Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Monday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Three years after Illinois’ voter registration database was infiltrated by Russian hackers, Illinois and local officials are spending millions to upgrade the cyber defenses protecting voters and their ballots leading up to the 2020 election,” the Tribune reports.


“The June 2016 breach of the state’s voter database remains the warning sign for election system vulnerability, with national security experts now saying all 50 states had been targeted for Russian intrusion. At least 21 states reported being contacted by addresses associated with Russia, largely by scanning public websites, but Illinois’ data breach was the most significant.
“All told in Illinois, personal information involving 76,000 voters was viewed, including names, addresses, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers. State election officials contacted the victims and provided steps to take on identity theft. No one contacted the state attorney general’s office to say his or her information had been compromised.”
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This is what really struck me, though:

State officials dispute some of the statements made about the extent of the Illinois breach in the heavily redacted Senate intelligence panel’s report released last month.
The report quoted Department of Homeland Security staff as saying of the Illinois hack that “Russia would have had the ability to potentially manipulate some of that data, but we didn’t see that.” Of Illinois, the DHS staff said that “the level of access that they gained, they almost certainly could have done more. Why they didn’t . . . is sort of an open-ended question.”
But state election officials said the report overstated what the Russians accomplished in breaching Illinois’ database.
“That is completely counter to everything that we have ever been told and to what we know,” Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the State Board of Elections, said of the assertion that the Russians could have manipulated the voter data.
“We know where they got in and we know what the permissions were once you broke into that area. It wouldn’t have allowed you to change or edit or delete any data,” he said. “We saw what they tried to do unsuccessfully.”

I wonder what accounts for the difference between the U.S. Senate report and what state officials say. Seems important to reconcile.
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Meanwhile . . .
“State election officials acknowledge that hacking attempts to their systems continue to this day but say they so far have been rebuffed.”
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Sub Flub
“Last school year, almost a third of 520 [CPS] schools – 152 – had at least one regular education or special education teacher position open all year long, a WBEZ analysis shows,” the station reports.

The problem is most acute at schools serving low-income and black students. They are twice as likely as all other schools to have a yearlong teacher vacancy. Chicago’s 28 schools with majority white student populations had no yearlong vacancies.
And making matters worse CPS also has a severe substitute teacher shortage, a WBEZ analysis shows. At 62 schools, half the time a teacher was absent no substitute showed up.
Here, again, there is a racial disparity. When majority black and Latino Chicago public schools request a substitute to cover a class, subs didn’t show up 35% of the time, data from September 2018 through March 2019 shows. That’s compared to 20% at majority-white or racially-mixed schools.

Now, why would that be?
“Substitute teachers can turn down any school assignment.”
Oh.
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Net Bet
“[E]ven as some major-league teams have announced plans to extend the netting – and the White Sox across town were the first to install it from foul pole to foul pole – the Cubs say they don’t know what they’re going to do,” the Tribune reports.

“We are currently exploring and researching expansion of protective netting,” team spokesman Julian Green said by e-mail. “No decision has been made to date.
“Given the pitch and slope of our field walls, which are not a straight line, there is a bit more complexity to installing and securing protective netting to the foul pole. We will review all available options to determine the safest and enjoyable environment for our fans.”

Julian Green, you are Today’s Worst Person In Chicago. But Tribune, for the zillionth time, why accept an e-mail statement that allows the “speaker” to avoid actual questions, including questions raised by the . . . e-mail statement? Ridiculous.
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New on the Beachwood . . .
The Largest Cashmere Manufacturer Of Mongolia Comes To The USA
Already at a Chicago outlet mall.
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From the Beachwood Sports Desk . . .
The White Sox Report: Walking & Crawling
And bobbleheading.
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TrackNotes: Casino Crazy & Whitney Day
Ignorance is one thing, but stupidity is what comedy is made of, unless it’s really happening.
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TrackNotes: Punching Up
I’m not saying fixed, just probable.
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The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #263: House Of Theo Crumbling
This is his mess. Plus: Trade Shade; Cubs Narratives We Can Put To Bed; Kimbrel Is Killing Us; Missing Maldonado; Cubs Farm System Still Sucks; Here Come The Brewers; Evil Sports Programming Network; The Ex-Cub Factor; Rickey Ventura; Seeing (Soccer) Stars; and Trubisky Continues To Be . . .
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ChicagoReddit

On the Eisenhower today at 12:21am. This guy will not die of old age. from r/chicago


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ChicagoGram


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ChicagoTube
How To Draw The Bulls Logo.

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BeachBook
Faced With Commercialization, The Black Punk Community Turns To Its Past For A Guide To Keep Resisting.

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TweetWood
A sampling.


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The Beachwood McRibTipLine: Right in front of you.

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Posted on August 5, 2019