Free Republic

Poor governance and privacy concerns have knocked Facebook out of an influential ethics index that tracks socially responsible companies.  Standard & Poor's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Index said that it had booted Facebook after the company scored poorly for social responsibility and governance, achieving 22 and 6, respectively, out of 100.  Facebook's disappointing results were due to a number of privacy concerns at the social network in recent years including “a lack of transparency as to why Facebook collects and shares certain user information”, said Reid Steadman, S&P's social and governance chief.  This includes allowing more than 150 companies...

Shortened title. Full title: More Than 1500 Central American Migrants in Caravans Found to Have US Criminal Convictions, At Least 3 Are Murderers More than 1500 migrants who traveled in two Central American caravans within the last year had US criminal convictions, according to letter obtained by The Gateway Pundit. House Oversight Committee Republicans wrote the Department of Homeland Security in February about the threat posed by the large caravans of migrants traveling from Central America to the United States. The DHS documents produced to the House Oversight Committee revealed that in October of 2018, the CBP’s Office of Intelligence...

Israeli forensics company Cellebrite – which has gained a reputation for unlocking mobile devices like the iPhone to obtain personal data without the passcode or biometrics – claims it can now unlock any iOS device running up to iOS 12.3. The firm boasted of its capability in a tweet posted on Friday, which promoted UFED Premium, the latest version of its Universal Forensic Extraction Device.

On the night before DeWayne Craddock murdered eleven people, Kate Nixon debated whether to take her pistol to work the following day. According to The Virginia-Pilot, Nixon feared Craddock. She was his supervisor at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center, and told her husband the disgruntled employee “gave off ‘real bad vibes’ and she’d had to write him up several times for issues with performance and attitude.”

**SNIP** Lawmakers had already been compiling a fresh package of bills in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller's findings in the Trump-Russia probe. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are now pushing ahead with votes because it's part of "what the American people elected us to do." **SNIP** Even though the nation’s intelligence agencies said from early 2017 that it was clear Russia tried to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump, Republicans who led both chambers did not move comprehensive legislation to address the issue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declined to hold a vote...

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $99.4 billion HHS appropriations bill with several amendments including reversing a longtime ban on developing a national patient identifier, money for hospital emergency departments dealing with opioid overdoses, and a nod to the anti-vaccination controversy. For decades, Congress has prohibited HHS from funding the development or promotion of any national program where patients would receive permanent, unique identification numbers. Lawmakers previously argued such a program could violate privacy issues or raise security concerns, while the medical community and insurers claimed the ban kept them from properly matching patients with the correct medical information....

Arrests in May increased by nearly a third from April. At this rate, illegal immigration levels will reach highs we haven’t seen since 2006. U.S. Customs and Border Protections on Wednesday released its numbers for May, and they are shocking. Border Patrol apprehended or turned away more than 144,000 people last month on the southwest border, including more than 100,000 families and children. That exceeds by 32 percent the total for April, which had represented the highest number of monthly apprehensions since 2007. Over the past eight months, CBP has detained more than 680,000 illegal immigrants—or, as acting CBP Commissioner...

This article will be updated as more candidates file to run. Some elections are this year. Some have happened, others will happen. THIS IS URGENT

Pearland police are warning residents to be on the lookout for a couple of fake DEA agents roaming the area. They were caught on camera trying to get inside a home on Ivory Creek Drive. The masked men were wearing black shirts with DEA lettering on the front and “police lettering” on the back. Both appeared to be armed with handguns, according to Pearland police. They pounded on the door of the home around 7:15 p.m. Tuesday and shouted, “DEA! DEA!” The woman inside warned them she was going to call the police so they ran off.

Our nation’s immigration laws were enacted to protect national security, public safety, public health and the jobs and wages of Americans. Those laws are utterly and completely blind about race, religion and/or ethnicity. The 9/11 Commission was crystal clear in its findings that first and foremost, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and other attacks perpetrated by foreign nationals were only possible because of multiple failures of the immigration system. Failures of border security and a lack of interior enforcement have enabled criminal aliens, members of transnational gangs and terrorists to flow easily into the United States and, once...

A database containing records of tens of millions of users of various dating apps has been found publicly accessible, according to a researcher who says it remains unclear who amassed the data. In a blog Wednesday, security researcher Jeremiah Fowler said he discovered the database and that it was not protected by so much as a password. The 42.5 million records, which appeared to belong to multiple apps, were stored on a U.S.-based server and largely contained the IP addresses and location data of American users. The apps to which the data belongs include Cougardating, Christiansfinder, Mingler, Fwbs (friends with...

he mayor of Sunland Park, New Mexico, has issued a cease-and-desist order to a private group that raised millions to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The wall is being constructed by We Build The Wall, a private organization which began a GoFundMe fundraiser in December 2018 when President Donald Trump faced opposition from Congress in receiving a proposed $5 billion to construct the barrier. To date, the group has raised over $22 million of a $1 billion goal, something which the group's leader, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, said has been established only because that is the highest...

Google is replacing some versions of its Titan Security Key because of a known issue with Bluetooth pairing that could leave your device and account vulnerable. ============================================================ As if the world isn't scary enough: According to Google, your most trusted security measures could actually be secret vulnerabilities. On Wednesday, Google announced on its security blog that it has found a bug in the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) version of its Titan Security Key that exposes users to a potential attack when pairing the device via Bluetooth. These keys are a low-cost method of two-factor authentication that provides an added layer...

The top U.S. communications regulator urged the rejection of China Mobile Ltd.’s application to provide telecommunications services in the American market, opening another front in the trade fight between the world’s biggest economies. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said Wednesday he was scheduling a vote May 9 on a measure to deny the application of China Mobile USA, described as a Delaware-registered subsidiary that is indirectly controlled by the Chinese government, on national security grounds. “We comply with all applicable laws in the course of operations and have not engaged in any behavior that causes ‘substantial and serious national...

In brief: Microsoft said ElectionGuard isn’t mean to replace paper ballots but rather, supplement and improve systems that rely on them. It also isn’t designed to support Internet voting, so there’s some reassurance there for those that aren’t yet convinced of such technologies. Microsoft is expanding its Defending Democracy Program with a new product called ElectionGuard. Announced at Build 2019 today, ElectionGuard is a free, open source SDK that Microsoft is developing in partnership with Portland-based Galois that is designed to boost the security and public verifiability of elections. ElectionGuard isn’t a standalone voting system but rather, an “add-on” of...

It's a short hop from Pyongyang to Vladivostok by plane. There's even a semi-regular flight. But for his first summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has once again opted to go by train... Kim is reportedly traveling with a big entourage — possibly more than 200 people — and lots of supplies. His train, unmistakable with its dark green paint job and yellow piping, is perfect for that. It's built like a tank. Its cars are equipped with advanced communications and flat-screen TVs so he can give orders and receive news and briefings...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that she has asked for a “security assessment” for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MI), and demanded that Donald Trump take down the “dangerous” video he posted to attack the freshman congresswoman. Trump posted a video that isolated a remark by Rep. Omar, and interspersed it with clips of the 9/11 attacks in progress. Since then, he has faced criticism for “willfully endangering” the life of Rep. Omar, although he was just one of several Republicans to launch inflammatory attacks against her. On Sunday, Speaker Pelosi released a statement calling on Trump to take down...

Trump reportedly ordered acting White House chief of staff to fire 'Secret Service Director Randolph Alles',.. Alles insists he wasn't fired but knew about a coming transition two weeks ago. 'U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Cissna'... is also leaving....So are DHS undersecretary for management 'Claire Grady' and general counsel 'John Mitnick'. Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the 33-year-old former staffer to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions.... Alles, Cissna, Grady and Mitnick were on a list of officials Miller targeted for removal as 'too soft,' according to a White House official. White House official said Monday that the Secret Service shift had...

(WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 8, 2019) Tomorrow the House Oversight Committee, led by Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD), will conduct hearings on the interconnected challenges of solving climate change and protecting national security. With the Trump administration ignoring longstanding warnings from the military about the impact of a changing climate on defense infrastructure and the dangers of increased instability, it is a critically important area for investigation for the Congress. The hearing follows a letter by fifty-eight senior national security officials warning about the dangers of climate change. "For more than a decade, the Department of Defense has warned presidents from...

This week, the Apache Software Foundation has patched a severe vulnerability in the Apache (httpd) web server project that could --under certain circumstances-- allow rogue server scripts to execute code with root privileges and take over the underlying server.The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-0211, affects Apache web server releases for Unix systems only, from 2.4.17 to 2.4.38, and was fixed this week with the release of version 2.4.39.According to the Apache team, less-privileged Apache child processes (such as CGI scripts) can execute malicious code with the privileges of the parent process.Because on most Unix systems Apache httpd runs under the root...