Psalm 51:6 “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden [part] thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”
‘Jellyfish and their cousins are often described as the simplest animals without nervous systems. Because evolutionary scientists have thought jellyfish were such simple creatures, and because many of them show up early in the fossil record, jellyfish were said to be among the earliest animals to evolve.
Marine biologists have been surprised to learn that the modern populations of jellyfish and their cousins are actually much more complex than they ever suspected. Creationists point out that because there are so many of these creatures, there was also probably a large population in the past. The more common a creature is, the more likely it is to be found in the deeper rocks of the fossil record.
More recently, scientists have learned that the supposedly simple nervous system of the jellyfish is actually not so simple. They have confirmed that at least one type of jellyfish has a nervous system with the same advanced features found only in mammals and humans. Most animals generate electrical impulses using sodium. However, like humans, this jellyfish can generate different kinds of impulses depending on whether sodium or calcium is used. Thus, the jellyfish can send twice as much information through its nervous system as most other animals!
Even the Left leaning THE CONVERSATION carried an article concerning the new law here in Australia, that seems to me, takes away even more of our freedoms and privacy. All this is occurring under a supposed CONSERVATIVE Federal government! Is this law truly meant to catch REAL criminals or is it to actually meant to spy on those citizens that may not swallow all the Kool Aid handed out by government? Personally, laws such as this only provides more reasons why many do not trust the government! With that said ‘A new law gives Australian police unprecedented powers for online surveillance, data interception and altering data. These powers, outlined in the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill, raise concerns over potential misuse, privacy and security.
The bill updates the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. In essence, it allows law-enforcement agencies or authorities (such as the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) to modify, add, copy or delete data when investigating serious online crimes.
What’s more, legal hacking by law enforcement may make it easier for criminal hackers to illegally access computer systems via the same vulnerabilities used by the government.
What’s in the law?
The bill introduces three new powers for law-enforcement agencies:
“data disruption warrants” allow authorities to “disrupt data” by copying, deleting or modifying data as they see fit
“network activity warrants” permit the collection of intelligence from devices or networks that are used, or likely to be used, by subject of the warrant
“account takeover warrants” let agencies take control of an online account (such as a social media account) to gather information for an investigation.
There is also an “emergency authorisation” procedure that allows these activities without a warrant under certain circumstances.
However, the new bill gives agencies unprecedented interception or “hacking” powers. It also allows “assistance orders”, which could require selected individuals to assist government hacking or face up to ten years in prison.
Why do police argue this bill is required?
According to the Department of Home Affairs, more and more criminal activity makes use of the “dark web” and “anonymising technologies”. Previous powers are not enough to keep up with these new technologies.
In our view, specific and targeted access to users’ information and activities may be needed to identify possible criminals or terrorists. In some cases, law enforcement agencies may need to modify, delete, copy or add content of users to prevent things like the distribution of child exploitation material. Lawful interception is key to protecting public and national security in the fight of global community against cybercrimes.
How does lawful data interception work?
“Lawful interception” is a network technology that allows electronic surveillance of communications, as authorised by judicial or administrative order. There are standards (which means regulations and rules) for telecommunication and internet service providers to achieve this, such as those recommended by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.
Law-enforcement agencies may require service providers to hand over copies of communications data, decrypted data, or intercepted data without notifying users. Service providers may also have to make available analytical tools such as graphs or charts of target behaviours.
What are the privacy concerns?
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and others have also raised privacy concerns. The bill may impact third parties who are not suspected in the investigation of criminal activities. In particular, the bill can authorise access to third party computers, communication and data.
The Human Rights Law Centre argues the proposed broad powers can potentially compel any individual with relevant knowledge of the targeted computer or network to conduct hacking activities. In some cases this may clash with an individual’s right to freedom from self-incrimination.
Enabling law enforcement agencies to modify potential evidence in a criminal proceeding is also a major issue of concern. The detection and prevention of inappropriate data disruption will be a key issue.
The implementation of the new warrants needs to be in line with Privacy Act 1988 which was introduced to promote and protect the privacy of individuals and to regulate Australian government agencies and organisations. Where some agencies may have exemption against the Privacy Act, it is important to balance between public safety and privacy impacts.
What are the security issues and impacts?
The Identify and Disrupt Bill is a part of an extensive set of Australian digital surveillance laws, including the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018 (TOLA), and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015 (the Mandatory Metadata Retention Scheme).
Under the Identify and Disrupt Bill, access can be gained to encrypted data which could be copied, deleted, modified, and analysed even before its relevance can be determined. This significantly compromises users’ privacy and digital rights.
Modern encryption can be very hard to crack, so hackers often exploit other vulnerabilities in a system to gain access to unencrypted data. Governments too are reportedly using these vulnerabilities for their own lawful hacking.
Specifically, they depend on “zero-day exploits”, which use software vulnerabilities that are unknown to software vendors or developers, to hack into a system. These vulnerabilities could be exploited for months or even years before they are patched.
A conflict of interest may arise if law enforcement agencies are using zero-day exploits for lawful hacking. To protect citizens, we would expect these agencies to report or disclose any software vulnerabilities they discover to the software manufacturers so the weakness can be patched.
However, they may instead choose not to report them and use the vulnerabilities for their own hacking. This puts users at risk, as any third party, including criminal organisations, could exploit these so-called zero day vulnerabilities.
It’s not an abstract concern. In 2016, the CIA’s secret stash of hacking tools itself was stolen and published, highlighting the risk of these activities. The Chinese government has claimed the CIA was hacking targets in China for more than a decade using these and similar tools.
Government use of hacking tools may result in worse cyber security overall. The warrant powers given to Australian law enforcement agencies may protect public safety and national interests, but they may also provide powerful means for adversaries to access government data.
This includes the data and online accounts of targeted individuals like state officials, which may significantly impact national security. This possibility needs to be considered in light of the passing of the new bill.
Sleepy ‘Old Joe Biden has become notorious for only answering scripted questions from preselected reporters, as he did again Thursday when the feeble and weary president said, “Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here,” and then referred to “the first person I was instructed to call on.” Likewise notorious has been his consistent practice, particularly at press conferences regarding Afghanistan, of turning his back and leaving a roomful of reporters shouting questions. And so it was no great surprise Friday when Biden said during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett: “I’m not gonna take any questions, because of the prime minister being here, on, uh, Afghanistan now, but I’ll be available at another time.” When?
After all, this is the president who on July 2 said this in response to questions about Afghanistan: “I want to talk about happy things, man. Look, it’s Fourth of July. I’m concerned that you’re asking me questions that I will answer next week, but it’s the holiday weekend. I’m going to celebrate it. There’s great things happening.”
Nearly two months and several massive disasters in Afghanistan later, the Biden administration still seems to want to focus on happy things and avoid unpleasant questions. On Saturday, as Bryan Preston has noted, Biden’s handlers refused to release the names of the two “high-profile” Islamic State jihadis who were supposedly killed in the recent American drone strike. Why would the administration withhold such information from the public? This kind of unnecessary secrecy has only invited speculation that there was no drone strike at all, or that it failed, and that Biden’s handlers concocted the whole thing in order to give the appearance of decisiveness in the wake of the catastrophe in Kabul.
Amid all this stonewalling, Biden’s handlers released a statement in the president’s name Saturday, depicting Biden as saying: “This morning, I met with my national security team in Washington and my commanders in the field. We discussed the strike that U.S. forces took last night against the terrorist group ISIS-K in Afghanistan. I said we would go after the group responsible for the attack on our troops and innocent civilians in Kabul, and we have. This strike was not the last. We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay. Whenever anyone seeks to harm the United States or attack our troops, we will respond. That will never be in doubt. I thanked General McKenzie for his leadership of that mission, and for his commitment to the safety of our troops in Afghanistan.”
Nothing surprises me anymore with the government or corporations!
‘Barf bags for the reader, knee pads for the author: some very special journalism happening here. This would be a perfect Twitter hit, but I ain’t got Twitter no more, so…
Know what surprised these hard-working Pfizer scientists the most? Not how quickly efficacy fell or how fast antibodies vanished or how many people reported serious side effects!
No, what surprised them the most was how well their vaccine worked!
True story, bro. Can’t make it up.
By the way, the Yahoo/Week article is excerpted (not plagiarized, excepted!) from an even more cringeworthy piece in StatNews.
Worried about the variants? Don’t be! Things are going great. Pfizer promises. And you can trust Pfizer!
Here in Australia the politicians continue to push fear of the Wuhan virus with lockdowns and threat of mandatory vaccinations! However, ‘Now that we have had 18 months to “slow the spread” it is time to take stock of the pandemic. We have learned many good things that the media and our pandemic managers rarely report. Most fundamentally, we do not need to be afraid of COVID-19 anymore. The media and some government health authorities are still pushing hysteria and fear, but that should not prevail. Let’s look at the good news that can calm our fears about COVID-19. There’ll be time at a later date to look at the bad and the ugly of the resolving pandemic.
1) Globally, the survival rate for COVID-19 is 99.8%. Under the age of 70, the survival rate for COVID-19 is 99.97%. This is on par with many influenza seasons. Americans younger than 70 do not have to fear COVID-19 any more than influenza and we know how to protect the elderly.
2) Herd immunity for the alpha strain is here. Sixty-seven percent of the American population have had at least one COVID-19 vaccination. The official number of cases is about 10% of the population, but several antibody studies show that the percentage of those with natural immunity is 4-6 times higher. Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins professor, estimates that 80-85% of the population is immune from natural immunity and vaccination. Those who deny this must explain how cases and deaths started to decline in January way before there was a significant vaccine effort. COVID-19 will not go away. Instead, we are transitioning now from a pandemic to endemic status and, indeed, some eminent virologists say vaccinating in the middle of a pandemic is making herd immunity more difficult to obtain through the creation of variants.
3) The average age of death from COVID is 78. The average life expectancy in America is 78. This is not to say, “Don’t worry, only old people are dying of COVID-19.” However, this fact should direct and inform our policies to protect the elderly especially. Children and those under age 70 are at much lower risk.
4) Early outpatient treatment should be adopted immediately for COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine works. Ivermectin works. It has been estimated 85% of COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented were these medicines used early. America’s Frontline Doctors have an excellent compilation of research. The cost of these treatments is $1/day. A new IV treatment, REGEN-COV, has been approved for early use in COVID-19. Don’t wait to see if you will get sick. Treat early.
5) Children are safe from COVID-19 and don’t spread the virus either. A study in the UK showed that the survival rate in children is 99.995%. In the U.S. 335 children have died since the start of the pandemic. A study done by Johns Hopkins and FAIR Health showed that all of the children that died from April 2020 to August 2020 had immune problems or were chronically ill. In that period not one healthy child died. Children have more chance of dying in a car wreck, unintentional drug overdose, or influenza than from COVID-19. Vaccination for healthy children is not needed.
7) Persons who have had COVID-19 infection have a robust and long-lasting immunity. This immunity also is likely to protect against variants. As evidence continues to accumulate that the new mRNA vaccines are neither as effective nor safe as advertised, I would advise not getting the vaccine on top of your natural immunity if you had the COVID-19 infection.
8) There is very little, if any, spread of COVID-19 from asymptomatic persons. This lie was spread early to maximize fear of this new virus. COVID-19 is like other respiratory viral infections—you catch it from being around someone who has symptoms. Like other viral infections, if you are sick stay home, quarantine yourself, and treat yourself. We do not need to quarantine the asymptomatic healthy.
9) The death rate nationally for COVID-19 has been going down since January. Breathless “news” reporters talk about cases, hospital occupation, and contagiousness but never mention the death decline. There has been a small uptick in deaths in some areas over the last week, but not anywhere close to last winter. (There will be some variations in the death rate as we transition to endemic status)
10) The Delta variant is acting like a typical historical virus variant. Typically, variants happen all the time and are more contagious but less deadly. Initial reports show that this is likely true with Delta. A UK report states the Delta variant is likely 20 times less deadly than the alpha strain, but that more data needs to be collected. The media constantly mentions that delta is more contagious which is also true. Other Greek variants are likely to behave in the same fashion.
We do not need to be afraid of COVID-19 anymore. Let’s begin to end the hysteria and fear. The worst is over and we are transitioning to endemic status which means a low level of cases and deaths.
We will have many fewer deaths if we start to treat the infection early now with the available outpatient treatments. We should resist further attempts at lockdowns and mask mandates as neither worked. We know exactly whom to protect—the elderly and those with chronic health problems. That’s where we should concentrate our energies.
Thankfully, children have very little risk and do not need masks at school or vaccinations. Variants will come but will not send us back into a situation like last year.
Can our pandemic managers take some of this useful information and transform it into helpful public health policies from this point forward? Or is there another agenda behind unending hysteria, fear, and the constant push for 100% vaccination? That remains to be seen. For now, let’s celebrate the good news.’https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/the_good_newsa_covid19_update.html
‘It had to happen. Science has evolved from Science to Science Fiction…sort of Science but not really. We’re told that even tho we know masks don’t work, Science Fiction says it does. Just ask the politicians. We know that lockdowns don’t work, but Science Fiction says it does. Just ask the politicians. Science says natural immunity is best but Science Fiction says it isn’t. Just ask the politicians.
So let’s explore what is Science and Science Fiction.’
whatyareckon 