All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Kusanagi]

Please ignore the fact we have enhanced licenses with actual tracking chips.

SMDH.

I would assume just about all these people have cell phones too. If someone wants to illegally track you there are a billion simpler ways to do it.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Ummm...doing a low flyover in New York City on 9/11? Seriously? What idiot came up with this idea? Can you imagine the trauma this will set off for survivors and their families?

Planned Flyover: An F-18 jet will be conducting a flyover on the Hudson River towards the Verrazzano Bridge on 9/11 at 3:30 PM. The aircraft will fly at approx 2,500 ft.

Haven't they learned their lesson from the last time they did this stupid ****?

[BeastieRunner]

I would assume just about all these people have cell phones too. If someone wants to illegally track you there are a billion simpler ways to do it.

If we made a list of all the ways you are currently being tracked, this thread would need to be closed for length.

I think basic cyber security should be taught in high school.

That will scare everyone off the internet for a bit. Or maybe be less dumb on it.

[InformationGeek]

Over in Wisconsin, Green Party is causing some problems that the conservative Supreme Court is taking advantage of.

BREAKING:

The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court has ordered that no absentee ballots be mailed until until it gives the go-ahead or rules on who should be on the ballot

The 4-3 ruling comes in case filed by Green Party presidential nominee seeking to be on ballot

[Tami]

Russian Intelligence Hackers Are Back, Microsoft Warns, Aiming at Officials of Both Parties

The Russian military intelligence unit that attacked the Democratic National Committee four years ago is back with a series of new, more stealthy hacks aimed at campaign staff members, consultants and think tanks associated with both Democrats and Republicans.

That warning was issued on Thursday by the Microsoft Corporation, in an assessment that is far more detailed than any yet made public by American intelligence agencies.

The findings come one day after a government whistle-blower claimed that officials at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security suppressed intelligence concerning Russia’s continuing interference because it “made the president look bad,” and instructed government analysts to instead focus on interference by China and Iran.

Microsoft did find that Chinese and Iranian hackers have been active — but often not in the way President Trump and his aides have suggested.

Federal officials insisted that the Microsoft report was consistent with their own warnings, which named Russia, China and Iran as three nations seeking to gather information from the campaigns, and perhaps try to influence the outcome. But the most recent assessment by the director of national intelligence, last month, also said China preferred that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. win the 2020 election.

The Microsoft assessment may have complicated that finding because it found that Chinese hackers focused their attacks on the private email accounts of Mr. Biden’s campaign staff members, along with a range of other prominent people in academia and the national security establishment, including groups like the Atlantic Council and the Stimson Center.

Notably, only one of the Chinese targets detected by Microsoft was affiliated with Mr. Trump, a former administration official whom Microsoft declined to name.

Firms like Microsoft and Google, because they sit atop global networks, have a front-seat view of suspicious activity, and increasing motivation to make it public to warn their customers. The result, inevitably, is a tumble of reports from the private sector, which government intelligence officials will be forced to assess, along with their own findings.

Thea McDonald, the deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said: “We are a large target, so it is not surprising to see malicious activity directed at the campaign or our staff. We work closely with our partners, Microsoft and others, to mitigate these threats.” She would not comment on specific cybersecurity measures the campaign was taking.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Ummm...doing a low flyover in New York City on 9/11? Seriously? What idiot came up with this idea? Can you imagine the trauma this will set off for survivors and their families?

Planned Flyover: An F-18 jet will be conducting a flyover on the Hudson River towards the Verrazzano Bridge on 9/11 at 3:30 PM. The aircraft will fly at approx 2,500 ft.

This is not just idiotic, but absolutely cruel as hell. A flyover at just half a mile off the deck? That’s flat out crazy! Who thought that was a good idea? No, let me guess, Trump. What’s more, I can’t believe the mayor and the governor signed off on that madness.

[AnakinFlair]

If we made a list of all the ways you are currently being tracked, this thread would need to be closed for length.

I think basic cyber security should be taught in high school.

That will scare everyone off the internet for a bit. Or maybe be less dumb on it.

Basis SECURITY should be taught in schools. Working Risk for a debit card company, it shocks me how many people write in to file a claim, and admit that they have disabled or not enabled every security feature we have on the card. That's on top of when they send their SSN, or pictures of their card showing the full number, expiration date, and CVV number.

I'm reading a book by the guy who wrote The Wire, where he spends a year with Baltimore detectives. In it, he constantly remarks that stupidity is the greatest ally of a detective. Criminals never seem to get that silence is their best friend

If I'm not mistaken, that book was the inspiration for the tv series Homicide: Life on the Street.

[Mister Mets]

There's a controversy over the live-action remake of Mulan, mainly about whether Disney provided cover for horrendous actions by the Chinese government.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/9/9...ghurs-xinjiang

Some viewers who paid to stream the movie on Disney+ last weekend found something troubling in the credits: Disney thanked eight government bodies in Xinjiang, a western province in China where around 2 million Uighur Muslims have been forced into concentration camps by the Chinese government. It turns out parts of Mulan were filmed in Xinjiang two years ago, well after the world knew about Beijing’s plan to “reeducate” Uighurs with Communist Party doctrine. That’s simply shocking, as there’s no excuse for Disney executives to have been unaware of the human rights abuses taking place just miles from the filming sites. Plus, the film had courted controversy for some time, as its lead actress last year supported Hong Kong’s law enforcement over pro-democracy protesters, which led to the #BoycottMulan social media movement.

For several years now, China has been systematically repressing its Uighur Muslim minority in that region — subjecting men, women, and children to torture, sexual abuse, forced sterilization, family separation, and brainwashing, among other horrors. They add to the Chinese government’s other abuses, such as banning expressions of Islamic faith.

Even worse, the film credits specifically praise the police security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang with a large Uighur population. That bureau is tasked with running some of the internment camps, experts say, and was blacklisted last year along with other Chinese law enforcement agencies by the US Commerce Department, prohibiting US companies from selling or supplying products to them.

It’s unclear if Disney and Turpan’s police bureau or other similar agencies interacted much or at all during filming, but it’s still not a good look.

A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry this week insisted the camps are simply “vocational skills education and training centers,” even though ample evidence suggests that isn’t true. Disney didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The film itself has some further problems.

Some who’ve seen the film say it also promotes Han supremacism (or “Han chauvinism,” as Mao Zedong, China’s communist leader and the founder of the People’s Republic of China, termed it), the idea that all parts of China — including native Uighur and Kazakh lands, among others — should be governed and dominated by ethnic Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China. Many leaders in the ruling Communist Party, like President Xi Jinping, are Han. The villain in the new Disney film leads a group of assassins clearly coded as Muslims, said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the Chinese government’s oppression of Uighurs. For instance, the characters are dark-skinned, wear turbans, and are dressed eerily like ISIS terrorists in their videos, some experts say.

[Robotman]

Stay classy Kansas City.

Fans at Arrowhead Stadium Boo During Pregame 'Moment of Unity'


A bunch of white men dressed as stereotypical Native Americans are angered by a showing of racial harmony. Shocking.

[luprki]

Trump on the virus
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[The MunchKING]

WAit, the police commissioner's last name is Outlaw?

Yup. And her previous job was, in all places, Portland, the city of endless protests.

She better not move to L.A. That doesn't end well for Police named Outlaw. OK, technically that was the CAR'S Nickname, don't ruin the joke for me.

[zinderel]

Haven't they learned their lesson from the last time they did this stupid ****?

It’s 2020. Has ANYONE in the halls of power learned not to repeat the stupid, poorly-thought-out, most-likely-offensive and/or dangerous anything they already did once before, often to great laughter (at their expense) or outrage or international war over the display of short-sighted and/or bigoted idiocy on the part of leadership...?

Clearly not, since we’ve surpassed the Wealth disparity that brought about the French Revolution, we have seen a return of robber baron corporate raiders who hoard resources while busting workers unions and underpaying, undermining, and undervaluing their workers, as well as the return of open, literal nazism in both the US and Germany.

Repeating a poorly thought out flyover that was HORRIBLY received the last time is just...par for the course in this current Century of Stupidity.

[Iron Maiden]

Or Russian bounties on US soldiers.

Yeah, this one seems to have been swept away with all the latest Trumpisms. I don't think he's smart enough to do it deliberately. It's like diarrhea with him, awful things just keeps flowing out.

[Malvolio]

I would assume just about all these people have cell phones too. If someone wants to illegally track you there are a billion simpler ways to do it.

Well, yeah. I guess these people who are worried about Bill Gates inserting micro-chips in their brains never wonder why they always seem to get ads on their phones for the same things they were just searching for a few minutes ago.

[babyblob]

I love how the same people who bitch about privacy are the same ones who post 20 pics of them and their kids on facebook, and post twitter updates every five minutes on where they are and what they are doing.