Tag Archives: politics

Paying Ransom for Cyber Crimes

Posted on by
Reply

Paying ransom to unlock a hacker’s lock on hard drives and the data stored there, paying protection money to “get back” stolen data, is worse than merely aiding and abetting the criminals.  It puts at risk more than just the ransom-payer. By paying this reward money, by ensuring that this particular crime, at least, pays and pays well, it put others at risk of the same crime.

Now those put at risk by these ransom payers have grown to include children.

Hackers looking to exploit sensitive information for profit are increasingly targeting the nation’s schools, where they are finding a relatively weak system to protect a valuable asset: student data.
…
The attackers have gained access to servers containing student names, addresses, social security numbers, birth dates, academic performance, phone numbers and medical and discipline records….

This is the payoff for rewarding hackers for their crimes: child molesting hackers moving to get in on all the paydays.

On Oct 5, a Twitter page using the name of a well-known hacker took credit for Johnston County’s hack in a tweet that read: “With the student directory from JCSD we released, any child predator can now easily acquire new targets and even plan based on grade level.”

Rajoy vs Catalonia

Posted on by
Reply

Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had and has an obligation to uphold the Spanish Constitution which, among other things, made the recent Catalan independence referendum illegal even to hold.  I’ve written elsewhere about what I think of his tactics in his enforcement campaign.

Whether Rajoy ordered his Policia Nacional and his Guardia Civil to engage in the violence they inflicted in Catalonia (nearly 900 Catalan casualties) or they acted on their own initiative, it’s hard to believe Rajoy was so stupid as to not know the violence would ensue when he ordered them in.

Now Rajoy has moved to invoke Article 155, which would allow him to seize control of the autonomous province from Madrid and among other things force new elections in Catalonia to get a new government, hopefully more…respectful…of Madrid imperatives.  The question is before the Spanish Senate as I write this piece on Saturday.

Two questions arise from Rajoy’s tactics (I hesitate to call the performance a strategy, anymore) so far:

1) What will Rajoy do if, as a result of his forced elections, Catalan separatist supporters are again elected to majorities in the Catalan government?

2) Is Rajoy prepared to send Spanish divisions into Catalonia to enforce Madrid’s rule there? Given the tactics he’s already chosen to enforce his will, that’s the choice this affair of his is coming down to.

Whichever way he chooses on the second question will end very badly for both Spain and Catalonia.  Choosing not to send his military across the frontier will amount to abject Spanish surrender to the separatists’ movement, however the latter might choose to play that out (perhaps negotiations would still be possible after Art 155 is officially invoked; the Catalans have been asking for talks all along, even though Rajoy has rejected them out of hand all along).  Choosing to send the military in will both magnify and solidify a political, cultural, and emotional split between Catalonia and Spain, regardless of how militarily successful Rajoy might be.

A Blow for Standards

Posted on by
Reply

And it’s struck by California’s state Supreme Court, yet, which is the controlling factor in setting the passing score, the cut score, on the State’s bar exam which prospective lawyers must pass in order to practice in California.

The Court has decided to keep the cut score at its current level, which is the second highest in the US.  The State’s law school deans are in an uproar over that; they wanted the cut score significantly lowered.  They’re complaining that

many competent graduates will continue to suffer the consequences of not being able to become certified to practice….

The deans decline to explain how are “graduates” can be considered competent if they can’t pass the test that assesses their competency.

Their excuse for wanting the standard lowered is risible.

Bar-exam-passage rates for incoming lawyers have plummeted in California in recent years, in parallel with similar drops in other states….

Of course, this couldn’t be a degradation in the quality of teaching through lowered standards of expertise credentialing, or of students through lowered admission standards, or both.

Never mind that UCLA’s first-time pass rate of 82% proves that the current cut score is not too high.  Gotta lower standards, the deans say, to meet declining performance rather than requiring the hard work of elevating performance to meet standards.

Here’re a couple of thoughts: do a better job of teaching. It looks like an old jibe that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach, is thriving in California.

Also: do a better job of selecting students for admittance. Not every snowflake who takes a notion to be a lawyer should be one.

Media Bias

Posted on by
Reply

Media “critic” Howard Kurtz says he decries it.  In a recent piece about media credibility he noted that, according to a Morning Consult/Politico survey, 46% of voters think the media makes up stories about President Donald Trump.  Even 20% of self-identified Democrats think that.

Then he wrote this.

In short, the president’s constant “fake news” attacks are working.

It couldn’t possibly be that the “media” really do make stuff up about Trump.  They don’t ever publish stories containing only rumors claimed by carefully unidentified sources, with nary an on-the-record bit of corroboration, like journalism standards used to require.  Nossir.

He also noted this outcome from the poll:

[I]n light of Trump suggesting scrutiny of TV licenses, the poll says 51% think the federal government shouldn’t have the power to revoke broadcast licenses of fabricating networks—not exactly a ringing endorsement.

It’s true enough that communications licenses shouldn’t be based on content.  But Kurtz wrote that in the context of his larger piece that while the media often are unfair (the token nod to another side of his argument), they don’t as a matter of routine fake the news.  It couldn’t possibly be that faint-praise damnation is because the media do, in fact, routinely make stuff up.  Uh, uh.

Talk about media bias.  Jeez.

Thurgood Marshall’s Politics Deserve Respect?

Posted on by
Reply

Jason Riley certainly thought Justice Thurgood Marshall’s approach to it deserved respect.

One of the final scenes in “Marshall,” a new film about the early legal career of civil rights superstar Thurgood Marshall, shows the future Supreme Court justice in a train station in Mississippi. It’s 1941—peak Jim Crow —and a large “Whites Only” sign hangs above a water fountain beside him.

Marshall ignores the sign, takes a paper cup from the dispenser, and draws water from the fountain. An elderly black gentleman quietly watches him, in seeming awe of this defiant act. The two men exchange glances but no words as Marshall exits the station, yet his message to the older man is clear: don’t be afraid.

That much is to the good, most assuredly.

Unfortunately, the movie that Riley reviewed seems to have omitted another aspect of Marshall’s political behavior.  Marshall deliberately dragged politics into the courts.  Speaking at a traditional Supreme Court mid-term lunch for the Court’s clerks, for instance, Marshall said this, in all seriousness:

You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.

A judge ruling on any basis other than what the law says pulls what are solely political branch authorities into his court.  That’s utterly disrespectful.