Category Archives: Privacy

Companies Tracking Customers

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It turns out this isn’t limited to cookies through browsers and overt tracking software.

There’s another software package that businesses use to track their users activities. Log4j

is used on computer servers to keep records of users’ activities so they can be reviewed later by security or software development teams.

Businesses are secretly tracking our activities as we interact with them digitally, not just quietly through cookies and tracking tools. Maybe not only those teams, either. It wouldn’t surprise me if marketing teams were using our data, and if other teams were putting together packages of our data to peddle to other companies.

It’s widespread, too.

The nonprofit Apache Software Foundation, a group that distributes the open-source tool at no cost, has said [Log4j] has been downloaded millions of times.

Nice.

And just to add a floatie to that puddle, Log4j has a serious security flaw.

The flaw is particularly dangerous given the widespread use of Log4j on corporate networks and the ease with which hackers could exploit the vulnerability, security experts say.

And

Attackers could use the bug to break into computer networks to steal sensitive data, prepare for ransomware attacks, or create backdoors that will allow them to maintain access to corporate systems even after the flawed software has been patched.

That exposure isn’t limited to personal information, either, or to the nefarious uses to which businesses put out personal information.  It ranges up to the technologies of businesses, including defense contractors.

Grassroots Infiltration

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Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA), of FOXLA, known also for his reporting from our border along the Rio Grande Valley, had this Twitter thread concerning the close ties the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has with the People’s Republic of China, especially as concerns Americans’ DNA records. I’ve reproduced the thread below, absent the tweeting headers for easier reading.

One other thing: the Los County County Supervisor at the end of the thread that Melugin tried to contact, Hilda Solis, is the same Hilda Solis (D) who sat in ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Secretary of Labor chair and did so much damage during his first term.

***

NEW: The L.A. County Sheriff has notified L.A. County that LASD will not work w/ a genetics firm the County hired for mandatory COVID-19 testing/registration of County employees after he received a recent briefing from the FBI warning him about the firm’s links to China.Over the last several weeks, I’ve been contacted by multiple L.A. County employees who are furious about Fulgent Genetic’s disclaimer about sharing their medical information outside the United States. All 100,000+ L.A. County employees mandated to register with Fulgent.

On August 4th, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors issued an executive order mandating all County employees provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19, or face potential termination. L.A. County awarded a no-bid contract to Fulgent to provide testing/registration services.

I’m told some L.A. County departments have already started registering with Fulgent. An employee in the D.A.’s office sent me this letter showing he has already been threatened with disciplinary action & termination for failing to register his information with Fulgent.

Fulgent Genetics was also awarded a contract to provide COVID-19 testing for New York City public schools through the 2021 school year.

ir.fulgentgenetics.com: https://ir.fulgentgenetics.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fulgent-genetics-extends-partnership-new-york-city-test-and/

Fulgent Genetics Extends Partnership with New York City Test and Trace for COVID-19 Testing,…

Following a competitive process, Fulgent was selected to extend its support of the NYC DOE public school testing managed by the NYC Test and Trace Corps with on-site staffing and RT-PCR tests through…

UPDATE: FBI Los Angeles spokesperson tells me:

“While we routinely provide briefings to partners, I decline to comment on the letter tonight.”

I have also reached out to LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis’ office for a response to the Sheriff’s letter. Waiting to hear back.

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This is how deeply the People’s Republic of China is penetrating even our local government jurisdictions.

Pay No Attention to the Woman Behind the Curtain

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That’s the mantra of Progressive-Democrats, who are enthusiastically supportive of President Joe Biden’s (D) nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova.

Ms Omarova wants to put an “‘end to banking’ as we know it”—again, her words—and transfer private banking functions to the Federal Reserve, where accounts would “fully replace” private bank deposits. The Fed would control “systemically important prices” for fuel, food, raw materials, metals, natural resources, home prices and wages.

And, she says

the Fed should be remade into what she calls “The People’s Ledger.”

And

She calls for “reimagining” the role of central banks “as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.”

But ignore those calls for Soviet finance controls. She’s the lady the Progressive-Democrats want to inflict on us.

Shut up about that flapping curtain; vote her up.

Biden’s Attack on Our Oil and Gas Industry

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President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate’s hatred of our oil and gas production industry is well known, and he wants to include $6 billion in additional taxes, fees, and fines on those industries in their reconciliation bill.

But those penalties also will explode the cost of a myriad products Americans use, and destroy the availability of too many others—all beyond such petty uses as fuel for our getting to and from work, or heating our homes in winter and cooling them in summer.

Here’s a partial list of those other uses to which our oil and gas production is put. The full list would run to some 6,000 products.

  • asphalt and road oil
  • components for producing chemicals, plastics, and synthetic materials
  • electronics
  • luggage
  • office supplies like ink and pens
  • computer chips
  • paint and paint brushes
  • floor wax
  • safety glasses and regular eye glasses and contacts
  • linoleum
  • caulking
  • roofing
  • curtains
  • electricians tape
  • fertilizer
  • insecticides
  • tires
  • mops
  • rugs and carpets
  • toilet seats
  • pillows (down-filled are much more expensive)
  • upholstery
  • refrigerators
  • dishwasher parts
  • rubbing alcohol
  • aspirin and other medicines
  • heart valves and other medical devices
  • bandages
  • anesthetics
  • surgical masks (never mind their claimed need for Wuhan Virus protection)
  • dentures
  • antiseptics and hand sanitizers
  • antihistamines
  • cortisone
  • artificial limbs
  • clothes
  • hair tinting and dying
  • perfume
  • sunglasses
  • lipstick
  • purses
  • shoes
  • roller skates
  • shampoo
  • deodorant
  • toothpaste and soap
  • balloons
  • tents
  • fishing rods
  • footballs
  • football cleats and helmets
  • golf balls
  • parachutes
  • telephones
  • cameras
  • candles
  • drinking cups

Of course, Progressive-Democrats know all of this. They also know that wind, solar, even nuclear sources will produce none of these.

Invasive IRS

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In an exchange between Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis (R) and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that occurred during Tuesday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing, Lummis decried Yellen’s proposal to have banks report to the IRS the (allegedly aggregated) “inflows” and “outflows” to/from all accounts larger than $600.

Yellen’s response was to describe the already extensive invasion of personal financial data the IRS demands and to pooh pooh the added reporting because it’s only two additional pieces of easily ascertained information onto the 1099-INT form.

And:

the IRS has a wealth of information about individuals if you work at a job where you get labor income

Invasion, isn’t enough, though. Yellen added that Government has a $7 trillion tax gap between what Government will collect in taxes and what folks allegedly will owe over “the next decade.”

…there are a class of partnerships, businesses, high-income individuals who have opaque sources of income that the IRS doesn’t have direct information about, and that’s where the tax gap is, not low-income people.

Yellen then justified the $600 threshold with this—and she actually was serious:

so that individuals can’t game the system and have multiple accounts.

Sure. Because a family with a $400,000 annual income—President Joe Biden’s (D) threshold for being Evil Rich—is going to set up 650+ bank accounts just to hide that. Or a business in a cash-intensive industry—bars, restaurants, construction companies, et al.—are going to incur the added expense of setting up myriads of $600 accounts in order to disguise their finances.

This is the cynicism of the Biden-Harris administration regarding us average Americans.