Violent Protests Erupted In India. Then Calls For Police To Shoot The Protesters Went Viral On Twitter.

Twitter did not take “Shoot” off its trending topics for at least a couple of hours — after there was public outcry and after BuzzFeed News emailed asking for comment.

Pranav Dixit BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From New Delhi
Last updated on January 27, 2021

Sajjad Hussain / Getty Images

Farmers stormed New Delhi's Red Fort, a historical national monument, to protest against the government's new agricultural reforms.

Calls to "shoot" farmers protesting against controversial agricultural reforms in India trended for hours on Twitter on Tuesday, as thousands of tweets encouraging police brutality against them flooded the platform.

Violence erupted in India’s capital on Tuesday after thousands of farmers, who have been camped on the outskirts of New Delhi for nearly two months to protest against government agricultural reforms they say will hurt their livelihoods, entered the city and clashed with police. Demonstrators broke through police barricades around the city and stormed the Red Fort, a historic national monument. Police used heavy batons and fired tear gas shells. Authorities also shut down internet access in parts of the capital, something that officials in India frequently do to quash protests. At least one protestor died.

On Twitter, supporters of India’s Hindu nationalist government, led by prime minister Narendra Modi, called the protesting farmers “terrorists” and encouraged police brutality against them. “They are not farmers. They are worms, wearing fake masks of farmers,” read one of the viral tweets, which used the hashtag “#shoot.” “Request @AmitShah #shoot at sight is only option,” said another tweet, tagging India’s home minister and Modi’s right-hand man responsible for law and order in the country.


via Twitter



“Hit them with your batons, Delhi police,” the editor of a pro-government propaganda blog tweeted in Hindi. “We are with you.”


On Tuesday morning, “Shoot” was one of the top trending topics on the platform in India, in addition to the Hindi phrase “Dilli Police lath bajao” — which loosely translates to “Delhi Police, hit them with your batons."




Via Twitter




Ahmer Khan@ahmermkhan
#Shoot is trending in India. People asking the enforcement to stop the #FarmersProtest by shooting them.09:31 AM - 26 Jan 2021
Reply Retweet FavoriteTwitter: @ahmermkhan

"Shoot" stayed in the Trending section on Twitter in India for at least a couple of hours. It only disappeared after there was a public outcry and after BuzzFeed News emailed asking for comment. The company also deleted the blog editor’s tweet, saying that it violated Twitter rules, and suspended her account for 12 hours. Still, the Hindi phrase encouraging police to use their batons remained a trending topic for at least another hour. A search for “#shoot” revealed hundreds of tweets asking for police to shoot protesters.

“We have taken steps today to protect the conversation on our service from attempts to incite violence, abuse and threats that could trigger the risk of offline harm,” a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “Our team will take strong enforcement action judiciously and impartially on content, trends, Tweets and accounts that are in violation of the Twitter Rules. We strongly encourage everyone on the service to familiarise themselves with the Twitter Rules and report anything they believe is in violation. We are monitoring the situation closely and remain vigilant.”


A day later, Twitter issued a new statement saying that it suspended more than 300 accounts engaged in spam and platform manipulation. “We are monitoring the situation closely and remain vigilant, and strongly encourage those on the service to report anything they believe is in violation of the rules,” the company said.

In the United States, multiple tech platforms including Twitter permanently banned former president Donald Trump from the platform after his supporters stormed the US Capitol earlier this month. Trump had been banned from the platform “due to the risk of further violence,” tweeted Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy, and trust and safety head. Last year, the company put a warning label on one of the former president's posts about the Minneapolis protests which said: "[When] the looting starts, the shooting starts."

But experts have argued that Silicon Valley-based companies like Twitter and Facebook have a double standard when it comes to enforcing their own policies globally. In non-Western countries like India, which has been sliding into authoritarianism under the Modi government over the last few years, tech platforms frequently move slowly or do not take action against people who use them as a weapon to cause real-world harm.

Last year, for instance, Twitter let dozens of tweets doxing interfaith Hindu-Muslim couples remain on the platform until BuzzFeed News asked the company about them. In December, protesters gathered outside Facebook’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, alleging that the social network was censoring content posted in support of the protesting Indian farmers. And the Wall Street Journal reported that Ankhi Das, a top Facebook executive in India, had prevented the company from taking action against a politician belonging to Modi’s party for posting hate speech, saying that doing so would hurt the company’s business interests.



Money Sharma / Getty Images
Farmers on a tractor prepare to remove concrete barricades installed by police as they stormed into India's capital on Jan. 26, 2021.

“Powerful interests everywhere have learned that Silicon Valley’s tools can be used to create a bonfire of human rights, but the only time the platforms care is when they get bad press,” Alaphia Zoyab, advocacy director at Reset, a tech policy nonprofit that aims to tackle the information crisis created by tech platforms, told BuzzFeed News.


“When Silicon Valley has to choose between protecting business interests or protecting human rights, they’re going to choose the former,” she added. “The fact is that their current business model is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and freedom because a determined troll army in the camp of those in power can just hijack the platform to demand violence.”

Gadde did not respond to a request for comment, and Twitter declined to answer whether accounts in India encouraging violence would be permanently banned.

UPDATE
January 27, 2021, at 7:14 a.m.
This story was updated to include a new statement that Twitter issued a day later.


Pranav Dixit is a tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Delhi.

Two Wall Street Firms Took Huge GameStop 

Losses After Admitting Defeat To Redditors
LIBERTARIANS TEACH FREE MARKET ECONOMICS TO HEDGEFUNDS 
"We have been called boomers many times over the past week," said the head of one hedge fund.

Amber Jamieson BuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on January 27, 2021

Boston Globe / Getty Images

Two of the major hedge funds targeted by investors on Reddit pushing up the stock price of GameStop have waved expensive flags of defeat and sold out of their investments, losing millions of dollars.

On Wednesday, the stock price of GameStop (GME), the mall retailer for video games, soared 134%, a staggering increase of 748% in just one week after Reddit investors launched a chaotic short squeeze attack to increase the price and screw over major investors.


Wall Street hedge funds, including Citron Research and Melvin Capital, had shorted the stock, meaning they bet against it and needed it to drop in price in order for their investments to be successful.

The meeting place for the internet investors, popular subreddit r/WallStreetBets (WSB), gained an extra million members in just one day as its GameStop push gained widespread media attention and the memes followed.

Andrew Left of Citron Research, who had called the redditors an "angry mob" last week after they attempted to hack his Twitter account and harassed his family after he said GME will drop to $20, released a video statement Wednesday. He confirmed Citron Research had closed its short position on GME, which basically means that it sold out of its investment, choosing to cut its losses before the price rose any further.

"I cannot answer one more phone call," Left says in the video. "How are you? Are you OK? Are you in business? What about GameStop? Should I short it here? People I have not spoken to in 20–30 years — this has captured the attention of America.”

“I’m just fine. Citron Capital is just fine," he says. "Covered the majority of the short in the 90s, at a loss, 100%, I had a small manageable position and I let it go.”

That means Left sold the majority of his investment when the stock was selling in the $90 range. It closed on Wednesday at $330.

Left also says in the video that as a longtime activist investor, he respects WSB and redditors taking on hedge funds, and acknowledges that the market is changing.

"Even though we have been called boomers many times over the past week, we understand the changing dynamics in the market, and with that, we’ll become more judicious when it comes to shorting stocks," Left says. "It doesn’t mean the industry is dead, it just means you have to be more specific.”

Melvin Capital announced that it had sold out of GME on Wednesday morning. The Melvin Capital news was announced on CNBC by Andrew Ross Sorkin, who said he'd spoken with the manager of the fund, Gabe Plotkin.

“They got out of the stock yesterday afternoon. They have taken a rather huge loss,” said Sorkin, who added that he did not know the total of the loss.

On Monday, Melvin received more than $2 billion in emergency cash to help stabilize the fund and allow it to close the shorted position, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Yet some of the WSB redditors didn't believe that Melvin had closed its position and encouraged investors to not sell GME.

After the flurry of activity on Wednesday, TD Ameritrade, one of the free brokerage apps commonly used by young investors, briefly restricted trades on some stocks, including GameStop and AMC (another target of the WSB crowd) “in the interest of mitigating risk for our company and clients." That frustrated many who saw the halt as Wall Street firms stopping investors from making trades that would improve their personal wealth.



Brock Wilbur@brockwilbur
let the free market decide except for when it decides wrong

07:20 PM - 27 Jan 2021
Reply Retweet FavoriteTwitter: @brockwilbur

Adena Friedman, the CEO of Nasdaq, said her exchange would possibly temporarily halt trading so investors could "recalibrate" if one of the stocks was being targeted online in a similar manner to what's happened with GameStop.

"If we see a significant rise in the chatter on social media channels," Friedman told CBNBC, as reported by Mediate, "we also match that up against unusual trading activity, [and] potentially halt that stock to allow ourselves to investigate the situation, to be able to engage with the company, and to give investors a chance to recalibrate their positions."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has long fought to hold Wall Street accountable, called out the big financial players for freaking out when everyday investors used the same techniques against hedge funds that the firms used to build their own wealth.

"For years, the same hedge funds, private equity firms, and wealthy investors dismayed by the GameStop trades have treated the stock market like their own personal casino, while everyone else pays the price," she said.

An “Angry Mob” On Reddit Is Pushing Up GameStop's Stock Price 

And Pissing Off A Bunch Of Wall Street Firms

One financial industry expert told BuzzFeed News the redditors were engaged in a “coordinated attack.”

Amber JamiesonBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on January 26, 2021

Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Investors on Reddit have launched an attack that’s both trolling and serious on Wall Street firms by purchasing shares in GameStop, pushing the stock price up over 480% in a week, costing hedge funds millions of dollars, and skyrocketing young investors’ portfolios and egos.

Popular subreddit r/WallStreetBets (WSB), whose tagline is “Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal,” has over 2 million members reading and posting “stonks” tips and news. Its biggest obsession in recent weeks has been raising the stock price of GameStop, the old-school video game mall retailer.

“They’re digitally doing it in a coordinated attack,” Howard Lindzon at Social Leverage, an early stage seed investment fund, told BuzzFeed News.

Lindzon thinks the investors chatting across Reddit — who tend to be millennial and Gen Z men — are just having a fun time causing trouble for hedge funds who’d bet on shares in the gaming retailer dropping. “They’re just playing a game,” he said. “And they’re having a blast.”

For months, there has been chatter encouraging WSB day traders — or “degenerates,” as they call themselves — to buy up GameStop (GME) stock. Chewy CEO Ryan Cohen has been pushing GameStop to investors for months. He owns at least 13% of the company’s stock and is now on its board, which many took to mean it would move in a more digital direction.

But Wall Street hedge funds, including Citron Research and Melvin Capital, had shorted the stock, meaning they had bet against it and needed it to drop in price in order for their investments to be successful.

After Andrew Left from Citron Research posted a video last week arguing that GameStop’s share price would soon drop to $20, people attempted to hack his Twitter account. (He subsequently called the Reddit investors an “angry mob.”)

But instead, the GME stock price rose even higher as redditors called on investors to put as much money into the company as they could. In recent weeks, some have declared they were putting their entire retirement and life savings accounts into the company, complete with lots of rocket emojis and declarations that they would not sell.

Trading of GameStop has halted multiple times over the last week because the stock price has jumped so quickly it’s triggered market protections. On Monday, the stock surged again, opening at $96 and then jumping to $159 an hour later, its highest-ever price. By the end of the day, it was back in the $70s.


On Tuesday, it opened at $88 and jumped 90% by close. In after-hours trading, it jumped another 50%, to over $230.

A year ago, the share price was $4.

“Any rational person knows this type of trading behavior is short lived,” Left told Bloomberg.


Spencer Platt / Getty Images


By encouraging everyday investors, also known as retail investors, to buy up GME stock and increase its price, hedge funds would have to sell out in order to cut their losses from having shorted the stock, which increases the stock price even further.

“Hedge funds are getting their asses kicked by the retail investor,” Lindzon said.

He noted that millennial investors have been sharing information across Reddit and social networks for years, but the sheer number of them now means they are a force to be reckoned with. “It’s like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park; they get smarter, and eventually they hop the fence,” he said.

The moment has also been a chance for young investors — many of whom have flocked to investing since the pandemic was declared, causing the stock market to jump, helped in part by free brokerage apps such as Robinhood — to flip the bird at established Wall Street firms.

“What I think is happening is that you guys are making such an impact that these fat cats are worried that they have to get up and put in work to earn a living,” wrote one of the WSB subreddit moderators in a post on Sunday. “That fuzzy sensation you are feeling is called RESPECT and it is well earned. Wall Street no longer dismisses your presence anymore.”

“We put the F U back in fundamentals,” one redditor wrote on Tuesday in a post about how many millions of dollars Melvin is estimated to have lost because of the GME surge.

Their actions are having a very real impact on those hedge funds. Two firms announced they were investing over $2 billion into Melvin on Monday — “an emergency influx of cash,” as the Wall Street Journal described it — aimed at stabilizing the fund.

But not all the young investors on WSB are making money from GameStop’s rise.

On Monday, David — a 25-year-old who works in corporate finance for a private tech company in the Bay Area and lives in the Midwest but asked that his last name not be used in this story — bought about $14,000 in GME stock after reading about it on WSB.

He said he’d been watching the chatter about GameStop for months but finally decided to buy in on Monday. “I just figured that the market is completely irrational and that everything I learned in college means nothing,” he told BuzzFeed News.


He bought about $7,000 worth of stock priced at $115 on Monday morning. After watching it rise, he bought another $7,000 at $155 — except that ended up being the stock’s highest point that day.

David panicked as he realized he was possibly about to lose 15% of his total portfolio. He sold all of his GME investment and only lost about $600 in total. If he hadn’t sold them just moments after buying them, by the end of the day he would have been down around $10,000 (although he would have been up by the end of Tuesday).

“Honestly, the majority of bad trades on WSB are due to FOMO,” he told BuzzFeed News over Reddit. “I paid a large (but relatively small) price to learn that lesson.”

But for many on WSB, the attitude is a mix of “eat the rich” and “get rich quick” (with some redditors saying that their investments are up millions of dollars), as well as a smug joy that their trolling has worked and the investing and media worlds were suddenly paying close attention to them.

“A good way to check how many hedge fund managers there are in your building is to check the pavement outside,” one redditor posted on Tuesday. “It should be covered in blood.”

“Any man that dies holding GME will be greeted by the All-Father himself in Valhalla,” another wrote.

Beyond redditors, other investors also see this moment as one when young internet investors are able to have a significant impact on the big Wall Street firms.

Alexis Ohanian, the cofounder of Reddit, believes it reflects a fundamental change. “2021: the mainstream will realize finance will be revolutionized from the bottom-up bc of the internet: Robinhood investors, Alts, crypto, the list goes on..,” he tweeted.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has publicly battled with investors who’ve shorted his company and has a reputation for trolling behavior himself, tweeted a link to the WSB subreddit on Tuesday afternoon, writing, “Gamestonk!!”

Lindzon said he expects hedge funds to get smarter at handling these moments. He believes that even if there are millions of millennial investors, they can really only significantly impact one relatively small company, rather than a whole market, industry, or corporate behemoth, such as Apple.

But it’s also a reminder that stock markets are reliant on individuals, their feelings, and their actions.

“All of this is just raw human emotion masquerading around as something more profound,” wrote Peter Heilbron, the founder of wealth management company Trace Wealth Advisors, in a blog post about GameStop and Reddit. “Everyone wants to be invited to the party but no one wants to be the one left without a chair when the music stops playing… the friction that exists between those two things is what creates volatility.”

And that volatility exists until the game, well, stops.

Amber Jamieson is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

GameStop: Why social media-driven traders are beating Wall Street

Retail traders using social media site Reddit have quickly overturned conventional wisdom about who holds sway in US equity markets.

GameStop, a struggling US video game retailer, has seen its share price surge from below $3 in April 2020 to more than $373 on Wednesday [File: Carlo Allegri/Reuters]

By Ben Piven
28 Jan 2021

An unlikely company has found itself at the centre of a much-heralded sea change in investment trends, as video game retailer GameStop’s stock continues to skyrocket – at least for now.

But the bizarre spectacle around the surge in the US consumer electronics firm’s share price has become a war of words – and dollars – between traditional Wall Street barons and small-time retail investors catalysed by social-media buzz.

Virtually overnight, the value of GameStop went from extraordinarily low to breathtakingly high. The coronavirus pandemic had slammed the Texas-based chain with more than 5,500 retail locations. Struggling to shift from brick-and-mortar stores to an online seller, the company was shuttering many of its mall shops.

Yet now, the gaming merchandiser is taking a victory lap, just as other companies have also seen their fortunes brought back to life by so-called “Reddit rich” rookies exchanging free stock tips on the social media site.
What is the background here?

In April 2020, Gamestop announced plans to close 450 stores. Its stock dipped to below $3 per share. The stock then slowly recovered by the end of the northern hemisphere summer and in September, investor Ryan Cohen rallied around the retailer, pressing for the company to take on Amazon.com Inc.

Cohen snatched up a 13 percent stake in GameStop and along with two partners, jumped onto the company’s board. That was when the firm’s cult-like status began to emerge.
How much is GameStop now worth?

By mid-January, the stock had surpassed $30 per share. But the momentum did not stop there. During the past week, its value has catapulted past $300 per share, reaching a peak of $373 on Wednesday morning in New York.

[Bloomberg]The stock’s surge has created $2bn in personal wealth for the firm’s three largest individual shareholders, including Cohen – none of whom appear to have sold their shares yet.


Why are heads turning?

Small-time investors purchased what they saw as undervalued GameStop stock using the Robinhood mobile app and other new trading services that aim to democratise market access. At the same time, a number of big Wall Street financial players bet against GameStop and shorted the stock.

So please explain to me what shorting a stock is

This is a strategy in which investors borrow shares they do not own and then sell them on the expectation that their price will fall. They then buy those shares back – something known as “covering” – once their price drops and hand the shares back to the party they borrowed them from in the first place. It is essentially the reverse of how an investor would normally try to make money: buying a stock while it is low and selling it when it rises.

More than 70 million GameStop shares are currently being shorted, resulting in losses for large institutional investors amounting to an estimated $6bn.
Is this what experts call a ‘short squeeze’?

Yes, a short squeeze occurs when a stock price sees a rapid increase – not necessarily due to underlying fundamentals – but because of short sellers covering and liquidating their positions.

With GameStop, this began on January 22 and continued this week.

What does this say about the power of Reddit?

On Monday, Reddit users were saying they “broke GME”, referring to the ticker symbol for GameStop. Trading of its shares was temporarily halted by the New York Stock Exchange nine different times to contain the volatility, after the stock doubled in under two hours. Many millennials in the WallStreetBets forum are celebrating their power over Wall Street titans.

Legions of Reddit-inspired stock pickers and a stampede of TikTok-addicted day traders went head-to-head with established investors who doubled down on their opposing bet, in a financial war of attrition. The investors backing GameStop have promoted the face-off as a battle royale between everyday punters and powerful hedge funds.

Social news aggregation site Reddit has become a platform for forums such as WallStreetBets which have allowed retail stock traders to beat much larger investment firms [File: Bloomberg]

Can veteran investors still win their wager?

One conventional investor, Citron Research, continues to refer to GameStop as “failing” and disparages supporters as “herd investors” artificially inflating the stock’s value. But that firm has stopped shorting the shares, reportedly following online harassment by GameStop fans.

Melvin Capital Management, another established player, has seen its assets lose 30 percent as short positions – including those in GameStop – have floundered. But the hedge fund has nonetheless been bailed out in recent days by other funds such as Point72 Asset Management and Citadel LLC. Melvin closed out its short position – in other words, it bought back the shares it had borrowed – in GameStop on Tuesday, as GameStop became the single most-traded stock in the United States.

Many in the mainstream financial media have sided with the seasoned investors, while some analysts condemn the market frenzy as a bull-headed sign of manic trading. Though the short sellers may eventually be forced to fold, sceptics argue that the stock ultimately will return to a valuation consistent with market fundamentals. Regardless, the price movements could take months to reach some kind of equilibrium.

Which other stocks are similarly positioned?

The same Reddit community has been orchestrating this type of manoeuvre with a few other heavily shorted stocks such as AMC Entertainment, Eastman Kodak, Bed Bath & Beyond and video rental firm Blockbuster’s liquidation company. Notably, AMC has been rescued from imminent pandemic-driven bankruptcy as a result.

All of these companies have confronted financial ruin – largely as a result of economic forces beyond their control, in sectors as varied as in-person film viewing, big-box retail and VHS movie rentals. Electronics firm BlackBerry Ltd and fashion retailer Express Inc also experienced apparent short squeezes over the last few days. Sharp upward moves in their shares have flown in the face of bets placed against these embattled companies struggling for solvency.

Theatre company AMC Entertainment has been rescued from imminent pandemic-driven bankruptcy as a result of its recent share price surge [File: Carlo Allegri/Reuters]

But is this fervour creating a market bubble?

Selecting hot individual stocks to quickly buy and sell runs contrary to the long-term strategy of diversifying risk in one’s portfolio that most financial planners advocate. Retail trading platforms TD Ameritrade and Schwab have already restricted trading of GameStop and AMC, as government regulators consider their options for how to limit the potential for significant down-side losses.

Some market watchers think a speculative bubble analogous to the dot-com boom – and subsequent bust – of 2000-2001 is being driven by the likes of WallStreetBets players, while other investors suggest that many of these newly rescued companies were seriously undervalued and due for a comeback.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA

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SolarWinds Is Not the 'Hack of the Century.' It’s Blowback for the NSA's Longtime Dominance of Cyberspace

Breathless coverage of the SolarWinds hack functions to manufacture consent for NSA's internet hegemony and to divert us from considering alternative models of security.

by

Jesselyn Radack, William Neuheisel

 Published on Wednesday, January 27, 2021

by Common Dreams

The National Security Agency (NSA) logo is shown on a computer screen inside the Threat Operations Center at the NSA in Fort Meade. U.S. President George W. Bush visited the ultra-secret National Security Agency on Wednesday to underscore the importance of his controversial order authorizing domestic surveillance without warrants. (Photo: Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images)

Last month, the private security firm FireEye discovered a widespread breach of government and corporate computer networks through a so-called "supply chain" exploit of the network management firm SolarWinds, conducted by nation-state-level hackers, widely thought to be Russia. Most coverage of the breach featured ominous headlines and quotes from current and former government officials describing it as the biggest hack of modern times. Occasionally, buried in one of the closing paragraphs, there was an official quoted admitting that, so far, only "business networks" were known to be compromised—sensitive but unclassified email systems and data on job descriptions and HR functions.

"Like our nuclear policy before it, the stated goal is deterrence, but the actual goal is to create a cover for unchecked aggression and dominance."

These stories lack context of the true state of cyber espionage over the last few decades. The SolarWinds hack is certainly a large and very damaging breach, but one could almost pick at random any five or ten of the hundreds of codename programs revealed in the Snowden documents that would top it. The mother of all supply chain attacks (that we know of publicly) may have been the clandestine American role behind CryptoAG—which allowed the NSA to sell scores of foreign governments broken cryptographic systems through which it was possible to crack the encryption on their top-level government and military communications for decades. And of course the first, and one of the only, actual cyberattacks in history was the Stuxnet program conducted by Israeli and American services against Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

Yet the American public may be left with the impression that Russian hacking poses a uniquely aggressive and destabilizing threat to the international order, and therefore must be punished. News coverage has been leadened with apoplectic quotes from senior officials and lawmakers that the breach represents "virtually a declaration of war," that we need to "get the ball out of their hands and go on offense," that "we must reserve our right to unilateral self-defense," and even that "all elements of national power must be placed on the table" (All elements? Tanks? Nuclear weapons?). This kind of hyperbolic reaction cannot be driven by sincere shock at the idea of a government hacking into and spying on another government’s networks. More plausibly, it is driven by outrage at the idea of any other nation challenging the United States' overwhelming dominance to date in network espionage.

The Pentagon has so far responded to the breach by proposing a rearrangement of the organizational chart for our cyber army. And if history is any guide, Congress will respond as they have to past intelligence failures: by throwing more money at the bureaucracy to feed its legion of private contractors. In other words: more of what contributed to this breach in the first place. The ever-growing feeding frenzy for beltway bandits not only increases the attack surface for foreign hackers, it ensures that Congress does not have the capacity (even if it had the will) to understand and oversee increasingly complex supply chains to ensure basic security standards for the very companies who will be called on to fix these vulnerabilities. Few were even aware of the ubiquity of SolarWinds presence across so many of our government networks, and the lax security practices of this key software provider have only come under scrutiny retroactively. According to reports, the update server for SolarWinds’ software ⁠— an incredibly sensitive key piece of any software supply chain ⁠— was publicly accessible by a default password that had leaked to the internet in 2019, and the company had been warned both by its employees and by independent security researchers.

Here another tragic irony emerges: whatever internal channels were used to warn of these security lapses were clearly not effective, but if a whistleblower had taken this kind of sensitive national security information to the press ⁠— publication of which perhaps could have forced action and prevented a major act of espionage against our government ⁠— they would have put themselves at risk of prosecution under the Espionage Act.

"If reports are true that Russia was behind SolarWinds, and was using its access to case physical infrastructure networks in the U.S., their motivation may have been to gain a small measure of deterrence against the overwhelming superiority of American offensive capabilities."

So while the pundits clamor for retaliation and Washington bickers about rearranging the desks at Fort Meade, we still do not get a debate on alternatives that might better serve the American people. In secret, and without public consultation, the NSA long ago decided to use our privileged position sitting atop the internet backbone not to secure it; to level up the safety of key systems for all its users (but to poke more holes in it); and to stockpile exploits and hoard vulnerabilities in order to dip its hands into nearly every network, communications protocol, and computer system of consequence on the planet, both foes and allies alike.

Even our defensive strategy has become a policy of aggression. Dubbed "defend forward," it has us maintaining backdoors and software implants on key infrastructure systems around the world, as a way of keeping a loaded gun pointed at any real or potential adversary. Like our nuclear policy before it, the stated goal is deterrence, but the actual goal is to create a cover for unchecked aggression and dominance. If reports are true that Russia was behind SolarWinds, and was using its access to case physical infrastructure networks in the U.S., their motivation may have been to gain a small measure of deterrence against the overwhelming superiority of American offensive capabilities.

The wisdom of such an aggressive posture towards the global internet was one of the key questions Edward Snowden posed to the public after his disclosures. We should not fail to consider it as we increasingly get a taste of what the rest of the world has been subjected to by American spies for decades.

Jesselyn Radack is a national security and human rights attorney who heads the 'Whistleblower & Source Protection' project at ExposeFacts. Follow her on Twitter: @JesselynRadack

William Neuheisel is a human rights and civil liberties analyst at WHISPeR. Follow him on Twitter: @wneuheisel

Biden Orders on Food Aid Heralded as 'Most Significant Anti-Hunger Actions in Modern Times'

The expected executive action comes as "families are struggling with food insecurity like never before."

by

Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Friday, January 22, 2021

by Common Dreams

New Yorkers in need receive free produce, dry goods, and meat at a Food Bank 

for New York City distribution event at the Barclays Center on July 30, 2020 in 

New York City. (Photo: Scott Heins/Getty Images)

Social justice organizations and Democratic lawmakers on Friday welcomed President Joe Biden's expected executive actions boosting federal food aid as part of a broader and immediate coronavirus relief effort.

"As someone who has relied on food stamps and works in Congress to make sure we continue to fund SNAP benefits, I'm grateful the president is taking steps to make sure struggling families and workers can put food on the table during this pandemic," tweeted Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), Biden's pick to lead the Interior Department.

SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, has faced surging demand in the economic fallout triggered by the pandemic.

The White House, in a statement, framed the actions as components of "equitable emergency economic relief" that would "help Americans persevere through the pandemic."

More specifically, as CNN reported:

The first of Friday's executive orders calls for the Department of Agriculture to consider enhancing Pandemic-EBT benefits by 15%, which would give a family with three children more than $100 in additional support every two months. The program, part of the relief packages Congress passed last March, provides funds to low-income families whose children's schools have closed to replace the free or reduced-price meals they would have received.

Also, the order directs the department to consider allowing states to boost food stamp benefits for about 12 million Americans who did not benefit from an earlier increase in emergency allotments included in the congressional relief packages. The order would bump up benefits for a family of four by 15% to 20% per month.

"While we await the details of this order," said the Massachusetts-based organization Project Bread, "we applaud the Biden administration for placing food insecurity among their top priorities. Federal nutrition programs like SNAP and Pandemic EBT are critical in the fight against skyrocketing rates of food insecurity during this crisis."

Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree of Maine also welcomed the news.

Families are struggling with food insecurity like never before. For a year, I’ve called on @USDA to expand SNAP & meet the growing #COVID19 hunger crisis.

In Week 1, @POTUS is already focused on ending hunger, working to give additional support to 25% of Maine’s SNAP recipients. https://t.co/AWyrxsUehd

— Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (@chelliepingree) January 22, 2021

"Finally, a president who cares about alleviating people's suffering," tweeted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

According to Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, Biden's action represented "a bold, common-sense move to address the nation's joint hunger and public health crises."

"These actions represent the most significant administrative actions by the federal government to fight domestic hunger in modern times," said Berg, calling the boosts in food aid "both smart and compassionate."

The benefits of the actions go beyond helping to combat food insecurity and its related adverse health impacts, he said. "Because hunger makes it harder for people to get back to work, and because food aid programs boost U.S. food companies and workers, these actions to increase the federal domestic food safety net will help the nation build back the economy better."

TalkPoverty.org, a project of the Center for American Progress, noted that as "many as 50 million Americans are food insecure right now. We need to keep pushing to make sure they're all fed."

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'A Big Deal': Lawmakers Reintroduce Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United

"We cannot allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to flood our elections with cash through complex webs of super PACs and dark money groups that put special interests above the will of the American people."

by

Brett Wilkins, staff writer

 Published on Thursday, January 21, 2021 

by

Common Dreams

A bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers reintroduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling on January 21, 2021. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images) 

In a bid to reverse the outsize influence of corporations and the wealthiest Americans over the nation's electoral process, a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers on Thursday reintroduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. 

"To ensure that our elections produce a democracy for all, we must overturn Citizens United and get big money out of our elections."
—Rep. Ted Deutch

The reintroduction of the Democracy for All Amendment in the 117th Congress—led by Reps. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—occurred on the 11th anniversary of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a 5-4 ruling which affirmed that corporations are legal persons and that they, labor unions, and other outside groups could spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcome of U.S. elections. 

The amendment, which has been introduced in every Congress since the 113th, grants the states and the federal government the ability to limit how money is raised and spent in U.S. elections. It also grants the states and Congress the power to differentiate between natural and corporate persons. 

BREAKING: Congress just reintroduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

This is a big deal.https://t.co/Mcoq7njay0

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) January 21, 2021

A separate but related measure, the We the People Amendment, has also been reintroduced in each successive Congress since the 113th, most recently by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) in February 2019. The amendment would preclude artificial entities such as corporations and limited liability companies from enjoying constitutional rights, which would be reserved for natural persons. 

Deutch asserted in a statement released Thursday that Citizens United has "put an unacceptable price of admission on American democracy."

He wrote: 

We cannot allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to flood our elections with cash through complex webs of Super PACs and dark money groups that put special interests above the will of the American people. Americans overwhelmingly support stronger gun laws to keep our communities safe, action on climate change to preserve our planet, and a fair economy that doesn't leave the most vulnerable behind or deny people basic needs like healthcare and a living wage. 

Unfortunately, big money in our politics gets in the way time and time again. Limitless campaign spending makes it harder for Washington to solve problems and opens the door to corruption. To ensure that our elections produce a democracy for all, we must overturn Citizens United and get big money out of our elections.

Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, welcomed the amendment, saying it "unites the American people," who he said "are furious about a rigged political system that responds to the whims of Big Money rather than the needs and desires of regular people."

"The American people know that Citizens United embodies, perpetuates, and locks in that rigged system," Weissman added. "That's why by overwhelming numbers they favor a constitutional amendment to overturn [it] and related decisions that create an overclass of the wealthy few and consign the rest of us to political serfdom."

Others are seeking to undo the damage wrought by Citizens United via the legislative route. Senate Democrats led Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) announced Tuesday that the first bill they will offer will be the For the People Act (pdf), which would expand voting rights, limit partisan gerrymandering, strengthen ethics rules, and limit money in politics.

If we’re going to deliver on health care, housing, & climate, we must start by ensuring our democracy works. We must end gerrymandering, voter suppression & dark money that have rigged our system. That’s why the For the People Act will be the first item on @SenateDems agenda.

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) January 19, 2021

The progressive advocacy group Stand Up America on Thursday called for the passage of the For the People Act within President Joe Biden's first 100 days. 

"Under the leadership of the Biden-Harris administration and with a Democratic Congress, we have a tremendous opportunity to undo some of the damage done by the Roberts Court by passing the For The People Act," Stand Up America managing director Christina Harvey said in a statement.

"Mitigating the damage Citizens United has done to our democracy won't be easy," added Harvey, "but the critical campaign finance reforms in the For the People Act—including creating a small-dollar matching program and requiring super PACs to disclose their donors—are an important first step."

As expected, outside election spending—which was already increasing before Citizens United—skyrocketed following the ruling. According to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org, outside spending in the 2020 election cycle by super PACs, political parties, and "dark money" groups, among others, totaled a record $2.9 billion, more than double the amount spent in 2016. That's up from $143.8 million in 2008, the last presidential election year before Citizens United. 

Citizens United also flung wide open the floodgates to megadonors, who had previously been limited by political action committee caps. According to OpenSecrets, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein gave over $58.3 million to Republicans during the 2020 election cycle, while Thomas and Kathryn Steyer, the top Democratic donors, spent $54.6 million on liberal races. 

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