Tag Archives: ethics

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.

Advice

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Rebecca Grant, DC-based national security analyst, had some for President Joe Biden (D) vis-à-vis Russian President Vladimir Putin on the subject of the latter’s threatened invasion of Ukraine. The venue for that advice is the summit between the two men that occurred yesterday.

Grant is naively optimistic, though.

The 30-nation Euro-Atlantic alliance is primed to deter and counter rash Russian actions.

No, it’s not. Johnson is just posturing, and the UK, a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum (as is Russia), already has betrayed Ukraine by acquiescing to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine rather than enforcing the Memorandum. Beyond that, Germany is already in the bag for Russia, and France is carefully quiet.

America is already involved.

Indeed, we are. We’re also a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, and under the Obama-Biden administration, we’ve also betrayed Ukraine by declining to enforce that memorandum. Beyond that, ships in the Black Sea are ducks in a pond for any force on the shores.

Biden and NATO can do more to deter Putin.  Start with immediate air exercises in Ukraine with US and NATO aircraft.

It’s a start, did Biden have the integrity and moral courage to do so, but more is needed, a yet sterner test of Biden’s…strength. Economic sanctions are insufficient and unlikely to be enacted, anyway. The more that’s actually needed is moving US (because we can’t count on a NATO whose European members won’t even honor their own commitments to fund and equip the alliance) troops into Poland, south toward Ukraine and north toward Kaliningrad, and moving US naval forces to within air strike range of Kaliningrad.

Grant closed her advice with this:

Heat up one tank engine and we’ll know about it.

Certainly. But what will Biden do about it? Grant opened her piece with this:

Ukraine’s borders are a parking lot for Russian tanks, trucks, and artillery ready for a three-pronged blitzkrieg.

Even after that first tank has lit off and crossed the border, that parking lot, for the next number of days, will remain a parking lot of targets. Von Moltke learned that problem in 1914, and even though Putin’s generals likely will have learned from that, the same or worse bottlenecks exist in western Russia and eastern Ukraine.

Biden is unlikely to do any of that, though. He got his marching orders from Putin via Colonial Pipeline, and he already has kowtowed to Putin via Nordstream 2.

Biden will only kowtow again.

In any event, we’ll be hearing, today and in the coming days, the claims of the two participants. We’ll learn empirically, in the coming weeks and months, the outcome of the summit.

Loopholes

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The usually solid editors over at The Wall Street Journal had a piece last Friday regarding, in their terms, a bizarre loophole for Oklahoma criminals.

It seems that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a majority opinion in McGirt v Oklahoma that held that since the Federal government—Congress—has never actually dissolved the nation’s treaty with the Creek Nation, Oklahoma’s

authority to prosecute crimes involving Native American perpetrators and victims has vanished in nearly half of Oklahoma.

Because that’s the expanse of the Creek Nation’s reservation under that treaty.

Their editorial then listed a number of cases that fell out of McGirt that allowed a number of negligent persons and outright criminals get away with their crimes because the events involved Native Americans over whom the State has no jurisdiction to prosecute or no standing to protect.

The editors’ overwrought headline, How to Get Away With Manslaughter, then was bookended with a cynically emotional finale:

The Supreme Court should look these cases in the face. Is this justice, Justice Gorsuch?

The Editors’ ire is justified, but it’s aimed in the wrong direction.

All any Federal judge, Justices included, can do under our Constitution (vis., Art I, Sect 1) and their oaths of office, is to apply the law, including our supreme Law of the Land, as they are written. They cannot, in particular, adjust either, nor can they manufacture from the bench laws that plug loopholes in laws.

The loophole the Editors decry here, as any loophole in any law, can only be plugged statutorily, and only Congress can make law that does so.

The items listed, and many others to come, indeed aggregate into a vast and serious failure to perform. However, the failure is Congress’, and it’s on Congress to correct it. Judges cannot, and especially, Justices cannot.

A Florida State Guard

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It seems that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has requested some $3.5 million to fund reestablishment of the Florida State Guard,

a civilian volunteer force that will assist the National Guard in state-specific emergencies[.]

The Governor’s press release went on:

The establishment of the Florida State Guard will further support those emergency response efforts in the event of a hurricane, natural disasters and other state emergencies. The $3.5 million to establish the Florida State Guard will enable civilians to be trained in the best emergency response techniques.

Florida’s State Guard would number all of 200 civilians, and as with all State Guards, will be under the control of the Governor and cannot be Federalized—cannot be called up by the President. DeSantis expanded on his press release:

We want to make sure that we have the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible. That will require us to have access and be able to use support in ways that are not encumbered by the federal government or don’t require federal government

The Leftist news outlets have gone hysterical about this move. CNN‘s now leading pundit following the temporary hiatus of Chris Cuomo had the typical response:

So… y’all know this is fascisty bananas, right…?

Because, of course.

It’s “fascisty bananas” to have a civilian force beholden only to the State government for being mustered in prompt response to State and local disasters like hurricanes, floods, and the like.

It’s “fascisty bananas” for 23 States in our nation to have such State Guards for such purposes.

Indeed, when Katrina struck Louisiana, the Texas State Guard, in an especially “faschisty bananas” move, immediately set up shelters for and distributed food to Louisiana refugees from the hurricane’s destruction.

When the bad storm comes and hours count, the Federal responses will be only days away. But it’s “fascisty bananas” to use first First Responders inside those days.

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.

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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.