When it comes to accurate reporting of news, this screen cap exemplifies why we have come to call them ‘skews media’ rather than news media. It has become increasingly apparent that in what used to be called journalism, accuracy in reporting and editing have been flushed.
OpenCdA’s post on February 19th titled Apple Bites provided a link to the “G’s” motion to compel Apple to devise a way to block Apple’s own ten-tries-you’re-out-forever safeguard against a brute force password attack on an Apple iPhone 5c. The “G” wants access to the iPhone 5c used by the San Berdo Two.
Apple was given until today to respond to the “G’s” motion.
Here is Apple’s response: Apple Inc’s Motion to Vacate Order Compelling Apple Inc. to Assist Agents in Search, and Opposition to Government’s Motion to Compel Assistance.
We don’t know how the Court will rule. Although it is a case probably ripe for litigation, we wish that both parties could enlist an outside third party to help them arrive at a non-litigious solution if one is possible.
Our suggestion (made while we’re holding our nose) is that at this point, the US Congress may more appropriate than the courts to address the national security issues raised by private key encryption in the public’s hands.
The Congress, if the children we elected to go there can ever learn to play well in the Fantasyland-on-the-Potomac sandbox together, owes it to the public and private interests to reach a compromise that enables lawful counterintelligence and counterterrorist operations affecting the national security to continue effectively while at the same time not infringing on a private corporation’s freedom to build a better mousetrap.
KXLY reported yesterday that former Spokane police officer Karl Thompson has been released from federal prison.
In 2012 Thompson was sentenced to over four years in federal prison for violating the federal civil rights of Otto Zehm.
In 2006 Zehm had been arrested by Thompson and other officers based on erroneous and incomplete information provided to them by citizens and the police dispatcher. Zehm was a mentally ill but functional janitor, and he had resisted Thompson’s effort to restrain him. After being restrained, Zehm stopped breathing and was taken to the hospital where two days later, he died.
This Otto Zehm hyperlink above and this Spokesman-Review abbreviated timeline from 2011 provide a little more information about the death of Otto Zehm.
However, a more complete account is in the book ‘Frenzy and Cover Up — The Death of Otto Zehm‘. The book was self-published in 2015 by its author, Andrew Gabriel Britt. Britt is a 2012 honor graduate in Sociology from Eastern Washington University.
Britt’s book is a compendium of public records filings, news articles, and other documents. It is well-researched and well-written. Though not written in particularly colorful style typical of true crime writers such as Ann Rule, Vince Bugliosi, and Tim Reiterman, his book is nevertheless very readable.
It is available on loan through the Community Library Network – Kootenai-Shoshone Counties .
Although Amazon lists the book’s price as nearly $70 used, we paid $12.95 plus tax when special ordered new from The Bookworm at 1132 N. 4th Street in Coeur d’Alene.
Our OpenCdA post on March 27, 2014, was titled Calif. State Senator Arrested By FBI — Gunrunning, Honest Services Fraud.
Today the Los Angeles Times is running an article headlined Ex-state Sen. Leland Yee gets 5 years in prison in corruption case. Website SFGate.com has more detail including more information about additional corrupt officials sentenced in its online article headlined Former state Sen. Leland Yee; ex-SF school board member sentenced.
The prosecution of this case shows that the FBI and the US Attorney in the Northern District of California takes public corruption cases very seriously — even when the corrupt officials are state and local rather than only federal.
Meanwhile, in the District of Idaho …
This February18,2016, CRS report entitled Encryption and Evolving Technology: Implications for U.S. Law Enforcement Investigations tries to help Congress better understand the challenges that encryption poses for law enforcement investigtions.
This isn’t an easily solved dilemma. For years the U.S. law enforcement and security community has been encouraging private industry to better safeguard proprietary and personnel information. Well, the feds got their wish. Apple took the message to heart and invented the better safeguard.
It would be very easy to side with Apple and simply declare that a company developing a unique and effective security product has no obligation to anyone to at the same time develop a way to defeat that product.
However, we think that even Apple might want to consider the possibility that another country’s government may have already found a way to do what Apple says can’t be done with the iPhone 5c. Will Apple expect the FBI to investigate if that happens?
Suppose somebody kidnaps Apple CEO Tim Cook and during the ensuing investigation, the FBI learns the suspect used an encrypted Apple device. Now suppose that somehow the encrypted Apple device falls into the FBI’s hands, and recovering Cook alive may hinge on what’s encrypted in the device. In that case, would Apple decide that its corporate principle is more important than its corporate principal?
This morning’s Coeur d’Alene Press skewspaper articles headlined Be prepared, North Idaho by Richard Dance and CASCADIA RISING by Jeff Selle used alarming words to stimulate readers’ interest in the earthquake risk to northern Idaho and in the planned June three-day earthquake exercise.
We recall our years in the Los Angeles area where earthquakes large and small occur frequently. While the area radio and television station newsreaders sometimes dive for cover under their news desk at the first rumblings of a shaker, their experienced producers calmly call Lucy.
For over 30 years Dr. Lucy Jones has been a calming and knowledgeable voice of the US Geological Survey at the Seismological Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Those of us shaken and stirred by the Northridge, Landers, and Loma Prieta earthquakes and others less notable vividly recall being able to flip on the radio to KNX 1070 News Radio and get up-to-the-minute updates on what we needed to know to get where we needed to go and get done what we needed to do. Above all, we could always count on eventually hearing Lucy’s voice, calmly explaining what had happened. And when we heard Lucy talking on the air with equally calm and reassuring KNX anchors and reporters like Harry Birrell, Tom Haule, Linda Nunez, Mike Landa, Beach Rogers, Dick Helton, and Michael Ambrosini, we always knew everthing was gonna be okay.
So when the CASCADIA RISING exercise is conducted, people in our area can thank Lucy. Her name wasn’t in this morning skewspaper reports, but her seismological research at CalTech has been a major driving force behind our nation’s and the world’s ability to be better prepared for earthquakes.
We love Lucy!
The aviation community pretty much acknowledges that unregulated, civilian-operated unmanned aerial systems (UAS) represent a serious threat to aviation safety.
It stands to reason, then, that enterprising businesspeople would try to capitalize on the counter-UAS market.
As this morning’s Idaho Statesman reports in an article headlined Revenge against drones: Boise company thwarts drones, ne’er-do-wells, Boise company Black Sage Technologies has built a civilian system to locate and track unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in flight.
That’s nice. But then what? Detection and tracking of an incoming UAV is not a countermeasure; it is a warning measure.
The Statesman article says nothing about the company’s product being able to do more than possibly blind a camera if that is the UAV’s payload and to possibly follow the UAV when it goes back to its pilot.
But what if the UAV is on a one-way flight with a payload of something much more dangerous than an enterprising paparazzi’s camera? Something explosive or toxic?
UASs are not new. UAV is the snooty term for the advanced versions of model aircraft hobbyists have been using radio control to fly for years.
Anyone who thinks that civilians couldn’t conceive of putting a dangerous payload on a UAV might want to research the Red Army Faction (Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Ulrike Meinhof — The Baader-Meinhof Gang) in Germany in the 1970s.
And of course today, Jeffy at Amazon-dot-Clueless wants to start delivering five-pound payloads via drones with Amazon Prime Air.
So we repeat: Detection and tracking of an incoming UAV is not a countermeasure; it is a warning measure.
Effective countermeasures to UASs are necessarily going to be intelligence driven. If you don’t know the command, control, and communication mechanisms of that thing coming at your facility, your ability to effectively counter it is seriously degraded.
There are companies working to develop effective countermeasures. One is Blighter Surveillance Systems in the UK.
Readers interested in UASs might want to read some of the online articles in Signal, the magazine of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. Similar articles such as this one appear in Aviation Week & Space Technology.
By now most readers probably know that the US Department of Justice sought and received a federal court’s order directing Apple to help in preserving and extracting the encrypted information on the San Berdo Two‘s iPhone 5c.
Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, refused to comply with the court order.
Today the DoJ filed a motion to compel Apple to comply with the first order. Here is the Motion to Compel filed by the government today.
It addresses two major concerns voiced by Cook. The first concern is that Apple would have to devise a method to access the information; the ability to do that was not part of the process. The second concern was that the method would make vulnerable all certain models of Apple iPhones, not just the individual phone seized in the San Bernardino incident.
The government points out in the motion that Apple has already acknowledged it can devise a method to access the information; Apple can comply with the first order.
The government also explains how the method will remain in the hands of Apple and not be turned over to the government or any other party. The government asserts those safeguards should be sufficient to satisfy Apple.
It seems to us that both Apple and the government have reasonable concerns and objectives, and we hope that the Court will find a way to enable Apple to comply with the Court’s order while at the same time preserving Apple’s proprietary interest in its intellectual property.
The process for nominating and selecting a new Justice of the US Supreme Court is explained in the 63-page February 19, 2010, Congressional Research Service Report entitled Supreme Court Appointment Process: Roles of the President, Judiciary Committee, and Senate.
The President’s nomination role is explained in the Octobeer 19, 2015, CRS Report entitled Supreme Court Appointment Process: President’s Selection of a Nominee.
The specific role and processes of the Senate Judiciary Committee are described in the October 19, 2015, CRS Report entitled Supreme Court Appointment Process: Consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The US Senate’s Advice and Consent role and processes are described in the October 19, 2015, CRS Report entitled Supreme Court Appointment Process: Senate Debate and Confirmation Vote.
The views and skews media blatherskites are hyperventilating at the suggestion the US Department of Justice might indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for mishandling of national security information or influence peddling. “How would that affect her presidential campaign?” they worry.
OpenCdA doesn’t know if she will be indicted.
Our uncertainty has nothing to do with US Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s political loyalties or with President Obama’s prejudicial comments made during his 60 Minutes television interview on October 11, 2015.
Prosecutors from the US Attorney General down the prosecutorial food chain to the most incompetent and politically comprimised county prosecutors in Idaho are given great latitude to decide which cases will be prosecuted and which ones will be declined for good reasons, bad reasons, politically expedient reasons, or no reason at all.
Our concern is that when Hillary Clinton used unsecured email systems and her own private server to exchange and store national security information, she knowingly and wilfully exposed that information to exploitation by all enemies foreign and domestic who will use that information harm to our nation.
That damage has been done. It will not be corrected even by criminal prosecution, conviction, and lifetime incarceration for Hillary Clinton.
If there is any value in criminally prosecuting and convicting Hillary Clinton, it is in ensuring she would never again be in any position of public trust and never again have access to national security information. It is in ensuring she would never again be able to barter information which, in the wrong hands, places at grave risk the lives of American citizens and foreign nationals working on our behalf. (more…)
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