Monthly Archives: May 2021

Reuters notes an important ruling by SCOTUS:

The justices decided that federal immigration law requires authorities to include all relevant details for a notice to appear for a hearing in one document rather than sending the information across multiple documents. While a technical issue, the ruling could affect hundreds of thousands of immigration cases.

“In this case, the law’s terms ensure that, when the federal government seeks a procedural advantage against an individual, it will at least supply him with a single and reasonably comprehensive statement of the nature of the proceedings against him,” conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the ruling.

Gorsuch was joined by the court’s three liberal justices as well as conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett.

And this is important because:

Under federal law, immigrants who are not lawful permanent residents may apply to have their deportation canceled if they have been in the United States for at least 10 years. The time counted to reach that threshold ends when the government initiates immigration proceedings with a notice to appear, a limit known as the “stop-time” rule.

In 2013, eight years after he entered the country, police stopped Niz-Chavez for a broken tail light on his vehicle. The federal government followed up with a notice to appear for a deportation hearing.

After the Supreme Court in 2018 found in another case that notices to appear that omitted the time and date of the hearing were deficient, Niz-Chavez cited his faulty notice to argue that the stop-time rule had not been triggered in his case.

And so Niz-Chavez gets past the decade mark. Seemingly trivial rules can have outsized impact in the judicial system.

Ow, this one hurts. By Jennifer Rubin, “Hey, whatever happened to the border crisis?”:

I admit to a certain amount of amusement about this software, new to me, made by Cellebrite, as analyzed and published on Signal:

Cellebrite makes software to automate physically extracting and indexing data from mobile devices. They exist within the grey – where enterprise branding joins together with the larcenous to be called “digital intelligence.” Their customer list has included authoritarian regimes in Belarus, Russia, Venezuela, and China; death squads in Bangladesh; military juntas in Myanmar; and those seeking to abuse and oppress in Turkey, UAE, and elsewhere. A few months ago, they announced that they added Signal support to their software.

Their products have often been linked to the persecution of imprisoned journalists and activists around the world, but less has been written about what their software actually does or how it works.

Wait for it …

Anyone familiar with software security will immediately recognize that the primary task of Cellebrite’s software is to parse “untrusted” data from a wide variety of formats as used by many different apps. That is to say, the data Cellebrite’s software needs to extract and display is ultimately generated and controlled by the apps on the device, not a “trusted” source, so Cellebrite can’t make any assumptions about the “correctness” of the formatted data it is receiving. This is the space in which virtually all security vulnerabilities originate.

Since almost all of Cellebrite’s code exists to parse untrusted input that could be formatted in an unexpected way to exploit memory corruption or other vulnerabilities in the parsing software, one might expect Cellebrite to have been extremely cautious. Looking at both UFED and Physical Analyzer, though, we were surprised to find that very little care seems to have been given to Cellebrite’s own software security. Industry-standard exploit mitigation defenses are missing, and many opportunities for exploitation are present.

As just one example (unrelated to what follows), their software bundles FFmpeg DLLs that were built in 2012 and have not been updated since then. There have been over a hundred security updates in that time, none of which have been applied.

Oh! That’s a burn. It’s beginning to taste like a company that concerns itself with nothing but making money, doesn’t it?

And that’s worth considering. At the highest ethical standard, a company marketing a software package should endeavour to deliver software with no security holes, now shouldn’t it? Oh, sure, given today’s primitive technology, security holes are a given – but the ethical marketers and developers should make the least little effort, right?

But, then, ethical developers shouldn’t be developing software for the “we’ll use it to torture our journalists” market either, wouldn’t you say? People signing on for that work … probably are not all that ethical.

So, in the end, it’s all not much of a surprise. Low class software because doing it properly requires a mindset that would refuse to do it in the first place.

Interesting how that all works out.

WaPo’s Margaret Sullivan profiles Harrisburg, PA’s WITF, a public radio station devoted to news:

The journalists at WITF, an all-news public radio station in Harrisburg, Pa., made a perfectly reasonable decision a few months ago.

They decided they wouldn’t shrug off the damaging lies of election denialism.

They wouldn’t do what too many in Big Journalism have done in recent months: shove into the memory hole the undemocratic efforts by some Republican elected officials to delegitimize or overturn the 2020 presidential election. …

But Harrisburg’s WITF has gone a different route: They want you to remember. …

The deadly culmination of that anti-democratic lie, the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, solidified their thinking. In late January, the station — whose newsroom includes six reporters and two editors — posted an explanatory story stating that they would be regularly reminding their audience that some state legislators signed a letter urging Congress to vote against certifying the Pennsylvania election results, and that some members of Congress had voted against certifying the state’s election results for President Biden, despite no evidence to support their election-fraud claims.

While some might argue that this constitutes a journalistically impermissible bias in WITF reporting, I find that position hard to credit: the deliberate actions of conspiring to obstruct the confirmation of President-elect Biden in the face of 60+ failed lawsuits, most of which were little more than obstruction, is not a rumor or opinion, but a fact that should be considered an important part of the next election, especially if the members involved run for reelection. In other words, it’s ongoing news that needs to be considered over the long term.

And this is a direct blow at one of the defects of a democracy, one that the Republicans are depending on, if Erick Erickson is any authority:

Continuing down the path [Democratic strategist James] Carville wants of tying the GOP to the January 6th insurrection may make Democrats feel good, but it won’t actually work because (1) the GOP will control redistricting in most states; (2) voters generally like their own congressman; (3) most of the GOP has plausible deniability on the issue; (4) memories are short; and (5) 2022 will be about Biden and Woke-O Haram, which Carville knows isn’t going away and is regularly now amplified by the media and corporate America to the seething resentment of the American public.

[My bold.]

The seething resentment of the America public should be that their Republic was endangered by the emotional five year olds who were manipulated into an attack on the US Congress on January 6th, and Erickson, I note without surprise but great sadness, acknowledges this happened and then proceeds to assert that the Democrats are still more evil than his own cohorts.

If the Republicans howl foul, tough shit. You talked the talk, now you walk the walk. The only part missing will be the heads down in shame. Kudos to WITF!

For the record, Minnesota Representatives voting not to accept the Presidential election results: Michelle Fischbach (R) and Jim Hagedorn (R). Current National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Emmer (R-MN) did not join his Minnesota colleagues, so color me a little surprised that he’s now chairman of the NRCC. The list of Minnesota Representatives who signed on in support of the ludicrous Texas v Pennsylvania lawsuit is comprised of Hagedorn and Emmer.

In case you were thinking of changing careers to Christian prophet, you should be aware that someone out there thinks you should be meeting a set of standards in order to assume this prestigious role. Here’s their lead-in:

WE BELIEVE that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including the gift of prophecy and the ministry of the prophet, are essential for the edification of the Body of Christ and the work of the ministry, which is why Scripture exhorts us to earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially that we may prophesy (see 1 Cor. 14:1, 39). Prophetic ministry is of great importance to the Church and must be encouraged, welcomed, and nurtured.

Or, in other words, We want to be prophets because it’s easy work, so here’s why we’re essential workers.

But they do recognize that the greedy and undisciplined may endanger everyone’s livelihood:

WE RECOGNIZE the unique challenges posed by the internet and social media, as anyone claiming to be a prophet can release a word to the general public without any accountability or even responsibility. While it is not possible to stop the flood of such words online, we urge all believers to check the lives and fruit of those they follow online and also see if they are part of a local church body and have true accountability for their public ministries and personal lives. We also urge prophetic ministers posting unfiltered and untested words purportedly from the Lord to first submit those words to peer leaders for evaluation.

There’s more, but that’s enough. As an agnostic who’s quite dubious about any of the current religions being anywhere close to reality, I find it hard to take this seriously; still, I can see how someone writing this may be in earnest. I don’t want to be too unfair in mocking them, but it’s still important to realize that belief is not proof, and that prophecy, being fundamentally based on private knowledge rather than public knowledge, should be recognized as an unsound basis for communications with the Divine, should it exist. A Divine creature is unconstrained by definition, and thus prophecy is a form of communications completely uncalled for and ultimately damaging, even destructive, of a belief in the Divine.

Prophecy should simply be ignored as untrustworthy.

Drew McCoy, via Friendly Atheist, diagrams successful Protestant church services:

It’s worth noting that the development is not a priori, but rather an example of social evolution. Competing designs of church services have varying levels of success; those designs that are less successful are tweaked or discarded. It’s not surprising that a common sequence of segments is shared across churches.

Codicil:

1. a supplement to a will, containing an addition, explanation, modification, etc., of something in the will.
2. any supplement; appendix. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “From former Soviet archives, chilling new details of the Cuban missile crisis,” Max Boot, WaPo:

Such close calls spurred Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev into intensive diplomacy to defuse the crisis. Their publicly announced deal was for the Soviets to withdraw their missiles in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba. But there was a secret codicil: Kennedy agreed to withdraw Jupiter missiles from Turkey that could reach Moscow as quickly as Soviet missiles in Cuba could reach Washington. Interestingly, Plokhy writes, Khrushchev got the idea of asking for the removal of the Jupiters from an article in The Washington Post by columnist Walter Lippmann, who was privy to White House discussions.

Because the Jupiter deal remained secret, Kennedy was widely seen to have ended the crisis with a display of strength. Khrushchev was humiliated and forced out of power two years later. In reality both men deserve credit for making concessions to save humanity.

Put anyone in 21 inch heels and they look tall. Too tall. To tell the truth, her distant cousin is Godzilla.

Angel-a (2005), a French film, follows the travails of Parisian André Moussah, in hock up to his eyeballs to Parisian gangsters of various flavors. We open with André pleading his case to officials of both legal and illegal nature, but all leave his fruit jar empty, and soon he is on one of the famous Parisian bridges over the Seine, crawling over the railing and onto one of the supports, taking the long stare down into the dangerous,  polluted –

But there’ll be a brief interruption of this suicide attempt, as there is a competitor on the next bridge support over, glaring at André for usurping her moment in the burst of a spotlight: Angela. After a brief and acrimonious exchange, she takes the plunge.

With André, one armed and all, directly following her. How he saves her with only one functioning arm, I’ll never know.

Having landed his monstrous fish, she now promises to help him with his fiscal problems, and she does so with gusto: first, advice, and then whoring herself out in such volume and prices as to excite envy – or, perhaps, disgust – from any true professional. But there’s an interesting undercurrent: this is a job, a duty to be performed. It may amuse Angela, and André’s bounty of character defects may add to her complex reaction to her entire situation, but this is a function for her, a reason to exist.

And, as André’s situation improves, Angela becomes less and less satisfied. No past, she claims; no future? How does André figure into Angela’s needs?

How can one love a man with André’s many and manifest faults?

The plot becomes more and more organic, but the dialogue never becomes natural, and that’s a real burden on a story in which the action is the dialogue. It gets worse if you don’t speak French and the print you’re seeing is not dubbed; captions made this a bit of a challenge to thoroughly understand. But it remains intriguing, from the Parisian criminals who become victims, if you will, to André, Angela, and the unseen puppet master orchestrating it all. It may leave you unsatisfied, but boredom is less likely.

A lovely yellow.

The attempted scandal of the week:

Republicans have seized on a recent claim that former Secretary of State John Kerry told Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif about Israeli strikes on Iranian interests in Syria. Zarif made the allegation in leaked audio, a claim which, if true, would undermine the US relationship with Israel.

Though Kerry has flatly denied that any such conversation took place, a group of Republican senators have asked the President to investigate the allegation. A handful of other congressional Republicans are calling for Kerry’s resignation from his current position on the National Security Council if the allegations are confirmed. [CNN/Politics]

This may be a compliment to President Biden by the Iranians, a recognition that the President, despite the recalcitrance of Republican leaders, has indeed proven an effective leader at this early date in his term. How so? By attempting to introduce doubt about the Democrats in the minds of the public.

It’s also an attack on Kerry, a known force in the American foreign policy world, whose expertise and long experience marks him as a target of anyone wishing to introduce confusion and impotence into the American sphere.

And, no doubt, the Iranians recognize the greedy grasping after power of the Republicans, having seen more than enough of that quality in their own political elites.

In the end, I expect this to quietly fade away, as so many supposed Democratic scandals have done of late, being tenuous creatures of their opponents. Time will tell.