campaignâs Facebook push also underscores the potential for older Americans to be led astray by misleading or sensationalist information online. According to a recent BuzzFeed News report, research suggests older Americans have âdisproportionately fallen prey to the dangers of internet misinformation and risk being further polarized by their online habits.â Members of the 60- or 65-plus demographic, who have lower levels of digital literacy in general, appear âmore likely to consume and share false online news than those in other age groups.â Theyâre also less deft at discerning news from opinion, gauging the reliability of online sources, and understanding of how algorithms factor into what they see on social media. At the same time, BuzzFeed noted, they tend to play a larger role in civic life.
BY JORDAIN CARNEY
Senate Republicans blocked two election security bills and a cybersecurity measure on Wednesday in the wake of former special counsel Robert Mueller warning about meddling attempts during his public testimony before congressional lawmakers.
Democrats tried to get consent to pass two bills that would require campaigns to alert the FBI and Federal Election Commission about foreign offers of assistance, as well as a bill to let the Senate Sergeant at Arms offer voluntary cyber assistance for personal devices and accounts of senators and staff.
But Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) blocked each of the bills. She didn’t give reason for her objections, or say if she was objecting on behalf of herself or the Senate GOP caucus. A spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under Senate rules, any one senator can ask for consent to pass a bill, but any one senator is able to object.
The floor drama comes after Mueller warned about election interference during his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, saying Russia was laying the groundwork to interfere in the 2020 election “as we sit here.”
“We are expecting them to do it again during the next campaign,” Mueller said.
But election interference bills face an uphill climb in the Senate, where Republicans aren’t expected to move legislation through the Rules Committee, the panel with primary jurisdiction, and have warned about attempts to “federalize” elections.
Democrats cited Mueller as they tried to get consent on Wednesday evening to pass their bills.
“Mr. Mueller’s testimony should serve as a warning to every member of this body about what could happen in 2020, literally in our next elections,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He added that “unfortunately, in the nearly three years since we uncovered Russia’s attack on our democracy, this body has not held a single vote on stand-alone legislation to protect our elections.”
I just got back from three weeks in lovely southern Germany and if there’s one thing I learned while there, it’s that “universally despised” probably understates Germans’ feeling about Trump.
But Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) blocked each of the bills. She didnât give reason for her objections, or say if she was objecting on behalf of herself or the Senate GOP caucus.
@Teve:..But a closer look shows the eagle has two heads, like Russiaâs national symbol, and the bird is holding golf clubs instead of its usual arrows.
More from USA Today
Additionally, instead of “e pluribus unum,” the scroll above the eagle appears to say “45 es un titere,” which appears to translate from Spanish to mean “45 is a puppet.”
Why do I think it’s the best? Because the conclusion of the second paragraph I’m excerpting here indicates the author actually understands what the fuck is happening.
It will get worse because the Democratic Party still believes that the mushy center is the place to campaign against Trump, that white votes are the only votes worth winning, that people of color or young people will never vote so why bother giving them a reason to, and that, in the brilliant words of Chuck Schumer, âfor every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.â
Except they didnât, and they wonât, and now they want the Blue Collar Guy back. He will never come back, because the stereotypical âwhite working classâ media caricature has lost his job and watched his city disintegrate and has no future, so whiteness is his last remaining asset, and he likes the candidate who promises to protect it. [emphasis added]
@Mikey: Great article. This nails it. We not only can’t find people to man the barricades, we can’t get the people with the means to do something to recognize that we need barricades. Double points for highlighting the complicity of the media in letting the putsch look like “politics as usual”.
FlightRadar24 tracked 225,000 airplane flights yesterday???? I knew humans were going to be hyper-boned from global warming, but I somehow missed that little detail. đ
But mopping up the mess we leave is still your problem. đ
@OzarkHillbilly:
“The blog cleans itself.”
“Well good for the bloody blog.”
#VagueStarTrekTNGReference
@Doug Mataconis: Heh.
link
Remember that weird story about VP Pence suddenly cancelling a visit to NH, and the strange half-response that came out a few days later? Apparently one of the employees at the drug treatment center Pence was to visit was trafficking in fentanyl.
Cesar Sayoc’s defense attorneys:
@Jen: So somebody tipped Pence off that his dealer was about to get pinched and he canceled the buy. Makes sense to me.
link
FYI, there’s a post up regarding today’s Mueller hearings for discussion of that issue.
Hearings begin at 8:30 Eastern
If anyone thinks that I’ve been too harsh on the stupidity of the Brits, you should see what the rest of Europe is saying about BoJo’s election.
@Teve: A couple of weeks ago I was puttering around listening to NPR, and there was a fascinating discussion on Reveal about a National Park scientist who was subjected to incredible pressure to modify her findings. It was a rebroadcast, but absolutely alarming what this scientist was subjected to.
@Jen: here in Florida under Rick Scott, state officials were prohibited from making any reference to global warming or climate change. And that order was distributed verbally throughout the chain so there wouldn’t be evidence of it.
@Teve: They did the same in NC with coastal development, they even passed it into law. (iirc)
Meanwhile on Twitter
đ
In cognitive biases and/or logical fallacies, is there something like a “first and done” bias/fallacy?
What this means is that often people will take up the first explanation or statement they hear about something, and it will lodge in their minds as absolutely and unshakably true, even if they are given, or find out, a correction later; and by later I mean as little as five seconds.
For example, one time in vegas I got into an elevator at the lobby after a man with a suitcase got in. We were going to the same floor. We got to talking, he was just checking in, and asked whether I knew where his room was. It was like three doors down from mine. So I told him, “just turn left at the hallway. Wait, no. Turn right.” He asked “Just turn left?” “No,” I said. “Turn right.”
When we exited, he turned left.
There are other concrete examples, but I won’t go through them. Things like rumors that get debunked, but people still believe them. Simple rumors like someone died, then you see them alive on TV, but keep thinking they died (seriously). Or someone makes a claim that is proved to be not true or accurate, but people keep believing it is. Things like that.
@Teve: Trump really is freaking out. What is it he thinks Mueller may have on him? I had to look up ZOG. And they say Ilhan Omar is the real antisemite. Vote Blue, no matter who.
@gVOR08: And they say Ilhan Omar is the real antisemite.
Since Trump’s tweets about “The Squad”, Trump has ratcheted up the lying about Omar’s supposed anti-semitism. He has now gone to saying that she used the term “evil Jews”, when in reality she used the phrase “evil doings of Israel” in reference to the 2012 conflict between Israel and Gaza, in which between 57 and 105 Palestinian civilians were killed and four Israeli civilians were killed. He also is claiming that AOC referred to Americans as garbage, when this is what she actually said:
Weâve strayed so far away from what has really made us powerful, and just, and good, and equitable, and productive. All of these [progressive economic policies] sound radical compared to where we are, but where we are is not a good thing. This idea of 10 percent better from garbage shouldnât be what we settle for.
It is pathetic that he lies so often, and worse that his supporters seem to love him in part because of those lies.
Today is the hottest day in the recorded history of Belgium and the Netherlands.
(Seen on the Tweety machine)
@Teve: Willful obstinance will hold the waters back, Iâm sure.
I’m really not a fan of comic songs but this Randy Rainbow song about Trump is hilarious.
@Teve:
Tomorrow is predicted to be another 2°C hotter here in Brussels. What’s really crazy here is the weekly variation.
@Teve: Randy Rainbow is a national treasure. He is *divine.*
Rutger Hauer passed away today
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/rutger-hauer-dead-dies-blade-runner-co-star-1203278050/
âIâve seen things you people wouldnât believe…
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the TannhÀuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time,
like tears in rain.â
@Kathy: I don’t know of a particular argument classification but I just so happen to be taking a psychology class this summer. In psychology they call trouble encoding new longterm memories based on prior knowledge: proactive interference. (wikipedia)
image here
TRUMPâS 2020 STRATEGY: TARGET GRANDPA WITH ANTI-IMMIGRANT ADS
@Katharsis:
Thanks, that seems similar.
GOP blocks election security bills after Mueller testimony
I just got back from three weeks in lovely southern Germany and if there’s one thing I learned while there, it’s that “universally despised” probably understates Germans’ feeling about Trump.
@teve:
She was objecting on behalf of Vladimir Putin.
@DrDaveT: Russians, Republicans, there’s little difference.
@Teve:..But a closer look shows the eagle has two heads, like Russiaâs national symbol, and the bird is holding golf clubs instead of its usual arrows.
Ratfvckers?
Detail
(Looks more like greenbacks than an olive branch in the other claw and the hammer and sickle are a nice touch.)
I’m no longer getting email notifications on new posts. Checked spam. Nothing. Anyone else?
link
Probably the single best summary of the why, who, and what of the current American shitshow:
This is Going to Get Worse
Why do I think it’s the best? Because the conclusion of the second paragraph I’m excerpting here indicates the author actually understands what the fuck is happening.
@Mikey: Great article. This nails it. We not only can’t find people to man the barricades, we can’t get the people with the means to do something to recognize that we need barricades. Double points for highlighting the complicity of the media in letting the putsch look like “politics as usual”.
@Mikey: that’s the guy who runs the Gin and Tacos blog and he’s almost always worth reading.
FlightRadar24 tracked 225,000 airplane flights yesterday???? I knew humans were going to be hyper-boned from global warming, but I somehow missed that little detail. đ
Science news:
âPhysicists have reversed time on the smallest scale by using a Quantum Computerâ (Science Alert)
âSkunk Works exotic fusion reactor program moves forward with larger, more powerful designâ (The Drive)
Fusion energy â just ahead!
âNavyâs 6th generation fighter could put F35 in a museumâ (The Nation)
âPhysicists just discovered the first elusive candidate for a 3D quantum spin liquidâ (Science Alert)
âPermanent liquid magnets have now been created in the labâ (Science News)
âElon Musk wants to upgrade our minds because of AIâ (US News)
âWe might finally be able to safely drink salt waterâ (US News)
âOne more thing that AI can beat you at: solving a Rubikâs cubeâ
(Popular Science)
âGeneral Relativity Rules: Einstein Victorious In Unprecedented Redshift Testâ (Forbes)
âIndiaâs Army Finds Yeti Footprints in Nepal: World Is Skepticalâ (Newsela)