Bad actors can now digitally impersonate someone you love, and trick you into doing things like paying a ransom.

To mitigate that risk, I have developed this simple solution where you can setup a unique time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) between any pair of persons.

This is how it works:

1. Two people, Person A and Person B, sit in front of the same computer and open this page;
2. They input their respective names (e.g. Alice and Bob) onto the same page, and click "Generate";
3. The page will generate two TOTP QR codes, one for Alice and one for Bob;
4. Alice and Bob scan the respective QR code into a TOTP mobile app (such as Authy or Google Authenticator) on their respective mobile phones;
5. In the future, when Alice speaks with Bob over the phone or over video call, and wants to verify the identity of Bob, Alice asks Bob to provide the 6-digit TOTP code from the mobile app. If the code matches what Alice has on her own phone, then Alice has more confidence that she is speaking with the real Bob.

Note that this depends on both Alice's and Bob's phones being secure. If somebody steals Bob's phone and manages to bypass the fingerprint or PIN or facial recognition of Bob's phone, then all bets are off.

Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
I’ve had a top secret clearance for many years and have clearances that themselves are classified.

That said, FAR too much information is made “classified”. If something is easily found online or patently obvious, it should NOT be classified. This impedes effective communication within the government.

TONY™ @TONYxTWO
This moment from the USAID House Hearing is 🔥🔥🔥!!!

“@elonmusk does have a security clearance, he has a top secret security clearance, by God he makes the rockets for NASA! But the suggestion that he somehow can’t be trusted to dig in to how we’re spending our money is nothing…
Embedded video
6:10 AM · Feb 14, 2025. //

1. FOIA Exemption 1 (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1)) – This exemption protects information that is classified under Executive Order 13526 (or its successors) for national security reasons. Security clearance information often falls under this exemption because it involves classified material.

During a Pennsylvania trip, Secret Service agents spotted a drone tracking Trump’s motorcade—they opened the moonroof and took it down with an electromagnetic gun.

President Donald Trump is taking further action against the 50 former intelligence officials who falsely suggested Hunter Biden’s laptop was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign,” instructing agencies to also ban those individuals from stepping foot in secure U.S. government facilities, according to a memo obtained by The Daily Wire.

The Jan. 29 cabinet memorandum, first obtained by The Daily Wire, expands Trump’s day-one executive order, which revoked the security clearance for the 50 individuals. Sent “on behalf of the President,” it orders the country’s top national security agencies to “revoke unescorted access to secure U.S. Government facilities from the 50 former intelligence officials named in the Executive Order.” //

NorCalGC
6 hours ago
This seems to suggest that one or more on the list visited a secure facility after they had their security clearances revoked. //

It’s a dry heat
5 hours ago
"despite the fact they had no solid evidence to support that conclusion."

That suggests they had some "evidence" but it just wasn't "solid." The truth is far more damning. They not only didn't have any "solid evidence," but that they had no evidence at all, and what evidence there was established precisely the contrary. There was ample evidence, solid, concrete, irrefutable and otherwise, that the Hunter laptop was genuine and that its owner was a genuine criminal, drug addled dipwad. //

GBenton
5 hours ago edited
Trump should have a gallows built with 51 nooses just to send a message to the traitors.

Getting your hall passes yanked is getting off far easier than you deserve.

What happened in 2020 was beyond election interference. It was a color revolution and with China and Iran and other nations involved I'd argue they are guilty of treason.

They may not actually be publicly hanged but in an earlier era they know they could have and they should be reminded of that.

In the last 20 years or so people got waaaay too comfortable engaging in treasonous and anti-American activities and that really does need to stop.

How hard they need to learn that lesson is up to them for now.

Is this too harsh of language? Welp, they tried to imprison Trump after convicting him of made up crimes and then they tried assasination - and they stole the last election.

I'd argue that not being clear about the boundaries is how we got where we are.

Keep in mind, we won in 2024 but if we'd lost the country would have been lost or we might have had to fight our way back to freedom. It's all fun and games until the Marxists consolidate power and we MUST never let that happen.

We won the Cold War. If WE became the force for Communism around the world humanity is basically over.

Play time for traitors is over. And Trump appears to be serious about making the necessary reforms and kicking out the bad actors. Full disclosure of what they did is next, IMO.

GBenton NavyVet
an hour ago
How I really feel is we need to make people fear the consequences of betraying the people and engaging in sedition, corruption, and yes, treason. There's a long list of folks who did all of the above who are used to being rewarded for it and they need to get their minds right.

I'm being somewhat tongue in cheek about the gallows, somewhat, since these cretins got Americans imprisoned and even killed during the Biden years in an illegitimate presidency that could have sent our nation into an age of darkness.

Call me crazy, but we really need to make sure that never happens again and bad actors respond to consequences so examples need to be made. Destroy their reputations, strip their access to power and money (already in progress), and yeah, some of them belong in prison - shunned from society, cautionary tales to future scumbags who consider selling out our country for money and power.

The only people who pay a price in this country are the law abiding ciitizens who believe in our Founding values - that has to change or one day we'll wake up and not have a country.

wvcitizen
3 days ago
A Secret Service agent fired multiple shots at this guy at close range and missed him clean. Seem he was supposed to get away. But a person took a pic of his license plates and called 911. Local law enforcement picked him up. Don’t think that was supposed to happen. Now there is a mess that has to be cleaned up before he sings. Let’s see how this works out. //

TheAmericanExperiment
3 days ago
The Feds were behind both assassination attempts.

Crooks was supposed to get off kill shot before being taken out by the counter snipers who were there for that express purpose.

Routh was supposed to get away but ran afoul of an alert citizen with a camera.

The Feds need to maintain total control over Routh and that means maintain physical possession of him. As long as they maintain physical possession of him he knows that one false move will get him Epsteined. If Florida is able to proceed with their case they get the chance to speak with him privately. I'd love to be a fly on that wall.

Can't get Kash into the bureau soon enough.

The House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump released its final report on Tuesday. The report covers the July 13 wounding of President-elect Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania, and the September 15 assassination attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida. //

So, the Secret Service was notified at 2:30 a.m. that Trump would play golf. He arrived at the golf course around 11 a.m. At 1:30 p.m., Trump having been on the golf course for about two hours, the Secret Service is conducting its preliminary sweep of the golf course boundary and discovers the shooter. The shooter, Ryan Wesley Routh, had been in his shooting position since 1:59 a.m. This latter data point is not mentioned in the report.

I'm not a highly trained Secret Service agent; I'm just a dumb sh** infantryman from Southside Virginia, but if I'd been given that mission, I would have conducted a preliminary sweep of the golf course sometime after dawn, placed observation posts at key spots and then done a rolling sweep after the golf party started moving. I would not have started my first pass over the golf course as Trump was playing through.

But it gets a lot better. //

The agent who discovered Routh fired six rounds (they think) at the gunman from a distance of five feet, scoring a perfect goose egg. //

How does any human miss a target basically within arm's reach? How do you get within five feet of a gunman without seeing anything (rhetorical question: you probably have your earbuds in, listening to tunes or a podcast, and daydreaming about what you're going to do when you get off shift)? And how, in the name of all that is Holy, can't you definitively tell how many rounds were fired? "[B]elieved six shots in total were fired" is NOT a number. Don't they keep track of ammunition in the Secret Service? Don't they have an SOP for loading magazines? How will "final ballistics" help determine this if you apparently don't know how many rounds you started out with? //

The Secret Service is a broken organization. A shameful performance by Director Kimberly Cheatle at a congressional hearing (BREAKING: Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Resigns After Disastrous Hearing – RedState) and the juvenile "I'm a public servant" rant by Acting Director Ronald Rowe last week (MUST SEE: Screaming Fight Between GOP Rep, Secret Service Director at Trump Assassination Attempt Hearing) are just the most visible indicators of an organization that is just not capable of carrying out its mission of protecting the president.

The Internet Archive was breached again, this time on their Zendesk email support platform after repeated warnings that threat actors stole exposed GitLab authentication tokens.

"Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened."

Those stark words are contained in a damning House Task Force report about the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt against former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. //

The report also points to logistical issues – particularly on the part of USSS – in the hours before the rally took place. For instance, there were two command centers set up for the event, with a witness testifying that no one from the Butler Police Department was invited to the USSS’ hub. //

Roughly an hour after the local officers first noticed Crooks, the would-be assassin fired eight shots into the rally, hitting Trump and the three attendees before being killed by a Secret Service sniper. //

"To date, the Task Force has not received any evidence to suggest that message reached the former President’s USSS detail prior to shots fired," the report said.

The report also quoted a witness from the Butler County Emergency Services United (ESU) whose account of shooting Crooks appears to undercut the USSS’s assertion that one of its snipers killed the gunman.

"He fired a single shot from a standing position at Crooks, who was in a prone position on the roof. Butler ESU Witness 5 told the Task Force that he believes his shot hit Crooks," the report said.

In an added — and some might say ironic — twist, per CNN, Routh's case was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, the same U.S. District Court judge overseeing the classified documents case filed by the DOJ against Trump. (Cannon's name is present on the indictment, which may be viewed below — the preliminary proceedings were handled by Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe.) //

GBenton
3 hours ago
That's beautiful. The dirtbag got a Trump appointed judge in Florida. If Bongino is correct and there is much more to this story in regards to Iran and assassins and the Biden/Harris clownshow, Cannon is the judge for the job, IMO.

Her handling of the Documents case was masterful, to my non-lawyer eyes.

She's the judge for the Federal charges. If DeSantis's state level charges are brought, I'm assuming they'd be handled in a state level court and not Cannon but I'd be glad to be wrong about that.

Clive Robinson • September 18, 2024 6:25 PM

@ ALL //

Even if never actively triggered all bombs are “unstable with time” and although they don’t have a predictable half life they do break down with time at a rate often depending on the environment. The only real question is how they break down…

Remember “blasting oil” was not safe untill “Dynamite” temporarily tamed it with clay. But dynamite “sweats” not just with temperature but other stressors including time. Thus the blasting oil comes out and is highly unstable again, and can easily act as a vibration sensitive detonator to the dynamite it is on plus any other “sticks” in close enough proximity.

Oh and just for fun, look up Victorian “Exploding Billiard Balls” it happens due to instability in nitro cellulose which over time becomes increasingly explosive…

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/once-upon-time-exploding-billiard-balls-were-everyday-thing-180962751/

Just remember it was also used for piano keys as well, so a grand crescendo on a historic instrument could have a more explosive finish than either the pianist or audience expect…

One handwritten letter, addressed to “The World,” stated, among other things, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.” //

Barr said in a statement to Fox News Digital:

I was dumbfounded that the DOJ made public this morning the contents of the letter that, Ryan Routh, left with an acquaintance prior to the attempted assassination of former President Trump

Even if DOJ thought it important to provide the letter to the court, it could have redacted inflammatory material or arranged to have the letter submitted under seal. It was rash to put out this letter in the midst of an election during which two attempts on the life of President Trump had been made.

"It served no purpose other than to risk inciting further violence," he added. //

anon-7lqi
39 minutes ago
Which are we to believe:

The Secret Service and DoJ are suddenly hopelessly incompetent and negligent
or
The Secret Service and DoJ knowingly and willfully pulled back protective resources and put their least competent staff on Trump

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) announced that there are at least five assassination teams in the United States that are intent on assassinating former President Donald Trump, according to an interview published on Thursday. //

“I have Republican colleagues who have not ruled out a mole inside the Secret Service of providing information about points of vulnerability,” he said. “I’ve not seen evidence of that, but I’ve got colleagues that are very, very smart at this who say they can’t rule that out, given some of the anomalies and the fact pattern here.” //

The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox
·
BREAKING: Whistleblowers tell Senator Josh Hawley that “it’s not even clear Secret Service swept the perimeter before Trump took to the course.”

That’s a massive and inexcusable failure.

But that’s just the beginning of the problems that unfolded. Whistleblowers also revealed… Show more

Last edited
9:04 PM · Sep 18, 2024

Butler County law enforcement officials stated that at separate times during the walkthrough, when they reiterated their concerns to the agents and counter sniper about securing the AGR complex buildings, the agents responded: “we will take care of it.”

The Iowa senator questioned Rowe whether the Butler County law enforcement officials' claim is true and, if so, what the Secret Service did to secure the area with the AGR complex buildings.

Grassley noted that in the weeks following the first assassination attempt, Rowe told senators during a hearing, "what was communicated is that the locals had a plan and that they had been there before," in regard to the roof of the AGR building where Crooks took his shots from.

Would-be Donald Trump assassin and leftist tool Ryan Routh apparently arrived at his firing position nearly twelve hours before the Secret Service discovered him on Sunday. Cell phone data indicates that Ryan Wesley Routh arrived at the tree line fence near the Trump International Golf Club at 1:59 a.m. Sunday. The former president's security detail discovered him at 1:31 p.m. //

In the area of the tree line from which ROUTH fled, agents found a digital camera, two (2) bags, including a backpack, a loaded SKS-style, 7.62x39 caliber rifle with a scope, and a black plastic bag containing food. The serial number on the SKS-style rifle was obliterated and unreadable to the naked eye.

The rifle appears to be a Chinese knock-off of the ancient Soviet SKS made by Norinco. The SKS, scope or no scope, is not the rifle, nor does it fire the round (Warsaw Pact 7.62mm x 39mm) needed for reliable shooting at any distance. //

Had he had sufficient skills to avoid sticking the barrel of the rifle through the fence, he could very well have succeeded.

At approximately 1:31 PM, a United States Secret Service ("USSS") Special Agent assigned to the former President's security detail was walking the perimeter of Trump International when the USSS Agent saw what appeared to be a rifle poking out of the tree line. //

Avatar
anon-brte a day ago

A simple sweep with an infrared camera should have picked him up. That's pretty basic tech and not a function of understaffing. Yet another easily preventable situation botched by the SS, which is of course ultimately under DHS Sec Mayorkas and Pres Biden. Meanwhile, the MSM is obsessed with talking about whether Haitian illegals are eating cats in Springfield OH. //

Billy Wallace DoubleXman a day ago

They did secure it, the got the guy who was outside of the course itself

Min Headroom llme Billy Wallace a day ago

No they didn’t. Looking at the aerial map, this was an obvious point of vulnerability, compared to much of the course; it should have gotten special attention. To a significant extent, this is a replay of failing to secure the most obvious rooftop at Butler. The USSS needs some basic site and perimeter skills it either doesn’t have or isn’t choosing to use. //

etba_ss anon-brte a day ago

If the MSM is talking about Haitian illegals not eating cats, we are still winning the argument. The point isn't that they eat cats, that was just the clickbait that got the story going. The point is that tens of thousands of immigrants are being dumped into communities, overrunning them and destroying them. Whether they are eating pets or just raping and pillaging and not eating pets, doesn't make that much of a difference.

Some stories you win by simply getting them covered, even if they are claiming a real problem is not a problem.

Curtis Houck
@CurtisHouck
·
Follow
CNN's Juliette Kayyem laments this second Trump assassination attempt "could have impacted voters" and "will be used for political purposes" and that's "exceptionally unfortunate"

9:40 PM · Sep 15, 2024 //

Bonchie
@bonchieredstate
·
Follow
Kinzinger: “Look, isn’t it really Trump’s fault that libs keep trying to shoot him?”
Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱
@AdamKinzinger
Look violent rhetoric is wrong, and has no place.

But MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power. Since Trump showed up our politics has gone to crap.

Literally just accused a group of people of eating our pets.

So stop
6:39 AM · Sep 16, 2024 //

Does any of the above read like anything other than derangement?

But understand, these people don't care about lowering the temperature or returning civility to politics. Their equivocations and deflections serve only their pursuit of power. If Trump being killed helps them, they are fine with that. I know that's a pointed, perhaps controversial thing to say, but why should I assume any differently given their own words? //

Clare Boothe Lucid
43 minutes ago
If a D is attacked or threatened, lefties accuse the GOP of inciting the violence. If an R is attacked or threatened, the lefties accuse the GOP of inciting the violence.
Heads I win, tails you lose //

LDRider
4 minutes ago
Trump = two assassination attempts
Harris = zero news conferences

Pretty much sums up politics today. //

Largo Patriot
3 minutes ago
Don't forget NBC anchor, Lester Holt, who suggested the assassin was motivated by Trump's discussion of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio despite the fact it was residents of Springfield, Ohio who began that discussion. It has been reported that a favorite Democratic talking point is posted on one of Routh's social media accounts - Democracy is on the ballot - and his son said his father hates Donald Trump "like every reasonable person does" but that he's not a violent person. Think about that for a minute. It is reasonable among Democratic voters to hate people they disagree with while blaming MAGA Republicans for political violence. Apparently, not being a violent person doesn't apply when that person has been encouraged by Democrats and the media to believe Donald Trump is a Hitler-like authoritarian who will throw his political opponents in concentration camps and must be kept out of the White House by any means possible. //

jester6
a minute ago
"But MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power. Since Trump showed up our politics has gone to crap."

I was thinking about som recent conversations with otherwise intelligent anti-Trumpers and realized something. These fools think Trump is the cause of our political schism. It never occurs to them that his rise is just a symptom of our internal problems. And the truly frightening thing is, he is a relatively mild symptom of our internal divisions. If we don't address the reasons someone like Trump can rise in politics, anti-Trumpers might wistfully look back at him someday.

The Secret Service states that former President Donald Trump is safe, after being evacuated from his Trump West Palm Baech golf course in Florida, after shots were fired in the area. //

Gasoline Forever
15 hours ago
This is all the fault of the machine. So many people under 40 are brainwashed and confused and miserable. They have no morals, no spiritual leader, disconnected parents and no hope. They have been fed misery since they started kindergarten and their parents don’t go to church.

Hawley said the pattern that was emerging from whistleblowers was that the rally that day was "undermanned, understaffed, they did not have people who had experience on it."

"The fact that the director will not level with the American people about what's going here is just totally unacceptable and unbelievable," Hawley declared. //

On top of what he said they were telling him from the internal Secret Service investigation, the DHS was telling them not to comply with document requests to Congress. That's incredibly problematic, and if that's true, anyone involved in that needs to be held accountable and further exposed. //

But it raises the question: What do they think those documents will reveal? And is that problem they don't want Congress to know about still continuing? Could it still expose Trump and other Secret Service protectees to further danger?

When one of the more senior Senate Democrats sounds the alarm bell regarding governmental failures, it says something — particularly if it involves former President Donald Trump (and I don't mean in a way that's critical of him). According to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the American people are going to be "shocked, appalled, astonished" when they see the interim report that lawmakers plan to release shortly regarding the July 13 assassination attempt on the former president. //

However, he did say that he believes there needs to be more accountability. "Without accountability, this kind of failure and lapse will happen again." //

Hallen
7 hours ago
Wow. If he's saying that, it means it's bad and there's no way for them to spin it. He's getting out in front of it so the stink doesn't land on him. That means it's the administration's fault which means it's the fault of Democrats.

Why would the debate moderators ask about Democrats inciting a would-be assassin when they can just keep recycling the lie that Trump incited a violent mob? //

Imagine refusing to ask the current vice president whether she regrets any of her hateful anti-Trump rhetoric and the Biden administration’s weaponization of the federal government against Trump that may have inspired an armed nutbag to fire at his head, but asking the former president whether he regrets “anything about what [he] did on” Jan. 6, 2021, even after he explicitly told his supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically.” (Which David Muir lied about, by the way.) You don’t hate the media enough.

As Trump said at the debate, he “probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy. I’m a threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy.” Correct. And the moment Trump brought up that uncomfy assassination topic, Muir pivoted because, you know, the moderators “ha[d] a lot to get to.” //

If the debate did nothing else, it reminded us of their true colors. They aren’t biased. They don’t have a slant. ABC News and CNN and NBC and all the rest of the establishment media don’t “lean left.”

They are propagandists. They live and die for the regime. They are wholly and completely corrupt, a hostile force that exists to accrue power for Democrats.

Re: Hard Hats and Hi-Viz...
When developing a task risk assessment process for a number of offshore drilling operations (for use by the drill crew) I set a rule a few basic rules:

• There should be no reference to what should be "givens" (e.g. if local rules already stipulate basic PPE requirements, assume it will be worn). That doesn't assume those givens will be realised, but processes for enforcement of those should already be in place. A task risk assessment needs to focus on what is not a given, that is different to the norm or an introduced hazard.

• The written report (usually a standardised format) should not normally exceed one page. If it needs more, the assessment probably needs to be elevated beyond local crew.

• Every non-standard action (i.e. the risk mitigations needed as a result of the assessment) should be itemised on the work permit - and in a box next to where the crew members sign it.

Not perfect, and wasn't liked by some of the company HSE management, but they were overruled whilst I was working there - and we didn't have any significant accidents whilst it was in place. After I left, HSE enforced their system that was probably sponsored by the local stationery supplier!

I wasn't part of the HSE department - I was hired direct by the company drilling management. //

Re: Hard Hats and Hi-Viz...
it generates a culture where people fly back to the shore in the same physical condition that they had when they flew out.

And that, and only that, is and should be the reason for any mandatory PPE and surrounding safety procedures.

One of the biggest issues I have with idiotic H&S rules is that they damage the core idea of care and attention to the health of staff in dangerous environments. They should be sane and safe, and not some power exercise by wannabe mini dictators because it devalues the whole concept.