Linked List: March 8, 2017

Wednesday, 8 March 2017

Tom Negrino Faces the End on His Own Terms 

Ray Holley:

One day next week, if all goes according to plan, Tom Negrino will swallow a dose of anti-nausea drugs. Shortly afterward, he will raise a glass filled with four ounces of liquid and drink. Ninety capsules of a barbiturate will be dissolved in that glass. Negrino will follow it up with a glass of good wine, say goodbye to his wife and fall asleep. Within an hour, he will be dead.

According to his wife, Dori Smith, Negrino has fought his body and his health for all his 60 years. He was born with spina bifida, a defect in the backbone and membranes that surround the spinal cord. “When he was born, in the 1950s, only one out of 10 people born with spina bifida lived and of those, only one out of 10 ever walked,” Smith said. “Tom was in the 1 percent who lived and walked.”

Indeed, Negrino walked with a bit of a sway, but he went everywhere vigorously and purposefully. He was the author of 48 books, focusing on Macintosh computers and software. He wrote on his website, “I’ve been writing about Macs, other computers and software since dinosaurs ruled the earth. OK, it’s actually been since 1987.”

Heartbreaking, yet inspiring. Tom and Dori are good people. My best thoughts and wishes are with them.

How Wiretaps Actually Work 

David Kris, former assistant attorney general of the United States, writing for The Washington Post:

Third, Trump is spending at a terrific rate the accumulated credibility capital of the office he occupies. There may come a day when he needs to speak seriously, and to be taken seriously, at home or abroad. On his present course and speed, that will be a hard day. If this were “House of Cards,” it would all be very entertaining. As it is, existing institutions, both domestic and international, are going to have to adapt to this new feature of our world.

“The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf” is a simple parable for children. If you keep spouting bullshit, eventually there will come a point when people will not believe you when you’re telling an urgent truth.

Trump Has Proven Himself Unfit 

Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, reporting for The New York Times on the fallout from Donald Trump’s completely unsubstantiated claim that Barack Obama had Trump’s “wires tapped” during the election:

So for Mr. Trump’s allies inside the West Wing and beyond, the tweetstorm spawned the mother of all messaging migraines. Over the past few days, they have executed what amounts to a strategic political retreat — trying to publicly validate Mr. Trump’s suspicions without overtly endorsing a claim some of them believe might have been generated by Breitbart News and other far-right outlets.

“No, that’s above my pay grade,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary and a feisty Trump loyalist, when asked on Tuesday at an on-camera briefing if he had seen any evidence to back up Mr. Trump’s accusation. The reporters kept at him, but Mr. Spicer pointedly and repeatedly refused to offer personal assurances that the president’s statements were true.

“No comment,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said earlier in the day. Last week, Mr. Sessions recused himself from any investigations involving the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.

“I don’t know anything about it,” John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, said on CNN on Monday. Mr. Kelly shrugged and added that “if the president of the United States said that, he’s got his reasons to say it.”

How’s this for a reason: Donald Trump is not mentally fit. He is unhinged from reality. Many of us have said this ever since the election began, and were dismissed as being blinded by partisanship. Now that he’s in office, Trump is proving it by his own words and deeds.

Mr. Trump, advisers said, was in high spirits after he fired off the posts. But by midafternoon, after returning from golf, he appeared to realize he had gone too far, although he still believed Mr. Obama had wiretapped him, according to two people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.

He sounded defiant in conversations at Mar-a-Lago with his friend Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media, Mr. Ruddy said. In other conversations that afternoon, the president sounded uncertain of the procedure for obtaining a warrant for secret wiretaps on an American citizen.

Mr. Trump also canvassed some aides and associates about whether an investigator, even one outside the government, could substantiate his charge.

The president of the United States doesn’t know how warrants for wiretaps work, and considered hiring a private investigator to “prove” a fever dream charge against his predecessor. This man is unfit for the job, and not mentally well. Those surrounding him who refuse to acknowledge this and remove him from office are doing a grave disservice to the nation and the world, simply for the sake of protecting their own power.

Errata Security: Some Comments on the WikiLeaks CIA Leak 

Robert Graham, Errata Security:

I thought I’d write up some notes about the Wikileaks CIA “#vault7” leak. This post will be updated frequently over the next 24 hours.

The CIA didn’t remotely hack a TV. The docs are clear that they can update the software running on the TV using a USB drive. There’s no evidence of them doing so remotely over the Internet. If you aren’t afraid of the CIA breaking in an installing a listening device, then you should’t be afraid of the CIA installing listening software.

The CIA didn’t defeat Signal/WhatsApp encryption. The CIA has some exploits for Android/iPhone. If they can get on your phone, then of course they can record audio and screenshots. Technically, this bypasses/defeats encryption — but such phrases used by Wikileaks are highly misleading, since nothing related to Signal/WhatsApp is happening. What’s happening is the CIA is bypassing/defeating the phone. Sometimes. If they’ve got an exploit for it, or can trick you into installing their software.

I don’t trust WikiLeaks at all. They’re effectively an arm of Russian intelligence as far as I’m concerned. WikiLeaks’s own announcement of this dump made it sound — to laypeople — that the CIA had the ability to intercept encrypted Signal and WhatsApp messages. They don’t. If you have a secure device, WhatsApp and Signal are secure. If your device has been compromised, no messaging service can be secure — everything on a compromised device is compromised.