News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Elon Musk Shut Down Starlink Access
for Ukrainian Drone Attack Plot Against Russian Navy

A Ukrainian plan to target a Russian naval vessel in the Black Sea was reportedly abandoned after Elon Musk denied Starlink satellite internet access to help facilitate the attack.

Amid increasing efforts from Kyiv to bring the war to the “territory of Russia”, with explosive-laden drones hitting Moscow twice since the weekend, Tesla chief Elon Musk has reportedly personally intervened to prevent his Starlink satellite internet technology from being used to aid in long-range drone attacks.

According to a report from the New York Times, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, recently raised concerns over Musk’s influence over the war with Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, after the latest refusal to assist in a long-distance offensive strike against a Russian ship off the coast of Crimea.
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Starlink has also reportedly been blocked off for Ukrainian forces attempting to recapture territory from the Russians in the Donbas region with geofencing limits being placed around the area.

Earlier this year, Mr Musk said on Twitter: “We are not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes.”

For now, it appears that Ukraine does not have much of an alternative, with Starlink having such dominance in the sector that it now comprises around 50 per cent of all active satellites in orbit around the Earth. The European Union has committed 2.4 billion euros last year to build its own satellite internet network, for both military and civilian use, however, it may be some time before it is operational.
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London’s Daily Telegraph, for example, cited Ulrike Franke, of the globalist European Council on Foreign Relations think tank as saying: “It doesn’t matter how you feel about Musk – no individual should have this power.”

There are mounting concerns over an escalation in the conflict. With Ukraine’s counteroffensive appearing to stall in places against the heavily entrenched Russian forces, Kyiv has apparently made the calculation to increase strikes on the Russian mainland.

Elon Musk’s X Corp Dismantles Giant Glowing Sign on San Francisco Twitter HQ

CNBC reports that the sign was erected on Friday but was quickly dismantled on Monday. The construction of the sign led to twenty-four complaints being filed with San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspections. Those filing the complaints stated that the sign was put up without a permit, was unsafe, and was a nuisance, with one individual even claiming that its flashing lights made it hard for residents to sleep.
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A spokesperson for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection, Patrick Hannan, stated in an email, “This morning, building inspectors observed the structure being dismantled.” He further added that a building permit is required to take the sign down, but it can be secured later due to safety concerns. “The property owner will be assessed fees for the unpermitted installation of the illuminated structure,” Hannan said. “The fees will be for building permits for the installation and removal of the structure, and to cover the cost of the Department of Building Inspection and the Planning Department’s investigation.”
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The saga over the glowing sign is not the first time Musk has clashed with San Francisco building inspectors. When the billionaire took over Twitter last year, he faced investigations by the city over building code violations, including allegations that some rooms at the office were turned into “hotel rooms.”

Facebook Exec Bragged that ‘Meta’ Name Change
Distracted from Company’s Bad Press

Business Insider reports that according senior Facebook executive Chris Cox, the company’s rebranding to Meta was successful in obscuring the media attention given to the so-called “Facebook Files,” a exansive set of whistleblower disclosures. This flies in the face of previous remarks from Mark Zuckerberg and others.
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When Facebook announced its renaming to Meta in October 2021, the move was officially attributed to a new focus on the metaverse. However, the timing led to widespread speculation that the change was related to the whistleblower disclosures that were being reported globally. CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed such connections, calling them “ridiculous.”

Yet, executive Chris Cox did just that when asked by an employee about the success of the new name. During a company-wide Q&A with employees, Cox reportedly said the name change was successful, explaining his measure of success was the amount of press coverage of the name change compared to the whistleblower disclosures. “It was more than double the volume of the Facebook Papers coverage,” Cox said on the call. He added that the coverage was also “neutral to positive in tone.”

“That’s the kind of thing that we only could have dreamed of when we did the change in terms of press coverage,” he went on. “And it was a really big deal because Facebook Papers was a big story, especially inside the US.”

The rebranding came three weeks after whistleblower Frances Haugen went public, revealing information that was being reported on at the Wall Street Journal. The revelations were covered by the press globally, and the timing of the name change led to speculation that it was related to these disclosures.

General, West Point Professor Ran
Shadow Investigation to Hunt Down
and Silence Military Whistleblower for Mean Tweets

Army Training and Doctrine Command Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais and Army Maj. Jessica Dawson — who is also an “information warfare research scientist” at the Army Cyber Institute — used their official authority and access to government resources to track down the whistleblower and get him identified publicly and punished by his chain of command.

Despite the lack of evidence, they repeatedly accused the whistleblower of being a “counterintelligence” and “insider threat” in a seeming effort to trigger action by Army Criminal Investigative Division (CID) — an independent federal law enforcement agency with expansive powers designed to investigate serious felonies.

Pat Wier, a civilian defense attorney and Navy reservist, said a CID investigation would require an assumption or designation of a serious threat and called Gervais and Dawson’s trumping up of accusations for exercising free speech rights “wrongful.”

“His alleged actions did not rise to the level of a serious crime, or any crime at all,” he said.

Rather, it appeared to be an attempt by rogue military officials seeking to use the levers of government to punish political dissent.

Gervais and Dawson ran their shadow investigation for nearly a year, enlisting help from a mob of online associates consisting of progressive current and former members of the military who disagreed with the whistleblower politically.

Their efforts led to the doxxing — or public “outing” — of the suspected whistleblower’s identity and an Army two-star general’s former aide filing an inspector general complaint against him, a weaponization of the IG system in retaliation for critical social media posts.
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Shoemate, who is planning to begin speaking about his experience publicly, told Breitbart News in a statement:

The DOD publicly boasts about its adherence to the law with numerous checks and balances in place to prevent unlawful conduct, but the shadow policy it actually operates under allows senior officers and officials to act with impunity as seen here. A lieutenant general colluding with various other senior officials to conduct their own unofficial investigation, with the use of government resources, is emblematic of larger, systemic abuses observed within the DOD in recent years.