Corruption and Free Speech at Columbia

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          October 10, 2022

These days, with Twitter and Facebook being hotbeds of censorship, IT and free speech are intimately related. I am an expert in both, although less willingly so for the latter, since I became so through denial of my free speech. My denial occurred at another hotbed of censorship these days, universities, and via a major method for censorship, email. This denial of free speech goes hand in hand with corruption at the universities, as it does for government.

This article, particularly its title, Corruption and Free Speech at Columbia (today is Columbus Day), is with acknowledgement to God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, who was essentially also writing about corruption and free speech (his book is subtitled The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom") at a university, Yale, while he was a student there, graduating in 1950. (Today Yale denies free speech to the point where some federal judges will no longer accept Yale Law School graduates as law clerks.)

Banned-For-Life Trader and Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget Using Fake News for Stock Price Manipulation?

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          May 5, 2021

After I wrote IT Reporting: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel with a Fake Facebook Data Breach, I wondered why a major media news outlet like Business Insider would publish fake news about Facebook and risk a multi-million dollar libel lawsuit that Facebook could easily win. Having written Stock Market Crash Deja Vu: Reddit Violates Securities Exchange Act earlier this year, the answer came to mind: Business Insider planned to make at least that much by short selling Facebook stock and driving its price down with the fake news. I then proceeded to mail a complaint of this illegal (Title 15 of U.S. Code, § 78i(a)(2)) stock price manipulation to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with copies mailed to Facebook and Business Insider. This SEC complaint is particularly important because it has a bearing on the federal government's current ridiculously-weak anti-monopoly case against Facebook: Federal Trade Commission v. Facebook Inc., U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:20-cv-03590. After mailing this SEC complaint, I was investigating who else at Business Insider should have their records, particularly emails, subpoenaed to look for evidence of the crime. I discovered that the founder, editor-in-chief, and CEO of Business Insider, Henry Blodget, had been convicted by the SEC of essentially the same securities fraud of stock price manipulation by fake news, been fined $4 million, and been banned for life from the securities industry. Thumbing his nose at and taunting the SEC, Blodget then founded Business Insider, which is the perfect cover for continuing this illegal stock price manipulation.

Microsoft Guilty But Protected by NSA, AB PAC, India, and DelBenes

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          March 22, 2021

IT incompetent Microsoft is guilty of The Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach and Doomsday II: The Massive Microsoft Email Data Breach Sequel and should be in serious, even terminal, legal and public relations/business trouble for it, but remains untouchable. This is because Microsoft is being protected, for several reasons, by those in and closely tied to the federal government. First, Microsoft has become inherent in federal government IT over the decades and it's too late for the federal government to do anything but defend Microsoft, no matter how disastrously IT incompetent they are. Second, Microsoft has colluded with the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on Americans and is being rewarded for that by the federal government. Third, Microsoft, via its IT incompetent leadership, including those from India, has paid for many elected federal officials. These include U.S. Representative Suzan DelBene from Washington state, home of Microsoft, who used to be a Microsoft executive, and whose husband Kurt DelBene is a longtime Microsoft executive, except for when he was appointed by the federal government to implement HealthCare.gov, which was hacked at implementation; see HealthCare.gov Hacked. While at Microsoft, IT incompetent Kurt DelBene managed both Outlook, implicated in The Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach, and Exchange, implicated in Doomsday II: The Massive Microsoft Email Data Breach Sequel. Not to mention — and no one does — Microsoft liberally supports the dirty tricks political action committee, AB PAC.

Federal Judiciary Reacts To Hackers: Evidence Tampering OK, Exposing NSA Surveillance Not

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          March 17, 2021

As I showed in Hackers Own The Federal Legal System, the federal judicial system has been taken over by hackers and the federal judiciary has admitted to this and reacted. Their reaction were orders on Highly Sensitive Documents (HSDs) reworded from a directive by the same IT incompetent agency — the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO), particularly its director appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court — that allowed itself to be hacked in the first place and is responsible for taking care of all documents (evidence documents and court documents), now all electronic, in the federal judicial system. These orders completely ignore the document tampering — to change court decisions — that will now occur, which was the main focus of Hackers Own The Federal Legal System, and only try to keep confidential the documents, HSDs, they consider important. What the AO considers HSDs that they will really try to protect now and non-HSDs that they will leave to the hackers, since they have been hacked permanently and undetectably, is outrageously self-serving. How the AO plans to keep HSDs confidential, when they already have a procedure for sealed and confidential documents that was hacked, is dangerously IT incompetent.

Hackers Own The Federal Legal System

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          March 12, 2021

One of the most important implications of The Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach and Doomsday II: The Massive Microsoft Email Data Breach Sequel is that hackers "own" the U.S. federal legal system, which consists of the legal departments and agencies of the executive branch and the entire judicial branch of the federal government. These organizations all used Microsoft email in some way so had their networks of computers hacked into, permanently and undetectably. The very foundation of the legal system, and what is assumed by it, is that police evidence (usually documents) and court documents have not been tampered with, but hackers can now undetectably tamper with these documents at will since these documents are all digital (a.k.a. electronic) and on computers these days. All judicial decisions are now questionable (including in some of my own cases), as some enterprising defense lawyer will soon point out to his guilty client's advantage. It's far worse than even Equifax Dead: Hacked So Credit Reports Worthless. Additionally, many court documents contain sensitive information that could be used to hurt the people involved and is supposed to be kept confidential, and all this is now available to hackers. The only solution is to go back to paper only documents, mailing them, and physical security for them. This will not only make the legal process more secure, but more fair, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment right to due process.

Doomsday II: The Massive Microsoft Email Data Breach Sequel

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          March 8, 2021

Only IT incompetent megacorporation Microsoft could have an oxymoron like Doomsday II, the sequel to the end of the world, in this case the sequel to The Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach. But perhaps it should be seen as taking doomsday on the road. The first Microsoft email doomsday data breach destroyed U.S. Government IT and the sequel is being called a global crisis, having also destroyed the IT of foreign governments and institutions. At least the IT incompetent media realized this time that it was Microsoft's fault — they call it the Microsoft Exchange Cyberattack — which they didn't last time. The first Microsoft email doomsday data breach was due to Microsoft's Outlook email, in all its various guises, and this sequel Microsoft email doomsday data breach is due to Microsoft's Exchange, which is their email server. Here I explain all this and how they are related.

The Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          February 22, 2021

As Apscitu has been warning for years, since its inception, particularly through Stop IT Incompetence, the IT Incompetents Hall Of Shame (Government, Business, and Media), and Apscitu Mail, there has been a doomsday data breach of the federal government's email and (then) networks, and this was due to government IT incompetence, not the supposedly sophisticated foreign government hackers. This doomsday data breach was finally admitted to by the federal government starting in December 2020 and continuing, but may have been going on undetected for many months or even years and may still be going on undetected.

Those who have even a clue about this data breach, which doesn't include the media, are calling it the most massive — and not just yet another most massive — (thus worst) data breach in history, whose vast effects will be the major national security risk for many years into the future, if the United States survives it at all; hence "doomsday data breach". ...

FOIA: That's Some Exemption, That Exemption 6

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          November 11, 2020

I file a lot of Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Many are to discover the outrageous salaries of IT incompetent government IT officials for the Government IT Incompetents Hall Of Shame (ITIHOS). These are usually successful, although after many months. But some are for Apscitu Mail, to discover the government email addresses (.gov) of government officials, which is part of my preparation for a lawsuit against the U.S. Government for violation, in its use of email, of my First Amendment right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". These are usually not successful, because of Exemption 6 of the FOIA law (Title 5 of the United States Code, § 552(b)(6)). If you actually read Exemption 6 though, you realize it's ridiculous to say it applies to government email addresses. The whole situation is as surreal as Catch-22, which I read as a teenager and later saw the movie. I play Yossarian, instead of Alan Arkin, and the U.S. Government plays itself, again.

IT Incompetent Attorneys General v. Google

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          November 7, 2020

A few days before Halloween, U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced that he and the attorneys general (AG) of eleven states were filing a civil lawsuit against Google in U.S. District Court (the lowest federal court, where all federal cases must start) of the District of Columbia (where conveniently Google has a corporate presence) for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (Title 15 of the United States Code, §§ 1-7). While Google is a prime candidate for an anti-monopoly lawsuit, given the IT incompetence of all the attorneys general and the IT incompetent track record of the U.S. Attorney General, and his Department of Justice, in antitrust lawsuits against IT corporations, this will take years and cost millions of dollars, and result in no real help to Google's victims.

Incompetent Encryption Is Worse Than No Encryption

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          August 17, 2020

When you think of email security, you probably think of encryption. This is not the most important aspect of email security — your email server is, see About Apscitu Mail — but email encryption can add another layer of security, which is generally good. You might not use email encryption because you think the NSA, and more competent hackers, can break the encryption, but you are wrong; see No, The NSA Does Not Have Encryption-Breaking Quantum Computers. Or you might not use email encryption because it seems too complicated to use. In that case, you are right. Studies show that even the most user-friendly email encryption system is too difficult for even above-average users to use competently. And incompetent encryption is worse than no encryption because you are lulled into a false sense of security and insecurely send more, and more sensitive, data than you would otherwise. You might go looking around for some one-size-fits-all solution to your email encryption, particularly if you are someone like a whistleblower trying to contact the media, or vice versa, but you would be wrong then too. Your getting competent email encryption requires an IT expert working closely with you, i.e. custom work, like with Apscitu Mail. In that case, you would be right.

Coronavirus and Spam: The Fear Is Worse Than The Disease

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          March 23, 2020

What do Coronavirus and spam have in common? The effect of the exaggerated fear, the overreaction, does far more harm than the actual "disease".

People won't admit this, but they don't care how many people die of a disease, just how easy it is to catch or hard to avoid and what the death rate is if you do catch it. The 2019-20 U.S. flu season resulted in 24,000 deaths. The 2017-18 U.S. flu season resulted in 61,000 deaths. Even 24,000 is probably far more people than you've ever been within six feet of in your entire life. Nobody cares. That's because the flu is relatively easy to avoid and even if you do catch it, the death rate is only around 0.1% (0.06% for 2019-20 and 0.14% for 2017-18) and mostly among the old and already sick.

Your Friends Get By (Google) With A Little Help From You

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          February 1, 2020

Recently I was doing business with a company that I discovered was unknowingly losing customers due to Google's spam filter. Like many businesses, and government and universities, the company used Google Mail (see Google: Invasion of the Email Snatchers). Gmail was automatically sending customers' emails to the spam folder, which they rarely if ever checked — and Gmail spam is automatically deleted after 30 days — or was rejecting customers' emails outright, without notifying the company (see Whitelists, Blacklists, and the Great Spam Filter Scam).

So the company was losing customers without even knowing it. Losing customers is literally money out of the company's pockets. This is every company's nightmare. They spend a small fortune on advertising (including to Google) and when it works, the acquired customers are ignored (by Google).

Proofpoint Investigation: Fraud and Government Email Tampering

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          January 10, 2020

The research for Net Neutrality: Who Controls the Communications of the Communications Controllers? led to further investigation of Proofpoint Inc., the IT incompetent email service provider for the IT incompetent Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It was discovered that Proofpoint is also the email service provider for the IT incompetent Department of Commerce (DOC) and that Proofpoint is illegally reading and blocking emails from people trying to contact both the FCC and the DOC based on Proofpoint's own arbitrary criteria, probably political or profit-seeking. Moreover, it was discovered that Proofpoint's Cybersecurity Executive Vice President (EVP), Ryan Kalember, is an IT incompetent fraud who has widely lied about his qualifications.

No, The NSA Does Not Have Encryption-Breaking Quantum Computers

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          December 7, 2019

Many people who absolutely should be using email encryption, like VIPs, don't because they say the National Security Agency (NSA), and thus the CIA, FBI, etc., can break the encryption (decrypt) anyway so why bother; the encryption will just point out their email to the NSA as worth breaking. The slightly more knowledgeable of these people say that the NSA can break this encryption because they have encryption-breaking quantum computers. The IT incompetent NSA does nothing to dissuade them of this belief because it makes their job of reading people's emails much easier. And the IT incompetent media, universities, and tech companies can't hype quantum computers enough — it sells ads and gets funding and investors, much like bogus artificial intelligence stories do. However, without any NSA-insider knowledge you could have been fairly sure the NSA doesn't have encryption-breaking quantum computers and now with the NSA-insider revelations of Edward Snowden you can be very sure the NSA doesn't have encryption-breaking quantum computers. So encrypt your email. Let Apscitu help you do it right so it is actually unbreakable.

Net Neutrality: Who Controls the Communications of the Communications Controllers?

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          August 10, 2019

Answer: Proofpoint Inc. of Sunnyvale California, just minutes down the road from Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The question more specifically: Who controls the email of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)? Your question: What does this have to do with net neutrality? My answer: Read on.

The Internet in the United States has a backbone. It's fiber optic cables able to carry massive amounts of data, starting with voice, across the country (note: I'm a certified fiber optic technician). These fiber optic cables, or at least their copper predecessors, were laid by AT&T back when it was a government-authorized monopoly — so could more easily get rights-of-way, the most valuable asset — long before the Internet started in the early 1990s.

Biggest Turnoff: Gmail Spam Filter

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          June 27, 2019

I mentioned Google Mail's (Gmail's) spam filter in Whitelists, Blacklists, and the Great Spam Filter Scam, particularly how it reads your emails and censors them based on content and probably sender too. As discussed in Google: Invasion of the Email Snatchers, most have surrendered their email to Big Brother Google and think they have to do email however Google says, including using its spam filter. You can actually turn off the Gmail spam filter, although Google tries to hide and discourage this, and until you get Apscitu Mail, this turnoff is the biggest thing you can do to protect yourself.

When you get a Gmail account, the spam filter is on by default, with no option given to turn it off. Whenever Google deems an email you receive to be spam, including because its content is politically incorrect or because it was sent from a rival email service provider, it gets sent to the Gmail spam folder.

Whitelists, Blacklists, and the Great Spam Filter Scam

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          June 15, 2019

Spam is unwanted email and is often dangerous and offensive. Dangerous because it is a leading hacking method (e.g. phishing) and offensive because it often involves porn. Spam has become such a big problem that many people have drastically reduced or even stopped using email. This is an incredible waste since email is the best form of communication — you can inexpensively and instantly send large amounts of text, documents, photos, audio, and video at any time and it can all be sent securely. Spam filtering is used to address the problem but the most common methods — because they are the most profitable to the companies that produce them — are frustratingly bad, often causing the loss of important wanted emails while still allowing dangerous and offensive spam. There is a simple, free, highly effective spam filtering method, whitelists, but spam filter producers and email service providers don't want you to use them because they are free and highly effective.

The U.S. Mail SHOULD Be Worried About Email Competition

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          May 28, 2019

Even though it is a U.S. government agency explicitly written into the Constitution, the U.S. Mail, a.k.a. the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), considers itself a business. In fact, online it is usps.com not usps.gov. In the U.S. Mail's most basic function, delivering letters, it is of course subject to competition from email. And it should be worried about this email competition, very worried.

Cliff Clavin was the bumbling postman on the very popular TV sitcom Cheers. In one episode Cliff was worried about email putting the U.S. Mail out of business and him out of a job. So he took pills for this worry, especially every time some evidence supporting it popped up. He ended up taking so many pills he developed gynecomastia ("man breasts").

ICANN Do Whatever I Wants

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          May 25, 2019

What is ICANN and why should you care that ICANN do whatever I wants? ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Among other profitable Internet fiefdoms, they control the Domain Name System (DNS).

You've probably heard of DNS but don't know exactly what it is. Computers on the Internet have numerical (IP) addresses, like 192.0.32.7. When you go with your browser to a website, which is on a webserver computer somewhere on the Internet, you have to tell your browser the webserver computer address. People have a hard time remembering numbers like that but are much better with names, like icann.org, which is a domain name. DNS is a system of computers on the Internet, queried by your browser, that translate domain names into IP address numbers, like icann.org into 192.0.32.7.

Google: Invasion of the Email Snatchers

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          May 18, 2019

I have been at four American universities since I graduated from high school as valedictorian: MIT, the University of Arizona, Columbia University, and the University of Alaska.

Three of these four have surrendered their email systems to Google. That means that the university email accounts of faculty, staff, students, and alumni are owned by Google — they are Google Mail (Gmail) accounts just like anyone can get, with the simple exception that the associated email address is not @Gmail.com but @SpecificUniversity.edu.

Facebook Reads Your And Government Officials'/Politicians' Email

By Duane Thresher, Ph.D.          October 11, 2018

Continuing my investigation of massive invasions of privacy by Facebook (see my previous three articles in Apscitu Expert IT News), I discovered that Facebook reads the emails of you and millions of other Facebook users, including government officials/politicians. This may be where many of the unexplained leaks in government and politics are coming from.

Recently, while I was easily creating another fake Facebook account, I quickly came to yet another scary Facebook demand: