As for Felicia Day, I could care less. The only reason she has "nerd cred" is because she was on that awful Guild show.
First she created "that awful Guild show" which a lot of people thought was actually pretty non - awful at the time. I will admit to go back and watch it now it has not held up well but if you put it back in its context it was a pretty huge success. There had not been a lot of direct to youtube productions of scripted comedy/drama when she started that. "The Guild" whatever you feeling about it was among the early more complex productions (there certainly were others as well) that showed free/ad supported online shows could go beyond cat videos and porn. Have many things come along sense that are much better sure they have. We could say that a lot of early 17th century Novels were not all that great by latter literary standards either but they remain important because they paved the way for the format and the art.
I would also suggest that her 'nerd cred' comes as much from her roles on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Eureka as anything else she has done. Maybe you missed them...
You don't have to like her but she is doing alright as a C-list celebrity.
No computers do what they are programmed to do. I would count on the fact there are a lot of 'simplified' HTTP clients and servers out there that look for the string 'HTTP' and not much more. After all if you were implementing something that just needed to exchange a little information over the course of a handful of strait forward GETs or something and wanted to make it HTTP like enough to traverse firewalls be proxied if needed etc, a cut down HTTP implementation is/was a good way to go.
When it comes to something like that you don't care if its HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1 the differences in the protocol won't impact your use case at all. Given how long HTTP/1.1 has been the standard a lot of stuff probably just assumes that.
Personally HTTP/2.0 being so radically different and binary to boot is probably a mistake. HTTP is Hyper TEXT transfer protocol, it makes sense that it is text. Future development of HTTP should have been more negotiable human readable text protocols not binary. Which is not to say the modern Internet application could not benefit from a binary protocol there are advantages. I just wish we could have called it WATP web application transport protocol, or something so it was clearly something radically different that won't work with existing proxies etc.
You sue the executive because he could be liable for malfeasance ( failing to do their duty). If there is some law under which it could be shown he had some specific obligation.
You can imagine some sufficiently twisted expansionist interpretation of exist environmental regulation where that might be possible. Its hard on the other hand at least for me as a lay person see how you could make a claim against the legislative body, they have powers but they don't really have much of anything in the way of legally defined duties.
Personally I hope they win at least the first round. I don't agree with what their goals, I think Obama and his EPA have already grossly over stepped and acted in excess of their authority. On the other hand they are going to continue to imagine new executive powers and playing King until something like this comes along and shows them it can bite them in the ass.
If a law suit like this can go forward brought by the general public than plenty of other suites could too. I can't wait until Joe Sixpack is able to sue the president for not deporting illegals as required for example; or for failing to defend the Constitution of the United States because he fought a foreign conflict without a Congressional declaration of war...
Oh the possibilities to restore checks on executive power.
Remember kids its okay to dox someone if you are doing it for the right reasons.
I wonder how members of this group would react if people start posting their comments anonymous or otherwise without context.
I have no problem with what they are doing. I don't believe at all in any of this PC safe space bullshit. I just hope these folks realize that what they are doing is abusive in its own way. I don't challenge their right legally ( I have not idea what the rules are in their country) or morally to do this. They should understand though that its not likely to escalate rather than deescalate the discourse and its going to make their group and its members targets. The people they are calling out as trolls will probably respond by doing what trolls do, more trolling. As long as they understand by doing this that they have it coming and don't go crying to 'mommy government' best of luck to them.
Does any of that really work when massive facial recognition systems exist and cameras are everywhere.
As long as nobody takes an interest it you anonymity is possible. The moment a three letter or other LEO does take an interest they can probably track you and uniquely identify around town easily.
Except, there is little oil and little petrol processing facility in Syria. The valuable stuff is in Iraq. Which for political reasons we can't bomb. We have to maintain the face that the current Iraqi government is something besides Iran's puppet and that the Iranians are any less radical and dangerous than ISIS. Because Obama has a legacy to protect.
Then there is the problem of our "allies" like Turkey who buy that oil and fund ISIS. The Turks are not our friends. They have no real interest if eliminating ISIS, they like this conflict because its an excuse for them to kill a lot of Kurds and for a lot of Kurds to otherwise be killed by ISIS. The refugee issue does not concern them, its irritating but they know the US will lose interest eventual and which point they will just have those people killed or drive them back over the boarder. There is a reason they keep them in camps rather than be absorbed into a culturally similar enough place where they could probably successfully integrate.
Meanwhile again primarily because Obama has his nose out of joint not having gotten his way in Ukraine, we have to have some on going feud with Russia. Who actually does have a vested interest in seeing Islamic terror and ISIS dealt within, AND the good sense to realize that there are no good actors. These 'moderates' no longer exist in any kind of useful numbers there if they ever did. There isn't a good reason to pick one radical expansionist ideology over another. Its just a different kind of bad news. Assad actually IS the best of bad choices he is secular and by all accounts was pretty well content to be a big fish in his small pound. Much like Qaddafi was in Libya before we kicked that bees nest over. These people are nasty but containable. The Islamists are not! They seem moderate because the down and out groups are pragmatic they set achievable goals, those in turn sound reasonable to us but the truth is once their power grows so will their ambition. They won't be any less dangerous than ISIS.
for example Lenovo did it so they could inject ads into web pages that were supposedly cryptographically protected from tampering
This makes no sense. Why do you need your private key to be located on the users' computer for that?
Why because you can't defeat the certificate checking logic of the local SSL stack. You need 'a' private key there for a trusted root CA so you can generate certificates on the fly other parts of the system will see as valid.
Browser tries goolge.com -> You intercept it -> You go fetch the cert from the original destination ip -> you validate it or don't -> you generate a new cert based on the content of the one you got and sign it with the private key -> send the response to the browser ( which then validates the cert checking it against the local trusted root you installed).
That is it in a nutshell. There are some other details but basically that is how its done and that is why you need the local private key because without you could not generate signed certs.
I would not call it scam. Lifelock delivers on exactly what they promise. The monitor. The faster you react to a stolen identity issue the better. It makes it much easier to sort out.
The latter, certutil works fine, but you have to build some custom fix packages to use it. Which can get complex if you have cases where those installations are not in the default locations.
ie. non local admin users can't install FF to its usual places so they install it to a directory inside their profile. Now you are playing find the Firefox / SeaMonkey install.
You need to wait for the holiday to delete a certificate out of your trusted roots on your personal machine? Wow.
Secondly Firefox did not protect you from anything, the fact they don't share the system cert store did. Yeah it worked out this time to your favor but I honestly don't think Mozilla's failure to integrate with system certificate stores is a win in general. Its actually one of the biggest reasons I think about leaving my beloved SeaMonkey for something else.
For one thing you now have not one but 2 certificate stores you need to audit. That sucks! If a CA says they have been compromised I have to remember to fix it in 2 place instead of one. That isn't a security win. Many users don't probably even realize they don't use the system trusts, so if they get instructions to fix an issue by removing a CA they will likely fail to fix the Mozilla based browser.
Second in managed environments revoking a trust in Mozilla isn't easy to script out, that means Firefox and SeaMonkey installs likely just don't get fixed, again not a security win.
Frankly I think its rather a shame Mozilla does not provide at least the option to use the system trusteded roots.
This is a very good point. Much of the mess that is the Middle East is because these despots manged to enrich themselves playing NATO against the USSR for decades. They knew perfectly well any attempt to sort them out would have been seen as an act of aggression by the other world power. That provided them with cover to run their little shit stands, and get all sorts of cool toys (fancy high tech weapons systems).
If we could get past or conflict narrative with Russia we could re-draw the boarders agree on some buffer / DMZ regions and go in and occupy these places. If we did it long enough we could wipeout the stain on human culture that exists there.
I would argue its time we roll back our policy of NATO expansion, and even consider ending NATO. When we faced an existential threat from another single nation state actor it made sense. NATO is now just a 'dangerous entanglement.' We would be wise to encourage the core members to eject some of the newly added peripheral members under threat of our own withdraw if they don't. These fights are not worth it and the expands NATO just threatens to draw us in.
The middle east is of rapidly decreasing value to us. EU only alliances would be better positioned to defend Western Europe geographically than we are. We don't need anyone else's help to defend our own territory if we simple concentrated or efforts on that.
They're threatening to release SSN and related information that is being used as verification for credit applications
Irritating yes but troubling not really. The fact is you SSN is out there for anyone who wants it.
Its in all the major subscription database PI's and LEOs can subscribe to, almost for certain. Some of my licensed co-workers have access to that information and they shown me they can pull the SSN for just about anyone I could name. It would be naive to think the identity thieves don't have straw accounts and leaked creds for many of these sources.
I an not suggesting anyone go posting their SSN all over the internet, but I don't think its nearly as big a deal as many people thing. Certainly anyone who targets you specifically can obtain it. Having it come out in one of these mass document dumps only means someone trying to open a large number of fraudulent accounts might hit you opportunistically.
As far as I am concerned to the hackers I say bring it. I don't care if the world knows I pay Ali Spangnola a dollar every time she makes one of her cover-band videos. Actually I think you can already read my name on her thank you page so whatever.
What they don't look like is the innards of an electronic clock.
Right because somone who does not possess electronics knowledge can tell the difference between a PCB for a cheap electronic clock and one that is some kind of detonator. I think that expectation is unreasonably. Ask youself had 'you' carried that thing thru the airport security line would you average TSA agent have likely pulled you off for some questioning?
You and I both know the answer is yes. The reality is here some people did know what it was at the school and they told him he should put it away. He did not do that. He continued to be disruptive, which could have been mistaken for agitation and when he encountered other people who were not sure what it was the responded out of an abundance of caution; and followed procedure.
They not only duped the SJW crowd, but even duped Obama
Obama is a member of the SJW crowd. The more I listen to him the clearer it is he has never a thought of his own. He has been spooned leftist nonsense from birth and learned to repeat it, sometime eloquently. We should just put a picture of him next to 'Social Justice Warrior' in the urban dictionary.
He did not build shit, he put the guts of a commercial clock in another box. So first off clock-boy does not deserve credit for being some kind of STEM hero. Here that is the kind of stuff I would expect a fifth or sixth grader to be doing.
Second schools are what they are. They are full of little people that we all worry about and place a higher value on the safety of than we probably should. Look 'zero tolerance' is stupid but its the governing priciple. This isn't a case of discrimination really, its not. Schools have ejected white children for biting pop-tarts into the shape of hand gun. Its a panicky place, just like an airport.
You can be safe or you can be sorry. You can be safe and still end up sorry. I suggest we learn to be more tolerant of being sorry on occasion so we don't create problems like this in the way of safety. What I can say is knowing what I know about schools, and the whole of the situation, if I were on that jury the kids family would not be award one thin dime.
You could sue for a realistic damages figure. If its about principle and not money than wining a case like this should be enough in itself. I can understand why he might want to get the school to admit wrong doing or have a finding against them that they did wrong.
How exactly was he harmed to the tune of $15 Million? I mean seriously if nothing else thanks to Obummer deciding to make a political football out of him he gained from it.
Now if they family said he now needs therapy for anxiety or something, and does not want to go back to that school, and sued for oh I don't know $300 - 400k and an apology for the cost of private school, therapy and pain suffered; I'd say well lets see what comes out in court or if the district settles.
$15 Million on the other hand is a naked cash grab. 15 Million isn't about fair compensation.
The question is "was it a lawful arrest" We know now that more of the story has come out, he had this suspect looking thing. Some people recognized it for what it was and told him to put it away.
He didn't follow their advice and continue to wonder around the school with it, not obeying other instructions, which could be seen as suspicious. Assuming there was not communication among the staff that knew it was just a stupid clock to those other people, I can see who it would meet a standard of 'reasonable suspicion' to justify an arrest. Would it have happened to someone who isn't brown skinned I don't know, but I am not sure that matters. If it does matter maybe the problem is authorities are not cautious enough about what white people are doing near high impact (I won't say value) targets like schools.
I doubt very much anyone in this thread things thinks 'they' need to suicide bomb anything. If you are on the planning end of things though suicide bombers have some advantages:
1) Dead men tell no tales - they won't be caught later and give up any intel on where your group can be found or how you communicate.
2) Less effort there is no escape or extract part of the engagement to plan. Which may mean few assets, which is probably harder to detect. Consider attacking power infrastructure as that is the topic. Which is more suspect 1 truck traveling down the access road or two? The second being to transport the driver of the bomb truck back out.
3) Less compensation required. People, even people fighting for a cause want to be paid, and have to eat. What's cheaper cash or a nice story about 72 virgins?
4) Suicide attack concept defeats a lot of security that was always built around the assumption someone would want to 'get a way with it' How much security should we put around this substation? Well figure that we put a barb wire fence and some high voltage signs up for safety sakes. If someone is stupid enough to throw a blanket over the fence climb in anyway and try to nab this copper they'll wind up a crispy critter. It'll get on the news and it won't happen again for quite a while, that's for sure. That thinking falls down when the attacker isn't thinking about getting out alive.
So if I am a terrorist commander fighting a symmetric war and have lots of low skill fighters I have invested pretty little in training and developing, well using them in kamikaze attacks has some major advantages, and they probably often out weigh the small price in head count.
I think the point is there are some major not very well protected long haul power lines outside some of our major population centers. Events of 2004 proved there isn't enough redundancy in the system overall and there exist some points of failure that would likely lead to large scale blackouts that could last days. The lead time on replacement of some large transformers is weeks to months as well.
A well researched attack that took out difficult to replace infrastructure like those transformers or perhaps took down multiple high capacity links in the north east or south west, at the same time could easily cripple a region.
I don't think it would be easy to do but it probably is within reach of some guys with truck bombs and suicide drivers. Most of the information I think you would need to decide where and how to cripple the grid most effectively is out there. There are a lot of mile of electrical infrastructure, while monitored have security geared around catching a vandal after the fact or grabbing your 'I am gonna set these fireworks off next to this propane cylinder and hope something impressive happens' type would be terrorist struggling to find his ass with both hands after his plot fails due to his own incompetence.
Fine if that is the case convince your law makers or get ones elected who agree with you. Once again this is typical of leftist types, don't like the rule of law just ignore it. That is not how this country works. The law was written, there was a dispute over its interpretation it went to court and the Administration LOST.
Its amazing how when right right leaning politician wants to do something like keep poorly vetted refuges out of their state, or not let someone who could be a carrier of known to be highly communicable and deadly disease just go wherever they like, suddenly the like, or some kid who happens to be tan in color ignore his teachers and wounder around a school with something that looks dangers, you people are quick to use the law to railroad everyone who resists into compliance.
When a judge rules against you though you just ignore it and carry on business as usually. When you have a law on the books that you barely got passed via parliamentary games, that has SPECIFIC dates when things are supposed to go into effect, oops time for extensions and rewriting it on the fly legality be damned.
You don't get to have it both ways. We either have laws and follow our process or we have mob rule. We seem to be erring toward mob rule.
I think its a question of how likely are you to get caught and do you fear the consequences. Look at some of the historic mobsters for example. They had little concern about taking their illegal gambling, moonshine, and drug running into the realm of murder. Most of those guy knew they either would not be caught because they had resources equal to those working to contain them. That or they simply 'own' a large portion of the authorities via corruption.
The other case is you are already looking at very long sentence so you don't care if its 2 consecutive life sentences or 20.
EL Chapo is the modern example. Even when he was re-arrested he did not stay in prison for too long, and there was a massive conspiracy to get him out. I think he is still at large? Point being if he wants to 'whack someone' he does it. He knows either he won't be caught, will be helped to escape, or if the system does work his rap sheet is so long it does not matter at this point.
So I am not sure it works like you suggest. Most criminals are not very bright bulbs. If they were they probably could work the system and make a decent life for themselves legally.
If you look at it from a pure risk reward standpoint it should be painful clear the robbing a convince store is pretty dumb but if you was hungry and destitute enough its possible you might decide to try it. It is after all a soft target and the clerk or even the owner might have little personal interest in doing anything but cooperating with you. They probably have some kind of business continuity insurance after all. Why risk their lives trying to protect the $150 bucks in the register and a few slim jims? It could work out.
Now add gun to mix as the criminal element often does and suddenly you have swapped larceny and simple assault for armed robbery and assault with deadly weapon (remember you don't actually have to hit or short someone for assault just credibly threaten it). You have perhaps encouraged a little more compliance from the store staff but at a cost of upping the ante for a probably 6mo - 1 year in the slam to 10+ years if caught. Totally not worth it! Yet criminals does it all the time!
Well the good news is we might get our freedom back. Some major insurers are talking about leaving the exchanges because they can't make any money at it. Others are talking about another round of big premium hikes. Its going to suck in the short term and good people are going to lose coverage and find themseves subject to tax penalties.
With a little luck though the terrible law that crushes peoples religious freedom and their freedom to do what they wish with there personal property will go down in the flames it deserves. Obama will have the legacy he deserves, "A paternalistic freedom hater we were all better off without."
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As for Felicia Day, I could care less. The only reason she has "nerd cred" is because she was on that awful Guild show.
First she created "that awful Guild show" which a lot of people thought was actually pretty non - awful at the time. I will admit to go back and watch it now it has not held up well but if you put it back in its context it was a pretty huge success. There had not been a lot of direct to youtube productions of scripted comedy/drama when she started that. "The Guild" whatever you feeling about it was among the early more complex productions (there certainly were others as well) that showed free/ad supported online shows could go beyond cat videos and porn. Have many things come along sense that are much better sure they have. We could say that a lot of early 17th century Novels were not all that great by latter literary standards either but they remain important because they paved the way for the format and the art.
I would also suggest that her 'nerd cred' comes as much from her roles on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Eureka as anything else she has done. Maybe you missed them...
You don't have to like her but she is doing alright as a C-list celebrity.
No computers do what they are programmed to do. I would count on the fact there are a lot of 'simplified' HTTP clients and servers out there that look for the string 'HTTP' and not much more. After all if you were implementing something that just needed to exchange a little information over the course of a handful of strait forward GETs or something and wanted to make it HTTP like enough to traverse firewalls be proxied if needed etc, a cut down HTTP implementation is/was a good way to go.
When it comes to something like that you don't care if its HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1 the differences in the protocol won't impact your use case at all. Given how long HTTP/1.1 has been the standard a lot of stuff probably just assumes that.
Personally HTTP/2.0 being so radically different and binary to boot is probably a mistake. HTTP is Hyper TEXT transfer protocol, it makes sense that it is text. Future development of HTTP should have been more negotiable human readable text protocols not binary. Which is not to say the modern Internet application could not benefit from a binary protocol there are advantages. I just wish we could have called it WATP web application transport protocol, or something so it was clearly something radically different that won't work with existing proxies etc.
You sue the executive because he could be liable for malfeasance ( failing to do their duty). If there is some law under which it could be shown he had some specific obligation.
You can imagine some sufficiently twisted expansionist interpretation of exist environmental regulation where that might be possible. Its hard on the other hand at least for me as a lay person see how you could make a claim against the legislative body, they have powers but they don't really have much of anything in the way of legally defined duties.
Personally I hope they win at least the first round. I don't agree with what their goals, I think Obama and his EPA have already grossly over stepped and acted in excess of their authority. On the other hand they are going to continue to imagine new executive powers and playing King until something like this comes along and shows them it can bite them in the ass.
If a law suit like this can go forward brought by the general public than plenty of other suites could too. I can't wait until Joe Sixpack is able to sue the president for not deporting illegals as required for example; or for failing to defend the Constitution of the United States because he fought a foreign conflict without a Congressional declaration of war...
Oh the possibilities to restore checks on executive power.
Remember kids its okay to dox someone if you are doing it for the right reasons.
I wonder how members of this group would react if people start posting their comments anonymous or otherwise without context.
I have no problem with what they are doing. I don't believe at all in any of this PC safe space bullshit. I just hope these folks realize that what they are doing is abusive in its own way. I don't challenge their right legally ( I have not idea what the rules are in their country) or morally to do this. They should understand though that its not likely to escalate rather than deescalate the discourse and its going to make their group and its members targets. The people they are calling out as trolls will probably respond by doing what trolls do, more trolling. As long as they understand by doing this that they have it coming and don't go crying to 'mommy government' best of luck to them.
Does any of that really work when massive facial recognition systems exist and cameras are everywhere.
As long as nobody takes an interest it you anonymity is possible. The moment a three letter or other LEO does take an interest they can probably track you and uniquely identify around town easily.
Except, there is little oil and little petrol processing facility in Syria. The valuable stuff is in Iraq. Which for political reasons we can't bomb. We have to maintain the face that the current Iraqi government is something besides Iran's puppet and that the Iranians are any less radical and dangerous than ISIS. Because Obama has a legacy to protect.
Then there is the problem of our "allies" like Turkey who buy that oil and fund ISIS. The Turks are not our friends. They have no real interest if eliminating ISIS, they like this conflict because its an excuse for them to kill a lot of Kurds and for a lot of Kurds to otherwise be killed by ISIS. The refugee issue does not concern them, its irritating but they know the US will lose interest eventual and which point they will just have those people killed or drive them back over the boarder. There is a reason they keep them in camps rather than be absorbed into a culturally similar enough place where they could probably successfully integrate.
Meanwhile again primarily because Obama has his nose out of joint not having gotten his way in Ukraine, we have to have some on going feud with Russia. Who actually does have a vested interest in seeing Islamic terror and ISIS dealt within, AND the good sense to realize that there are no good actors. These 'moderates' no longer exist in any kind of useful numbers there if they ever did. There isn't a good reason to pick one radical expansionist ideology over another. Its just a different kind of bad news. Assad actually IS the best of bad choices he is secular and by all accounts was pretty well content to be a big fish in his small pound. Much like Qaddafi was in Libya before we kicked that bees nest over. These people are nasty but containable. The Islamists are not! They seem moderate because the down and out groups are pragmatic they set achievable goals, those in turn sound reasonable to us but the truth is once their power grows so will their ambition. They won't be any less dangerous than ISIS.
for example Lenovo did it so they could inject ads into web pages that were supposedly cryptographically protected from tampering
This makes no sense. Why do you need your private key to be located on the users' computer for that?
Why because you can't defeat the certificate checking logic of the local SSL stack. You need 'a' private key there for a trusted root CA so you can generate certificates on the fly other parts of the system will see as valid.
Browser tries goolge.com -> You intercept it -> You go fetch the cert from the original destination ip -> you validate it or don't -> you generate a new cert based on the content of the one you got and sign it with the private key -> send the response to the browser ( which then validates the cert checking it against the local trusted root you installed).
That is it in a nutshell. There are some other details but basically that is how its done and that is why you need the local private key because without you could not generate signed certs.
I would not call it scam. Lifelock delivers on exactly what they promise. The monitor. The faster you react to a stolen identity issue the better. It makes it much easier to sort out.
You deserve and up mod AC, you are quite correctly my choice of the word delete was poor, the correct course of action is to mark it as untrusted.
The latter, certutil works fine, but you have to build some custom fix packages to use it. Which can get complex if you have cases where those installations are not in the default locations.
ie. non local admin users can't install FF to its usual places so they install it to a directory inside their profile. Now you are playing find the Firefox / SeaMonkey install.
You need to wait for the holiday to delete a certificate out of your trusted roots on your personal machine? Wow.
Secondly Firefox did not protect you from anything, the fact they don't share the system cert store did. Yeah it worked out this time to your favor but I honestly don't think Mozilla's failure to integrate with system certificate stores is a win in general. Its actually one of the biggest reasons I think about leaving my beloved SeaMonkey for something else.
For one thing you now have not one but 2 certificate stores you need to audit. That sucks! If a CA says they have been compromised I have to remember to fix it in 2 place instead of one. That isn't a security win. Many users don't probably even realize they don't use the system trusts, so if they get instructions to fix an issue by removing a CA they will likely fail to fix the Mozilla based browser.
Second in managed environments revoking a trust in Mozilla isn't easy to script out, that means Firefox and SeaMonkey installs likely just don't get fixed, again not a security win.
Frankly I think its rather a shame Mozilla does not provide at least the option to use the system trusteded roots.
This is a very good point. Much of the mess that is the Middle East is because these despots manged to enrich themselves playing NATO against the USSR for decades. They knew perfectly well any attempt to sort them out would have been seen as an act of aggression by the other world power. That provided them with cover to run their little shit stands, and get all sorts of cool toys (fancy high tech weapons systems).
If we could get past or conflict narrative with Russia we could re-draw the boarders agree on some buffer / DMZ regions and go in and occupy these places. If we did it long enough we could wipeout the stain on human culture that exists there.
I would argue its time we roll back our policy of NATO expansion, and even consider ending NATO. When we faced an existential threat from another single nation state actor it made sense. NATO is now just a 'dangerous entanglement.' We would be wise to encourage the core members to eject some of the newly added peripheral members under threat of our own withdraw if they don't. These fights are not worth it and the expands NATO just threatens to draw us in.
The middle east is of rapidly decreasing value to us. EU only alliances would be better positioned to defend Western Europe geographically than we are. We don't need anyone else's help to defend our own territory if we simple concentrated or efforts on that.
They're threatening to release SSN and related information that is being used as verification for credit applications
Irritating yes but troubling not really. The fact is you SSN is out there for anyone who wants it.
Its in all the major subscription database PI's and LEOs can subscribe to, almost for certain. Some of my licensed co-workers have access to that information and they shown me they can pull the SSN for just about anyone I could name. It would be naive to think the identity thieves don't have straw accounts and leaked creds for many of these sources.
I an not suggesting anyone go posting their SSN all over the internet, but I don't think its nearly as big a deal as many people thing. Certainly anyone who targets you specifically can obtain it. Having it come out in one of these mass document dumps only means someone trying to open a large number of fraudulent accounts might hit you opportunistically.
As far as I am concerned to the hackers I say bring it. I don't care if the world knows I pay Ali Spangnola a dollar every time she makes one of her cover-band videos. Actually I think you can already read my name on her thank you page so whatever.
What they don't look like is the innards of an electronic clock.
Right because somone who does not possess electronics knowledge can tell the difference between a PCB for a cheap electronic clock and one that is some kind of detonator. I think that expectation is unreasonably. Ask youself had 'you' carried that thing thru the airport security line would you average TSA agent have likely pulled you off for some questioning?
You and I both know the answer is yes. The reality is here some people did know what it was at the school and they told him he should put it away. He did not do that. He continued to be disruptive, which could have been mistaken for agitation and when he encountered other people who were not sure what it was the responded out of an abundance of caution; and followed procedure.
The kid is NOT in the right here.
They not only duped the SJW crowd, but even duped Obama
Obama is a member of the SJW crowd. The more I listen to him the clearer it is he has never a thought of his own. He has been spooned leftist nonsense from birth and learned to repeat it, sometime eloquently. We should just put a picture of him next to 'Social Justice Warrior' in the urban dictionary.
He did not build shit, he put the guts of a commercial clock in another box. So first off clock-boy does not deserve credit for being some kind of STEM hero. Here that is the kind of stuff I would expect a fifth or sixth grader to be doing.
Second schools are what they are. They are full of little people that we all worry about and place a higher value on the safety of than we probably should. Look 'zero tolerance' is stupid but its the governing priciple. This isn't a case of discrimination really, its not. Schools have ejected white children for biting pop-tarts into the shape of hand gun. Its a panicky place, just like an airport.
You can be safe or you can be sorry. You can be safe and still end up sorry. I suggest we learn to be more tolerant of being sorry on occasion so we don't create problems like this in the way of safety. What I can say is knowing what I know about schools, and the whole of the situation, if I were on that jury the kids family would not be award one thin dime.
You could sue for a realistic damages figure. If its about principle and not money than wining a case like this should be enough in itself. I can understand why he might want to get the school to admit wrong doing or have a finding against them that they did wrong.
How exactly was he harmed to the tune of $15 Million? I mean seriously if nothing else thanks to Obummer deciding to make a political football out of him he gained from it.
Now if they family said he now needs therapy for anxiety or something, and does not want to go back to that school, and sued for oh I don't know $300 - 400k and an apology for the cost of private school, therapy and pain suffered; I'd say well lets see what comes out in court or if the district settles.
$15 Million on the other hand is a naked cash grab. 15 Million isn't about fair compensation.
The question is "was it a lawful arrest" We know now that more of the story has come out, he had this suspect looking thing. Some people recognized it for what it was and told him to put it away.
He didn't follow their advice and continue to wonder around the school with it, not obeying other instructions, which could be seen as suspicious. Assuming there was not communication among the staff that knew it was just a stupid clock to those other people, I can see who it would meet a standard of 'reasonable suspicion' to justify an arrest. Would it have happened to someone who isn't brown skinned I don't know, but I am not sure that matters. If it does matter maybe the problem is authorities are not cautious enough about what white people are doing near high impact (I won't say value) targets like schools.
I doubt very much anyone in this thread things thinks 'they' need to suicide bomb anything. If you are on the planning end of things though suicide bombers have some advantages:
1) Dead men tell no tales - they won't be caught later and give up any intel on where your group can be found or how you communicate.
2) Less effort there is no escape or extract part of the engagement to plan. Which may mean few assets, which is probably harder to detect. Consider attacking power infrastructure as that is the topic. Which is more suspect 1 truck traveling down the access road or two? The second being to transport the driver of the bomb truck back out.
3) Less compensation required. People, even people fighting for a cause want to be paid, and have to eat. What's cheaper cash or a nice story about 72 virgins?
4) Suicide attack concept defeats a lot of security that was always built around the assumption someone would want to 'get a way with it' How much security should we put around this substation? Well figure that we put a barb wire fence and some high voltage signs up for safety sakes. If someone is stupid enough to throw a blanket over the fence climb in anyway and try to nab this copper they'll wind up a crispy critter. It'll get on the news and it won't happen again for quite a while, that's for sure. That thinking falls down when the attacker isn't thinking about getting out alive.
So if I am a terrorist commander fighting a symmetric war and have lots of low skill fighters I have invested pretty little in training and developing, well using them in kamikaze attacks has some major advantages, and they probably often out weigh the small price in head count.
I think the point is there are some major not very well protected long haul power lines outside some of our major population centers. Events of 2004 proved there isn't enough redundancy in the system overall and there exist some points of failure that would likely lead to large scale blackouts that could last days. The lead time on replacement of some large transformers is weeks to months as well.
A well researched attack that took out difficult to replace infrastructure like those transformers or perhaps took down multiple high capacity links in the north east or south west, at the same time could easily cripple a region.
I don't think it would be easy to do but it probably is within reach of some guys with truck bombs and suicide drivers. Most of the information I think you would need to decide where and how to cripple the grid most effectively is out there. There are a lot of mile of electrical infrastructure, while monitored have security geared around catching a vandal after the fact or grabbing your 'I am gonna set these fireworks off next to this propane cylinder and hope something impressive happens' type would be terrorist struggling to find his ass with both hands after his plot fails due to his own incompetence.
Good, that is a start
Fine if that is the case convince your law makers or get ones elected who agree with you. Once again this is typical of leftist types, don't like the rule of law just ignore it. That is not how this country works. The law was written, there was a dispute over its interpretation it went to court and the Administration LOST.
Its amazing how when right right leaning politician wants to do something like keep poorly vetted refuges out of their state, or not let someone who could be a carrier of known to be highly communicable and deadly disease just go wherever they like, suddenly the like, or some kid who happens to be tan in color ignore his teachers and wounder around a school with something that looks dangers, you people are quick to use the law to railroad everyone who resists into compliance.
When a judge rules against you though you just ignore it and carry on business as usually. When you have a law on the books that you barely got passed via parliamentary games, that has SPECIFIC dates when things are supposed to go into effect, oops time for extensions and rewriting it on the fly legality be damned.
You don't get to have it both ways. We either have laws and follow our process or we have mob rule. We seem to be erring toward mob rule.
I think its a question of how likely are you to get caught and do you fear the consequences. Look at some of the historic mobsters for example. They had little concern about taking their illegal gambling, moonshine, and drug running into the realm of murder. Most of those guy knew they either would not be caught because they had resources equal to those working to contain them. That or they simply 'own' a large portion of the authorities via corruption.
The other case is you are already looking at very long sentence so you don't care if its 2 consecutive life sentences or 20.
EL Chapo is the modern example. Even when he was re-arrested he did not stay in prison for too long, and there was a massive conspiracy to get him out. I think he is still at large? Point being if he wants to 'whack someone' he does it. He knows either he won't be caught, will be helped to escape, or if the system does work his rap sheet is so long it does not matter at this point.
So I am not sure it works like you suggest. Most criminals are not very bright bulbs. If they were they probably could work the system and make a decent life for themselves legally.
If you look at it from a pure risk reward standpoint it should be painful clear the robbing a convince store is pretty dumb but if you was hungry and destitute enough its possible you might decide to try it. It is after all a soft target and the clerk or even the owner might have little personal interest in doing anything but cooperating with you. They probably have some kind of business continuity insurance after all. Why risk their lives trying to protect the $150 bucks in the register and a few slim jims? It could work out.
Now add gun to mix as the criminal element often does and suddenly you have swapped larceny and simple assault for armed robbery and assault with deadly weapon (remember you don't actually have to hit or short someone for assault just credibly threaten it). You have perhaps encouraged a little more compliance from the store staff but at a cost of upping the ante for a probably 6mo - 1 year in the slam to 10+ years if caught. Totally not worth it! Yet criminals does it all the time!
Well the good news is we might get our freedom back. Some major insurers are talking about leaving the exchanges because they can't make any money at it. Others are talking about another round of big premium hikes. Its going to suck in the short term and good people are going to lose coverage and find themseves subject to tax penalties.
With a little luck though the terrible law that crushes peoples religious freedom and their freedom to do what they wish with there personal property will go down in the flames it deserves. Obama will have the legacy he deserves, "A paternalistic freedom hater we were all better off without."