Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Which Candidates’ Climate Plans Put Justice First? We Break It Down.

This election season, it’s hard to understate the change in how Democrats discuss climate change compared to even the 2016 presidential race—or any election in the last half century since scientists first started sounding alarms about the greenhouse effect. 

It’s now merely a baseline matter for Democratic candidates to swear off campaign donations from fossil fuel industry sources, pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies, and call to cease drilling and mining on public lands. It goes almost without saying that they’d all rejoin the Paris climate agreement and reinstate Obama-era environmental regulations rolled back by the current administration. Most of the Democratic candidates have also endorsed the Green New Deal.

In fact, the Democratic contenders have almost all issued policy proposals that, if enacted, would amount to a sweeping new social compact, transforming everything from how we build homes to how we fuel our cars, fill our stomachs and power industry, while righting an array of long-festering social and environmental justice issues along the way. 

“Climate is not a separate issue. It is the lens through which we must do everything,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said during the CNN climate town hall September 4. 

The public, too, is changing. A poll released last week by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, for instance, found that about 80 percent of Americans now say human activity is propelling climate change, and nearly 40 percent now see it as a “crisis” compared to less than 25 percent of respondents five years ago. 

For many advocates, though, the goal is not merely to reduce carbon emissions, but to support workers and marginalized communities in the process. Many candidates’ plans are starting to reflect this need for equity and climate justice—with advocates saying that Sens. Bernie Sander (Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) are leading the way.

Inside the Plans

All of the Democratic presidential hopefuls are deploying rhetoric about protecting workers and frontline communities, with many also voicing support for indigenous rights. 

“It’s hard not to argue that something really has changed,” says Julian Brave NoiseCat, director of Green New Deal strategy at the progressive think tank Data for Progress.

Even relatively moderate climate proposals from candidates such as former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg acknowledge that marginalized communities and people of color will be hardest hit by climate change’s impacts, They are vague, however, on how their plans will secure racial and economic equity while ensuring fossil fuel workers aren’t left without income.

One who has offered more in-depth solutions is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the campaign’s unapologetically socialist candidate. Sanders is seen by many as taking up the banner abandoned by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who dropped out of the race in August, ending his campaign as “the climate candidate.” Even before Sanders’ climate proposal came out, environmental justice advocates spoke highly of the Vermont senator as among the best aligned with their concerns based on his previous presidential campaign and Senate voting record. Since releasing his detailed climate plan in August, Sanders has received even more praise for producing the most comprehensive proposal among the remaining candidates.

The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), an umbrella group of environmental justice organizations around the country, called Sanders’ plan for transitioning away from privately-owned energy utilities “a bold leap towards Energy Democracy” and gave the Vermont senator high marks for (along with several other candidates) putting fossil fuel corporations on notice that he will seek to hold them accountable.

Like Inslee before him, Sanders has also taken special care to signal workers and frontline communities will not be left behind. Sanders has proposed a $40 billion Climate Justice Resiliency Fund that would task the EPA and other federal agencies with conducting a nationwide survey to identify communities based on their “climate impact vulnerabilities and other socioeconomic factors, public health challenges, and environmental hazards” and prioritizing funding “in order of most vulnerable to least vulnerable.” His plans for a Green New Deal guarantee not just job training, but five years of income to workers who lose their jobs as the economy reconfigures away from fossil fuels. “Coal miners are not my enemy. The men and women who work on oil rigs are not my enemy. Climate change is my enemy,” Sanders said at the September 4 forum. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), true to her reputation as a policy expert and fighter for the people, has also put out an array of detailed plans outlining how she would tackle the climate crisis without leaving the poor and vulnerable behind. 

Her Green Manufacturing Plan calls for $2 trillion in investment in researching and implementing climate solutions, including “a $1.5 trillion federal procurement commitment over the next ten years to purchase American-made clean, renewable, and emission-free energy products for federal, state, and local use, and for export.” This demonstrates a formidable “level of commitment” to addressing the problem, according to the CJA, but the group wants more specifics about how frontline communities that have traditionally borne the brunt of industrial pollution will benefit from the investments and new jobs. CJA members also want assurances that any plan will take seriously the solutions to climate and environmental problems already underway in many low-income communities of color and not just impose changes from the top down without local consultations. 

CJA wants to see Warren and the rest of the Democratic field follow Sanders’ lead in explicitly rejecting an array of proposals they consider “false promises” such as cap-and-trade and carbon trading schemes, nuclear energy, and geoengineering, but praised Warren spurring the rest of the Democratic candidates to pay more attention to climate and social justice issues by publishing so many detailed plans of her own.

NoiseCat also gave Warren and Sanders high marks on climate justice. “Warren and Sanders are the standard bearers of the Left in this primary, so that’s not surprising at all,” he said, ticking off a list of candidates— Sens. Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) and the billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer—he’d consider in a “second tier” on climate justice, given their focus on creating jobs and a social safety net to protect vulnerable communities and workers. NoiseCat would also give “an honorable mention” to former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro for his “People First Indigenous Communities” plan that would address a spate of longstanding justice issues—from housing and education to voting rights and tribal sovereignty—facing indigenous communities around the country.

Harris has built a message of polluter accountability around her experience as San Francisco District Attorney, where she presided over several high-profile lawsuits against polluting corporations and created an environmental justice unit. Harris is also burnishing her climate justice credentials this year on Capitol Hill: On the eve of the Detroit debates back in July, Harris teamed with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to introduce the Climate Equity Act. The bill would make “communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis the foundation of policy related to climate and the environment, including the policies to build a Green New Deal.” The bill has been presented as a first step toward keeping environmental justice in the forefront of any Green New Deal and transition off of fossil fuels. It would first have to pass the GOP-controlled Senate, however, raising the question about whether, at least for the time being, it’s merely a symbolic gesture.

Booker, who cut his political teeth as the mayor of Newark, N.J., before going on to serve in the U.S. Senate, has made inner cities and other frontline communities a focus, as well. In the Democratic presidential debate in Houston earlier this month, Booker pointed out that he was the only candidate on the stage who lives in a low-income community of color, giving an added boost to his environmental justice proposals which not only include stepped up enforcement of environmental regulations in frontline communities and the establishment of an Environmental Justice Fund led by a White House Advisor for Social Justice. The fund would allocate $50 billion a year to a wide range of projects, from water infrastructure to cleaning up abandoned mines. While Booker’s positions on climate justice haven’t gotten as much attention as those in the top tier of candidates, CJA’s Anthony Rogers-Wright praised his work bringing attention to the concerns of frontline communities in Alabama and “cancer alley” in Louisiana.

Castro, who served as the mayor of San Antonio, Texas, has hung his climate ambitions around social justice, as well as housing and building codes—issues he dealt with at H.U.D.’s helm during the Obama administration. Asserting himself as the true standard bearer of the Obama years in a testy confrontation with Biden during the September debate, Castro has pledged to introduce “new civil rights legislation to address the disparate impact of environmental discrimination and dismantle structures of environmental racism” in his first 100 days in office. He would also reinvigorate the EPA’s Office of External Civil Rights Compliance, and require federal agencies to take the environmental and health impacts on low-income and marginalized communities into account to ensure frontline communities enjoy the same protections afforded more affluent ones. 

Castro and fellow Texan, the former congressman Beto O'Rourke also propose a new climate refugee status for migrants displaced by extreme weather, drought or other climate-related problems, setting themselves apart on this front.

False Solutions

Biden, meanwhile, and more middle-of-the-road candidates like Yang and Klobuchar have failed to impress climate justice hawks with proposals such as cap-and-trade and carbon trading marketplaces that critics say could delay the transition away from fossil fuels. 

Carbon capture and storage technology would allow continued burning of coal and natural gas, capturing the carbon dioxide emissions and burying them underground to keep them from warming in the atmosphere. Most objections to this burgeoning technology revolve around whether it is scalable and economically feasible. But setting aside technical hurdles, Rogers-Wright also points out that continued fossil fuel use means continued pollution. “We all know where that carbon capture will be located. … it’s going to be located in the Gulf South and Cancer Alley.”

Critics of carbon trading—in which corporations receive credits that allow them a finite amount of emissions that they can then buy and sell, making it possible for companies to increase pollution by purchasing other company’s unused credits on an open marketplace— and offset schemes—in which corporations and individuals pay for emissions reduction projects, such as reforestation, in order to offset their own emission—say there is no justification for putting such faith in the market and the private sector. So far, these have failed to deliver fully on promised reductions in greenhouse gases. Forest conservation offset projects have been particularly controversial due to the difficulty of accurately estimating how much carbon dioxide can be offset by restoring or conserving a given forest, as well as cases of outright fraud.

CJA praised Sanders for being the only presidential candidate whose platform explicitly rejects such “false solutions” as geoengineering, carbon markets, carbon offsets, nuclear energy, and industrial carbon capture and storage. “We find those way too middle-of-the-road,” Rogers-Wright said, whose organization also criticized the Green New Deal resolution introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) for failing to rule out those same controversial ideas. Warren has also been critical of nuclear energy.

“A Critical Juncture”

Speaking at a Capitol Hill press conference yesterday in the lead-up to Friday’s global climate strike, Markey said this presidential election “is going to be a referendum on climate change.” Flanked by dozens of youth climate activists including a delegation of South American indigenous people and Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, Markey went on: “It will be a referendum between Donald Trump and a whole new Green New Deal direction.”

Nick Leonard, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, is among those in the environmental justice community who also see this presidential election as “hugely important.” 

“We are at a really critical juncture in terms of the direction this country is going to take in terms of not only climate change, but all of these environmental justice issues, like drinking water quality,” he said. “All of these are rising environment issues, not only in Michigan but across the country.”

But while the mere frequency with which the Democratic presidential candidates utter the phrase “climate justice” this election cycle is unprecedented; it remains to be seen whether any of the ideas floated by the candidates will actually move from rhetoric to reality. 

Earlier this year, a group of environmental justice activists in Detroit invited all the presidential candidates to come to Michigan’s most polluted Zip Code (48217) to hear first-hand about their problems while they were in town for the July presidential debate. Who showed up? Just one candidate: Jay Inslee, who has now left the race. The failure of follow-through with Detroit 48217 residents muddles the message and raises questions about whether a Democratic president would truly prioritize the most vulnerable. 

For his part, NoiseCat is encouraged to hear so many of the candidates make reference “explicitly or indirectly to climate justice” at the climate town hall earlier this month. Nevertheless, he says, “a major question here,” is how much the Democratic Party cares about attending to the issues of one of its core constituencies: poor and marginalized communities, particularly communities of color. 

 “Where the jobs go; where the infrastructure gets built; those are always relevant questions,” he says.

@unlofl Longer list:

http://kizu514.com/blog/forbidden-file-names-on-windows-10/

Automation Consternation

We’ve built super-capable robots that work more efficiently than any person!

Extreme survivors: #Greenland's hardy #wildlife under threat from #GlobalHeating | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2019/sep/19/extreme-survivors-greenlands-hardy-wildlife-under-threat-from-global-heating

#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

#ClimateCrisis seen as ‘most important issue’ by public, poll shows | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/18/climate-crisis-seen-as-most-important-issue-by-public-poll-shows

#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

A Judge Just Blocked South Dakota’s “Riot-Boosting” Law, But Anti-Protest Measures Keep Spreading

A judge on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of South Dakota’s new “riot-boosting” law, which passed earlier this year to deter pipeline protests. The law threatens heavy penalties for any person or group that encourages a “riot,” which is defined broadly enough to include many forms of public protest. US District Judge […]

It's always fun to introduce new people to TAC, an independently produced German board game.

At first they roll their eyes and think it's just another game of Ludo or Pachisi... but then you introduce the gorgeous wooden board & tactical cards, and they realize how much strategy and planning is involved in this seemingly "innocent" game.

Most everyone I've met is a huge fan after only the first or second round.

If you like board games, definitely check it out:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17991/tac

How Dare Samantha Power Scrub the Yemen War From Her Memoir

Before serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power served on President Obama’s National Security Council, where she was instrumental in advocating for intervening militarily in the Libyan civil war. While serving as UN Ambassador during Obama’s second term, she continued to advocate for military interventions, this time in the Syrian war. In both cases, she framed her case for intervention as a moral one—a “humanitarian intervention” necessary for saving Libyans and Syrians from their dictators.

These interventions, however, were anything but humanitarian: They led to a sharp increase in the loss of human lives, exacerbated a refugee crisis, enabled extremist groups, and caused an overall exacerbation of already-tenuous civil conflicts. Yet, in her recently-published memoir, The Education of an Idealist, Power downplays her role in the bloodshed that followed in Libya, and she goes as far as lamenting Obama’s inaction earlier in the Syrian Civil War. Though these interventions are certainly career-defining, they are also not the only foreign policy injustices by which Power should be remembered.

The most striking thing about Power’s memoir is her complete omission of her role in what became the world’s worst humanitarian crisis: the ongoing U.S. intervention in Yemen.

In 2011, two years before Power’s tenure as Ambassador to the UN began, Yemenis protested against long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh who eventually resigned and transferred power to his then-vice president (and now president) Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. By the time Power took office in August 2013, U.S. policy in Yemen was defined by drone warfare, while Yemenis awaited an election following Hadi’s two-year term. Then in late 2014, the Houthi rebel group marched to the capital Sana’a, in what many saw as a coup, thereby threatening Saudi Arabia’s interests in Yemen. Months later, a coalition consisting of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other neighboring countries launched a surprise attack on Yemen, ostensibly aimed at restoring Hadi to power.

Ambassador Power supported this intervention.

Her support did not waver when evidence surfaced that the Saudis and Emiratis were fighting alongside members of al-Qaeda. By the end of her tenure, at least 10,000 Yemenis were dead and at least 80% of the population was in need of humanitarian aid. Despite this, there were no public statements made by Power at the time indicating waning support for the disastrous U.S. intervention in Yemen.

In June 2016, Ambassador Power was asked to comment on then-UN Secretary-General’s Ban Ki-moon’s stunning admission that Saudi threats to UN funding led him to remove Saudi Arabia from a list of armies responsible for killing and wounding children (Saudi Arabia was initially on that list for its role in targeting Yemeni children). Power and her staff reportedly ignored a journalist’s questions about this. “Since news broke of Ban’s decision, I have asked Power’s office for a direct response to Saudi funding threats,” journalist Samuel Oakford wrote for Politico in July 2016. “Neither she nor her staff has ever replied.”

Years later, Power still prefers in her memoir to look away from Yemen rather than confront her role in enabling the Saudis to kill innocent Yemenis when she had the power to oppose such aggression.

Yemen is mentioned twice in her book, with neither reference having anything to do with the war in Yemen. Such a glaring omission can only be seen as a lack of reckoning and accountability for her actions as a representative of the United States at the UN at the onset of the war in Yemen. During her critical role at the UN, the Obama administration supported the Saudi and UAE coalition militarily through targeting assistance, intelligence, midair refueling, arms sales and training. Furthermore, Power helped provide cover for the Saudis and the Emiratis at the United Nations, allowing them to investigate their own crimes, and enabling them to carry out atrocities against civilians with impunity.

Her omission of Yemen is indeed surprising given her new-found criticism of the U.S. role in the war in Yemen. Months after leaving office, Ambassador Power began tweeting against the war in Yemen, even going as far as openly acknowledging that it was wrong for the Obama administration to support the Saudi-led coalition while it killed civilians and imposed a famine-inducing blockade on the country. Yet, when writing her own story, she chose to ignore Yemen altogether.

Despite this glaring omission, her memoir has received mostly positive reviews that fail to criticize her for helping turn Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. And while the press and Congress have become much more critical of the war in Yemen since Trump’s election, Obama and his officials remain relatively unscathed by criticism for their role in launching the U.S. intervention in the Yemen back in 2015. Had there been more outrage and calls for accountability at the onset of Obama’s unconstitutional intervention in Yemen, perhaps Trump would not have had a war to inherit. Perhaps nearly 100,000 Yemenis would not have been killed. And perhaps 85,000 Yemeni children would not have starved to death.

In choosing to entirely ignore one of her most glaring failures—as a self-proclaimed activist and diplomat—Ambassador Power missed a crucial opportunity to set the record straight on her horrific actions and inactions as ambassador. In the eyes of this Yemeni-American, Ambassador Power remains neither educated nor an idealist.

‘The #NHS has been destroyed’: #BorisJohnson confronted by father of sick child | #Politics | The Guardian

On a scale of 1 to 10 in lying, this scores a resounding Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/18/nhs-destroyed-boris-johnson-father-sick-child-hospital-london

#UK

With a Click of the Like Button, a Trump HUD Official Violated Federal Law

Lynne Patton, the New York and New Jersey regional administrator at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is well-known for her active and often controversial social media presence, in which she often attacks liberals and expresses admiration for President Donald Trump. But her laissez-faire attitude about how government officials should conduct themselves online may […]

Bill McKibben: This Friday Could Mark the Largest Day of Climate Action in Planetary History

This story originally appeared in Truthout. It is republished here as part of In These Times' partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

What do Ben and Jerry’s, an 800,000-member South African trade union, countless college professors, a big chunk of Amazon’s Seattle workforce and more high school students than you can imagine have in common? They’re all joining in a massive climate strike this coming Friday, September 20–a strike that will likely register as the biggest day of climate action in the planet’s history. 

More than this, what they have in common is something they share with much of the rest of humanity: a rapidly growing fear that global warming is out of control and that we must act with remarkable speed if we have any hope of getting our civilizations safely through the century. This growing realization is clear in many places: in the UK, for instance, where Extinction Rebellion began its massive civil disobedience, a campaign now spreading around the world. And in Washington, D.C., where the Sunrise Movement and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been building powerful support for a Green New Deal.

But the climate strikes, of course, had their genesis in high schools–or, more exactly, outside of high schools, which is where 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg found herself last autumn. Why, she asked the Swedish authorities, should I spend all day in school preparing myself for the future when you aren’t preparing the country or the world for the future? That is a good question–so good that it quickly spread around the planet.

I’ve known school strikers on every continent with schools, and they should give everyone heart: Youth activists are awake and aware and working hard. As usual, those in the most vulnerable communities are leading the way. This is a movement in which Indigenous youth, kids from communities of color and those who live on sinking islands are on the front line.

But these young activists are also asking for help. On May 23, at the end of the last massive school strike, Thunberg and 46 other youth activists released an open letter to The Guardian urging adults to join in next time. Because, as they pointed out, there are limits to what young people can do on their own. If you can’t vote, and if you don’t own stocks, then your ability to pull the main levers of power is limited. They wrote: “Sorry if this is inconvenient for you. But this is not a single-generation job. It’s humanity’s job.”

People around the world are responding to the call. The biggest demonstrations will probably be in New York City, because of the excitement surrounding Thunberg’s arrival by sailboat to address the UN General Assembly. But there will be rallies in all 50 states (a full list is at globalclimatestrike.net). Often, they’ll be led by students at local high schools and colleges, but in many cases, the emphasis is on adult participation–shop owners are closing their doors for the afternoon, and chefs shutting down restaurants to feed demonstrators.

Can this worldwide strike galvanize us into significant climate action? By itself, surely not. No single thing is enough to make a decisive difference–not blocking pipelines or divesting portfolios or electing new senators. But a day in the streets can demonstrate to everyone that the zeitgeist is shifting, and decisively. It’s the zeitgeist that activists really play for: the sense of what is normal, natural, obvious. (Think of how gay marriage now seems conventional to many Americans, and then try to remember what it seemed like to much of the culture a decade ago). 

We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. In the spring of 1970, 20 million Americans–10 percent of the country’s population–took to the street for that protest. It was almost certainly the largest day of political action in its history. And that was enough. The zeitgeist shifted decisively, and Richard Nixon, of all presidents, signed into law all the most important environmental laws, from the Clean Water Act to the Endangered Species Act. (Incidentally, these are all laws that Donald Trump is currently trying to gut.)

You can find the signs to indicate we might be on the cusp of a similar shift. The polling shows that Americans are far more concerned about climate change than even a year or two ago. Partly that’s because of good organizing, partly it’s because the planet continues to demonstrate our folly with fire and flood and partly it’s because Donald Trump has bellowed his climate denialism so loudly that it’s begun to disconcert everyone who is not in his cult. Surveys show that he’s more out of touch with Americans on the environment than on any other issue. If and when Trump goes, climate denialism as a powerful political force may well go with him.

But even if we leave climate denial behind us, will we really start to move with the speed we must? The answer to that will lie in how many people truly demand action. We’ll start to find out what the numbers look like on September 20.

‘Listen to the scientists’: #GretaThunberg urges #Congress to take action | #US news | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/18/greta-thunberg-testimony-congress-climate-change-action

#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #Politics

Thanks For Helping Us Defend the California Consumer Privacy Act

The California Consumer Privacy Act will go into effect on January 1, 2020—having fended off a year of targeted efforts by technology giants who wanted to gut the bill. Most recently, industry tried to weaken its important privacy protections in the last days of the legislative session.

Californians made history last year when, after 600,000 people signed petitions in support of a ballot initiative, the California State Legislature answered their constituents’ call for a new data privacy law. It’s been a long fight to defend the CCPA against a raft of amendments that would have weakened this law and the protections it enshrines for Californians. Big technology companies backed a number of bills that each would have weakened the CCPA’s protections. Taken together, this package would have significantly undermined this historic law.

Fortunately, the worst provisions of these bills did not make it through the legislature—though it wasn’t for lack of trying. Lawmakers proposed bills that would have opened up loopholes in the law and made it easier for businesses to skirt privacy protections if they shared information with governments, changed definitions in the bill to broaden its exemptions, and made it easier for businesses to require customers to pay for their privacy rights.

These bills sailed through the Assembly but were stopped in July by the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson. The final amendments to the CCPA that passed through the legislature last week make small changes to the law, and do not weaken its important protections.

We want to thank everyone who called or wrote to their lawmakers to protect the CCPA this year and amplified how important data privacy is to the people of California. Your voices are invaluable to our advocacy.

We also appreciate the time that lawmakers, our coalition partners, and other stakeholders devoted to discussions about these amendments. As a result of this hard work, the California State Legislature stood up for the privacy law that they passed last year.

Still, while the CCPA is important for Californians’ consumer data privacy, it needs to be stronger. EFF and other privacy organizations earlier this year advanced two bills to strengthen the CCPA, which met significant opposition from technology industry trade association groups. Most importantly, these bills would have improved enforcement by allowing consumers to bring their own privacy claims to court. We particularly thank Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. Sen. Jackson, and the California Attorney General’s Office for leading the charge to improve the CCPA in the legislature.

More than anything, this year’s CCPA fight shows that when voters speak up for their privacy, it makes a big difference with legislators. We look forward to continuing to work with legislators and our coalition partners to advance measures that improve everyone’s privacy. We also look forward to offering input on the Attorney General’s regulations for the CCPA, expected this fall. And as technology trade groups redouble their efforts to weaken state privacy laws or override them with a national law, we encourage everyone to keep pushing for strong consumer data privacy laws across the country.

Huawei Opts for Linux on Its Laptops - PCMag UK
https://uk.pcmag.com/news/122567/huawei-opts-for-linux-on-its-laptops @thrrgilag

Dr Hannah Fry has joined calls for a Hippocratic oath for tech & maths specialists.

"The issue has become urgent now that researchers are building systems that gather and sell personal data, exploit human frailties, and take on life-or-death decisions."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/16/mathematicians-need-doctor-style-hippocratic-oath-says-academic-hannah-fry

Big Tech’s Disingenuous Push for a Federal Privacy Law

This week, the Internet Association launched a campaign asking the federal government to pass a new privacy law.

The Internet Association (IA) is a trade group funded by some of the largest tech companies in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. Many of its members keep their lights on by tracking users and monetizing their personal data. So why do they want a federal consumer privacy law?

Surprise! It’s not to protect your privacy. Rather, this campaign is a disingenuous ploy to undermine real progress on privacy being made around the country at the state level. IA member companies want to establish a national “privacy law” that undoes stronger state laws and lets them continue business as usual. Lawyers call this “preemption.” IA calls this “a unified, national standard” to avoid “a patchwork of state laws.” We call this a big step backwards for all of our privacy.

The question we should be asking is, “What are they afraid of?”

Stronger state laws

After years of privacy scandals, Americans across the political spectrum want better consumer privacy protections. So far, Congress has failed to act, but states have taken matters into their own hands. The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), passed in 2008, makes it illegal to collect biometric data from Illinois citizens without their express, informed, opt-in consent. Vermont requires data brokers to register with the state and report on their activities. And the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), passed in 2018, gives users the right to access their personal data and opt out of its sale. In state legislatures across the country, consumer privacy bills are gaining momentum.

This terrifies big tech companies. Last quarter alone, the IA spent nearly $176,000 lobbying the California legislature, largely to weaken CCPA before it takes effect in January 2021. Thanks to the efforts of a coalition of privacy advocates, including EFF, it failed. The IA and its allies are losing the fight against state privacy laws. So, after years of fighting any kind of privacy legislation, they’re now looking to the federal government to save them from the states. The IA has joined Technet, a group of tech CEOs, and Business Roundtable, another industry lobbying organization, in calls for a weak national “privacy” law that will preempt stronger state laws. In other words, they want to roll back all the progress states like California have made, and prevent other states from protecting consumers in the future. We must not allow them to succeed.

A private right of action

Laws with a private right of action allow ordinary people to sue companies when they break the law. This is essential to make sure the law is properly enforced. Without a private right of action, it’s up to regulators like the Federal Trade Commission or the U.S. Department of Justice to go after misbehaving companies. Even in the best of times, regulatory bodies often don’t have the resources needed to police a multi-trillion dollar industry. And regulators can fall prey to regulatory capture. If all the power of enforcement is left in the hands of a single group, an industry can lobby the government to fill that group with its own people. Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai is a former Verizon lawyer, and he’s overseen massive deregulation of the telecom industry his office is supposed to keep in check.

The strongest state privacy laws include private rights of action. Illinois BIPA allows users whose biometric data is illegally collected or handled to sue the companies responsible. And CCPA lets users sue when a company’s negligence results in a breach of personal information. The IA wants to erase these laws and reduce the penalties its member companies can face for their misconduct in legal proceedings brought by ordinary consumers.

Real changes to the surveillance business model

We don’t know what the IA’s final legislative proposal will say, but its campaign website is thick with weasel words and equivocation. For example, the section on “Controls” says:

Individuals should have meaningful controls over how personal information they provide to companies is collected, used, and shared, except where that information is necessary for the basic operation of the business[.]

The “basic operation” of data brokers involves collecting and selling personal data without your consent. Does that mean you shouldn’t be able to stop them?

The rest of IA’s proposals follow the same pattern. The section on “transparency” says that users should be able to know the “categories of entities” that their data is shared with, but not the names of actual companies or people that receive it. This will make it unnecessarily difficult for people to trace how their personal information is bought and sold. The section on “access” says that users’ ability to access their data should not “unreasonably interfere with a company’s business operations.” Again, if a business depends on gathering data about people without their knowledge, will users ever be able to access their information? Sometimes, exercising your privacy rights will mean “interfering” with a company’s business.

The bottom line is that tech companies are happy for Congress to enact a privacy law—as long as it doesn’t affect their “business operations” in any way. In other words, they’d like a privacy law that doesn’t change anything at all.

The Internet Association knows which way the wind is blowing. Across the country, people are fed up with Big Tech’s empty promises and serialmishandlingofpersonaldata. They want real change, and state legislatures are listening. We must allow states to continue passing innovative new privacy laws. Any federal privacy legislation needs to build a floor, not a ceiling.

Ecologists find strong evidence of fishing down the food web in freshwater lake

Research by ecologists shows strong evidence in a freshwater lake of 'fishing down the food web' - the deliberate shift away from top predatory fish on the food chain to smaller species closer to the base. While the effect has historically been observed almost exclusively in marine ecosystems and ocean fisheries, there has been little evidence of the effect in freshwater ecosystems.

Greta Thunberg Just Pulled an Iconic Move in Front of Congress

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist who has inspired weekly school strikes for climate action around the world, dedicated her Wednesday morning Congressional testimony to the scientists who have outlined the irrefutable facts of climate change. Instead of delivering prepared remarks at the joint hearing between the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Energy, and […]

If Trump Is Reelected, California’s Pollution Waiver Is History

Donald Trump, as part of his war against little ol’ California, says he is revoking the state’s waiver to set its own pollution rules under the Clean Air Act. Can he get away with it? My very tentative guess is yes. This is hardly the first time it’s happened, after all. George Bush refused to […]

The Dollyrots release a video for ‘Animal’

Florida-based Pop Punk husband and wife team The Dollyrots have released a video for ‘Animal’. The track is opener from their recent album, Daydream Explosion, which was released on Wicked Cool Records after Little Steven (The E Street Band) became a fan. Check out the video below.

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