I know why the right has fetishized violence differently depending on who has the ability to inflict it. Course Fascists always underestimate their enemies, as it is inherent to their ideology. So basically I answered my own question. Good talk.
'Bombshell': Israeli Spyware Used to Hack iPhones of US State Department Officials Calling the Israel-based spyware maker NSO Group an "in-plain-sight national security threat," one expert warned that "a multi-agency investigation is immediately needed." December 3, 2021 Multiple news outlets revealed Friday that Apple notified at least 11 U.S. State Department officials that their iPhones were recently hacked by an unknown party or parties with spyware developed by the private Israeli firm NSO Group. "A multi-agency investigation is immediately needed." The "bombshell," first reported by Reuters, comes after Apple sued NSO Group last month in an effort to protect iPhone users from its Pegasus spyware, which the Israeli company claims to only sell to government law enforcement and intelligence agencies and was the focus of a major reporting project earlier this year. Spoiler Citing multiple unnamed sources, The Washington Post and Reuters explained that State Department employees based in Uganda or elsewhere in East Africa were targeted over several months, and the intrusions "represent the widest known hacks of U.S. officials through NSO technology." According to the Reuters: A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said the threat to U.S. personnel abroad was one of the reasons the administration was cracking down on companies such as NSO and pursuing new global discussion about spying limits. The official added that they have seen "systemic abuse" in multiple countries involving NSO's Pegasus spyware. The National Security Council said in a statement reported by the Post that "we have been acutely concerned that commercial spyware like NSO Group's software poses a serious counterintelligence and security risk to U.S. personnel, which is one of the reasons why the Biden-Harris administration has placed several companies involved in the development and proliferation of these tools on the Department of Commerce's Entity List." Spokespeople for Apple and the State Department declined to comment to Reuters, though the latter also noted that the Commerce Department recently added NSO Group to the Entity List "based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers." "This reporting shows—again—why we need to hold NSO accountable for their actions, and why governments need to support increased security online." While officials at the Ugandan Embassy in Washington, D.C. also did not comment, the Israeli Embassy in the U.S. capital gave a statement to Reuters addressing the fact that Israel's Ministry of Defense approves export licenses for the spyware company. "Cyber products like the one mentioned are supervised and licensed to be exported to governments only for purposes related to counter-terrorism and severe crimes," an Israeli spokesperson said. "The licensing provisions are very clear and if these claims are true, it is a severe violation of these provisions." An NSO Group spokesperson told the news agency that the relevant accounts were canceled and if an internal investigation finds that "these actions indeed happened with NSO's tools," the involved customers "will be terminated permanently and legal actions will take place." The representative added that the company will "cooperate with any relevant government authority and present the full information we will have." Facebook sued NSO in 2019, claiming the Israeli firm's spyware was used on its messaging service WhatsApp. "We've been calling NSO a national security threat for years," Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, tweeted Friday. "This reporting shows—again—why we need to hold NSO accountable for their actions, and why governments need to support increased security online." John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, also responded to the revelations on Twitter, saying that NSO Group has been an "in-plain-sight national security threat for years" and it is "embarrassing that it took a private company to warn them." "Are there victims not notified by Apple?" he asked. "How about the overseas-posted personnel using Androids? Does [the State Department] know now? A multi-agency investigation is immediately needed." Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) similarly told the Post that "companies that enable their customers to hack U.S. government employees are a threat to America's national security and should be treated as such by the government." "I want to be sure the State Department and the rest of the federal government has the tools to detect hacks and respond to them quickly," added Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Federal agencies shouldn't have to rely on the generosity of private companies to know when their phones and devices are hacked." Last month, Apple filed a lawsuit in a California-based U.S. district court accusing NSO Group of violating its terms and conditions as well as state and federal laws. Apple is seeking a permanent injunction to ban the firm from using its devices, services, or software. That suit came after the Pegasus Project—an investigation into NSO's spyware published in July by more than 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries. Coordinated by Forbidden Stories with the technical support of Amnesty International, the project focused on the leak of 50,000 phone numbers of potential surveillance targets, including activists, heads of state, and journalists around the world. The Pegasus Project spurred worldwide calls for an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, and use of such spyware. Exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden—whose leaked documents revealed that in 2007, Israel was flagged as a top espionage threat against the U.S. government—went further, saying in July that NSO Group's industry "should not exist." Scott-Railton, in his series of tweets Friday, highlighted that some progress is being made, pointing to reporting that the White House plans to announce a new initiative related to the abuse of surveillance technology during President Joe Biden's democracy summit next week. According to Bloomberg, an unknown group of countries "with shared concerns about foreign governments and private-sector actors—in China and elsewhere around the world—using digital surveillance and other technologies to enable human rights abuses and target members of ethnic and religious minority groups, journalists, and political dissidents" will commit to a nonbinding code of conduct.
I'm on a family call right now. My mother just proudly showed me her Joe Biden "I Did That" sticker. "That's stupid." "I think it's funny!" Fuck, she's such a dumb FL chud.
I feel like I am the opposite of so many people, I don’t get along with my parents for personal reasons, but we are aligned politically. I almost wish they were trumpers so I could just drop them.
It must be so demoralizing as a nutso right wing extremist white supremacist terrorist (redundant, I know). You try so hard and spend how much money traveling to do these demonstrations only to be disavowed by your own heroes.
Some dbag at the SEC championship a row behind me spent the entire game yelling “let’s go Brandon” no one ever even acknowledged he was there
No Bible scholar, never heard of this, would think I would have if true IF true wonder what the context is
Can’t have kids growing up believing that slavery was bad, fuck around and they’ll grow up wanting to abolish our current system of slavery.
Workers Held at Gunpoint in Modern-Day Slavery Operation in Georgia, Feds Allege Migrant laborers were allegedly forced to dig onions with their bare hands for pennies per bucket as supervisors threatened them with a gun. EO by Emma Ockerman November 24, 2021, 10:32am For years, dozens of Mexican and Central American laborers were brought to the United States to work on Georgia farms as modern-day slaves, according to a newly unsealed federal indictment. Now, two dozen accused members and associates of the crime ring that orchestrated the workers’ exploitation are facing a laundry list of felony charges—all thanks to a three-year, multi-agency federal investigation dubbed “Operation Blooming Onion,” a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia said Monday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office believes Operation Blooming Onion may be one of the country’s largest-ever human trafficking and visa fraud investigations, a spokesperson told VICE News. Spoiler The alleged conditions it uncovered were brutal; at least two workers died, and another was allegedly repeatedly kidnapped and raped. While migrants toiled in Georgia’s fields as contract laborers, some of them dug onions with their bare hands for pennies per bucket, and people threatened them with a gun. Members of the accused human smuggling and labor trafficking operation held onto their passports and documents to keep them from escaping, the indictment alleges. Migrant workers were also allegedly charged unlawful fees they could not afford; some were illegally forced to do lawn care, construction, and restaurant work; and others were threatened with violence or deportation, according to the indictment. All the while, many of the workers lived in cramped, dirty conditions, sometimes with little to no food or safe water. Workers were even unlawfully sold and traded to other conspirators within the crime ring, a so-called “transnational criminal organization”—described as “Patricio TCO” in the indictment—that made more than $200 million as part of the scheme. Maria Patricio, a 70-year-old resident of Nicholls, Georgia, for whom the organization is apparently named, is among the defendants in the federal indictment. She’s accused of filing fraudulent petitions to bring workers into the United States via the country’s H-2A work visa program. Her attorney did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment, but court records show she’s pleaded not guilty to the charges against her. Overall, members and associates of the alleged crime group—who were largely residents of Georgia, Florida, and Texas, and citizens of Mexico illegally living in the U.S.—are facing charges including mail fraud and mail fraud conspiracy, forced labor and forced labor conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and witness tampering, according to the feds’ press release. “The American dream is a powerful attraction for destitute and desperate people across the globe, and where there is need, there is greed from those who will attempt to exploit these willing workers for their own obscene profits,” David Estes, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, said in a statement. “Thanks to outstanding work from our law enforcement partners, Operation Blooming Onion frees more than 100 individuals from the shackles of modern-day slavery and will hold accountable those who put them in chains,” Estes continued. There were essentially three components to their alleged trafficking operation, according to the indictment: misusing the H-2A visa program to get people from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras into the U.S. under the pretext of being agricultural workers, abusing and exploiting the laborers to make money once they were stateside, and laundering the proceeds through big cash purchases, cashier’s checks, and a casino. And, allegedly, the crime ring tried to pull a ton of workers into this scheme: Starting in 2015 at the latest, the organization sent multiple false petitions to the government seeking over 71,000 laborers for an “agricultural employer,” the indictment alleges. The U.S. then issued “thousands” of these visas to foreign nationals. The indictment also alleges that between September 2018 and November 2019, a member of the crime ring “repeatedly raped, kidnapped, and tried to kill Victim 12.” Those crimes were allegedly “aided and abetted” by the only two defendants expressly described as business owners in the indictment: Charles King, the owner of Kings Berry Farms and a registered agent of Hilltop Packing, and Stanley McGauley, the owner of Hilltop Packing. Both are residents of Waycross, Georgia. Neither could immediately be reached for comment. The feds started investigating in November 2018; Homeland Security Investigations, the Labor Department, the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the FBI were all involved in the probe. A few members of the crime ring at one point attempted to instruct a witness to lie to a federal grand jury and deny any knowledge of illegal activity, the indictment alleges. When asked about the status of alleged victims today, Barry Paschal, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia, said, “Victim/Witness services staff and NGOs are assisting the rescued victims (approximately 102).” “In specific circumstances, federal law protects victims of crime from deportation,” Paschal said. In a press conference this week, Estes urged other victims of human trafficking to come forward. “We’re aware of somewhere around 70,000 who have come in under this program fraudulently,” Estes said. “We have 100 actual victims in our district that we were able to locate.”
Yeah, have you seen the submerged bottom of every iceberg in existence? Can’t rule out giant disembodied Marx head with an incomplete data set. Like my therapist said, giant disembodied Marx head isn’t real, it can’t hurt you.
I get that wage slavery is a horrible thing and obviously needs to be eliminated in every single instance, but I really dislike calling it "modern-day slavery." I think it reduces actual chattel slavery by using the same term.