Jesus Wept

Here is a synopsis of the current news cycle, compiled by my buddy Vince. Presented without "spin" or comment.

Today Republican Representative Duncan Hunter and his wife, Margaret, have been indicted for using $250,000 worth of campaign funds for personal expenses filing false campaign finance records. This includes wire fraud, falsifying records, campaign finance violations, and conspiracy.

Today former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on 8 of the charges filed against him - filing a false tax return in each of the years from 2010 through 2014, as well as not filing a form in 2012 to report a foreign bank account as required. He was also convicted of two instances of bank fraud, related to a $3.4 million loan from Citizens Bank and a $1 million loan from Banc of California. The jury was deadlocked on the other ten charges, and a mistrial for those charges has been declared.

Today President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud as part of a deal, which includes jail time. Cohen is the fifth Trump associate to have pleaded guilty or be charged with criminal wrongdoing since Trump took office, including his former national security adviser, his deputy campaign chairman, and a former campaign policy adviser.

Today Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, revealed in a post that Facebook has removed hundreds of accounts and pages for what it calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” generally networks of ostensibly independent outlets that were in fact controlled centrally by Russia and Iran. Facebook also announced that it was removing pages and accounts “linked to sources the U.S. government has previously identified as Russian military intelligence services.”

Last night, Microsoft President Brad Smith said that Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) successfully executed a court order to transfer control of six internet domains created by APT28 (also known as Fancy Bear or Strontium, and associated with the the Russian military intelligence service GRU) before they were used in any attacks. The idea was to have people think they were accessing links managed by US political groups but redirect them to fake ones run by the hackers so passwords and other information could be stolen.

Smith said one such site appeared to mimic that of the International Republican Institute, which promotes democratic principles and whose board includes Republican senators, among them John McCain, who have been critical of President Vladimir Putin. Another is similar to the domain used by the Hudson Institute, which hosts prominent discussions on topics including cybersecurity.

Yesterday Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration "County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon. This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services. Bowden's declaration was submitted in an addendum to a brief filed by 22 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, Santa Clara County, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, and the California Public Utilities Commission seeking to overturn the recent repeal of net neutrality rules in a lawsuit.

Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more, according to Bowden's declaration and emails between the fire department and Verizon that were submitted as evidence.

The throttling recently affected "OES 5262," a fire department vehicle that is "deployed to large incidents as a command and control resource" and is used to "track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed," Bowden wrote. "OES 5262 also coordinates all local government resources deployed to the Mendocino Complex Fire," an ongoing wildfire that is the largest in California's history, Bowden wrote.