Monthly Archives: February 2017

TSA Releases Data on Air Marshal Misconduct — 7 Years After Request

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“Dozens of air marshals had been arrested for crimes ranging from aiding a human trafficking ring to attempted murder. One air marshal used his badge to smuggle drugs past airport security while another used his to lure a young boy to his hotel room, where he sexually abused him.  Air marshals had hired prostitutes in Barcelona and gotten into a fight with security guards after patronizing a brothel in Frankfurt.  Another marshal’s in-air behavior concerned flight attendants so much that they reported it to the agency, saying ‘I can’t believe he is able to carry a gun!’ (That officer was later convicted of bank fraud for trying to cash a $10.9 million check that he said was a settlement after he was a scratched by a friend’s cat.)  As time passed, the problems continued.”

Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/tsa-releases-data-on-air-marshal-misconduct-7-years-after-we-asked

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US Marshals Now Performing Retinal Scans At Airport Gates

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“It’s one thing to control who comes into a country. But surveilling and permissioning American citizens as they leave their own country, even as they are about to board, is something else.  Where is the toggle switch that would have told the machine not to let me board, and who controls it? How prone is it to bureaucratic error? What happens to my scan now and who has access to it?  The scene reminded me of movies I’ve seen, like Hunger Games or 1984. It’s chilling and strange, even deeply alarming to anyone who has ever dreamed of what freedom might be like. It doesn’t look like this.”

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/welcome-aboard-but-first-us-marshals-will-scan-your-retina/

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If NATO Is Obsolete, Stop Feeding It

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“Trump has been saying that NATO members need to pony up their required contributions to NATO. Doesn’t all that seem a bit illogical? After all, why force taxpayers, both American and European, to continue contributing their hard-earned money to an entity that is obsolete, outdated, outmoded, and old-fashioned?  But as we have seen with bureaucracies, once you bring them into existence they sometimes become like a permanent cancer on the body politic.”

Read more: http://www.fff.org/2017/02/24/part-obsolete-trump-not-understand/

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Stockman to Trump: It’s the Economy, Stupid

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“In a recent appearance on CNN, [former Reagan administration director] David Stockman suggested that Trump might best spend some time actually addressing economic issues instead of the administration’s travel ban for immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, which Stockman called ‘a giant misfire.'”

https://mises.org/blog/stockman-trump-its-economy-stupid

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Lacking More Important Business, Trump Renews War On Pot Smokers

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NORML reports that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared war on much of the cannabis community yesterday when he announced the the Trump administration intends to engage in the ‘greater enforcement’ of federal anti-marijuana laws in the eight states that have legalized and regulated its adult use.

In resuming this regressive policy, Trump stands with a shrinking minority.  Again, according to NORML, fifty-nine percent of voters say that adults’ use of marijuana should be legal while a whopping 93 percent support the medical use of marijuana. Perhaps most importantly, 71 percent of voters — including strong majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents — say that they ‘oppose the government enforcing federal laws against marijuana in states that have already legalized medical or recreational marijuana.’

At the Mises Institute, Ryan McMaken points out that 81 percent of all drug arrests are for simple possession, defining the renewed war on marijuana as a war on personal choice.  Since Trump has sided with the police regarding civil asset forfeiture and praised Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug death squads, drug-war abolitionists can likely expect little help from the Trump administration over the next several years.

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ACLU sues US govt for making entire state of Michigan a ‘border zone’

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“A lawsuit is accusing the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of turning the entire state of Michigan into a ‘border zone’ where anyone can be detained and searched without a warrant, according to ACLU-Michigan.  Federal authorities have said checkpoints elsewhere within the nation’s 100-mile border zone are crucial to catching human and drug smugglers who illegally cross into the US.  The ACLU and its co-plaintiff, the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, saw almost one in three, or 31 percent, of people apprehended by Border Patrol were US citizens, and over 63 percent of those apprehended had been stopped by other law enforcement agencies before their CBP encounter.”

Read more: https://www.rt.com/usa/368922-aclu-sues-govt-warrantless-stops/

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Multiple Canadians denied entry to U.S. based on phone searches

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In at least two separate incidents, Canadian citizens of Moroccan heritage were denied entry to the U.S. based on CBP searches of their smartphones and social media accounts.  One was refused on the basis of an old school photo in which he was “tagged” on his Facebook profile, while the other was refused on the apparent basis of videos of Muslim daily prayers on her phone.

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Trump’s Department of Justice just reopened business for private prisons

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“On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it public that he rescinded a guidance that tasked the Justice Department with ending its use of privately operated prisons.  Last year’s memo by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates came after the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found serious problems and more frequent reports of violence at privately run, for-profit facilities compared with federal public prisons.”

Read more: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/23/14718580/trump-justice-department-private-prisons

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Security researchers announce “first practical” SHA-1 collision attack

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“The SHA-1 hash algorithm is still in use for verifying the authenticity of digital content, despite the march of Moore’s Law ramping up compute power available to hackers in the wild — and despite other, more robust alternatives having existed for years.  Systems that could be compromised via the technique according to the researchers include document signature, HTTPS certificates, version control (git), backup systems, software updates, ISO checksums and more.”

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/security-researchers-announce-first-practical-sha-1-collision-attack/

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Major Cloudflare bug leaked sensitive data from customers’ websites

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“Cloudflare revealed a serious bug in its software today that caused sensitive data like passwords, cookies, authentication tokens to spill in plaintext from its customers’ websites. The announcement is a major blow for the content delivery network, which offers enhanced security and performance for more than 5 million websites.  This could have allowed anyone who noticed the error to collect a variety of very personal information that is typically encrypted or obscured.  The leak may have been active as early as Sept. 22, 2016, almost five months before a security researcher at Google’s Project Zero discovered it and reported it to Cloudflare.”

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/major-cloudflare-bug-leaked-sensitive-data-from-customers-websites/

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