Category: Internet

The Unbelievable Wankitude that is Sam Brownback

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Seriously. It appears that a girl watching Sam Brownback address a mock legislature tweeted that he “sucked”, and Brownback’s office found her tweet and contacted school authorities:

A Kansas teenager is in trouble after mocking Gov. Sam Brownback during a mock legislative assembly for high school students.

Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, was in Topeka on Monday as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government.

During the session, in which Brownback addressed the group, Sullivan posted on her personal Twitter page:

“Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot”

On Tuesday, Sullivan was called to her principal’s office and told that the tweet had been flagged by someone on Brownback’s staff and reported to organizers of the Youth in Government program.

The principal “laid into me about how this was unacceptable and an embarrassment,” Sullivan said. “He said I had created this huge controversy and everyone was up in arms about it … and now he had to do damage control.

“I’m mainly shocked that they would even see that tweet and be concerned about me,” she said. “I just honestly feel they’re making a lot bigger deal out of it than it actually was.”

Sullivan said the principal ordered her to write letters of apology to Brownback, the school’s Youth in Government sponsor, the district’s social studies coordinator and others.

Karl Krawitz, the school principal, did not return calls or e-mails Wednesday.

It goes without saying that Krawitz is a bully and a coward, full of demands when he’s leaning on a student, and silent when the press calls, though in all fairness, being a bully and a coward depending on circumstances is pretty much the definition of a Principal’s job.

That being said, the fact that any political operation decided to go after a teenager over a tweet is pathetic beyond belief.  This is “Michelle Malkin stalking a 12-year old over his support of S-Chip” pathetic.

It’s also deeply evil, and un-American.

Just when I think that the ‘Phants could not go any lower, I am disabused of this quaint notion.

This is Literally the Worst Idea I Have Ever Heard

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The Department of Justice is seeking to expand anti-hacking laws to make it a criminal offense to violate the terms of a click-through license on a web site:

A commonly invoked anti-hacking law is so overbroad that it criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake user name on Facebook or fibbing about your weight in a Match.com profile, one of the nation’s most respected legal authorities has said.

This came to prominence when the DoJ decided to prosecute the infamous (and unsuccessful) Lori Drew Myspace cyberbulling prosecution.

And the Response of the USDepartment of Justice?

In fact, quite the opposite: Downing and the Justice Department want to expand the law’s scope and impose harsher sentences on cybercriminals.

As CNET reported, the Justice Department is after an expansion of its powers under CFAA because of what happened when the agency attempted to prosecute Lori Drew, a Missouri mother who created a phony MySpace account to harass her 13-year-old neighbor, who later committed suicide. Drew was in 2008 convicted under CFAA of felony conspiracy and three counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization.

What you have to understand here is that the goal of the DoJ is to have another “arrow in their quiver”.

They want to have a world where everyone can be criminally prosecuted for something, because that way, they can go after anyone that they find inconvenient.

The fact that the Obama DoJ is in full throated support of this is why I refer to him as the “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever”.

When you give the state security apparatus the power to manufacture criminality, which is the desire of most agents of the state security apparatus, you create a blueprint for tyranny.

An Interesting Solution to the Problem of Phishing and Hacking:

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A web master has come to the conclusion that the first step in managing this sort of activity is to, “block all traffic from China:

I run quite a few few websites and blogs and my solution to this problem was first to BLOCK all traffic from China, I allow nothing, nada, zip from China based IPs. From my personal experience 100% of China’s internet traffic is hacking attempts, email SPAM and phishing. I have never encountered a single China access that could be considered positive.

Blocking China has solved about 80~90% of the problem. The second thing is to block specific domains and IPs from Russia, Romania, Brazil, Taiwan, Korea, Poland and may other ex Soviet Satellites. I can’t block all access to these countries because there is about 90% of legitimate traffic and the 10% left are probably compromised computers being used as proxies/bots for China.

I tried to find the original source for this and a quick google indicates that there are a significant number of web masters who are beginning to consider this as a first step for web security on their sites.

Obviously, I am not a webmaster, but I’m wondering just how wide spread this phenomenon is.

Anonymous Gets Scalp of HBGary Fedral CEO

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Following revelations by Anonymous that HBGary Federal was developing a plan of Nixonian dirty tricks, with false identities, forged documents, and other disinformation, the CEO of HBGary Federal has been fired resigned:

Aaron Barr’s departure as CEO of HBGary Federal represented the latest twist for the company and its Sacramento affiliate, HBGary Inc. A spokeswoman for the Sacramento company confirmed the resignation.

According to numerous reports, Barr’s company, which is based in Colorado and Washington, D.C., proposed conducting a disinformation campaign against critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The plan was presented to the chamber’s law firm, but the chamber says it wasn’t aware of it.

The plan was aborted after the hacker group Anonymous stole tens of thousands of e-mails from both HBGary and HBGary Federal – and posted many of the messages on the Web.

And now Democratic members of Congress are calling for an investigation of these activities.

Of course, there won’t be an investigation in the House.  The Republicans are busy looking for a blue dress.

Because It Worked So Well in Egypt

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Libya has cuts off the Internet:

Internet service has been cut off in Libya for a second consecutive day as protesters step up demonstrations against longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, a U.S. company that monitors Internet traffic said on Saturday.

Massachusetts-based Arbor Networks said data collected from 30 Internet providers around the world showed that online traffic in and out of Libya was disconnected abruptly at 7:15 p.m. EST on Friday after two partial interruptions earlier that day.

I kind of figured that Bahrain would go first, because it’s a predominantly Shia country ruled by a Sunni king, but I may have been wrong.

AOL Buys HuffPo

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For $315 million dollars.

I think that this explains why they have been moving to a paid writing staff lately.

Many of the celebrities who have contributed non-remunerated articles to the Huffington Post may be less inclined to do so now that it is part of the AOL empire, if just because the whole “cool factor” is much diminished. (See the term “AOLamer”)

Ms. Huffington will stay in charge of her web site, as well as taking over supervision AOL’s media operations, things like Techcrunch and its hyper-local news operations.

I think that this will turn out better than the AOL/Times Warner merger, but that’s a very low bar.

Because We Want to Be Just Like Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt

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Susan Collins and Joseph “The Human Stain” Lieberman, want there to be kill switch for the Internet in the United States that can be invoked at will without judicial review:

A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“We’re not trying to mandate any requirements for the entire Internet, the entire Internet backbone,” said Brandon Milhorn, Republican staff director and counsel for the committee.

…………

The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government’s designation of vital Internet or other computer systems “shall not be subject to judicial review.” Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include “provider of information technology,” and a third authorized the submission of “classified” reports on security vulnerabilities.

The idea of creating what some critics have called an Internet “kill switch” that the president could flip in an emergency is not exactly new.

Just imagine Dick Cheney’s finger on the button.

“Not subject to judicial review,” that’s a wet dream for the former VP.

OK, I Don’t Have Much to Add on the Assassination and Shooting Spree

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Click for full size

These are on the days preceding the shooting

But Brad Delong finds a rather alarming data point.

Here are two members of Congress, both Democrats, from the same state, but in the 4 days before the shooting, Gifford’s hits on her wiki page skyrocketed.

There are a number of caveats here:

  • Even with the delta, the number is pretty small, under 400 hits peak over a 4 day period.
  • This could have been triggered by something as innocent as a mass email to constituents.
  • It could be one person, obsessively visiting the page.

It could also be:

  • The result of some obscure right wing media figure calling her out.
  • The result of a small group of people involved in a conspiracy. (Unlikely, this seems to be the archetypal Lone Gunman).

Anyone aware of any event that might support some the more prosaic explanations?

Facebook to Buy Time-Warner in a Multibillion Dollar Stock Deal

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Not really, but the obvious parallels between the dot-bomb mania of the late 1990s, and this bit of Vampire Squid* inspired pump and dump, Goldman Sachs is investing money in, and creating a (completely fictitious) market cap for Facebook of around $50 billion.

Karl Denninger says that it’s a scam, and that whoever invests in after Goldman will be left holding the bag, while William Cohan at the New York Times runs the numbers:

Despite the high price of its investment, Goldman sees in Facebook a business bonanza, a nearly perfect nugget of investment-banking opportunities. First, Goldman’s cost of capital is close to zero — as a bank holding company, it can borrow from the Federal Reserve at negligible interest rates — so any capital gain it makes on its venture in Facebook will be sheer profit. Second, Goldman has almost certainly locked up the role of lead manager of the inevitable Facebook initial public offering.

Fees for underwriting public offerings are generally about 7 percent of the value of the stock sold. Facebook could easily sell $2 billion of stock or more, generating fees to Goldman and the other underwriters of at least $140 million. The other benefit for Goldman in leading the public offering — aside from major bragging rights — is that it can use its marketing, sales and distribution muscle to make sure the value of Facebook at the time of the offering exceeds the $50 billion valuation at which Goldman invested.

Goldman has also won from Facebook the right to offer an additional $1.5 billion of the company’s stock to its private-wealth clients. According to The Times, Goldman will be creating a “special purpose vehicle” to sell the stock to its wealthy clients and then will charge them a 4 percent initial fee plus 5 percent of any profits. While on paper it seems that these high rollers would be foolish to invest in Facebook at such a lofty valuation, they will still most certainly feel increased loyalty to Goldman for making such an exclusive opportunity available to them. On top of it all, there is the increased likelihood that Goldman will get to manage a good portion of the $12 billion fortune belonging to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, for yet more fees.

Seriously, we bailed out those contemptible f%$#s for this?!?!?

By way of perspective, DC at the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS noted:

  • Facebook is worth more than, Starbucks ($25 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than United, American, Delta, JetBlue, and Southwest Airlines combined (About $32 billion combined market cap)
  • Facebook is worth about 25 times more than the New York Times Company
  • Facebook is bigger than Target’s market cap ($43 billion)
  • Facebook is worth about twice as much as Dell ($26.5 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Viacom, which owns MTV and Comedy Central ($28 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Campbell Soup and General Mills combined ($34.4 billion combined market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Boeing ($48.7 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth five times more than Netflix, the stock darling of 2010 ($9.3 billion market cap)
  • Facebook is worth more than Nokia, the world’s biggest cellphone company ($39.5 billion market cap)

All this for a company that doesn’t really sell anything, and has a revenue stream that is rather opaque.

Facebook is still privately held, which implies that they really don’t want people to look under the hood until someone really stupid hands them a lot of money.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

Pass the Popcorn…

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Someone just hit 4chan hit by DDoS attack:

Controversial image board 4chan came under a denial of service attack on Tuesday.

A status message on 4chan’s status boards (below) reported that the birthplace of anonymous and home of midget porn had joined the “ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal” as victims of a denial of service attack.

Site is down due to DDoS. We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al.—an exclusive club!

The Anonymous contingent of 4chan was behind the attacks on Mastercard et al over the refusal of many elements of the banking industry to do business with Wikileaks. In response, patriot hacktivists have launched denial of service attacks on 4chan IRC channels.

This could get … interesting.

As to who I root for in this conflict, God bless them both, and keep them far away from me!

Brought to You by Leonard Pinth-Garnell

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Adventures in bad corporate damage control.

Specifically, because Wikileaks has said that they have a document dump from a Bank of Bank of America, Bank of America has started to buy up hundreds of nasty domain names in the hope of preventing the airing of criticism:

Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive domain names for its senior executives and board members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing Website WikiLeaks.

According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of Directors’ and senior executives’ names followed by “sucks” and “blows”.

For example, the company registered a number of domains for CEO Brian Moynihan: BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com.

You know, I REALLY don’t think that this is going to help when people realize that you were smoking cigars lit from the original notes of mortgages that you have foreclosed on, and that you used homeless orphans as ash trays.

More seriously, if Wikileaks has your documents, then people will go there, or to one of its legion of mirrors, to get that information.

Another Day, Another Obama Sellout

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So, after some arm twisting, the FCC has passed something it’s calling network neutrality regulations.

Surprise, surprise, it’s another cave to corporate interests, allowing for tiered access in wired service, and what amounts to no protection at all for wireless.

The two most prominent consumer protection organizations, Public Knowledge and Free Press have both condemned the deal.

I would also note that the FCC decided not to define broadband back to a telecommunications service (Title II), and instead have elected to have it remain a data service (Title I) which the courts have already slapped down the FCC about, so not only are these rules toothless, they are almost certainly going to be overturned in court.

Once again, the Obama administration has decided to treat the miscreants, in this case the incumbents who have taken billions in subsidies to make the US last in the developed world on connectivity and cost, as partners to be parleyed with, and given them pretty much what they want.