Affidavit by former head of IT for large Italian defense contractor admitting he uploaded instructions through military satellite to Frankfurt to flip votes from Trump to Biden on election night under direction of US persons. Willing to testify.#ItalyDidIt

I'm going to tell you a little bit how we work on features at GitHub. It's simple, but very powerful in my opinion. At GitHub we have a high performance culture.

We are deploying changes almost all the time while keeping the service running and the deployment failure ratio needs to be super low! We are constantly working on new medium/big features, we have frequent deploys and required peer reviews.

How do we know that big features are not conflicting with each other in functionality and in version control. How do we merge the work done in these non-trivial features? How do we do prevent peer reviews slow down our productivity?

With basically two things: split the work in small batches and feature flags. We don't have long-lived feature branches. We do very small changes all the time and deploy them.

We could split a feature in tens or hundreds of PRs, but until it is beta or GA, we don't expose it to users by using feature flags.

Facebook is a newstand. But no one can see which news Facebook is pushing to the top.

So we built an app for that called #CitizenBrowser. Our first finding: the sharp impact of Facebook’s political ad ban reversal in the Georgia Senate elections.
https://t.co/GZNdwZOlHW /1

This is the first report from our #CitizenBrowser project. There will be many more to come. But first, I want to tell you a bit about how we did it because it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done @themarkup – and we do a lot of ambitious projects. /2

#CitizenBrowser grew out of conversations @suryamattu and I had about how to audit Facebook. We had both worked on browser extensions to collect data from Facebook, but FB always threatened to shut those down, just like their recent threats against the NYU AdObservatory. /3

But the bigger problem is that browser extensions don’t capture most FB activity. Most people use FB on mobile and browser extensions only work on desktop or laptop computers.

So one night, late at the WeWork, @suryamattu said to me: “We’ll have to build our own browser.” /4

“No way,” I said. “That’s insane.” But slowly, I came around. Here’s why: browsers are good at running in the background. Users could log into FB once through the browser and never use it again.

Then we wouldn’t be monitoring users. We would only be monitoring their feed. /5

I am seeing a ton of confusion about protecting yourself on the Internet. So as a retired bastard genius kid, I wanted to share my own experiences and knowledge in this.

DOXXING, PERSONAL CYBERSECURITY, ANONYMITY for the average revolutionary. A thread:

If you're a regular user of huge Internet services like Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc., as well as over the age of 18, it's wise to assume that your personally identifiable information IS attainable and IS out there. These services all collect and save info --

to varying degrees, and to varying levels of security. And this information is VALUABLE. Data breaches occur frequently, retroactively, and unknowingly, and the data from said breaches are circulated around and cached in all kinds of easy-to-access places online.

Why does this matter? A (simplified) hypothetical: while someone probably can't find your street address from just your Twitter bio, if your handle is the same as your e-mail, and that e-mail is in a publicly available data breach with a street address attached, you're screwed.

Usually when doxxing happens, a much more elaborate version of said case happens. Doxxing really comes down to investigating all of an individual's available info and digital footprints, and narrowing it down to a single identity.

As the United States deals with insurgent forces at home, security professionals should look to the Middle East for insight on how this threat may evolve:



There are a lot of parallels between right-wing US extremism, and post-colonial Islamic extremism.

The most prominent, I feel, is the one between the @newtgingrich era GOP and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, like most early Islamic terrorism, was a reaction to European colonialism in the Middle East.

What starts as a political movement interested in social change becomes an insurgent group engaged in violent extremism.



The same radicalization factors can be identified. It’s disenfranchisement and cultural erosion all the way down.

Both groups want a return to “tradition” to strengthen a culture they feel they’ve lost because of modernity. Both groups feel they’ve been economically and culturally disenfranchised by a foreign oppressor. You can see roots of this same problem in the Confederacy.

In our case at home, this is because of the inherent cultural divide between conservatives and liberals. Many conservatives do not feel that liberals are real Americans. This is an important factor for later.

New from me, & my final piece of 2020:

In 2020, a false message board conspiracy theory harmed the pandemic response, significantly impacted our political process, & destroyed lives & families.

A deep dive into how QAnon's breakout year harmed us all:

I'll touch upon few different types of cyber frauds and few possible ways in which we can avoid ourselves to be duped of money, time & energy.

Will also attach few real registered FIRs showing that most of the times such crimes happen with educated & learned people.

1/16

Cyber Fraud type 1 - Facebook/Instagram

Profile cloning -Fraudster will make exact same profile like yours - using pictures from your own profile. They will then message to your contacts asking for money immediately for the surgery of mother or similar emotional lie

2/16

Always verify before sending money.
Don't verify by calling that person, instead, call a common friend or family member of that person. Don't think you can't be fooled - I know at least 20 people working in Top IT MNCs becoming victim of this fraud. Lock your FB/Insta.

3/16

Cyber Fraud type 2 -OLX/Quikr
This generally happens while selling something on OLX/Quikr & similar platforms. In such cases, people will fraud in the name of paying money by asking to scan the QR code or click a link.
NEVER scan the QR code to receive money, give your UPI

4/16

Cyber Fraud type 3 - Fake SMS & Call from unknown numbers
Fraudster will send fake SMS showing amount credited to the account - with correct account number in SMS. Then they will call from unknown numbers asking for money.

ALWAYS check your bank account first via bank app.

5/16