LETTERS
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RELOCATING MLK’S STATUE I recently came across the February 2017 edition of PURE NEWS USA. The article on the MLK statue took me down memory lane.
There were three of us; Jimmie Treadwell, Lillian Kinnel and myself, who witnessed and were horrified at the 1989 placement of Geraldine McCullough’s statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the walkway in back of the Illinois State Archives and the Illinois State Museum. At the time, we each worked for the State of Illinois – Jimmie worked for the Illinois State Senate, Lillian worked at the Illinois Legislative Research Council, and I worked at the Illinois State Library. My office was on the second floor of the Howlett Building next to a window.
When I saw the workers hoisting the statute by the neck, I thought they were lynching a Negro. I called Lillian and Jimmie and asked them to come to my office. I was upset and needed someone else to witness what I saw. We strategized and decided on a campaign to make the state legislature and the community aware of this injustice. We started a petition to have the statue relocated. I believe Jimmie and Lillian wrote the petition and we all got signatures. We identified five new sites to relocate the MLK statue, including the grounds of the Illinois State Capitol and the Illinois State Library (which was under construction at the time). I believe we submitted the petition to Secretary of State Jim Edgar, as his office was over the grounds and the placement of statues. Jimmie Treadwell got PURE NEWS and black legislators involved. The community got involved and didn’t let it rest.
After George Ryan was elected Secretary of State and took office in 1991, T.C. Christian revisited the issue with the Springfield and Vicinity Ministerial Alliance and Secretary George Ryan. The rest is history. The statue was moved in 1993. Jimmie, Lillian and I made the community aware of this travesty. Margaret J. Collins Durham, N.C.
USE CAUTION ONLINE On Feb. 23, an article regarding risk management was published on http://arstechnica.com in regards to websites that associated with a company called Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a company that provides services to optimize security on the 5.5 million websites they support. According to the article, the system exposed sensitive information like passwords, tokens and cookies from authenticated users of theses websites.
From Sept. 22 to Feb. 18, people had the ability to access real-time data being leaked by the software. This was discovered by a Google security researcher who was trying to find the source of the data. To make matters a bit more difficult, the data was being picked up by programs called “crawlers” during normal usage. This data from at least 770 different resources and 161 domains was cached/added to by the crawlers to Google, Bing, Yahoo and any other search engine and in essence became open to the public.
It affected all Cloudflare customers, including Uber, 1Password, FitBit and OKCupid. Considering 1Password is a password storage service, this leak could have been devastating to their customers. No one will know with any certainty what the issues are for some time.
In 2012, Cloudflare’s CEO account was hacked and they gained access to Cloudflare customer accounts. This hack came about as AT&T was tricked into redirecting his voicemail to a new box. Google left a PIN to gain access to his account in the new box, bypassing 2-factor authentication. This gave the hacker access to Google’s Enterprize app. The hackers added a BCC to some administrative accounts to reset the password of customers.
In a world where identification theft is quickly becoming the crime of choice, remember: Just because it seems you are safe, you may be associating with the wrong people and never even knew it. Craig Williams Sr. Springfield
BEST TO BETTER Regardless of who you voted for in the last presidential election, it is important to keep in mind that “best” is the enemy of “better.” If this country doesn’t have “better” choices than the “best” we had to choose from in November, then the future of the country is in very grave jeopardy. Bill McGee Springfield
