Give Trump a Chance?

I already did.

He had that chance during the campaign. Granted, he disgusted me before the campaign, but once he became the Republican nominee, I thought I should try to be as objective as possible. I heard what he had to say, and I found him an utterly reprehensible, despicable creature representing all that I abhor. So, I voted against him.

That was his chance.

And yet I’m still being asked to hold my judgment until he’s had some time to get settled into his new role. This while he selects a cabinet so far consisting of:

– Steve Bannon, a white nationalist as chief strategist;
– Reince Priebus, the RNC chair (so much for draining the swamp) as chief of staff;
– Mike Pompeo, who advocated for the execution of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed America’s illegal intelligence gather activities, as head of the CIA;
– Michael Flynn, an Islamophobe who was fired under the Obama administration, as national security advisor;
– Myron Ebell, a climate change denier and person with no scientific background, as the transition head for the EPA.

Of course, let’s not forget his running mate, Mike Pence who believes one can pray away the gay.

And look! They’re all white guys.

Now, tell me again when I can expect Trump’s about face to being a moderate president “for all Americans,” because his picks so far indicate he intends to follow through on all of the hateful promises he’s made.

/rant>

America has spoken…

…and this is what we’ve been told:

To my daughters: You are objects

To my black neighbors: Your lives don’t matter

To my Muslim and immigrant friends and family: There’s no place for you here

To my LGBTQ friends and family: You don’t deserve equal rights or protection

To America’s allies: We don’t honor our agreements

To Russia: Go for it

To reason: We value irrational thought over facts and science

To those whom you have mocked, berated, and physically and verbally attacked: Get over it; you’re being divisive when we need unity

To bigots, racists, misogynists, homophobes, and xenophobes: Your prejudices are legitimate and deserve respect and a voice

And here is my response. You have wiped away my self-deluding belief that the hate in this country couldn’t be this bad. So, I promise you these things:

  • Count on me to push back;
  • Count on me to speak up;
  • Count on me to defend and protect those whom I love;
  • Count on me to never again be complacent from a naive belief that we would never do anything so reckless, so self-destructive, or so opposite of what this country is supposed to mean.

/rant>

Privacy: You know, for kids.

As of this morning, I’ve been following the story about uKnowKids’ publicly-exposed user database, which included private information on roughly 1,700 kids. It got me to thinking about the VTech breach in 2015, and I was curious as to what has happened since then. Remember the VTech breach in the Fall of 2015? If not, here’s a quick refresher:

  • The children’s toy maker stored personal information, such as ages, photos, addresses, and such, of millions of children and their parents in a database vulnerable to a SQL injection attack;
  • The database was popped because, well, a SQL injection vulnerability is on par with using “password” as your password. (I’m struggling for the right analogy here, because it’s just so stupid. Ah! Let’s try this: Imagine somebody leaves a large wooden horse in the street in front of your house. You assume it’s a gift, so you wheel it into your yard. That night a cadre of soldiers jumps out of the horse and slaughters you and your family. Didn’t see that coming!);
  • Around 4.8 million records were exposed, and the hacker that gained access notified a reporter at Motherboard to explain his reasons for doing so;
  • VTech acknowledged the breach and assured its customers that no credit card data was compromised, nor was any personally identifiable information (like driver’s license data) stored in that database. (I guess your kid’s age, photo, address, etc., cannot be used to identify him or her…);
  • The suspected hacker, who made no effort to profit from the breach or share the data, and who wrote that he wanted VTech to fix their problems, was arrested in December 2015.

What really fried me – beyond the gaping holes in their antiquated systems, and VTech’s assurances about credit card data while kids’ data was exposed – was that just this month they’ve implemented measures to further protect… wait for it… themselves with new terms of service. Why new terms of service and not, say, fix their security issues to protect customers and their kids? Because screw your kid’s privacy and your little dog, too!

Companies such as VTech and uKnowKids have been entrusted with keeping, not just their customers’ data, but their customers’ kids’ data, secure. I’m not sympathetic to these companies’ complaints about loss of intellectual property (IP) by these researchers when there is no evidence that that IP has been shared. If you’re responsible for protecting kids’ privacy, that responsibility is your top priority. Full stop. If you can’t handle that responsibly, you shouldn’t be in business, in the first place.