Hasta La Gadget!

Data security firm UpGuard is bringing our attention to a very severe data exposure today. This “leak” of sorts left the personal data of nearly every registered voter in the US exposed, making this the “largest known data exposure of its kind,” according to UpGuard’s Cyber Risk team. In all, the data for 198 million registered voters in the US … Continue reading

Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s twins are finally here ― Gemini babies no less! ― and the internet was understandably sent into social media convulsions over the arrival. When pictures of these two mini-Beys are released, the world will quake ― and the pope might feel the need to weigh in at some point.

Until then, here are just a few of the funniest reactions to the latest additions to the Carter family.

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In a decision that could benefit the NFL’s Washington Redskins, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a federal prohibition on disparaging trademarks as a constitutional violation in a major free speech ruling involving a band called The Slants.

The court ruled 8-0 in favor of the Portland, Oregon-based Asian-American dance rock band, which had been denied a trademark because the government deemed its name disparaging to people of Asian descent. The Slants challenged that rejection as a violation of free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, and the Supreme Court agreed.

The ruling likely paves the way for the Redskins to protect trademarks covering the team’s name.

The National Football League team, which took the name Redskins in the 1930s, filed a legal challenge to a 2014 decision by a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tribunal canceling its trademarks as disparaging to Native Americans. A lower court put the Redskins’ dispute on hold pending the outcome of the band’s case.

Lisa Blatt, a lawyer representing the Redskins, told Reuters the team is thrilled with Monday’s ruling because it resolves “the Redskins’ long-standing dispute with the government.”

Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito did not mince words in ruling that the decades-old trademark provision is unconstitutional. “It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend,” Alito wrote.

Band frontman Simon Tam has said he chose to call the band The Slants to reclaim a term some consider a derogatory reference to Asian people’s eyes, and wear it as a “badge of pride.” The band’s lawyers argued that the government cannot use trademark law to impose burdens on free speech to protect listeners from offense.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed legal papers supporting the band, hailed the ruling as a major victory for the First Amendment. ACLU lawyer Lee Rowland said government efforts to protect minorities from disparagement instead hurt members of that very community, in this case the Asian-American band.

“Fortunately, today’s opinion prevents the kind of absurd outcome that results when the government plays speech police,” Rowland said.

‘MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES’

The band welcomed the ruling.

“After an excruciating legal battle that has spanned nearly eight years, we’re beyond humbled and thrilled to have won this case at the Supreme Court,” the band said in a statement posted to its website on Monday. “This journey has always been much bigger than our band: it’s been about the rights of all marginalized communities to determine what’s best for ourselves.”

Patent and Trademark Office spokesman Paul Fucito said the agency was reviewing the decision. The government previously said a ruling favoring The Slants could lead to a proliferation of racial slurs as sanctioned trademarks.

After the government rejected The Slants’ request, Tam appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, which in 2015 ruled that the so-called disparagement provision of the 1946 law governing trademarks ran afoul of the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. The government appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

The federal government said in court papers that it should not be required to approve trademarks “containing crude references to women based on parts of their anatomy; the most repellent racial slurs and white-supremacist slogans; and demeaning illustrations of the prophet Mohammed and other religious figures.”

In the separate Redskins case, a trademark board in 2014 canceled the team’s six trademarks at the request of Native American activists on grounds that the team name disparaged Native Americans.

The team’s appeal, also on free speech grounds, was put on hold in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, pending the outcome of The Slants’ case.

Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court after arguments were heard in the case and did not participate in Monday’s decision.

The Supreme Court also ruled on another free speech case on Monday, striking down a North Carolina law banning convicted sex offenders from Facebook and other social media services that play a vital role in modern life.

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A Republican data analysis company called Deep Root Analytics left exposed an online database containing the personal information of almost all of America’s 200 million registered voters, the cyber security firm UpGuard has found.

The data contained in the breach includes an unsettling amount of personal information, including voters’ first and last names, birth dates, home and mailing addresses, phone numbers, registered party, self-reported racial demographic and voter registration status. 

A Deep Root spokesman confirmed the breach in an email to HuffPost, saying, “We take full responsibility for this situation.”

The company added it is undertaking a full review of the lapse, which is believed to have begun June 1 and lasted through June 14. UpGuard Cyber Risk Analyst Chris Vickery, who found the files, notified federal authorities of the exposure.

Deep Root said it believes only Vickery accessed the database during that time.

Vickery was able to download 1.1 terabytes of “entirely unsecured” data, which uses 9.5 billion data points to describe 198 million potential U.S. voters’ likely political preferences across 48 different categories. Those categories span nearly every major political debate, including a voter’s likely stance on abortion, gun control, stem cell research and environmental issues.

The exposure of such personal data for so many voters is the largest breach of its sort.

It is a testament both to their talents, and to the real danger of this exposure, that the results were astoundingly accurate.

Vickery’s colleague, UpGuard reporter and analyst Dan O’Sullivan, looked himself up in the database and was taken aback by the RNC’s analyses. “It is a testament both to their talents, and to the real danger of this exposure, that the results were astoundingly accurate,” he wrote.

Most of the data appears to have originated from Republican super-Political Action Committees and other external collection firms, and not with Deep Root itself.

Large caches of text appear to have been scraped from Reddit, while other folders seem to have been named to track the origin of the data each contains. UpGuard reported that American Crossroads, the super-PAC Republican strategist Karl Rove helped start, likely contributed data, as did a company called Data Trust, which boasts a mission of “continually develop[ing] a Republican and conservative data ecosystem through voter file collection, development, and enhancement.”

Last January, Vickery found a database with 56 million records that appeared to belong to a right-wing Christian organization. In addition to more standard information like a person’s name and address, it included individual income levels, whether they donated to religious organizations, where they worked, and whether they were politically conservative.

In 2015, Vickery uncovered a database of 191 million voter records that didn’t seem to have an owner.

UpGuard notes the recent lapse also eclipses political data breaches in other countries, including those for 93.4 million Mexican voters and 55 million voters in the Philippines, both of which occurred in April 2016.

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A recent New York Times article shows that not a single state supports the Republican health bill, which is amazing since the entire nation agreeing on anything is miraculous.

On Sunday, John Oliver updated us on the status of the very secretive American Health Care Act, pointing out that Republicans literally don’t know what to say when confronted about the legislation. 

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