Trump's Second Term

[Jack by the hedge]

Trump suggests Jeffrey Goldberg hacked the Signal group or something: "The person that was on just happens to be a sleazebag, so maybe that's just coincidence. I don't know ... he's basically bad for the country."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1904612925442039877

So obviously he's banning his whole administration from using this tech. Right?

If some random journalist can hack into their conversations and they don't know how, then clearly it would be unconscionable to keep using it. And that's quite separate from whether conducting government business with this self-deleting message system is lawful.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

starting to see some of the extreme incompetence. this is only the beginning.

Starting to see?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

To no one's surprise, Dump is going after federal election laws.
Passports or other ID will be required, and no mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day will be accepted.

In other words, measures to make it (even) harder for the wrong people to vote in elections. Don't get me wrong, I find the fact that you don't need ID to vote in the US to be completely absurd (unless I've misunderstood how it works), but I'd find it a much better solution to make sure 'everyone' has ID than to only impose ID requirements.

Trump signs action requiring proof of citizenship for voters, other measures overhauling U.S. elections

It also requires that all ballots be received by Election Day throughout the country.

www.pbs.org

When the Tories introduced voter ID to the UK, they found they lost out.

There was no evidence of more than a tiny handful of cases of personation, where a person's vote got used by someone else, but the Tories pandered to a notion that somehow "they" (immigrants, minorities) were stealing "our" elections. The result was the opposite of what they expected as mostly elderly voters (typically a more right-leaning demographic) got turned away for forgetting to bring their ID, and many couldn't be bothered to go home and get ID and then come back again to vote.

 

[AmyStrange]

To no one's surprise, Dump is going after federal election laws.
Passports or other ID will be required, and no mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day will be accepted.

In other words, measures to make it (even) harder for the wrong people to vote in elections. Don't get me wrong, I find the fact that you don't need ID to vote in the US to be completely absurd (unless I've misunderstood how it works), but I'd find it a much better solution to make sure 'everyone' has ID than to only impose ID requirements.

Trump signs action requiring proof of citizenship for voters, other measures overhauling U.S. elections

It also requires that all ballots be received by Election Day throughout the country.

www.pbs.org

Well, don't you need an ID to register to vote?


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[Norman Alexander]

When the Tories introduced voter ID to the UK, they found they lost out.

There was no evidence of more than a tiny handful of cases of personation, where a person's vote got used by someone else, but the Tories pandered to a notion that somehow "they" (immigrants, minorities) were stealing "our" elections. The result was the opposite of what they expected as mostly elderly voters (typically a more right-leaning demographic) got turned away for forgetting to bring their ID, and many couldn't be bothered to go home and get ID and then come back again to vote.

In the USA, lots of MAGAts won't have suitable ID. They never travel outside their village let alone overseas, so no passports. They refuse to abide by the law for driver licences, sovcit style. Birth certificate? Don't need no stinkin' birth certificate, that's socialism!

Wonder if they will be allowed vote...

 

[shemp]

Weel, don't you need an ID to register to vote?


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In most states, non-citizens can obtain a driver's license. This will require those registering to vote to have a "REAL ID" (a driver's license that certifies that you are a citizen), a certified copy of your birth certificate, or a U.S. passport.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

When the Tories introduced voter ID to the UK, they found they lost out.

There was no evidence of more than a tiny handful of cases of personation, where a person's vote got used by someone else, but the Tories pandered to a notion that somehow "they" (immigrants, minorities) were stealing "our" elections. The result was the opposite of what they expected as mostly elderly voters (typically a more right-leaning demographic) got turned away for forgetting to bring their ID, and many couldn't be bothered to go home and get ID and then come back again to vote.

Let's not forget that Rees-Mogg literally admitted on camera that it was an attempt to influence elections by restricting voters for other parties & bemoaning the fact it had failed.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Let's not forget that Rees-Mogg literally admitted on camera that it was an attempt to influence elections by restricting voters for other parties & bemoaning the fact it had failed.

Mees-Rogg is SUCH a wally.

 

[AmyStrange]

In most states, non-citizens can obtain a driver's license. This will require those registering to vote to have a "REAL ID" (a driver's license that certifies that you are a citizen), a certified copy of your birth certificate, or a U.S. passport.

What's funny is my BC originally didn't have my first name on it, and guess what, it's easy as pie to get a fake BC. I got one by comparing death notices to birth notices in the newspaper. The birth notice has everything one needs to get one, or at least it used to anyway.


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[JayUtah]

So obviously he's banning his whole administration from using this tech. Right?

In theory it is already prohibited. I don't believe Signal can be installed on government devices. This suggests the participants were using their personal devices to access the chat.

If some random journalist can hack into their conversations and they don't know how, then clearly it would be unconscionable to keep using it.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is already claiming now that Jeffrey Goldberg "somehow" hacked Waltz's phone and "must have" replaced the contact information for "JG" with his own in order to gain unauthorized access to the Signal group chat. Trump officials and Trump-sympathetic media still can't figure out what pathetic, desperate story they want to stand behind. But ultimately Waltz's latest fairy tale doesn't fix the problem: they were using an unapproved chat app on unsecured devices to conduct national defense planning. Waltz's inability to secure his own device against intrusion, sabotage, and subterfuge doesn't make him look any more competent.

 

[AmyStrange]

In theory it is already prohibited. I don't believe Signal can be installed on government devices. This suggests the participants were using their personal devices to access the chat.


National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is already claiming now that Jeffrey Goldberg "somehow" hacked Waltz's phone and "must have" replaced the contact information for "JG" with his own in order to gain unauthorized access to the Signal group chat. Trump officials and Trump-sympathetic media still can't figure out what pathetic, desperate story they want to stand behind. But ultimately Waltz's latest fairy tale doesn't fix the problem: they were using an unapproved chat app on unsecured devices to conduct national defense planning. Waltz's inability to secure his own device against intrusion, sabotage, and subterfuge doesn't make him look any more competent.

Hacking a phone can be done relatively easy by "cloning" it (also called SIM swapping). All you need to do is get some special equipment and be close to your target phone when it's on or is in use or while it's turning on (I can't remember which). Google it if you don't believe me.

The problem with Waltz's lying explanation is if the phone was cloned, then there's no really easy way to tell for sure, especially if it's only cloned to get the data (passwords etc.) and not to use for phone calls or text.


ETA: If I'm wrong, please tell me. All of this is from memory, and I may have remembered the details wrong.


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[Chris_Halkides]

Radley Balko wrote, "At least two of the immigrants Trump sent to a Salvadoran prison came here legally to flee persecution in Venezuela. They applied for refugee status, passed a background check, were approved, and then came to the U.S. They did everything they were supposed to do. They were fleeing a dictatorship. Now they’re being tortured in one of the cruelest prisons on earth." I am not sure what to say any longer.

 

[Tero]

Hate to break it to you your President is President Trump.

We do not pledge allegiance to the president. In fact we should be able to fire him. Congress and SC are ignoring an amendment.

 

[Tero]

Some 50% of Trump voters are MAGA

Majority of Republicans nationally identify as MAGA for first time in Unity Poll

The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy has asked Republicans in a quarterly national poll since June 16, 2023, if they consider themselves supporters of the Make America Great Again or MAGA movement. In that first poll, 37 percent of respondents identified more with the MAGA...

news.vanderbilt.edu

So 30-40 million Americans hate foreigners?
There are 48 milion of us foreigners to hate.

 

[arthwollipot]

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7485519844301966638

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Is it me or does Pete have a Tom Cruise filter going there?

 

[Aridas]

In other words, measures to make it (even) harder for the wrong people to vote in elections. Don't get me wrong, I find the fact that you don't need ID to vote in the US to be completely absurd (unless I've misunderstood how it works), but I'd find it a much better solution to make sure 'everyone' has ID than to only impose ID requirements.

Well, don't you need an ID to register to vote?

You do need appropriate ID to register to vote in the first place for federal elections, as AmyStrange noted, but ID at the polling places (except maybe the first visit) or for mail in ballots isn't necessarily required. States and local elections don't technically have to follow the same rules as federal elections, though. Non-citizens are pointedly barred from federal and statewide voting in all states, either way, but there are local school board elections in some states that non-citizens are legally allowed to vote in, for example. I expect that that last bit has become fuel for right wing fantasies about massive non-citizen voting in federal elections, though. None of that's really the ugly part, of course.

Republican photo voter ID law requirements and the various related attempts to restrict which IDs are acceptable for the sake of skewing political contests ever further in their favor at the cost of the Constitutional rights of many citizens are just one of the numerous voter suppression tactics that the right wing's been employing. It's just a recent step in a long line of right-wing voter suppression tactics, for that matter. To poke at a couple notable things to help put the situation in fuller context -

Discriminatory and prejudicial ID practices pose major challenges for certain groups and are often rooted in decades of history. During the Jim Crow era, many Black people were denied access to certain hospitals, and many were never given a birth certificate. As such, communities of color are especially likely to lack a driver’s license.


While only 8% of white Americans do not have a driver’s license, 21% of Black Americans and 23% of Hispanic Americans do not have access to this form of ID. Consequences of this are numerous, but one striking example is that 13.8% of Black households lack a checking or savings account compared to just 2.5% of white households. IDs are required to open these accounts.

The report highlighted a set of studies in Kansas that found “in just the first four years after the state implemented its voter registration law in 2013, over 63,000 people were blocked from registering to vote,” almost all of whom were eligible to vote.

Republicans in Georgia also nefariously exploited voter IDs. In 2017, the state passed a law requiring an “exact match” between an individual’s name on their ID and on their voter registration. The next year, over 51,000 people were flagged — 80% of which were Black, Latino or Asian — and the discrepancies were as small as John versus Johnathan. A lawsuit led to the law being overturned in 2019.

And yes, Republicans have been caught admitting that the various efforts were all about making it harder for the people they don't want to vote over and over. I certainly have no objection to making sure that all American citizens have appropriate ID, as a general matter, but that misses the main actual issue at hand, which is that the Republican fuss has been in very, very bad faith from the start. There's no good reason to believe that they'll suddenly start acting in good faith and make sure that all American citizens who lack the appropriate forms of ID would actually get them or that they wouldn't just then change the rules and kick up a fuss, yet again. Plenty more can be said there, of course, but no need to belabor the point more at the second, I think.

 

[bruto]

I'm not sure whether it has come up yet, but in addition to the obvious gaffe of giving a journalist accidental access, one of the other participants in the conference, Steve Witkoff, was in Moscow at the time! It's not been revealed whether he actually joined the conversation, but still!

But let's keep to what's important....how about those emails of Hillary's?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The bigger intelligence failure has already happened: firing/forcing government employees to quit, creating a huge pool of people who know secrets and have money problems - rich pickings for hostile actors.
Just think of the people in charge of protecting nuclear weapons and material DOGE fired and mostly failed to rehire - no security issue there, no Sir.

 

[Blue Mountain]

I am shocked that the forum conservatives who were all hot and bothered over "her emails" are completely silent about the Trump administration leaking classified information over an unsecured chat app. Shocked, I tell you.

The sort of thing that would once upon a time have brought wholesale bipartisan condemnation and someone would have been expected to fall on their sword, now? The Republican attitude seems to be that its hardly worth noticing the sharing of strategic plans over an insecure system that will automatically delete the trail after a few weeks.

Where do you get the idea this was an "unsecured app"? Signal uses end to end encryption in its protocol and is considered "best of class" software. Not even people running the servers can see what's being posted; only the receiving devices can.