Politics

Ghost skin is short for ghost skinhead. It refers to a white supremacist who hides his racist beliefs in order to blend into wider society, with the goal of remaining undetected and covertly continuing his Nazi agenda.

Over at least the past 2 decades, white supremacists have been specifically infiltrating law enforcement. Going into the police is an attractive career option to begin with, for someone with controlling tendencies, an interest in power, and often an incentive to use the badge as a shield for one’s own crime schemes.

Ghost skins are rebranded Nazis

White supremacy has a long and brutal history in America. This original stain not only hasn’t been washed clean, but is seeping outwards once again. It’s expanding outward through QAnon and conspiracist fear-mongering on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, the -chans, etc. It’s what resulted in the January 6 deadly siege on the Capitol building where Congress was counting the electoral college votes and certifying Joe Biden’s presidency.

Part of the larger swell of fascism in this country, ghost skins have allowed neo-Nazis and a motley assortment of thugs, violent criminals, and authoritarian personalities to hide out in the fabric of society, waiting to strike when the time is right. When The Storm comes. When it is time, the President tells them, to take their country back.

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Titushki (or titushky) are paid street thugs sent to act as provocateurs, who provoke clashes or destroy property to tarnish peaceful protests and blame the left for “violence.”

The concept is from Ukraine, where it was first employed by later ousted President Viktor Yanukovych. He hired street hooligans in civilian clothing to perform illegal acts including street beatings, carjackings, kidnappings, and murders. Their purpose was both to intimidate the opposition against his government and create pretexts for arresting pro-democracy protestors.

During the events of Euromaidan in 2013-14, Yanukovich’s Party of Regions paid titushki about $100 per day to blend into peaceful crowds and start picking fights. After violence broke out, mass arrests would disperse the gatherings and round up protestors — and the titushki were again used as either “witnesses or “victims” for the show trials of these ginned up “crimes.”

Titushki in the U.S.?

During the George Floyd protests in summer 2020, city officials in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and elsewhere reported a pattern of out-of-town agents provacateur escalating peaceful protests and instigating aggression, incitement, and property damage. A Ukranian immigrant family in Idaho with no prior political activity organized one of the most important pro-Trump demonstrations of the summer in Portland, out of nowhere. There was umbrella man. He may be more likely aligned with the white nationalist groups who were also id’d as instigating violence and who also have an undercover plot against America going on so, you know, strange bedfellows!

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The Trump Tapes make the Watergate Tapes seem like Polyanna. It’s not like a 10x or a 100x — it’s like a 1000x Watergate.

Here is the full audio of the President of the United States essentially verbally abusing GA SecState Brad Raffensperger for over an hour on Saturday, January 2: Trump Tapes: phone call and transcript

There’s the usual chatter in legal, justice, and natsec communities about whether or not this constitutes a crime — the consensus seems to be strong that it does, but then again any smidgeon of wiggle room leaves me feeling a little bit queasy.

If this isn’t a crime; if this isn’t an impeachable offense — then nothing is. If a President can get away with this to keep tyrannical grip on power after losing an election quite resoundingly, then the republic is dead and all its ideals of self-governance with it.

New year, new Lost Cause: The Sedition Caucus

And yet… that’s not all. 11 additional Republican Senators have come forward to follow Josh Hawley’s lead in objecting to one or more states’ count of electors in the ceremonial Jan. 6 readout of the state certifications. The new Sedition Caucus is led by Texas lawyer and newfound facial hair enthusiast Ted Cruz, who is in danger of winning a Daytime Emmy for his crisis acting on the Fox News network.

Along with Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), James Lankford (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Kennedy (R-LA), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Senators-Elect Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Mr Cruz presented evidence that the people they told to believe the election was rigged then did in fact believe that the election was rigged, and for this reason required another dangerous — and admittedly symbolic! — delay in securing the sovereignty of the nation.

Essentially they are making an argument to keep this President’s fragrantly, steamingly, scathingly unethical, anti-democratic, and anti-conservative, institution-destroying behavior protected and reinstalled against the will of the people for another 4 years of “deal-making” just like this. They haven’t been silently seething at or embarrassed by Trump’s behavior this whole time. They’ve been licking it up — “finally, a guy who will really keep fighting forever!”

However, now The Sedition Gang have been caught flat-footed by the timing of the Raffensperger call breaking — even Tom Cotton has now changed his tune and come out against the coup (though not without getting a few digs in at the Democrats). That is going to start turning the momentum back the other way, with luck. Even Lindsey Graham is inching back from the ledge a bit. The Jan. 6 reception may be chillier than they think.

Hoping it’s all fuel for the blue trifecta in Georgia.

🤞🏾💃🏼

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I try to be choosy about my news as well as reading widely. I make it a habit to routinely consult sources outside the US, know the ethics of the outlets I most rely on, and try to mix up the types of media ownership and format (newspaper, TV, podcast, website, radio, etc.) to avoid a monolithic class or other point of view on any particular subject or issue. Some of the media sources I trust for valuable perspectives are in the table below.

Other habits: trying to corroborate stories amongst multiple publications; evaluate the credibility of authors and references; read source material; do my own calculations; consult public data when available; go back further into history to understand the trajectory of preceding events; keep listening for new information on the subject. Adjust my views based on new incoming information, if warranted. Keep an eye out for disinformation or other skewed presentations of fact.

Good journalism matters

Having worked in media for most of my career, I have a lot of practice evaluating the quality and veracity of reporting. Cross-referencing comes second nature. I’ve studied the media industry as a professional imperative and understand a bit about its ownership structures and its history, both technical and economic. As a political philosophy buff, I’m aware of the great importance of a free press to our democratic republic.

I appreciate a tight headline, a profound topic, and bold investigation as well as imaginative prose and pithy information. We need the intrepid courage of the press, particularly in these times of demagoguery, kleptocracy, hucksterism, and Zucksterism. The fourth estate has helped us find our better angels in the past, and there’s no reason to think it can’t assist us once again to get better transparency into the bigger picture and big histories behind today’s otherwise chaotic and overwhelming political landscape.

NameCountryFundingYear foundedAgeLink
The GuardianUKPrivate1821203https://www.theguardian.com/
The EconomistUKPrivate1843181https://www.economist.com/
Scientific AmericanUSPrivate1845179https://www.nature.com/
Associated PressUSNonprofit1846178https://apnews.com/
The New York TimesUSPrivate1851173https://www.nytimes.com/
ReutersUSPrivate1851173https://www.reuters.com/
The Daily TelegraphUKPrivate1855169https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
The AtlanticUSPrivate1857167https://www.theatlantic.com/
NatureUSPrivate1869155https://www.nature.com/
The Washington PostUSPrivate1877147https://www.washingtonpost.com/
LA TimesUSPrivate1881143https://www.latimes.com/
Financial TimesUKPrivate1888136https://www.ft.com/
The New RepublicUSPrivate1914110https://newrepublic.com/
BBCUKPublic1922102https://www.bbc.com/news
TimeUSPrivate1923101https://time.com/
The New YorkerUSPrivate192599https://www.newyorker.com/
CBCCanadaPublic193688https://www.cbc.ca/news/world
SpiegelEUPrivate194777https://www.spiegel.de/international/
Radio Free EuropeEUPublic194975https://www.rferl.org/
New ScientistUKPrivate195668https://www.newscientist.com/
Rolling StoneUSPrivate196757https://www.rollingstone.com/
PBSUSPublic196955https://www.pbs.org/
Foreign PolicyUSPrivate197054https://www.euronews.com/
NPRUSPublic197054https://www.npr.org/
Greg PalastUSIndependent197648https://www.gregpalast.com/
C-SPANUSPublic197945https://www.c-span.org/
CNNUSPrivate198044https://www.cnn.com/
The IndependentUKPrivate198638https://www.independent.co.uk/us
Sky NewsUKPrivate198638https://news.sky.com/
EuronewsEUPrivate199331https://www.euronews.com/
MSNBCUSPrivate199628https://www.msnbc.com/
International Consortium of Investigative JournalistsUSNonprofit199727https://icij.org
VoxUSPrivate200519https://www.vox.com/
PoliticoUSPrivate200717https://www.politico.com/
BellingcatEUIndependent201410https://www.bellingcat.com/
Gaslit NationUSCrowdfunding20159https://www.patreon.com/m/1844970/posts
AxiosUSPrivate20177https://www.axios.com/
Just SecurityUSAcademic20177https://www.justsecurity.org/
The ConversationalistUSNonprofit20195https://conversationalist.org/
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A concept that describes the impact to the world of children in poverty, under excessive inequality, and in other circumstances that contribute to the loss of that individual’s gift to the world. It is one of many ways to try and measure the effect of the negative externalities of lightly regulated laissez-faire capitalism.

There is both a human cost and an actual financial impact on collective wealth: it goes down. It will be lower than it otherwise could have been. We all miss out, because the size of the economic pie is smaller for all of us. We are surely impoverished intellectually and spiritually as well by the loss of these missing geniuses.

Ethical questions

How can we justify not helping the poor on any basis then?

  • We all lose out; the pie is smaller
  • It’s a very small amount of money relative to other traditional parts of public budgets
  • It improves various measures of civil society, public health, crime, and other public services
  • It’s the right thing to do
  • The Golden Rule indicates it
  • Jesus commanded it

What rationale remains?

And if we still insist on metering talent development out to spite our own face, then who do we allow to have that kind of mental space, to spend enough time pondering the Big Questions? Who do we assume will do those things?

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Boiling frog syndrome is a metaphor that refers to the creep of some insidious process that sinks in slowly and only becomes apparent over time. In it, a frog in increasingly hot water will not attempt escape as long as the temperature is increased gradually. It happens a little bit at a time, until the poor frog meets its end, in the end.

Scientifically, the fable is on poor footing — most frogs would actually leap to escape at some point along the way. But metaphorically, the analogy is a useful descriptor for some processes which tend empirically to have this quality of imperceptible changes over time resulting in seismic shifts when taken as a whole.

This syndrome is frequently invoked in discussions about social, political, or environmental issues. For example, in the context of climate change, it suggests that incremental increases in temperature and gradual environmental degradation might not be met with immediate action, leading to a lack of urgency in addressing the problem. The metaphor is a cautionary tale, urging people to be aware of and responsive to gradual changes that might have serious consequences if left unchecked. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing and acting upon subtle shifts in our environment, whether they are literal or figurative, to prevent detrimental outcomes.

Related to boiling frog syndrome:

  • slippery slope
  • gradualism
  • marginal changes
  • evolution
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The right wing is full of contradictions — a defining trait, almost. Chief among them is this bit of cognitive dissonance:

  • hatred of liberals
  • love of “freedom”

You can’t have this both ways, philosophically speaking. The entire concept of individual liberty (hint: it’s right there in the name!) is a core insight of the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment Inspired the United States

This 18th century philosophical movement grew large in Europe, predating the French Revolution of 1789 and influencing heavily the American Revolution. Resting on the then recent revolutions in science, math, and philosophy including the works of Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, and Leibniz, The Enlightenment has its roots in 1680s England with the political philosophy of John Locke.

Locke argued that human beings are capable of self-improvement via rational thought and accumulated experience. His philosophy was a break with traditional assumptions that knowledge came only from authorities, and that truth was opaque and unknowable. Working in the same era as Isaac Newton, Locke’s ideas about human nature were highly informed by the Scientific Revolution well underway by this time. The two strains of philosophy have a common commitment to reason and empiricism at their core.

Political ideas of The Enlightenment

You can appreciate why any number of authorities would find the radical ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers potentially threatening — their age-old power structures were in jeopardy. It represented the democratization of knowledge, removing a dependency of the less powerful upon the powerful as a singular source of truth. The church, monarchy, and aristocracy were all on the chopping block — sometimes literally — during this age of philosophical and political revolutions.

The following philosophical and political ideals emerged from The Enlightenment:

  • Reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy. Phenomena can be examined in the real world to understand more about how things work and what is true. Everything should be subject to critical examination, versus simply being taken on faith.
  • People have natural rights, and prime among them is liberty — or freedom to pursue the kind of life they so choose, without infringing upon the natural rights of others.
  • Equality is the concept that all members of a nation or society are equal members and have equal standing in terms of their political influence and power. These are expressed in the American concept of equality before the law (14th Amendment), free speech, and one person/one vote.
  • Progress as the collective project and meaningful unifying force for a nation or group. The goal is to create better societies and better people by discarding outmoded traditions and embracing rationalism.
  • Religious tolerance as a rational way to prevent civil unrest. Appears in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) and in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
  • Consent of the governed is one of several foundations of liberal thought from philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who stated that to be legitimate, political power must be representative and agreed to by the people bound by it.
  • The social contract is a foundational concept from both John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, extending the consent of the governed and placing it as the true basis for governmental authority.
  • Constitutional government has its underpinnings in a 1748 work by French judge and political philosopher Montesquieu, titled The Spirit of the Laws. This tome is the principle source for the concept of separation of powers in government as a system of healthy checks and balances to protect political liberty.
  • Fraternity in a philosophical sense is concerned with an ethical relationship between people, based on love and solidarity as the foundation for how individuals in society should treat each other.
  • Separation of church and state is a logical outgrowth of freedom of religion. The idea is older, but its introduction to the United Sates is attributed to Thomas Jefferson who declared the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause to be about building a “wall of separation between church and state.”
  • Property rights as a natural outgrowth of natural rights and labor (Locke).

Freedom is self-determination, but is not unlimited

The history of political philosophy reveals the evolution of Enlightenment thinking over the course of centuries, and how the ideas underpinning our government have deep roots. Freedom isn’t a new idea, and it does come with some caveats.

The first caveat is that freedom cannot be unlimited if we are to have a civil society. As Hobbes put it, if men are left to their natural state our lives will be “nasty, brutish, and short.” Also, we cannot preserve equal rights for all citizens if some members of society are allowed to trample on the rights of others.

That’s why the concept of liberty is so important. It’s important to our democracy, and it’s important to our day to day lives and how we treat each other. Freedom and liberty are similar and we often use these words interchangeably, but there is a very important distinction between them.

Liberty flows from equal rights

Liberty means that I have freedom, but only insofar as I don’t intrude upon your freedom. I must respect your rights and not invade your sovereign boundaries of life and property. For all persons are created equal, and the rights of one another shall not be infringed.

Political liberty has its foundations in Greek philosophy and was closely linked with the concept of democracy. Aristotle and Plato among others planted the seeds that would later be picked up by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and John Stuart Mill — giving us our modern concept of liberty today.

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Malignant narcissism is a more severe and more dangerous version of narcissistic personality disorder. NPD is an extreme and pervasive set of traits associated with narcissism, a common human quality that most of us possess in small amounts — while some have it to excess, and even great excess. Those folks conversely have less or even no empathy for others, which means they are deficient in the area of basic conscience.

Adolf Hitler is the prototype

While there are several vocabularies around the phenomenon of narcissism and antisocial personalities, the historical clarity of the term malignant narcissism can make for helpful reference. Social psychologist Erich Fromm first coined the term to describe the mentality of the Nazis in the aftermath of World War II.

As the world reeled to understand the nature of the atrocities of the Holocaust and the unfathomable destruction wrought by the Third Reich, Fromm searched for a model to explain what he referred to as the “quintessence of evil.” He thought the extreme inhumanity exhibited by the Germans was emblematic of severe pathology and mental sickness, at the root of vicious destructiveness unleashed on the world.

Core traits of narcissism

  • Grandiosity; sense of self-importance
  • Obsessive fantasies of unlimited success, power, money, sex, etc.
  • Belief in their inherent specialness that necessitates associating with high-status individuals
  • Excessive need for admiration
  • Sense of entitlement; feeling of supremacy
  • Superficial and exploitative relationships
  • Low empathy
  • Lack of conscience
  • Has deep jealousies and believes others are envious of him or her
  • Arrogant, haughty behaviors and attitudes
  • Chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom
  • Overindulge in maladaptive psychological defense mechanisms

Add a dash of sadism

As we push higher on the scale to psychopathy from narcissism we enter an arena with even less empathy, less conscience, and more sadism. It’s not merely that these folks are extremely self-absorbed (which they are), it’s also that they enjoy other people’s pain. They get off on hurting others for their own enjoyment, and feel like guilt or shame in doing so.

Quotes about malignant narcissism

  • “regressive escape from frustration by distortion and denial of reality” — Edith Weigert
  • “a disturbing form of narcissistic personality where grandiosity is built around aggression and the destructive aspects of the self-become idealized” — Herbert Rosenfeld
  • “These people are preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love, and with chronic feelings of envy for those whom they perceive as being more successful than they are” — DSM-III-R
  • ‘exploitative and parasitic:’ it is as if they feel they have the right to control others and to exploit them without guilt — Otto Kernberg
  • “The defect, to be precise, is chiefly his missing conscience, which makes him incapable of empathy, guilt, and shame, unable to experience higher level feelings, and understand and respect higher values.” — Elizabeth Mika
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The state has an interest in educating its citizens. There are a number of reasons a nation could benefit from attending to the education of its citizens, creating a state interest in public education. Many of them are economic, and contribute to the growth of industry and health of communities:

  • More people generating more value increases GDP, compounded over time
  • Increased entrepreneurship
  • Increased innovation, and dynamism in the economy along with it
  • Improved public health and saving cost on health care
  • Longer life spans means more working years at greater seniority levels, contributing a lot of surplus value to the economy
  • Increased incomes provide more free time to contribute to civic life and be informed voters
  • Decreasing the number of “Lost Einsteins” — talented individuals who do not get a chance to shine their lights and contribute their gifts

We all have an interest in investing in the development of our human capital, because it is rational to do so. It will pay many dividends over time, both directly and indirectly.

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Can’t go back — as far as we know. That makes the politics of nostalgia, of the rose-tinted past, of MAGA, to be by definition an exercise in magical thinking.

We can’t go back to the past.

Psychologically speaking though, it is common to harbor this belief. This wishful thinking.

The Politics of Fear

It is the availability of memory stacked against the uncertainty of the future. For those who lack a certain sense of imagination, the road ahead can seem dark and dangerous. They are vulnerable to succor and protection — from enemies they believe to be around every corner.

In exchange for loyalty to the Strongman, they get fake superficial protection while the leader and his cronies raid the community coffers. Meanwhile the autocrat blames the opposition party for all the followers’ ills, despite obviously being in power himself. They hail him as a truthteller.

Magical Thinking

This blindness to the constraints of reality is more common than we might think. And regression is a common defense mechanism which encapsulates in microcosm this macro nostalgia: wherein we fall back to the carefree mentality of childhood. It’s a method of escapism and avoiding responsibility on one hand, and an aspect of the denial of death.

But we must grow up, and bravely face our fate. We must make decisions that shape it, and guide our course through the significant constraints of life and the unexpected obstacles.

Creativity is the Antidote

Ironically, something worthwhile we may have left behind in childhood can help get us out of this mess. Creativity shares the imaginative aspect with magical thinking, but the difference is its recognition of the constraints of reality. Time, resources, skills, prevailing conditions, random chance, and much more all must be favorable for us to achieve our creative goals and solve our problems. It requires effort and incisiveness. It requires an addiction to reality.

Creativity requires humility — something in short supply. We will need to cultivate vulnerability and non-aggression and deliberation. We will need to rediscover community and rededicate ourselves to civics.

I’m ready. Are you?

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Then-candidate Trump signed a letter of intent to move forward with this project in 2015, while at the same time denying its existence publicly, repeatedly. Jan 2016: Michael Cohen speaks with Dmitry Peskov, Russian government press secretary, about the project. There is no way this would have occurred without the blessing, or instruction, of Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, everyone in the Trump campaign lied, repeatedly and inexplicably, about their numerous contacts with Russia.

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Whataboutism is a classic debate tactic of old Soviet apologists to deflect criticism of Soviet policy; whenever an American would levy a critique, the response would be, “What about the bad things America does?”

Whataboutism is a rhetorical tactic where a person responds to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or bringing up a different issue altogether, rather than addressing the original point. This strategy is often used in debates and discussions to deflect criticism away from oneself by pointing out the flaws in an opponent or in a different situation.

The underlying intent is to divert attention from the initial subject and to reduce the impact of the original argument by suggesting hypocrisy or inconsistency.

Whataboutism: A Cold War trope

The term “whataboutism” gained prominence during the Cold War, particularly in the context of Soviet Union propaganda, where officials would frequently respond to Western critiques of Soviet human rights abuses by referencing issues in the West, such as racial discrimination in the United States.

This tactic is not confined to any specific political or ideological group; it is widely used across various contexts as a means of muddying the waters and avoiding direct engagement with uncomfortable questions or criticisms. Whataboutism can undermine productive discourse by preventing a focused discussion on the matter at hand.

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Novichok is a military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia and used in the poisoning of former FSB agent turned Putin critic Andrei Skripal and his daughter in Lonson in March, 2018.

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Developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, classical liberalism is a political, philosophical, and ethical framework based on individual liberty via human rights and equal protection. Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of individual freedom, natural rights, and equality. Whereas classical liberalism emphasizes the role of liberty, social liberalism stresses the importance of equality.

Political thinkers in the 1700s were responding to the contentious issues of their time — namely the oppressive cultural and social conditions of authoritarianism and the twin totalisms of monarchies and the church. Classical liberals such as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, Montesquieu and others believed that individuals ought to be free to pursue their own interests without interference from the state or other people — so long as they were not harming others, or infringing upon their rights in turn. These principles tend to require a delicate balance between respect for the rule of law, and the limiting of government power.

Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas and policies such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, gender equality, and international cooperation.

In a word: freedom.

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Exfiltration is the removal or copying of data from one server to another without the knowledge of the owner.

In the context of cybersecurity, exfiltration describes the unauthorized transfer of data from a computer or network. This can be data of any type, such as sensitive corporate information, personal identification details, intellectual property, or classified government data.

The mechanisms of exfiltration can vary widely, encompassing both digital and physical methods. Digital methods might include the use of malware to siphon data, exploiting network vulnerabilities to access and transmit data covertly, or phishing attacks to trick users into unknowingly providing access to sensitive information. Physical methods could involve someone with legitimate access to the network, such as an employee, intentionally or unintentionally removing data via portable storage devices or other means.

Implications of exfiltration

The implications of data exfiltration are significant, as it can lead to a loss of competitive advantage, financial loss, legal repercussions, and damage to an organization’s reputation. To counteract these threats, organizations employ a range of security measures including intrusion detection systems, data loss prevention (DLP) technologies, encryption, and comprehensive access controls.

Additionally, educating employees about the importance of data security and the methods used by attackers is a critical component of protecting against exfiltration attempts. Despite these efforts, the increasingly sophisticated tactics used by cybercriminals mean that vigilance and continuous improvement of cybersecurity practices are essential for minimizing the risk of data exfiltration.

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