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Monday, July 15, 2024

'FBI Claims Purportedly Struggling To Crack Trump Shooter's Phone'

The FBI has reportedly taken alleged Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks’s phone to its lab in Quantico, Virginia, where its technicians are working to unlock it as part of the investigation into his possible motives.

But according to Fox News reporter Laura Ingraham, the FBI’s finest techies are struggling to crack the phone.

An official is telling Fox they believe the shooter acted along. We’re also learning they can’t get into his cellphone,” Ingraham said on Sunday. “They have it at Quantico but haven’t been able to get any data out of it.”

The FBI’s claim that it can’t crack Crooks’s phone should be treated with skepticism. The bureau has a track record of lying about such matters.

The most notorious case of the FBI claiming it couldn’t crack an encrypted phone happened in December 2015, in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, in which two shooters killed more than a dozen victims.

At the time, the FBI claimed it couldn’t access one of the shooters’ iPhones. The bureau sought a court order to force Apple to help the FBI break the phone’s encryption.

Apple resisted the FBI’s coercsion, but the dispute was never fully litigated. It turned out, the FBI hired an Australian cybersecurity firm to hack the phone around March 2016 or shortly thereafter. The purported true story of how the FBI unlocked the phone wasn’t told until 2021.

A similar situation occurred in May 2020, when then-Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray criticized Apple for not helping investigators who were attempting to gain access to two iPhones used by Mohammed Alshamrani, who launched a terror attack at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida in December 2019.

Wray has continued his anti-encryption throughout the years. In March 2021, for example, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that encryption was stifling his agents from investigating domestic extremism.

“Like Alshamrani, the plotters who sought to kidnap the governor of Michigan late last year used end-to-end encrypted apps to hide their communications from law enforcement. Their plot was only disrupted by well-timed human source reporting and the resulting undercover operation,” Wray said at the time.
“Subjects of our investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol siege used end-to-end encrypted communications as well.”

According to Wray and other law enforcers, tech companies should be able to build “backdoors” into their encryption that preserves privacy, while allowing for access when necessary. That, they say, strikes the proper balance between data security and national security.

However, numerous tech experts, civil libertarians, and others say that it’s impossible to build a backdoor that can’t be exploited by hackers. They also say that by banning encryption, the United States would be following in the footsteps of authoritarian countries such as China, which blocked the encrypted messaging app Signal.

“It is important to understand that any kind of back door (or front door) access for the ‘good guys’ can also be exploited by the ’bad guys,’” the pro-industry Information Technology & Innovation Foundation stated in a July 2020 report, in the midst of the Apple-Barr controversy.

“For example, key escrow systems would introduce new attack vectors that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted information, such as by compromising the system that maintains copies of the keys.”

...and in case you hadn't put it all together, here's Matt Walsh...

...what do they need to hide?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-claims-purportedly-struggling-crack-trump-shooters-phone

Artiva Targets $116M in Latest IPO Push

Cell therapy biotech Artiva Biotherapeutics plans to use the funds raised to support the development of its AlloNK therapy for systemic lupus erythematosus.

San Diego–based Artiva Biotherapeutics provided more details on its IPO push Monday, outlining plans to offer 8.7 million shares and raise approximately $116 million to advance its early-stage cell therapy candidates.

According to the SEC document, Artiva plans to price its shares between $14 and $16 on the Nasdaq and trade under the name “ARTV.” If priced at $15 per share, the company expects to net a maximum of $135 million if the underwriters exercise their options to purchase an extra 1.3 million shares.

Artiva noted that $55 million from the IPO would support the development of its NK cell therapy, AlloNK. The funds would lead the candidate through initial clinical data from its Phase I/Ib trial in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). SLE is an autoimmune disease characterized by abnormal B-cell function that can cause organ damage and increase the risk of death. Phase I studies for the therapy in SLE began in April.

The AlloNK therapy is also being investigated as a treatment for other autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and pemphigus vulgaris, a rare disease that causes blisters on the skin.

Any remaining funds will be used to support other programs in Artiva’s pipeline and for other general purposes, according to the SEC document. The IPO and its existing cash is expected to fund the company through 2026.

Artiva previously attempted to launch an IPO in 2021, but halted its plans to instead focus on a manufacturing and commercialization pact with Affimed, according to Endpoints News.

The IPO filing could help to compensate for the loss of a partnership with Merck. Artiva had previously entered into a license and research collaboration agreement with the pharma in 2021, with Merck paying $30 million upfront. Artiva was also eligible to receive milestones and royalties for two target programs. However, according to the SEC document, Merck terminated the agreement in October 2023.

Artiva’s leap onto the exchange comes during a significant uptick in the biotech IPO market. In the first half of the year, 11 biotechs announced their intentions to launch a public offering, with some of the more significant valuations coming from CG Oncology, valued at $380 million, and Kyverna Therapeutics, at $366.9 million.

Biotechs are still turning to the IPO market, with Alumis annoucning in late June that it was pushing through with its offering but with a smaller raise of $250 million instead of the initially sought $274 million. However, Telix Pharmaceuticals announced in June that it would halt its IPO plans due to “market conditions.”

https://www.biospace.com/business/artiva-targets-116m-in-latest-ipo-push

How MSNBC smeared doctor in crusade against Trump — and may pay price in court

MSNBC may finally be facing blowback for its deranged hatred of Donald Trump.

A bombshell $30 million defamation lawsuit against the Democratic mouthpiece recently got the go-ahead from a Georgia judge.

She ruled that Rachel Maddow and friends, goaded by execs of parent company NBCUniversal, recklessly and falsely put out a story claiming a gynecologist working in a Trump-era immigration facility performed “mass hysterectomies’’ on women, most of which were unnecessary.

Yet as reporters breathlessly produced shocking story after story online and on air about the so-called “uterus collector,’’ the TV propagandists privately — in text messages, emails and telephone conference calls — expressed doubts about the veracity of the tale brought to them by a nurse “whistleblower.’’

Ultimately, the source of the hysterical “gotcha’’ reports, an embittered former nurse for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency named Dawn Wooten, admitted her tales about Dr. Mahendra Amin, who treated patients at a Georgia ICE facility, were based on “hearsay.’’

(That didn’t stop her from starting a GoFundMe that raised $100,000, the lawsuit notes.)

Execs and reporters’ doubts about the story were laid bare during the case’s discovery process.

“We just don’t know if any of this is true,” Chris Scholl, an NBC News veteran who is NBCUniversal’s deputy director of standards, said in a conference call with Hayes on Sept. 16, 2020, according to the lawsuit.

According to the court document, Maddow “initially questioned reporting on the allegations,” and suggested there was a lot of “jumping to conclusions around the complaint” but proceeded to cover it anyway. “All In with Chris Hayes” did a follow-up later in the week.

In a conference call with Hayes after the show aired, Scholl acknowledged they still had no idea whether
Wooten’s claims were accurate, and whether Amin was a “a good doctor or a sh—y doctor.”

“The guy has a pretty clean record,” Scholl said of Amin in the conference call. Scholl added that Wooten “has no direct knowledge of this stuff” and “kind of has a beef,” though he did not elaborate.

Despite Scholl’s concerns, Hayes, Maddow and Nicolle Wallace aired several segments about Wooten’s allegations on their evening MSNBC programs.

It seems that the opportunity to discredit anything even tangentially related to then-chief executive Trump was just too irresistible to pass up.

But in her ruling last month, the judge, Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District of Georgia, found that Maddow, Hayes and Wallace made 39 “verifiably false” allegations about Amin.

“In the end, we are left with this: NBC investigated the whistleblower letter’s accusations; that investigation did not corroborate the accusations and even undermined some; NBC republished the letter’s accusations anyway,” Wood wrote in a scathing, 108-page ruling on June 26.

She ordered a jury trial to determine whether MSNBC engaged in “actual malice.’’

That’s a nice way of saying the reporters — who personally pretended to vet the story — promoted the juicy fiction and allegedly defamed an innocent medical professional in furtherance of a disgusting left-wing agenda.

Days after MSNBC’s series of reports, dozens of Democratic senators called for an investigation into Amin and the ICE facility.

But that probe failed to confirm what the network reps desperately wanted to be true.

“The Subcommittee did not substantiate the allegations of mass hysterectomies on ICDC detainees. Records indicate that Dr. Amin performed two hysterectomies on ICDC detainees between 2017 and 2019. Both procedures were deemed medically necessary by ICE,” the Senate report concluded.

In 2021, Amin sued NBC.

The lawsuit notes that after MSNBC defamed him, Amin “suffered public hatred, contempt, scorn, and ridicule, including stalking, being called names, and receiving hateful comments, death threats, and bomb threats.”

I hope that Maddow and her collaborators in fiction publishing publicly apologize to the doctor they slimed, as well as to the public they repeatedly lied to.

And they should promptly get fired.

They seem to be guilty of journalistic malpractice, which puts the entire profession to shame as they gleefully attempted to ruin a man who performed his job honorably. This is not a victimless crime.

Come clean, people. For once in your lives, stand up for the truth.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/14/opinion/how-msnbc-smeared-a-doctor-in-its-endless-crusade-against-trump-and-may-pay-the-price-in-court/

Copa America madness spilled beyond the gates inside stadium with escalator destroyed

The chaos at the Copa America final on Sunday did not stop at the gates.

Video and photos posted on X show an escalator at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens that was allegedly destroyed by fans, with shattered glass everywhere and the handrails collapsed at the bottom.

Geo Milian, a sports reporter in South Florida, posted photos of the scene, which he described as “barbaric and unacceptable!”

Argentina’s 1-0 win over Colombia was overshadowed by the fan madness that delayed the start of the game, with crowds so large trying to get through the gates with or without tickets that at one point, gates were opened to everyone to avoid stampedes.

Some fans even tried entering the stadium by crawling through vents.

The stadium was overcrowded as a result, and one fan posted on X that their tickets weren’t checked and assigned seating wasn’t being enforced.

Video and photos from before the game show fans getting bloodied and some were detained by police.

Manuela Ángel, the wife of Colombia’s Daniel Muñoz, was left bloodied with a cut on the wrist.

“We were standing in line as a family waiting to get in and then the reckless people behind me started to push me,” Ángel told The Athletic. “They thought I was causing chaos, so I was pushed towards the police officers, away from the line. They started yelling at my children. My oldest is 6 years old and my youngest isn’t even 2 yet. I’m here with Daniel’s grandmother, his mother, his aunt and other family members. I suffered the most because I was in front of all of them. I had the tickets.”

In another example of unruliness inside the stadium, several fans in Colombia shirts opened a giant bag of concession popcorn and poured all of it out, creating a large mess.

“We are outraged by the unprecedented events at [Sunday’s] Copa America finals,” Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levina Cava and chief public safety officer James Reyes said in a joint statement.

“Let’s be clear: This situation should never have taken place and cannot happen again. We will work with stadium leadership to ensure that a full review of tonight’s events takes place immediately to evaluate the full chain of events, in order to put in place needed protocols and policies for all future games.”

Hard Rock Stadium is one of the host venues for the 2026 World Cup.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/15/sports/copa-america-madness-continued-inside-with-escalator-destroyed/

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