Meddling

There is a light-weight, even comical element to the recent Mueller indictment of 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies for "meddling" in the 2016 presidential election. This indictment's wording suggests that gossiping or kibitzing are now criminal offenses. It even has the smell of desperation or possible purposeful misdirection to it ... keeping this investigation alive until bigger game can be bagged.

Despite the narrow range of this indictment, there are other possible issues emanating out of Mueller's modest accusal:

- Much of the information and even some of the text of this indictment came from a Russian business journal story that was published last fall ... see: NY Times article

- Steve Robnson of the Howie Carr Show has asked about a very interesting omission from this indictment, namely where are the accusations about Russian hacking into the DNC computer and the stealing of John Podesta's emails and putting them on Wikileaks? This would seem a natural inclusion since we have been told that "17 of our intelligence agencies" agree with this obvious crime.

- The Mueller indictment claims that the Russians were spending upwards of a million dollars a month on Facebook fake news and ads ... whereas Facebook itself testified to Congress recently that the sum total of all this meddling was at most $100,000.

All in all this indictment, since it comes close to exonerating Trump from the original reason for Mueller's appointent ... Russian collusion ... seems a fart in a windstorm.

Bum's Rush

Jeff Sessions is a liar. He lied during his AG confirmation hearings about meeting with Russian officials. He not only needs to recuse himself from any investigation into Russian hacking into the presidential election ... he needs to immediately resign. In fact, like often happened in Nazi Germany, he should be put in a locked room with a loaded Luger with the obvious expectation. And then tomorrow Obama's shadow government can commence impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump for a variety of treasonous charges that Maxine Waters has been unable yet to specify. The American people demand justice and we cannot cotton the obvious corruption that has surrounded Hillary Clinton's defeat. Vladimir Putin not only abetted Trump's nefariousness campaign, but his agents hacked into the actual election to insure a Trump victory.

These charges are so serious that they don't even need to be proven. In fact Trump and his close associates need to prove that Russia didn't subvert this past election. It is obvious to the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times, MSNBC and all the major TV networks, therefore it is indisputable that Donald Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Although they can't say exactly what these charges are, this doesn't excuse things. Trump and his inner circle needs to prove that Russia did not insure his November victory. How they might prove this negative is unclear ... even more reason for their shame.

There used to be a term for this kind of bar room justice ... it was called the "bum's rush."

If you feel that the above arguments are wrong  ... and want some bald facts and a little studied legal insight  see: Powerline 1 and Powerline 2. If not, send your donation to MoveOn.org.

Cyber Security

Given the current brouhaha over the possibility of Russia trying to influence our recent presidential  election using computer hacking, it seems appropriate to shine a light on this subject. Please note that, although I have no deep expertise in this subject, I am not a complete neophyte either. I was involved in a Data General Corporation development project were computer security was a key element. And so, I have concluded that there is no such thing as complete cyber security. It all depends upon the amount of push back against possible breaches. If we need any example of same, point to Edward Snowden who, in order to teach the world about how we are being spied upon by our government, naively gave troves of invaluable information to those who would harm us. This breach was accomplished not over a communication connection but by using tiny portable flash drives that can store multiple gigabytes of data.

Many years ago when time-sharing computing was in its infancy, I concluded that, if a computer had a connection to the outside world, it was by definition compromised. Then came the personal computer whose operating systems developers, mostly Microsoft, left data security out of their designs for expediency (and profit) sake ... and because connecting these "personal" computers was thought anathema. Personal computers didn't take long to kill the economic advantage of time-sharing and thus kill this technology. And then came the Internet with almost universal connectivity ... an opening a mile wide for cyber security breaches. Now, the advent of the "cloud" makes the protection of remote data storage and processing even more vulnerable, albeit convenient.

So what steps can be taken to start to protect today's electronic devices from these data piracy threats? Here are just a few:

- Develop the ability to isolate various levels of network interconnectivity. China already has the ability to cut off its entire national network from the rest of the world. Clearly this capability should be available to the U.S. as well as other sub-sectors of the Internet. It would seem to me that those providing networking hardware and software such as Cisco Systems could find a ready market for such a rigorous and scalable capability which might be automatically triggered by 'denial of service' attacks.

- In particularly sensitive applications, install computers that have no ports through which data can be offloaded onto any external storage device.

- Move all critical operating system components to microcode or even hardware which cannot be accessed anyway but through physical access to the computer ... and physically secure such access as one would a vault. Other O.S., interface and even some application code should be located in memory which generates a default if any changes are attempted to the bit structure. Action taken on such a default would be under the the control of the system administrator.

- Encrypt all sensitive data and applications with software whose keys vary in length with the degree of sensitivity of what is to be encoded. But don't assume any encrypted information cannot be decoded unless a truly randomized one-time pad is used.

And I'm sure other more sophisticated steps are possible. However such cyber security is expensive in both money and computer performance terms. But we are rapidly reaching the point were such costs can and need to be borne.

More "Fake News" News

Here are some news snippets and/or my insights which have recently struck my fancy. Deem them fake news if you wish ... I consider them to be genuine ...

- If the Russians really swung our election with their hacking ... and Putin was personally involved ... wouldn't these revelations by our intelligence agencies compromise their "sources and methods" to the Ruskies? If the Obummer administration is willing to pay this high a price for dubious political gain, then they are really a bunch of doofuses. If not, then it must be just more liberal fake news.

- Hillary, at a recent holiday gathering, seems to have aged 20 years following the election of Trump. But her appearance for the debates was masterful. I wonder who did her makeup then? A mortician?

- During the recent Jill Stein recounts, 37% of Detroit voting machines did not have meter counts equivalent to actual ballots cast. One such machine had an indicated tally of 306 votes ... but when the machine was opened, it only contained 50 actual ballots. (Obviously the same ballots were run through multiple times.) These voter-fraud revelations caused the Michigan Democrat party to call off the recount with beet red faces.

- Is there such a thing as a right-wing Internet fact-checking site? The four major supposedly "no-partisan" fact checkers: Snopes, Factcheck.org, Politifact and Washington Post's Fact Checker ... all are so loaded with liberals that one can easily predict their responses regarding conservative revelations ... must be "fake news." Now, Facebook is stepping into this one-sided game with its own set of moonbats to negate the views from the other side. Who, in the end is going to check the fact checkers?

- The US employment rate's denominator is based upon not all working-age people but only upon those "looking for work." This statistic was "adjusted" late in Bill Clinton's presidential term ... which obviously artificially inflated this key statistic ... and thus deflated the unemployment rate.  If calculated the old way, the unemployment rate today would be over 9% not the 4.6% as currently reported. Is the unemployment rate an example of fake news? As governments control the reported statistics, they then control the news.

- The New York Times is vacating 8 floors of its headquarters on Times Square. Perhaps the NYT has another 5-10 years? I understand the Clinton Foundation was looking to rent this space ... until the recent election that is (just joking ...).

- If hate crimes are reported only on social media, but not by calling 911 ... then the chances of them being hoaxes is quite a bit larger ... because reporting a hoax on 911 can result in criminal consequences whereas using social media is generally without repercussions. Tip of the hat to
Howie Carr for this idea.

Afterthought: Much of the incentive for genuine fake news is the ad revenue received therefrom. Sites that don't contain ads or that don't pay for premium placement in searches (like this one) have much less reason to create or pass on so-called fake news or hyper-biased opinion.

Two Wrongs

From reddit

I like Greg Gutfeld on the Fox talk show, The Five. He very often has outside-the-box humorous comments on current events. But his position on e-mail hacking has me conflicted. He believes that, since the Wikileaks revelations were stolen, they are tainted and should be ignored ... a variation on "two wrongs don't make a right" thesis. I understand this stance and almost agree with it. However, the first wrong was committed by a third party who can be punished separately. This does not mean the the raft of evil so uncovered should be ignored IMHO.

Law enforcement officials often use what, under normal circumstances, would be illegal or immoral to nab criminals ... wire taps,  scams, informers, surveillance, stings, even 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. If these procedures go too far, then oft times the criminal walks. Thus, the distinction I draw. The illegal methods used at Wikileaks should be punished. But we, the public, are not guilty of this transgression and should not feel required to ignore the revealed dirt.

Does this encourage others to try to outdo Wikileaks? Probably, but then it might just also encourage politicians to be more law-abiding ... or at least to cover their tracks better. The Clinton crime family has been acting with reckless impunity ... witness their private e-mail server. Perhaps being forced to cover their tracks better might just slow down their sleazy activities just a tad. A small benefit.