Security, Spoken

Last week, representative Blake Farenthold of Texas lamented on the radio that some "female senators from the Northeast" stood in the way of repealing the Affordable Care Act. "If it was a guy from south Texas," he said, "I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style," suggesting he'd love to duel, say, Susan Collins of Maine.

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Before my visit earlier this year, I’d never been to Cuba, though Cuba had certainly been to me. The Miami of my ’80s childhood was a suburban reboot of prerevo­lutionary Cuba, filled with people who still toasted El año próximo en La Habana (“next year in Havana”) at important occasions. Everything from family letters to fresh-off-the-raft waiters kept us apprised of the increasingly desperate conditions.

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When AlphaBay, the world’s largest dark web bazaar, went offline two weeks ago, it threw the darknet into chaos as its buyers and sellers scrambled to find new venues. What those dark web users didn't—and couldn't—know: That chaos was planned. Dutch authorities had already seized Hansa, another another major dark web market, the previous month.

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It was the week that sent dark web markets scrambling. On Thursday, the feds confirmed earlier reports that they had taken down Alphabay, a dark web bazaar substantially larger than Silk Road ever was. They tacked on a surprising revelation though: Dutch police had a month earlier quietly seized control of the third-largest dark web market, Hansa, setting a trap for displaced Alphabay buyers and sellers. What a world! While darknet drama dominated the headlines, plenty more transpired.

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The ever-changing Russian hacking scandal—which doesn’t yet have a catchy name like Treasongate but clearly needs one—took a sharp U-Turn back to email territory, when Donald Trump Jr. revealed the email chain in which he set up a meeting with a Russian government lawyer. We profiled the British publicist who organized the get-together, a guy who has had a long and colorful relationship with the Trump family, much of which helpfully lives on social media.

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Not since the days of the now-legendary Silk Road has a single site dominated the dark web's black market as completely, and for as long, as the online bazaar known as AlphaBay. And with the news that the site has been torn down by a law enforcement raid---and one of its leaders found dead in a Thai prison---the dark web drug trade has fallen into a temporary state of chaos. About a week ago AlphaBay, the dark web's largest contraband marketplace, went mysteriously offline.

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Minnesota representative and Deputy Chair of the DNC Keith Ellison recently called on Twitter to ban Donald Trump once and for all, joining countless publications who have made the same demand. And currently, nearly 72,000 people have signed an online petition asking for the same. Unfortunately for all those dreaming of a Trump-free Twitter, it is almost certainly never going to happen.

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Remember when Myspace suffered one of the largest user data breaches ever? Around 360 million accounts were compromised in June 2013, but Myspace said in 2016 when it disclosed the incident that it was taking action to shore up its security. Which would be great, except that it turns out anyone could have taken over any Myspace account if they had the account owner’s listed name, username, and birthday.

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Despite what you may have heard, an Amazon Echo did not call the police earlier this week, when it heard a husband threatening his wife with a gun in New Mexico. On Monday, news reports took Bernalillo County authorities' version of those events credulously, heralding the home assistant as a hero.

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On Thursday, President Donald Trump stressed the importance of a particular feature of his proposed border wall: transparency. His reason? Without it, a 60-pound bag of heroin might fly over, and hit an unassuming passerby on the head, striking them dead. The vivid image invites flashbacks to Chuck Jones cartoons, and more than a few questions. But to take it on its merits: Yes, drugs do fly over the wall. But … not like that.

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