Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Johnson and Johnson Was Just Found Guilty of Fueling the Opioid Epidemic In a Historic Trial

In a landmark verdict, an Oklahoma judge ruled Monday that Johnson and Johnson is guilty of fueling the state’s opioid epidemic. The case, the first of its kind to go to trial, is being closely watched to see if a court is prepared to hold a pharmaceutical company responsible for the devastating consequences of the […]

There Are No Magic Words That You Can Post to Change Instagram’s Terms of Service

Every so often, a rash of identical posts starts to take over social media. This isn’t the work of bots, but the result of a number of people believing that these words will have an effect on the terms of service of Facebook, or, in this most recent case, Instagram. In fact, there is nothing you can post online that will change a social network’s terms of service. And currently, Instagram’s terms aren’t even changing in the first place.

Here’s how this goes: people hear there is going to be a change to a company’s terms of service. It usually takes the form of “there’s going to be a new rule that means Instagram owns the copyright of my pictures.” It’s often not even true—there is no new rule. These companies do require users to license—not give—user-posted content to them so that companies can share them. On all of the major social media platforms, users keep the copyrights in the photos and videos they create and upload. No major platform has ever had terms of service that claim to transfer users’ copyrights.  But in response to the rumor, a bunch of people start posting a paragraph of legal-ish sounding words that, talisman-like, they believe will prevent this thing that isn’t even happening.

It happened with Facebook in 2012, when people started posting this:

For those of you who do not understand the reasoning behind this posting, Facebook is now a publicly traded entity. Unless you state otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post to this site. It is recommended that you and other members post a similar notice as this, or you may copy and paste this version. If you do not post such a statement once, then you are indirectly …allowing public use of items such as your photos and the information contained in your status updates.

PRIVACY NOTICE: Warning - any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency of any governmental structure including but not limited to the United States Federal Government also using or monitoring/using this website or any of its associated websites, you do NOT have my permission to utilize any of my profile information nor any of the content contained herein including, but not limited to my photos, and/or the comments made about my photos or any other “picture” art posted on my profile.

You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein. The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, student or any personnel under your direction or control.

The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law. UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE

The law cited there has nothing to do with any of this, but it certainly sounds convincing. This was so prevalent it has a Snopes entry. (Snopes rates it “false.”)

Facebook got hit again with this kind of hoax again in 2015, with one that looked like this, typo and all:

In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc (as a result of the Berner Convention).

There is no Berner Convention. There is a Berne Convention, but it doesn’t do what this notice claims. Sometimes the notice mentioned a “Rome Convention,” which still does not grant the post magic legal powers.

This brings us to 2019, where Instagram finds itself in the same place as its parent company Facebook once did. Here, via Forbes, is a version of this same story floating around:

Don’t forget tomorrow starts the new Facebook rule where they can use your photos. Don't forget Deadline today!!! It can be used in court cases in litigation against you. Everything you've ever posted becomes public from today Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. It costs nothing for a simple copy and paste, better safe than sorry. Channel 13 News talked about the change in Facebook's privacy policy. I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past and future. With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute. NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once it will be tacitly allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in the profile status updates. FACEBOOK DOES NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION TO SHARE PHOTOS OR MESSAGES.

This isn’t how privacy or copyright law works. This isn’t how contract law, which governs your relationship with a company’s terms of service, works. And it does not matter that Judd Apatow, Julia Roberts, Usher, or Secretary of Energy Rick Perry all fell for it.

While this phenomenon has been called a hoax, a scam, and a new iteration of the chain letter, it’s also something like a superstition. People are legitimately concerned about the power of giant companies like Facebook, and it’s kind of believable that it’d be able to make these kinds of rules and you, the user, would be stuck with them. Thinking there must be some legal way out of this unequal relationship—that the law wouldn’t let one company act with impunity in this way—isn’t so irrational. And so these words keep popping up and, since there was no change in the first place, they seem to “work” and do no harm—like knocking on wood—so everyone forgets for a couple of years.

Perhaps if there were many competing services, we could choose the one with the policies that best protected us, but, until then, there are no magic words that a viral post can have that will change the terms of service you agree to by using Instagram. Perhaps the influential people who've fallen for this hoax should instead focus on ways to bring much-needed competition to Internet platforms

Before Kamala Harris Soured on Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Bill, She Grew Her Email List From It

Kamala Harris distanced herself from Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill at an event with large-dollar donors two weeks after her campaign ran those ads.

The post Before Kamala Harris Soured on Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Bill, She Grew Her Email List From It appeared first on The Intercept.

The Washington Post: Sanders’s climate proposal is the best way forward
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/25/what-sanders-gets-others-dont-about-our-climate-debate/ #climatechange #climatecrisis

The spy in your wallet: Credit cards have a privacy problem
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/26/spy-your-wallet-credit-cards-have-privacy-problem/ #privacy #security

G7: Trump skips talks on climate crisis and Amazon fires - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/donald-trump-skips-g7-talks-on-climate-crisis-and-amazon-fires empty chair, empty brain

Salt marshes' capacity to sink carbon may be threatened by nitrogen pollution

Salt marshes sequester carbon at rates an order of magnitude higher than land ecosystems. A new study indicates nitrate pollution of coastal waters stimulates the decomposition of organic matter in salt marsh sediments that normally would have remained stable, and can alter the capacity of salt marshes to sequester carbon over the long term.

Beaver reintroduction key to solving freshwater biodiversity crisis

Reintroducing beavers to their native habitat is an important step towards solving the freshwater biodiversity crisis, according to experts.

Making polyurethane degradable gives its components a second life

Polyurethane waste is piling up, but scientists have a possible solution: They have developed a method to make polyurethane degradable. Once the original product's useful life is over, the polymer can easily be dissolved into ingredients to make new products such as superglue.

Urban living leads to high cholesterol...in crows

Animals that do well in urban areas tend to be the ones that learn to make use of resources such as the food humans throw away. But is our food actually good for them? A new study suggests that a diet of human foods such as discarded cheeseburgers might be giving American crows living in urban areas higher blood cholesterol levels than their rural cousins.

Cleaning pollutants from water with pollen and spores -- without the 'achoo!'

In addition to their role in plant fertilization and reproduction, pollens and spores have another, hidden talent: With a simple treatment, these cheap, abundant and renewable grains can be converted into tiny sponge-like particles that can be used to grab onto pollutants and remove them from water, scientists report. Even better, these treated particles don't trigger allergies.

Rules of Attraction

“I don’t want to have sex with you.”

Oh No, They’re Right

It’s problematic stuff, all the way down.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Calls Out the President: “He’s Afraid of Us”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has clearly gotten under the skin of President Trump, who has frequently attacked the first-term congresswoman in starkly racist terms and even lobbied Israel to block her from visiting the country. Now Tlaib says she knows why: He’s afraid. In a recent conversation with the Guardian, billed as her first in-depth interview […]

The U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor Are Putting a Native American Reservation Under “Persistent Surveillance”

Elbit Systems, which touts its products as “field-proven” on Palestinians, was contracted to build a high-tech surveillance system on Tohono O’odham land.

The post The U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor Are Putting a Native American Reservation Under “Persistent Surveillance” appeared first on The Intercept.

Welfare Reform Was a Disaster for the Poor. Trump Wants to Make It Even Worse.

This week marked the 23rd anniversary of welfare reform, a law that ripped a hole in the nation’s safety net under the guise of encouraging personal responsibility among poor families. The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has marked the anniversary with a look back at how low-income families have fared under the “reform,” […]

Let Microsoft buy Facebook and allow them to "improve" it. Heck, go ahead and convert it to LinkedIn

Telnet Is Not A Crime: Unconvincing Prosecution Screenshot Leaked in Ola Bini Case

Since EFF visited Ecuador three weeks ago, the investigation into open source developer Ola Bini has proceeded as we described then: drawn out, with little evidence of wrong-doing, but potentially compromised by acts of political theater outside the bounds of due process and a fair trial.

Last week — shortly after prosecutors successfully extended the investigation for another 30 days and informed Bini that they would also be opening new investigations into his taxes and visa status — Ecuadorean TV and newspapers published leaked imagery and conversations from evidence collected in the trial, together with claims from sources that this imagery proved Bini hacked the systems of Ecuador’s national communications provider, ECN.

The evidence offered was a screenshot, said to be taken from Bini’s mobile phone. The press reported that the phone was unlocked by police after seized security footage revealed Bini’s PIN when he used his phone in his own office elevator.

Telnet Is Not A Crime

Cursory examination of the actual screen capture reveals that both the leaker and the media misunderstand what the new evidence shows. Rather than demonstrating that Bini intruded into the Ecuadorean telephone network’s systems, it shows the trail of someone who paid a visit to a publicly accessible server — and then politely obeyed the servers’ warnings about usage and access.

Here’s the screenshot (with our annotations), taken from the evidence as it was finally submitted to the court.

Those knowledgeable about Unix-style command line shells and utilities will recognize this as the photograph of a laptop screen, showing a telnet session (telnet is an insecure communication protocol that has largely been abandoned for public-facing technologies).

Command line interactions generally flow down the page chronologically, from top to bottom, including both textual commands typed by the use, and the responses from the programs the user runs. The image shows, in order, someone – (presumably Bini, given that his local computer prompt shows “/home/olabini”) – requesting a connection, via Tor, to an open telnet service run on a remote computer.

Telnet is a text-only communication system, and the local program echoes the remote service’s warning against unauthorised access. The remote service then asks for a username as authorization. The connection is then closed by the remote system with a “timeout” error, because the person connecting has not responded.

It’s the Internet equivalent of seeing an open gate, walking up to it, seeing a “NO TRESPASSING” sign, and moving on.

The last line on the screen capture shows the telnet program exiting, and returning the user to their own computers’ command line prompt.

This is not demonstrative of anything beyond the normal procedures that computer security professionals conduct as part of their work. A user discovers an open telnet service, and connects to it out of curiosity or concern. The remote machine responds with a message by the owner of the device, with a warning not to log on without authorization. The user chooses to respect the warning and not proceed.

It’s the Internet equivalent of seeing an open gate, walking up to it, seeing a “NO TRESPASSING” sign, and moving on.

It’s notable also what was not leaked: the complete context surrounding the screenshot. The picture allegedly came from a series of messages between Ola and his system administrator, Ricardo Arguello, a well-known figure in the Ecuadorian networking and free software communities. The full conversation was omitted, except that that Bini sent this screenshot, to which his Arguello replied “It’s a router. I’ll talk to my contact at CNT.”

If you found a service that was insecurely open to telnet access on the wider Internet, that’s what you might reasonably and responsibly do — message to someone who might be able to inform its owner, with evidence that the system is open to anyone to connect. And under those conditions, Arguello’s response is just what a colleague might say back — that they would get in touch with someone who might be able to take the potentially insecure telnet service offline, or put it behind a firewall.

Certainly, that explanation fits the facts of this screenshot far better than the press reports that claims this is proof that Bini invaded the “entire network” of Ecuador’s national oil company, Petroecuador, and the former National Intelligence Secretariat.

EFF’s conclusions from our Ecuador mission were that — from its very beginnings in a hasty press conference held by the Interior Minister that spoke of Russian hackers and Wikileaks members undermining the Ecuadorean state — political actors, including the prosecution, have recklessly tied their reputations to a case with little or no real evidence. It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that Ola Bini’s prosecution continues to be publicly fought in the Ecuadorean press, with misleading and partial leaks and distractions, instead of in a courtroom, before a judge.

We trust that, when and if this evidence is presented in court, that judge will examine it more skeptically, and with better technical advice, than the prosecution or media has until now.

A Tennessee Republican Accused of Sexual Misconduct With Underage Girls Just Said He Isn’t Running Again

Tennessee state Rep. David Byrd, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women who were underage at the time, quietly told his Republican colleagues in the state House that he would not seek reelection next year due to the controversy. In his comments, made during a closed-door caucus meeting, he also reportedly insisted […]

Sanders and Warren Released Criminal Justice Plans This Week. Here’s What’s Good, Bad and Missing.

As the Democratic primary heats up, the fight against mass incarceration has appropriately taken center stage. This week, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—the two most progressive candidates in the race—both released plans outlining broad agendas that each candidate promises will reform the criminal justice system and propel an end to mass incarceration. Their plans provide an opportunity to see how Democrats can rectify the harms of both the Trump administration and 50 years of bipartisan support for expanded criminalization and carceral control.  

Neither of these plans would have been possible without years of grassroots organizing by currently and formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones. Each incorporates some of the wisdom born of this organizing, which is itself a victory. The plans themselves mirror the candidates: Sanders often uses bolder slogans, Warren often more precise language. Sanders features a category on “ending mass incarceration and excessive sentencing,” whereas Warren’s similar section, “Reforming Incarceration,” highlights the 1994 crime bill and related policy shifts. While both plans identify urgent areas of change, they also miss some opportunities to challenge the bipartisan consensus—and to lay out a plan to close prisons and jails. They come up against the technical limits of presidential power and—to a certain degree—are hampered by a reform framework that is still stuck in austerity logic. These plans are best seen as terrains of struggle, not finished blueprints. It’s the job of social movements to keep pushing the conversation.

First, it’s important to acknowledge the mammoth task facing a president who actually wants to end this country’s punishment problem. “Mass incarceration”—the interlocking institutions of police, prosecution, surveillance and incarceration—is not one thing. Rather, it is a series of institutions—governmental, corporate and nonprofit—that operate on the local, state, federal and international levels. A local police department, a state prison and ICE are governed by different institutions. While each one is engaged in the business of social control, the mechanisms differ. And the federal government’s role is mixed. The federal Bureau of Prisons accounts for 12 percent of the incarcerated population—but the Department of Homeland Security is the ultimate governing body for immigrant detention centers—many of which are privately run—and the growing legion of concentration camps on the border.

Because much of the carceral infrastructure is governed at the state and local levels, neither candidate could do all of what they say they want to do. It’s not clear, for instance, that a President Sanders or Warren could end zero-tolerance discipline practices in schools or transform the practices of metropolitan police departments, both of which are largely local and state considerations. Their respective promises to “incentivize” change lack clear mechanisms for implementation. Our excitement about the promising elements of both plans, therefore, needs to be tempered by the realization that we have a long, hard fight ahead to end the violence of police, prisons and deportations. Nevertheless, the federal government can set the priorities—and supply the funds—for states and cities to follow.

What’s good

As they have done with other issues throughout the primaries, both Sanders and Warren connect the problem of police and incarceration to other forms of economic precarity and social control. Both speak to the need for everyone to have quality education and stable housing. Such demands are not only basic human rights, but place the conversation about ending mass incarceration where it belongs—as a fundamental component of pursuing structural equity, democracy and justice.

This is the biggest victory. Mass incarceration thrives in part because elites treat the criminal legal system as separate from jobs, housing, education, healthcare and environment. Viewing the problem in isolation, without paying close attention to the broader racial capitalist context in which many reforms are crafted and unfold, produces reforms that expand rather than shrink methods of carceral control. Trying to solve the problems of police and prisons with more investment in police and prisons—including body cameras, expanded community corrections and gender-responsive prisons, instead of less police and fewer prisons—does not go to the heart of the problem. We must dismantle oppressive methods of social control, punishment and surveillance within an economic system that requires structural inequality—not produce reforms that try to manage that inequality better. Police violence and hyper-incarceration are not simply problems of bad officers and mean prosecutors. They are the inevitable result of a society that uses punishment to respond to social problems. Fixing them requires attending to the underlying problems.

In addressing root causes, both plans make great strides: They each support expanded funding for “indigent defense” (Sanders) and “access to counsel/public defenders” (Warren). Both support efforts to end the War on Drugs and the criminalization of addiction, poverty, homelessness and other social problems. Both want to end cash bail. Both want to end private prisons and at least some forms of profiteering in the system. And both condemn the onerous assessment of “fines and fees,” though neither fully addresses the ways so-called “offender-funded justice” is a major revenue source for many municipal budgets. It is great to see Sanders and Warren target the predatory expenses that incarcerated people and their loved ones pay, since both candidates had, before now, largely focused their comments about incarceration on the relatively small fact of private prisons, rather than the much larger problem of fines, fees and expenses.

Sanders and Warren tackle some of the cruelest aspects of the criminal legal system. Both call for an end to solitary confinement. Both favor access by incarcerated people to good legal counsel. Both favor strengthening re-entry services and supports. Both support reinstating and expanding federal use of consent decrees, which are binding agreements that authorized federal monitoring of state/local law enforcement agencies with documented patterns of abuse and civil rights violations. Both plans call for an end to the death penalty, recently reinstated at the federal level. 

Sanders proposes an “alternative response system” that includes creating a state/municipal corps of unarmed first responders—social workers, EMTS and mental health professionals—to respond to a variety of mental health emergency or low-level incidents where police intervention is unnecessary and likely counterproductive. This is a necessary intervention, for it identifies non-punitive responses to people in crisis, and community anti-police violence advocates have been calling for this for years. (Warren’s plan calls for a “co-responder” system that links law enforcement to mental health professionals, which still utilizes armed law enforcement, making it a weaker proposal.) And Sanders comes out swinging on the need to “reverse the criminalization of disability,” an especially necessary but often overlooked aspect of current policing and incarceration. Sanders also echoes several of the demands from recent prison strikes in calling for a “Prisoner Bill of Rights.” People in prisons have gone on strike to achieve demands specifically noted by Sanders, including “access to free educational and vocational training,” “the right to vote” for currently and formerly incarcerated people, “ending prison gerrymandering,” “living wages and safe working conditions” for labor by incarcerated people, and the creation of an “Office of Prisoner Civil Rights and Civil Liberties” within the Department of Justice, and more.

Some of these issues could not be meaningfully addressed at the federal level, given that almost 90 percent of incarcerated people are held in state prisons and local jails. For example, the federal government could not implement things like expanded visitation or wages for incarcerated people at the state level. Yet, Sanders' proposals nonetheless signal a major rhetorical win for incarcerated people and their advocates. If these proposals were adopted in the federal prison system, it might give activists more leeway to pressure their state governments to follow suit. And they may have greater significance if a president utilized their unique platform to help mobilize state and local office-holders and activists to demand change.

While Warren does not directly speak to the above, her plan addresses the need to expand justice for people wrongfully imprisoned, and calls to “repeal these overly restrictive habeas rules” that, since the heinous 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, have limited people’s post-conviction appeal options. She also proposes using presidential authority much more actively to grant pardons and clemency as a tool to help remedy systemic injustices, countering the stingy record of both Obama and many Democratic governors on such executive authority. She pledges to establish an “advisory board comprised of survivors of violence, along with formerly incarcerated individuals,” seeming to recognize that both victims of violence and incarcerated people have perspectives that should be heard. But at the same time, she wrongly juxtaposes survivors of violence with formerly incarcerated people, who themselves have experienced violence. Warren highlights cross-community partnerships for preventing and addressing violent harm. Her proposal to end the militarization of police forces is more developed than Sanders’, as is her call to “separate law enforcement from immigration enforcement.”

What’s bad

Despite their strengths, both plans have sections that evoke the “bipartisan consensus” that has governed prison reform. The bipartisan agenda includes procedural policing tweaks, new “evidence-based” strategies, the expansion of surveillance and control via multiple forms of “e-incarceration,” fines and fees, and a host of reforms intended to make incarceration more humane. Such reforms expand the system rather than permanently shrink it. While Sanders and Warren do not endorse the most oppressive aspects of the bipartisan consensus, there are ways in which they seem to buy into it, at least in part.

For example, Sanders supports “sentencing alternatives,” and Warren supports “diversion programs,” but neither appears to have followed how these reforms are often implemented in ways that can expand carceral control while offloading costs onto individuals and their families. Instead of creating endless community-based extensions of incarceration, we need to release or decline to adjudicate many individuals who need not be in the carceral system at all—something Sanders, Warren and other major candidates are not explicitly calling for en masse.

While his “Reform Our Decrepit Prison System” section rightly names prisons as “hotbeds of human rights violations, torture, sexual assault and wrongful imprisonment,” Sanders’ plan repeats standard promises for reforms that have not created more safety for incarcerated people in the past. He opens the door to cosmetic changes and remodeling of facilities, such as making jails and prisons safe and accessible for people with disabilities in prisons and jails, and making sure trans people have access to good health care. Such demands have led some jurisdictions to propose building new prisons or expanding existing ones to accommodate “special populations,” such as transgender people or people with mental illness.

As the opposition to gender-responsive prisons in California has shown, expansion of an already-violent system through newer or more specific kinds of prisons creates more problems than it solves. Misty Rojo, an organizer with Justice Now who mobilized against new prisons and jails in California, argued in 2014 that gender responsive prisons “appropriated feminist discourse by using the language of ‘specific needs for women’ in order to manipulate the public into favoring prison and jail expansion as ‘progressive’ and necessary for the well-being of women prisoners.” As she argues, the real source of their problem is being in prison in the first place—and the most effective way to help them is to let them go. Demands to improve the care for incarcerated people need to be linked to concrete plans to close prisons, jails and detention centers.

Using the language of the bipartisan reform agenda, Warren places faith in “evidence-based programs and interventions,” such as expanded use of body cameras as a means for reducing police abuse and violence. While she promises strict accountability measures for use of new technologies—facial recognition and algorithm-based surveillance—the growing industry of e-carceration shows that technologically driven promises of accountability, however good on paper, typically don’t provide more justice. But they do sometimes provide cover for wider use of repressive practices and technologies. Though supporters hope body cameras increase police accountability, this has rarely proven true. Police departments typically control who has access to the camera footage, and prosecutors have used such footage to successfully prosecute victims of police abuse. Body camera footage did not stop officer Jeronimo Yanez from shooting Philando Castile, nor did it aid in holding him accountable for killing an innocent man. And to this day, the only person who has gone to jail for the death of Eric Garner is Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed officer Pantaleo choking him.

The candidates seem to assume that by reducing the number of incarcerated people, more money will be available to support the structural needs of communities in the areas of health care, public education and housing. Indeed, this is what many people believe. But for more than a decade, bipartisan prison reform institutionalized, in a majority of states, “justice reinvestment” mechanisms that calculate “savings” and distribute them, usually to pay for more in-jail and prison programs and the expansion of community corrections and post-release supervision. In some instances, “prison savings” are returned to general state or municipal budgets to cover revenue shortfalls, not for new investment in social supports and services for all. For example, in Mississippi, the governor simply transferred monies saved from incarcerating fewer people into the general budget to help cover the costs of corporate tax cuts (while prisoners there continue to be brutalized and killed at alarming rates). Institutionalized bipartisan consensus reinvestment mechanisms do not—at least currently—free up money for new investment in health care, housing, public education and other social goods.

Surprisingly for candidates known for their commitments to economic justice, neither plan acknowledges this austerity conundrum: that savings from reductions in incarceration and other jail/prison “cost efficiencies” are used to expand the carceral system, not to reduce it. At the same time, property tax cuts and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy starve state and municipal budgets. The result: expansion of carceral control while state and municipal governments continue to claim that they can’t afford to increase spending for public health care, education, and the like.

We need to release savings from reducing mass incarceration to help fund health and community well-being for all—including those who are returning from prison—outside of the criminal justice system. We also need to  expand the revenue pool by progressive taxation policies for corporations and the wealthy, and for community resources to be provided outside the control or influence of the criminal justice system. Both Warren and Sanders acknowledge these realities, and have all the right beliefs and commitments, but they are hampered by their failure to recognize that making this shift will require dismantling many already-institutionalized state and local “reinvestment” mechanisms and adopting radically different budget priorities.

What’s missing

Surprisingly, neither Sanders nor Warren devote much attention to how they would reduce or eliminate “crimmigration,” the four-decade creep of the criminal-legal system into immigration policy. To be fair, both Sanders and Warren have released statements on immigration, and Warren’s criminal justice plan does call to “separate law enforcement from immigration enforcement” by eliminating 287(g) and the Secure Communities program. (Sanders has previously opposed Secure Communities, but his criminal justice plan does not address it.) Yet immigration enforcement is a domain that rests largely with the federal government and has been central to the current administration’s brutality. There will be no end to mass incarceration while concentration camps dot the borderlands, asylum protections are gutted, and nativist racism guides policymaking. Sanders and Warren know this, but their criminal justice plans do not discuss it. That is a missed opportunity to target the severe expansion of the country’s punishment apparatus at its most urgently gruesome point—something fully in the purview of presidential authority. And, as the journalist Andrea Pitzer has noted, the longer concentration camps exist, the harder they are to close.

Warren calls for repealing the 1994 Crime Bill, but the worst parts of it, federal grants to hire more police officers and build more prisons, have come and gone. Neither she nor Sanders have called to overturn the other still lingering policies of carceral expansion from that era. In particular, neither one calls to eradicate the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which vastly curtailed the ability of incarcerated people to file suit against the cruelty of their conditions, nor the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which enhanced the deportation regime. And neither one calls for the steady, incremental closure of  federal prisons, immigrant detention centers, state prisons and local jails, even though such closures are the surest and most lasting way to reduce the number of people incarcerated. To be sure, such closures would be wildly controversial, and federal closures would likely require congressional approval. To address the economic impacts of fewer carceral jobs as well as the negative environmental impacts of prisons and jails, these proposals should be joined with the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and other bold policy proposals that address the most urgent issues of our time.  

Neither plan names and opposes mens rea, or “guilty mind” reform, the much sought-after right-wing crown jewel of criminal justice reform. This proposed federal reform (it is also promoted in many states) would make it all but impossible to hold corporations, other private and public institutions, and white-collar actors legally liable for wrongdoing or infliction of harm, including harm to entire communities and ecologies. Liberal and Obama administration opposition in 2016 curtailed attempts by the Right to pass federal legislation, but it will return. Its passage would further undermine efforts to assert collective claims to justice. Both candidates object to the fact that the wealthy face more lenient justice standards than everyone else—their histories show that. But Warren’s proposal for holding corporations and their executives accountable falls short of the mark, and Sanders’ plan does not specifically address corporate accountability—even though both of them have frequently called for white-collar executives to face stiff, even criminal, penalties for their misdeeds.

Moving forward, both candidates should join their critiques of the criminal justice status quo to a dramatic reorganization of the economy. Their criminal justice plans need to be in greater conversation with their plans on tax reform, climate remediation and corporate accountability. Neither proposal makes clear that, in addition to different budget priorities, structural shifts from spending on carceral control to the collective well-being of entire communities requires significant changes in tax policy. It’s great and necessary to say “stop criminalizing poverty,” but it’s far stronger to say, “We’re going to give Department of Corrections funding to provide equitable public schools instead.”

What should the Left be doing? 

Today, every split state legislature in the country, except Minnesota, is dominated by one party. Republicans control 30 of them, Democrats 19. Many of them are gerrymandered. Yet this is the level at which much of the necessary changes to prisons and police can happen. The task of structural change, always daunting, is especially so now.

Progressive and Left movements must buttress vision with an accurate understanding of the institutions we propose to transform, and develop organizing strategies to match. And as always, the work of the left is to expand beyond what is on offer. For every bold stroke in the plans put forward by Sanders and Warren, there are absences or limitations that warrant attention. It is heartening, for instance, to see Warren call for greater involvement of formerly incarcerated people and survivors of violence (often the same population) and Sanders call for a Prisoners Bill of Rights. We also need to ensure that currently incarcerated people—and not only people convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses—serve on advisory boards and shape policy. Families of incarcerated people should be represented as well. These additions would ensure a platform that not only protects criminalized people’s rights but maximizes their own power.

The attention to ending the war on drugs and expanding expungement is welcome. Both candidates call for expunging marijuana convictions and Warren suggests that the federal government provide a “certificate of recovery for nonviolent offenders who have served their time and maintained a clean record for a certain number of years.” But we need to extend that generosity to others targeted by the domestic wars that have fueled mass incarceration. Any serious plan to end mass incarceration also has to challenge harsh sentencing and long terms for people convicted of violent offenses. Even though most of that work will need to happen at the state level, where the majority of people are incarcerated, presidential candidates serious about addressing mass incarceration need to also address violent harm.

Supporters of either plan should recognize how difficult implementation will be. We should see these plans as developing rather than final, especially given that it is not at all clear that much of what these plans include could be implemented from the federal level. Sanders’ plan includes many exciting, necessary ideas—such as  “unlimited visits, phone calls, and video calls” for incarcerated people, and a promise to “stop excessive sentencing”—without discussing how they could be put into effect. (Are incarcerated people really going to be able to call their loved ones at 2:00 a.m. if they want? When does a sentence become “excessive”?) Warren offers a similar list for meeting basic human rights standards and protecting “special populations.” Yet implementation is where the rubber meets the road: The history of prison reform is replete with examples of wardens, sheriffs, police chiefs and associations of correctional officials rejecting progressive options—legally or otherwise—or co–opting demands to strengthen repressive measures.  

Both plans are exciting steps forward—and both plans are limited. They give us some things to fight for, some things to push beyond, and some things to question. Discussing their strengths and weaknesses can push the candidates to clarify some of what remains implicit while also strengthening efforts to build new justice paradigms, particularly at the state and local level. And, just as grassroots movements made those plans possible, it be movements that determine whether any of them get implemented. The fight against mass incarceration will require bold initiatives to shift the country away from its reliance on police and incarceration toward safe and thriving communities. A presidential election can’t inaugurate all the changes we need. But these plans should inspire organizers to do what they do best: Keep pushing, always within the framework of a more transformative vision.