Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

ICE Is Sending Asylum-Seekers to the Private Prison Where Mother Jones Exposed Abuse

In 2016, Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer took readers inside a Louisiana private prison where he spent four months working as a guard. His award-winning investigation exposed a dehumanizing institution plagued by rampant violence and medical neglect. Now the Trump administration is using the same facility to detain asylum-seekers who seek protection at the southern border. Mother […]

Pirates Press releases 4-way splie with CRIM, Antagonizers ATL, NOI!SE, and Rude Pride

The fine folks over at Pirates Press Records recently released a 4-way split 7″ featuring CRIM, Antagonizers ATL, NOI!SE, and Rude Pride. You can give it a listen below, and if you like what you hear, you can pick up a copy for yourself here.

The post Pirates Press releases 4-way splie with CRIM, Antagonizers ATL, NOI!SE, and Rude Pride appeared first on Dying Scene.

How Russia Can Spend Money to Influence the 2020 Election—Legally

In April 2018, a steel pipe manufacturer called Wheatland Tube gave $1 million to the super-PAC supporting Donald Trump’s reelection and the campaigns of Trump-allied Republicans. Around the same time, the CEO of its parent company, Barry Zekelman, dined with Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. in a private dining room at the Trump […]

Is Our EPA Chief Stupid or Evil?

In most studies of new drugs, half the patients are given the experimental drug and the other half are given a placebo. It’s a “blinded” study because the patients don’t know which they’ve been given. In a double-blinded study, the doctors don’t know either. Andrew Wheeler, head of the EPA, is a wee bit confused […]

Private Border Wall Expands Onto Federal Land, Blocking Access to Historic Site

We Build the Wall has expanded its private border wall to land owned by the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, a federal agency.

The post Private Border Wall Expands Onto Federal Land, Blocking Access to Historic Site appeared first on The Intercept.

Right-Wing Sting Group Project Veritas Is Breaking Facebook’s “Authentic Behavior” Rule. Now What?

Sworn testimony by a Project Veritas operative shows the group is violating Facebook rules designed to curb troll farms, a key expert says.

The post Right-Wing Sting Group Project Veritas Is Breaking Facebook’s “Authentic Behavior” Rule. Now What? appeared first on The Intercept.

Medical marijuana does not reduce opioid deaths

Legalizing medical marijuana does not reduce the rate of fatal opioid overdoses, according to researchers.

Pneumonia mapped in largest genomic survey of any disease-causing bacterium

Researchers have mapped the most common bacterial cause of pneumonia around the world and revealed how these bacteria evolve in response to vaccination. Scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators carried out a global genomic survey of Streptococcus pneumoniae, discovering 621 strains across more than fifty countries. Published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the study will help predict which strains will be important for new pneumococcal vaccines.

Five California Cities Are Trying to Kill an Important Location Privacy Bill

If you rely on shared biked or scooters, your location privacy is at risk. Cities across the United States are currently pushing companies that operate shared mobility services like Jump, Lime, and Bird to share individual trip data for any and all trips taken within their boundaries, including where and when trips start and stop and granular details about the specific routes taken. This data is extremely sensitive, as it can be used to reidentify riders—particularly for habitual trips—and to track movements and patterns over time. While it is beneficial for cities to have access to aggregate data about shared mobility devices to ensure that they are deployed safely, efficiently, and equitably, cities should not be allowed to force operators to turn over sensitive, personally identifiable information about riders.

As these programs become more common, the California Legislature is considering a bill, A.B. 1112, that would ensure that local authorities receive only aggregated or non-identifiable trip data from shared mobility providers. EFF supports A.B. 1112, authored by Assemblymember Laura Friedman, which strikes the appropriate balance between protecting individual privacy and ensuring that local authorities have enough information to regulate our public streets so that they work for all Californians. The bill makes sure that local authorities will have the ability to impose deployment requirements in low-income areas to ensure equitable access, fleet caps to decrease congestion, and limits on device speed to ensure safety. And importantly, the bill clarifies that CalEPCA—California’s landmark electronic privacy law—applies to data generated by shared mobility devices, just as it would any other electronic devices.

Five California cities, however, are opposing this privacy-protective legislation. At least four of these cities—Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco, and Oakland—have pilot programs underway that require shared mobility companies to turn over sensitive individual trip data as a condition to receiving a permit. Currently, any company that does not comply cannot operate in the city. The cities want continued access to individual trip data and argue that removing “customer identifiers” like names from this data should be enough to protect rider privacy.

The problem? Even with names stripped out, location information is notoriously easy to reidentify, particularly for habitual trips. This is especially true when location information is aggregated over time. And the data shows that riders are, in fact, using dockless mobility vehicles for their regular commutes. For example, as documented in Lime’s Year End Report for 2018, 40 percent of Lime riders reported commuting to or from work or school during their most recent trip. And remember, in the case of dockless scooters and bikes, these devices may be parked directly outside a rider’s home or work. If a rider used the same shared scooter or bike service every day to commute between their work and home, it’s not hard to imagine how easy it might be to reidentify them—even if their name was not explicitly connected to their trip data. Time-stamped geolocation data could also reveal trips to medical specialists, specific places of worship, and particular neighborhoods or bars. Patterns in the data could reveal social relationships, and potentially even extramarital affairs, as well as personal habits, such as when people typically leave the house in the morning, go to the gym or run errands, how often they go out on evenings and weekends, and where they like to go.

The cities claim that they will institute “technical safeguards” and “business processes” to prohibit reidentification of individual consumers, but so long as the cities have the individual trip data, reidentification will be possible—by city transportation agencies, law enforcement, ICE, or any other third parties that receive data from cities.

The cities’ promises to keep the data confidential and make sure the records are exempt from disclosure under public records laws also fall flat. One big issue is that the cities have not outlined and limited the specific purposes for which they plan to use the geolocation data they are demanding. They also have not delineated how they will minimize their collection of personal information (including trip data) to data necessary to achieve those objectives. This violates both the letter and the spirit of the California Constitution’s right to privacy, which explicitly lists privacy as an inalienable right of all people and, in the words of the California Supreme Court, “prevents government and business interests from collecting and stockpiling unnecessary information about us” or “misusing information gathered for one purpose in order to serve other purposes[.]”

The biggest mistake local jurisdictions could make would be to collect data first and think about what to do with it later—after consumers’ privacy has been put at risk. That’s unfortunately what cities are doing now, and A.B. 1112 will put a stop to it.

The time is ripe for thoughtful state regulation reining in local demands for individual trip data. As we’ve told the California legislature, bike- and scooter- sharing services are proliferating in cities across the United States, and local authorities should have the right to regulate their use. But those efforts should not come at the cost of riders’ privacy.

We urge the California legislature to pass A.B. 1112 and protect the privacy of all Californians who rely on shared mobility devices for their transportation needs. And we urge cities in California and across the United States to start respecting the privacy of riders. Cities should start working with regulators and the public to strike the right balance between their need to obtain data for city planning purposes and the need to protect individual privacy—and they should stop working to undermine rider privacy.

EFF and Open Rights Group Defend the Right to Publish Open Source Software to the UK Government

EFF and Open Rights Group today submitted formal comments to the British Treasury, urging restraint in applying anti-money-laundering regulations to the publication of open-source software.

The UK government sought public feedback on proposals to update its financial regulations pertaining to money laundering and terrorism in alignment with a larger European directive. The consultation asked for feedback on applying onerous customer due diligence regulations to the cryptocurrency space as well as what approach the government should take in addressing “privacy coins” like Zcash and Monero. Most worrisome, the government also asked “whether the publication of open-source software should be subject to [customer due diligence] requirements.”

We’ve seen these kind of attacks on the publication of open source software before, in fights dating back to the 90s, when the Clinton administration attempted to require that anyone merely publishing cryptography source code obtain a government-issued license as an arms dealer. Attempting to force today’s open-source software publishers to follow financial regulations designed to go after those engaged in money laundering is equally obtuse.

In our comments, we describe the breadth of free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) that benefits the world today across industries and government institutions. We discuss how these regulatory proposals could have large and unpredictable consequences not only for the emerging technology of the blockchain ecosystem, but also for the FLOSS software ecosystem at large. As we stated in our comments:

If the UK government was to determine that open source software publication should be regulated under money-laundering regulations, it would be unclear how this would be enforced, or how the limits of those falling under the regulation would be determined. Software that could, in theory, provide the ability to enable cryptocurrency transactions, could be modified before release to remove these features. Software that lacked this capability could be quickly adapted to provide it. The core cryptographic algorithms that underlie various blockchain implementations, smart contract construction and execution, and secure communications are publicly known and relative trivial to express and implement. They are published, examined and improved by academics, enthusiasts, and professionals alike…

The level of uncertainty this would provide to FLOSS use and provision within the United Kingdom would be considerable. Such regulations would burden multiple industries to attempt to guarantee that their software could not be considered part of the infrastructure of a cryptographic money-laundering scheme.

Moreover, source code is a form of written creative expression, and open source code is a form of public discourse. Regulating its publication under anti-money-laundering provisions fails to honor the free expression rights of software creators in the United Kingdom, and their collaborators and users in the rest of the world.

Source code is a form of written creative expression, and open source code is a form of public discourse.

EFF is monitoring the regulatory and legislative reactions to new blockchain technologies, and we’ve recently spoken out about misguided ideas for banning cryptocurrencies and overbroad regulatory responses to decentralized exchanges. Increasingly, the regulatory backlash against cryptocurrencies is being tied to overbroad proposals that would censor the publication of open-source software, and restrict researchers’ ability to investigate, critique and communicate about the opportunities and risks of cryptocurrency.

This issue transcends controversies surrounding blockchain tech and could have significant implications for technological innovation, academic research, and freedom of expression. We’ll continue to watch the proceedings with HM Treasury, but fear similar anti-FLOSS proposals could emerge—particularly as other member states of the European Union transpose the same Anti-Money Laundering Directive into their own laws.

Read our full comments.

Hearing Tuesday: EFF Will Voice Support For California Bill Reining In Law Enforcement Use of Facial Recognition

Senate Bill 1215 Would Bar Police From Adding Facial Scanning to Body-Worn Cameras

Sacramento, California—On Tuesday, June 11, at 8:30 am, EFF Grassroots Advocacy Organizer Nathan Sheard will testify before the California Senate Public Safety Committee in support of a measure to prohibit law enforcement from using facial recognition in body cams.
Following San Francisco’s historic ban on police use of the technology—which can invade privacy, chill free speech and disproportionately harm already marginalized communities—California lawmakers are considering SB 1215, proposed legislation that would extend the ban across the state.
Face recognition technology has been shown to have disproportionately high error rates for women, the elderly, and people of color. Making matters worse, law enforcement agencies often rely on images pulled from mugshot databases. This exacerbates historical biases born of, and contributing to, over-policing in Black and Latinx neighborhoods. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors and other Bay Area communities have decided that police should be stopped from using the technology on the public.
The utilization of face recognition technology in connection with police body cameras would force Californians to decide between actively avoiding interaction and cooperation with law enforcement, or having their images collected, analyzed, and stored as perpetual candidates for suspicion, Sheard will tell lawmakers.
WHAT:
Hearing before the California Senate Public Safety Committee on SB 1215
WHO:
EFF Grassroots Advocacy Organizer Nathan Sheard
WHEN:
Tuesday, July 11, 8:30 am
WHERE:
California State Capitol
10th and L Streets
Room 3191
Sacramento, CA  95814

Contact:  Nathan 'nash' Sheard Grassroots Advocacy Organizer nash@eff.org

Just discovered CryptPad via the FLOSS Weekly podcast. Basically, Google docs without privacy concerns.

CryptPad in their own words:

"CryptPad is a private-by-design alternative to popular office tools and cloud services. All the content stored on CryptPad is encrypted before being sent, which means nobody can access your data unless you give them the keys (not even us)."

It's also Free software.

https://cryptpad.fr/

Better still CryptPad is on the Fediverse:

@cryptpad

#FLOSS #FOSS

How Unions and Climate Organizers Learned To Work Together in New York

Several years before Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) elevated the climate, jobs and justice framework to the national level, a coalition of labor, environmental and community groups joined together to push for a pioneering climate bill in New York.

‘Frightening’ number of #plant #extinctions found in global survey | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/10/frightening-number-of-plant-extinctions-found-in-global-survey

#Science #Ecology #Biology #Botany

Mass anomaly detected under the moon's largest crater

A mysterious large mass of material has been discovered beneath the largest crater in our solar system -- the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin -- and may contain metal from the asteroid that crashed into the Moon and formed the crater, according to a new study.

Scientist makes case for stabilizing forest carbon to help mitigate climate change

There's no doubt that climate change is affecting ecosystems as well as the lifestyles of plants and animals around the globe. As temperatures rise, so do the complexity of the issues. Scientists, both in the United States and around the world, are actively pursuing mitigation solutions while providing governments with the understanding of natural hazards to help stem the effects of climate change.

Tart cherry shown to decrease joint pain, sore muscles in some breast cancer patients

Tart cherry reduces the musculoskeletal effects of aromatase inhibitors in patients with non-metastatic breast cancer, according to new findings.

Here’s Why the Black-White IQ Gap Is Almost Certainly Environmental

A reader emails me: Twice now you have asserted that your “… read of the evidence is that the black-white IQ gap is almost certainly accounted for by environmental factors.” Would you please do me the favor of listing (in either a reply email or in Mother Jones) one or two of the sources for […]