THERE'S REALLY LITTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
McCARTHY AND JOE BIDEN. BOTH ARE ADVOATES FOR A
FOREIGN INVASION OF 'CHEAP' LABOR ILLEGALS!
GOP Rep. Good: ‘Swamp Cartel’ Leader McCarthy Speaker Bid Will Be Blocked
Representative Bob Good (R-VA) said Monday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends” that “swamp cartel” leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will not be Speaker of the House.
Good said, “I won’t be voting for Kevin McCarthy tomorrow. He is part of the problem. He is not part of the solution.”
He continued, “There is nothing that indicates to me that he is going to change his pattern since he has been in leadership, where he is part of the swamp cartel. He is the reason on the Republican side why we passed massive omnibus spending bills that just got rammed down our throats by Republicans in the Senate. He was part of that in leadership. Since he has been in leadership for the past eight years, there is nothing about Kevin McCarthy that indicates he will bring the change that’s needed to Washington or that’s needed to the Congress, or he will bring the fight against Biden, Schumer’s agenda and represent the interest of the voters who sent us to Washington to bring us real change.”
He added, “What we will do is we will block Kevin.”
Good concluded, “We will put forth a true challenge candidate on the second ballot.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Chump Change: Google to Pay $29.5 Million Settlement in Lawsuits over Location Tracking
Tech giant Google has reportedly agreed to pay $29.5 million to settle separate lawsuits with Washington DC and Indiana over the company’s location tracking practices.
The Hill reports that Google has reached a settlement with Washington DC and Indiana, agreeing to pay a total of $29.5 million to resolve separate lawsuits regarding its location tracking practices. As part of the settlements, the tech giant has pledged not to mislead users about the collection and use of their location data in location history and web and app activity.
Sabo mocks Google CEO Sundar Pichai (unsavoryagents.com)
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has announced that the state has reached a settlement with Google for $20 million to resolve a lawsuit over allegations of deceptive location-tracking practices. In a statement, Rokita said that the settlement reflects the state’s commitment to protecting consumers and holding companies accountable for their actions.
“This settlement is another manifestation of our steadfast commitment to protect Hoosiers from Big Tech’s intrusive schemes,” Rokita said. “We will continue holding these companies accountable for their improper manipulation of consumers.”
Multiple states filed lawsuits against Google after an Associated Press investigation in 2018 shed light on the extent of the company’s location-tracking practices. Despite efforts by a coalition of state attorneys general to reach a settlement with Google, negotiations ultimately failed, leading Indiana to file its own lawsuit.
In November, Google agreed to pay a settlement of nearly $392 million to 40 states to resolve the case brought by the coalition. Indiana’s recent settlement with Google for $20 million is separate from this earlier resolution.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita accused Google of using location data collected from Indiana consumers to build detailed user profiles and target ads, while also misleading users about its practices since at least 2014. Despite the allegations, the settlement reached between Indiana and Google states that the agreement does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing on the part of the company.
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has announced that his office has reached a settlement with Google for $9.5 million over allegations that the company used “dark patterns” to manipulate customers and gain access to their location data. Racine said that Google made it difficult for users to prevent their location from being tracked, leading his office to file a lawsuit against the company.
Under the terms of the settlement, Google will be required to clearly disclose to its customers how their location data is collected, stored, and used, and will also implement measures such as issuing a pop-up notification to users with location history enabled and maintaining a webpage outlining the company’s location tracking practices and policies.
Read more at the Hill here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
Report: Google Home Speakers Allowed Hackers to Spy on Users
According to a recent report, a bug in Google Home smart speakers allowed for the installation of a backdoor account that could be used to control the device and access its microphone feed. In short, hackers could take over Google’s devices to spy on users by listening in on their conversations.
Bleeping Computer reports that a vulnerability in Google Home smart speakers allowed the creation of a backdoor account that could be used to remotely control the device and access its microphone feed, potentially turning it into a spying tool.
(© GETTY/AFP/File SPENCER PLATT)
The flaw was discovered by researcher Matt Kunze, who received a $107,500 reward for responsibly reporting it to Google in the previous year. Kunze published technical details and an attack scenario illustrating the exploit late last week.
During his experimentation with a Google Home Mini speaker, Kunze discovered that new accounts created using the Google Home app could remotely send commands to the device through the cloud API. In order to capture the encrypted HTTPS traffic and potentially obtain the user authorization token, the researcher used a Nmap scan to locate the port for the local HTTP API of Google Home and set up a proxy.
Kunze found that adding a new user to the target device involves two steps: obtaining the device name, certificate, and “cloud ID” from its local API. This information makes it possible to send a link request to the Google server. To add an unauthorized user to a target Google Home device, Kunze implemented the linking process in a Python script that automated the extraction of local device data and reproduced the linking request.
The researcher released three proof-of-concept scripts on GitHub that demonstrate the actions involved in the hack. However, these scripts should not be effective on Google Home devices running the latest firmware version. The proofs-of-concept go beyond simply adding an unauthorized user and also enable spying through the microphone, making arbitrary HTTP requests on the victim’s network, and reading/writing arbitrary files on the device.
Read more at Bleeping Computer here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
Fmr. Apple in China Employee: Due to ‘Deep Partnership’ with CCP, Companies Like Apple Have ‘To Do What They Want’
During a portion of an interview with NPR aired on Monday’s broadcast of “Morning Edition,” Doug Guthrie, a former employee of Apple in China who also advised company executives on Chinese politics, stated that due to the “deep partnership” between corporations like Apple and the Chinese government, Apple ends up having to do what the Chinese government wants.
During a clip that was played in a segment on Apple denying the Chinese people tools like the AirDrop feature that they use to get around the censorship tools of the Chinese Communist Party, Guthrie said, “There’s a deep partnership between companies like Apple and the Chinese government, and you’ve got to do what they want.”
NPR International Desk Correspondent John Ruwitch then stated, “The company has moved some assembly to places like India and Vietnam, but Guthrie calls that hand-waving about diversifying, relocating supply chains will take years. And he says that means Apple is beholden to China. And now, it has to contend with pressure from Chinese citizens who aren’t happy about that.”
Ruwitch also introduced Guthrie’s comments by stating that “He says Apple’s supply chains in China are the key to its profitability.”
Republicans Urged to Investigate China’s IP Theft, Big Tech Ties
Policy experts and tech leaders including conservative venture capitalist Peter Thiel are urging the incoming GOP House to investigate China’s exploitation of the U.S. intellectual property system, as well as ties between Big Tech companies and the communist country.
In a recent speech at the Reagan Library, Thiel called on the incoming GOP House Majority to get tougher on China, stating “There’s sort of no simply neutral way to work with China in any way.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif., departs after speak during a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony honoring law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
In particular, he called out the role of Big Tech in China:
“with . . . some of the Dynamics in the tech industry where you have . . . Apple computer has this strange dependency on Chinese labor to build the iPhones . . .would violate every labor law standard in the U.S and so the biggest company in the US that makes up something like six and a half seven percent of the S&P 500 is somehow incredibly deeply entangled on an economic level with China.”
Thiel also noted that our “data gets shared in all sorts of different ways” with China, citing concerns about TikTok’s ties to the CCP. Thiel famously called Google’s relationship with China “seemingly treasonous” at the 2019 National Conservatism Conference
While Thiel has largely been an anti-establishment, the bulk of the majority of the GOP Leadership shares this view rhetorically. Prior to the election McCarthy’s blueprint called to “End Dependence on China” and “Confront Big Tech.” Candeub was encouraged with McCarthy’s claim that “China is the No. 1 country when it comes to intellectual property theft.” Indeed, China has exploited the U.S.’s IP system, stealing an estimated $600 billion in intellectual property each year.
Many leading conservative anti-Big Tech scholars have argued that cracking down on Big Tech and China requires a tough approach on intellectual property.
Adam Candeub, a law professor at Michigan State who headed the National Telecommunications and Information Agency during the Trump Administration, said a strong IP framework was necessary to combat both China and Big Tech.
“Both Silicon Valley Democrats have both traditionally supported weaker patent protections, however, it’s not as visible of an issue as antitrust or Section 230.” He cautioned that “given the overwhelming anti-Big Tech sentiment amongst the Republican base, undermining IP could be the one favor that establishment Republicans could deliver to companies like Google and Apple.”
Candeub points to “bipartisan” attempts to undo Patent reforms made by the Trump administration by giving more power to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
“PTAB was a product of Big Tech lobbying, and has remained Silicon Valley’s preferred tool to evade responsibility for patent infringement.”
Adam Mossoff, a law professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law and a visiting intellectual property fellow at the Heritage Foundation agreed, telling Breitbart News that Big Tech companies have spend “hundreds of millions of dollars” in lobbying money supporting PTAB.
“The PTAB has canceled tens of thousands of patent claims through willy-nilly decisions many Americans have come to expect from many of the alphabet-soup regulatory agencies,” said Mossoff, author of a recent paper for the Heritage Foundation explaining how the administrative state has choked off innovation.
“Given the weakened U.S. patent system in which it’s become almost impossible to license or enforce a patent, Big Tech engages in a well-known practice of predatory infringement—stealing inventions because it’s now cheaper than rightfully paying to use other people’s property,” said Mossoff.
Mossoff said that the weakened state of U.S. intellectual property makes China’s job easier.
“Through its explicit domestic industrial policies, China is stealing technologies from U.S. innovators and providing stable and reliable patent protections to its own innovators,” said Mossoff.
“China seeks to dominate next-generation technologies in AI, the Internet of Things, and mobile telecommunications, such 6G. Weakened patent rights in the U.S make it easier to steal U.S. technologies, such as patents on 5G.”
Mossoff urged the House GOP to “reestablish the reliable and effective patent rights that have been a key driver of the U.S. innovation economy from the Founding Era to today,” and to “call the FTC to account for its continued attacks on American innovators in both the biomedical and high-tech sectors, holding hearings and subpoenaing records of its decision-making processes.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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