Polarizing stories spotted in the news

[Jinx999]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusi...021-12-10/

Threatening poll workers.

[Bob Schroeck]

The head of the Oath Keepers has been arrested and charged with Seditious Conspiracy

[Bob Schroeck]

My Pillow guy claims to have "enough evidence" to put 92% of the country's population in prison for election fraud.

[robkelk]

The head of the Oath Keepers has been arrested and charged with Seditious Conspiracy

Just so everybody's on the same page: 18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

[Jinx999]

https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-ame...edictions/

Here's an old editorial. Everybody likes to compare biblical "prophecy" and look for signs that we're in the End Times, right?

[Bob Schroeck]

I think I posted a link to that more than a year back... but it's always good to bring things like that around again.

[robkelk]

It's been revised slightly.

[robkelk]

Despite all logic, state governor still insists hitting F12 in a web browser is 'hacking'

[LynnInDenver]

It's not about the website... it's about trying to make the media afraid to report anything bad about the government.

[Black Aeronaut]

Uhm, yeeeaaaahhh.  Even if it could be defined as "Hacking", there is a such thing as "White Hat Hackers" who serve to find things like Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and notify the appropriate people.

That said, if there was any sort of crime at all, it was in that the reporter chose to first publish it in the news rather than first report it to the local government.  There's nothing in the article that states that this reporter ever attempted to notify governing officials of the vulnerability before running the story.

Which, in my mind, makes what he did morally wrong... but technically legal.  It'd be a bit different if he first notified the government, and then was threatened to fuck off and stay quiet, and thus significantly more controversial.

What he did instead was to make the vulnerability widely known, denying the local government a chance to fix it before actual "Black Hats" could capitalize on the vulnerability and steal the Social Security credentials of educators.

In which case, Governor Parson would have been better off pursuing a civil suit on behalf of these educators to this effect - that no matter what the State's culpability in the matter was, the reporter was reckless in exposing this vulnerability to the general public without giving anyone a chance to fix it first.  Even if you could consider the news report itself to be the "notification", it's extremely unlikely that the government could react fast enough to secure the vulnerable data before Black Hats could get to it.

To put it in a metaphor, it'd be like as if someone working for the state left an armored car, with the educator's payroll inside, unlocked and unattended in front of a bank... which is bad, sure.  But then, someone comes along, checks to see if the doors are unlocked, and upon seeing that they are, throws them all open and screams to everyone present, "HEY GUYS!  CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!"

Yeah.  Not technically a crime, but extremely uncool.

[LynnInDenver]

BA, my understanding is the the reporter actually sat on the information until the website was actually fixed, and then released the story.

[Bob Schroeck]

Sidney Powell Finally Admits That ‘Perhaps’ the Kraken Is Not Real

[Black Aeronaut]

BA, my understanding is the the reporter actually sat on the information until the website was actually fixed, and then released the story.

Apologies.  I didn't see that in the article, and if it was mentioned, it was a short enough blurb that I missed it in a casual reading.

[LynnInDenver]

BA, my understanding is the the reporter actually sat on the information until the website was actually fixed, and then released the story.

Apologies.  I didn't see that in the article, and if it was mentioned, it was a short enough blurb that I missed it in a casual reading.

No worries... this does bring up the other problem... the "let's instigate a knee jerk reaction among my supporters" in terms of the demand that the reporter face charges that aren't really what they did. "Publicly accessible in the HTML of the page" requires a disproportionate stretching of the definition of "hacking", while also casting allusions as to the ethics of the reporter. It will probably provide at least some of the intended effect; some reporters will decide not to pursue future stories of this type because they don't want the public headaches.

[Labster]

BA, my understanding is the the reporter actually sat on the information until the website was actually fixed, and then released the story.

Apologies.  I didn't see that in the article, and if it was mentioned, it was a short enough blurb that I missed it in a casual reading.

No worries... this does bring up the other problem... the "let's instigate a knee jerk reaction among my supporters" in terms of the demand that the reporter face charges that aren't really what they did. "Publicly accessible in the HTML of the page" requires a disproportionate stretching of the definition of "hacking", while also casting allusions as to the ethics of the reporter. It will probably provide at least some of the intended effect; some reporters will decide not to pursue future stories of this type because they don't want the public headaches.

Having met reporters... nah.  Getting these kinds of government oppression stories written about oneself are status symbols for reporters, especially for a case so unlikely to succeed.

And now for something completely different:

Not only do we have the D.C. jail, which is the D.C. gulag.  But now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staffs, and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives.

Terrifying.  But you would expect that from an Italian like Pelosi.  Tyranny is a dish best served cold.

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, she's already gotten, what, most of a week of mockery for that one.

[robkelk]

Well, you can't be too careful about gazpacho, as Arnold Rimmer learned to his dismay. It's obviously the job of the gazpacho police to tell people these things.

[Jinx999]

And Putin has made a speech that denies that Ukraine has the right to exist as a country and demands that they stop doing things that are only being done in inept Russian propaganda . . .

[Dartz]

==== Yeah, I sobered up. Was meant at a crock at the idiocy of Gazpacho but maybe too far.

[robkelk]

And Putin has made a speech that denies that Ukraine has the right to exist as a country and demands that they stop doing things that are only being done in inept Russian propaganda . . .

Just before sending troops across the border into what he just said were independent countries.

[robkelk]

* robkelk blows dust off thread

U.S. town is considering a ban on all public art

Carrie Gendreau is a conservative Christian and Republican who also sits in the state legislature. She has said her policies are guided by biblical scripture, and recently told the Boston Globe: "Homosexuality is an abomination."

At a town meeting in August, she complained about some of the art appearing in town. She urged residents to do their own research into these symbols, such as the rainbow outside the Chinese restaurant and, in another local work, the sun depicted as an eye.

Well, if you insist.

Then God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth. When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will appear in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures. Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth.”
-- Genesis 9:12-16, New Living Translation

So this conservative "Christian" is complaining about something that her holy book says her God placed in the sky. Hence me putting "Christian" in quotes when talking about her -- if she doesn't even know something that she should have been taught in Sunday School, she isn't much of a believer.

[classicdrogn]

She could at least have listened to Kermit the Frog. Rainbows have nothing to hide.

[Jinx999]

Or what the US Constitution has to say about freedom of speech.

[Bob Schroeck]

Haven't you heard? The Constitution is woke, and needs to be abolished.

[hazard]

For people like this it's pretty much never about what the actually declared rights are and pretty much always about how they hurt others. It's just malice and cruelty.