How and Why the NSA is Watching You! Also Cisgendered Straight White Males Are Horrible People. Boing Boing Told Me So - What I am reading - 10/6/2014

#Snowden #NSA #GamerGate
I know it's been awhile but the lats couple weeks have been hectic at work; anyway despite your requests that I never subject you to my inane ramblings again I'm back:

Alexaobrien.com via Schneier on Security - William Binney Explains NSA Surveillance Using Snowden's Documents -

This is one of those cases where there is no one good excerpt to publish, so I will just say go read it with some caveats.  1.  All the stuff here has been presented in other forms before, this is just a new set of eyes and interpretation.  2.  The speaker obviously has an agenda and an axe to grind so keep that in mind.  3.  Despite item 2 the guy is obviously a genius in that he agrees with me in that there is a compromise solution that allows the data gathering and analysis to continue and protects privacy (a solution I about a week after the Snowden stuff started):

Ars Technica - Bugzilla 0-day can reveal 0-day bugs in OSS giants like Mozilla, Red Hat -

Security firm Check Point Software Technologies used a flaw it discovered in the Perl programming language to hack into the popular Bugzilla bug-tracking system and add four users to the administrator group, giving them power to see the details of undisclosed vulnerabilities.

The bold demonstration, detailed in a private bug report made public on Monday, took advantage of a new class of flaws discovered by Check Point in the Perl programming language, allowing the organization to craft specific strings of text that essentially fooled Bugzilla's user database. 

Call me cynical but I am beginning to think that a. There is no such thing as secure software, and b.  Maybe the many eyes theory of Open Source development needs some rethinking.  

The Register - Linux systemd dev says open source is 'sick', kernel community 'awful' -

Says newbies should beware of hostile straight white males

Of course they should, we're awful.  Which leads to the next article:

Boing Boing - Social Justice Warriors and the New Culture War -

There's a culture war happening right now. It's happening in games, in film, in journalism, in television, in fiction, in fandom. It's happening online, everywhere. And everywhere, sexists, recreational misogynists and bigots are losing.

OK, there is a culture war in gaming blah blah blah.  Don't really care about that - I mean I am a casual gamer but the games I play are things like Forza, not a lot of opportunity for sexism when all you do is drive in a circle.  I also play WoW which I guess could be more offensive, but that's beside the point.  The point is I don't care about Zoe Quinn or Anita whoever.  

I do care about potential violence against women, but that bell has been rung too many times.  I no longer believe any of the claims unless I see verifiable proof.  

Same with Sexual Assault.  I'm against it.  I think guys who rape women should be shot.  Same with those who roofie a girl.  But again that claim has been made to many time just to make a point so I no longer believe anyone who makes such a claim unless they immediately called the cops and went and had a rape kit done.  

Here is that part of the article I do care about:

everywhere, sexists, recreational misogynists and bigots are losing

To be clear - by that Ms. Penny means anyone with a penis, and especially anyone with the poor taste to be born white or straight.  The irony here is that one of the complaints of people like Penny, Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian (now you know why I can never remember her name) is that the straight, white cisgendered male patriarchy reduce women to nothing but a blob of flesh, othering them in SJW terms:  

Underneath it all, you're just a woman, just a body. You can be reduced to flesh. You are less. You are an object. You are other. LOL, boobs.

but here she is indulging in the same behavior:

We know we're winning because the terrified rage of a million mouthbreathing manchild misogynists is thick as nerve gas in the air right now.

 and the idiots at Boing Boing are enthusiastically endorsing it because Woman => Roar or some other half asses justification.  

Which leads to the next article:

Carnifex - Nerd Culture -

Over the last several weeks I have been seeing article after article about how nerds are misogynistic and nerd culture is rape culture. Personally, me and all my friends are extremely respectful of women and we are as a group shy and thoughtful. When a woman finally does pay attention to us, we tend to be very grateful and extremely sensitive. 

What I have been saying and what the previous two articles point out is that it's not the "Beautiful People" as Chris calls them who are fucking us over.  We are doing it to ourselves.  

Oh well it doesn't matter, precisely zero people will read this and if someone does they won't actually give a shit.  It was a big deal for awhile because Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) got involved but that novelty is dying off.

InfoSec News - Cyber: The new Red Flag battleground -

They are making cyberwar scenarios part of the Red Flag exercise on a permanent basis.  Probably not a bad idea.

The Verge - What's happening in Gamergate?  -

Just a recap in which the author again makes clear that the powers that be have declared anyone who dares disagree with Quinn, Sarkeesian, Penny, et. al. is a sexist pig.