Tag Archives: freedom

Satellites, Espionage, and Malware

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It seems that the People’s Republic of China is using our geosynchronous satellites for its own ends, both economic and national security.  It seems the NLMSM is only just catching up to that long-standing fact.

That’s not cool (each of those things), but the former also presents some opportunities (the latter only serves for hand-wringing and click-bait).

One is to upload software to block communications from PRC sources—the data packets have the data necessary for the discrimination embedded within them. Of course, it’s a routine hack to alter those packet source data or to alt-route the messaging so as to disguise the data’s origin.  But that slows down the data stream, and that, with the latency inherently involved in a communications pathway that involves such faraway nodes can destroy the usefulness of some time-sensitive data.

Another stems from the PRC’s reception of communications via our satellites.  This makes the satellites ideal platforms from which, or with which, to inject malware into the data stream headed for PRC sites.  Imagine the possibilities—especially for sleeperware, designed to be triggered at a time opportune for us.

A Desperate Establishment?

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It’s not often I agree with Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley (D, MA) or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY), but on this I do.  It seems that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee intends to blacklist political firms that support primary challenges to current (senior) Progressive-Democratic Party Representatives and Senators in Congress.

Here’s Pressley on the Party’s attempts to limit voter choice:

If the DCCC enacts this policy to blacklist vendors who work with challengers, we risk undermining an entire universe of potential candidates and vendors—especially women and people of color—whose ideas, energy, and innovation need a place in our party[.]

Here’s Ocasio-Cortez’ tweet on the Party’s attempts to limit voter choice:

The @DCCC’s new rule to blacklist+boycott anyone who does business w/ primary challengers is extremely divisive & harmful to the party.
….

Yewbetcha.

This is a shameless attempt to deny American citizens their own choices regarding whom they’ll have represent them in Government.  It’s a demand that putative challengers and us citizens—both—should just sit down, shut up, do what we’re told, and enjoy the portions we’re given.

It’s a mark of the desperation of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s leadership.

It’s instructive of the nature of the Party’s reign were it to succeed in taking over our Federal government.

Crimea and the Golan Heights

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A writer to the Letters to the Editor in a recent Wall Street Journal, actually tries to equate Israel’s hold on the Golan Heights with Russia’s occupation of Crimea and of the People’s Republic of China’s seizure of the South China Sea.

And he’s serious.

Approval of Israel’s seizure lends support to Russia’s claims that the Ukrainian territory seized by Russian “separatists” now belongs to Russia, as does Crimea. President Trump’s stance also gives sanction to China’s seizure and fortification of islets in the South China Sea.

This is just idiotic. Israel’s seizure and retention of the Golan Heights was a defensive move: terrorists acting with Syrian (at least tacit) approval, along with the Syrian army, were using that higher ground to shoot at Israel and Israelis.

No one was shooting at Russia from anywhere in Ukraine; Russia’s seizure and occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine is nothing but a gun-point land grab.

No one was shooting at the People’s Republic of China from anywhere at all, much less from the South China Sea. The PRC’s seizure and occupation, and militarization of the occupied islands, are nothing but a gun-point land and sea grab for the resources in and under the Sea and from which to threaten the surrounding nations.

There’s no equivalence here.

Inconsistent

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Venezuela’s interim President—and only legitimate President—Juan Guaidó has sent his emissaries, his ambassadors around the globe to represent his government to other nations, as ambassadors are designated to do.  He has sent Otto Gebauer to Germany to represent his government to the German government.

There’s the rub.  Germany recognizes Guaidó’s presidency, but that government refuses to recognize his ambassador.

For the purposes of conducting official talks, on March 13 the government described him as the “personal representative of interim President Juan Guaidó….”

The rationalization for this inconsistency has been articulated by the Social Democratic Party’s Helge Lindh (and per his resume, Head of Working Group “Strengthening Foundations” (together with Andreas Bialas MdL):

Recognizing Guaidó was a political decision and a signa.  But, in the current situation, it doesn’t make sense to confirm Guaidó’s shadow ambassadors, as that ignores the fact that the power remains with Maduro and his system.

Sadly, Maduro’s ability to cling to power is facilitated by this willingness to continue to recognize—to tacitly support—his power. This paralysis also contributes to Germany’s maintaining Maduro’s policy of denying entry into Venezuela even the most basic survival foods and medicines, solely on the basis of their originating from the wrong nations.

It’s time for Germany to get off the dime, accept Gebauer as Venezuela’s ambassador, and eject the Maduro man.

Germany’s Hans-Joachim Heintze, of the Ruhr University Bochum’s Institute for International Law, is worried about America’s past gunboat diplomacy and doesn’t want Germany to make the same mistakes.  This is another misguided rationalization, here borne of Germany’s guilt complex over a four generations removed war.

Still, if Germany truly is worried about our unilateral action (of which there has been very little related to the current crisis), Germany should work with the OAS and with individual South American nations—particularly Brazil and Colombia, who are bearing the brunt of the flow of Venezuelan refugees—to assemble a South American military coalition to enter Venezuela, force Maduro out, and allow the Guaidó government to function.

Dithering serves only to prop up the thug to the continued abuse of the Venezuelan people.

Risks

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Or, perhaps, threats.

Take careful note of this tweet from Matthew Brennan.  Not only does this system know who Brennan is without any input from him (this time).  It knows where he is and where he’s going.

Imagine that identification and tracking ability in the hands of Government.  The government in the tweet is the PRC’s, but that’s not the only government spreading surveillance systems around the nation like butter on warm toast.

 

H/t to ralf.