Wiping the phone with a duress passcode

When airline passenger Samuel Tunick from Atlanta was stopped at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the authorities seized his phone.  He was not a spy or anything like that, but he had made a reputation as an opponent of the plan to build a police and fire training center in an urban woodland in Atlanta.  

Anyway, the authorities wanted the passcode to get into Mr Tunick’s call history.  The code he gave them is called a “duress” passcode, and it wipes the entire contents of the phone.  How cool is that?

The Feds were not amused.  They have now charged him with a felony for destroying evidence.  What evidence?  He made phone calls.  And what were the grounds for seizing the phone in the first place?  They didn’t have a warrant.  No crime was suspected. 

I think Mr. Tunick will win this case.  Even if he doesn’t, that is one of the best weapons against technology I’ve heard.  If I ever get a cell phone, I’ve got to get one of those duress passcodes. 

American Concentration Camps

Let’s be honest about this.  That’s the accurate name for where we are keeping our ICE detainees.  Some of detention warehouses are run by private for-profit firms.  Those warehouses are not usually required to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.  That means if you have a parent or a child in one of them, you may not be able to obtain information.

Wormy food, lack of health care, brown water–all problems.  More than 65,000 people are in these concentration camps right now.  Now ICE wants to put people in county jails.  I don’t even know if my county is cooperating with ICE.  I will be attending a meeting of the County Commissioners to try to answer that question.

Is Congress doing anything about this?  Do pigs fly?

A Blunt Warning for Israel

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is a Zionist.  He has also been a reliable defender of Israel in the past.  Today Mr . Stephens’ column was entitled “A Blunt Warning for Israel.”  Stephens said that anyone who cares about Israel’s well-being, and that would include me, needs to speak up and condemn the anti-Palestinian settler terrorism on the West Bank.  He noted that it was not only harmful to the Palestinians and an affront to Jewish ethics, but it was also a threat to Israel’s statehood.

Stephens quoted a letter sent to President Trump by Matan Vilnai, a retired deputy chief of staff of the IDF, representing a group that includes hundreds of retired senior IDF officers.  Vilnai wrote:

     Whereas our security agencies excel in dealing with Hamas and other West Bank Palestinian terror groups they are severely constrained when it comes to Jewish terrorists.  

     It is no secret that certain members of our current government orchestrate much of this chaos including by shielding their followers–who are armed and driven by messianic impulses–from the law and its enforcement.

Will this have an effect on Netanyahu?  Probably not.  He is depending on the settler extremist supporters to stay in power.

You can read the full column in today’s Times, page A23.

Living in the U.S.A.

That’s the title of a book I found in the shed tonight.  I probably mentioned this in an earlier post, but I am “deaccessioning” my library.  I’m finding books on the shelves I didn’t even know I owned.  Tonight I came across Living in the U.S.A. by  Alison R. Lanier, first published in 1973 and revised by Charles William Gay for an edition published in 1996.

It is a guide for immigrants, and it has chapter such as “Some Dominant American Attitudes,” “Doing Business in the United States,” and “Manners and Courtesies in Social Life.”  The book is completely useless.

Today I had a conversation with the mother of an immigration lawyer.  He told her there was no path to citizenship at the present time.  An attorney can’t even bring a client along to court; he or she might get arrested.  

I suppose Living in the U.S.A. might have some historical value, like a repair guide for a ’57 Chevy or an etiquette book for teenagers in the 1920s.  

Maybe I’ll keep it.

Cotton Mather and Smallpox

Cotton Mather (1663-1728) was a Puritan minister in Massachusetts.  He read about experiments with smallpox inoculation in a publication from Britain in 1716.  That, and information from his slave who had been inoculated in West Africa, convinced him to advocate for inoculation.  

At that time it was a dangerous procedure; you were exposed to live infectious smallpox matter.  (I won’t describe the “matter.”)  Some of the inoculated people did die, but far fewer than the people who were not inoculated.

I have been unable to find any evidence that the inoculated Bostonians became autistic.

American Death Count Drops in Iran War

The Pentagon announced that the death toll of American service members in the Iran War had dropped from 18 to 14.  Four of these service members had died in action during one of the “cease fires,” so they don’t count as war dead, because we weren’t technically at war.

The injured count is over 100, but the Pentagon isn’t releasing those figures.  Pentagon spokespeople say they are obligated to release figures of deaths, but not injuries.

See Helene Cooper, Lara Jakes, and John Ismay, Pentagon Abruptly Lowers Online Tally of Service Members Killed in the Iran War,” New York Times, (25 July 2026), p. A-6.

Movie Night

I’m taking the night off.  First I watched “The Magnificent Seven” with my cousin’s family.  It was based on a Kurosawa film “The Seven SamuraI.”   Now I’d watching “Ran,” a Kurosawa film based sort of on “Macbeth.”  I needed a break.