02 October 2021

Some HP printers will not print without internet connection


This is another blow to people's privacy where corporations are 'forcing' the consumer to give up their data.

At the end of the day, it's quite simple, where you vote with your wallet, that being do not purchase  privacy invading products or services.

See the following post from reddit of the headline:

Buyer beware! Some newer HP printers will NOT print a single page unless they have internet connectivity and you've linked them to an "HP Smart" account

This is some bullshit

I had an M203dw literally go up in literal smoke at a customer's site. They asked for a small black and white duplex laserjet. So I googled around and found the M209dwe. Ethernet port, duplex, laser, all sounded good

Ordered it and it arrived. Got the MAC address, loaded the DHCP reservation, set it up on the print server, and scheduled a time with the customer for install

Today was the install appointment. I unboxed, plugged it in and powered it up. Verified it had the right IP and I could get to the web UI. All good. Mapped and tried a test page.

Page failed to print. Huh. Wonder what that's about. Tried another PC, tried direct from the print server. Nope. No prints. All failed. Checked for FW update. Nothing new.

So I went back to the homepage of the web UI. And I saw a message that was so mind numbingly stupid that I couldn't believe it.

Printer Setup Incomplete Finish printer setup to enable printing. If setup is not complete, you will be unable to print very soon.

Very soon meant right now. Couldn't even print a test page.

So I went to 123.hp.com and learned after DL'ing the "HP Smart" app on a windows PC, that you CANNOT complete setup without an HP Account tied to that printer.

Which is a giant pile of bullshit. Why the actual hell should a printer have to have an account tied to it and constant internet connectivity?!

I checked with my VAR to make sure I wasn't missing the magical "IT Managed" mode. Nope. That's just how these are. Confirmed by HP's own support article.

So yeah HP can go deepthroat a chainsaw. The M477/M479 series have been great. The M400/401 series were great. But this? This is utter bullshit.

Buyer beware.






29 September 2021

Passport app may have exposed hundreds of thousands of users' personal data

Vaccine passport app has more than 650,000 registered users, according to its CEO


Vaccine passport app Portpass may have exposed users' personal data like drivers' licences and photos. CBC was able to access the photos on the right that belong to users on the app. The IDs have been blurred to protect those users' identities and information. (Portpass/CBC)

Private proof-of-vaccination app Portpass exposed personal information, including the driver's licences, of what could be as many as hundreds of thousands of users by leaving its website unsecured. 

On Monday evening, CBC News received a tip that the user profiles on the app's website could be accessed by members of the public.

CBC is not sharing how to access those profiles, in order to protect users' personal information, but has verified that email addresses, names, blood types, phone numbers, birthdays, as well as photos of identification like driver's licences and passports can easily be viewed by reviewing dozens of users' profiles.

The information was not encrypted and could be viewed in plain text.

Earlier in the day, the Calgary-based company's CEO Zakir Hussein had denied the app had verification or security issues and accused those who raised concerns about it of breaking the law.

CBC called Hussein late Monday, and agreed to hold off on publishing an article on the lapse until late Tuesday morning in order to give his team time to lock down the site and protect user information.

The portpassportal.com web app was pulled offline that evening and users of the mobile app were met with "Network error" pop-up messages if they attempted to upload or modify any information.

Hussein said Tuesday morning that the breach only lasted for minutes, and repeated that claim when CBC pointed out it had reviewed the personal information for more than an hour — and it's unknown how long the information was exposed before that tip was received.

"Someone that's out there is trying to destroy us here, and we're trying to build something good for people," he said. 

"There's holes, and what I'm realizing is I think there are some things that we need to fix here. And you know, we're trying to play catch-up, I guess, and trying to figure out where these holes are."

The CEO said data has been pulled from the server and his developers are investigating. He said he believes only those who were awaiting verification were affected, a claim CBC was unable to verify. 

Hussein has said Portpass has more than 650,000 registered users across Canada. 

Security, privacy concerns

Cybersecurity analyst Ritesh Kotak said he was shocked but not surprised to hear users' information was exposed.

"These were exactly the privacy and security concerns I've previously raised when it comes to using third-party apps," Kotak said. "You've gotta ask yourself, 'Where's the data housed? Who has access to it? Is it encrypted?'… If this gets out to the wrong individuals it opens them up to fraud, identity theft and a whole other world of potential issues."

Earlier on Tuesday morning, Hussein spoke with 630 CHED Radio and said the servers were turned off to perform a security audit. He did not mention during that interview that users' personal information had been exposed. 

The Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation (CSEC), which owns the NHL's Calgary Flames, had recommended the Calgary-based app as a way for ticket holders to prove their COVID-19 vaccination status to enter the Scotiabank Saddledome arena.

CSEC said Monday in an emailed statement, before the security lapse was discovered, that it's aware of concerns raised about the app and is working with the app's developer. CBC has reached out to CSEC for further comment. On Tuesday, after this article was published, CSEC pulled the recommendation for the app from the Flames' website.

"It seems like these were some really basic things that were missed. I question why the Calgary Flames in the first place said go ahead and use this app … you gotta do your homework," Kotak said. 

Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, said those who fear their information may have been compromised can notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. She said the company should have to answer some hard questions about how long the information was accessible and how many users' saw their data exposed.

"Will they conduct a forensic audit? Will they bring in a third-party independent auditor, not just somebody from within their company, to look it over and say, 'Yeah, we had a problem?'" Polsky said.

Hussein said his company will notify the offices of the federal and Alberta privacy commissioners.

The Alberta privacy commissioner's office said in an emailed statement that it has not yet received a report, and said it is contacting Portpass to remind it that if "there is a real risk of significant harm to affected individuals" an incident must be reported to the commissioner and individuals must be notified.

The federal privacy commissioner also said it has not yet received a report, and said it has contacted Portpass to seek further information in order to determine next steps, and that it is in communication with its provincial counterpart. 

Alberta does not have an official app

On Sunday, Conrad Yeung, a local web developer, had questioned on social media whether the app was accurately verifying vaccination information and CBC News had contacted the company to ask for a response. 

Shortly after CBC contacted the company on Sunday, the app began to experience technical difficulties, but Hussein said the crash was due to an influx of users headed to that night's hockey game, overloading the server.

Alberta currently does not have an official proof-of-vaccination app, and the province's PDF vaccine record has been criticized for being easy to edit.

Kristi, one Portpass user, said she was scared to learn her personal information may be compromised. CBC News agreed not to use her last name in case her information was among those exposed.

She said she only downloaded a private app because the government hasn't yet made one available — a delay that frustrates her.

"It was like a kick in the gut when I got the CBC News alert … I don't know if my information is out there," she said.

Yeung had tested the Portpass app by uploading a photo of an actor as an ID photo, and editing a fake vaccination record to display the actor's name that the app verified as legitimate.

However, earlier on Monday, Hussein had denied that the app validated Yeung's false information, despite it appearing to do so, because he said the fake picture would be a giveaway.

"That's not true. We saw it on the back end and we were watching it.… So even if that user showed up, he wouldn't be able to utilize that picture because that's not him. So you wouldn't be able to get in. Secondly, that QR code, if someone scanned it, it would show that picture again," he said at the time. 

Hussein had also said security concerns Yeung had raised about the app were false, and suggested he may contact authorities over his social media posts. He said he wished Yeung and others publicly posting concerns instead had privately reached out to the company.

"Instead he did that maliced behaviour. That, you know, that's not nice," he said.

Yeung said earlier on Monday he had no ill-will toward the company but simply wanted to raise the issues he spotted.

"I was trying to warn, I guess, the general public based on the vulnerabilities that I saw. Because at the end of the day, it's personal information people are submitting," he said. 





Source: cbc.ca

28 September 2021

Are they 100% safe? Response from Australian Parliament


See clip:


Key words: Long term, intergenerational effects, provisional approval, no information on the duration of protection, unknown prevention of transmission because it's a TRIAL.


See original source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVhj4B34IO0

See another resource:

https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/vaccine-passports-and-compensation/

26 September 2021

Windows is spyware


Quite simply put Microsoft's Windows operating system is one of the world's nastiest pieces of spyware.

It's been like this for quite some time, yet the most astonishing part about all this is that it's the world's most popular personal computer operating system.

Every few years you are 'forced' to upgrade software and hardware under the auspice that it's out-of-date, where in reality it's one of the biggest con jobs.

Surely corporations like Microsoft can make their software NOT 'out-of-date', but that would limit their profiteering ability.

Do you really need to update your older version to Windows 10?

Well Microsoft sure would like you to think so.

After all, they get to obtain more information about you that is passed on to governments and other corporations.

What possible benefit is it for you that Microsoft obtains the following data:

  • Typed text on keyboard sent every 30 minutes
  • Transmits anything you say into a microphone
  • Transcripts of things you say while using Cortana
  • Index of all media files on your computer
  • When your webcam is first enabled, 35mb of data
  • Telemetry data
Microsoft should be sued to the maximum (but as we know, won't) regarding the invasion of privacy.

Now, now, let's not use the 'for better user experience' excuse.

Another corporation working for the five eyes global surveillance regime.

Read more on this subject from neweggbusiness.com within the article of the headline:

Should You Disable Windows 10 Telemetry?


25 September 2021

The upgrade lie tech manufacturers propagate

Technology manufacturers need you to upgrade all your tech every year, so that you (and not them) pay for their R&D (research and development) in order to obtain a quick ROI (Return On Investment) for their troubles.

After all what good are you to them if you're their customer only once?

The need you to purchase this year's flagship smartphone with a multicoloured notification LED.

This year's software update may have a minimal feature update, features that have been designed years ago and turned off by default, but you have to download it now!

With regards to your personal computer, you could be running a 6 or 8 year old processor, and according to the 'mainstream' you must update, because your hardware is 'ancient', but do you really need to update?

Well that depends on what you're doing.

See more in the following video:


In reality consumers are getting blatantly ripped off by corporations profiteering from minimal updates making them out to be the next best/hottest feature you didn't know you needed.


23 September 2021

Police LIE inciting violence in order to help government enact new Terrorism Bill


Briefly, 

During the past few weeks the people of Melbourne have been hurting as a result of the (factually) unnecessary lockups (based on falsified 'cases') and curfew allegedly for people's health.

As a result the mainstream media has been falsely reporting on protests and their reasons.

Victoria Police have been inciting violence in order to justify a further harsh stance against people's right to demonstrate, as is true of in a democracy.

The current Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, Shane Andrew Patton has falsely stated on the record the actions and reasons for people demonstrating in order to enact the authoritarian state, as desired by the Labor Andrews government.

Victoria Police are acting on the orders of the people within the Andrews government.

Undercover police pretending to be civilians incited the crowd into rowdy actions that were met with unequal force.

This is all done in order to classify ANY gathering, protest, march, demonstration as an act of 'terrorism' in order to engage a specially trained police unit to deploy lethal force on the community in order to comply with the government directive of 70% or 80% now 85% uptake rate a pharmaceutical of their choosing.

We are witnessing the birth of the Communist State of Australia, hatched right here in Melbourne.


22 September 2021

No medicare for Victorians?



Discrimination and 'Human Rights' abuse are rife in the police state of Victoria.

It seems that there is going to be a policy introduced by the Labor government of Victoria headed by Daniel Michael Andrews where medicare (a federal health portfolio) will NOT be available to every person in Victoria, something that is a 'human right' in this colony.

People, or rather technically at law, 'persons' will be discriminated against by the healthcare system?

Those who have chosen to take currently a trial liquid intravenously will be able to obtain healthcare?

Where those who have not taken the same liquid (intravenously) will not be able to obtain healthcare?

Can Dan Andrews 'legally' go behind the federal government?

Well, he did with regards to the Belt and Road Initiative.

It seems that this information comes from (allegedly) two 'reliable' sources Jordan Cruganale and Darren Cheeseman.

Hear the recording at:

Which is available for download from the following link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VQ7zNm3KXB3TGH20h25165MQ4-vtbEUj/view?usp=sharing







20 September 2021

Who Owns Who by Brad


A quick and concise look at which corporations 'own' the brands that people in government 'force' us to do business with.

Corporations within sectors like pharmaceuticals, social media and so called 'news' corporations.

Spoiler Alert:

Key players include: The Vanguard Group Inc, SSgA Funds Management Inc, BlackRock Fund Advisors.

See video (13m22sec):





19 September 2021

Australia’s ‘national cabinet’ operating unlawfully, the very definition of terrorism



It’s pretty feral here on the prison isle, the land called 'down under', that being Australia.

China’s reference to Australia was that it was once “roamed by rascals and outlaws”, was slightly askew and aimed at the wrong crowd.

A while ago it was exposed that the people occupying the office of Australia’s national cabinet are not doing so lawfully.

So, what has been done about it?

Nothing.

No police action, no charges, and it’s business as usual.

If it was exposed (e.g. on social media) that you (the serf) did something illegal/unlawful then the relevant authorities would take pretty much immediate action.

Prior to the media’s announcement of a ‘fake’ national cabinet an FOI (Freedom Of Information) request was sent to show in accordance within the Constitution the valid creation of the cabinet.

The result of this request can be found within the post:

https://constitutionwatch.com.au/patrick-v-prime-minister-a-pretended-national-cabinet/

See also

https://corpau.blogspot.com/2021/08/national-cabinet-thrown-open-to.html


16 September 2021

Covid: the New World Order


Something dangerous has happened to Australia. 

We have allowed the interests of ‘collective health’ to erase individual human rights. 

It has become acceptable to imprison, hurt, fine, intimidate, arrest, segregate, discriminate, oppress, and financially ruin individuals – so long as it is done in the interest of public health. 

While the personal ethics of our politicians should have prevented a situation like this from arising, Australia has learned that there isn’t a scrap of morality within Parliament, the courts, or the legions of human rights lawyers who show more interest in the wellbeing of terrorists than citizens. 

The founders of our political system were smarter than this. They built-in structural protections to ensure that every Australian would remain free from the tyrannous whims of deluded ideologues. Contained within our Constitution are assurances of unimpeded travel, the right to work, unrestricted access to public services and spaces, healthcare without prejudice – along with freedom of assembly, association and speech. 

‘Emergency’ is a legal status created by politicians – not our founders – to negate these protections. It was designed to deal with rare occasions of chaos when cataclysmic events played out too fast for government to handle: think asteroids, earthquakes, an approaching fire-front, floods, plague of frogs etc. 

Emergencies last for fourteen days because that was the estimated time it would take for normal parliamentary process to catch up. The ability to extend an emergency was not intended to create a permanent parallel legal system in Australia. 

Why? Dictators hold permanent emergency powers. That is how Communist nations are able to chop-and-change policy without public consultation. Democracies must ask and debate. This makes them slower to adapt, but ultimately more stable over the centuries. In other words, Xi Jinping is in a Porsche taking The Amalfi Drive at 300km/h. Eventually, he’s going to meet a bus on one of those curves. 

Nearly two years of Covid is in no way an emergency situation. Politicians have had long enough to calmly consider their position on Covid and return society to its legal norms, especially when we have a global example to work from. Extending emergency powers over the states indefinitely is nothing short of criminal behaviour by our premiers who know full well that if they were to lift restrictions, life would return to normal. 

That’s the white elephant sitting between premiers and their chief health officers in every press conference. 

If they returned freedom to the people of Australia, the fear-mongering and endless propaganda would be exposed as a lie. When that happens, the class action suits start and possibly criminal proceedings against those involved in violating the rights of citizens. 

Premiers instructing businesses to commit international crimes by refusing service to the unvaccinated is only the beginning. Once you start down the path of scapegoating innocent citizens to cover up political errors, democracies crumble into anarchy. 

What happened to inclusion and equality? Why does the government fund heroin injecting clinics next to pre-schools if their chief goal is public health? If the vaccines are so successful, why is Israel a mess while Sweden opens up? 

There are a million questions that journalists could ask premiers if they weren’t so busy kneeling at their shrine, microphones lifted in a state of click-bait worship. 

Which brings us to New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant and her hilarious Freudian slip which is still trending on social media. 

Leave someone in front of a press gallery for long enough and they’re bound to make a mistake. Chant did exactly that when she decided to mention the New World Order. 

“We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the New World Order…” said Chant. 

She’s not the first to say it. Brad Hazzard, the Minister for Health and Medical Research in New South Wales, had a similar calamitous conference. “There’s a world pandemic. It’s a one-in-one-hundred year event. So, you can expect that we will have transmission from time to time, and that’s just the way it is. We’ve got to accept that this is the New World Order.” 

Claiming this was accidental word choice makes about as much sense as health officials accidentally referring to their mandates as ‘The Third Reich’. 

In a speech on June 9 this year titled ‘A world order that favours freedom’, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, “We are living in a time of great uncertainty, not seen – I believe – since the 1930s outside of wartime. Our challenge is nothing less than to re-enforce, renovate, and buttress a world order that favours freedom.” 

Morrison said everything except ‘Build Back Better’ in his graphic verbal painting of a Net Zero economy controlled by a centralised unelected bureaucracy based in Brussels chaired by the world’s most dangerous geopolitical shark. 

If your New World Order is wholly owned and controlled by an expansionist communist dictatorship, ‘freedom’ is not on the agenda except as bait for the dangerously naive. 

New World Order sounds familiar for a reason – it is another pet slogan of the World Economic Forum. I understand it’s difficult to take a global bureaucracy seriously when it’s led by a man who dresses like a galactic dictator in a 1984 remake, but this is the architect of ‘Build Back Better’ adopted by our most powerful leaders. A quick glance at the World Economic Forum’s partner list should settle any questions you have about their influence. 

The New World Order has two Wikipedia pages, one listed as ‘politics’ and the other as ‘conspiracy’ – both of these pages describe exactly the same thing; a centralised world government forming after a significant geopolitical power shift. 

In the same way that Antifa claim they ‘can’t possibly be fascist because their name means anti-fascist’, organisations like the World Economic Forum title their policies in a way that leaves it difficult to attack or examine them. 

Picking a phrase that has been in common usage for over a generation and applying it to a specific policy makes it easy for those not paying attention to dismiss slip-ups like Chant’s. 

The question is, what does the New World Order mean now? In what context are Australian politicians and health officials hearing it enough to accidentally slip it into press conferences when talking about Covid? 

Head of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab wrote a Harvard Business Review piece titled, ‘Power and Policy: The New Economic World Order’ where he detailed his belief that the industrialised world has been going through an economic revolution. Keep in mind, the article is written in 1994. He correctly lusts after points out the rise of Asia, commenting, “One consequence of the new parity is that the West can no longer hope to dictate the rules of the game.” 

In this, he is only partially right. The circumstance he prophesied has only manifested because organisations like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations have trained Western leaders to be weak. It was not an inevitability of trade structures, but rather a matter of ideological infestation. The constant infiltration of socialist rhetoric into the once free world via endless champagne conferences has left it unable to work out what gender it is, let alone present a strong front against the rise of Asia.  

By 2018, the World Economic Forum was publishing articles insisting that we must all work together to hasten the rise of Asia and teach ourselves to embrace the New World Order. The United Nations have a similar song sheet. Before Covid, they spoke of the New World Order in the context of a green revolution and the dismantling of old industrialised nations in favour of empowering the third world. 

Most of the propaganda coming out of the United Nations these days talks about sustainability, mass-migration, climate goals, and Covid as a singular item – an omini-shambles apocalypse with only one solution: world socialism disguised as environmentalism. 

Build Back Better, The Great Reset, The New Normal, The New World Order, Net Zero, the Fourth Industrial Revolution are all pieces of the same puzzle. On their own, they appear either innocuous or ridiculous, but when placed together in the context of trillion-dollar corporate interests these ideas spell disaster for Australia and her citizens. 

We can lie to ourselves and pretend Australia would never become a vassal state to an unelected bureaucracy, when in reality it took less than two years to turn us into drug-addicted dependants of the World Health Organisation and its consortium of corporate partners. Our politicians take health orders from Tedros Adhanom, a man who stands accused of aiding genocide and the deliberate concealment of Cholera outbreaks to protect politicians. 

What of Dr Kerry Chant and her New World Order? 

Perhaps she read the white paper from FinTech ‘Covid and the New World Order – Actionable insights from global technology thought leaders’ detailing life in a new digitally intrusive, socially distanced, health-oriented, and frequently locked-down world. It is about using technology, surveillance, big data, and artificial intelligence to manage society in the pandemic – which could explain why she mentioned it in reply to questions regarding contact tracing. 

“The pandemic has helped crystallise our collective realisation that the current global economic order, and our financial markets, are not equipped to address the wider environmental and social issues that face humanity,” said Lord Chris Holmes, speaking of the white paper. 

More frequently, we hear all levels of our political system refer to ‘Covid Normal’ which is used interchangeably with ‘The New Normal’. It is the idea that we can never return to our free and innocent society. Politicians want us to accept, without question, a future of mass government stalking – a ‘paper’s please’ society that deliberately excludes those it deems unclean. 

For our own safety, we are told that our lives belong in a network of cages with doors controlled by vaccine passports. Treats are dropped or withheld depending on our collective behaviour. We are presented with ‘free choices’ that have mandatory outcomes leading us down an ever-narrowing space that’s anything but ‘safe’. 

Has the world forgotten that it has survived hundreds of pandemics over thousands of years and never once adopted a permanent state of tyranny? After all, communism gave us Covid – why would communism cure it? 

What you stand for today, is what you’ll be remembered for tomorrow. 

Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at Ko-Fi.

Source: spectator.com.au