Tag Archives: ethics

In Which Zuckerberg is Right

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Attorney General William Barr has taken up ex-FBI Director James Comey’s battle for government backdoors into private citizens’ encrypted private messages.  Apple MFWIC Tim Cook won a similar fight regarding iPhone passwords and a demand that government should be allowed backdoors into those, and Comey’s FBI was shown to have been dissembling about that difficulty by the speed with which a contractor the FBI hired successfully broke into an iPhone the FBI had confiscated.

Now Barr has broadened the fight, demanding Facebook give Government backdoors into Facebook’s planned rollout of encryption for its messaging services.  He wants Facebook, too, to hold off on its rollout until Government is satisfied it has such backdoors.  Barr’s cynically misleading plaint includes this tearjerker:

Companies cannot operate with impunity where lives and the safety of our children is at stake, and if Mr Zuckerberg really has a credible plan to protect Facebook’s more than two billion users it’s time he let us know what it is[.]

Zuckerberg has been quite clear on what it is.  It’s facilitating private citizens’ ability to encrypt their private messages on Facebook’s platform.  Many of whom live in outright tryannies, others of whom live in so-far free nations, but whose government officials want to be able to pierce the protections of enforceable privacy at will.

The concern that bad guys, terrorists as well as common criminals, will take advantage of such encryption to evade government law enforcement facilities is entirely valid.  Two things about that, though. First is Ben Franklin’s remark about the relationship between safety and security.

The other is for law enforcement to do better with their own IT skills and with their own human policing skills.  Just as the FBI did in cracking that iPhone after Apple refused to give break-in assistance to Government.

Hong Kong Police out of Control?

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Or is it President Xi Jinping’s staff member, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who’s out of control? Or has she simply lost control?

First, the police shot, at point blank range, an 18-yr-old student (and arrested him for his role in the shooting), during the then-latest round of violence that Lam’s police have been provoking with their approved-thug attacks, water cannon, pepper spray, cudgels, brandished firearms, and then shooting those firearms into the air.

Then, Lam made a classic despotic move: banning facemasks during public gatherings of three or more folks (imagine getting fewer than that at a pedestrian crosswalk).  She even invoked a British colonial law to rationalize that ban.  In response to that latest attack on freedom, Hong Kong citizens protested in their tens of thousands again.

And one of Lam’s policemen—who wasn’t even in uniform—shot a 14-yr-old child.  Then arrested him for rioting and assaulting police. Apparently, it really is illegal in Xi’s/Lam’s Hong Kong to interfere with a police bullet making its lawful rounds.

An Intelligence Strike

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A second putative whistleblower is claimed to be coming forward with commentary on President Donald Trump’s telecon with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy.  This one claims to have firsthand knowledge of the call.  This one also is claimed by others to be from the intelligence community.

I’ll ask the obvious question, knowing the NLMSM will refuse to answer: who’s leaking these things?  The whistleblower’s claims haven’t even been evaluated by the Intelligence Community Inspector General as such things are supposed to be before anything is done with that kind of complaint.

The other obvious thing is this warning by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) about a President daring to dispute with the intelligence community.

Let me tell you: you take on the intelligence community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you[.]

This is against the backdrop of the drumbeat of smears and false accusations by ex-CIA Director John Brennan and the more sub rosa false claims made by the more genteel ex-DIA Director James Clapper, also known for his “not deliberately” done misstatements during a House hearing.

This “complaint” is the second intelligence community strike of which Schumer warned, coming after the first “whistleblower” strike was shown to have been coordinated with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) (who lied about that coordination) and shown further to be foolish at best, consisting as it does of nothing but second- and third-hand rumors.

Having sent out that stalking horse and learned something of the nature of the counters, this on may well be of better manufacture.

Unfortunately, though, it’s no longer possible to take intel’s “whistleblowers” seriously, even were a complaint to turn out to coincide with truth, because of this history of dishonesty.  And especially since these are being rolled out serially, keeping the matter in the newspapers and talk shows, rather than coming out together as a package, so the matter could be addressed with some finality.

Look for a third strike, if this one plops, also.

Impeachment Moves

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In J T Young’s Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed on the importance of the current impeachment effort to “the Left,” he correctly pointed out that

Impeachment is the left’s means of gaining control of the Democratic Party—which is liberal, but not as far left as many Republicans imagine.

After all, Young wrote,

Those who oppose impeachment would risk a primary challenge from the left. Those who support it would endanger themselves in the general election. Either way, the left wins by converting or purging moderates. Controlling both the nominee and the [Progressive-]Democratic caucuses in Congress would strengthen the Left’s hand considerably, whether or not it was good for the party as a whole. Rules, funding, personnel—all would bend to the Left’s liking.

He’s right, but that’s not the only reason for the Progressive-Democratic Party’s impeachment move: Party also is simply keeping the smear alive through the election season so as to preempt the 2020 elections. They want Republicans to quit trespassing in their White House.

One other thing: Party isn’t as “liberal” as many Republicans imagine? Yes, it is. It’s only necessary to look at Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi’s avowed pride in her progressive policies, and the fire in the belly of Party: Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressey, and Omar to see that much. These persons comprise the leadership of Party; all of them—every single one—are socialists; and they are the voice, as well as the fire, of Party.

Politicizing Tragedy

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Recall a mass shooting in 2018 at a Thousand Oaks, CA, bar in which 13 were killed and a dozen injured.  Recall further that Ventura County Sergeant Ron Helus was killed as he moved to stop the killer from doing more.

Various charity activities since had raised thousands of dollars for the families of other police officers who’d also died in the course of their several duties, and

The Blue Bowl, a charity flag football game, was intended to raise money for the family of fallen Ventura County Sergeant Ron Helus as well as [those] other officers killed in the line of duty….

However, Thousand Oaks Police Chief Tim Hagel has pulled his department out of the event, leading to its cancelation, and all that money already raised for those other officers’ families is

now being returned to donors….

All, and solely, because Trump supporters would be speaking at the event.

Mike Randall, Fallen Officers Foundation Vice President:

He [Hagel] basically said over and over in the conversation, “This is not Trump country, that slogan ‘Make America Great’ is not favorable, popular, within 1,200 square miles,” that we don’t want Republicans here. I could not believe it[.]
“The only thing,” and I quote, “the only thing you [could have done to make] this worse, Mike, was to invite Dick Cheney and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”

Now, no one will get any aid. Never mind that the collected speakers would have been an ecumenical group: Governor Gavin Newsom’s public safety liaison, Trump supporter and Hollywood icon Scott Baio—a fellow congregant of Helus’ at church—Trump-supporting singer Joy Villa, and others.

Hagel didn’t approve, so everyone gets cut off.  No one gets needed financial assistance.

This stinks.  But more dangerous than just the odor of this move, Hagel has shown that he doesn’t “serve and protect” all the citizens of Thousand Oaks.  Only those of whom he personally approves.