Sex Offender Arrested After Woman’s Body Found in Trunk During Traffic Stop

According to Q13 News (September 26, 2018) Portland police arrested a registered sex offender after officers discovered a body in a car trunk. Investigators believe the victim is “likely” that of a missing 89-year-old woman.

Marcine Herinck was reported missing on September 19th from her home in northeast Portland. Volunteers and authorities had been searching for Herinck for several days around her neighborhood.

Police said information developed Monday identified 58-year-old Timothy J. Mackley as a person of interest in Herinck’s disappearance. The body was found in Mackley’s trunk during a Tuesday traffic stop.

Mackley was arrested for murder. Mackley is registered as a Level 3 sex offender, according to the State of Oregon Sex Offender Inquiry System.
--

I recently posted about the concerns neighborhoods have with high-risk sex offenders living in their communities. These violent criminals pose a clear risk to public safety.

If you are getting on in years, or know someone who is, consider the importance of personal protection for senior citizens. Arming the Elderly: A Self-Defense Guide for Senior Citizens provides some tips worth considering.

 

Facebook Ad Preferences

Go to Facebook - Settings - Ads - Advertisers you've interacted with...

When you share information like your phone number or email address with a business, they might add it to a customer list that can be matched to your Facebook profile.

Facebook can then try to match the ad to the most relevant audience. (Target ads to you on your Facebook page).

You may have shared your information with these businesses by:

• Signing up for an email newsletter
• Making purchases at retail stores
• Signing up for a coupon or discount

Delete advertisers from the Facebook Ad Preferences section to limit their ability to associate your personal information with your Facebook profile.

 

--

 

 

 

Apple and Firefox Tools Aim to Thwart Facebook and Google Tracking

Facebook and other companies routinely track your online surfing habits to better target ads at you. Two web browsers now want to help you fight back in what's becoming an escalating privacy arms race.

New protections in Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox browsers aim to prevent companies from turning "cookie" data files used to store sign-in details and preferences into broader trackers that take note of what you read, watch and research on other sites.

Lance Cottrell, creator of the privacy service Anonymizer, said Apple's effort was particularly significant, as it takes aim at a technique developed by tracking companies to override users' attempts to delete their cookies.

Safari makes these protections automatic in updates coming this week to iPhones and iPads and a week later to Mac computers. Firefox has similar protections on Apple mobile devices and is rolling out them out to personal computers in the coming months.

To get the protections, you'll have to break your habit of using Google's Chrome browser, which by some estimates has more than half of the worldwide browser usage. Safari and Firefox have less than 20 percent combined.  (The Olympian, September 14, 2018)
--

It's Meth, Not Opioids, That Holds Power in the US, And The Numbers Are Rising

The opioid epidemic dominates headlines across the country but it is crystal meth that still holds the power.

"Meth continues to be a problem despite the fact there are fewer clandestine labs," said Barbara Carreno, spokesperson for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) headquarters.

So far in 2018, Customs and Border Patrol’s Office of Field Operations have seized over 67,000 pounds of meth. Around 14,000 pounds was seized in all of 2012.

"Demand for meth is still there, it's just being supplied almost exclusively by the Mexicans," Carreno said.

About 30 percent of law enforcement agencies that responded to the 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment by the DEA said meth was the greatest threat to their community.

Nearly the same percentage said meth was the drug that takes up the most law enforcement resources. Heroin was the highest with 36 percent of responding agencies.

But in terms of numbers of deaths, opioid overdoses are still in the lead. Over 60,000 people died of an overdose related to opioids in 2017, while there were just over 10,700 drug overdoses involving meth, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Meth is not getting a highlight because it's not killing as many people as the opioid crisis is. A meth user usually doesn't overdose and die from methamphetamine. (Circa, September 19, 2018)
--

Soldier Gets Jail Time in Chlorine Gas Bombing at Installation’s Gates

A former Fort Polk soldier was sentenced to 135 months on Monday for the creation of a chlorine bomb he detonated outside of the installation’s gates last year, injuring investigators at the scene.

Ryan Keith Taylor, 25, was sentenced by a federal judge in Lafayette to the maximum sentence of just over 11 years after accepting a plea deal in June for producing, possessing and using a chemical weapon in violation of federal law. He will also receive five years of supervised release.

U.S. Attorney David C. Joseph said in a news release announcing the sentence that the chemical weapon Taylor created is banned under international and national laws “because of its terrible effects on the human body.”

Child pornography images were also found inside Taylor’s apartment in New Llano during a search conducted after the incident on April 12, 2017, by Vernon Parish detectives and members of the FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, however those charges were dropped in accordance with the plea deal.  (American Press, September 26, 2018)

--

According to a report by CNN (September 25, 2018) Taylor detonated the bomb on the morning of April 12, 2017, in the Kisatchie National Forest beside the Fort Polk Army base, according to his guilty plea. Three soldiers in the middle of a training exercise nearby heard the blast and found Taylor filming the explosion with his cell phone. The soldiers questioned Taylor and told military police who arrived on scene to investigate, according to the Justice Department.

As police collected samples, one investigator put a rock covered in an unknown substance in a bag, which immediately popped. The investigator's plastic gloves and boots began to melt, his skin began to burn and he had trouble breathing, the Justice Department said in its release.

Taylor was detained and his vehicle was searched, the release said. Investigators found remnants of the bomb and chlorine residue in the car. Law enforcement agents ultimately found bomb-making notes, materials and chemical residue in Taylor's vehicle, apartment and storage building, the Justice Department said.

Taylor did not detonate a bomb at the gates of Fort Polk, but was instead playing with these devices in the Kisatchie National Forest. Military Police apprehended Taylor, and triggered the release of chlorine gas when they mishandled the device / chemicals that Taylor had in his vehicle.

The military police officers who were affected by the gas suffered permanent injuries (severe lung damage).

In any case where explosives or chemical devices are suspected it is essential that EOD and/or chemical DECON personnel be called to the scene.

A 2010 bulletin from the Vermont Fusion Center explains the danger of these devices, and how easy they are to construct.

Chronic Pain Sufferers Say Pain Medication Rules Unfair

A small rally was held Tuesday outside the University of Washington Medical Center. It was one of four rallies statewide -- and many more across the country -- to raise awareness of the difficulties patients with chronic debilitating pain are dealing with now that the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on prescribing pain meds are causing doctors to scale down or eliminate opioid medications that people like her say they need to function.

"The CDC has never seen my medical records, they have never examined me. They have no right to change my prescription," says Micki Forrester, who added that she use to have a vigorous and active lifestyle before her disease showed itself in 2007.

Forrester says she understands the new CDC guidelines came about from the national health crisis that has been emerging from the historic over-prescribing of pain medications. CDC numbers show that more than 350,000 Americans died from prescription and illegal opioids between 2009 and 2016. But, Forrester says the new 2016 guidelines are too strict and put bureaucrats between her and her doctor.  (Q13 Fox News, September 18, 2018)

 

An April 26, 2018 article in the New England Journal of Medicine stated that 'a flood of new prescribing rules severely limits physicians options and burdens them with extensive administrative hurdles. “Drugs are being denied by insurance companies” and pharmacies aren’t stocking sufficient quantities of opioids, leaving our staff to go through a lot of paperwork, so there are wait times, said Sue Glod, MD, a palliative medicine specialist at Penn State College of Medicine.
--

This is a battle between physicians being able to treat patients and prescribe needed drugs, and big government wanting to control opioid abuse, and control the lives of each individual citizen needing medication to help control severe and chronic pain.

The CDC has stated "Prescription opioids are often used to treat chronic and acute pain and, when used appropriately, can be an important component of treatment. However, serious risks are associated with their use, and it is essential to carefully consider the risks of using prescription opioids alongside their benefits. These risks include misuse, opioid use disorder (addiction), overdoses, and death."

Opioid abuse is an issue that should be addressed, but not at the expense of allowing physicians to properly and effectively treat their patients.

 

 

Using Fax to Exploit a Computer Network

Believe it or not, but your fax number is literally enough for a hacker to gain complete control over the printer and possibly infiltrate the rest of the network connected to it.

Check Point researchers have revealed details of two critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities they discovered in the communication protocols used in tens of millions of fax machines globally.

You might be thinking who uses Fax these days!

Well, Fax is not a thing of the past. With more than 300 million fax numbers and 45 million fax machines are in use globally, Fax is still popular among several business organizations, regulators, lawyers, bankers, government agencies, and hospitals / medical service providers.

Since most fax machines are today integrated into all-in-one printers, connected to a WiFi network and PSTN phone line, a remote attacker can simply send a specially-crafted image file via fax to exploit the reported vulnerabilities and seize control of an enterprise or home network.

All the attacker needs to exploit these vulnerabilities is a Fax number, which can be easily found simply by browsing a corporate website or requesting it directly.

This RCE attack is explained in this short YouTube video.

The mitigation to this vulnerability is to keep your fax machines separate from your computer network. This same vulnerability exists with printers as well.