ANONYMOUS - OUR VOICE

Join the Vox Book Club!

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aSqrw-ju8VESKj4LCX32seRW3Q0=/0x41:2080x1130/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19869257/bookclub_3_v2.jpg" /></div>
The Vox Book Club is linking to <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2020%2F4%2F10%2F21216559%2Fvox-book-club-join-read-discuss" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Bookshop.org</a> to support local and independent booksellers.
Here’s how the <a href="http://vox.com/bookclub">Vox Book Club</a> works: Every month, we pick a book. Around the middle of the month, we publish a discussion post containing thoughts and questions from Vox book critic Constance Grady, but we also have comments turned on and moderated so you can share your thoughts, too. Talk among yourselves! Post your opinions and questions! Or use the conversation as a jumping-off point for your own conversations with friends and family. And at the end of the month, we gather on Zoom for a virtual live discussion.
Our pick for May 2021 is Sanjena Sathian’s assured and immersive debut novel <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fgold-diggers-9780593401088%2F9781984882035%3Fsscid%3D51k5_6gex6%26utm_source%3DShareASale%26utm_medium%3DAffiliate%26utm_campaign%3D314743%26utm_term%3D1535322&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2020%2F4%2F10%2F21216559%2Fvox-book-club-join-read-discuss" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Gold Diggers</a>. It’s got <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22379926/gold-diggers-book-review-sanjena-sathian">alchemy, heists, and diaspora politics</a>, and it should give us plenty to talk about! Constance will host a <a href="https://voxmediaevents.com/vox-book-club-gold-diggers">live discussion</a> of Gold Diggers on Wednesday, May 19, at 5 pm ET, featuring Sathian herself. We’d love to see you there! You can <a href="https://voxmediaevents.com/vox-book-club-gold-diggers">RSVP here</a>, and in the meantime, <a href="http://vox.com/book-club-newsletter">sign up for the Vox Book Club newsletter</a> to be notified about new book selections, discussions, and related live events.
Friday, May 14: Discussion post on Gold Diggers published to Vox.com
Wednesday, May 19: Virtual live event with author Sanjena Sathian at 5 pm ET. You can <a href="https://voxmediaevents.com/vox-book-club-gold-diggers">RSVP here</a>. Reader questions are encouraged!
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21216559/vox-book-club-join-read-discuss">https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21216559/vox-book-club-join-read-discuss</a>

vox Join the Vox Book Club!

The Vox Book Club is linking to Bookshop.org to support local and independent booksellers. Here’s how the Vox Book Club works: Every mo...

There’s a better way to protect yourself from hackers and identity thieves

<div class="c-float-left">
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1620363969_7598_169049" data-cdata='{"asset_id":19433750,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TuT0QLbr3Ev0se9v6mTleNSsrYQ=/0x0:840x214/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rmxmnKBnlfU5h86Wnu1mnFzBRd4=/0x0:840x214/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sHt-wGMNVoHDOqP6wSiEJ9JINNs=/0x0:840x214/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hITirzaU6GMPrOobhXhFm3nxa7o=/0x0:840x214/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Zz-6LOuM8kFJpE1w--HBsyko0vs=/0x0:840x214/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uDCeRWXZA9NVuNXmeB0vEiNFdR0=/0x0:840x214/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sKGkEMFjRgxqPrjKg-vktXBVL6k=/0x0:840x214/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jkUvXTW4fQOLHN8zFyEsICN7F8g=/0x0:840x214/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ja0zKqPqO_kOmbVYH-BheK8LDSo=/0x0:840x214/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="Open Sourced logo" data-upload-width="840" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9indh3vUqeOVX6_RpyVYHqtr2tE=/0x0:840x214/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6wfj5r7x_PzmkizGIIBaNJ9QhZ4=/0x0:840x214/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zo7IA05WcPqiet8eRAEqVg7uDLY=/0x0:840x214/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4qLRQ8PPHsa98KZSiqivHKgNaGw=/0x0:840x214/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pQCwf5gGIEeFkMEy_zNh6rA9Jpk=/0x0:840x214/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rnyRIV-v_2lMw_dLqcmEayj__lk=/0x0:840x214/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rfzpn72Dv504LsYEMn6fyKLLv2U=/0x0:840x214/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/674czWvVLcYvd3V1hJucJX7M_Vc=/0x0:840x214/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wqEhpUGEfNJmOwIt1jVwele8l4M=/0x0:840x214/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8OMsyfRtzq9gLLWcX6LZKKVfsys=/0x0:840x214/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:840x214):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19433750/open_sourced_story_logo.png 1920w" /></picture></figure>
</div>
When people ask me for security tips, I give them the basics. One is a strong and long password with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. (No, “Passw0rd!” is not good enough.) Each password should also be unique to each account (We love a good <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/best-password-managers/">password manager</a>!). And you always use two-factor authentication, or 2FA. (Don’t be like me, who didn’t have 2FA on her bank account until a hacker <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/28/21080122/avoid-hack-hacker-theft">wired $13,000 out of it</a>.) But the type of 2FA you use is also increasingly important.
Text-based 2FA, where a text with a six-digit code is sent to your phone to verify your identity, is better known and better understood because it uses technology most of us use all the time anyway. But it’s a technology that wasn’t meant to serve as an identify verifier, and it’s an increasingly insecure option as hackers continue to find ways to exploit it.
That’s why I recommend using an authenticator app, like Google Authenticator, instead. Don’t let the name intimidate you: There are a few extra steps involved, but the effort is worth it.
By the time Mykal Burns got the security text from T-Mobile informing him that his SIM card had been changed to a different phone, it was already too late. In the 20 minutes it took Burns to get the SIM switched back to his phone, his Instagram account was gone. With access to Burns’s SIM card, the hacker simply asked Instagram to send Burns a password recovery text in order to take over Burns’s account and lock him out. All Burns could do was watch the hacker destroy that part of his online life.
“It had been wiped clean of the 1,200 or so photos I had shared since creating the account in 2012,” Burns, a Los Angeles-based television producer, told Recode.
SIMjacking, or SIM swapping, was famously used to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/technology/sim-swap-jack-dorsey-hack.html">take over</a> Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey’s own Twitter account in 2019. But as Burns’s story shows, you don’t have to be a famous billionaire to be a target. If a hacker knows enough about you to convince your mobile carrier that they are you, an unsuspecting customer service representative might switch your SIM to them. There have also <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edla/pr/former-phone-company-employee-charged-rolein-sim-swap-scam-targeted-least-19-customers">been cases</a> of mobile carrier employees accepting bribes to switch SIMs, in which case a hacker wouldn’t have to know much about you at all.
Putting a PIN on your SIM might prevent some of this, but it’s not foolproof. And, as <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g8wb/hacker-got-my-texts-16-dollars-sakari-netnumber">Vice reported</a> in March, hackers have found other SMS exploits that don’t even require access to your SIM card.
“SMS, as a technology, has been around for a long time,” Marc Rogers, executive director of cybersecurity at Okta, an identity authentication technology company, told Recode. “It was designed to be a cheap way of sending messages. It wasn’t designed to be secure. And we built a bunch of security services on top of it. ... There are now more ways to compromise an SMS service than they can hope to fix.”
Basically, if you’re using texts or your phone number to verify your identity, it’s time to consider something else.
Authenticator apps — which are usually free — take a few more steps to set up than text-based authentication. Some people might find that — choosing and downloading another app, scanning QR codes, accepting tokens — to be too intimidating or simply not worth the extra effort. I’m here to tell you that it’s not intimidating, and it is worth it.
“That’s our whole purpose of really promoting these authentication apps,” Akhil Talwar, director of product management for LastPass, which makes a password manager and an authenticator app, told Recode. “They’re really easy to use, they’re super secure, and they’re also convenient. You’re just getting a push notification in some cases.”
Authenticator apps work the same way text-based 2FA does, but instead of having a code sent to you via text, the code appears in the app. The code also changes every 30 seconds or so as an added measure of protection — it’s next to impossible for a hacker to guess at the right code when it changes so frequently. A hacker would have to be ridiculously lucky (anything’s possible, I guess) or have possession of your physical device to gain access to the code.
<a href="https://gizmodo.com/the-best-authenticator-apps-for-protecting-your-account-1840711013">Several</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-two-factor-authentication-app/">sites</a> <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/digital-security/use-authentication-apps-for-multifactor-security/">have</a> <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-authenticator-apps">recommendations</a> for good authenticator apps and their respective features, which should help you figure out which one works best for you. Google Authenticator is one of the most popular and it comes from Google, so you can trust that it’ll be around for a long time and that the company knows what it’s doing to keep the app secure. But it’s also one of the most basic authenticator apps out there. If you’re looking for a few more features, Authy is highly recommended by most, has a nice interface, and lets you search within the app for a specific account (very helpful if you have a lot of accounts to scroll through), and is easier to switch to a new device than Google Authenticator. LastPass and 1Password’s authenticator apps can be linked to those companies’ password managers. And Microsoft’s authenticator — which, like Google, has the backing of a massive and long-running company behind it — is also a good choice.
“Three key things to think about when deciding on an authenticator app are the reputation and stability of the company that created it, the independent security reviews performed on it, and the ability to backup and restore the application in case of a lost or stolen phone,” Mathew Newfield, chief security and infrastructure officer at Unisys, told Recode.
Some authenticators have a push function where you simply confirm you’re trying to log into a site rather than remember and enter a six-digit code. But not all authenticator apps do this, and not all websites and apps support that functionality — at least, not yet. Some apps give you an option to have a backup in the cloud or to use the app across multiple devices, which you might be happy to have if your phone (and, therefore, authenticator app on it) breaks or is lost. Some apps have a search function so you can find the app you’re trying to log into easily — pretty helpful if you have a long list of logins.
“The one overarching rule is any authentication app is better than none,” Rogers, of Okta, said.
Once you’ve decided on an authenticator app and downloaded it to your device, it’s time to add your accounts to it.
In honor of our friend Burns, let’s use Instagram’s app as an example of how to connect your authenticator app to an account:
Go to Settings > Security > Two-Factor Authentication > Authentication App
From there, Instagram will ask to open your authenticator app and add your Instagram account automatically to it. You’ll then see a 6 digit code on the app. Enter that code on Instagram and you’re all set.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1620363969_1916_169050" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22496196,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Jy6kovXHS0ITuqJS9awwINJnlWE=/0x0:2400x1525/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/l6xDWo2Od4jgh48fSfscSEwXHL0=/0x0:2400x1525/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vdPct3giSA2krGmq6bHmDvBtB4w=/0x0:2400x1525/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8-BJUwExsSjAc_XW5qgV9x2OKwA=/0x0:2400x1525/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xY90GHDgE3WRKCSERFWUPBNNLNQ=/0x0:2400x1525/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AIkeGi7gNknjR1J-ot4rEr_eppY=/0x0:2400x1525/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3jSflBvX6Jp6ekgOXPViW6K2Abw=/0x0:2400x1525/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qN0q7aLE8ixEXdZ3i2RzYfRtO4g=/0x0:2400x1525/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PApg0v2hYARkxFElDr-UVvpnlFo=/0x0:2400x1525/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="2400" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UYK3yd-betV73_mSRbulQTJEJ84=/0x0:2400x1525/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/One1gvn9lM7q9hkSZubMMXLS8Jg=/0x0:2400x1525/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4fRpZknACpeWuxrkwdlqOuKJ8m0=/0x0:2400x1525/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5axIyGsGjPsfhMwx-Kl1vDL5fPo=/0x0:2400x1525/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bLSD2zn-eZ8m6wJTerHULW-5GyM=/0x0:2400x1525/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ogkacKvFXwgnD9sDLHj5MvNteRM=/0x0:2400x1525/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1ZAFidoDkwGHxk-e3ft8d8VV29Q=/0x0:2400x1525/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fhRdRo3hTmLrSADR50SPzxm_oSk=/0x0:2400x1525/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GMuYJSraozCfbkGkbE9h1Yxkg30=/0x0:2400x1525/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4uUX05pFjkmSrvO7PzttIadtT_0=/0x0:2400x1525/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2400x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496196/instauth.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Google Authenticator is your basic authenticator, and now my Instagram account is on it.</figcaption>
</figure>
But you aren’t done. Instagram will then show you a set of backup codes. Write some or all of those down and keep them in a safe place (not on your phone) — you might need them to restore access to the app or website if you lose access to your phone and your authenticator app doesn’t have its own backup system.
Websites are a little different to set up. In honor of our other SIMjacked friend, Jack Dorsey, let’s use Twitter’s website as our example.
Go to Settings and privacy > Security and account access > Security > Two-factor authentication > Authentication app.
From there, you’ll be prompted to scan a QR code with your phone’s camera, which will open your authenticator app and add your Twitter account to it. If you can’t scan a QR code or the app won’t open correctly, you can also generate a code and enter it manually instead.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1620363969_744_169051" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22496593,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cJaP9yA3pXvuLDOVAFGYthlsWrw=/0x0:3025x1525/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dIcRVmzY0zQMzDaQPmJeSLj6Xcs=/0x0:3025x1525/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ti24i3JTZ5rbj7mWGVs6Zj7FHQo=/0x0:3025x1525/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yrCwcnjW71vmlvC2JnynRaMP5To=/0x0:3025x1525/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/645A6sMHdi2J1Ra986ETby-Z-uo=/0x0:3025x1525/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/j9dVCUgngCM4xnk_haFedEp4XHM=/0x0:3025x1525/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xvdt3T4nQ33ddCG8w5qC9vEEWPA=/0x0:3025x1525/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JRI4dOJwJB13n0Y12nKJn-mJ2K0=/0x0:3025x1525/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dyrgDTvvz7DwkPSrGTqG6bwI1G0=/0x0:3025x1525/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3025" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lEwWbIpLK2H0-LntNLjMqy7rma4=/0x0:3025x1525/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JJBMbPeNnVRHzMh1enNEkaoP6SY=/0x0:3025x1525/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jKpp_ZubeUTcAT2Jtx6EP4gfiAk=/0x0:3025x1525/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QmaK-L2p_aaJd2EwkEuMRpguAUA=/0x0:3025x1525/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/05Fy-mIHGf_qurgx7ya_GfQUEz0=/0x0:3025x1525/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iJzyoV-vu324rVLkEvr5qp91wKw=/0x0:3025x1525/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KmBu6xxUpBKigvCF1YhRqtMd3eQ=/0x0:3025x1525/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5_qMr12EKVsjYZqFVJbUGU39H9I=/0x0:3025x1525/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/meBaLSbJvApfOIFC31eEoUg47oM=/0x0:3025x1525/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/svAPA1S5uwTsWh5PBh2lmKZTQM8=/0x0:3025x1525/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3025x1525):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496593/twitterauth1.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Authy is another authenticator app. Adding my Twitter account is easy.</figcaption>
</figure>
Back on Twitter’s site, click “next” and enter the six-digit code on your app. Again, remember to save Twitter’s backup code somewhere safe.
Now that you’re set up, when you log into Instagram or Twitter, you’ll be prompted to enter a code from your authenticator app. Open the app, get the code for the account you’re trying to log into, and enter that into the site or app. You can choose to do this every time you log into a site, or you can choose to only do it once if you’re using a device you trust. And that’s it.
Once you’ve got the authenticator app up and running on an account, make sure you’ve disabled text-based 2FA and removed your phone number from the account (unfortunately, some apps and websites won’t let you do this). And don’t use your phone number as an account recovery backup option. After all, the whole reason why you’re doing this is that phone numbers make for poor identity verifiers.
Finally, if you’re getting a new phone, make sure you transfer your authenticator app from your old device to the new one. If your authenticator app requires that you have both devices in your possession to do this, make sure you plan ahead, or else you’ll have to rely on all those account backup codes to manually restore access to your accounts. Not good. Not fun. But still better than being hacked.
Again, this is going to be a little more work than relying on SMS-based 2FA, but think about what you stand to lose if your accounts are hacked. You may not realize how valuable some of those accounts — and the things on them — are until you lose them. Burns now uses an authenticator app wherever possible. He was able to get his Instagram account back after two days, thanks to a connection he had at Facebook. But he didn’t get back the 1,200 photos that were on his account — including those of his beloved dog, Bonnie, who died last year. His Instagram account is private now, and his use of it has been sparing.
“I have most of the original photos backed up from my phone, but gone are any photo edits (filters, etc.) I made in the app, whatever memories I attached in the captions, and any comments from others,” Burn said. “Pretty disappointing ... I didn’t really post anything to the account for a year after getting it back, and have only recently begun posting photos again.”
<a href="http://www.vox.com/open-sourced">Open Sourced</a> is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22419794/authenticator-apps-and-you-authy-google-authenticator">https://www.vox.com/recode/22419794/authenticator-apps-and-you-authy-google-authenticator</a>

vox There’s a better way to protect yourself from hackers and identity thieves

When people ask me for security tips, I give them the basics. One is a strong and long password with upper and lower case letters, numbe...

Biden agreed to waive vaccine patents. But will that help get doses out faster?

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dwJEldZnljNDCDshT0GB6i0hDhA=/0x227:5356x3031/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22496314/1232713493.jpg" /></div>
The Biden administration <a href="https://twitter.com/AmbassadorTai/status/1390021205974003720">has announced</a> that it will work with the World Trade Organization (WTO) to negotiate a deal to suspend intellectual property rights associated with the Covid-19 vaccines — a surprise move for the administration, which had initially resisted taking such a step.
The reversal came as Covid-19 deaths are <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/22403722/india-covid-19-vaccine-variant-cases-coronavirus">mounting in India</a> and elsewhere. The vaccination program in the US is going well, but much of the world is still waiting for vaccines, which has made the role of pharmaceutical companies and intellectual property in the global vaccine effort the subject of intense debate.
There is unanimous agreement on one thing: There is a lot of work to be done to speed up vaccine manufacturing and vaccinate the world. As the WTO’s General Council meets this week, patents have risen to the top of the agenda. India and South Africa have asked the WTO to waive intellectual property (IP) rules relating to the vaccines so that more organizations can make them.
The case for waivers is simple: Waiving IP rights might enable more companies to get into the vaccine-manufacturing business, easing supply shortages and helping with the monumental task of vaccinating the whole world. The case against them: Taking IP rights from vaccine makers punishes them for work that society should eagerly reward and disincentivizes similar future investment. Opponents have also argued this step would do very little to address the vaccine supply problem, which has largely been the result of factors such as raw material shortages and the incredible complexity and tight requirements of the vaccine-manufacturing process.
The debate has raged for the last several weeks — with Bill Gates as a notably outspoken defender of IP rights — but recently intensified as the Covid-19 crisis in poor countries worsens.
Wednesday’s announcement unambiguously puts the US on record in support of such a waiver — a reversal from its previous position. “The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,” US trade representative Katherine Tai said in an announcement.
Done correctly, making the IP associated with these vaccines available to the world can be a good first step — the more information-sharing here, the better. But it’s a small thing to do at a time when bigger commitments are needed. Waivers might help, but ending the pandemic worldwide is going to require so much more.
While the Biden administration’s decision is a positive development, but debates over intellectual property can also distract the world from the policy measures that could really end the pandemic: building our vaccine-manufacturing capacity, committing to purchase the doses the rest of the world needs, and working directly with manufacturers to remove every obstacle in their path.
To unpack what the Biden administration’s move means, it’s important to understand the role patents play in vaccine manufacturing.
When a pharmaceutical company makes a drug, it applies for a patent. The patent protects its intellectual property for a fixed amount of time, typically 20 years, after which others can make “generic” versions of the drug, which are generally a lot cheaper.
Simple enough, right?
When it comes to Covid-19 vaccines — and many modern pharmaceutical products — the situation is much more complicated than that.
First, a modern vaccine is often in a web of different intellectual property rights, with the vaccine manufacturer having purchased the rights to some elements of its vaccine from either other pharmaceutical companies or researchers.
The lipids (shells that contain the mRNA molecules) used for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvA9gs5gxNY">mRNA vaccines</a>, for example, are licensed to Pfizer and Moderna, but other companies have the rights to them. Patents held by the vaccine companies are actually a fairly small share of what’s going on in this IP web. It’s better to talk more broadly about all of the intellectual property that goes into a vaccine: licensing deals, copyrights, industrial designs, and laws protecting trade secrets.
The other complication is that, while there are legal barriers to copying the existing vaccines, that’s not what’s really making them impossible for other companies to start manufacturing. Experts I spoke with emphasized that, generally speaking, the world’s entire supply of critical raw materials is already going into vaccines, and there are no factories “sitting idle” waiting for permission to start making them. What’s more, changing a factory’s processes to produce a new kind of vaccine is a difficult, error-prone process — which went wrong, for example, when a plant converted to make Johnson & Johnson vaccines <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/21/fda-johnson-johnson-vaccine-inspection/">spoiled millions of doses</a>.
Moderna is an instructive example here. The pharmaceutical company made a splashy announcement in the fall that it would not enforce its Covid-19 vaccine patents. Despite that move, there is still no generic Moderna vaccine, and none of the experts I talked to believed one was on the horizon. (It turned out well for Moderna — get the PR bump from the announcement without suffering the financial drawbacks.)
In the long run, though, a world where everything Moderna, Pfizer, Novavax, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson know about manufacturing their vaccines was freely available online would make vaccines easier for other manufacturers to make. It would also make them cheaper and more accessible to countries that have had trouble getting them.
At a meeting this week, the WTO is considering requests from India and South Africa to waive the patents for the duration of the emergency. Most countries have their own patent laws, but international agreements about how they enforce each other’s patents — and disputes when countries suspect each other of ignoring IP concerns — tend to be mediated by the WTO.
Although the Biden administration’s announcement is a win for the pro-waiver side, the US isn’t the only country that needs to be persuaded for the WTO to agree on a patent waiver. For their part, the EU, the UK, Japan, and Switzerland have expressed opposition. But the US is influential in these debates, and the Biden administration’s about-face may well be decisive.
Many global health researchers, Bill Gates (and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and some within the Biden administration have vocally opposed waiving IP rights on the Covid-19 vaccines, generally with two arguments.
First, they argue society should want pharma companies to invent vaccines like the ones they did for Covid-19, and waiving rights will make that less likely in the future by making similar projects less appealing targets for investment. Second, they contend that patent waivers will set that precedent without even speeding up vaccine manufacturing.
“For the industry, this would be a terrible, terrible precedent,” Geoffrey Porges, a research analyst at SVB Leerink, an investment bank, told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/us/politics/biden-coronavirus-vaccine-patents.html?mc_cid=a13d6a60db&mc_eid=aec10915b0">the New York Times</a>. “It would be intensively counterproductive, in the extreme, because what it would say to the industry is: ‘Don’t work on anything that we really care about, because if you do, we’re just going to take it away from you.’”
Perhaps most prominent among those who’ve taken this stance is Bill Gates. “The thing that’s holding things back, in this case, is not intellectual property,” Gates said in a controversial interview on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Ic4EN0io4">Sky News</a>. “It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines. You’ve got to do the trials on these things, and every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way.”
Instead of intellectual property, Gates’s argument goes, the problem is deep technical know-how: the important details of the process that goes into making a vaccine. This is an especially critical problem for the mRNA vaccines Pfizer and Moderna created because they use a new technique. (The mRNA vaccines give the body instructions it can use to make the spike protein on the coronavirus. From there, the body can recognize it and fight it off. This is different from the vaccines we’re all familiar with, which expose a patient to a dead or weak virus, or a chunk of a virus, to help prime the immune system.)
Moderna and Pfizer know not only the exact formula of their vaccines but also countless procedural details about making them successfully: equipment modification, temperature settings, how to troubleshoot common problems, different kinds of failure and what problems they indicate, and so on. Waiving IP protections won’t make this information available.
This isn’t an instance of Bill Gates going off message; it has consistently been the stance of his foundation. Last year, it worked to convince Oxford to partner with AstraZeneca on vaccine production, a partnership that has come under heavy criticism for having <a href="https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine-oxford-makes-a-deal-with-drugmaker/">held back the Oxford vaccine’s potential for wider, cheaper sharing</a> as AstraZeneca scaled up production slower than was hoped.
Why would advocates for global health want partnerships with for-profit pharmaceutical companies?
They contend that, if the world predictably waives patents for sufficiently critical medications and vaccines, companies will find it harder to attract investment when they work on those problems. And vaccines developed without a pharmaceutical partner — say, by a university — might have no luck being manufactured at the needed scale. “At our foundation, we believe that IP fundamentally underpins innovation, including the work that has helped create vaccines so quickly,” Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articles/coronavirus-vaccine-equitable-access">wrote in February</a>.
“From early in the pandemic, there were lots of smart people at the Gates Foundation thinking about how to structure financing and incentives for accelerating vaccine development,” Justin Sandefur, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in London and Washington, DC, told me. “To their credit, they worked on this really early on. They convinced themselves that IP was important.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation isn’t alone in thinking IP is important or waivers would be a bad idea. Vaccine makers “are already cooperating widely with competitors and generic manufacturers, including via <a href="https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/articles/2020/astrazeneca-takes-next-steps-towards-broad-and-equitable-access-to-oxford-universitys-potential-covid-19-vaccine.html">voluntary licenses</a>, <a href="https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/novartis-signs-up-to-help-produce-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine">contracted production</a>, and <a href="https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/government/2021/02/canada-signs-deal-with-novavax-to-make-its-covid-19-vaccine-at-new-montreal-facility">proactive technology transfer</a>,” the CGD’s Rachel Silverman argued in a CGD-hosted <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/debate/would-exempting-covid-19-vaccines-intellectual-property-rights-improve-global-access">debate about whether to waive IP</a>. “Diluting that commercial incentive may reduce their interest in pursuing the voluntary horizontal collaborations that are already driving scale.”
The case for IP waivers is that, while there are definitely many other barriers to getting the world vaccinated, removing even one is better than letting it remain in place. As part of a no-holds-barred effort to get the vaccine to everyone, the world should do everything in its power to cut through some of the restrictions delaying vaccines, even if it will take additional steps for this particular action to make a big difference.
“There’s a question of where the onus of proof lies in this situation,” Sandefur told me. “The standard line you hear is, ‘Well, there aren’t that many factories that can do this.’ And I can’t point you to the [specific] factory that’s ready to produce AstraZeneca, but we want to free up the market to let the discovery happen.”
If you really want to get something done, it makes sense to address every possible thing standing in the way of getting it done, even if it’s not the biggest or most significant barrier. And while the vaccines genuinely are incredibly difficult to manufacture, those from Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca aren’t quite as out of reach as the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, and years of this fight are still ahead — time during which some company could, perhaps, pull off what has been dismissed as too difficult or even impossible and get generics off the ground a little faster.
What’s implicit in that argument is there’s actually only a small chance of seeing benefits from waivers. But, proponents of waivers argue, there’s also not much chance of harm. If it’s true other companies can’t make the vaccines easily, the IP waivers won’t undercut sales for the existing companies or disincentivize future R&D. Conversely, the only way the IP waivers could actually cut into existing companies’ profits is if they successfully incentivize more vaccine development. If that actually happened, the thinking goes, that’d be worth it.
Some supporters of IP waivers have argued the debate is essentially a matter of class warfare: Gates and big pharma against the global poor. But there are passionate defenders of the interests of poor people on both sides of the IP waiver debate: Many experts who’ve spent their careers fighting for the world’s poor also see IP waivers as a counterproductive step. Smart people disagree on whether this approach does, in fact, increase vaccine access where it’s needed most, and whether it damages our preparedness for the next pandemic.
Regardless of whether they were for or against IP waivers, everyone I spoke to agreed on one thing: IP waivers are much less important than just directly funding poor countries’ access to the vaccine.
Many people who aren’t opposed to IP waivers nonetheless caution against advocating for them because it could distract from better solutions. Silverman called waiver advocacy “an inefficient use of limited global advocacy/political capital for vaccine access.” IP is “not the point in the medium term,” Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy at CGD, <a href="https://twitter.com/glassmanamanda/status/1390026893722796037">tweeted Wednesday</a>.
Her focus: urging governments to <a href="https://www.vox.com/22291086/biden-covax-united-states-covid-19-vaccinations-world-g7">give money to Covax</a> so there’s clear demand for increased manufacturing. Covax is supposed to purchase vaccines for the world but has found them scarce; the overwhelming majority of vaccines have been distributed in rich countries. Despite the devastating consequences of letting the pandemic rip through poorer nations, richer countries have been stingy with Covax, and it needs more resources to succeed.
“I think [waiving IP protections] is almost as much of a PR move as anything else,” Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist who works on drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry, told me. “There are a lot of people who are convinced that the only thing that’s holding back the generic vaccine is the patents, so the Biden administration said, ‘Okay, let’s see.’”
Indeed, the attention the debate over patent waivers has generated in the past week has obscured an important point: There’s no one trick to making vaccines widely available. Doing so is going to require commitments to buy billions of doses once companies make them, and months of hard work easing the supply bottlenecks that slow down production. Even if companies can manufacture generic versions of vaccines, they won’t do so without committed buyers — and that’s where committing to help poor countries purchase them really becomes essential.
In other words, it would be a mistake to take a victory lap following the Biden administration’s announcement. Even if legal barriers are addressed, countless practical barriers remain between here and vaccinating the world. If the IP waiver is a first step, great. But there are many steps to go if we’re to conquer Covid-19 in every corner of the globe.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22419842/vaccine-patents-biden-pfizer-moderna-johnson-astrazeneca">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22419842/vaccine-patents-biden-pfizer-moderna-johnson-astrazeneca</a>

vox Biden agreed to waive vaccine patents. But will that help get doses out faster?

The Biden administration has announced that it will work with the World Trade Organization (WTO) to negotiate a deal to suspend intellectu...

The Anti-Police Movement Wants To Do A Left-Wing Revolution To Overthrow The Authority Of The Police And Spark Chaos

<a href="https://shoebat.com/2021/05/06/the-anti-police-movement-wants-to-do-a-left-wing-revolution-to-overthrow-the-authority-of-the-police-and-spark-chaos/defund-the-police-pic/" rel="attachment wp-att-143690"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-143690 jetpack-lazy-image" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-lazy-srcset="https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-300x169.jpg 300w, https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-768x433.jpg 768w, https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic.jpg 1210w" height="577" loading="lazy" src="https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-1024x577.jpg?is-pending-load=1" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" width="1024" /></a>
<img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-143690" height="577" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-1024x577.jpg" srcset="https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-300x169.jpg 300w, https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic-768x433.jpg 768w, https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/defund-the-police-pic.jpg 1210w" width="1024" />
By Theodore Shoebat & Walid Shoebat
The only thing that stands between peace and mob rule is the law and the ones who enforce it. This would be the police, and this is why we are witnessing an unprecedented attack on the police. This is the only reason as to why we are seeing these activists pressing for “police reform” when they really want to diminish the police’s authority to enforce law and order.  
There is a trend growing against the police, and there is also a push to democratize the police, or to have the police department completely under the control of ’the people’ who would be represented by a commission of radicals. This civilian oversight would make it easy for people to accuse the police of “civil rights” abuses and would make the leeway towards the persecution of the police. They want to make it easier to prosecute officers by lowering the standard of evidence for accusations of civil rights abuses against the police; they want a mob of activists to act as the inquisition towards officers, providing the conditions for the breakdown of police authority.
Of course, these people are not outright saying that they desire for a revolution against the police; but rather they are demanding for “civilian oversight” to dictate their demands to the police. This “civilian oversight” would consist of Left-wing activists who already have a “defund the police” (or even “abolish the police”) ideology, and they will only work to overpower the police by not only making unreasonable demands (don’t shoot at people who are waving a knife at you or a civilian), but to also exert efforts to punish officers for shooting people justifiably. A favor towards criminals and an enmity towards law enforcement is the love of lawlessness, and nothing good can come out of such. But this attempted revolution is occurring incrementally, lest they shock people too much. We see this incremental move in the city of San Antonio, where an attempt was made to remove the police union’s collective bargaining and to impose more civilian oversight on the police department. We are talking about Prop B., which did not win in the referendum, but not by a landslide (51% to 49%), nothing to be proud about and only a warning sign of a rising trend towards revolutionary thought. 
[embedded content]
In the current system of San Antonio, the City and the police union negotiate a contract every five years that determines important things like wages, health care, and disciplinary procedures. If Prop B (or something like it) ever passes in the future, it would provide the avenue and the opportunity for the mob to gather enough support for voting for defunding the police by demanding the reducing of police funds. The Prop B movement, which is directed by a group called Fix SAPD, claims that they don’t want to defund the police but simply want more “community oversight” over the police. As Fix SAPD’s Deputy Director Ananda Tomas, says: “This is about the community being able to have a stronger voice in policing … This is the only way that we can have a say over policing in our city and create a contract that has better community oversight, that has less officers fired and brought back, that has a disciplinary system that works.” But if there is community oversight, that means those of the “defund the police” persuasion can petition for what they want, and if they have enough people, they could succeed in what they demand.
Under Prop B, the police would lose their bargaining power and the City would have the authority to set the terms of employment as it sees fit, which would chip away a piece of the police’s power. Now, while the City would (technically) have the power to determine the contract for the police as it wants, this would be quite difficult to accomplish because (as in any negotiation) both sides need to feel satisfied. The City cannot just leave the police unhappy and declare what it desires; the cops would need to have their demands met to some extent. Nonetheless, the dangerous element of Prop B is that it would be an incremental step towards stripping away the political leverage of the police. As we read in <a href="https://sanantonioreport.org/prop-b-explained-what-happens-when-police-cant-use-collective-bargaining-to-negotiate-contracts/">San Antonio Report</a>:
<blockquote readability="9">
“Meet and confer gives the City a significant upper hand. City Council could just set the terms of employment as it sees fit, something that would be unlikely, because the City could lose police officers if the terms aren’t attractive.”
</blockquote>
It would also be a small step towards democratizing the authority of the police, since it allows for citizens to petition against police contracts that they don’t find favor with. While this would still be based on a petition and not necessarily very effective, it is nevertheless an incremental move forward placing the police’s bargaining rights under the complaints of a mob. 
Under Prop P (according to a St. Mary’s University School of Law professor) “the City of San Antonio would have the upper hand in contract negotiations under meet and confer”. So, what Prop B wanted to do was give the upper hand to the City over the police union. Although, as an option, the City could still negotiate the contract with the police department under Prop B, but at the same time it wouldn’t have to and could just just dictate the terms of the contract.
Moreover, Prop B would have allowed civilians to petition against police contracts, meaning that Prop B would have provided the opportunity to manipulate enough people with anti-police propaganda to gather enough signatures against the police department’s contract. What Prop B would have done is give an incremental advantage over the police to the mob. By the mob, we are not talking about the average person who wants the police to have sufficient authority, but anarchists and Left-wing radicals who are waging war against the established system and want to supplant it with their own utopianism which does not exist anywhere but in their warped heads. These people are agitators and exaggerators who make outlandish statements with no basis in reality, but they make them for no other purpose than to stoke up rage.
The organization, Fix SAPD, tries to paint itself as moderate as they claim that they only want “police accountability” and are not working to abolish the police. But to make an entire ideological movement over police misconduct in San Antonio doesn’t really make sense when you look at the <a href="https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2020/09/23/law-enforcement-officers-in-bexar-county-have-shot-killed-more-people-in-2020-than-2019-records-show/">actual numbers</a> for police shootings in this city. For example, in the entire county of Bexar (wherein lies San Antonio) which has a population of over two million people, there were just nineteen cases of officers shooting at people. In eleven of those cases, a person was killed by officers; in sixteen of the nineteen cases, the person being shot at was armed with a weapon. In other words, these killings were justified.
But, an entire ideological movement has been formed against the police over eleven people being killed by cops justifiably, in a county of over two million people? The outrage over the police in San Antonio is unfitting to say the least. In simpler terms, it just doesn’t make sense. All of this outrage against a police force that has killed 90 people since 2016 does not add up. It does make sense, however, that there is an ideological motive that stems from political radicalism, and this can be seen in the list of organizations that are supporting Fix SAPD. One of these organizations is Our Revolution, which was founded by Jewish socialist politician, Bernie Sanders, and is currently chaired by Jewish unionist Larry Cohen. The president of Our Revolution is Nina Turner, a politician and agitator who enjoys making over the top exaggerations fueled by a vicious emotionalism and which stokes up anti-police sentiment. For example, in June of 2020 — amidst the hysteria of the George Floyd riots — Turner <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/502310-turner-on-why-reform-must-go-beyond-police">called</a> the police an occupying force of black neighborhoods:
<blockquote readability="11">
“The history of the police has not been one of ‘protect and serve … It has been one of ‘occupy,’ it’s been one of that says ‘they are bad, they are evil, they’re poor, we must be there at all times.’”
</blockquote>
If black neighborhoods are under an ‘occupation’ by the cops, it is as if Turner is portraying black areas as being divided from the rest of the country, and cops are merely an occupying force like soldiers in Iraq. If the police are an occupation force, then that means blacks are a separate nation. It is a rhetoric of polarization; and what she accuses the police officers of, she is doing herself, seeing officers as evil and as an enemy. But, if black communities really see the cops as racist or as singling them out, such rhetoric is found inadequate in the face of the fact <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx">that 61%</a> of blacks want police presence in their neighborhoods to remain the same. And these numbers were not found by some conservative media outlet, but by Gallup Center on Black Voices. So how could the police be an enemy of blacks, or of the people, when the great majority of people are happy with the police?
Also on the staff of Our Revolution is Jewish Left-wing professor, Huck Gutman, the Former Chief of Staff for socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. Gutman is also a commentator on poetry and <a href="https://www.huckgutman.com/blog-1/vladimir-mayakovsky-at-the-top-of-my-voice">on his own website</a> presents a poem by Soviet writer, Vladimir Mayakovsy, which states:
“Listen,
comrades of posterity,
to the agitator
the rabble-rouser.
Stifling
the torrents of poetry,
I’ll skip
the volumes of lyrics;
as one alive,
I’ll address the living.
I’ll join you
in the far communist future”
So, it just so happens that people talking about “police accountability,” in a country where there isn’t a police problem (but a criminal problem) want us to revere the criminal and to have dreams for a communist future. The activists who want us to see the police as enforcing racism, want us to revere a regime that killed tens of millions of people. This is not surprising. All radical revolutionaries need chaos to capitalize upon so as to usher in their revolution. If you diminish the police, you increase violent crime. With the weakening of the police force comes the rise of private security which would be afforded by people with enough money, which means poor areas would be the ones most heavily troubled by an increase in the crime rate. With such divisions, those who are in the most dire situation would be the most vulnerable to revolutionary thinking, and since it would be the wealthy classes who would be the most protected from the violence, then the propaganda would be against the rich, and class warfare would then be promoted. Taking advantage of chaos to foment revolution has always been a strategy of the communists. In 1919, Leon Trotsy <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1919/xx/order.html">saw</a> the violence of World War One as an opportunity to advance the communist revolution: “Bloody chaos still stands over Europe. The old is combining with the new. Events pile up on events; and blood accumulates on blood. But from this chaos, ever more resolutely and boldly emerges the idea of the Communist Order”.
It is not surprising that there are communists who are in the ranks of Our Revolution. The Communist Party USA <a href="https://keywiki.org/Our_Revolution#Communist_Party_infiltration">admitted</a> that they have members in Our Revolution working for the Bernie Sanders campaign:
<blockquote readability="11">
“Members were involved with Bernie Sanders campaign and are continuing their activism in Our Revolution, Swing Left, Indivisible, Working Families Party, statewide groups like the New Virginia Majority and local Democratic Party groups and 2018 electoral campaigns.”
</blockquote>
It is not to our amazement that communists would be collaborating with Our Revolution. Its founder, Bernie Sanders, is an open socialist. A socialist utopia cannot come to fruition without revolution, and a revolution is sparked through a green light to the mob. A mob is never satisfied; you can give them the world, and they will declare their rule over the earth and kill the person who gave it to them. You can give them the whole earth and they will simply burn it down. Mobs stand victorious over the society that gave them power, after they ruin and burn it to the ground. Mob rule is seen as a means to fanatical utopianism. Hence why these fanatics are demanding for complete civilian oversight to be imposed upon police departments. Hence why one of the supporters of Fix SAPD is a Left-wing organization called Campaign Zero, which wants the police to be ruled by a mob. For example, on its own website Campaign Zero has a list of demands for the police. One demand is: “Establish an all-civilian oversight structure with discipline power that includes a Police Commission and Civilian Complaints Office”.
One of the “powers” of this “civilian oversight structure” would be to “determine policy for the police department based on community input and expertise”. In such a system, the only people who would be giving “community input” would be people who despise the police; it would be people who think that an officer who shoots and kills someone trying to stab someone (or the officer) with a knife is a ‘murderer’ who needs to be arrested and tried. Just look at how the mob frothed their hysterical rage against officer Nicholas Reardon because he shot Ma’Khia Bryant when she was trying to stab another woman.
The mob wanted to crucify officer Darren Wilson because he shot Michael Brown after he tried to use his service weapon against him. No matter what the story is, no matter how justified the officer is in killing an assailant, the mob is never happy. The reason why is because the mob wants something outside of what it claims to want. The mob claims to want justice, but it only cries this out because it wants to do injustice against its neighbor. The mob claims to want equality, but what it really wants is to be above everyone else. A mob is only angry because its not in power.
Once the mob gets in power, all of its former cries for justice are dissolved in the injustice it perpetuates; all of its plaintive cries against inequality are disintegrated in the cries of those it torments, as it works to manifest the nightmare that he sees as utopia, to manifest an idea that only exists in its warped head. The only people who would want to be on a civilian commission to judge the police would be people who despise the police, and thus the concept of civilian oversight pushed by Leftists has only a motivation towards mob rule over the police. Campaign Zero wants the mob to have the power to “evaluate and fire the Police Chief, if needed”, and of course this same organization demands for “full-time, competitive salaries for all members”.
Thus you will have a mob judging the police based on its own hysterical mentality (an officer is a murderer if he kills someone for trying to kill him or others) while being paid for. It makes one wonder if, when they say “defund the police”, what they really want is for police funds to be reallocated to their own pockets. Also, Campaign Zero wants the civilian commission (the mob) to have the power to “make disciplinary and policy recommendations to the Police Chief”, and if the Police Chief does not listen, then the commission can “compel the Police Chief to explain why he/she has not followed a recommendation”, and if the Chief still doesn’t acquiesce then the civilian commission will “decide cases where the Police Chief does not follow recommendations”. So these “recommendations” are not recommendations at all, but orders, since if they are not followed then the mob overrides the Chief. Other than the fantasy of coercion, Campaign Zero also wants to make it easier to find officers guilty in the courtroom: “lower the standard of proof in civil rights cases against police” .
This means that officers who kill people justifiably could still be tried for murder with arguments like ‘just because the person was armed with a knife and was swinging it at you don’t mean he deserved to die.’ This mob wants to make it easier for criminals to terrorize, and they want to make it difficult for cops to kill the tormenters. Ultimately, what these ideologues are doing is setting up the conditions for revolution. They will say that they don’t want to ruin the cohesiveness of society, but they are nevertheless doing just that when they call for a complete democratization of the police under the pretence of a police problem which does not exist in the United States.
An entire ideological movement over an hysterical view of the police, calling for Left-wing activists — who are excessively and vitriolically critical of the police — to rule over the cops, and to, with a lower standard of evidence, make accusations of murder and brutality at officers even when they justifiably use deadly force — all of these things are merely a way to wage war on the institution that keeps society stable and safer: the police department. One of the symbols of authority in modern society is the police badge, and if enough people despise it, then enough people hate authority, and the conditions for revolution would only further ripen. While the ideological underpinnings of this movement can be found in Left-wing thought (such as Marxism), there is a deeper historical root for this tree of rotten fruit: the Enlightenment, the very thing which sprang to life both Right-wing fanaticism and Left-wing lunacy. We have discussed <a href="https://shoebat.com/2017/01/27/we-are-about-to-enter-a-new-world-war-christians-are-going-to-suffer-the-most-horrific-persecution-humanity-is-about-to-enter-its-darkest-moment-a-great-cloud-of-evil-will-flood-the-earth-and-it-w/">in depth the connections between Right-wing radicalism and the Enlightenment</a>, but there is also found in the hysteria we see today a parallel with the Enlightenment radicalism that led to the French Revolution of the late 18th century. What these fanatics are calling for is for the mob to rule over one of the institution that carries out violence to enforce the authority of the state, and to democratize this would be to have a mob demobilize it and diminish its power to purge away criminals. In the Enlightenment there was a call to have the state completely controlled by ‘the people.’
The reason why they pushed this was because by popularizing democratization they would then set up the conditions for a revolution to overthrow monarchy. For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the ideologue who heavily influenced the French Revolution, envisioned an entire assembly of the people dictating the laws of the government: “the Sovereign can never act but when the people are assembled.” Rousseau went so far as to affirm that once a society obeys a governor then they lose all integrity as a people: “If therefore a people promise unconditionally to obey, the act of making such a promise dissolves their existence, and they lose their quality of a people; for at the moment that there is a master there is no longer a Sovereign; and the body politic is destroyed of course.” (See Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, part 2, ch. 3)
In other words, since the people are the sovereign, there can be no king since monarchy is antithetical to the idea that the people are the rulers. Thus, while Rousseau is not exhorting for the overthrow of the monarch, he is advocating for the conditions that would lead to revolution. In the eighteenth century, it was about democratizing sovereignty; today it is about democratizing the police. Both are attempts at breaking down institutions of governing, and both are a war against authority.
To have a mob of activists dictate the fate of officers and find them guilty of “murder” when they were simply doing their jobs, would be the establishment of mock courts the existence of which would only serve as a facade. What we are witnessing, to use the words of Augustin Barruel when he wrote on the ideological origins of the bloody French Revolution, is a frantic Philosophism, with an entire network of conspirators and their sanhedreins, “eradicating from man every symptom of reason.” (Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinsim, part 1, ch. 9, p. 174).
What we are dealing with is a group that wants to run the mock trial; the scoffers of authority are possessed with that very spirit of the Sanhedrim of antiquity, who pressured the government to slay the Logos, the Mind of God incarnated in the flesh. They were vacuous of reason, and they murdered Reason; filled with madness, they were driven by an hysterical bloodlust, and gazing upon Truth nailed on the cross, Truth was no longer with them; standing upon the mountain that appeared like a skull, and remaining to scoff in the face of cruelty, death became their emblem. Such are the hearts of those today who desire power in the name of freedom. They will, in the words of Barruel, “drag others in their train, craving a servitude termed peace”. (Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, part iv, preliminary discourse).
 
 
source <a href="https://shoebat.com/2021/05/06/the-anti-police-movement-wants-to-do-a-left-wing-revolution-to-overthrow-the-authority-of-the-police-and-spark-chaos/">https://shoebat.com/2021/05/06/the-anti-police-movement-wants-to-do-a-left-wing-revolution-to-overthrow-the-authority-of-the-police-and-spark-chaos/</a>

armageddon The Anti-Police Movement Wants To Do A Left-Wing Revolution To Overthrow The Authority Of The Police And Spark Chaos

By Theodore Shoebat & Walid Shoebat The only thing that stands between peace and mob rule is the law and the ones who enforce it. Thi...

"Felt Really Heavy:" Astronauts Describe Returning To Earth On SpaceX Capsule

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="'Felt Really Heavy:' Astronauts Describe Returning To Earth On SpaceX Capsule" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-05/lcmfdck_astronauts-splash-down-off-florida-650_625x300_02_May_21.jpeg" title="'Felt Really Heavy:' Astronauts Describe Returning To Earth On SpaceX Capsule" /></div>
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday.
</div>
Washington, United States:
Four astronauts just returned from the International Space Station described on Thursday their reentry into Earth's atmosphere and ocean splashdown after more than 160 days in space.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday in NASA's first nighttime ocean landing in more than 50 years. 
"There was a point where I was just saying to myself, breathe. Inhale, because I felt really heavy -- I felt like those cartoons when they experience G and your face is just sagging down," said American Victor Glover, one of the astronauts in the group called Crew-1. 
It was the first regular mission to be taken and then returned from the ISS aboard a spacecraft built by billionaire Elon Musk's company.
"I expected it to be so dynamic -- and so challenging -- that the actual event I think, was a little less than what I was expecting, and so it was enjoyable all around," Glover said.
The weight of acceleration was concentrated in the chest, making it difficult to breathe.
But then, "launch and entry are such unique experiences," he said.   
NASA has contracted SpaceX to launch astronauts into space from US soil, something that has not been possible since 2011 with the end of space shuttle program.
Since that time until now NASA was forced to pay for rides to the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz vessels, which land on dry land.
"Landing in the water was interesting because none of us really knew what to expect, but I would say from my standpoint, it felt a little bit softer than landing on land," said US astronaut Shannon Walker.
"You spend less time under a parachute on the Dragon than you do under the Soyuz," he said.
Soon, space "tourists" -- civilians who are not professional astronauts -- will take their places on Dragon.
US astronaut Mike Hopkins believes that space tourists will be able to handle the rough reentry rides.
After the civilians go through some centrifuge training "it's not going to be completely unique to them," he said.
Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi said the landing was pretty smooth.
"Impact was very, very minimal, and right after splashdown. We feel the waves, we come back to the water planet.
"That's a great feeling."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/astronauts-describe-returning-to-earth-on-spacex-capsule-felt-really-heavy-2436717">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/astronauts-describe-returning-to-earth-on-spacex-capsule-felt-really-heavy-2436717</a>

news world "Felt Really Heavy:" Astronauts Describe Returning To Earth On SpaceX Capsule

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday. Washington, United States: Four as...

US Lawmakers Applaud Biden For Temporary Patent Waiver On Covid Vaccines

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="US Lawmakers Applaud Biden For Temporary Patent Waiver On Covid Vaccines" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-04/c7suahe_joe-biden-afp_625x300_29_April_21.jpg" title="US Lawmakers Applaud Biden For Temporary Patent Waiver On Covid Vaccines" /></div>
US lawmakers have applauded President Joe Biden for the temporary waiver of Covid vaccines (File)
</div>
Washington:
US lawmakers have applauded President Joe Biden for the temporary waiver of some Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) rules to accelerate manufacturing and distribution of coronavirus vaccines.
Congressman James Clyburn said the announcement will not only help vulnerable populations in other countries, but it will protect all Americans from the risk of variants that threaten to undermine the recent success in administering vaccinations and reducing infections.
"I commend the Biden-Harris administration on today's announcement in support of the temporary waiver of certain intellectual property rules in order to accelerate the delivery of much-needed coronavirus vaccines to people around the world," the chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis said.
"The coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis and requires global solutions. As we have watched the virus devastate countries around the world, it has become increasingly clear that our nation's ability to fully emerge from this crisis is threatened by the spread of the virus elsewhere," he said.
Clyburn said ensuring that our global partners have the tools they need to deliver safe and effective vaccines to people around the world as quickly as possible is crucial in order to save lives and bring the coronavirus pandemic to an end.
Influential Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone welcomed the announcement by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
"The United States must do everything in its power to ensure vaccines are accessible worldwide as soon as possible," he said.
On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal in an editorial slammed Biden for such a move.
"Who will invest in future therapies when the White House helps other governments steal?" it asked.
"The administration's WTO waiver will break patents and legal protections for vaccine makers. Investors will be less likely to fund new drug research if they think their own government will betray them under political pressure. Chalk up another damaging victory for the Congressional left," the daily said.
India and South Africa have been pushing a resolution at the WTO that would force pharmaceutical companies to hand over their COVID vaccine and therapy IP to manufacturers in low-income countries. 
The waiver is backed by some 100 other low-income countries, progressive groups and more than 100 Democratic Congress members, the major financial daily said.
On Thursday, Indian Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu had a virtual meeting with Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and South African Ambassador to the US Nomaindiya Mfeketo on the Biden administration's decision.
Jayapal, who is chairman of the powerful Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives. has been one of the biggest advocates of TRIPS waiver.
During the conference, they discussed important issues relating to global public health, including the TRIPS waiver.
"We thanked the Congresswoman for her steadfast support for the TRIPS waiver proposal," Sandhu said in a tweet.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-lawmakers-applaud-joe-biden-for-temporary-patent-waiver-on-covid-19-vaccines-2436698">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-lawmakers-applaud-joe-biden-for-temporary-patent-waiver-on-covid-19-vaccines-2436698</a>

news world US Lawmakers Applaud Biden For Temporary Patent Waiver On Covid Vaccines

US lawmakers have applauded President Joe Biden for the temporary waiver of Covid vaccines (File) Washington: US lawmakers have applaud...