August 29th, 2019 • 2h 55m

1168: Poop-in

Unhoused

Sir Mark Hall: I am thinking about starting a non-profit: Austin Poop Action. It would hold public poop-ins at City Hall.

(3) Austin Skidrow on Twitter: "This isn't LA. This isn't San Francisco. This is Austin. https://t.co/Vqk5K675I6" / Twitter

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Mon, 26 Aug 2019 18:22

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UTPD Chief urges Austin leaders to ban homeless camping along campus perimeter | KXAN.com

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 18:11

AUSTIN (KXAN) '-- As the University of Texas at Austin welcomed students for the Fall 2019 semester, University Police Chief David Carter is beseeching the city to prevent homeless people from camping along the perimeter of campus.

Carter's Wednesday letter was addressed to Mayor Steve Adler and Austin City Councilmembers. In it, he said the UT community supports the city's efforts to help find solutions for finding permanent housing for homeless people but till then, security needed to be improved.

'''...I request that the Council work to improve public safety by prohibiting camping by members of the public in areas along the entire perimeter of campus, as well as in the area west of campus where many students live, work and gather,'' he wrote.

Carter wrote that police regularly respond to calls about predatory or harassing behavior along the ''Drag,'' referring to a stretch of Guadalupe Street near the UT campus that is frequented by students, staff and faculty. In the letter, Carter said members of the UT community ''often feel threatened'' in the area and sometimes homeless people themselves become victims of violence there.

Allowing homeless people to sit or camp in the densely populated West Campus area also posed a risk to public health and security, Carter wrote.

''The City has a responsibility not only to seek appropriate housing and treatment for the homeless, but to recognize that the interface of young students and some subjects of the homeless community have created potential dangers,'' Carter wrote. ''This view is not based on discriminatory practices but, rather, on real-world experiences of members of the UT community.''

Public forum with Mayor Adler on homeless issues to be held - Story | KTBC

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 14:58

AUSTIN, Texas (FOX 7 Austin) - The LBJ School of Public Affairs and the LBJ Foundation will be hosting a public forum featuring Mayor Steve Adler to discuss recent changes to Austin's public order ordinances and the city's plan to move forward with solutions for individuals experiencing homelessness.

This forum will take place at the LBJ Auditorium on the University of Texas at Austin campus on Thursday, August 29 from 6 to 8 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

Doors will open at 5 p.m.

The forum will kick off with a welcome from Dean Angela Evans of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and will be moderated by Steven Pedigo, professor of practice and the director of the LBJ Urban Lab.

Panelists include:

Mayor Steve AdlerAustin Police Chief Brian ManleySusan McDowell '-- CEO, LifeWorksMatthew Mollica '-- Executive Director of ECHO Chris Harris '-- Community Advocate, Homes Not HandcuffsSherri Greenberg '-- Clinical Professor, LBJ School of Public AffairsBill Brice '-- VP Investor Relations, Downtown Austin AllianceThe forum will begin at 6 p.m. and include a Q&A portion.

Questions can be submitted ahead of time to lbjcommunications@austin.utexas.edu, or you may submit them in writing in the lobby of the auditorium that evening.

Free parking is available in the LBJ Library Visitors' lot (#38), located at 2313 Red River St., and Lots #37 and #39, after 5 p.m. Overflow parking will be available in Manor Garage on a self-pay, space available basis. A max of two seats can be held with each RSVP.

To RSVP or to learn more information on the public forum, click here.

---

ARCH director says camping outside shelter becoming emergency situation

Nearly 800 at Downtown Austin Alliance town hall forum on homeless rules

Austin police union president says updated camping ordinances are tying officers' hands

Town hall meeting to be held on city's homeless ordinances

Mayor proposes possible locations to restrict camping, sitting, lying

Brexit

KASSAM: The Queen Just Saved Brexit By Neutralizing Parliament | The Daily Caller

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:00

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On Off

Patriots Only

Opinion(Photo by John Stillwell - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Comments August 28, 2019 12:00 PM ETShe's not ''just a figurehead.''

Her Majesty The Queen is Britain's final constitutional backstop. On Aug. 28, she acted in the interest of the majority of people in Britain. She approved Prime Minister Boris Johnson's request to suspend Parliament from early September to mid-October.

The move paves the way for Johnson to follow through on Brexit. The British people voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, but Parliament has sought to thwart the people's will for the last three years.

Parliament has of course done itself no favors as of late: originally voting in favor of the referendum itself, voting for Article 50 '-- which notified the EU of the result and intent to leave '-- voting for the Withdrawal Act, which set leaving in motion, but then rejecting a deal with the EU three times.

The last time Parliament blocked the United Kingdom from leaving with ''no deal'' (that is, without kowtowing to the EU's demands), the deciding vote was cast by an anti-Brexit member of Parliament who had just been convicted of lying to the police.

In the parlance of the HBO series ''Succession,'' the Brexit process had become a ''s**t show in a f**k factory,'' almost entirely because of Parliament.

Now the queen has allowed Johnson's administration to ''prorogue'' Parliament if it wishes. This means the rump of anti-democratic members who have been stalling the process may not sit between Sept. 9 and Oct. 14, and will likely not have enough time to stop a ''no deal'' Brexit '-- or even to call a motion of ''no confidence'' in the prime minister '-- again.

If this happens, Britain leaves without a deal on Oct. 31.

Such authority is historically sound.

A.V. Dicey wrote in 'The Law of the Constitution' (1885): ''The House can in accordance with the constitution be deprived of power [when] there is fair reason to suppose that the opinion of the House is not the opinion of the electors.''

Edmund Burke noted: ''The virtue, spirit, and essence of an House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation. It was not instituted to be a controul upon the people, as of late it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency. It was designed as a controul for the people.''

Parliament has now repeatedly failed to act as a control for the people.

DEAL OR NO DEAL

It has also been the most spoken phrase in Westminster and beyond for the past three years.

When Britain voted to leave, the referendum question didn't ask what kind of leaving we would prefer. In the same way you don't ask you house guests whether they'd like to exit through the back door, the first floor window, or through a series of underground tunnels after you host them for dinner. For Britons, the front door was always the obvious option.

But both Parliament and the European Union kept trying to close that front door for fear of emboldening other nations to leave. For a while it looked like we were going to have to scramble up the chimney, covered in the soot of Theresa May's half-Brexit withdrawal agreement.

And while No Deal is ''clean'' insofar as it cuts the Gordian knot, it also means a lot of international deals over things like access to skies, trade, regulation, environmental protections and more will need to be dealt with quickly, and with much common sense.

The European Union knows our regulatory regime. The European Union deals with nations across the world which don't necessarily live up to their own standards. And yet anti-Brexiteers have been pretending the sky would fall and the food would run out in a post-hard Brexit scenario. This is scaremongery at its finest.

IRELAND

Even the famed ''Irish backstop,'' which U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to leverage as a reason to oppose a new U.K.-U.S. trade deal, is a grossly overstated problem.

While Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for certain have their unique border problems '-- including a seemingly mildly resurgent religious strife between the two nations '-- most of the trade going between the two countries operates in a similar way to the U.S. and Canada. Along predictable places of entry, and with agreeable standards between the two.

The idea that a slightly altered trading situation would lead to a full-on return of ''The Troubles'' is expressed only by those who would like to see Brexit fail: globalists.

The U.K.'s constitution is pretty clear for those who care to understand it, about just about everything to do with the balance of powers between our branches of government.

There is significant overlap between the branches, which is something Americans are not particularly used to.

But Sir William Blackstone '' who was a source for many of America's founders on the subject of common law '-- was clear about the need to keep Parliament in check if they refused to represent the will of the people.

The queen's intervention takes Brexit one step closer to a reality on Oct. 31. Of course, there will be complaints by pipsqueak Speaker of the Commons John Bercow, and there will likely be court challenges.

It isn't clear whether Johnson has the brass tacks to carry out such a prorogation, or whether this is simply a negotiating tactic for him. Something to keep in the back pocket in case Parliament tries for a vote of no confidence in him.

Still, that's an incredible risk to take, given the constitutional concerns raised as a result of Her Majesty's intervention. It's a risk that Boris and the Conservative Party can't afford to take and then not deliver Brexit. The country '-- left and right alike '-- would loathe them for marching us up to the top of the hill, and then marching down again.

Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) is a Claremont Institute fellow. He is the author of two bestselling books: ''No Go Zones'' and ''Enoch Was Right.''

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller

A no-deal Brexit would make it harder for Europeans to travel with pets | PBS NewsHour

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Archived Version

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:00

LONDON '-- All across Europe, families and couples on vacation are seamlessly crossing borders with their beloved dog, cat or even ferret, thanks to the European Union Pet Passport scheme. Now, as a no-deal Brexit looms as a possibility for Britain, free pet travel is under threat.

If the U.K. leaves the European Union on Oct. 31 without a divorce deal '-- which is increasingly likely under new Prime Minister Boris Johnson '-- that could result in Britain being chucked out of the pet passport program. And that would hit pet owners on both sides of the English Channel.

READ MORE: Germany's Merkel dangles possibility of negotiated Brexit

Some 250,000 British cats and dogs are taken to the EU on holiday by their owners every year. In 2017, the British government issued over 90,000 pet passports to veterinary practices in the U.K.

Dave Kent, who has relied on his guide dog for 40 years, says the prospect of more paperwork and long waits is alarming.

''It's not like you can leave your dog behind if you've got some business or a holiday in Germany or the Netherlands or Italy, or anywhere else in Europe,'' he says. ''You can't just suddenly go to those countries and rent a guide dog.''

In order to vacation in Europe now, British pets need a passport, a rabies vaccine and a microchip. After three weeks, they are cleared to go. Before returning home, animals get a tapeworm tablet from a veterinarian. If the pets' vaccinations are kept up to date, the passport is valid for three years.

Before European pets had their own passports, animals arriving in Britain from the EU had to be quarantined for six months.

The thought of returning to a more complicated system is a worry for pet owner Mark Elsden in Newhaven in southern England, who is used to vacationing in France with his dog Alfie.

Before European pets had their own passports, animals arriving in Britain from the EU had to be quarantined for six months.

''There's no consistency, no information, no certainty about what's going to happen,'' he says.

The British government's spokesperson on animal issues, Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss, says pet owners should prepare for a no-deal Brexit.

In practice, that means that the process of preparing a pet for travel would quadruple.

''If you're looking to travel, you need to see your vet at least four months before the date of travel,'' says Daniella Dos Santos from the British Veterinary Association.

A pet still needs the microchip and the rabies vaccine, but it also needs a blood test at least thirty days after the vaccine. If the pet passes that test, owners need to wait three months before they can travel, bringing the whole timeline to at least four months.

Then, Dos Santos says, pet owners need additional certification to leave the country '-- export health certificates '-- so that's another visit to the veterinarian. Pets will also need a new health certificate for each trip to the EU.

On top of that, pet owners would be able to travel the EU from only a select few entry points.

Katherine Sofoluke has a passport for her miniature Dachshund called George, with whom she recently toured central France.

''Some people probably think it's ridiculous, but to us, George is part of the family,'' she said.

Travelling with the Dachshund also means Sofoluke doesn't have to pay costly kennel fees or find a dog sitter. But that may be the simpler option if the Pet Passport scheme is replaced with a more complex system.

''If it becomes a really arduous task, for kind of a week or two abroad, it's not worth it,'' she said.

British authorities say they are talking to guide dog associations to help them prepare, but that is cold comfort for Kent, who finds the situation utterly confusing.

''It's a real dog's dinner in my opinion, and one that I don't think my dog would even want to eat.''

OTG

Lockdown and Census

Anonymous...

I work at a university and the second day of classes

administration was left flat-footed after a technology glitch. Over the past

several years the school has moved to automated door locks on many buildings

and classrooms. These doors are unlocked at specific times of day and days of

the week based on a central server.

Well after a nightly technology glitch, the network/servers

were down in the morning and guess what, tons of students couldn't get into

classrooms. Employees couldn't get into their buildings. Even some employees

found their building "master" key didn't open many of the doors they

were supposed to. Police were asked to open many doors.

Just another reason the internet of things and making

everything a smart device is shit and will be the end of us all once we are

fully compliant. A single glitch can ruin us all.

On another side note I signed up to work for the 2020

census. What a shit show that thing will be. I sat through two days of training

and they aren't hiring the best let me tell you. The guy behind me asked if

"the shift key is how you make capitals." Everyone is provided a

laptop so this all happens electronically as well. (Think of the coming

glitches and possible voter fraud possibilities if those systems are

compromised) This training was an absolute joke and at least 1/3rd of the

class, at the end, I had zero confidence would be able to do their jobs

correctly.

All we're doing at this point is verifying addresses. But

with all the talk about the citizenship question and the census "Printing

Forms" I learned the entire thing will be online in the spring. They are

going to email a postcard or something and ask everyone to do it online. If

they don't then they'll send out numerators on foot. So, it's not like,

whatever they are printing, they would be printing a questionnaires for every

home.

Lastly, we are asked to count persons "experiencing

homelessness" whom are living in caves, tents or pretty much anything

else. So if we do find these people we mark them on a a little map and I guess

someone will come out later. It's good to know they are keeping the terminology

in sync across the propaganda channels.

Keep up the good work, always enjoy the show.

Doorbell-camera firm Ring teams with 400 police forces, extending surveillance reach - SFGate

Link to Article

Archived Version

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 11:02

The doorbell-camera company Ring has quietly forged video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 police forces across the United States, granting them potential access to homeowners' camera footage and a powerful role in what the company calls the nation's "new neighborhood watch."

The partnerships let police automatically request the video recorded by homeowners' cameras within a specific time and area, helping officers see footage from the company's millions of Internet-connected cameras installed nationwide, the company said. Officers don't receive ongoing or live-video access, and homeowners can decline the requests, which Ring sends via email, thanking them for "making your neighborhood a safer place."

The number of police deals, which has not previously been reported, is likely to fuel broader questions about privacy, surveillance and the expanding reach of tech giants and local police. The rapid growth of the program, which began in spring 2018, surprised some civil liberties advocates, who thought that fewer than 300 agencies had signed on.

Ring is owned by Amazon, which bought the firm last year for more than $800 million, financial filings show. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.

Ring officials and law-enforcement partners portray the vast camera network as an irrepressible shield for neighborhoods, saying it can assist police investigators and protect homes from criminals, intruders and thieves.

"The mission has always been making the neighborhood safer," said Eric Kuhn, the general manager of Neighbors, Ring's crime-focused companion app. "We've had a lot of success in terms of deterring crime and solving crimes that would otherwise not be solved as quickly."

But legal experts and privacy advocates have voiced alarm about the company's eyes-everywhere ambitions and increasingly close relationship with police, saying the program could threaten civil liberties, turn residents into informants and subject innocent people, including those who Ring users have flagged as "suspicious," to greater surveillance and potential risk.

"If the police demanded every citizen put a camera at their door and give officers access to it, we might all recoil," said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor and author of "The Rise of Big Data Policing."

By tapping into "a perceived need for more self-surveillance and by playing on consumer fears about crime and security," he added, Ring has found "a clever workaround for the development of a wholly new surveillance network, without the kind of scrutiny that would happen if it was coming from the police or government."

Launched in 2013 as a line of internet-connected "smart doorbells," Ring has grown into one of the nation's biggest household names in home security. The company, based in Santa Monica, California, sells a line of alarm systems, floodlight cameras and motion-detecting doorbell cameras starting at $99, as well as monthly "Ring Protect" subscriptions that allow homeowners to save the videos or have their systems professionally monitored around the clock.

Ring users are alerted when the doorbell chimes or the camera senses motion, and they can view their camera's live feed from afar using a mobile app. Users also have the option of sharing footage to Ring's public social network, Neighbors, which allows people to report local crimes, discuss suspicious events and share videos from their Ring cameras, cellphones and other devices.

The Neighbors feed operates like an endless stream of local suspicion, combining official police reports compiled by Neighbors' "News Team" with what Ring calls "hyperlocal" posts from nearby homeowners reporting stolen packages, mysterious noises, questionable visitors and missing cats. About a third of Neighbors posts are for "suspicious activity" or "unknown visitors," the company said. (About a quarter of posts are crime-related; a fifth are for lost pets.)

Users, which the company calls "neighbors," are anonymous on the app, but the public video does not obscure faces or voices from anyone caught on camera. Participating police officers can chat directly with users on the Neighbors feed and get alerts when a homeowner posts a message from inside their watched jurisdiction. The Neighbors app also alerts users when a new police force partners up, saying, "Your Ring Neighborhood just got a whole lot stronger."

To seek out Ring video that has not been publicly shared, officers can use a special "Neighbors Portal" map interface to designate a time range and local area, up to half a square mile wide, and get Ring to send an automated email to all users within that range, alongside a case number and message from police.

The user can click to share their Ring videos, review them before sharing, decline or, at the bottom of the email, unsubscribe from future footage-sharing requests. "If you would like to take direct action to make your neighborhood safer, this is a great opportunity," an email supplied by Ring states.

Ring says police officers don't have access to live video feeds and aren't told which homes use Ring cameras or how homeowners respond unless the users consent. Officers could previously access a "heat map" showing the general density of where Ring devices were in use, but the company said it has removed that feature from the video request because it was deemed "no longer useful."

Ring said it would not provide user video footage in response to a subpoena, but would comply if company officials were presented with a search warrant or thought they had a legal obligation to produce the content.

"Ring does not disclose customer information in response to government demands unless we're required to do so to comply with a legally valid and binding order," the company said in a statement.

Ring users consent to the company giving recorded video to "law enforcement authorities, government officials and/or third parties" if the company thinks it's necessary to comply with "legal process or reasonable government request," its terms of service state. The company says it can also store footage deleted by the user to comply with legal obligations.

The high-resolution cameras can provide detailed images of not just a front doorstep but also neighboring homes across the street and down the block. Ring users have further expanded their home monitoring by installing the motion-detecting cameras along driveways, decks and rooftops.

Some officers said they now look for Ring doorbells, notable for their glowing circular buttons, when investigating crimes or canvassing neighborhoods, in case they need to pursue legal maneuvers later to obtain the video.

Ring users have shared videos of package thieves, burglars and carjackers in hopes of naming and shaming the perpetrators, but they've also done so for people - possibly salespeople, petitioners or strangers in need of help - who knock on the door and leave without incident. (Other recorded visitors include lizards, deer, mantises, snakes and snooping raccoons.)

Ring users' ability to report people as suspicious has been criticized for its potential to contribute to racial profiling and heightened community distrust. Last Halloween in southern Maryland, a Ring user living near a middle school posted a video of two boys ringing their doorbell with the title: "Early trick or treat, or are they up to no good?"

After The Post shared this video with Ring, the company removed it, saying it no longer fits the service's community guidelines because "there is no objective reason stated that would put their behavior in question."

Since formally launching its Neighbors police partnerships with officers in Greenfield, Wisconsin in March 2018, Ring has extended the program to 401 police departments and sheriff's offices across the country, from northwest Washington state to Key West, Florida, company data show.

Shortly after this story was published, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff released a blog post saying that count had already expanded, to 405 agencies.

The partnerships cover vast expanses of major states - with 31 agencies in California, 57 in Texas and 67 in Florida - and blanket entire regions beneath Ring's camera network, including roughly a dozen agencies each in the metropolitan areas surrounding Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Kansas City, Missouri.

Sgt. William Pickering, an officer with the Norfolk Police Department in Virginia, which is working with Ring, compared the system's expansion to the onset of DNA evidence in criminal cases - a momentous capability, unlocked by new technology, that helps police gain the upper hand.

"We have so many photojournalists out there, and they're right there when things happen, and they're able to take photos and videos all the time. As a law-enforcement agency, that is of great value to us," Pickering said.

"When a neighbor posts a suspicious individual who walked across their front lawn, that allows them at that very moment to share that in real-time with anyone who's been watching. Now we have everybody in the community being alerted to a suspicious person."

(A Ring spokeswoman later said this example would be removed from Neighbors because it does not pass the service's community guidelines, which require "an attempted criminal activity or unusual behavior that is cause for concern.")

Ring has pushed aggressively to secure new police allies. Some police officials said they first met with Ring at a law-enforcement conference, after which the company flew representatives to police headquarters to walk officers through the technology and help them prepare for real-world deployment.

The company has urged police officials to use social media to encourage homeowners to use Neighbors, and Pickering said the Norfolk department had posted a special code to its Facebook page to encourage residents to sign on.

Ring has offered discounts to cities and community groups that spend public or taxpayer-supported funding on the cameras. The firm has also given free cameras to police departments that they can then distribute to local homeowners. The company said it began phasing out the giveaway program for new partners earlier this year.

Pickering said his agency is currently working with its city attorney to classify the roughly 40 cameras Ring gave them as a legal donation. But some officers said they were uncomfortable with the gift, because it could be construed as the police extending an official seal of approval to a private company.

"We don't want to push a particular product," said Radd Rotello, an officer with the Frisco Police Department in Texas, which has partnered with Ring. "We as the police department are not doing that. That's not our place."

Ring has for months sought to keep key details of its police-partnership program confidential, but public records from agencies across the country have revealed glimpses of the company's close work with local police. In a June email to a New Jersey police officer first reported by Motherboard, a Ring representative suggested ways officers could improve their "opt-in rate" for video requests, including greater interaction with users on the Neighbors app.

"The more users you have the more useful information you can collect," the representative wrote. Ring says it offers training and education materials to its police partners so they can accurately represent the service's work.

Ring officials have stepped up their sharing of video from monitored doorsteps to help portray the devices as theft deterrents and friendly home companions. In one recent example, a father in Massachusetts can be seen using his Ring Video Doorbell's speakers to talk with his daughter's date while he was at work, saying, "I still get to see your face, but you don't get to see mine."

The company is also pushing to market itself as a potent defense for community peace of mind, saying its cameras offer "proactive home and neighborhood security in a way no other company has before." The company is hiring video producers and on-camera hosts to develop videos marketing the brand, with a job listing stating that applicants should deliver ideas with an "approachable yet authoritative tone."

Rotello, who runs his department's neighborhood-watch program, said Ring's local growth has had an interesting side effect: People now believe "crime is rampant in Frisco," now that they see it all mapped and detailed in a mobile app. He has had to inform people, he said, that "the crime has always been there; you're just now starting to figure it out."

He added, however, that the technology has become a potent awareness tool for crime prevention, and he said he appreciated how the technology had inspired in residents a newfound vigilance.

"Would you rather live in an 'ignorance is bliss' type of world?" he said. "Or would you rather know what's going on?"

That hyper-awareness of murky and sometimes-distant criminal threats has been widely criticized by privacy advocates, who argue that Ring has sought to turn police officers into surveillance-system salespeople and capitalize on neighborhood fears.

"It's a business model based in paranoia," said Evan Greer, deputy director for the digital advocacy group Fight for the Future. "They're doing what Uber did for taxis, but for surveillance cameras, by making them more user-friendly. . . . It's a privately run surveillance dragnet built outside the democratic process, but they're marketing it as just another product, just another app."

Ring's expansion has also led some to question its future plans. The company last year applied for a facial-recognition patent that could alert when a person designated as "suspicious" was caught on camera. The cameras do not currently use facial-recognition software, and a spokeswoman said the application was designed only to explore future possibilities.

Amazon, Ring's parent company, has developed facial-recognition software, called Rekognition, that is currently used by police across the country. The technology is improving all the time: Earlier this month, Amazon's Web Services arm announced it had upgraded the face-scanning system's accuracy at estimating a person's emotion and was even perceptive enough to track "a new emotion: 'Fear.'"

For now, the Ring systems' police expansion is earning early community support. Mike Diaz, a member of the city council for Chula Vista, Calif., where police have partnered with Ring, said the cameras could be an important safeguard for some local neighborhoods where residents are tired of dealing with crime. He's not bothered, he added, by the concerns he's heard about how the company is partnering with police in hopes of selling more cameras.

"That's America, right?" Diaz said. "Who doesn't want to put bad guys away?"

Ring, the doorbell-camera firm, has partnered with 400 police forces, extending surveillance reach - The Washington Post

Link to Article

Archived Version

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:54

Listen on Post Reports: Reporter Drew Harwell on a video-sharing partnership that some homeowners see as 'a step toward Big Brother'

Ring is owned by Amazon, which bought the firm last year for more than $800 million, financial filings show. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Ring officials and law enforcement partners portray the vast camera network as an irrepressible shield for neighborhoods, saying it can assist police investigators and protect homes from criminals, intruders and thieves.

''The mission has always been making the neighborhood safer,'' said Eric Kuhn, the general manager of Neighbors, Ring's crime-focused companion app. ''We've had a lot of success in terms of deterring crime and solving crimes that would otherwise not be solved as quickly.''

But legal experts and privacy advocates have voiced alarm about the company's eyes-everywhere ambitions and increasingly close relationship with police, saying the program could threaten civil liberties, turn residents into informants, and subject innocent people, including those who Ring users have flagged as ''suspicious,'' to greater surveillance and potential risk.

''If the police demanded every citizen put a camera at their door and give officers access to it, we might all recoil,'' said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor and author of ''The Rise of Big Data Policing.''

By tapping into ''a perceived need for more self-surveillance and by playing on consumer fears about crime and security,'' he added, Ring has found ''a clever workaround for the development of a wholly new surveillance network, without the kind of scrutiny that would happen if it was coming from the police or government.''

A map of Ring's more than 400 police partnerships. (Courtesy of Ring)

Begun in 2013 as a line of Internet-connected ''smart doorbells,'' Ring has grown into one of the nation's biggest household names in home security. The company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., sells a line of alarm systems, floodlight cameras and motion-detecting doorbell cameras starting at $99, as well as monthly ''Ring Protect'' subscriptions that allow homeowners to save the videos or have their systems professionally monitored around the clock.

The Neighbors feed operates like an endless stream of local suspicion, combining official police reports compiled by Neighbors' ''News Team'' with what Ring calls ''hyperlocal'' posts from nearby homeowners reporting stolen packages, mysterious noises, questionable visitors and missing cats. About a third of Neighbors posts are for ''suspicious activity'' or ''unknown visitors,'' the company said. (About a quarter of posts are crime-related; a fifth are for lost pets.)

Users, which the company calls ''neighbors,'' are anonymous on the app, but the public video does not obscure faces or voices from anyone caught on camera. Participating police officers can chat directly with users on the Neighbors feed and get alerts when a homeowner posts a message from inside their watched jurisdiction. The Neighbors app also alerts users when a new police force partners up, saying, ''Your Ring Neighborhood just got a whole lot stronger.''

To seek out Ring video that has not been publicly shared, officers can use a special ''Neighbors Portal'' map interface to designate a time range and local area, up to half a square mile wide, and get Ring to send an automated email to all users within that range, alongside a case number and message from police.

The user can click to share their Ring videos, review them before sharing, decline or, at the bottom of the email, unsubscribe from future footage-sharing requests. ''If you would like to take direct action to make your neighborhood safer, this is a great opportunity,'' an email supplied by Ring states.

Ring says police officers don't have access to live video feeds and aren't told which homes use Ring cameras or how homeowners responded unless the users consent. Officers could previously access a ''heat map'' showing the general density of where Ring devices were in use, but the company said it has removed that feature from the video request because it was deemed ''no longer useful."

Ring said it would not provide user video footage in response to a subpoena but would comply if company officials were presented with a search warrant or thought they had a legal obligation to produce the content. ''Ring does not disclose customer information in response to government demands unless we're required to do so to comply with a legally valid and binding order,'' the company said in a statement.

Ring users consent to the company giving recorded video to ''law enforcement authorities, government officials and/or third parties'' if the company thinks it's necessary to comply with ''legal process or reasonable government request,'' its terms of service state. The company says it can also store footage deleted by the user to comply with legal obligations.

Aggressive Amazon tactic pushes you to consider its own brand before you click 'buy'

Ring users have shared videos of package thieves, burglars and vandals in the hope of naming and shaming and apprehending the perpetrators, but they've also done so for people '-- possibly salespeople, petitioners or strangers in need of help '-- who knock on the door and leave without incident. (Other recorded visitors include lizards, deer, mantises, snakes and snooping raccoons.)

The video, which has been viewed in the Neighbors app more than 5,700 times, inspired a rash of comments: Some questioned the children's motives, while others said they looked like harmless kids. ''Those cuties? You're joking, right?'' one commenter said. After The Post shared this video with Ring, the company removed it, saying it no longer fits the service's community guidelines because ''there is no objective reason stated that would put their behavior in question.''

As summer camps turn on facial recognition, parents demand: More smiles, please

Since formally beginning its Neighbors police partnerships with officers in Greenfield, Wis., in March 2018, Ring has extended the program to 401 police departments and sheriff's offices nationwide, from northwest Washington state to Key West, Fla., company data show. Shortly after this story was published, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff released a blog post saying that count had already expanded, to 405 agencies.

The partnerships cover vast expanses of major states '-- with 31 agencies in California, 57 in Texas and 67 in Florida '-- and blanket entire regions beneath Ring's camera network, including about a dozen agencies each in the metropolitan areas surrounding Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

Sgt. William Pickering, an officer with the Norfolk Police Department in Virginia, which is working with Ring, compared the system's expansion to the onset of DNA evidence in criminal cases '-- a momentous capability, unlocked by new technology, that helps police gain the upper hand.

''We have so many photojournalists out there, and they're right there when things happen, and they're able to take photos and videos all the time. As a law enforcement agency, that is of great value to us,'' Pickering said.

''When a neighbor posts a suspicious individual who walked across their front lawn, that allows them at that very moment to share that in real time with anyone who's been watching. Now we have everybody in the community being alerted to a suspicious person.'' (A Ring spokeswoman later said this example would be removed from Neighbors because it does not pass the service's community guidelines, which require ''an attempted criminal activity or unusual behavior that is cause for concern.'')

The doorbells have eyes: The privacy battle brewing over home security cameras

Ring has offered discounts to cities and community groups that spend public or taxpayer-supported money on the cameras. The firm also has given free cameras to police departments that can be distributed to local homeowners. The company said it began phasing out the giveaway program for new partners earlier this year.

Pickering said his agency is working with its city attorney to classify the roughly 40 cameras Ring gave them as a legal donation. But some officers said they were uncomfortable with the gift, because it could be construed as the police extending an official seal of approval to a private company.

''We don't want to push a particular product,'' said Radd Rotello, an officer with the Frisco Police Department in Texas, which has partnered with Ring. ''We as the police department are not doing that. That's not our place.''

Oregon became a testing ground for Amazon's facial-recognition policing. But what if Rekognition gets it wrong?

Ring has for months sought to keep key details of its police-partnership program confidential, but public records from agencies nationwide have revealed glimpses of the company's close work with local police. In a June email to a New Jersey police officer first reported by Motherboard, a Ring representative suggested ways officers could improve their ''opt-in rate'' for video requests, including greater interaction with users on the Neighbors app.

''The more users you have the more useful information you can collect,'' the representative wrote. Ring says it offers training and education materials to its police partners so they can accurately represent the service's work.

Ring officials have stepped up their sharing of video from monitored doorsteps to help portray the devices as theft deterrents and friendly home companions. In one recent example, a father in Massachusetts can be seen using his Ring Video Doorbell's speakers to talk to his daughter's date while he was at work, saying, ''I still get to see your face, but you don't get to see mine.''

The company is also pushing to market itself as a potent defense for community peace of mind, saying its cameras offer ''proactive home and neighborhood security in a way no other company has before.'' The company is hiring video producers and on-camera hosts to develop user testimonials and videos marketing the Ring brand, with a job listing stating that applicants should deliver ideas with an ''approachable yet authoritative tone.''

Rotello, who runs his department's neighborhood-watch program, said Ring's local growth has had an interesting side effect: People now believe ''crime is rampant in Frisco,'' now that they see it all mapped and detailed in a mobile app. He has had to inform people, he said, that ''the crime has always been there; you're just now starting to figure it out.''

He added, however, that the technology has become a potent awareness tool for crime prevention, and he said he appreciates how the technology has inspired in residents a newfound vigilance.

''Would you rather live in an 'ignorance is bliss' type of world?'' he said. ''Or would you rather know what's going on?''

FBI, ICE find state driver's license photos are a gold mine for facial-recognition searches

''It's a business model based in paranoia,'' said Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital advocacy group Fight for the Future. ''They're doing what Uber did for taxis, but for surveillance cameras, by making them more user-friendly. '... It's a privately run surveillance dragnet built outside the democratic process, but they're marketing it as just another product, just another app.''

Ring's expansion also has led some to question its plans. The company applied for a facial-recognition patent last year that could alert when a person designated as ''suspicious'' was caught on camera. The cameras do not currently use facial-recognition software, and a spokeswoman said the application was designed only to explore future possibilities.

Amazon, Ring's parent company, has developed facial-recognition software, called Rekognition, that is used by police nationwide. The technology is improving all the time: Earlier this month, Amazon's Web Services arm announced that it had upgraded the face-scanning system's accuracy at estimating a person's emotion and was even perceptive enough to track ''a new emotion: 'Fear.' ''

For now, the Ring systems' police expansion is earning early community support. Mike Diaz, a member of the city council in Chula Vista, Calif., where police have partnered with Ring, said the cameras could be an important safeguard for some local neighborhoods where residents are tired of dealing with crime. He's not bothered, he added, by the concerns he has heard about how the company is partnering with police in hopes of selling more cameras.

''That's America, right?'' Diaz said. ''Who doesn't want to put bad guys away?''

Dig Deeper: Personal tech + Privacy

Want to learn about how to keep your personal information private? Check out our curated list of stories below.

Get smart about stopping spam calls

Americans receive more than 5.2 billion automated calls in a month. But there are new apps to help stem the deluge.

Understanding what your phone tracks for marketers

As tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler slept, a dozen marketing companies used his iPhone to learn his number, email, location and IP address.

Say no to your default privacy settings

Changing privacy default settings means you'll get less personalization from some services, but it can slow down the number of eerie on-the-nose ads driven by data siphoned by major companies.

Google Warns Against Blocking 'Cookies' Entirely, Triggering Criticism - WSJ

Link to Article

Archived Version

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:04

Tech company proposes ''privacy sandbox'' to set new standards after promising in May to let users restrict cookies

After promising to offer tools to let users limit ''cookies,'' tiny files that help internet and advertising companies track users, Alphabet Inc.'s Google suggested it won't go any further, saying in a blog post that blocking cookies entirely could be counterproductive for user privacy.

The post from late last week has drawn criticism in recent days from some privacy advocates who say Google's Chrome internet browser should catch up to the stricter practices of rivals Firefox and Safari.

...

After promising to offer tools to let users limit ''cookies,'' tiny files that help internet and advertising companies track users, Alphabet Inc. 's Google suggested it won't go any further, saying in a blog post that blocking cookies entirely could be counterproductive for user privacy.

Ad tech companies and some digital publishers are wary of a major crackdown on cookies, saying it would hurt their businesses.

In its post, Google said blocking cookies will encourage the rise of other, more nefarious methods of tracking internet users.

These include so-called ''fingerprinting'' through which sites collect various signals about users, such as the fonts on their screens or the devices they use, to keep track of unique individuals as they browse the internet.

Google said it was exploring new privacy technologies to enable personalized ads without compromising privacy, in a framework it called the ''privacy sandbox.''

As part of that initiative, Google proposed a so-called ''privacy budget'' that would impose a cap on the amount of data any site could request from a browser that might be used to identify a user.

Cookies are small text files stored in internet browsers that let companies follow users around the internet, gathering information such as which sites they visit and what ads they view or click. Hundreds of digital ad companies rely on them to collect user data.

Google's latest comments on the technology surprised some in the industry who assumed the company was working toward phasing out cookies after remarks Google made in May.

The company promised at that time to launch new tools to restrict cookies. Those tools are going forward, but a full-on cookie crackdown isn't happening.

''Many folks were expecting Google to do something. When major competitors have come out with a much praised user feature, you can imagine they would come out with something that competes with that,'' said Jonathan Mayer, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University. ''This notion that blocking cookies is bad for privacy is completely disingenuous.''

''I interpret the announcement as giving Google an opportunity to try to show forward momentum on privacy while at the same time not doing anything that would negatively impact its own business interests,'' said Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, a trade association for online publishers that has argued online tech platforms are harming competition and consumers. Google's digital ad business uses data on users collected partially through cookies.

Chetna Bindra, Google's senior product manager for trust and privacy, said the criticism ''misstates the intent of what we're trying to do. It's more about broadening this conversation beyond cookies.''

The debate extends to the issue of who benefits financially from browser cookies. Google cited its own research showing that publishers lose an average of 52% of their advertising revenue when their readers block cookies.

The results differ substantially from an academic study published this spring, which found that publishers only receive about 4% more ad revenue for an ad impression that has a cookie enabled than for one that doesn't.

Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com

Maureen Baginski - Wikipedia

Link to Article

Archived Version

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 21:07

Early life and education Edit Before beginning her intelligence career, Baginski graduated with a BA and MA in Slavic Languages and Linguistics from the University of Albany where she also received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2005 for her service to the nation.[1]

Public Sector Career Edit Baginski began her career in intelligence in 1979 as a Russian language instructor at the NSA during the Cold War.[2][3] She held various positions over her nearly quarter-century at the NSA, including lead analyst for the Soviet Union, Assistant Deputy Director of Technology and Systems, Chief Officer of the Director, Executive Assistant to the Director of NSA/Central Security Service, Senior Operations Officer in the National Security Operations Center, and SIGINT Director, NSA's third highest position.[2] Baginski was the SIGINT Director on September 11, 2001 and was critical to the NSA's response after the terrorist attacks while also directing the Extended SIGINT Enterprise[clarification needed ] in order to acquire, produce, and disseminate foreign SIGINT to a variety of government and military customers.[3]

In the documentary film ''A Good American'',then-Senior NSA Executive Thomas Drake quotes Baginski as saying ''9/11 is a gift to NSA. We're gonna get all the money we need and then some,'' in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Retired NSA Analyst Bill Binney - the star of the film - describes Baginski's reaction as ''sickening.''

In 2003, Baginski left her position at the NSA to become the Executive Assistant Director of Intelligence at the FBI. As the Executive Assistant Director of Intelligence at the FBI between 2003-2005, Baginski successfully led the bureau's first-ever intelligence program. She was in charge of adapting the FBI's intelligence capabilities with information technologies, and created an intelligence-sharing platform that helped identify and stop terror plots.[2] As the head of intelligence at the FBI, Baginski helped develop an intelligence career service so that intelligence professionals would be able to advance in their careers at the FBI.[4] Many high-ranking government officials, including President George W. Bush and FBI Director Mueller, acknowledged and applauded Baginski's significant changes at the FBI which improved its capabilities to safeguard the United States of America.[4] Upon her retirement from the FBI, Director Mueller asked Baginski to remain as a senior advisor to the FBI, a position which she accepted.[4]

Private Sector Career Edit Since retiring from the FBI, Baginski has held multiple positions within the private sector. She has been a board member at BearingPoint Inc., Argon ST, and SI International Inc. Baginski has also been President of National Security Systems at SPARTA Inc., Chief Executive Officer at National Security Partners LLC,[5] and Chairwoman Emeriti of AFCEA.[6]

Awards Edit Throughout and after her distinguished career in the public sector, Baginski received several awards, including two Presidential Rank Awards, two Director of Central Intelligence National Achievement Medals, the Director of Military Intelligence's Leadership Award, and NSA's Exceptional Civilian Service Award, and the FBI Intelligence Analysts Association Award.[7]

References Edit

Foursquare Has Creepy Location Data On 100m People And They Are Making $100m Off It '' Gab News

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:27

Purchase the CyberGhost VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.Remember Foursquare? The app from a decade ago where millions of people willingly told the entire internet where they were at any given moment? Well the company still exists and they're making $100m+ on your location data and have consumer profiles on 100m+ people. For some bizarre reason people still allow this parasite of an app to automatically track them as they go about their day.Your reward for doing this? Badges. Stickers. Becoming the ''mayor'' of a location. Childish foolishness is the reward for the stupidity the folks who used''and still use'--this data harvesting machine. Foursquare's reward is hundreds of millions of dollars.

''Everyone was laughing at us, 'Oh, what are you, just people checking in at coffee shops?''' Crowley says. ''Yeah, and they checked in billions of times. So we had this corpus of data, an army of people, who every day were like, 'I'm at Think Coffee.' 'I'm at Think Coffee.' 'I'm at Think Coffee.''' Because of the ''corpus'' of data generated by people like Uncle Tony, Foursquare knows when the dimensions of storefronts change and can tell the difference between an office on the eighth floor and one of the ninth floor.

Source: Ten Years On, Foursquare Is Now Checking In to You

Purchase the CyberGhost VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.In addition to all of those active check-ins, at some point Foursquare began collecting passive data using a ''check-in button you never had to press.'' It doesn't track people 24/7 (in addition to creeping people out, doing so would burn through phones' batteries), but instead, if users opt-in to allow the company to ''always'' track their locations, the app will register when someone stops and determine whether that person is at a red light or inside an Urban Outfitters. The Foursquare database now includes 105 million places and 14 billion check-ins. The result, experts say, is a map that is often more reliable and detailed than the ones generated by Google and Facebook.

The precision of Foursquare's technology, and the added benefit of not doing business with one of the big-four tech companies, is what attracted clients like Uber and Snap to work with the company. (With about 350 employees, Foursquare has branded itself as an ''independent alternative'' to Google and Facebook.) Foursquare will not disclose how many of its clients share their own data (clients are not required to share), but it's safe to assume the data being provided by its clients far outweighs the data being generated by holdout Foursquare City Guide users. All told, the company now has ''interest profiles'' for over 100 million U.S. consumers.

Purchase the PIA VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.When Trump began talking about a Muslim ban in 2016, Crowley wondered if Foursquare had the capability to build a registry. ''We kind of paused everything and we did this audit of the code base to make sure that any of the tools and products, whether they're development tools or advertising tools or measurement tools, let's make sure that people don't have the ability to view stats or build features around sensitive categories.'' Crowley was pleased to find out that Foursquare engineers had already siloed sensitive locations, like places of worship or LGBTQ support centers, into hidden categories that, save for the rare exception, would not be available to developers. Still, Foursquare has access to data on those hidden locations, even if it isn't sharing it.

Purchase the CyberGhost VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.There is currently no federal law regulating what Foursquare can and cannot do with its user data. ''Location data is one of the most sensitive forms of data,'' says Vitak. ''So we want to be sure that consumers have control over that data, that they can edit that data, that they can choose to remove pieces of data, that they just have more agency in that process of how that data is collected, what is collected, and what is done with it after it's collected.'' Vitak and other data-privacy experts say that the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation is ''far from perfect,'' but it is a good guide for consumer protections.Foursquare executives agree. ''We do think the country needs a privacy legal regulatory framework akin to, or smarter than, the GDPR in Europe,'' says Glueck. ''We went out and implemented most of the GDPR rights globally, even though it's only the law in Europe.'' Should lawmakers ask Foursquare executives for input some sort of regulation, Crowley's advice would be pretty straightforward: ''Here's what we do '-- now make everyone else do it.'' But even if Crowley and Glueck have the best intentions, until there is federal oversight, they are a cork in a dam, accountable to themselves, investors, and one day, with a potential IPO looming, shareholders.

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The Purge

Twitter Trust and Safety Advisers Revolt, Scathing Internal Letter Leaked '' Gab News

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Tue, 27 Aug 2019 18:41

Purchase the CyberGhost VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.Twitter's ''Trust And Safety'' thought police are very mad. In a scathing letter, which was leaked to Wired, the advisors on the subjective and ambiguous ''trust and safety'' team expressed their concerns with lack of internal communication and support from Twitter executives and product managers.

From the looks of it, they haven't been in communication for the majority of 2019. They cite the fact that they get no communication from the product teams which makes it difficult for them to communicate to the press when they inevitably come crying to them.

The Trust And Safety Council is a draconian concept that is loaded with far-left activist types and organizations. It appears that the council doesn't actually do very much of anything being that they haven't had a meeting with management in six months. You can read the letter below.

Purchase the PIA VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.Dear Twitter team,

I am writing on behalf of the Trust and Safety Council Members, many of whom copied in have a number of concerns.Up until a call the other week, the last update to the group was December and while some members have continued to have updates and collaboration with their regional Twitter contacts, some have heard absolutely nothing despite constant chasing up. As it was mentioned on both the calls for different time zones the other week, this is unacceptable and many of us were sad to hear no acknowledgement or follow up communication after the calls to address this.

When we joined the Council we did so in the hope that it would be a partnership, one where both parties participate and indeed it started out that way. To have Jack spend time with us on both occasions and speak to us was incredible, as many of the other existing industry safety groups have never had the CEO or anyone senior from the company engage with them.

And indeed many members commented that last year's summit was the best example of a way of working with safety partners within the entire industry, with the access to different twitter teams/departments exemplary. It then continued with excellent engagement via email updates and calls, with advance sharing of information and a chance to input on policies before announcements.

Which is why it has been extremely disappointing to have had no progress updates this year on what we all worked on at the summit and in previous years. Twitter's approach has been in the past innovative and very effective and the Twitter health metrics proposals announced at the summits was an example of this. However we have had no update on these proposals, and we have received no update of our own council member Susan's collaborative study with yourselves. This is no fault of Susan as from what we heard on the call the other week, but is again disappointing to have not had an explanation.

There have been no advance heads up of Twitter's policy or product changes to the council, leaving many of us to have no prior warning or let alone knowledge when answering press and media enquiries about our role and involvement in the council. This is embarrassing. While this email cannot speak for everyone, a large number of voices copied in have shared concerns as a group and I will ask that people don't individually reply so not clog up everyone's inbox, but a number of us did feel it was important to copy everyone in, to keep everyone in the picture, something which has been missing of late.

We would therefore like to have a call with Jack as CEO to discuss this further as a council, and understand his vision for the council, as many of us have seen he continues to tweet in replies to challenges from users about the importance and reasons for the council existing. We trust that this is possible in a similar way Jack speaks on earnings calls.We look forward to hearing from you and hearing details of the suggested call and the next steps,It goes without saying that we all remain dedicated to contributing to safety on the platform.

Twitter's Trust and Safety Council Members

Source: Twitter Trust and Safety Advisers Say They're Being Ignored | WIRED

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Uber's and Lyft's cut of fares can exceed 50%, report finds | Ars Technica

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:05

taken for a ride '-- Fare receipt data showed the surge multiplier riders pay doesn't get to drivers. Kate Cox - Aug 28, 2019 6:37 pm UTC

The core businesses of Uber and Lyft, despite everything else layered on top, spring from a fairly simple premise. Their apps connect people who have cars and are willing to drive them to people who need or want rides, and the companies facilitate payment in exchange for keeping a percentage of the fare. But the cut the companies take is increasing'--and it's more than the companies tell drivers they take, according to a new report.

Jalopnik asked ride-hailing drivers to share fare receipts, and it received data from more than 14,756 real-world trips in response. On average, Jalopnik, found, Uber kept about 35% of the revenue from each ride, and Lyft kept about 38%.

In regulatory filings, however, Uber has reported that its global take rate'--the percentage of the rate it takes, as you might guess'--is closer to 20%. Lyft has not disclosed its take rate publicly, but Jalopnik pointed to prior reporting from Business Insider showing Lyft's rate to be closer to 26%.

When Jalopnik reached Uber and Lyft for comment, both companies disputed the data as a non-representative, too-small sample. An Uber spokesperson told Jalopnik that the approximately 8,900 Uber fares it examined were "not a statistically representative sample, given Uber completes approximately 15 million trips per day around the world."

A spokesperson for Lyft said to Jalopnik that the sample pool did not accurately reflect a cross-section of all Lyft drivers and therefore did not represent the average experience across the board.

''This is robbery''The experiences they do represent, however, include some really ticked-off drivers.

One driver recounted to Jalopnik how he took on a "surge" fare that should have gotten him twice as much as usual for the drive. When all was said and done, however, he received $15 out of the $65 the rider paid for the half-hour, five-mile trip'--meaning Uber pocketed more than 75%.

"This is robbery," the driver told Jalopnik. ''This business is out of control.''

Another driver told Jalopnik that recent changes have dropped her earnings by about 20% this year but said she mostly avoids looking at the breakdowns of fares from individual rides. "It just annoys me," she told Jalopnik, "and there's nothing I can do about it."

While the take rate for fares Jalopnik analyzed averaged between 35% and 40%, more than a quarter of the fares showed take rates in excess of 40%, with some coming in at over 50%. The structure of surge pricing likely shoulders much of the blame for the worst rates, Jalopnik found, as well as the entire model both companies use to pay drivers.

Users of both apps have, since 2016, been presented with upfront fare estimates before they summon a car, so there are no surprises. Drivers, however, are then compensated based on the actual duration and distance of the drive'--decoupling the actual income a driver gets from the fare a rider pays.

The companies have also changed the way drivers are compensated for surge pricing. While passengers see and pay a surge fare multiplier, such as 100% or 200% of the typical base fare, drivers instead mostly receive a flat fee, "typically only a few dollars per ride." That discrepancy for drivers can add up significantly on the bottom line.

Driver groups have organized short-term strikes in various cities in recent months to protest the way the firms treat their drivers, who have been struggling for years to be legally recognized as employees rather than independent contractors.

Legally speaking, however, independent contractors generally have the ability to set terms for their work'--including payment. Thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers, on the other hand, have seen their wages go down without being able to control it.

"What they're doing is exactly what employers do with their workers," a labor and economic expert told Jalopnik.

Australia To Censor Alt Media And Alt Tech Domains During ''Crisis Events'' '' Gab News

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 12:53

Purchase the PIA VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.Australia is apparently going to shut down the entire internet every time a ''crisis event'' happens. Their plan is to block access to any internet domain that hosts ''extremist content during crisis events,'' which effectively means shutting down the entire internet, right?

After all: the media often reports on this ''extremist content'' including republishing manifestos and other such nonsense. Will their websites be censored? As is mentioned below a news station in Australia was recently fined for showing clips from the Facebook livestreamed Christchurch murders. This content spreads like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter, as was demonstrated during the Christchurch shooting.Will Big Tech domains be censored?

I think we all know this won't be the case. Instead, alternative media, news, and tech platforms will be the domains to be censored. Count on it.

Related: Dozens Of People Arrested Over Threats Posted On Big Tech Platforms Australia will block access to internet domains hosting terrorist material during crisis events and will consider legislation to force digital platforms to improve the safety of their services, officials said on Sunday.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is in France to take part in the G7 leaders' forum, said the government intended to prevent extremists from exploiting digital platforms to post extremely violent content.

''We are doing everything we can to deny terrorists the opportunity to glorify their crimes,'' he said in a statement.Australia and New Zealand have increased scrutiny of websites and social media companies in the wake of the Christchurch massacre in March, when 51 worshippers were killed in attacks on two New Zealand mosques.

Purchase the PIA VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.The attack was livestreamed by alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant over Facebook.The government said it would establish a framework to block domains hosting such material. Australia's eSafety Commissioner would determine on a case-by-case basis what should be censored, and was working with industry on arrangements to quickly block access during an attack.A 24/7 Crisis Coordination Centre would be established to monitor the online world for extreme violence or terrorist material. In addition to extremist violence, domains hosting any abhorrent violent material '' defined as content showing murder, attempted murder, rape, torture, or kidnapping '' that is recorded by anyone involved in the conduct also would be blocked, the government said.

Purchase the CyberGhost VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.The government did not elaborate on what legislative options would be used if digital platforms failed to improve safety. Tech giants including Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter, along with Telstra, Vodafone, TPG and Optus are expected to provide details to the government by the end of next month on how they will carry out the recommendations.The firms are all members of the Taskforce to Combat Terrorist and Extreme Violent Material Online, which had recommended a clear framework be established.It was not immediately clear how the move would affect media reporting of terror attacks or civil unrest.

SKY Network Television was fined NZ$4,000 ($2,560) by New Zealand's Broadcasting Standards Authority earlier this month for showing a number of edited clips taken from the alleged Christchurch attacker's 17'minute livestream video.The regulator said in its judgment that, while the broadcast was newsworthy, the clips contained disturbing violent content which could cause distress, or glorify the alleged attacker and promote his messages.(Reporting by Alison Bevege; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Source: Australia to block internet domains that host extremist content during terror attacks | VentureBeat

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Academics Who Are Studying Facebook's Impact on Democracy Threaten to Quit '' Gab News

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:10

Academics are suddenly very interested in social media and how it impacts democracy. It turns out they are pretty mad at Zuck for not giving them enough user data so that they can twist it to support whatever narrative and agenda they have. Imagine working with 83 ''scholars'' on one research project. You're asking for an ivory tower ego battle power trip for the ages.

Purchase the CyberGhost VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.We've seen more and more of these ''academic'' studies popping up since the election of Donald Trump. They are typically deeply flawed in their assertions and conclusions which inevitably argue for censorship, no-platforming, and the dehumanization of political dissidents, wrong think media, and technology platforms. All for the sake of ''muh social justice'' and in this case ''muh democracy.' Have fun with this lot, Zuck.

Purchase the PIA VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.A group of philanthropies working with Facebook Inc to study the social network's impact on democracy threatened on Tuesday to quit, saying the company had failed to make data available to researchers as pledged.

The funders said in a statement that Facebook had granted the 83 scholars selected for the project access to ''only a portion of what they were told they could expect,'' which made it impossible for some to carry out their research. They have given Facebook until Sept. 30 to provide the data.

Their concerns focus on the absence of data that would show which web pages were shared on Facebook as far back as January 2017.The company had yet to say when the data would be made available, the funders added.Facebook said in a statement that it remained committed to the project and would ''continue to provide access to data and tooling to all grant recipients '' current and future.''

Purchase the CyberGhost VPN by clicking the image above to support Gab in the process.The announcement comes only a few months after Facebook launched the research program, which opened the company's propriety data to independent scholars for the first time.Data access was meant to be heavily controlled, with special precautions to protect user privacy.The funding consortium includes both the conservative Charles Koch Foundation and Silicon Valley's Omidyar Network.

''We hope Facebook (not to mention other platform companies) will find a way to provide deeply robust privacy-protected data,'' they said, as ''independent scholarly analysis of social media platforms is essential'' to understanding elections and democracy around the world.

Source: Researchers studying Facebook's impact on democracy threaten to quit '' Reuters

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Advertiser-friendly content guidelines - YouTube Help

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Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:42

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This help content & informationGeneral Help Center experienceUpdated June 2019: This article now includes more examples of content that will receive limited or no ads. There are no policy changes which means you should not expect any difference in how your videos are assessed for advertiser friendliness.

If you're in the YouTube Partner Program, you can monetize with ads. This article aims to help you understand which individual videos on your channel are suitable for advertisers. Our policies apply to all portions of your content (video or live stream, thumbnail, title, description, and tags). Learn more about our best practices.

Our systems don't always get it right, but you can request human review of decisions made by our automated systems.

Note: All content uploaded to YouTube must comply with our Community Guidelines. If your content violates our Community Guidelines, it may be removed from YouTube. If you see violative content,

you can report it.

What you'll find in this article You'll find examples of content not suitable for ads, and will result in a "limited or no ads" monetization state.

Here are all the main topics that are not advertiser-friendly:

Inappropriate languageContent that contains frequent uses of strong profanity or vulgarity throughout the video may not be suitable for advertising. Occasional use of profanity won't necessarily result in your video being unsuitable for advertising, but context matters.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

ViolenceContent where the focal point is on blood, violence, or injury, when presented without additional context, is not suitable for advertising. If you're showing violent content in a news, educational, artistic, or documentary context, that additional context is important. Violence in the normal course of video gameplay is generally acceptable for advertising, but montages where gratuitous violence is the focal point is not.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Category Limited or no ads Content containing gruesome, graphic, or disgusting accounts or imagery Blood, guts, gore, sexual fluids, human or animal waste, crime scene or accident photos Content depicting acts of violence Accounts or images of shootings, explosions, or bombings; execution videos; violent acts committed against animals Content depicting cruelty or gratuitous violence toward animals, such as cockfighting, bullfighting, or dog fighting Videos that contain graphic violence in the context of physical altercations, public demonstrations, or police brutality Raw footage of war casualties with graphic depictions of injury or death Gratuitous violence against children, even if only dramatized or fictional Hunting videos with a focal point in graphical violence, animal death or suffering Adult contentAdult Content Content that features highly sexualized themes is not suitable for advertising, with limited exceptions for non-graphic sexual education videos. Stating your comedic intent is not sufficient and that content may still not be suitable for advertising.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Harmful or dangerous actsContent that promotes harmful or dangerous acts that result in serious physical, emotional, or psychological injury is not suitable for advertising.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Category Limited or no ads Inappropriate pranks, challenges, dares, and stunts Pranks relating to suicide, death, terrorism (like fake bomb scare pranks), or threats with firearms and other lethal weapons Sexually unwanted acts such as forced kissing, groping, or sexual abuse Shows physical harm or distress but is not the focus of the video. This guideline applies to acts performed in non-professional, non-controlled environments Content that induces prolonged emotional distress of a minor Body modification and medical procedures Invasive medical procedures, including cosmetic surgery Pimple-popping or in-grown toenail removal Skin implant procedures Tongue forking surgery Content that threatens or advocates for physical or mental harm on oneself or others Threatening someone with real-life harm Calling for the attack of another person Harm to self, harm to others or harmed by others Content related to suicide, eating disorders, bullying, harassment, domestic violence, or other forms of abuse and self-harm Content that promotes the use of weapons to inflict harm on others Content relating to cannibalism Dangerous acts not to be imitated Content showing the consumption of substances in such quantities that it results in a toxic reaction Failure compilations that include graphic harm and injury Subway or underground surfing Roof-topping Other challenge-based content, which if replicated may result in harm (like the fire challenge, kiki challenge, and bird box challenge) Promoting or advocating for harmful health or medical claims or practices Anti-vaccination, or AIDS denialist movements Non-medical treatments that promise to cure untreatable diseases Content, which implies serious medical conditions, does not exist, or are an elaborate hoax Hateful contentContent that incites hatred against, promotes discrimination, disparages, or humiliates an individual or group of people based on the following is not suitable for advertising:

Race Ethnicity or ethnic origin Nationality Religion Disability Age Veteran status Sexual orientation Gender identity Any other characteristic associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization Content that is satire or comedy may be exempt. Stating your comedic intent is not sufficient and that content may still not be suitable for advertising.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Incendiary and demeaningContent that is gratuitously incendiary, inflammatory, or demeaning may not be suitable for advertising.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Recreational drugs and drug-related contentContent that promotes or features the following is not suitable for advertising:

Sale of illegal drugs, regulated drugs, or substances, or other dangerous products Use of illegal drugs, regulated drugs, or substances, or other dangerous products Abuse of illegal drugs, regulated drugs, or substances, or other dangerous productsVideos discussing drugs or dangerous substances for educational, documentary, and artistic purposes are generally suitable for advertising -- so long as drug use or substance abuse is not graphic or glorified.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Category Limited or no ads Promoting substances that alter mental state for recreational purposes, or otherwise induce "highs" Cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, marijuana, cocaine substitutes, mephedrone, "legal highs", bath salts Promoting products or services marketed as facilitating recreational drug use Pipes, bongs, cannabis coffee shops Promoting instructional content about producing, purchasing, or using recreational drugs Exchanging tips or recommendations on drug use Tobacco-related contentContent that promotes tobacco and tobacco-related products is not suitable for advertising.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Firearms-related contentContent focused on the sale, assembly, abuse, or misuse of firearms is not suitable for advertising.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Controversial issues and sensitive eventsContent that features or focuses on sensitive topics or events is generally not suitable for ads. This policy applies even if the content is purely commentary or contains no graphic imagery.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Adult themes in family contentContent that appears to be appropriate for a general audience but contains adult themes is not suitable for advertising. This guideline applies even if content is done for comedic or satirical purposes.

Examples (non-exhaustive)

Category Limited or no ads Adult themes in family content Content that is made to appear appropriate for a general audience, but contains adult themes, including:

Sex Violence Vulgarity Other depictions of children or popular children's characters, that are unsuitable for a general audience All videos uploaded to YouTube must comply with YouTube's Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. To be able to monetize with ads, you'll need to follow the YouTube Partner Program policies and Google AdSense Program policies.

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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki says YouTube will remain an open platform - Vox

Link to Article

Archived Version

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:39

Can the world's largest video company continue to let its 2 billion users upload anything they want, whenever they want?

Yes, says the woman who runs that company: In a letter addressed to creators on YouTube, CEO Susan Wojcicki says the platform is committed to remaining open because she thinks the upside of that approach very much outweighs the downside.

This isn't a new idea, and it's one that Wojcicki, along with people who run other giant tech platforms, say in private all the time. But Wojcicki is saying it again, today, as critics are increasingly questioning if it's a philosophy that works for tech companies at a global scale. In recent months, that scrutiny has been particularly directed at YouTube over content uploaded to its platform that spreads harassment, hateful ideologies, and misinformation.

''I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever,'' Wojcicki writes in a quarterly note aimed at YouTube's most ardent users, who upload videos onto the site for fun and profit. While that note is usually dedicated to celebrating YouTube's wide swath of creators, this one spends most of its time defending the idea that YouTube will continue to keep its doors open to anyone who wants to post just about anything on the site.

Wojcicki's letter comes after months of criticism about distasteful videos and comments that appeared on the site, including a high-profile dispute between Vox journalist Carlos Maza and conservative YouTube host Steven Crowder, who had targeted Maza with racist and homophobic slurs. I talked with Wojcicki at length at the Code Conference in June about that incident, YouTube's response, and whether YouTube can really function as an open platform at its size.

It also comes as critics, regulators, and politicians are proposing various ways to scale back the protections offered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a key part of the legal scaffolding used by YouTube and many other giant tech platforms built on users' submissions.

The short version of that regulation: It allows YouTube '-- or any other internet platform '-- to host any content users place there without being held liable for that content. It does, however, give the platforms the ability to moderate and police that content once it's been placed there.

As she and other Google executives have previously argued, Wojcicki says YouTube is okay with the idea that some people will be upset with some things they find on YouTube, which could include ''content that is outside the mainstream, controversial, or even offensive.''

But she draws a line between that stuff and stuff that YouTube says really shouldn't be on the site, which she argues is both rare and damaging: ''Problematic content represents a fraction of one percent of the content on YouTube and we're constantly working to reduce this even further. This very small amount has a hugely outsized impact, both in the potential harm for our users, as well as the loss of faith in the open model that has enabled the rise of your creative community.''

Wojcicki goes on to explain the way YouTube wants to stay open while keeping some semblance of order on the site: It is employing computers and humans to police the stuff that appears on the site and it is constantly creating new rules to guide its in-house moderators. It will limit distribution for stuff it thinks will upset some users or advertisers but that doesn't cross a clear line that would necessitate a ban. And it is finding ways to create a tiered advertising system so that video makers YouTube approves of will find it easier to make money.

Wojcicki and YouTube have discussed much of this in public before. Had she showed any sense of backing away from an open ideology, that would constitute real news. But the fact that one of the most powerful tech executives in the world needs to defend the ideological and legal principle at the foundation of her company is something we wouldn't have imagined just a few years ago.

Here's the full text of Wojcicki's note:

Dear creators and artists,

As I do every quarter, I'd like to pause and reflect on my priorities and how I can help you be successful on YouTube. But rather than our usual update on this quarter's highlights and lowlights, I want to take a minute to talk about something that is incredibly important to me personally, and the future of this platform: openness and how we balance that with our responsibility to protect the community.

YouTube is built on the premise of openness. Based on this open platform, millions of creators around the world have connected with global audiences and many of them have built thriving businesses in the process. But openness comes with its challenges, which is why we also have Community Guidelines that we update on an ongoing basis. Most recently, this includes our hate speech policy and our upcoming harassment policy. When you create a place designed to welcome many different voices, some will cross the line. Bad actors will try to exploit platforms for their own gain, even as we invest in the systems to stop them. As more issues come into view, a rising chorus of policymakers, press and pundits are questioning whether an open platform is valuable...or even viable.

Despite these concerns, I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever.

First, openness leads to opportunity. Today's creators have built an entire creative economy and are redefining the face of media. They are truly next-generation media businesses, with millions of views and global brands, who are contributing to local and global economies, and creating jobs. These are creators that would not have had a chance to break through in a more closed media landscape. Creators like Swedish robotics enthusiast Simone Giertz and blind lifestyle vlogger Molly Burke, both unconventional in their appeal and passed over by traditional media, are finding huge success on YouTube managing businesses, selling merchandise, creating jobs for other people and creating real economic value in their communities. Or creators like Laura Vitale, Sallys Welt and Helen's Recipes have turned their passion for food into full-time professions, complete with successful channels, cookbooks and more. And they are not alone. A report from Ryerson University found that YouTube creators have created 28,000 full time jobs just in Canada. And twenty percent of eligible Canadian creators are creating jobs for others. Around the globe, the number of channels earning more than $100,000 continues to climb 40% year over year.

Openness has also helped foster community. On an open platform, a shared experience can unite people in amazing ways. For example, Ryleigh Hawkins from New Zealand started her channel, Tourettes Teen, to spread awareness about what it's like to live with Tourette's syndrome. Her informative, joyful and humorous videos have earned her fans around the world and let others with this potentially isolating condition know they are not alone. And teens are sharing their college rejection videos, serving as a reminder that this painful moment happens to everyone and people do bounce back.

And finally, openness leads to learning. As a daughter of two teachers and a lifelong learner, I've been especially inspired to see Edutubers like Origin of Everything, Manual do Mundo, Eddie Woo and Excel is Fun turn YouTube into the world's largest classroom. Every time I meet someone new and ask them about YouTube, I hear a story about something they learned on the site: how YouTube helped a student ace her math homework, a mom fix a broken garage door, or an employee master a new job skill.

Let me be clear, none of this happens without openness. Without an open system, diverse and authentic voices have trouble breaking through. And the voices that do get a platform often sound like those who already have one. That small business built on someone sharing their passion for soapmaking never takes off. That bullied teen can't find a community that looks and feels like them and lets them know that it gets better. And that curious person obsessed with planetary physics and looking for a few videos is probably out of luck.

A commitment to openness is not easy. It sometimes means leaving up content that is outside the mainstream, controversial or even offensive. But I believe that hearing a broad range of perspectives ultimately makes us a stronger and more informed society, even if we disagree with some of those views. A large part of how we protect this openness is not just guidelines that allow for diversity of speech, but the steps that we're taking to ensure a responsible community. I've said a number of times this year that this is my number one priority. A responsible approach toward managing what's on our platform protects our users and creators like you. It also means we can continue to foster all the good that comes from an open platform.

Problematic content represents a fraction of one percent of the content on YouTube and we're constantly working to reduce this even further. This very small amount has a hugely outsized impact, both in the potential harm for our users, as well as the loss of faith in the open model that has enabled the rise of your creative community. One assumption we've heard is that we hesitate to take action on problematic content because it benefits our business. This is simply not true '-- in fact, the cost of not taking sufficient action over the long term results in lack of trust from our users, advertisers, and you, our creators. We want to earn that trust.

This is why we've been investing significantly over the past few years in the teams and systems that protect YouTube. Our approach towards responsibility involves four ''Rs'':

We REMOVE content that violates our policy as quickly as possible. And we're always looking to make our policies clearer and more effective, as we've done with pranks and challenges, child safety, and hate speech just this year. We aim to be thoughtful when we make these updates and consult a wide variety of experts to inform our thinking, for example we talked to dozens of experts as we developed our updated hate speech policy. We also report on the removals we make in our quarterly Community Guidelines enforcement report. I also appreciate that when policies aren't working for the creator community, you let us know. One area we've heard loud and clear needs an update is creator-on-creator harassment. I said in my last letter that we'd be looking at this and we will have more to share in the coming months.

We RAISE UP authoritative voices when people are looking for breaking news and information, especially during breaking news moments. Our breaking and top news shelves are available in 40 countries and we're continuing to expand that number.

We REDUCE the spread of content that brushes right up against our policy line. Already, in the U.S. where we made changes to recommendations earlier this year, we've seen a 50% drop in views from recommendations to this type of content, meaning quality content has more of a chance to shine. And we've begun experimenting with this change in the UK, Ireland, South Africa and other English-language markets.

And we set a higher bar for what channels can make money on our site, REWARDING trusted, eligible creators. Not all content allowed on YouTube is going to match what advertisers feel is suitable for their brand, we have to be sure they are comfortable with where their ads appear. This is also why we're enabling new revenue streams for creators like Super Chat and Memberships. Thousands of channels have more than doubled their total YouTube revenue by using these new tools in addition to advertising.

The stories I hear from creators like you inspire me every day. The community you've created is living proof that an internet that reflects a broad range of ideas can change the world for the better. You've built something incredible; it's our job to strike the right balance between openness and responsibility so that future generations of creators and users can, as well.

And here's the full video of my conversation with Wojcicki at the Code Conference in June:

Build The Wall

RealID

Hello Adam,

I was surprised that you did not call out John's two home states

as the reason for the Real ID act. Washington and California give drivers

licenses to undocumented residents (illegal aliens), as once you have a license

you can register to vote. As a tax paying land owning US and WA citizen I

now have to pay more $$$ to the state that will be used for "Social"

programs with no oversight.

Apologies,

Longtime Dousche Bag

EuroLand

A flashback that isn't: EU set to require warning labels on Jewish products

Link to Article

Archived Version

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 02:33

Some Americans may find modern day concerns about anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment overblown, especially if they haven't experienced some centuries of religious discrimination.

Such concerns typically appear when Israel is in the news, as it is this week by denying entry to a pair of Muslim congresswomen. Ed wrote about that controversy here.

Now, comes the European Union with a clever idea to add consumer warning labels to products from Israel as being from that Jewish state. No, seriously.

Of course, this is not the first time Jews have been singled out for such public alerts.

In Germany and Eastern Europe in the 1930's and '40s the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars of David on their outerwear as a public humiliation and isolating tactic to deter others from having any contact. Before that, the Russian tsar required Jews to wear animal skins as head coverings, an intended humiliation.

The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice recently issued an opinion that EU law requires Israeli-made products be labeled as originating from ''Israeli colonies'' or ''settlements.''

As the Free Beacon reported:

The decision was seen as a major win for supporters of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel and its citizens.

Pro-Israel activists, as well as Jewish businesses involved in the legal dispute, see the decision as an ominous warning sign they say is reminiscent of Holocaust-era boycotts of Jewish businesses.

The Court's 15-member panel is poised to issue its binding ruling. But that threatens to ignite U.S. anti-boycott measures intended to protect Israel from international discrimination.

And it could prompt additional discriminatory labeling requirements by the EU and other countries on goods from more disputed territories.

Brooke Goldstein, a human-rights lawyer, said, ''Could the discrimination be any clearer?''

The ruling stipulates that items made by Muslims must be labeled as coming from 'Palestine' while products made by Jews must be labeled as coming from 'Israeli colonies.''

Goldstein warned such a ruling would become a nightmare for European importers and an invitation for labeling requirements by innumerable others.

She added, ''If the EU Court justifies this bigotry, it will degrade the rule of law in Europe and it will undoubtedly have many unintended consequences for EU traders.''

Amsterdam kraakt onder misdaad | Binnenland | Telegraaf.nl

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Archived Version

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 14:57

Door John van den Heuvel en Mick van Wely

Updated Gisteren, 13:21

Gisteren, 00:55 in BINNENLAND

''¸ Hollandse Hoogte / Robin Utrecht

AMSTERDAM - De hoofdstad heeft de strijd tegen de georganiseerde misdaad vrijwel verloren. De autoriteiten zijn slecht ingevoerd in de drugseconomie en -criminaliteit, de politie heeft de drugsbestrijding volledig laten liggen en justitie verzuimt de echte misdaadstructuren aan te pakken.

''¸ Hollandse Hoogte / Robin Utrecht

Dat zijn de vernietigende en verontrustende conclusies van het vertrouwelijke onderzoek De achterkant van Amsterdam naar ondermijnende criminaliteit in de hoofdstad in opdracht van de gemeente Amsterdam. Het rapport is toegespeeld aan De Telegraaf.

Het onderzoek is gedaan door hoogleraar bestuurskunde Pieter Tops en onderzoeksjournalist Jan Tromp. Het rapport wordt vrijdag gepresenteerd.

Drugsgerelateerde criminaliteit in Amsterdam heeft vrij spel en een ontwrichtende werking op de stad. De gemeente pakt niet door bij projecten die verwevenheid van de onder- met de bovenwereld moet voorkomen en informatie tussen relevante instanties wordt nauwelijks gedeeld. Het ontbreekt aan inzicht in de mate waarop crimineel geld in de legale economie wordt gepompt. Het terugdringen van de ondermijnende drugscriminaliteit kost zeker tien tot vijftien jaar.

Dagelijks tijdens de lunch het belangrijkste nieuws in je inbox?Ongeldig e-mailadres. Vul nogmaals in aub.

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Amsterdam drugshoofdstad Lees meer over dit thema en vind alle verhalen in een overzicht Meer lezen hierover

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Dave Chappelle's New Netflix Special Reminds Us that the Most Successful Comedians Are Also the Most Sensitive :: Comedy :: Reviews :: Dave Chappelle :: Paste

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:09

Among the long list of people Dave Chappelle doesn't give a fuck about are the people who paid between $70 and $90 (before fees and charges) to see him live. The multimillionaire starts off his latest special on the largest streaming platform by belittling everybody who's ever criticized any celebrity for insulting or offending people, using the audience at Atlanta's Tabernacle as a stand-in for all of society. There's not a joke or any kind of humor behind it'--it's just him venting about people being held accountable for their own words and actions. I guess it's a brave way to start off a show, if you equate bravery with just acting like an asshole.

Sticks & Stones'--which I assume is called that because Triggered was already taken'--is less a comedy special than an hourlong expos(C) of Chappelle's fragile ego. It's one fantastically wealthy man revealing how thoroughly gotten to he is by criticism, while desperately trying to seem above it all. It's remarkably similar to Ricky Gervais's miserable special from last year, straight down to a ''well, what if I identify as this'' transphobic joke; instead of Gervais's chimpanzee, though, Chappelle whips out an Asian stereotype worthy of Breakfast at Tiffany's, adding just that extra little jolt of racism that nobody anywhere asked for.

Somehow he's incapable of understanding the difference between criticism and censorship. Although he's not as confrontational or direct about it as Gervais, Chappelle still seems to believe that saying a comic's jokes aren't funny is somehow the same as squashing that comic's career. This is in a special he's being paid eight figures for and that's getting the full promotional push of the biggest outlet in the world today. He makes an off-hand joke about Louis C.K. dying in a ''masturbation accident'' and acting like his friend's career is over, despite fellow millionaire C.K. regularly getting booked in clubs within months of that scandal breaking. I don't know how the richest and most successful comedians became the most entitled people alive, but it's not a good look. It's the kind of hypocrisy that you would hope a comedian like Chappelle would call out and rip apart, but instead it's become a defining part of his brand.

Chappelle spends almost the entire hour arguing that rich and famous people shouldn't have to face consequences for the fucked-up things they do. He dismisses and mocks Michael Jackson's accusers, defends C.K., and even jokes that trans people need to take responsibility for Chappelle's own transphobic jokes. An extended bit about who he calls ''the alphabet people'''--the LGBTQ community'--packs in as many queer stereotypes as Chappelle can fit, while reserving special scorn and derision for trans people. It's hard to see how any of this is even meant to be funny, and watching it feels like overhearing retirees and Fox News watchers complain about a world that has thoroughly passed them by.

Chappelle's not the only major comedian who acts like comedy itself is somehow imperiled by today's audiences. These complaints come during a time when comedy is flourishing like never before. Comics with actual bravery have redefined what can be considered stand-up, while the internet has let exciting and hilarious new comedians establish themselves through podcasts, social media, and video sites like YouTube. Comedy's so big right now that superstars like Chappelle and Jerry Seinfeld are being paid more for stand-up specials than anybody ever could've imagined. And yet it's those same comics profiting the most off the current comedy boom who hypocritically act like comedy is dying because not everybody likes their outdated material. Chappelle's special is terrible not because audiences have changed, but because Chappelle himself is so thoroughly out of touch with today. Maybe all that money has something to do with it?

The only stuff that works here is the one section where Chappelle drops the contempt and actually talks about life outside of comedy. It comes at the very end of the special, when he discusses his own personal experiences growing up poor and his dad's attempts to save money. It's the only part of the hour that isn't devoted to Chappelle's total lack of empathy and understanding, and to get to it you have to sit through almost an hour of boring, thoughtless junk that could come straight from any morning drive shock jock. Sticks & Stones is terrible, and Chappelle can only blame himself for that.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He's on Twitter @grmartin.

You Can Definitely Skip Dave Chappelle's New Netflix Special 'Sticks & Stones' - VICE

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Thu, 29 Aug 2019 11:44

Dave Chappelle made a return to Netflix Monday with a new stand-up special, Sticks & Stones. Fans quickly realized that, if you watch until the very end, the special has a secret epilogue called "The Punchline," where Chappelle answers questions from audience members who went to his separate Dave Chappelle on Broadway stand-up show last July. The special takes the comic's anti-wokeness schtick to a new level, and the whole thing is repetitive and exhausting enough that it's a slog to even make it to the Q&A.

Chapelle's controversial 2017 Netflix specials, like The Age of Spin: Dave Chappelle Live at the Hollywood Palladium and Equanimity and the Bird Revelation, honed his voice as a comedian wary of progressive criticism. That voice is even sharper in his latest special. At one point in his routine, he says he doesn't believe Michael Jackson molested young children. He continues by saying that if Jackson did, the children should've felt lucky their first time was with the King of Pop, adding, "Do you know how good it must've felt to go to school the next day after that shit?" Chappelle also returned to his now-infamous obsession with making fun of trans people, saying, "[trans people] hate my fucking guts and I don't blame them. [...] I can't stop writing jokes about these niggas." This time, those jokes included asking the audience how funny it would be if he was actually a Chinese person stuck inside a Black man's body, which (you guessed it) also included a racist impression of a Chinese person. He also found time to defend fellow controversial comedians Kevin Hart and Louis C.K., painting them as victims of an overzealous callout culture.

By the time the Q&A plays at the end of the special, Chappelle has already shown his unapologetic approach to courting controversy. His answers put that into even starker view. He says that a white woman left one of his practice sets for the special at The Punchline comedy club in San Francisco, telling him, "I'm sorry, I was raped." Chappelle says he replied with "It's not your fault you were raped. But it's not my fault either. Ta-ta, bitch," to which the audience laughs raucously, as though that were a real punchline. He then followed with a story about sparking an unlikely friendship with a trans woman who he says "was laughing the hardest" out of anyone at the trans jokes in his practice set. The strange story of camaraderie seemed to highlight the common accusation that Chappelle is only interested in repairing his relationship with marginalized groups if he doesn't have to change anything about himself.

Chappelle has always been a daredevil comedian willing to take a controversial stance or downplay a serious controversy for laughs, including his early-2000s skits about R. Kelly's court trials on Chappelle's Show. But now he chooses to blatantly ignore the historic criticism against his style of comedy and new loud-and-clear criticism from the trans community. His approach comes off like a defiant rejection of change at any cost. As he keeps going down this path, drawing attention to the worst aspects of his important career, the biggest cost will be tarnishing his own legacy.

Follow Taylor Hosking on Twitter and Instagram.

"KILL TERFS": Vancouver's women-only rape shelter vandalized with death threats, rat nailed to door - The Post Millennial

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Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:59

A Vancouver rape relief shelter alleges they have been the target of vandalism and death threats over their ''woman-only'' policy.

Photos shared by the official Vancouver Rape Relief & Woman's Shelter Twitter account show several threats and messages scrawled on the centre's windows like ''KILL TERFS'' and ''TRANS POWER''.

A follow up to the dead rat that was nailed to our door recently'... this morning we found this writing scrawled across the windows of our storefront space that we use for support and training groups #Misogyny pic.twitter.com/vm6Gv8jWcj

'-- VancouverRapeRelief (@VanRapeRelief) August 27, 2019''TERF'' is a slur word for ''Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists,'' or feminists who believe that women who are born biologically female face oppression and have a different lived experience than those born as men.

The shelter is believed to be Canada's oldest and longest standing rape shelters for women.

''We are the longest standing rape crisis centre in Canada. Since 1973, our group has responded to close to 46,000 women seeking our support in their escape from male violence. Since we opened our transition house in 1981, we have housed over 3,000 women and over 2,600 children,'' writes the organization's website.

The Post Millennial reached out to Vancouver Rape Relief who confirmed that the motivation behind the vandalism and threats was their refusal to allow biological males to stay in their rape shelters.

''We have no doubt. Feminists groups have a lot of enemies, there are men's rights activists, and fascists, but in this particular instance, the use of the word ''TERF'' obviously explicitly targets us because of our position for working for women who were born female,'' said spokeswoman Hilla Kerner.

While the centre does not shelter biological males, their official policy is to serve transgender men who were born female.

''People who were born female are welcome to our services but they rarely call us because they would not use services from an organization who is identified with women's services for women,'' said Kerner.

''Our services are open to all people who were born female even if they don't identify as women.''

Recently, NDP Vice President and trans activist Morgane Oger spearheaded a successful push for the city of Vancouver to strip the women's rape shelters of funding based on alleged ''discrimination.''

According to the shelter, they have had past instances where dead animals like skunks were shoved through the mail slot of the building. In one case rape victims attending the shelter encountered a dead rat which was nailed to the door.

''The women who found it were from our support group so they are battered women and rape victims, and one of them said: Haven't we suffered enough,'' said Kerner.

Since the tweet was released, Kerner claims that the shelter has received an outpouring of support and donations from concerned members of the public.

''I want to make it really clear we're not going anywhere, we are committed to our work with women for women on behalf of women and since this has been public we've had an outpouring of support from all over the world, including donations,'' said Kerner.

According to Vancouver Rape Relief, all of the incidents have been reported to the police who are investigating the matter.

2020

How the DNC is unfairly tilting the field against Tulsi Gabbard

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:02

| August 27, 2019 03:12 PM

After the fiasco that was the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, the Democratic National Committee doesn't exactly have a reputation for impartiality and fairness. You'd think, then, the DNC would take steps this time around to ensure that its decision-making is transparent and bias-free.

Naturally, they're doing the opposite.

The most recent issue is the DNC's qualification criteria for the third Democratic primary debate set for September. The DNC has understandably sought to cut down on the number of candidates granted a place on the debate stage, and they've done so by putting in place more stringent qualification requirements. Now, candidates must show four DNC-approved polls placing them at 2% or higher, and they must also receive 130,000 unique donations.

If applied fairly, these standards are reasonable enough. They proved easy hurdles to overcome for the big-name candidates, with Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the like all long-since qualifying, just as you'd expect. But it's the borderline candidates who have been harmed the most by arbitrary and potentially biased enforcement of these criteria. Candidates such as Tom Steyer and Marrianne Williamson have suffered, but most clearly disadvantaged by DNC malpractice is Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

Here's where the bias comes in: The decision as to which polls are ''DNC-approved'' and which are not. Several of these campaigns have met the polling threshold in more than four reputable polls, just not the ones approved by the DNC, whose criteria for poll approval are unknown and opaque.

This is particularly true for Gabbard. The Gabbard campaign provided a statement to the Washington Examiner:

Rep. Gabbard has exceeded 2% support in 26 national and early state polls, but only two of them are on the DNC's 'certified' list. Many of the uncertified polls, including those conducted by highly reputable organizations such as The Economist and the Boston Globe, are ranked by RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight as more accurate than some DNC 'certified' polls.

This is manifestly unjust. And given the DNC's long history of bias against outsider, anti-establishment candidates, it's unlikely that this injustice is an accident.

Remember, the DNC basically tilted the 2016 Democratic primary against Sanders, and in favor of the party establishment's preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton. They gave Clinton debate questions in advance, planned debates for weekends (perhaps to shield Clinton from high viewership), and leaked emails showed numerous examples of anti-Sanders bias from DNC officials.

Plus, the DNC and the Clinton campaign even had a signed agreement giving Clinton's camp control over party staffing decisions before she was the nominee.

As journalist Michael Tracey wrote for RealClearPolitics, ''Tulsi Gabbard is on the verge of being excluded from the next Democratic presidential debate on the basis of criteria that appear increasingly absurd.'' If the DNC wants to avoid more allegations of bias, it should step in and make sure Gabbard is granted the debate stage place she clearly deserves.

Beto O'Rourke Ejects Breitbart News Reporter from Event at Historically Black College | Breitbart

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:24

COLUMBIA, South Carolina '-- Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) has styled himself as a champion of press freedom, tweeting last October: ''The press is not the enemy of the people but the best defense against tyranny.''It is now August, and with his poll numbers falling in the Democratic presidential primary, O'Rourke has decided that he is entitled to abuse members of the press who cannot be relied upon to provide favorable coverage.

O'Rourke's campaign ejected this Breitbart News reporter from a speech at Benedict College, a historically black college, on Tuesday afternoon.

This reporter was standing along the side of a lecture hall in the basement of the Henry Pinder Fine Arts Humanities Center, waiting for the event to start, together with roughly 200 students and college staff members. Other news outlets had set up cameras in the back of the room.

Several minutes after the 3:00 p.m. event had been scheduled to begin, a staff member in a Beto O'Rourke t-shirt approached this reporter and asked what outlet I represented. Upon reading the press credential on my chest, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, cheerfully, ''Oh, hey. All right.''

A few minutes later, before the event began, a campus police officer approached this reporter and motioned for me to accompany him to the back of the room, adding that I should bring any property I had with me. In the hallway outside, he informed me that I was to leave.

A different member of the O'Rourke campaign staff, who said his name was ''Steven'' and would not give a last name, said that I was being ejected because I had been ''disruptive'' at past events.

This reporter has covered two O'Rourke events. The first was at a protest outside a shelter for migrant teens in Homestead, Florida, in June; the second was at the College of Charleston ''Bully Pulpit'' lecture in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday evening. At no point was there any disruption whatsoever.

This reporter asked a question during a press gaggle on Monday evening; that was the only interaction of any kind with the candidate.

The question asked the Democratic presidential hopeful whether misquoting Trump's comments on riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 was consistent with O'Rourke's pledge to ''heal'' and not ''inflame'' divisions in this country.

In the hallway at Benedict, ''Steven'' threatened this reporter, saying that I could either leave voluntarily or be ''officially uninvited'' from campus, suggesting arrest.

This reporter complied with the police officer, who said that he was just doing his job.

This reporter has appeared regularly as a guest on MSNBC, and has covered the first two Democrat Party presidential primary debates in the 2020 cycle, with the approval of both MSNBC and CNN.

In addition, this reporter has covered campaign events for all of the major primary candidates, including former vice president Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

During a town hall that aired on MSNBC last year, O'Rourke was asked by a college professor what he would do to protect press freedom. He said: ''If we don't have a free press, if we cannot make informed decisions at the ballot box, if we can't hold people like me accountable, and make sure that we're held honest to the promises that we made, to the job that we're performing in these positions of public trust, we'll lose the essence of our democracy.''

The press is not the enemy of the people but the best defense against tyranny. We need to vigorously defend the freedom of the press. It's essential for our democracy. pic.twitter.com/LnqtevuOCV

'-- Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) October 30, 2018

He added that ''we need to vigorously defend the freedom of the press'' and that ''we need to call out violations.''

Benedict College is a private institution that has hosted many distinguished political speakers in the past, such as President Barack Obama, who told an audience there in 2015: ''There are neighborhoods where it is easier for you to buy a handgun'... than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable.''

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

My husband dumped me for Ilhan Omar, DC mom says in divorce filing

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:20

A Washington, DC, mom says her political-consultant husband left her for Rep. Ilhan Omar, according to a bombshell divorce filing obtained by The Post.

Dr. Beth Mynett says her cheating spouse, Tim Mynett, told her in April that he was having an affair with the Somali-born US representative '-- and that he even made a ''shocking declaration of love'' for the Minnesota congresswoman before he ditched his wife, alleges the filing, submitted in DC Superior Court on Tuesday.

The physician, 55, and her 38-year-old husband '-- who has worked for left-wing Democrats such as Omar and her Minnesota predecessor, Keith Ellison '-- have a 13-year-old son together.

''The parties physically separated on or about April 7, 2019, when Defendant told Plaintiff that he was romantically involved with and in love with another woman, Ilhan Omar,'' the court papers say.

''Defendant met Rep. Omar while working for her,'' the document states. ''Although devastated by the betrayal and deceit that preceded his abrupt declaration, Plaintiff told Defendant that she loved him, and was willing to fight for the marriage.

''Defendant, however, told her that was not an option for him'' and moved out the next day, the papers say.

''It is clear to Plaintiff that her marriage to Defendant is over and that there is no hope of reconciliation,'' according to the filing.

The Mynetts lived together for six years before marrying in 2012, the filing said.

Omar '-- a member of ''the Squad,'' a group of far left-leaning female freshman House members including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and two others '-- recently separated from her husband, according to reports.

The 37-year-old congresswoman and mom of three paid Tim Mynett and his E. Street Group approximately $230,000 through her campaign since 2018 for fundraising consulting, digital communications, internet advertising and travel expenses.

Omar was spotted enjoying time with Tim Mynett at a California restaurant in March.

Beth Mynett is seeking primary physical custody of her and her husband's son in part because of Tim Mynett's ''extensive travel'' with Omar '-- which isn't exactly part of his job description, the document says.

''Defendant's more recent travel and long work hours now appear to be more related to his affair with Rep. Omar than with his actual work commitments,'' the court papers state.

Tim Mynett and Ilhan Omar with her daughter SplashNews.comWhen he was home, ''he was preoccupied and emotionally volatile,'' Beth Mynett says of her estranged spouse. Meanwhile, the mom has been juggling ''the vast majority of responsibilities related to [their son's] school, medical care, and extracurricular activities,'' the papers say.

The doctor argued that she doesn't trust her husband's judgment with their son anymore '-- in part because of his relationship with Omar.

''By way of example, days prior to Defendant's devastating and shocking declaration of love for Rep. Omar and admission of their affair, he and Rep. Omar took the parties' son to dinner to formally meet for the first time at the family's favorite neighborhood restaurant while Plaintiff was out of town,'' the papers state.

''Rep. Omar gave the parties' son a gift and the Defendant later brought her back inside the family's home,'' the papers say.

Beth Mynett said in the filing that the most concerning thing about the excursion was her hubby's decision to ''put his son in harm's way by taking him out in public with Rep. Omar, who at that time had garnered a plethora of media attention along with death threats, one rising to the level of arresting the known would-be assassin that same week.''

Beth Mynett CourtesyThe physician said her husband ''has a history of emotional volatility, that can cause him to become easily angered and rageful,'' according to the papers.

She added that she used her contacts to help him launch and grow his career and financially supported him along the way '-- only to have him ''conveniently asserting after their separation that he is nearly broke, and his business is floundering,'' the documents show.

Tim Mynett, using ''bullying tactics,'' has ''begun threatening not to pay for his share of their joint financial responsibilities,'' Beth Mynett says in the complaint.

She is seeking full control of the couple's DC home, child support and legal fees, according to the filing.

Tim Mynett and Omar did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Omar's husband, Ahmed Hirsi, is a former banker who was hired as a senior policy aide to a Minnesota city councilwoman last year, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported at the time. Omar was previously married to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.

President Trump has repeated a claim that the union with Elmi was illegal immigration fraud because he is her brother and that they wed so he could obtain American citizenship. Omar called that allegation ''absolutely false and ridiculous.''

Additional reporting by Nikki Schwab and Ben Feuerherd

Nearly one of every three dollars spent on Ilhan Omar's campaign has gone to her alleged lover's firm

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Archived Version

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:13

| August 27, 2019 09:42 PM

T he New York Post reported Tuesday on a high-profile divorce. To be specific, a woman has claimed in court papers that her husband has been cheating on her, carrying on with married Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Omar's alleged paramour, Tim Mynett, has been a fundraising consultant for Omar's 2018 and 2020 campaigns.

Omar hasn't commented on the accusations, but there's a possible second scandal involving the more than $200,000 that her campaign has spent with Mynett's firm.

Of the $145,406 reported earnings by the E Street Group during the 2018 campaign cycle, $62,674 came from Omar's campaign. Not counting payroll taxes and transfers to Minnesota's Democratic Party, E Street Group was Omar's second-largest vendor, according to FEC data. From Labor Day through the end of the year, E Street Group ate up more than 10% of her campaign's spending (not counting transfers to other campaigns).

Here's the odd thing: The overwhelming majority of Omar's funds spent on the E Street Group were paid after she won the contested primary and during the totally noncompetitive general election race in her D+26 district. Contrary to FEC rules, Omar's filings did not designate whether her E Street Group disbursements (or any of her disbursements) were for the primary election or the general election.

The Omar campaign payments to the E Street Group, often reported as "fundraising consulting" fees on her FEC filings, have accelerated in the 2020 cycle. Her campaign has spent $160,000 at E Street this year, the campaign off year. That's nearly one in every three dollars spent on her reelection (again, not including transfers to other campaigns or committees) going to her alleged lover.

Omar did not answer the Post's questions about the alleged affair. Her congressional office declined to answer my questions, instead passing along a campaign email address. Her campaign did not respond to an email.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have plans to save journalism industry in crisis - Vox

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Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:16

The journalism industry's landscape looks bleak '-- and Democratic presidential candidates are talking about it.

President Donald Trump is calling the media the ''enemy of the people.'' Major media companies are consolidating, like the recently announced Gannett and GateHouse media merger, mass layoffs are on the horizon, and local newspapers are shuttering at a concerning speed. All the while, newsroom budgets are dwindling and the digital media industry faces financial pressures that have shaped newsroom priorities away from reporting.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) released his response to these dire state in a new plan this week, which includes a series of regulations aimed at the top, and a campaign to organize workers. His plan calls for a moratorium on major media mergers, blames major tech companies for bilking newsrooms' revenue, and promotes his push to unionize newsrooms across the country.

''Trump's authoritarian bullying of the media is totally unacceptable and it must be denounced and rejected,'' Sanders wrote in an op-ed with the Columbia Journal Review this week. ''But let us be clear: that alone will not solve the journalism crisis. Moreover, a further expansion of oligarchic business models in the media industry could make matters worse.''

The ''journalism crisis'' Sanders is talking about is disproportionately impacting newspapers around the country. Major metropolitan papers and their smaller, local counterparts are on life support as the companies that own them have cut journalists, editors, and photographers from staff. Pew Research Center found about 28,000 journalists nationwide lost their jobs from 2008 to 2018. The implications: For the approximately 1,400 cities and towns that have lost their newspapers, there are no watchdogs to report on local governments. Without that accountability, one Notre Dame study even found local financial costs like municipal bonds have risen in those communities.

A competitive and rich media landscape is good for democracy at all levels of government, not just the federal government. But local media is dying. The question is: Could the next president save it?

Sanders spins his tumultuous relationship with the press into a plan Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks to journalists in Des Moines, Iowa, in August.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Sanders himself has a rocky relationship with the press. Last month Sanders quipped to supporters, ''I wonder why the Washington Post '-- which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon '-- doesn't write particularly good articles about me.'' (Sanders has been critical of Amazon's labor and wage policies.) He later walked back the comment, saying he ''absolutely'' does not believe Bezos is directly involved in coverage at the paper, after the Washington Post, an independent entity, called the comment a conspiracy theory.

But in a newsletter put out by the campaign, Sanders campaign adviser David Sirota wrote that ''reporters don't have to receive a call from Jeff Bezos to know that their paychecks are signed by a billionaire with a well-known personal and corporate agenda '-- and knowing that agenda exists can shape overall frameworks and angles of coverage.''

To some extent, this latest plan from the Sanders campaign clarifies its war with ''corporate media,'' framing it within the candidate's broader worldview: one where the CEOs in Silicon Valley and hedge fund and vulture capitalists on Wall Street are chipping away at democracy. It expands some ideas already floated by presidential candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

Chuck Plunkett, the former editorial page editor for the Denver Post and now the director of the University of Colorado News Corp, told Vox these ideas from presidential candidates can't come a minute too soon '-- especially in the age of Trump.

''I hope it gets oxygen, I hope it becomes a platform,'' Plunkett said. ''That's the kind of energy we need, the thinking we need. '... What we sure don't need is calling those people the enemy of the people.''

The Sanders plan to save journalism, explainedSanders is identifying three problems in the journalism industry: The media industry is consolidating, big tech companies like Facebook and Google have too much control over the industry's revenue, and journalists don't have enough bargaining power.

Sanders' plan is aimed at stopping major media consolidation

Sanders's plan would order an ''immediate moratorium on approving mergers of major media corporations,'' ''limit the number of stations that large broadcasting corporations can own in each market and nationwide,'' and ''require major media corporations to disclose whether or not their corporate transactions and merger proposals will involve significant journalism layoffs.''

Under the Trump administration, the Federal Communications Commission has moved mostly in the opposite direction, paving the way for more consolidation in the industry. In 2017, the FCC eliminated decades-old rules that restricted companies from owning a radio or TV station and a newspaper in the same market, and made it easier for companies to own multiple TV stations in one market.

Ajit Pai, Trump's chair of the FCC, said the move was to ''strengthen local voices,'' but the changes were panned by Democrats on the board who said it would only enable major companies to nationalize local news coverage and limit the number of voices and jobs.

As Vox's Dylan Matthews reported, this has been the strategy with groups like Sinclair, a conservative-leaning broadcast media company that has been acquiring new affiliates in more markets for decades. Matthews writes that Sinclair has been working around the FCC requirement to hitting the absolute maximum level of viewer reach that a broadcasting conglomerate of its kind is allowed to have under federal regulations; it owns 173 TV stations across the country. (You can see which affiliates Sinclair owns in your local market thanks to Vox's Alvin Chang).

It's worth noting a proposed merger between Sinclair and Tribune Media fell through last year because the FCC alleged the company misled the body on how the merger would stay within the bounds of a regulation that limits companies to reaching no more than 39 percent of all US households. But Sinclair still has an unprecedented amount of influence in the local TV market.

Sanders is saying his administration would reestablish and strengthen the enforcement around antitrust at the FCC. But according to Bill Grueskin, an expert on the journalism industry at Columbia University, this might be more effective with TV than with print.

''Local TV is still very profitable, especially if you have stations in swing states like Ohio or Florida,'' he told Vox over email. ''And the audience hasn't shrunk a great deal. So to the extent that preventing mergers can help keep more independent voices in local TV '-- especially given the heavy-handed nature of Sinclair's editorial management '-- that's a good thing.''

This is especially important given the outsized influence local TV has compared to major network or cable television.

But print hasn't weathered the digital transition as well as TV and there have been ''rapid declines in print advertising, flat or modest improvements in digital ads that don't come close to compensating for print losses, and for many newspapers, a pretty ineffective digital subscription model that has already captured many of the customers likely to pay for access to a site'' that are still impacting local newsrooms, Greuskin said.

Sanders addresses big tech's role in the journalism industry

Sanders is putting the blame on Google and Facebook, which have played a large role in disrupting the traditional advertising revenue model that news organizations rely on. Sanders says he would like to prevent companies like Google and Facebook ''from using their enormous market power to cannibalize, bilk, and defund news organizations.''

In 2018, advertising revenue from all digital platforms '-- not just news outlets '-- rose by 23 percent making up nearly half of all advertising revenue in the US, Pew reported. But half of all digital revenue went to Facebook and Google. For news outlets, this growth hasn't made up losses from traditional advertising markets.

The plan backs a bill originally written by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in the Senate, which would temporarily exempt news organizations from competition laws and allow them to collectively bargain with these tech companies like Google and Facebook to get better prices.

Sanders said he would also consider ''taxing targeted ads and using the revenue to fund nonprofit civic-minded media,'' essentially pulling money from these tech giants and reallocating it toward local-news outlets. But there's a big open question in this plan: Who would get that money?

''Shouting at [Facebook] and Google also doesn't do much unless you're willing to try to extract revenue from them '-- and then you have to figure out how to disburse that money and decide which news orgs should get it,'' Greuskin said.

Sanders plan also incorporates his larger push for unions and employee ownership

Lastly, Sanders's media plan emphasizes his ambitious push to double union membership in the country by the end of his first term. Sanders has already shown solidarity with unionizing newsrooms, like BuzzFeed's and, full disclosure, Vox Media's. His ''workplace democracy'' plan proposes several measures that would make it easier for employees to collectively bargain.

Notably, he backs giving employees the opportunity to purchase media outlets through employee stock-ownership plans.

The theory behind an employee-owned newsroom is, as Sanders points out, that a lot of media companies make money. Gannett, for example, took in $751.4 million in operating revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018, with a small loss overall. Yet, instead of reinvesting money into the journalism or staff resources, newspapers are still cost-cutting by making newsrooms leaner and leaner. In January 2019, Gannett had major nationwide layoffs. That could change if employees owned the company.

Then there's a more cynical view: that advertising revenue is actually going down, and circulation revenue is going down.

FRED Employee-owned models have been tried in newsrooms like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune with varying degrees of success. For example, as detailed by Sandra Borden, a Western Michigan University communications professor, in her book Journalism as Practice, papers like the Journal Sentinel and the Omaha World-Herald were able to ''maintain higher levels of staffing, coverage, and penetration'' than peer newsrooms with employer-owned structures.

But eventually financial troubles, management issues, and a lack of resources roiled those attempts as well as others. ''Such arrangements are difficult to construct because they require complex bylaws and financing to ensure that employees can afford to buy stock and they will not sell to outsiders,'' Borden writes.

Poor management in the Chicago Tribune's case shut the employee-owned stock system down. And the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is currently owned by Gannett.

Elizabeth Warren has also proposed targeting private investment firmsWhile Bernie Sanders wants to regulate media mergers, Elizabeth Warren aims to regulate the private equity firms that have made a business of buying, gutting, and selling newspapers.

Warren's idea is fairly straightforward, and a smaller piece of a larger ''economic patriotism'' plan. Specifically, Warren wants to regulate private equity firms and investment companies that make money by buying companies including local newspapers, cutting costs by shedding staff and resources, and selling the shell of that company for a profit.

As Vox's Emily Stewart explained, ''The bill would overhaul the way private equity is governed and require the industry to change some of its most lucrative business practices. It would also offer more protections for workers when their private equity-owned employers go south. ... It would mean that to make a lot of money, they'd have to make really good bets.''

A news photographer prepares for an evening live shoot outside of the governor's mansion in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2016. Al Drago/CQ Roll Call In other words, one of the biggest parts of Warren's private equity idea is making it much for difficult for these investment firms to make money if the businesses they buy fail. If her plan was implemented, these groups in theory would need to make sure they were leaving behind a healthy, sustainable local newspaper or media company, rather than an empty newsroom.

''Private equity is also wiping out local and regional newspapers with the same playbook: buying papers for cheap, slashing the staff to cut costs, and bleeding the company with fees and dividends,'' Warren wrote in a Medium post. ''When the papers fail, members of the press lose their jobs and communities lose valuable sources of local news coverage.''

One of the prime examples Warren cited is the Denver Post, the major metro paper serving the Denver area that went from a staff of more than 280 in 2003 to around 60 currently. The Post is owned by Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund that owns newspapers around the country.

As the Denver Post's editorial board wrote in 2018, Alden raised subscription rates while it ordered round after round of cuts from the newsroom, even as the paper demonstrated it was profitable and award-winning.

''You had another year where you'd hit ambitious targets, we embraced video, we made all those changes, and another 20 [people] would get cut,'' Plunkett told Vox. ''It just seemed arbitrary, it seemed like they had a number in their head. What their endgame ultimately is ... is acquiring massive numbers of newspapers and bleeding them dry.''

Other 2020 candidates are thinking about how to save local newsOther presidential candidates including Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang are also thinking about ways to save local journalism.

Klobuchar and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) introduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the Senate (the bill was originally drafted by Rep. David Cicilline in the House). The bill would allow media companies, including newspapers, to negotiate directly with big tech companies like Facebook and Google ''to improve the access to and the quality of news online.''

The main goal of the bill is to suspend federal and state antitrust laws for 48 months to allow media companies to collectively bargain with these tech companies (current laws make it hard for them to do so). But beyond opening up a path for negotiations, it doesn't spell out exactly what would happen beyond that.

Journalist Paul Mason protests outside the Houses of Parliament on August 28, 2019 in London.Peter Summers/Getty Images And Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur primarily running on a universal basic income, has proposed a plan to have the federal government subsidize journalism '-- specifically, placing government-funded journalists in less-covered states and regions, and creating a fund to put more resources toward local news. This is similar to how the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) funds 144 ''local democracy reporters'' to news organizations in England, Scotland, and Wales. The BBC is in part funded by a household fee set by the British government.

No matter what, Plunkett is heartened these conversations are happening on the presidential campaign level.

''I think it's a healthy discussion to have right now,'' Plunkett said. ''Journalism isn't broken, it's the funding. Conversations that seek to empower that is helpful and useful and exciting.''

Big crowds stir talk of momentum for Warren | TheHill

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Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:12

Sen. Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann WarrenFormer Biden economic adviser: 'I really like a lot of' Warren's tax proposals Poll: Trump trails top 2020 Democrats in Michigan Monmouth acknowledges poll showing Biden losing support was 'outlier' MORE is making waves with the big crowds that she's attracting to campaign events across the country.

The Massachusetts Democrat drew 15,000 people to a presidential campaign event in Seattle on Aug. 25, and 12,000 to an event at Macalester College in St. Paul '-- her first campaign event in the state '-- on Aug. 19.

The crowds have drawn attention to her campaign from Democrats and other members of the media who see it as a sign she might be gaining momentum in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A former aide to President Obama, who also drew big crowds during his campaign for the White House, marveled at the size of Warren's crowds at this stage of the race.

''What Warren is doing this early on is pretty unprecedented,'' the aide said, adding that Obama's events didn't attract thousands of people until well into the primary cycle.

''If we would have attracted crowd sizes that large early on, Hillary would have run for the hills,'' the aide said, referring to Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonPoll: Support rises for 2020 Democrats favoring 'Medicare for All' Overlooked Nevada seeks to pack a bigger punch in 2020 race Trump to hold campaign rally in North Carolina day before special House election MORE , who Obama beat out in the 2008 primary.

Polls don't show Warren running away with the nomination contest.

Nationally, she trailed frontrunner Joe Biden Joe BidenFormer Biden economic adviser: 'I really like a lot of' Warren's tax proposals Poll: Trump trails top 2020 Democrats in Michigan Monmouth acknowledges poll showing Biden losing support was 'outlier' MORE by double-digits in two national polls released on Wednesday. She also trailed Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersFormer Biden economic adviser: 'I really like a lot of' Warren's tax proposals Poll: Trump trails top 2020 Democrats in Michigan Monmouth acknowledges poll showing Biden losing support was 'outlier' MORE (I-Vt.) in the two surveys.

But the big crowds could be a sign that Warren is building toward something.

''It shows growing enthusiasm, people want to see and hear her,'' said Democratic strategist Eddie Vale. ''Crowd size in August isn't going to decide the race, but it certainly helps.''

Warren isn't the only candidate who can draw a crowd.

Sanders drew huge audiences in 2016, and the trend has continued in this cycle.

In March, Sanders aides say they drew 16,000 supporters to a rally in San Francisco, the Vermont senator's biggest crowd so far.

They also drew 15,124 people to a rally in Los Angeles that same month. Rallies in New York and Chicago also in March drew more than 13,000 and 12,000 respectively, the Sanders campaign said.

''There is an incredible level of enthusiasm for Sen. Sanders in states all across the country,'' Faiz Shakir, Sanders's campaign manager, said in an email to The Hill. ''It is telling that not only does Sen. Sanders attract energetic crowds but that these events are filled with people who are deeply engaged in the political process and the future of our country, often for the first time.''

Democrats historically have warmed to the candidate who can attract the crowds.

Obama in 2008 and Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonVideo from camera outside Epstein jail cell unusable: report New data challenges Trump's economic narrative The ideological divide on vaping has a clear winner: Smokers MORE in 1992 are two examples of Democratic candidates whose crowds foreshadowed victories.

Strategists say drawing a crowd is also important in the Trump era given the president's obsession with the subject.

On Tuesday, Trump belittled Warren's crowds, saying his were ''far bigger'' and complaining that they ''get no coverage at all.''

Biden has been the steady leader in the Democratic race, but he doesn't appear to be drawing big crowds.

At an event in Keene, N.H., over the weekend, Biden addressed a crowd of approximately 300 people. The former vice president's largest crowd to date was his May kick-off event in Philadelphia, which drew an estimated 6,000 supporters.

''His ground game doesn't seem to be as good,'' said another former Obama aide, who remains undecided in the Democratic primary. ''Could he pull off 15,000 people in Washington State organically? It doesn't seem that way.''

Drawing a big crowd in Iowa might be more important than drawing a big crowd in Seattle.

And none of the big three candidates appear to be pulling particularly large crowds in any of the early-voting states.

Warren's largest crowd in an early state, for example, was approximately 1,100 earlier this month in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Several weeks ago, she also spoke to a crowd of approximately 925 in Aiken, South Carolina and 700 in Franconia, New Hampshire.

''At this point, I'd look closer at whether these campaigns can pull 500 people in Oscaloosa, Iowa '-- population 11,000 '-- than 16,000 people in San Francisco, population 850,000,'' the second former Obama aide said.

Doug Landry, who served as trip director to Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineA lesson of the Trump, Tlaib, Omar, Netanyahu affair Warren's pledge to avoid first nuclear strike sparks intense pushback Almost three-quarters say minimum age to buy tobacco should be 21: Gallup MORE as part of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, noted that crowd size ''doesn't always translate to support at the ballot box.''

When he served as an advance staffer on Clinton's presidential campaigns, Landry said, ''we had to work a lot harder to convince people to actually make the effort to come out to see her.

Since Clinton had already been a public figure on the national stage, ''voters felt like they already knew her.''

He said that could be a problem for Biden.

''When you're in the news for a quarter century, it's hard to get people to come out to 'learn about this new candidate' '-- and I think that's the same dynamic at work for Joe Biden's solid but not huge crowds since he's been in public life for even longer,'' Landry said.

Lynda Tran, a Democratic strategist who served as the national press secretary for Organizing for America, cautioned that campaigns design different types of events to suit particular needs.

''So size is definitely not everything when it comes to measuring success,'' Tran said.

But, she added, ''from an organizers perspective, you always hope for a great turnout.''

'''...The optics of a capacity or over-capacity crowd make fantastic headlines that boost voter and donor interest, shore up staff and volunteer morale, and feed into an overall narrative about campaign momentum,'' she said.

Any Collusion?

Trump lawyer demands MSNBC retract report alleging banking ties to Russian oligarchs | TheHill

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An attorney for President Trump Donald John TrumpOur justice system must reward success Former Biden economic adviser: 'I really like a lot of' Warren's tax proposals Roy Moore calls for Omar to go back from 'whence she came' MORE on Wednesday demanded a retraction and apology following an MSNBC report alleging the president obtained loans from Deutsche Bank with Russian oligarchs as co-signers.

Charles Harder sent a letter to NBCUniversal saying the remarks made Tuesday night on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell Lawrence Francis O'DonnellThe Hill's Campaign Report: Battle for Senate begins to take shape Federal guidance identifying 'go back to where you came from' as discrimination goes viral after Trump comments The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sights and sounds from Democrats' first debate night MORE " were false and defamatory, according to a copy of the letter made public by Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi.

''I may have some information, in this next hour, which would add a great deal to their understanding of that, if true, and I'll be discussing it here,'' O'Donnell said. "I stress 'if true,' because this is a single source who has told me that Deutsche Bank obtained tax returns."

O'Donnell, a staunch critic of the president, said later in the program that the story will "need a lot more verification before that can be a confirmable fact."

The White House also condemned the report.

The Hill reached out to MSNBC, which declined to comment.

The details of O'Donnell's report have not been verified by NBC News, according to a tweet by MSNBC "Morning Joe" producer Mike Del Moro.

Deutsche Bank is declining to comment on Lawrence O'Donnell's reporting that Russian oligarch's co-signed Trump's loans. The information came from a single source who has not seen the bank records. NBC has not seen those records and has not yet been able to verify the reporting.

'-- Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) August 28, 2019''Deutsche Bank is declining to comment on Lawrence O'Donnell's reporting that Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump's loans. The information came from a single source who has not seen the bank records. NBC has not seen those records and has not yet been able to verify the reporting,'' Del Moro tweeted.

Hong Kong

PLA 'ready to defend Hong Kong' after morning arrival Beijing says is routine troop rotation | South China Morning Post

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Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:46

PLA military vehicles pass into Hong Kong at Huanggang Port in the early hours of Thursday. Photo: Xinhua

Photos show troops arriving in the city before dawn, with military armoured vehicles exchanged for anti-riot typesArmed helicopters from the Hong Kong garrison's air force then fly in during daylightTopic | China military

Minnie Chan

Published: 11:09am, 29 Aug, 2019

Updated: 8:30pm, 29 Aug, 2019

PLA military vehicles pass into Hong Kong at Huanggang Port in the early hours of Thursday. Photo: Xinhua

Green New Deal

CNN announces details for climate crisis town hall

Michael Mann, creator of the infamous global warming 'hockey stick,' loses lawsuit against climate skeptic, ordered to pay defendant's costs

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Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:39

The graph's methodology and accuracy have been and continue to be hotly contested, but Mann has taken the tack of suing two of his most prominent critics for defamation or libel. One case, against Mark Steyn, is called by Steyn likely to end up in the Supreme Court. But another case, against Dr. Tim Ball was decided by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, with Mann's case thrown out, and him ordered to pay the defendant's legal costs, no doubt a tidy sum of money. News first broke in Wattsupwiththat, via an email Ball sent to Anthony Watt. Later, Principia-Scientific offered extensive details, including much background on the hockey stick.

The Canadian court issued it's final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed in May 2019 by Dr Tim Ball's libel lawyers.

Not only did the court grant Ball's application for dismissal of the nine-year, multi-million dollar lawsuit, it also took the additional step of awarding full legal costs to Ball. A detailed public statement from the world-renowned skeptical climatologist is expected in due course.

This extraordinary outcome is expected to trigger severe legal repercussions for Dr Mann in the U.S. and may prove fatal to climate science claims that modern temperatures are ''unprecedented.'' (snip)

Dr Mann lost his case because he refused to show in open court his R2 regression numbers (the 'working out') behind the world-famous 'hockey stick' graph (shown below).

Real science, not the phony ''consensus'' version, requires open access to data, so that skeptics (who play a key role in science) can see if results are reproducible. Of course, there are no falsifiable experimental data associated with the global warming predictions of doom, so it doesn't really stand as science as Karl Popper defined it

This is an important victory in the process of debunking the warmist scare.

Update 1: Michael Mann disputes the notion that he lost (and more):

There have been some wildly untruthful claims about the recent dismissal of libel litigation against Tim Ball circulating on social media. Here is our statement (https://t.co/8tGoBZnE3Y): pic.twitter.com/ySeJcOktX9

'-- Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) August 23, 2019 Update 2: technology.news has a rather different take than Mann, noting that further legal steps are on their way.

Penn State climate scientist, Michael 'hockey stick' Mann commits contempt of court in the 'climate science trial of the century.' Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination. Only possible outcome: Mann's humiliation, defeat and likely criminal investigation in the U.S.

The defendant in the libel trial, the 79-year-old Canadian climatologist, Dr Tim Ball ... is expected to instruct his British Columbia attorneys to trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions, including a ruling that Mann did act with criminal intent when using public funds to commit climate data fraud. Mann's imminent defeat is set to send shock waves worldwide within the climate science community as the outcome will be both a legal and scientific vindication of U.S. President Donald Trump's claims that climate scare stories are a ''hoax.'' (snip)

Michael Mann, who chose to file what many consider to be a cynical SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) libel suit in the British Columbia Supreme Court, Vancouver six long years ago, has astonished legal experts by refusing to comply with the court direction to hand over all his disputed graph's data. Mann's iconic hockey stick has been relied upon by the UN's IPCC and western governments as crucial evidence for the science of 'man-made global warming.' (snip)

The negative and unresponsive actions of Dr Mann and his lawyer, Roger McConchie, are expected to infuriate the judge and be the signal for the collapse of Mann's multi-million dollar libel suit against Dr Ball. It will be music to the ears of so-called 'climate deniers' like President Donald Trump and his EPA Chief, Scott Pruitt.

As Dr Ball explains:

''Michael Mann moved for an adjournment of the trial scheduled for February 20, 2017. We had little choice because Canadian courts always grant adjournments before a trial in their belief that an out of court settlement is preferable. We agreed to an adjournment with conditions. The major one was that he [Mann] produce all documents including computer codes by February 20th, 2017. He failed to meet the deadline.''

Punishment for Civil Contempt

Mann's now proven contempt of court means Ball is entitled to have the court serve upon Mann the fullest punishment. Contempt sanctions could reasonably include the judge ruling that Dr. Ball's statement that Mann ''belongs in the state pen, not Penn. State' is a precise and true statement of fact. This is because under Canada's unique 'Truth Defense', Mann is now proven to have wilfully hidden his data, so the court may rule he hid it because it is fake. As such, the court must then dismiss Mann's entire libel suit with costs awarded to Ball and his team.

Updated and bumped. See updates below

Michael Mann, a climatologist at Penn State University, is the creator of the ''hockey stick graph'' that appears to show global temperatures taking a noticeable swing upward in the era when humanity has been burning fossil fuels and dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. The graph was first published in 1998, prominently featured in the 2001 UN Climate Report, and formed part of Al Gore's 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

The Canadian court issued it's final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed in May 2019 by Dr Tim Ball's libel lawyers.

Dr Mann lost his case because he refused to show in open court his R2 regression numbers (the 'working out') behind the world-famous 'hockey stick' graph (shown below).

This is an important victory in the process of debunking the warmist scare.

Update 1: Michael Mann disputes the notion that he lost (and more):

'-- Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) August 23, 2019 Update 2: technology.news has a rather different take than Mann, noting that further legal steps are on their way.

As Dr Ball explains:

Punishment for Civil Contempt

Michael Mann Refuses to Produce Data, Loses Case | Power Line

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Sun, 25 Aug 2019 20:56

Some years ago, Dr. Tim Ball wrote that climate scientist Michael Mann ''belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.'' At issue was Mann's famous ''hockey stick'' graph that purported to show a sudden and unprecedented 20th century warming trend. The hockey stick featured prominently in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (2001), but has since been shown to be wrong. The question, in my view, is whether it was an innocent mistake or deliberate fraud on Mann's part. (Mann, I believe, continues to assert the accuracy of his debunked graph.) Mann sued Ball for libel in 2011. Principia Scientific now reports that the court in British Columbia has dismissed Mann's lawsuit with prejudice, and assessed costs against him.

What happened was that Dr. Ball asserted a truth defense. He argued that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud, something that could be proved if one had access to the data and calculations, in particular the R2 regression analysis, underlying it. Mann refused to produce these documents. He was ordered to produce them by the court and given a deadline. He still refused to produce them, so the court dismissed his case.

The rules of discovery provide that a litigant must make available to opposing parties documents that reasonably bear on the issues in the case. Here, it is absurd for Mann to sue Ball for libel, and then refuse to produce the documents that would have helped to show whether Ball's statement about him''he belongs in the state pen''was true or false. The logical inference is that the R2 regression analysis and other materials, if produced, would have supported Ball's claim that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud on Mann's part.

Mann says that his lawyers are considering an appeal. He can appeal to his heart's content, but there is not a court in North America that will allow a libel case to proceed where the plaintiff refuses to produce the documents that may show whether the statements made about him were true or false.

Mann responded to the dismissal of his lawsuit in typically mean-spirited and dishonest fashion: ''The dismissal involved the alleged exercise of a discretion on [sic] the Court to dismiss a lawsuit for delay.'' The dismissal was for failure to obey a court order, and the delay went on for eight years.

Fun fact: I learned while tracking down Michael Mann's statement about the court's order that he has blocked me on Twitter:

It must have been something I said.

(5) Byron York on Twitter: "Remember the 'hockey stick'? Read @jhinderaker on latest from climate wars: Micheal Mann refuses to produce data, loses case.' https://t.co/sFs6UMLU9v https://t.co/0qVMzLgjlE" / Twitter

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Sun, 25 Aug 2019 20:57