the sad reality of the encryption debate is that after 30 years it is finally over: dead at the hands of Facebook. If the company’s new on-device content moderation succeeds it will usher in the end of consumer end-to-end encryption and create a framework for governments to outsource their mass surveillance directly to social media companies, completely bypassing encryption.
In the end, encryption’s days are numbered and the world has Facebook to thank.
The article says WhatsApp will be, or perhaps already has been, compromised by Facebook. Moving to Signal is probably warranted but that is no guarantee of security. Furthermore, I think blaming Facebook for this is a little unfair.
Back when I was working for Pacific Northwest National Labs I suggested the government could add code to whatever O/S a particular set of terrorists were fond of using and then “upgrade” their phone to send duplicate copies of messages, phone calls, and even record conversations when the phone was believed to be “asleep”. To the best of my knowledge the suggestion went nowhere. But that doesn’t mean I was just very late to the game and there was no need to tell me it had already been done.
Similar things can be done to your Windows and/or Apple devices. You upgrade your computers and other communications devices all the time to guard against security vulnerabilities. But how do you know you aren’t also installing a custom version of the O/S dictated to Apple, Google, and/or Microsoft, by government spies?
If you want communication security you will need to make sure your O/S is secure as well as the applications and the channels it transmits over. It’s not an easy thing to ensure.—Joe]
Overarching, and across the world, is the fight over globalism. I’ve said in the end globalism will win, because it’s being driven by technological change at its root. The struggle isn’t whether we have transnational systems where the nation state plays a less important role: that will happen. The struggle is whether globalism will be a democratic movement that is controlled by the people for the people’s benefit, or whether it will be a aristocratic movement that benefits the transnational aristocrats. It’s been set up as the latter, and the people are, across the globe, calling foul.
The struggle over the RKBA is downstream of that fight, but what we’re seeing I think fits in the overall struggle. It’s a theme repeated throughout history that aristocrats do not like their subjects being armed. So it was practically inevitable that when the people started asserting themselves against this cultivated global order, the counter-reaction was the aristocracy returning to their traditional fears and anxieties about armed peasants. That anxiety is acting itself out among the pool of Democratic candidates.
The counter point is that 100 million people with 300+ million guns and billions of rounds of ammo can make themselves heard and respected…if they have the will to do so.—Joe]
I would support a modest income tax rise to issue every citizen with a gun when they reach the age of 21.
Milo Yiannopoulos @m
Via Gab on July 30, 2019
[As amusing as I find this, I would like to think it is just as unconstitutional as government provided food, housing, and healthcare.—Joe]
if who the president is actually scares you then clearly that office has way too much power
MJ @morganisawizard Tweeted on July 24, 2019
[You would think this is obvious in hindsight and clearly applies equal to any of the half dozen or so political parties I can think of who conceivably could hold the office. But somehow there is a substantial number of people do not think it applies when one of their tribe is in power.
For some reason that scares me as much as the amount of power the president holds. How can people be so blind?—Joe]
Once those activists believed the high court was on their side, their willingness to change their unconstitutional laws would vanish faster than you can say “come and take them”. Hopefully the Supreme Court sees through the transparent plans of the gun control activists and will move ahead with the New York City case.
The world in which most liberals live is one of magic and fairytales — where socialist systems have starved millions of people and destroyed every economy forced into its model, but which certainly will work the next time. It is a world in which using fascist tactics to silence opponents actually makes you an anti-fascist; and where presidential candidates can promise everything for everyone, and still have enough money left over to cut taxes. In this fantasy land, anything is possible if you just feel it to be true.
I look at search. And I look at Google News. And I look at what it’s doing. And I see Google executives go to congress and say that, “It’s not manipulated. It’s not political.” And I’m just so sure that’s not true.
Greg Coppola Senior Software Engineer, Google Assistant July 2019 [Also, a follow up from Coppola. He announces has been suspended from his job at Google. Then he goes on explore the hypothesis that Google News has a political bias using data science, with only publicly available information and tools.
As computers continue to permeate every aspect of our lives, society, and critical infrastructure, it is much more important to ensure that they are secure from everybody — even at the cost of law-enforcement access — than it is to allow access at the cost of security. Barr is wrong, it kind of is like these systems are protecting nuclear launch codes.
That’s why everything has become politicized in the US. Americans have come to see the State as their parent, so they’re constantly pleading with it, like children, asking it for favors and benefits. Like children, they expect the State to magically support them.
They don’t seem to understand that the State isn’t a cornucopia. It’s the opposite. It’s a dangerous parasite. A huge tapeworm in the body of society.
Big gun = small wienie Embarrassing #RVA #Virginia again surrounding unarmed @MomsDemand & children who are fighting to keep kids & workplaces safe #gunsense laws
KarenVCU (@KarensHavoc) Tweeted on July 9, 2019 [When the arguments are weak, the weak lash out, and then we get another Markley’s Law Monday! And they delete their tweet because these cowards know they can’t defend themselves in the free marketplace of ideas.
Americans have always come together as ‘one’ when we have a identifiable threat or a common enemy and the Democratic Party fits the bill perfectly. #Truthdom#WalkAway
Isaiah Washington @IWashington Tweeted on July 13, 2019 [I don’t think it is quite that simple and clear cut, but I can see a good case being easy to make.—Joe]
This is what House Democratic leadership fears: that Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad, through their dominance of social media and their centrality on conservative media, will become the faces of the House Democratic majority.
…
Trump took a fight House Democrats were having with each other and turned it into a fight they are now having with him. In doing, he rallied House Democrats around the Squad, and made himself the Squad’s chief opponent. “The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four ‘progressives,’ but now they are forced to embrace them,” Trump tweeted. “That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!”
Ezra Klein July 16, 2019 Trump vs. “the Squad”–Trump reunited the Democrats to further his narrative. [“The Squad” is the far left wing of the Democrats and their politics will be unacceptable in the vast majority of U.S. political jurisdictions. Speaker Pelosi knows this. She has data, from the quoted article, which says:
…the weird poll that Democratic officials apparently leaked to Axios to emphasize the damage Ocasio-Cortez was supposedly doing to the party. The poll was of non-college educated white men, and the post-publication controversy has swirled around whether it’s appropriate to call this group, which went heavily for Trump, “swing voters.”
But more telling was the framing of the poll by whoever leaked it. The Axios headline read “AOC defining Dems in swing states,” even though the results didn’t include any data to that effect. What the poll did show was that 74 percent of the respondents knew of Ocasio-Cortez, and 53 percent knew of Omar. How many other House Democrats have that kind of name recognition?
“If all voters hear about is AOC,it could put the [House] majority at risk,” an anonymous “top Democrat” told Axios. “[S]he’s getting all the news and defining everyone else’s races.”
Trump apparently saw this and made three tweets (and here and here):
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……
….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….
….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
Trump is just castigating them as foreign because he says racist stuff.”
I find it telling that the tweets have to be explained as racists rather than demonstrate the racism directly. Ordinary people can clearly see they aren’t racist. The political left is like a paranoid person who imagine they see “people out to get them” everywhere. Healthy people don’t see the imaginary threats but that doesn’t reassure the paranoid. To the paranoid, as is the case with the political left, they interpret the fact that only they can see the “threat” as proof of their special powers.
With these three tweets President Trump bonded, essentially, all Democrats with “The Squad”. This bonding is a political albatross.
Congresswomen, who I truly believe, based on their actions, hate our Country. Get a list of the HORRIBLE things they have said. Omar is polling at 8%, Cortez at 21%. Nancy Pelosi tried to push them away, but now they are forever wedded to the Democrat Party. See you in 2020!
Tim Pool describes it as 4-D Chess:
Via email from Chet who also asks, in a somewhat different context:
Would it be possible to do this for the first and second amendments? For example coming up with really, really outrageous positions that would distract the opponents of the bill of rights?
The vast population of this earth, and indeed nations themselves, may readily be divided into three groups. There are the few who make things happen, the many more who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens.
On a good day I watch things happen. To accomplish the analog to President Trump’s manipulation of the Democrats but in defense of the First and Second Amendment is beyond my capacity. Suggestions?—Joe]
Turns out the California county with the most concealed carry licenses has a lower homicide rate than LA County, where it’s easier to win an Oscar than get a CHL.
Cam Edwards @CamEdwards Tweeted on July 16, 2019 [Reference article, also by Edwards, is here.
I want to change the conversation. I’m tired of people saying “things will never change.” I’m tired of walking on egg shells. After Sandyhook, if that’s where you’re at, you’re wrong.
I would like to suggest McMurray get a little practice in before he goes nationwide with that plan. I’d like to suggest he stop in at my place in Idaho sometime so I can give him a lesson or two.—Joe]
Here in the United States, where we have the Second Amendment as the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, anybody who seriously believes the citizens will line up to just hand over their guns may be too delusional to be president.
You might notice that something seems off about a Democratic state senator sponsoring a bill loosening firearm restrictions, that law speeding through a Democrat-controlled legislature, and then a feverishly anti-gun governor stamping it with approval. The city knew a change in state law to preempt the city gun law, something the anti-gun crowd has consistentlyfoughtagainst, was the only way to strengthen the city’s mootness argument. This is merely a case of the city and state colluding to keep the Court from settling the matter once and for all.
