Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

« Older Entries

The Pain Of Upgrades

Monday, October 28th, 2024

I had to upgrade my Mac to Sequoia (15.0.1) because I need to run Slack on it for my new job. Naturally, this broke a lot of my existing apps and made Firefox look like it had forgot everything, because why start up with the profile the user was already using when you can make him panic by presenting a fresh slate to suggest you’ve lost all history, bookmarks and passwords?

Anyway, I’ve got that back, and I can blog, but fixing all the changes (including finally having to buy a new version of MS Office), and the new job are going to eat up a fair amount of my time, so expect some terse blogging this week. Which, I know, is less than ideal the week before the election. It is what it is.

Oh, and I still can’t run Slack, because it needs to validate on a browser to activate, and it says my already-updated Firefox is still too old.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments »

Getting Out The Ten Foot Pole To Talk About UFOs

Thursday, October 10th, 2024

If the Jeopardy category is “Topics Seldom Covered At BattleSwarm,” “What are UFOs?” is a pretty good answer. While I’ve occasionally done a post, for the most part those waters are too polluted by cranks, grifters and true believers (to the extent those categories are distinguishable) to give much credence to the idea that alien spacecraft regularly visit earth.

But since Michael Shellenberger just dropped a piece on a whistleblower saying the federal government has a secret UFO program, and since Shellenberger did such important work on the Twitter files, I am reluctantly getting out my ten foot pole* and covering the piece.

But first some background.

Back in the 1970s, a whole lot of otherwise rational people believed not only in the existence of UFOs, but in alien abductions, ancient astronauts, and a whole host of crackpot pseudoscience beliefs. Belief in UFOs as extraterrestrials visiting earth probably peaked then, reflected in popular media from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Project Bluebook. There was also a steady stream of UFO true believers on TV, making fairly outrageous claims on actual news programs or “true story” TV shows, be it Barney Hill getting butt-probed in a saucer or Bob Lazar’s stories of alien technology at Area 51 and how Grays will use humans as “containers for souls.”

In terms of government UFO projects, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was a real (though unpublicized) Defense Department program that evidently ran from 2007 to 2012.

Now back to Shellenberger:

There is no evidence that any non-human or extra-terrestrial intelligence has visited Earth, according to a May 2024 report by the office the Pentagon created in 2022 to study unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), formerly called UFOs.

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) “assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part,” the report concluded, “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”

The former Director of AARO has since resigned his position and has repeatedly dismissed and ridiculed the topic, claiming that talk of the phenomenon is due mainly to a small group of individuals in the grip of a rumor-based religion.

But critics say that AARO’s 63-page history of the US government’s investigation into UAPs since the end of World War II was riddled with factual errors and poor referencing, including to Wikipedia. And the document was missing historical information that appeared in the 117-page “UAP Timeline” document created by a former or existing US government intelligence officer that Public published last year.

Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, wrote a lengthy rebuttal, concluding, “this is the most error-ridden and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading during or after decades of government service.”

And major political figures, including Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, have vouched for the credibility of UAP witnesses and whistleblowers.

“I’ve interviewed solid people,” said former president Donald Trump in September, “great pilots for the US Air Force, et cetera, they’ve seen things that they cannot explain.”

Trump has said repeatedly that the government has information about UAPs that it has not released. In 2020, during a podcast with his son, Donald Trump, Jr., Trump said, “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.”

In June of this year, Trump said that the government has information about UAPs that it has not released. “I have access,” he said, “and I speak to people about it. I’ve had actually meetings on it. And they will tell you there’s something going on.”

In 2021, former CIA Director John Brennan said, “I think some of the phenomena we may be seeing continue to be unexplained and might be some type of phenomenon that results from something that we don’t yet understand and could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.”

The same year, the current Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, said UAPs could constitute non-human intelligence (NHI).

In 2023, a high-ranking former intelligence officer named David Grusch testified to Congress that the US government had retrieved spacecraft of nonhuman origin and bodies, which US government insiders told Public was accurate.

In July 2022, the Intelligence Community Inspector General concluded that Grusch’s complaint that “elements” of the IC had withheld or hidden UAP-related information from Congress “to purposely and intentionally thwart legitimate Congressional oversight of the UAP Program” was both “credible” and “urgent.”

At the time, Charles McCullough III, the first Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, who the US Senate had confirmed for his job in 2011, represented Grusch.

That does not mean that extraterrestrial beings occupy or are operating the UAPs, nor that the US government and military contractors are hiding crashed alien spacecraft or bodies, as some former astronauts, former IC officers, and former military leaders claim.

There are other explanations for UAPs. Current dominant alternative theories, including those put forward by AARO, are that UAPs are some kind of natural phenomenon we don’t yet understand, like ball lighting or plasma. They could also be part of some new US or foreign government weapons program, such as drones, aircraft, balloons, CGI hoaxes, or birds.

Elon Musk thinks UFO sightings are probably experimental U.S. miltech. Let’s hope so.

Other UAP skeptics say that some combination of government disinformation and social contagion, like the Satanic panic of the 1980s or the Salem witch trials, among UAP believers in the US military are driving the phenomenon.

Is it possible that the Pentagon and CIA are still playing disinformation games with the American people to cover up unacknowledged programs? Or that intelligence and security agencies, as well as politicians, are creating a UAP hoax to frighten the public? And is it possible that whistleblowers are fabricating parts or all of their testimony?

The US Air Force allegedly used disinformation against a UFO buff in the past to cover up a weapons program. Something similar could be happening today.

However, no available evidence supports that theory. And so, while this possibility should not be ignored, for it to be true, it would require a complicated conspiracy with unclear motivations.

As Senator Rubio noted last year, “Most of [the UAP whistleblowers] have held very high clearances and high positions within our government. So, you do ask yourself: What incentive would so many people with that kind of qualification – these are serious people – have to come forward and make something up?”

Rubio also said that individuals in “high clearances and high positions within our government” with “firsthand knowledge” of UAPs were “fearful of harm coming to them.”

Grusch and other UAP whistleblowers say the government retaliated against them and tried to stop them from going public.

Snip.

Existing and former US government officials have told members of Congress that AARO and the Pentagon have broken the law by not revealing a significant body of information about UAPs, including military intelligence databases that have evidence of their existence as physical craft.

One of these individuals is a current or former US government official acting as a UAP whistleblower. The person has written a report that says “the Executive Branch has been managing UAP/NHI issues without Congressional knowledge, oversight, or authorization for some time, quite possibly decades.”

Furthermore, these individuals have revealed the name of an active and highly secretive DOD “Unacknowledged Special Access Program,” or USAP. The source of the document told Public that the USAP is a “strategic intelligence program” that is part of the US military’s family of long-standing, highly-sensitive programs dealing with various aspects of the UAP ‘problem.’”

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)’

Supposedly the name of this secret UFO program is Immaculate Constellation.

All this adds up to something that congress should probably look into…but far short of actual proof that extraterrestrial vehicles are visiting earth. Just because a “whistleblower” says something doesn’t make it true.

Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence…

*Do I actually have a 10 foot pole? Actually I have a 16′ extending pole (similar to this one, though with a different brand name), which I’ve found useful for things like knocking dead branches out of a tree, or getting a Frisbee off a neighbor’s roof. Back when Dwight worked in an office, he used to borrow it to use as a Festavus pole…

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Military, Uncategorized | 19 Comments »

Latest Microsoft Patch Fixes TEN Zero Day Exploits

Wednesday, August 21st, 2024

“Patch Tuesday” is when Microsoft (and other software companies) regularly release patches for their software on the second Tuesday of a month. A “zero day exploit” is a serious, previously undisclosed security flaw in a shipping piece of software. Not every Patch Tuesday includes a zero day fix, and sometimes the release only fixes one or two.

The latest Microsoft Patch Tuesday fix, released last Tuesday, fixes ten zero day vulnerabilities, six of which were already being exploited in the wild.

Attackers are actively exploiting as many as six of the 90 vulnerabilities that Microsoft disclosed in its security update for August, making them a top priority for administrators this Patch Tuesday.

Another four CVEs in Microsoft’s update were publicly known before the Aug. 13 disclosure, which also make them zero-days of a sort, even though attackers have not yet begun exploiting them. Among them, an elevation of privilege (EoP) bug in Windows Update Stack, tracked as CVE-2024-38202, is particularly troubling because Microsoft does not yet have a patch for it.

The unpatched flaw allows an attacker with “basic user privileges to reintroduce previously mitigated vulnerabilities or circumvent some features of Virtualization Based Security (VBS),” according to Microsoft. The company has assessed the bug as being only of moderate severity because an attacker would need to trick an administrator or user with delegated permissions into performing a system restore.

However, Scott Caveza, staff research engineer at Tenable, says that if an attacker were to chain CVE-2024-38202 with CVE-2024-21302 (an EoP flaw in the current update that affects Windows Secure Kernel), they would be able to roll back software updates without the need for any interaction with a privileged user. “CVE-2024-38202 does require ‘additional interaction by a privileged user,’ according to Microsoft,” he says. “However, the chaining of CVE-2024-21302 allows an attacker to downgrade or roll back software versions without the need for interaction from a victim with elevated privileges.”

Caveza says each vulnerability can be exploited separately, but when combined, they could potentially have a more significant impact.

In all, seven of the bugs that Microsoft disclosed this week are rated as critical. The company rated 79 CVEs — including the zero-days that attackers are actively exploiting — as “Important,” or of medium severity, because they involve some level of user interaction or other requirement for an attacker to exploit. “While this isn’t the biggest release, it is unusual to see so many bugs listed as public or under active attack in a single release,” said Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), in a blog post.

This is, to use a technical term, “bad.”

I’m not an expert in Windows security, but ten zero day exploits sounds like a new record.

And just who is exploiting this vulnerability in the wild? Well, in one case, North Korea.

A Windows zero-day vulnerability recently patched by Microsoft was exploited by hackers working on behalf of the North Korean government so they could install custom malware that’s exceptionally stealthy and advanced, researchers reported Monday.

Getting pwned by North Korea is like getting arrested for knocking over a liquor store because you posted a picture of yourself in front of the store holding up the stolen cash on Facebook.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-38193, was one of six zero-days—meaning vulnerabilities known or actively exploited before the vendor has a patch—fixed in Microsoft’s monthly update release last Tuesday. Microsoft said the vulnerability—in a class known as a “use after free”—was located in AFD.sys, the binary file for what’s known as the ancillary function driver and the kernel entry point for the Winsock API. Microsoft warned that the zero-day could be exploited to give attackers system privileges, the maximum system rights available in Windows and a required status for executing untrusted code.

Microsoft warned at the time that the vulnerability was being actively exploited but provided no details about who was behind the attacks or what their ultimate objective was. On Monday, researchers with Gen—the security firm that discovered the attacks and reported them privately to Microsoft—said the threat actors were part of Lazarus, the name researchers use to track a hacking outfit backed by the North Korean government.

“The vulnerability allowed attackers to bypass normal security restrictions and access sensitive system areas that most users and administrators can’t reach,” Gen researchers reported. “This type of attack is both sophisticated and resourceful, potentially costing several hundred thousand dollars on the black market. This is concerning because it targets individuals in sensitive fields, such as those working in cryptocurrency engineering or aerospace to get access to their employer’s networks and steal cryptocurrencies to fund attackers’ operations.”

Monday’s blog post said that Lazarus was using the exploit to install FudModule, a sophisticated piece of malware discovered and analyzed in 2022 by researchers from two separate security firms: AhnLab and ESET. Named after the FudModule.dll file that once was present in its export table, FudModule is a type of malware known as a rootkit. It stood out for its ability to operate robustly in the deep in the innermost recess of Windows, a realm that wasn’t widely understood then or now. That capability allowed FudModule to disable monitoring by both internal and external security defenses.

Rootkits are pieces of malware that have the ability to hide their files, processes, and other inner workings from the operating system itself and, at the same time, control the deepest levels of the operating system. To work, rootkits must first gain system privileges and go on to directly interact with the kernel, the area of an operating system reserved for the most sensitive functions. The FudModule variants discovered by AhnLabs and ESET were installed using a technique called “bring your own vulnerable driver,” which involves installing a legitimate driver with known vulnerabilities to gain access to the kernel.

Earlier this year, researchers from security firm Avast spotted a newer FudModule variant that bypassed key Windows defenses such as Endpoint Detection and Response, and Protected Process Light. Microsoft took six months after Avast privately reported the vulnerability to fix it, a delay that allowed Lazarus to continue exploiting it.

Whereas Lazarus used “bring your own vulnerable driver” to install earlier versions of FudModule, group members installed the variant discovered by Avast by exploiting a bug in appid.sys, a driver enabling the Windows AppLocker service, which comes preinstalled in Windows. Avast researchers said at the time the Windows vulnerability exploited in those attacks represented a holy grail for hackers because it was baked directly into the OS rather than having to be installed from third-party sources.

As I’ve noted before, Internet security is hard. Neither Mac nor Linux are entirely free of such exploits, but they seem to be a lot less frequent. Log4J wasn’t a Linux kernel exploit, but everyone (rightly) freaked out over it because Log4j was used everywhere and it let attackers install malicious code on your server.

Microsoft patching ten zero day exploits suggests that there’s a big problem up in Redmond. You would think the zero day vulnerability numbers would be going down, not up. I wonder if we might be seeing that start of widespread AI use to find vulnerabilities in software.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Crime, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Another Texas Sales Tax Holiday Starts Tomorrow

Thursday, August 8th, 2024

Another sales tax holiday, this one for back-to-school, starts tomorrow, August 9th.

The Comptroller encourages all taxpayers to support Texas businesses while saving money on tax-free purchases of most clothing, footwear, school supplies and backpacks (sold for less than $100) during the annual Tax-Free weekend. Qualifying items can be purchased tax free from a Texas store or from an online or catalog seller doing business in Texas. In most cases, you do not need to give the seller an exemption certificate to buy qualifying items tax free.

This year’s sales tax holiday begins Friday, Aug. 9, and goes through midnight Sunday, Aug. 11.

The sales tax exemption applies only to qualifying items you buy during the sales tax holiday. Items you buy before or after the sales tax holiday do not qualify for exemption, and there is no tax refund available.

Qualifying Items

  • Clothing and Footwear
  • Face Masks
  • Backpacks
  • School Supplies

    • So if you need clothes, paper, etc., you can save some money this weekend.

    Tags:, ,
    Posted in Texas, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

    The Joe Biden Experience

    Saturday, July 13th, 2024

    This video is almost genius in its simplicity: Joe Biden as Joe Rogan, interviewing Joe Biden, all populated exclusively with actual Biden audio.

    I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow recap, since the video is short and you’ll probably recognize most or all of the snippets. And who doesn’t love the loopy Corn-Pop/rusty razors in rain barrels story?

    The creators missed an opportunity to spoof the theme music, though. “The Joe Biden Experience! 10-4 all day! None at night!”

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Democrats, Uncategorized, video | 5 Comments »

    Supreme Court Shuts Down Another Democrat Election Fraud Vector

    Wednesday, April 24th, 2024

    In many states, Democrats can’t win unless they cheat, and that’s why they want easily-abused universal mail-in voting to become to the norm. To that end, Democrats sued Texas (yet again) over mail-in voting limitations, and once again their lawsuit against election security laws was denied by the Supreme Court.

    An attempt to revive the Texas Democratic Party’s 2020 challenge to the state’s mail-in ballot restrictions was denied this week by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    The court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari from Joseph Cascino, Marie Sansing, and Brenda Li Garcia — residents of Texas who do not qualify for mail-in voting under current law. They filed their petition back in December.

    In Texas anyone may vote early in person, but only those aged 65 or older, disabled, or out of their county of residence during the election may vote by mail.

    The trio of petitioners argued that their right to vote is impinged by those limitations and that the 26th Amendment bars any such division of classification between voters.

    The case was originally made in 2020 by the Texas Democratic Party, which secured a temporary victory in the trial court. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and the Supreme Court denied an appeal of that reversal.

    Represented by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), Secretary of State Jane Nelson countered, “Some States endorse no-excuse absentee voting; others require in-person voting with narrow exceptions.”

    “This diversity of approaches reflects a healthy federalism and accords with the uncontroversial notion that ‘government must play an active role in structuring elections.’”

    The court did not issue any opinion or reasoning with the dismissal.

    “Many states irresponsibly and unconstitutionally changed their voting policies prior to the 2020 election,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said of the dismissal. “Fortunately, we did things differently in Texas: we fought hard to uphold Texas law and defend the integrity of elections in this State.”

    Texas did change its voting policy during the 2020 election — Gov. Greg Abbott used disaster powers to unilaterally extend early voting by a week — and while no ruling declared it unconstitutional, the extension was done without input from the Legislature, which was the very contention of Paxton’s 2020 election suit against other states who similarly changed voting laws through executive order.

    Two state senators, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, then-Texas GOP Chair Allen West, and a bevy of then-current or former state representatives sued over the action. The Texas Supreme Court denied their motion for an emergency stay as Paxton was named as one of the attorneys for Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs.

    Another argument that was denied back in 2020 was that the threat of contracting COVID-19 constituted a disability under the state Election Code; it was also ultimately rejected.

    The practical onus for the original lawsuit was Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins’ unsolicited mailing of absentee ballot applications to all voters. That action was halted by the Texas Supreme Court in October 2020.

    In Harris County, I’m sure that Lina Hidalgo is very disappointed that vote tabulation sites won’t be able to pull out boxes of miraculously overlooked mail-in ballots to alter tallies at 3 AM on November 5th…

    Tags:, , , , , ,
    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

    Tab Clearing For April 6, 2024

    Saturday, April 6th, 2024

    A small handful of links that either didn’t make yesterday’s LinkSwarm, or weren’t quite right for it.

  • Why young men have checked out. A rant with a measure of truth:

    I was particularly struck by the phrase “fundamentally unwifeable.” Add “social justice” to “feminism” for the reason. As for “Disney Princess programming,” the Disney Princess thing has been around for over half a century. So why have things gotten so much worse on that front over the last 20 years?

  • On the flipside, here’s a 20-something girl complaining that she can’t afford rent. She apparently deleted the original tweet, but she said her rent had jumped from something like $1,200 a month to $1,600 a month, and she was having trouble affording food. Thanks, Joe Biden! Rent inflation is real, especially in blue cities where regulation prevents new housing being built to meet demand, but if your rent is that much, then you either need to move further out, find roommates to share rent with, or you need to consider moving to a less expensive city entirely.
  • “Opioid Overdoses, Homicide Rates on the Rise in Austin and Travis County.”

    During an Austin City Council meeting on public safety, Austin-Travis County Emergency and Medical Services (EMS) spoke about the rising rates of opioid deaths in the county.

    “Travis County now has twice as many opiate overdose deaths than any other county in Texas, per capita,” said Steven White, acting assistant chief for Austin-Travis County EMS.

    White explained how the opioid crisis began in the community in 2016, “with a severe increase in 2017.”

    White elaborated that in 2018 there were about 30 overdoses per month, and “now we’re averaging about 100 overdoses a month.”

    He went on to show a heat map of where the overdoses are occurring, stating that “opioids do not seem to be contained by geographic barriers or financial barriers.”

    “It really gets into every part of our community and touches every family [and] at some point will be affected by the opioid crisis.”

    White also highlighted that “30 percent of all the opioid users who die of an overdose, at some point had contact with EMS in the previous 12 months before their death, which gives us an intersection point where we’re actually meeting these patients who have the potential to overdose and die.”

    Another statistic he presented is that “patients that receive Narcan in the field by EMS have a 10 percent chance of having a fatal overdose in the next 12 months.”

    This is your city on social justice…

  • Free goats.
  • Random Habitual Linecrosser I’m posting just so I can steal the phrase “Skittle Hair People.”

    • Tags:, , , , , , ,
    Posted in Budget, Crime, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

    Did Facebook Run A Man-in-The-Middle Hack Against Competitors?

    Thursday, March 28th, 2024

    Newly unsealed court documents accuse Facebook of running a man-in-the-middle attack against several competitors.

    At the request of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook officials developed a program called In-App Action Panel (IAAP) that they deployed in 2016 and which was in use through mid-2019, according to the documents, which include internal emails.

    The program utilized cyberattacks to intercept information from Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon. The program then decrypted the information.

    “Facebook’s IAAP Program used nation-state-level hacking technology developed by the company’s Onavo team, in which Facebook paid contractors (including teens) to designate Facebook a trusted ‘root’ certificate authority on their mobile devices, then generated fake digital certificates to redirect secure Snapchat analytics traffic (and later, analytics from YouTube and Amazon) from Snapchat’s servers to Onavo’s; decrypted these analytics and used them for competitive gain, including to inform Facebook’s product strategy; reencrypted them; and sent them up to Snapchat’s servers as though it came straight from Snapchat’s app, with Facebook’s Social Advertising competitor none the wiser,” lawyers said in one of the documents.

    This is a clever attack in several ways. If you can create and get a program/device to accept a false signing certificate, you bypass having to break a company’s encryption altogether. The program trusts your fake certificate and creates a secure connection to your backend, using your encryption, thinking it’s transmitting information back to the targeted company. Also, analytics data doesn’t have to be sent and received in real time, so a significant delay in gather and receive times may not tip off the targeted company to the attack.

    None of this is a walk in the park, but it’s something like ten orders of magnitude easier than breaking the targeted company’s encryption stream on a live session to seamlessly hack it in real time, which is the sort of God-level hacking limited to those with NSA-level computing power, or fictional characters.

    The lawyers, representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit that accuses Facebook of anti-competitive behavior, were describing emails they obtained through discovery.

    In one email, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote that there was a need to receive information about Snapchat but that their traffic was encrypted. “Given how quickly they’re growing, it seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them. Perhaps we need to do panels or write custom software. You should figure out how to do this,” he wrote.

    After Facebook employees started working on figuring it out, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan wrote that the program could pay users to “let us install a really heavy piece of software (that could even do man in the middle, etc.).”

    Man in the middle refers to a type of cyberattack where attackers secretly intercept information.

    More specifically, it’s where a third party successfully inserts itself into the communication stream between two other parties, relaying (and possibly altering) both ends of the communication without either party knowing.

    “We are going to figure out a plan for a lockdown effort during June to bring a step change to our Snapchat visibility. This is an opportunity for our team to shine,” Guy Rosen, founder of Onavo, later wrote. Onavo was started in Israel and bought by Facebook in 2013.

    In a presentation on the program when it was being finalized, it was stated that there would be “’kits” that can be installed on iOS and Android that intercept traffic for specific sub-domains, allowing us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage.”

    Documents and testimony obtained in the case showed the program was launched in June 2016 and continued being used through 2019.

    The program initially targeted Snapchat but was later expanded to Google’s YouTube and Amazon, according to the documents.

    A few quick points:

    1. This is all from Snapchat’s court documents, so you have to put an “allegedly” on all this.
    2. If all the allegations are true, Facebook has just broken all sorts of federal anti-hacking laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act, and probably half a dozen more I haven’t even thought of.
    3. That Zuckerberg himself is (allegedly) directly implicated in deliberately breaking federal law is pretty breathtaking. He could be looking at serious jail time. Or would be, if he weren’t such a big Democratic Party Donor. (We’ll see how much time Sam Bankman-Fried catches today.)
    4. Snapchat is one thing, but targeting fellow tech behemoths Google (which owns YouTube) and Amazon with this sort of attack would seem to be…unwise. (Maybe Google’s forgiveness was covered in the secret deal the two companies allegedly signed with each other.)
    5. The timeframe is important here. Back in 2016-2019, the handling of digital signing certificates was a lot more loosey-goosey than it is now. A whole lot of things have been tightened up. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to carry out such an attack now, but it would be harder.

    We’ll see if the whole thing jumps from litigation land to the feds actually going after Facebook, but at a time when Facebook is being sued by all manner of plaintiffs (including Texas and other state attorney generals) over privacy violations and anti-competitive practices, the Snapchat revelations could certainly provide more fuel for the fire…

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Budget, Communism, Democrats, Texas, Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

    NYC’s Illegal Alien Debit Card Scam

    Sunday, March 10th, 2024

    There’s a scam sweeping New York City. And by “New York City,” I mean “the New York City mayor’s office.” Instead of feeding the illegal aliens New York has lured there as a “sanctuary city,” Eric Adams has decided to just hand out preloaded debit cards.

    These are theoretically to replace buying food for them. Theoretically.

    Handing out free money to illegal aliens paid for with citizen taxpayer dollars is unconscionable enough.

    But let me ask the obvious question that no one seems to be asking: How do we know these debit cards will actually be handed out to illegal aliens? How do we know it won’t just be handed out to friends of Eric Adams, leftwing activists, etc.? At least with real food there are receipts. I’m betting there is not a rigorous, auditable, traceable system where the illegal aliens are required to show ID and sign off on receiving the cards.

    I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no two-factor authentication is going on here. Being cash-equivalent debit cards, I’m also guessing there’s no way to keep them from being used in liquor stores.

    Here Adams is declaring there he’s going to start handing the 21st century equivalent of “walking around money” and we just have to trust him when he says its going to the illegal aliens so they can buy food.

    Yet another reason Democrats love illegal aliens is that, like the homeless, they have no support network to speak up for them when welfare state goodies get diverted into the pockets of leftwing activists.

    Tags:, , , , , , ,
    Posted in Texas, Uncategorized, unions, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 3 Comments »

    Texas Election Roundup For February 28, 2024

    Wednesday, February 28th, 2024

    I hadn’t intended to use so much of this week talking about Texas elections, but a lot of news is dropping and the primary looms next week, so let’s tuck in:

  • Vegas bets on Dade Phelan.

    After mainly remaining on the sidelines ahead of the primary, casino companies seeking to turn Texas into a piggy bank are spending big to back the current House Speaker and his allies.

    Chief among these out-of-state interlopers is Las Vegas Sands, giving through its “Texas” Sands PAC. The largest beneficiary of Sands’ money in the latest filing period is embattled House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont).

    The casino outfit gave $200,000 to the Speaker, his second-largest donation in the latest filing period. Another gambling behemoth, Penn Entertainment Inc., gave Phelan $20,000. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma donated $10,000.

    Gambling special interests have long targeted Texas but have been rebuffed for decades following failed promises of the Texas Lottery. During the 2023 legislative session, the Texas House advanced gambling measures that the Texas Senate ignored.

    In this latest period, Sands gave $1.8 million to Texas politicians. This money went exclusively to members of the Texas House, with Republicans taking $1.34 million and Democrats $457,500. This is potentially a preview of a deluge of money that big gambling may spend in the lead-up to the 2025 legislative session.

    State Rep. John Kuempel (R-Seguin), a key proponent of growing the gambling footprint in Texas, received the second-highest total from Sands at $110,000. Like Phelan, Keumpel finds himself up against a field of challengers, including Alan Schoolcraft who enjoys the endorsement of Gov. Greg Abbott and heavy financial backing.

  • Speaking of Phelan, it seems that a state agency paid millions in above-market rates for real estate rental to Phelan’s company.

    Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi says the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) has paid a company House Speaker Dade Phelan manages three times the market value.

    On February 16, 2023, an exclusive Texas Scorecard investigative report examined a lease between HHSC and 3105 Executive, LLC—a company Phelan and members of the Phelan family manage and direct. From December 2017 to December 2023, state taxpayers paid this company $2.3 million through HHSC. The original lease ran from January 2014 to December 2023 but has been extended to August 2029. Phelan was first elected to the Texas House in 2014 and began serving in 2015. He was elected Speaker by fellow House members in 2021.

    On February 17, Rinaldi took to social media platform X, noting that the 2023 rent HHSC paid Phelan is three times the market value.

    “This looks like a $268,000 windfall to the Speaker’s business paid for money appropriated by the House, which is a big deal,” he wrote. “My next question would be how many other income streams are there like this one?”

  • President Trump just endorsed a bunch more Texas candidates.

    Trump endorsed the following House candidates:

    • Brent Money for House District 2, a seat only recently filled by Jill Dutton in a special election
    • Joanne Shofner, who is challenging State Rep. Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches) for House District 11
    • Steve Toth (R–Conroe), who is the current representative for House District 15
    • Janis Holt, who is challenging State Rep. Ernest Bailes (R-Shepherd) for House District 18
    • Gary Gates (R–Richmond), who is the current representative for House District 28
    • Wes Virdell for House District 53, which is an open seat following the retirement of State Rep. Andrew Murr (R-Junction)
    • Hillary Hickland, who is challenging State Rep. Hugh Shine (R-Temple) for House District 55
    • Stormy Bradley, who is challenging State Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo) for House District 72
    • Don McLaughlin for House District 80, which is an open seat following the retirement of Tracy King (D-Uvalde)
    • John Smithee (R–Amarillo), who is the current representative for House District 86
    • Caroline Fairly for House District 87, which is an open seat following the retirement of Four Price (R-Amarillo)
    • Barry Wernick, who is challenging State Rep. Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas) for House District 108

    Bailes, Darby, Shine, and Meyer all voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton—a close ally of Trump. Gates also voted for impeachment but later apologized and contributed $15,000 to Paxton’s campaign fund.

    Bailes, Darby, Clardy, and Shine all voted against Gov. Greg Abbott’s school choice program. Abbott has endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.

    Money, Virdell, Hickland, and Bradley have also been endorsed by Gun Owners of America.

    A consensus is forming among a broad front of Republicans (Trump, Abbott, Patrick and Paxton) on who to vote for on Tuesday, and Phalen’s pals ain’t it.

  • And Paxton is out on the campaign trail supporting challengers to the Phelan-aligned reps who voted for his impeachment.
  • “State Rep. Gary VanDeaver Faces Stiff Challenge One Decade After Ousting Previous Incumbent.”

    Ten years into his career in the Texas House, state Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston) now faces the very same challenge he mounted a decade ago — a newcomer hoping to unseat an incumbent.

    VanDeaver faces two challengers — the Gov. Greg Abbott-backed Chris Spencer and Attorney General Ken Paxton-backed Dale Huls — in his bid for a sixth term in the Legislature.

    He is one of 15 House Republicans seeking re-election who voted both for Paxton’s impeachment last May and to strip education savings accounts (ESA) from the House education omnibus bill last November, and for those he’s become a top target. Abbott and the pro-school choice groups wading into Texas House races have an eye toward flipping the seat, and Paxton is bent on exacting retribution.

    Snip.

    VanDeaver is in a dogfight, primarily against Spencer, the former chairman of the Sulphur Springs River Authority who loaned himself $300,000 at the campaign’s outset and is benefitting greatly from outside money.

    According to ad buy data provided to The Texan from Medium Buying, a national GOP placement agency, Spencer and the groups backing him have reserved $116,000 of ad space on cable and broadcast television from Monday through the election next week. That dwarfs the $12,000 spent by VanDeaver’s camp during the same period.

    Most of Spencer’s ad space was purchased either by Abbott’s campaign or the School Freedom Fund, a PAC affiliated with the national group Club for Growth.

    As of the eight-day reporting period, VanDeaver has $450,000 cash-on-hand after raising $684,000 from January 26 through February 24. During that same period, Spencer raised $257,000 and has $166,000 left on hand. Huls is far behind the other two with $16,000 raised and $7,000 remaining in the bank.

  • A brief look at Republican ballot propositions.

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Republicans, Texas, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

    « Older Entries