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>Law firm targeted by hackers says Trump was never a client
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/498223-law-firm-targeted-by-hackers-says-trump-was-never-a-client
The celebrity law firm targeted by a hacking group with a $42 million ransom demand said Sunday that it had no previous relationship withafter the hackers threatened to release damaging information on Trump and others.
A spokesperson for Grubman, Shire, Meiselas & Sacks, P.C. told CNN that the firm had never listed Trump among its list of high-profile clients, which include names behind top brands such as Vera Wang and Tommy Hilfiger. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill on whether Trump had any relationship with the firm.
Hackers from a group identified by experts as "REvil" or "Sodinokibi" targeted the firm in with a ransomware attack, locking up the law firm's network and demanding $42 million in ransom in a post to a dark web forum first reported by Variety on Friday.
The group later claimed that it would release politically damaging information on Trump should the firm refuse to pay the ransom, while also stating that it had received $365,000 from the firm so far.
“The next person we'll be publishing is Donald Trump. There's an election race going on, and we found a ton of dirty laundry,” the group's post reportedly read. “And to you voters, we can let you know that after such a publication, you certainly don't want to see him as president.”
A spokesperson for Grubman, Shire, Meiselas & Sacks, P.C. denied this in statements to multiple news outlets.
"We have been informed by the experts and the FBI that negotiating with or paying ransom to terrorists is a violation of federal criminal law," the spokesperson told CNN and Variety. "Even when enormous ransoms have been paid, the criminals often leak the documents anyway."
"The leaking of our clients' documents is a despicable and illegal attack by these foreign cyberterrorists who make their living attempting to extort high-profile US companies, government entities, entertainers, politicians, and others," the spokesperson continued.
>https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/05/17/disinformation-from-schiff-media-damaged-america/
>Corporate media control [source]:
>Bill Clinton_ 1996 Telecommunications Act
>[2016 campaign [+CF] contributions [HRC] by media]
>Control of information.
>Control of narrative.
>Control of people.
>Q
Disinformation from Schiff, media damaged America
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has been feeding the American people misinformation for years. He used his position — replete with access to information and people in the know — to distribute wild accounts of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.
The effect was to frighten and alarm millions of Americans, sowing division between neighbors, toxifying our discourse and raising anxieties.
The Trump administration spent time and resources fighting off the fallacy that cursed them since day one and deprived the American people of a president who could devote his time and energy to the policies they had elected him to enact.
Just a year ago, Adam Schiff was on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, Fox News — anyone who would have him — talking about Trump/Russia collusion “in plain sight.”
Even after the Mueller report clearly indicated that there was no provable collusion or coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, Schiff continued to propagate the lie.
Chris Wallace of Fox News pressed Schiff on the claims, playing the congressman a highlight reel of his assertions of collusion.
Schiff shot back, “What more clear intent to collude could you have than the Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what was described as an effort to help Mr. Trump in the campaign and Don Jr. saying if it’s what you say, I would love it?”
“Intent to collude.”
That after years sounding the alarm about “damning evidence” of collusion with Putin that was “more than circumstantial.” This scandal was “beyond Watergate,” Schiff, privy to all of the sensitive intelligence, told us.
We found out this week that Schiff always knew there was no evidence of collusion. By day he would interview former Obama administration officials including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, national security adviser Susan Rice and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who would tell him there was nothing, and by night he’d jump on a newscast assuring Americans that he’d seen evidence of something.
But there was nothing.
The canard Schiff continued to promulgate was supercharged, though, by the media, who went wall to wall with their coverage. Relics from Watergate were dragged out onto “Breaking News” sets and we were told how serious the matter was.
Hysterical anti-Trump media personalities took to social media to scold anyone who doubted the Russia conspiracy, lecturing us about putting “country over party.”
The coordination between Schiff and the media was pernicious.
As Lee Smith wrote in the New York Post, “The tragic fact is that once-prestigious press organizations, including CNN as well as MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, weren’t fooled by the collusion hoax. They were an essential part of it.”
Adam Schiff is a vile actor. Democrats must follow their own mantra and put their country over party and eject the snake in their midst.
There are bipartisan endeavors — like infrastructure legislation, economic recovery and the battle against the pandemic — that have undoubtedly been hindered by the malevolence of the congressman from California who abused his power by weaponizing his position in order to bring down a duly-elected president.
We will continue to bear the poisoned fruit from his actions for years and it will happen again in a different form unless there is a reckoning, once and for all.
BAKER
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>https://thehill.com/policy/technology/268459-bill-clintons-telecom-law-twenty-years-later
Bill Clinton’s telecom law: Twenty years later
Washington’s tech policy wonks are celebrating an anniversary this week: 20 years ago Monday, President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act into law at the Library of Congress.
Designed to de-regulate aspects of the telecommunications business, it was the first overhaul of the law that created the Federal Communications Commission in more than six decades.
Supporters of the law said it would create more competition in the telecommunications industry that, at the time, was only beginning to grapple with the transformative power of the Internet.
“It promotes competition as the key to opening new markets and new opportunities,” Clinton said at the bill signing. “It will help connect every classroom in America to the information superhighway by the end of the decade. It will protect consumers by regulating the remaining monopolies for a time and by providing a roadmap for deregulation in the future.”
Among other things, the bill brought deregulation to the cable industry and lifted the national cap on radio station ownership. It also eased the rules that apply to broadcasters.
It touched on universal service, the idea that the government should help make sure that all Americans have access to communications services. The act authorized the FCC's E-Rate program, which helps connect schools and libraries. That program remains in effect today; in 2013, President Obama asked the commission to look at expanding it.
A number of technology groups will commemorate the law’s passage next week, with players from big-name technology companies participating.
On Monday, technology groups and companies are expected to mark the signing of the bill. INCOMPAS, which represents the so-called “competitive” communications companies and used to be called COMPTEL, will hold a policy summit on Wednesday that includes Colin Crowell, the vice president of global public policy at Twitter, and representatives from the FCC and 21st Century Fox. The group is also throwing a party in honor of the anniversary.
The Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy will also host an event evaluating the successes and failures of the law with some of the people involved in its creation.
Some have argued that parts of the law had detrimental effects on the communications market. A 2005 report from public interest group Common Cause found that political forces blunted its impact.
“In many ways, the Telecom Act failed to serve the public and did not deliver on its promise of more competition, more diversity, lower prices, more jobs and a booming economy,” the group said. “Instead, the public got more media concentration, less diversity, and higher prices.”
Technology has also changed substantially since the law was signed in 1996. Internet speeds have risen, with Americans making the switch from dial-up to broadband, which in turn has disrupted the old order in other industries, like broadcasting. And more recently, the rise of smartphones has forced regulators to confront challenges posed by mobile networks.
It had seemed as though lawmakers might update the law as the 20th anniversary approached. In 2013, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Chair Greg Walden (R-Ore.) announced that they were embarking on a multi-year process to update the law.
“A lot has happened since the last update,” Walden said. "A lot of companies have been born out of the innovation of the communications act. There’s a lot that’s changed in the legal world.”
The lawmakers spent time talking to various stakeholders and begin to hone in on issues that could be addressed. But then the debate became more complicated when the FCC approved rules governing net neutrality almost a year ago.
Those regulations — which increased the FCC’s regulatory authority over Internet service providers — are reviled by many Republicans, who view them as a power grab. Their implementation heightened partisan tensions on the commission and has ratcheted up tensions between Chairman Tom Wheeler and Congress.
“Net neutrality certainly was a mini-atomic bomb in the middle of [the communications act update],” Walden told reporters last summer, before noting that he held hope that some sort of piecemeal update would be possible.
Since then, neither Walden's subcommittee or his Senate colleagues have gotten closer to an update.
BAKER, NOTABLE