Biden's executive orders.

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Biden is not messing around.

And is now doing some more on policing, housing and voting later today.

I guess Biden learned from watching Trump playing dictator with executive orders. And after how Obama tried to play nice with the Republicans and they still stopped everything he tried to do for his last 6 years, Biden has decided to just play by Republican rules to get some very needed things done for our nation.
 

topcat

Well-Known Member
Biden is not messing around.



And is now doing some more on policing, housing and voting later today.



I guess Biden learned from watching Trump playing dictator with executive orders. And after how Obama tried to play nice with the Republicans and they still stopped everything he tried to do for his last 6 years, Biden has decided to just play by Republican rules to get some very needed things done for our nation.
He's doing just what I'd hoped for. Executive orders from jump street, little bother with inauguration celebrations.
 

oill

Well-Known Member
Biden is not messing around.



And is now doing some more on policing, housing and voting later today.



I guess Biden learned from watching Trump playing dictator with executive orders. And after how Obama tried to play nice with the Republicans and they still stopped everything he tried to do for his last 6 years, Biden has decided to just play by Republican rules to get some very needed things done for our nation.
Fair play... reverse everything trump reversed and fucked up. Th Paris treaty for example
 

CunningCanuk

Well-Known Member
Biden is not messing around.



And is now doing some more on policing, housing and voting later today.



I guess Biden learned from watching Trump playing dictator with executive orders. And after how Obama tried to play nice with the Republicans and they still stopped everything he tried to do for his last 6 years, Biden has decided to just play by Republican rules to get some very needed things done for our nation.
Absolutely. If you’re not willing to play the game, get the fuck off the field.

It’s about fucking time the Democrats woke up. The people gave Biden a mandate and he’s gonna use it.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/europe-malware-netherlands-coronavirus-pandemic-7de5f74120a968bd0a5bee3c57899fed
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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — European and North American cyber cops have joined forces to disrupt what may be the world’s largest network for seeding malware infections, striking a major blow against criminal gangs that have been using it for years to install ransomware in extortion schemes, steal data and engage in financial theft.

European Union police and the judicial agencies Europol and Eurojust said Wednesday that investigators took control of the infrastructure behind the botnet known as Emotet. A botnet is a network of hijacked computers, and this one has effectively served as a primary door-opener for cybercriminals since 2014.

“This is a really big deal. Emotet was one of the largest, if not the largest, botnets delivering a wide variety of malware. Their botnet consisted of hundreds of thousands compromised hosts which were used to send more than 10 million spam and phishing emails a week,” said Allan Liska, an analyst with Recorded Future.

The Emotet model of recent years was “a game changer for ransomware gangs who otherwise rely on other access methods,” said Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, another cybersecurity firm.

Emotet has allowed ransomware gangs to outsource initial access, and focus their efforts instead on a cybercrime variety that has crippled Western government, healthcare and educational networks by scrambling their data and only providing a decoding software key after they have paid up. Those who don’t risk having data exfiltrated by the hackers exposed publicly.

Williams said via text message that although someone will eventually fill the gap “there’s no question that this will hurt (ransomware gangs) and help defenders in the short/mid term.”

Authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, the U.K., France, Lithuania, Canada and Ukraine took part in the international operation coordinated by the two Hague-based agencies.

Dutch prosecutors said the malware, run out of eastern Europe by a Russian-speaking organization, was first discovered in 2014 and “evolved into the go-to solution for cybercriminals over the years,” responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses beginning with financial theft through a banking trojan.

They said two of the main servers for the infrastructure were based in the Netherlands and a third in another undisclosed country.

The Emotet botnet was effectively used to manage infections of victims and provide a distributed bulwark against takedown attempts by authorities. In the disruption by law enforcement, its command-and-control infrastructure was routed to servers controlled by law enforcement, cutting off criminals who effectively hired Emotet from quarry they have infected.

Europol said law enforcement agencies teamed up to take down the criminal infrastructure from the inside.

“The infected machines of victims have been redirected towards this law enforcement-controlled infrastructure,” the agency said. “This is a unique and new approach to effectively disrupt the activities of the facilitators of cybercrime.”

The operation recalled one carried out by Microsoft late last year against a different botnet known as Trickbot — which was pushed out using Emotet and used in ransomware attacks. The U.S. National Security Agency was also reported to have tried to take down Trickbot.

Costin Raiu, research director at the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, said the Emotet takedown “should impact other cybercriminal groups’ ability to maintain and grow their botnets. It remains to be seen if they will be able to stage a comeback, be it either as Emotet, or perhaps merge with another group and continue from there.”

Emotet’s “door-opening” malicious software was automatically delivered to computers in infected email attachments containing Word documents.

“A variety of different lures were used to trick unsuspecting users into opening these malicious attachments,” Dutch prosecutors said in a statement. “In the past, Emotet email campaigns have also been presented as invoices, shipping notices and information about COVID-19.”

The operation was not the first time that cybercrime fighters have infiltrated illicit computer operations. In 2017, police shut down the world’s leading “darknet” marketplace — then Dutch police quietly seized a second bazaar to amass intelligence on illicit drug merchants and buyers.
 

Rob Roy

Well-Known Member
Absolutely. If you’re not willing to play the game, get the fuck off the field.

It’s about fucking time the Democrats woke up. The people gave Biden a mandate and he’s gonna use it.
A man date? I didn't know Joe swung from that side of the plate.
 

sf_frankie

Well-Known Member
Absolutely. If you’re not willing to play the game, get the fuck off the field.

It’s about fucking time the Democrats woke up. The people gave Biden a mandate and he’s gonna use it.
Finally! It was so fucking frustrating watching the democrats worry about decorum, compromise and doing things "the right way" while the other side straight up rewrote the rules in their favor. Glad Biden has come out swinging. Watching the republicans bitch about it has been maddening. They're already blaming him for COVID. The level of discourse is unnerving!
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-jen-psaki-ca5e68d8b23cb26a0e964b3ea5fe826d
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The Biden administration is backing off former President Donald Trump’s attempts to ban the popular video app TikTok, asking a court to postpone a legal dispute over the proposed ban as the government begins a broader review of the national security threats posed by Chinese technology companies.

A court filing Wednesday said the U.S. Commerce Department is reviewing whether Trump’s claims about TikTok’s threat to national security justified the attempts to ban it from smartphone app stores and deny it vital technical services.

Separately, the Biden administration has “indefinitely” shelved a proposed U.S. takeover of TikTok, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Last year, the Trump administration brokered a deal that would have had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in the Chinese-owned app on national-security grounds.

The unusual arrangement stemmed from a Trump executive order that aimed to ban TikTok in the U.S. unless it accepted a greater degree of American control.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki did not deny the Journal report, but said Wednesday the Biden administration hasn’t taken a “new proactive step” in the process.

Psaki added that the Biden administration is comprehensively evaluating risks to U.S. data, including those involving TikTok. A review of TikTok by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which considers national security implications of such investments, is ongoing, Psaki said. She didn’t offer a timetable for that process.

Trump targeted TikTok over the summer with a series of executive orders that cited concerns over the U.S. data that TikTok collects from its users. But courts temporarily blocked the White House’s attempted ban, and the presidential election soon took overshadowed the TikTok fight.

While President Joe Biden has said TikTok is a concern, his administration hadn’t said whether it will continue to try to ban TikTok or force a sale. Biden has so far taken a cautious approach to inheriting Trump’s China policies and hasn’t promised to scale back or cancel tariffs and other combative measures.

The Biden administration appears to be creating a clearer set of criteria to evaluate which Chinese technology platforms pose a legitimate security risk to Americans, said Samm Sacks, a China expert at Yale Law School.

“I don’t think they see TikTok itself as a high-priority issue,” she said, calling it a hypothetical future threat. “This one-off ban on a rotating cast of Chinese tech companies, that’s not likely to continue.”

In September, Trump gave his tentative blessing to a proposal by TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance that would form a new U.S. arm of TikTok in partnership with Oracle and Walmart, who would make significant investments in the new company. The arrangement aimed to hand management of the app’s U.S. user data to Oracle. CFIUS, however, has not completed its required review of the arrangement. A government deadline for TikTok to sell its U.S. operations has passed.

TikTok has been looking to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review Trump’s divestment order and the government’s national-security review.

TikTok and Oracle didn’t return requests for comment Wednesday. Walmart declined comment Wednesday and referred questions to the Biden administration.

The Treasury Department, which chairs the CFIUS agency reviewing the TikTok deal, did not reply to a request for comment. Neither did the Commerce Department, which last year had sought to enforce Trump’s orders, nor the Justice Department, which is handling the court challenges.

The Chinese government’s stance toward the deal is unclear. State media in September criticized the proposal as U.S. bullying and extortion.

Trump cited concerns that the Chinese government could spy on TikTok users if the app remains under Chinese ownership. TikTok has denied it’s a security threat but said it was still trying to work with the U.S. government to resolve its concerns.

TikTok said Oracle and Walmart could acquire up to a combined 20% stake in the new company ahead of a TikTok initial public offering, which Walmart said could happen within the next year. Oracle’s stake would be 12.5%, and Walmart’s would be 7.5%.

Where Oracle stood to handle data management, Walmart said it would provide e-commerce, fulfillment, payments and other services to the new company. TikTok said in a November court filing that the new entity, owned by Oracle, Walmart and ByteDance’s existing U.S. investors, would be responsible for TikTok’s U.S. user data and content moderation.

The Trump administration’s aggressive tactics were part of a broader effort to counter the influence of China. During his term in office, Trump waged a trade war with China, blocked mergers involving Chinese companies and stifled the business of Chinese firms like Huawei, a maker of phones and telecom equipment.

The Biden administration shares many of the Trump administration’s concerns about Chinese technology and trade practices, but they’re likely to use “different tactics and tone on how to achieve those strategic objectives,” said Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“They’re taking a holistic, strategic approach to these issues and not going after these companies on a one-off basis,” he said. “It’s part of a broader reassessment.”
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/24/biden-hurricanes-fema/
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President Biden will announce Monday afternoon that he is doubling the amount of money the U.S. government will spend helping communities prepare for extreme weather events, while launching a new effort at NASA to collect more sophisticated climate data.

While the $1 billion in funding is a fraction of what taxpayers spend each year on disasters, it underscores a broader effort to account for the damage wrought by climate change and curb it. Last week the president signed an executive orderinstructing federal agencies to identify and disclose the perils a warming world poses to federal programs, assets and liabilities, while also requiring federal suppliers to reveal their own climate-related risks.

The president will make the announcement during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters Monday afternoon, where he will receive a briefing on this year’s outlook for the Atlantic hurricane season.

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program helps communities prepare in advance for hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. The administration will target roughly 40 percent of the additional money to disadvantaged areas.

In a phone interview Monday, White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy said that Biden’s actions will help convey to Americans how the climate has already changed and what the United States must do to respond to it.

“That’s really going to make this climate issue real and relevant to people,” she said. “We just have to prepare for this, and the president is a realist. This is the world we’re living in.”

Monday’s hurricane briefing, McCarthy said, marked a sharp departure from how President Donald Trump approached extreme weather events. In a 2019 incident known as “Sharpiegate,” Trump and his deputies pressured the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to contradict its own experts and say the path of Hurricane Dorian would severely impact Alabama. He also repeatedly questioned the link between rising temperatures and more frequent and intense wildfires.

“This meeting is not just sitting around talking about policies. It’s all about listening to what science tells us, and how we can be prepared for those real-world impacts,” McCarthy said. “It’s telling people what they need to hear about what’s happening in their world, but also responding with a robust whole-of-government approach.”

Brock Long, who headed FEMA from June 2017 to March 2019, praised the decision to increase funding for a program that he helped launch under the Trump administration. But he cautioned the administration would have to do more to bolster everything from digital systems to private supply chains in the face of more intense extreme weather.

“We’re stuck in this unsustainable disaster-recovery cycle. We’re putting out massive amounts of money to help communities recover, instead of preparing for disasters,” he said in a phone interview Monday, adding that under current law the administration could direct up to $3.7 billion to the BRIC program. “While I applaud the increase in funding, providing $1 billion to mitigating our nation’s infrastructure is just scratching the surface.”

Last week, NOAA said it expects another hectic hurricane season — one that will come on the heels of the busiest such season on record in 2020.

The past year saw a startling 30 named storms, including a half-dozen major hurricanes, surpassing a record set in 2005. A dozen tropical storms and hurricanes made landfall in the United States during the past year. Five of those made landfall in Louisiana, leaving multibillion dollar disasters and plenty of heartache in their wake.

But emergency officials will probably have little time to catch their breath. NOAA’s outlook last week said a 60 percent chance exists for an above-average storm season this year, with a 70 percent probability of 13 to 20 named storms.

Biden’ orders federal agencies, vendors to assess their climate-related risk

The administration will also start developing a new NASA mission concept for an Earth System Observatory, which will deploy advanced technology in space so scientists and policymakers can better understand the interactions between Earth’s atmosphere, land, ocean and ice.

"If you want to mitigate climate change, you’ve got to measure it,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in an interview Monday.

Nelson said the agency plans to assemble a “comprehensive observatory” in coming years that will give scientists unprecedented insight into what is happening on Earth — and how to better anticipate and react to key shifts.

Nelson said the planned satellite system will measure a broad range of things, from sea level rise to other land changes such as deforestation, landslides, the melting of glaciers and the impact of wildfires. The system also plans to track aerosols in the atmosphere, as well as help to better predict droughts, monitor water use and improve weather forecasting.

Satellites orbiting our planet, some owned by the U.S. government, already track many of those elements. But Nelson said the administration aims to give scientists an entirely deeper level of insight in the years to come.

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“If we want to understand where things are headed with climate-change impacts, understanding and forecasting extreme events is where we need to go,” he said, adding that one of the complications is that some climate-related events, such as wildfires, have multiple causes.

2020 not only marked a record hurricane season, it also saw a startling number of billion-dollar disasters, according to a NOAA report released early this year. That research found that such catastrophes in the United States alone amounted to $95 billion from 22 separate billion-dollar events. The previous record for billion-dollar disasters was 16 in 2011 and in 2017.

How escalating temperatures fueled California’s infernos

Severe wildfires raged in the West, burning millions of acres and entire neighborhoods.

The year marked the most severe wildfire season across the West to date, with California logging five of its six biggest wildfires in state history. Hurricanes and tropical storms battered parts of the Gulf Coast.

In addition, 2020 essentially tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, according to scientists. It also capped the hottest decade in recorded history.

Long, now executive vice president at Hagerty Consulting, said that it was too early to judge Biden’s handling of natural disasters. But he warned that these events are only escalating: The damages that took place during his time as FEMA administrator equaled nearly $456.7 billion in damages and associated costs — more than those under the past nine administrators combined.

“Disasters can make or break a president’s legacy,” he said.
 
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