Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Indigenous People Are Already Working “Green Jobs” — but They’re Unrecognized and Unpaid

From Standing Rock to the Unist’ot’en Camp, land defense and water protection are necessary for the continuation of life on a planet teetering on collapse.

The post Indigenous People Are Already Working “Green Jobs” — but They’re Unrecognized and Unpaid appeared first on The Intercept.

In Next Year’s Biggest Senate Primary, It’s AOC Vs. the Kennedys

Last December, during one of her busy trips down to Washington to prepare for her congressional swearing-in, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grabbed lunch with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The 29-year-old congresswoman-elect wanted to discuss potential opportunities to collaborate with the 72-year-old political veteran who, in 2009, had authored an ambitious climate bill that passed the House and […]

Letters to the Editor: What Will You Do After the Empire Collapses?

Climate collapse, nuclear war, Trump’s tweets… one way or another, human civilization doesn’t seem long for this world.

Bowling For Soup and Simple Plan detail UK tour

Pop punk veterans Bowling for Soup and Simple Plan have announced they’re getting together for a joint-headline UK tour. The six date tour will take in England and Scotland next February. Tickets for the “Together Again, You’re Welcome” tour go on sale this Friday (September 27th). Details of dates below.  

The post Bowling For Soup and Simple Plan detail UK tour appeared first on Dying Scene.

Black Rain on the Highway of Death

An Iraqi soldier recalls fleeing through hell at the end of the first gulf war.

Busts of the Trumpian Empire

History won’t be kind.

Destined For Empire: The Nib Interviews Masha Gessen

Eleri Harris interviews the author of The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia about the stories empires tell themselves.

Sniper 66 announce Deutschland “Annihilate Tour”

Austin, TX street punks Sniper 66 have announced a 15 day European tour through Germany. Check those dates below. Sniper 66 – Annihilate Tour ~EURO EDITION~ 27/9 Hamburg, DE – Monkeys Music Club (MOIN IT’S HAMBURG FESTIVAL 4) 28/9 Dülmen, DE – Skatepark Dülmen 29/9 Essen, DE – Temple Bar 1/10 Hof, DE – Keller 2/10 Berlin, […]

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Part Time Killer streaming new song “System is Using You”

Finnish skate-punks Part Time Killer are streaming their new song “System is Using You”. The song comes off the band’s upcoming yet to be named album. Mastered by Jason Livermore at The Blasting Room, the new album promises to be a gem. Check out the new song below. Part Time Killers released “Notes To Myself” […]

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Nerf Herder returns to Chicago to play inaugural “Merry Punking Christmas”

Punk vets Nerf Herder will return to Chicago for the first time in seventeen long years to play the inaugural “Merry Punking Christmas” at Reggies. Joining Nerf Herder for this, the most joyous of occasions will be: The Copyrights, Dan Vapid & The Cheats, and Capgun Heroes. The show will go down December 7th as […]

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Cleopatra Records streaming Punk Rock Halloween 2 compilation

Cleopatra Records is streaming their latest installment in the Punk Rock Halloween compilation department Punk Rock Halloween 2. Featuring the likes of The Vandals, Pulley, Down By Law, Tsunami Bomb, and a whole host of other amazing bands covering some of your favorite Halloween classics. Check it out below. Cleopatra Records released Punk Rock Halloween back in 2017. Featuring […]

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Who’s Speaking at the U.N. Climate Summit? Several Champions of Coal. https://nyti.ms/34XHbo1 #climatechange #climatecrisis

GOP Leadership Huddles With Fossil Fuel Industry During Climate Week

“Please join us for a Gas and Oil Industry Dinner with Republican Whip Steve Scalise,” read one invitation.

The post GOP Leadership Huddles With Fossil Fuel Industry During Climate Week appeared first on The Intercept.

Bernie Sanders Introduces Plan to Cancel $81 Billion in Medical Debt

Bernie Sanders not only wants to eliminate future medical debt with his plan for Medicare-for-All, he also wants to wipe the slate clean for Americans who already have debt from unpaid medical bills. On Saturday, the Democratic candidate announced an ambitious plan to eliminate $81 billion medical debt for Americans, reform bankruptcy laws, and even […]

Black Flag Concert Turn Into Ticket Mayhem

Last night Black Flag performed at the Wiltern Theater in LA and there was a problem: fans who bought tickets from third-party vendors like StubHub were turned away. There was massive pointing of fingers over this, with TicketMaster saying everyone knew the tickets were nontransferable while the third-party guys said TicketMaster changed the rules 40 […]

New ruling gives legal boost to a key data journalism tool

A recent federal appeals court ruling may be a big win for data journalists and researchers who depend on scraping — the automated collection of data from websites — to collect information on which they report.

The case, involving the professional social networking giant LinkedIn and the data startup hiQ Labs, has been widely discussed in legal circles and the security community, but may be just as significant for journalists.

The legal controversy centers on a database of information that hiQ had scraped from the portion of LinkedIn profiles that were set to be publicly accessible on the web. LinkedIn sought to stop hiQ from accessing that data, sending a letter threatening to sue under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a handful of other grounds. hiQ then challenged that letter in court. In response, the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled last week that the CFAA likely does not prohibit the scraping of public web pages.

“Permission is not required”

Strictly speaking, the court has not yet definitively ruled on the issues at the heart of hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn. Rather, it said hiQ is likely enough to win on the merits of its argument — including the CFAA question — that LinkedIn must allow the startup to continue scraping while the case continues. It's a bit of a confusing procedural posture, but some takeaways are clear and important.

While CFAA rulings — in this circuit and elsewhere — have become a bit of a contradictory thicket, here the Ninth digs in specifically to the statutory language on authorization, or who can access what. Namely, the CFAA prohibits "exceed[ing] authorized access" to a computer.

The ruling lays out a neat taxonomy of computer information, dividing it into three parts: information for which access is open to the general public and permission is not required; information for which authorization is required and has been given; and information for which authorization is required but has not been given.

Last week’s ruling specifically covers LinkedIn’s publicly available data, which it correctly describes as falling into the first category — one that also includes the vast swath of information available on the public web. LinkedIn had argued that, by sending a cease-and-desist letter, it revoked hiQ’s “authorization” to use the site. The court dispensed with that idea: information that is presumptively available to all requires no special authorization to access, and so there’s no authorization to revoke.

Many journalistic endeavors that involve scraping fall precisely into that first category, which is why the ruling is significant.

Journalists may automate visits to an Inspector General’s web page, to be alerted when there are newly published reports. They may write a script to download all the previous meeting agendas of a community board committee at once, to analyze how often a topic has been discussed. They may back up the online marketing materials for a business they’re reporting on, to monitor whether it quietly makes changes after an expose is published.

Research scraping and the CFAA

For journalists and researchers, web scraping — and other mechanisms of automating computer usage — can be an invaluable source of raw data, but has occasionally hit legal friction, especially around the CFAA.

First Look Media and a collection of academics described bodies of research they were creating, using techniques that include scraping, in a constitutional challenge to the CFAA. First Look’s portion of the complaint was dismissed in 2018, but the ACLU continues to represent plaintiffs who investigate whether sites are systematically discriminating against certain classes of users.
A broad coalition of journalists and researchers, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute, challenged Facebook to establish a "safe harbor" from CFAA prosecution for activities that include scraping the site or creating temporary accounts. Some courts have allowed plaintiffs to argue that terms-of-service violations also constitute CFAA violations, so the group asked specifically for Facebook to clarify its terms to explicitly allow that behavior.
A team of ProPublica reporters scraped some 80,000 criminal records to compare with data collected through public records requests in order to analyze patterns of discrimination in one component of the prison parole process. Julia Angwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on that research team, later said of their research, “The CFAA criminalizes practically everything I do in my reporting.”

While these examples don’t deal exclusively with the sort of entirely public web content addressed in the hiQ ruling, they demonstrate both the power of scraping as a tool, and the peril of the CFAA as a threat.

By taking the common-sense position that these activities are “not analogous to ‘breaking-and-entering,’” last week’s ruling provides legal cover for the myriad journalistic uses of public web scraping against the dark cloud of the CFAA.

Why I Decided Not To Delete My Old Internet Posts

In this excerpt from his memoir, the NSA whistleblower describes his realization that no one should have to "pretend to be perfect."

The post Why I Decided Not To Delete My Old Internet Posts appeared first on The Intercept.

Climate change study finds that maple syrup season may come earlier

Once winter nights dip below freezing and the days warm up above freezing sap begins to flow in sugar maples marking the start of the syrup season. With climate change, daily temperatures are on the rise, which affects sap flow and sugar content. By 2100, the maple syrup season in eastern North America may be one month earlier than it was during 1950 and 2017, according to a new study.