[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #654 Even dealtje met China regelen

twitter:

ABCPolitics twitterde op vrijdag 16-08-2019 om 18:38:49 Pres. Trump phoned a supporter whose weight he mocked at a rally, a White House official said, after the president mistook the attendee for a protester. https://t.co/pVwuH6F5fs reageer retweet

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The president called the supporter about the moment and left a voicemail during his Thursday night flight on Air Force One back to New Jersey, where he is spending the week at his golf club, the official said.

The supporter told ABC News that the president did, in fact, call him and leave a voicemail. He said Trump thanked him for his support and for coming to the rally.

Asked if the president apologized, the supporter replied, "No, why would he apologize?"

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Op vrijdag 16 augustus 2019 17:44 schreef Montov het volgende:

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Nog een pareltje in deze categorie
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Trump: "You have no choice but to vote for me, because your 401(k)'s down the tubes, everything's gonna be down the tubes," Trump said while speaking in Manchester, N.H. "So whether you love me or hate me, you gotta vote for me," he added.

Trump:'love me or hate me, you got to vote for me'

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Judge orders Georgia to switch to paper ballots for 2020 elections (ArsTechnica)
Judge finds several serious flaws with Georgia's current election technology.

Election security advocates scored a major victory on Thursday as a federal judge issued a 153-page ruling ordering Georgia officials to stop using its outdated electronic voting machines by the end of the year. The judge accepted the state's argument that it would be too disruptive to switch to paper ballots for municipal elections being held in November 2019. But she refused to extend that logic into 2020, concluding that the state had plenty of time to phase out its outdated touchscreen machines before then.

The state of Georgia was already planning to phase out its ancient touchscreen electronic voting machines in favor of a new system based on ballot-marking machines. Georgia hopes to have the new machines in place in time for a presidential primary election in March 2020. In principle, that switch should address many of the critics' concerns.

The danger, security advocates said, was that the schedule could slip and Georgia could then fall back on its old, insecure electronic machines in the March primary and possibly in the November 2020 general election as well. The new ruling by Judge Amy Totenberg slams the door shut on that possibility. If Georgia isn't able to switch to its new high-tech system, it will be required to fall back on a low-tech system of paper ballots rather than continue using the insecure and buggy machines it has used for well over a decade.

Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist who served as the plaintiffs' star witness in the case, hailed the judge's ruling.

"The court's ruling recognizes that Georgia's voting machines are so insecure, they're unconstitutional," Halderman said in an email to Ars. "That's a huge win for election security that will reverberate across other states that have equally vulnerable systems."

Georgia’s voting technology is deeply flawed
Totenberg's ruling is 153 pages long because it presents a mountain of evidence that Georgia's touchscreen voting machines—as well as back-office software the state uses to manage voter registrations, design ballots, and count votes—are outdated and insecure.

Georgia is still using Diebold Accuvote TSX touchscreen machines whose hardware and software date back to around 2005. In 2006 and 2007, security researchers discovered numerous security vulnerabilities in these machines—problems serious enough to cause California to decertify them from use in state elections.

After one 2006 report, Totenberg writes, "Diebold was forced to create a security patch for the vulnerable TSX software." Yet incredibly, "there is no evidence that Georgia ever implemented the software patch or made any upgrades to protect the integrity of its DRE machines," Totenberg says.
The security problems found by those early researchers were serious. Not only can someone with physical access to the machine install vote-stealing malware, it's also possible to deliver such malware using viruses that spread from machine to machine on the memory cards election workers use to load ballot information onto them. Hence, a malicious actor with a few minutes' access to a single machine could potentially hack dozens or even hundreds of machines.

These concerns seemed somewhat theoretical when they were first raised around 2006. After all, who would want to hack an election? But they've been given added urgency after revelations that the Russian government actively probed state election systems—including in Georgia—in 2016.

Not actually air-gapped
Besides hacking voting machines directly, another way someone could compromise an election would be to first hack the office computers of election officials. Officials use these computers to create ballot definition files that are later transferred to voting machines via memory cards. Here too, there's a risk that malware could ride along with the ballot files and infect machines.

Georgia election officials dismissed these concerns. In 2018 testimony before Judge Totenberg, official Michael Barnes insisted that the computers used to design electronic ballots were air-gapped from the Internet, making it impossible for remote attackers to compromise them. But subsequent testimony made it clear that this was wrong. In reality, Totenberg writes, ballots were designed "on public-facing internet-connected desktop computers of the individual ballot builders, then copied over from the public facing computer onto a 'lockable' USB drive for transfer to the 'air-gapped' system."

In court testimony, Halderman pointed out that this setup isn't actually secure. "Air-gapping" a computer does no good if people are regularly transferring files to it from Internet-connected computers.
It gets worse. In 2016, a Georgia-based security researcher discovered that Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems, which has a contract to help Georgia manage its elections, had a massive cache of sensitive election-related documents—including private voter data and passwords for election systems—publicly available on its website for anyone to download. After being notified of the breach, it took officials months to remove the sensitive information from the website.

Many voters reported problems with the machines
Meanwhile, dozens of ordinary Georgia voters told the court that they had experienced problems with Georgia's touchscreen machines. Totenberg describes one voter's experience:

>Teri Adams described that when she voted at the Bleckley County Courthouse and selected candidate Stacey Abrams for governor on the DRE screen, she noticed that her designated selection was listed as Brian Kemp on the review screen. She tried to vote for Abrams a second time, but the review screen again showed Kemp as her chosen candidate. Ms. Adams cast her ballot on the third try when her selection in the governor’s race remained Abrams. Adams reported her problems on “machine number 2” to the poll workers whose only response was “did it take your vote?”

Adams was hardly an isolated case. A number of voters reported that it took two or three tries to ensure that a voting machine was choosing their preferred candidate.

Is this evidence that hackers were tampering with the election? Probably not. It seems more likely that Georgia's touchscreen machines are just old and poorly designed. Someone who hacked the machines in order to steal the election wouldn't have any reason to alarm voters by showing the stolen vote on the screen—they could show the voter's correct choice on the screen while recording a different result in the electronic record.

But the fact that so many voters have reported problems with the machines is a problem in its own right. A mis-recorded vote is a problem regardless of whether it was the result of hacking, malfunctioning equipment or just a badly designed user interface. And there's now ample evidence that touchscreen machines are a less effective way to record voters' choices than a traditional paper ballot.

Georgia must stop using its machines after 2019
Judge Totenberg had all of these problems in mind as she was deciding what to do with the lawsuit. She was convinced by the plaintiffs' argument that Georgia's current election system was fatally flawed and needed to be overhauled—and that a hand-marked paper ballot was the gold standard for secure and reliable voting.

At the same time, she took seriously warnings from the state of Georgia that an abrupt shift to paper ballots could cause more disruption than it was worth. The issue was complicated by the fact that Georgia's legislature recently passed legislation directing that the state develop a new election system based on ballot-marking devices—electronic voting machines that print out a paper ballot the voter can examine.

Georgia has signed a contract with a vendor for these new machines and plans to start testing them in a few cities in this November's elections. The state aims to start rolling the new system out statewide in time for next March's presidential primary. Under that timeline, the state would stop using its current, insecure machines before the end of the year.
The problem, critics point out, is that the state may not be able to roll out the new system in time for next March's election. Experts testified that Georgia has set an unusually aggressive timeline for standing up a completely new election system, and this creates a risk that the schedule could slip. In that case, Georgia's most likely fallback would be to continue using its existing touchscreen machines for the spring primary election—and possibly even the November 2020 general election.

So Judge Totenberg decided to split the difference. She denied the plaintiffs' request to force Georgia to begin using paper ballots in the November 2019 election. She accepted the state's argument that it would be a waste of resources to set up a paper-based system that will only be used in a single election—and that such an order could distract from efforts to develop the new system for 2020.

However, she also ordered the state not to use its old touchscreen machines as a fallback for elections in 2020. If the new ballot-marking devices aren't ready by March, the state will be required to use hand-marked paper ballots instead.

People are finally listening to computer scientists
The order is an important ruling for voters in Georgia, who won't have to worry about outdated equipment failing to accurately record their vote in 2020. But the ruling is also an important milestone in the broader debate over voting machine security. Judge Totenberg's ruling is a strong endorsement of the consensus of computer security experts about the dangers of computer-based voting. Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel put it well in a report quoted by Totenberg:

>All digital information—such as ballot definitions, voter choice records, vote tallies, or voter registration lists—is subject to malicious alteration; there is no technical mechanism currently available that can ensure that a computer application—such as one used to record or count votes—will produce accurate results; testing alone cannot ensure that systems have not been compromised; and any computer system used for elections—such as a voting machine or e-pollbook—can be rendered inoperable.

As a result of these arguments, most computer scientists favor voting via a hand-marked paper ballot. They believe that computerized optical scanners are a reasonable way to speed up the vote-counting process provided that a state also provides for routine post-election audits that hand count a random sample of ballots to verify the accuracy of the machine count.

Federal legislation to strengthen election security has been blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But that doesn't preclude changes at the state level, with the courts spurring states along in the most egregious cases. Totenberg's clear and thorough ruling will give opponents of electronic voting machines a bit of extra momentum as they race to decommission as many electronic voting machines as possible before the November 2020 presidential election.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op zaterdag 17-08-2019 om 00:20:49 The city of West Hollywood approved a proposal to remove Trump's star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame last week, citing recent costly vandalism and recent demonstrations around the star. https://t.co/mBndqVZDkz reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 00:04 schreef Whiskers2009 het volgende:
Autopsierapport: Epstein pleegde zelfmoord
https://www.nu.nl/buitenl(...)ichzelf-verhing.html

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Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson issued a terse statement Friday announcing her conclusion: “After careful review of all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings, the determination on the death of Jeffrey Epstein is below — Cause: Hanging. Manner: Suicide.” She has shared her findings with law enforcement officials, according to people familiar with the matter, but no further details have been disclosed.

WP

twitter:

migold twitterde op zaterdag 17-08-2019 om 01:20:28 Update: Here's a statement from Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers on the medical examiner's autopsy results. https://t.co/gVWyBDG8Na https://t.co/mWRNdtK3Pj reageer retweet

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On Dec. 9, 2008, police raided the home of the millionaire James Cummings in Belfast, Maine. Cummings was an abusive husband, and he had been shot in the head by his wife, but that wasn’t what still disturbs investigators to this day. At Cummings’s home, police obtained radiological material and literature on constructing a dirty bomb. Cummings had collected the radioactive isotope thorium-232 and depleted uranium, the latter of which he bought online, along with the materials necessary to build a conventional explosive. Angered by the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president, Cummings had compiled the materials he deemed necessary to build a dirty bomb just 42 days before the inauguration.

At the scene, investigators found literature on how to create different types of radiological dispersal devices (RDDs), colloquially referred to as dirty bombs, using the radioactive isotopes cesium-137, cobalt-60, and strontium-90 and an application for the U.S. Nationalist Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization. Cummings had ties to white nationalist groups, he revered Adolf Hitler, and, according to workers who spent time in his home, he was a collector of Nazi memorabilia.

More than a decade later, on Aug. 3, 2019, a gunman posted an anti-immigrant, white nationalist manifesto on a far right forum, walked into a Walmart on the East side of El Paso, Texas and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 22 people.. There is no longer any question of whether the country is facing the rise of domestic white supremacist terrorists. The question is how far they will go.

While the United States has been focused on the trafficking of nuclear and radiological materials abroad, experts at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) have argued that the threat of dangerous radiological materials being used in America’s own backyard is “just as serious.”

With a wide variety of civilian uses, including in the medical, industrial, and research fields, radiological materials rated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as Category 1 threats—such as cesium-137, cobalt-60, and strontium-90—are left relatively unguarded. These materials could be used to contaminate a major U.S. city with devastating consequences.

That is what makes these devices so attractive to modern terrorist organizations. The Islamic State declared its intent to get its hands on a nuclear device in its propaganda magazine Dabiq. Al Qaeda trained the domestic terrorist José Padilla in Egypt and Afghanistan and then sent him back to the United States to detonate a dirty bomb.

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twitter:

CNNSitRoom twitterde op vrijdag 16-08-2019 om 00:58:57 .@RepTedLieu on Lewandowski’s subpoena: “Corey Lewandowski sent out a tweet that emphasized he was a private citizen. I'm glad he did that, because executive privilege does not apply to private citizens. I look forward to him testifying before the House Judiciary Committee." https://t.co/49sTK5BwMP reageer retweet

twitter:

washingtonpost twitterde op vrijdag 16-08-2019 om 19:59:22 Lewandowski says he’ll happily appear before Judiciary panel next month and defend Trump https://t.co/92QEBF87f1 reageer retweet

twitter:

_waleedshahid twitterde op vrijdag 16-08-2019 om 04:02:03 @RashidaTlaib @IlhanMN In 1975, South Africa's apartheid government denied a black member of Congress an entry visa, accusing him of "intervention in South Africa's internal affairs." https://t.co/JekHJLfuyC reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 00:43 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

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Bizar dat hier een rechter aan te pas moet komen als je leest wat voor matige garanties de huidige systemen geven.

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Thousands of Shell contractors were in attendance at Donald Trump’s big union speech in Monaca, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean they wanted to be. While it’s no secret that the workers were paid to be there, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on Friday that the consequences of not attending amounted to far more than just the loss of one day’s wages. Employees who wanted to skip the MAGAfest were technically free to do so, but their choice would cause a loss of as much as $700 later in the week.

Those that decided to sit out the event would have an excused absence, the company said, and would not qualify for overtime pay on Friday. The company has a 56-hour workweek with 16 hours of overtime. That means those workers who attended Mr. Trump’s speech and showed up for work on Friday meeting the overtime threshold are being paid at a rate of time and a half, while those that didn’t go to hear the president are being paid the regular rate, despite the fact that both groups did not do work on the site on Tuesday.

And everyone knows how much this administration loves overtime.

Those that did attend were required to be present from 7:00 a.m. until well after 3:00 p.m., with no lunch break allowed, or lunch provided. Additionally, employees were told that they were expected to “promote good will from the labor unions” by Shell, whatever their personal feelings about the current administration might be.

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 02:08 schreef kladderadatsch het volgende:
Dit is gewoon chantage.

Pennsylvania union leaders reveal Shell employees who skipped Trump rally lost hundreds in income.
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https://www.dailykos.com/(...)t-hundreds-in-income

https://www.post-gazette.(...)stories/201908160113

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 01:59 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Dat visa weigeren aan een congteslid is al eerder gebeurd.

twitter:

_waleedshahid twitterde op vrijdag 16-08-2019 om 04:02:03 @:RashidaTlaib @:IlhanMN In 1975, South Africa's apartheid government denied a black member of Congress an entry visa, accusing him of "intervention in South Africa's internal affairs." https://t.co/JekHJLfuyC reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 06:33 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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Dus als ik het goed begrijp is het bijwonen van de rally gewoon betaald. Maar komen ze niet opdagen voor de rally en nemen ze dus een vrije dag dan worden de overuren niet uitbetaald?
Jij vind dus dat een ieder doorbetaald moet worden of er nu gewerkt word of niet?

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 07:00 schreef kladderadatsch het volgende:

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Nee, je begrijpt het dus niet goed, zou het gewoon nog eens lezen.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op zaterdag 17-08-2019 om 05:15:02 Trump seems to be quite upset about the pictures that show a few empty seats at his rally in New Hampshire. reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 17-08-2019 om 04:44:52 Look at the tremendous overflow at packed arena in New Hampshire last night. Sorry we couldn’t get you in, will be back soon! https://t.co/Rvd2TeJrpo reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 07:56 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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Het kan aan mij liggen hoor maar de mensen die niet naar de rally zijn gegaan die krijgen dus niet betaald. Dus buiten het feit dat ze een vrije dag hebben gekregen hebben ze ook geen recht op extra geld voor overwerk.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 16-08-2019 om 23:50:04 The Trump admin has taken one of its most aggressive steps yet to legalize anti-transgender discrimination by telling the Supreme Court that federal law allows firing workers solely for being transgender, BuzzFeed News reports.. https://t.co/C7jqVxq95A reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 07:56 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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“The company has a 56-hour workweek with 16 hours of overtime. That means those workers who attended Mr. Trump’s speech and showed up for work on Friday meeting the overtime threshold are being paid at a rate of time and a half, while those that didn’t go to hear the president are being paid the regular rate, despite the fact that both groups did not do work on the site on Tuesday.“

Het kan aan mij liggen hoor maar de mensen die niet naar de rally zijn gegaan die krijgen dus niet betaald. Dus buiten het feit dat ze een vrije dag hebben gekregen hebben ze ook geen recht op extra geld voor overwerk.
Tenzij je vind dat zo’n vrije dag gewoon doorbetaald moet worden.
Ik zie eerlijk gezegd het probleem niet zo.

Het is eigenlijk nog beter, een doorbetaalde vrije dag maar geen overuren uitbetaald krijgen omdat je een vrije dag hebt gehad.
Ik persoonlijk heb veel erger meegemaakt en dat gewoon in Nederland.

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 12:37 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:

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Ja het ligt hier denk ik aan jou. Werknemers die niet naar de rally gaan, en over de rest van de week genoeg uren maken dat een aantal daarvan overuren zijn, krijgen die niet als overuren uitbetaald. Dat is chantage, actief geld afpakken/ontzeggen van de werknemers die niet naar de rally gaan.

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Op zaterdag 17 augustus 2019 12:54 schreef Chivaz het volgende:

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Feit is dat de mensen die niet naar de rally zijn gegaan ook niet naar het werk zijn gegaan.
Beiden hebben doorbetaald gekregen alleen krijgen de mensen die thuis zijn gebleven geen overuren doorbetaald.
Je kan het smerig vinden maar het is lang niet zo erg dat je kan spreken over chantage.
Ze hebben immers een betaalde vrije dag gehad.