Political thought of the day

July 26, 2015

You know, Bernie Sanders supporters in the Democrat Party and the Donald Trump supporters in the Republican Party, it is very cute that you get excited about their rise in the polls. There is almost zero chance that either one of them will be the nominee in their respective parties. The powers at be in both of the parties will see that the establishment candidates of Clinton and likely Bush will be the candidates. The Donald may run as an independent candidate a la Ross Perot in 92, but the oligarchy of having a Bush or Clinton in the senior levels of government since 1980 with the exception of the last 2+ years will probably lend to another Bush-Clinton election cycle.

Just sit back and grab the popcorn and see how much laying to waste the darlings will do before the party leaders will step in and tell them where they stand.

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Indiana's RFRA and Walkerton, IN

April 7, 2015

So, it has been nearly a week since this pizza place (Memories Pizza) in Walkerton, IN that raised all sorts of stink about saying they would not cater a gay wedding if someone wanted them to. Just some points:

There was very little chance of them every catering a gay wedding in Walkerton. There is not a large gay population in Walkerton (if any).
No self respecting gay couple would cater their wedding with pizza.
The ultra nut jobs from the left and right have predictable gone off the deep end with their threats, diatribes, and support of the crazies on their side.

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The upcoming "War on Cyber"?

January 17, 2015

If you are old enough to harken back to the 1970's, President Nixon brought to us the "War on Drugs", supposedly to curb the influx of narcotics into our the country and to reduce the violence associated with illegal drugs. For the most part, the war on drugs has been a failure, with the general result of burgeoning jail sentences for low level drug users.

Fast forward to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States back in 2001. This brought another war on an abstract concept, "The War on Terror." Given the current situation in the Middle East and across the world, I don't think anyone can say that the published spending of $1.6 trillion as of the end of 2014 on just military operations. This doesn't include the ridiculous spending and distribution of arms in the increased militarization of our police force.

In the wake of the large data breaches on 2013 and 2014 (Target, Home Depot, Sony, etc), along with the "terrorist" attacks in Paris in early January 2015, there are renewed calls for "Security on the Internet" to protect us from hackers and terrorists. What are governments looking to curtail freedoms online?

Encryption - Since Phil Zimmermann introduced PGP in 1991, there has been concerns by the government about encryption tools. This included 3 years of investigation by the Federal Government into Zimmermann before it dropped the investigation. Now, world leaders like David Cameron want to ban encryption as a tool against terror, saying "...legislation that does not allow terrorists safe space to communicate with each other." This same tool can be used by dissidents, privacy conscious individuals, and the general population to keep others from spying on their communication.
Hacking and Racketeering? - The President may have some interesting comments about hacking in the State of the Union on Tuesday, according to Rob Graham. Obviously, new laws won't change those that are already breaking the law, but it will stifle security research, security testing, and security discussions over the internet (podcasts like Security Weekly.)

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Anatomy of a scam? Or just a password notification?

September 20, 2014

While eating my breakfast this morning and checking up on email, I run across 2 of the following emails:

3am email about a password reset from Facebook to an email address that is not used by the family as logins? The Spidey Senses are tingling. Time to look at the raw email data and see what is going on....