Mass homicides

Once again a mass homicide has made the news.  Once again we learn that law enforcement at the scene stood around and let it happen.  We also now know that the suspect "was known to the Federal Buruae of Investigation (FBI).  Almost every school shooting has the same modis operandi at this point:

• Suspect felt bullied throughout school
• Suspect had a history of mental illness
• Suspect was known to law enforcement
• Law enforcement failed to rapidly deploy and stop the suspect
• Suspect carried an AR-15
• Mass coverage via every news outlet so fast that the initial reports are usually wrong, but that wrong information once out is immensly damaging to society, and the victims and victim's families of the attack.

So a list of six commonalities, but what do we do about them?  Let's go backwards through the list and see what can be done.

• Mass news covrage: A very easy fix though it will require fifty seperate pieces of legislation to do it, and that is to ban news outlets covering this sort of thing.  Now don't give me "BUT MAURA WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!"  No, technically you do not.  Yes we have freedom of the press but the 24/7 news coverage machine jumps at anything to create a "GOTCHA" headline.  In my opinion the mass coverage is encouraging these crimes as the perpetrators choose to go out in a "blaze of glory" even if all they do is seal their fate in infamy to the rest of us.  We have many laws on the books to prevent news outlets from outing minors involved in crimes, would it hurt to add this one?  Is it worth trying just to eliminate "copy cats"?  Our media with their quest for the next big headline to me, are as culpable as the cops that wait and do nothing.
• Suspect carried an AR-15: let me start with it is doubtful the suspect chose this particular weapon but instead just grabbed one already available.  The AR-15 is a VERY common firearm, yes they really are used to hunt deer and other game animals so that alone makes it difficult to remove from society.  The weapon has been on the market for decades so why is it only recently become the weapon of choice for school shooters?  Because it is ubiquitous in U.S. housolds.  Can we ban it?  Not really, regardless of how the pundants bloviate it is not easy to remove a particular firearm from society.  Then we have the Second Amendment which has been upheld by the Supreme Court of The United States (SCOTUS) to apply to all civilians.  "The right of the people to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed."  Short, blunt, to the point.  Now some would say that the other line is more imortant "A well regulated Malitia, being necessary to the security of a free state," the issue is you can't split a sentance to pick and choose what you want it to mean.  And well regulated at the time the Constitution was written and still does mean "in good working order."
• Law enforcement failed to deploy rapidly: This is the one that burns my butt, we send eighteen year olds into active combat with ten weeks of training, they have a backpack, a gun, a helmet, in active fire where bullets come from everywhere at once, yet those eighteen year olds uphold their oath and run into a firefight day in and day out.  Law enforcement waits around for back-up?!  Who are they waiting for?  Batman?  Law enforcement has body armor--or at least they should have it on--the average soldier has no body armor issued.  They have one active shooter so once you know where the shooter is things become much simpler.  Why do we expect someone who isn't much more than a kid to run into a firefight and not law enforcement?  Law enforcement knew what they were signing up for when they signed up for the job.  SCOTUS has ruled that "To serve and protect" means nothing, so maybe we need a federal or fifty state laws that make "to serve and protect" mandatory or maybe something as blunt as "The get off your ass and do the job you signed up for act of 2022."  We need to end qualified immunity, we need to hold law enforcement accountable and culpable in these scenarios.  If ten, twenty, fifty, cops on the scene were suddenly looking at being accesories to murder maybe they would be more active in stopping the perpatrator(s).
• Suspect was known to law enforcement: We slap ankle monitors on fairly harmless criminals and undocumented immigrants all the time, why can we not say "you are a credible threat" and either monitor the person or use involuntary psyche hold and get them help?  How is it so many criminals are known to law enforcement and allowed to cause mass mayhem?
• Suspect had a history of mental illness: here we hit a massive crux of the problem.  As a society we have a massive mental health crisis throughout the world.  Is it the video games?  The music?  No, it's just part of being human--personally I often wonder if nuero-typical is actually not typical but just so happens to have become the default--so maybe "neuro-default" would be a better term.  Whatever the source we need to destigmatise mental health services.  We need to be paying more attention to our children.  We need a better mental health system.
• Suspect felt bullied throughout school: this is actually a bit easier to solve.  We need zero tolerance bullying policies in schools.  Bathrooms, and locker rooms need to be monitored as well as playgrounds.  We need more adults on the playgrounds.  Bullies need to be pulled out and given propper education in why their actions are wrong--not paddlings or other punative measures.  Will we by default find many children who are being abused at home?  Most likely.  Do we need to up our numbers of Clinical Social Workers and psychologists to handle the influx of children and families needing help?  Yes, but as a society is it not worth it?

In the end there is no easy fix for the issues that lead up to mass homicides.  Sure we could ban every gun, but it won't stop the problem because technically guns are not the problem, but they are a very visible symptom of many problems we as a society have.

World Password Day 2022

So today is World Password Day!  I know we all hate changing our passwords and we really hate when IT comes through and takes the sticky notes reminding us of what our passwords are--that used to be my job :-)

The challenge is making a password that we can remember yet meets all of IT's requirements, so lets look at a simple method.

Mnemonics, we learned these as kids things like: "Men Very Easily Make Jugs Serve Useful Needs Perhaps" Now that's definitely long enough but fails a few security issues so let's start with shortening it a bit; MVEMJSUNP (In case you haven't worked it out those are the 8 planets and poor little Pluto).  Now all CAPS won't work so pick one that is not on either end to be a capitol letter the obvious first choice would be the letter C but we don't have one so let's use S since C mimics S frequently: mvemjSunp  Now we need a special character and those very a bit system by system for now we will use the ampersand; mvemjSun&p  Now a number; mv3mjSun&p  That brings us to ten characters which suffices for most systems, it does not spell anything so makes it hard to crack, keeps numerals, special characters, and capitol letters out of first and last position.  The real beauty here is you can do this with any mnemonic, song lyric, poem, special event dates--combine more than one as these are easily guessed, or even a quote, that you can easily remember.

Have fun with your passwords and they become much easier to deal with.

Maura