So I said... #21 - for May 15-24

So here I am again, striving for relevance, with a collections of thoughts and opinions expressed here, there, and pretty much anywhere else I happened to stick my keyboard. I hope you’ll find a few at least interesting; remember that comments and reactions are welcome.

A note on formatting, in case it’s not clear. Comments on new topics are separated by “==” (a double equal sign) while parts of reply threads are separated by “-” (an en dash). That said, let’s get on with this.

==

2026-05-15
[A post, the link to which I unfortunately failed to record, discussed the requirement for new cars to have a kill switch, supposedly to prevent drunk driving. It included four questions for discussion.]

Answering the questions in order:

Do you have an analog car and are you planning to keep it? Yes, and I’m keeping it as long as I can keep it running.

Does this bother you, or honestly, does it not? Yes, it bothers me, bothers me both because of the invasion of privacy (or, rather, the off-handed assumption of a lack of it) and the paucity of attention to the potential for unintended consequences.

Do you think saving 13,000 lives a year [the claimed benefit] is worth it? “Lives saved” is a claim, not a fact, and should be treated with the same skepticism as any other promotional claim should be. On the other hand, “false accusations” is a reality and while we can’t quantify the effect of these measures on that, we can safely assume based on the historical record that it will primarily affect minorities and other marginalized communities.

Is there a bigger agenda behind the legislation that we aren’t being told about? Maybe not an “agenda” in the sense of a conscious plan but it is part of an overall trend, an overall bias call it, toward the government in general and the police in particular knowing more and more about us while we are more and more restricted about what we can know about them - with the phrases “public safety” and “national security” waved like magic incantations.

Or do you think there’s a better way to get there? “You got anything better?” is not an argument, it’s a way of avoiding the issues and objections by demanding that you on the fly come up with something “better” - which assumes the supposedly desired end, whatever it is in a given case, requires no justification to a degree that “the ends justify the means” and thus the method is the only question involved while unintended consequences are irrelevant.

==

2026-05-16
[Popular Information revealed that The Orange Overlord had been investing in stocks just before acting in a way to promote them, clear evidence of insider training. Some commentators bemoaned a supposed inability to do anything about it because of presidential immunity.]

Will people puh-leeze stop saying that SCOTUS gave The Orange Overlord “absolute immunity” so he can do whatever the hell he wants, commit whatever crimes he chooses. That immunity decision was horrible but it was limited to actions related to “core presidential duties and powers,” if I recall the quote correctly. I don’t see how even this court could create a fig leaf big enough to define insider stock trading as a “core presidential duty.”

The statute of limitations for insider trading is five years for civil cases and six years for criminal ones. So yes, the SOB can be held responsible. Very likely not until he’s out of office, but yes.

Stop letting him off the hook before you even cast your line.

==

2026-05-17
[Re the White House video of TOO doing his bit during a Bible reading event]

Okay I will say he didn’t look as bad as I’d been told but otherwise, what a disaster.

He obviously had never seen those words before, had made no preparation - but my word, even for a cold reading, what a crappy job!

==

2026-05-18
[On May 18, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that hospitals which stopped GAC because of The Orange Overlord’s anti-trans EO discriminated against transgender youth in violation of state law.]

The most important sentence in the whole thing: “Because the Kennedy Declaration isn’t federal law.”

YES! And it’s damn well about time everybody - and I mean anybody and everybody - stopped acting as if any of that mass of heinous Executive Orders is anything other than what it is: the vapid ramblings spewed by biased fanatics dreaming of what they wish the law would be, not what it is.

-

2026-05-18
[Excellent news but can it be overturned by the Supreme Court?]

Not easily, anyway. This is a ruling by the Supreme Court of Colorado - a state court, not a federal one. SCOTUS should have no say unless there is a federal law to the contrary - and, as the decision points out, a declaration from Robert F. “My father would be ashamed of me” Kennedy Jr. is NOT a law.

==

2026-05-20
[Erin Reed reported that California has reaffirmed its policy re trans girl high school athletes where if a cis girl places lower than a trans girl, for the purposes of awards and meet records, she is treated as if the trans girl didn’t compete at all.]

In this case, as in a number of others, the thing that strikes me is that the people supposedly damaged by the presence of someone like A. B. - that is, the other competitors - seem to be the ones who are the least troubled by it.

==

2026-05-20
[In a discussion of supposed advantages trans women athletes have over cis women athletes, it was noted how the idea was being applies in competitions like disc golf, darts, and chess. Another unrecorded link, dang it.]

Just a bit of trivia to throw in: There is a way in which physicality can provide an advantage in chess, particularly at its highest levels. A game of tournament or match chess at master or grandmaster level can take a physical toll on a player because of the mental effort involved. In fact, it’s not uncommon for a long, hard-fought game to be lost because someone got tired enough to make mistakes.

That is, physical endurance can make a difference.

It’s trivia because there is so much individual variation and it’s such an individual quality that it’s silly to suggest men have more endurance than women.

==

2026-05-21
Why are there no ethical complaints against Reed O’Conner [the notorious judge in the notorious Northern District of Texas]?

He is patently biased to the point that he essentially has decided LGBTQ+-related cases even before they are filed. Overt animus drips from his every order. (Why is that not an issue in every such case he handles?)

He got a request to enforce a subpoena against Rhode Island Hospital signed by two of his former law clerks (Why didn’t he recuse himself?) and issued it hours later. (Why was the target not allowed a chance to respond?)

He has continued to press the matter even after learning (assuming he didn’t know originally) that the parties were in active negotiations literally the day before the request for the enforcement order. (Why didn’t he withdraw the order as not ripe?)

And now he has declared that he can decide where the targets of his bigoted wrath can seek relief and by implication what cases and motions other courts can accept.

And yet nothing happens and lawyers wonder why people don’t trust the system.

-

2026-05-21
[It’s really not that difficult: Just don’t hand over the information. Do not obey a single ruling handed down by Reed O’Connor]

I expect it will soon - indeed it has - come to that, where people need to just say “no.” The problem, the difficulty, with what we used to call “doing ‘no’” is that it involves consequences and it’s always easier to convince ourselves that those consequences (which seem real and immediate) are of greater weight than the potential gains (which seem distant and uncertain) than it is to convince ourselves that despite that the risks are worth the goal.

Breaking through that psychological barrier takes a good deal of courage, perhaps even more so for those in situations like hospitals, where people may fear the consequences not only to themselves but to others.

So I have some sympathy for places like Rhode Island Hospital even as I agree that the moral (and in the long run, more effective) course of action would be to tell Reed O’Connor and the entire 5th Circuit to stick it.

-

2026-05-21
[”These people should suffer such overwhelming personal / professional consequences from their collaboration that whatever the Trump regime threatens them with looks preferable.” (quote edited for length)]

My sympathy (or, as you tellingly put it, “sympathy”) was specifically directed at people in the crosshairs of the state, including situations such as that involving Rhode Island Hospital where those targeted may be deterred from resistance not only by the consequences to themselves but to the broader community; in the specific example, those whose access to care might be damaged by institutional resistance - which could, for example, result in the loss of Medicaid funding.

I recognize that you refer to “people in positions of power” but also say every person who “failed to say no” should be “hounded from polite society” and include those who acted under “whatever the Trump regime threaten[ed] them with” among the collaborators.

I find it both strategically dumb and morally offensive to lump those who wind up bending before the power of the state together with actual collaborators, who by definition are those who willingly cooperate with an enemy or oppressor.

Reed O’Conner (who faces no threat from Trump) is a collaborator - indeed, we could properly call him an oppressor. Rhode Island Hospital (which is under threat) is not. And we should not confuse the two.

I repeat: I have sympathy for places like Rhode Island Hospital even as I agree that the ethical and (ultimately) more effective course would have been to say “no.”

In the immortal words of Mr. Spock, “I understand. I do not approve.”

==

2026-05-22
After surviving a major heart attack, my wife was involved for several years with a group called WomenHeart, speaking to community groups and doing outreach at health fairs and the like. The stories I heard about women not receiving proper care because of the ignorance ranging from EMTs to MDs about women’s heart heath were both jaw-dropping and revealing.

It’s truly disturbing to hear now that in the six years since her death (ironically - and I maintain that is a correct use of the word here - not from a heart issue) it seems not much has changed.

==

2026-05-22
Please don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.

“Right-wingers falsely claim San Diego mosque shooters were trans”

OTOH, it admittedly was amusing to see the San Diego police described as “leftists.”

==

2026-05-24
[Jess Craven said some were upset that she said the Harris campaign’s silence on Israel/ Gaza cost the election.]

Just a quick note about the postmortem and Gaza: Don’t sweat the critics. You were right.

Openly calling out the slaughter in Gaza might have cost Harris the votes of some folks, but it for damn sure would have gained her those of a whole lot more. Enough to change the outcome? Precisely because the gap in so many states was so small, I’d say yes - but anyone reasonable would have to at least allow there was a good chance.

What can’t be denied is that her silence hurt her chances.

So I said... #18 for April 15-21

Another more-or-less weekly compilation of comment replies and random thoughts posted on other sites, this one covering April 15 to April 21.

Two notes on style: As always, at the top of each item I try to include some context, at least enough to make it clear what I'm responding to. If I need to add context here to what I originally said, it will be in square brackets ([ ]) in italics.

Also, both relies to my comments and my replies to other comments on the same original post (if you follow that) are grouped together. 

With that said, let's get to it. And oh yeah, comments and reactions are always welcome.

== 

2026-04-15
[Re a WaPo op-ed on a proposal in Connecticut to limit/regulate self-service grocery checkouts.] 

It is, of course, not surprising that a newspaper with an openly declared editorial bias in favor of "the free market" - that is, favoring corporations over the public and the bosses over workers - would carry something from "a newsletter on the consequences of overregulation" without a whisper of a concern about the consequences of under-regulation.

But as to the particular case, I refuse to use the self-checkouts on principle because I am aware of how they are marketed to the corporations.

Simply put, the pitch is that the company can boast about "service" and "speed" and "convenience" while the real impact is to get customers to do more of the work so the company can hire fewer workers. The net effect is that they are job-killers, especially of the sort of entry-level jobs long lauded by corporate America as a "way into the job market" for the young and those lacking specialized skills.
So limit them. Regulate them. It's probably unrealistic, but I'd say get rid of them as not only imposing costs on the jobs market (meaning our neighbors) but because those costs are unnecessary, recalling how long and how well we got along without them.
In the meantime, I'll deal with the "slowness" and "inconvenience" of waiting in a grocery store line. So should you.
-
2026-04-15
[“So should you?” Wow, talk about sanctimonious.]

1. There is nothing either smug or condescending about my statement. There are occasions where the wider impacts of our choices makes YMMV inadequate as a response. I say this is one. (If you want to mentally add "unless limited by physical inability/disability" to my closing, go ahead.)

2. Attempting to wave off my argument with a dismissive sneer is not a rebuttal.
-
2026-04-15
[Let the businesses run themselves and legislature keep your nose out if what they’re doing isn't illegal.]

Did it ever occur to you that everything is legal until it's not? "Don't act unless it's illegal" would have blocked every law ever passed anywhere. Say what you will about this proposal, but the principle you're applying needs much better definition.
-
2026-04-15
[proposal of 8 regular checkout lanes per 4 self-checkouts required 4 cashiers on duty at all times regardless of traffic; cashiers are "jobs for buggy whip makers."]

Just for clarity, as I read this, a store with (for example) eight self-checkouts would not have to have four cashiers always on duty at a register regardless of traffic but rather that it would have to have a minimum of four such lanes that could be staffed if traffic called for it.

If it did intend what you say, I'd agree that was silly. But I strongly suspect, indeed expect, it does not but was if anything (and assuming there is an issue) the result of sloppy language that could easily be corrected by amendment.

As for the rest, as the AI-driven self-checkout wonderworld you image for grocery stores inevitably starts to spread to the rest of retail, I'd advise you to be careful what you wish for.

==

2026-04-15
[WaPo article: SCOTUS making religion outweigh all other considerations; here, allowing exemptions from public school vaccination requirements.]

I will say this and only this: We told you so. 

If you're surprised by any of this: You were warned.

If you say "I didn't know," you just weren't paying attention.

And most particularly if you say anything like "I voted for Trump, but I didn't vote for that," yes you did. It's on you. Because we told you so. You were warned. And you just wouldn't listen.
-
2026-04-15
[Atheists have worst of it. Discrimination not only tolerated, celebrated; have to follow ALL laws, can't pick/choose."]

In at least some ways, the legal question about atheists has already been answered. In US v. Seeger (1965), SCOTUS ruled that conscientious objector status under the draft was available to non-theists if they had beliefs that if I recall the term correctly "occupied the same position" in their life as a traditional religion would. In Welsh v. US (1970), the Court expanded that to make explicit that those beliefs need not be religious or called such, that a personal moral code would suffice.

In short, if you had a set of core beliefs that would guide your judgment in the same way traditional religious principles (supposedly) did, you were eligible for CO status. (It was still tough to get for anyone not a member of a traditional "peace church," but you were eligible.)

It'd be very interesting to see someone pursue a demand for an exemption from some civic duty on the grounds of their atheist beliefs being as valid as those of right-wing Xians to see if the Court would be true to its declared principles. The downside is I'm afraid such a suit would be successful, ripping out another support from the already-rickety concept of community responsibility. 

==

2026-04-15
[re article on decision of MT SupCt state constitution provided broad protection for trans rights, wondered if GOPpers in Congress would try to pass law overruling it.]

The "supremacy clause" in the Constitution says federal law can (depending on the particulars) override state law and the same is generally true about state versus local law - but here we're not talking about a state law but a state constitution and federal law cannot override that. And as I think the article notes, the guiding principle is that your rights within a given state are protected to the extent guaranteed by the state or federal constitution, whichever is greater.

This is why the efforts of The Orange Overlord and RFK "My father would be ashamed of me" Jr. to cripple trans health care have revolved not around outright bans but through threats to cut off various sources of funding, i.e., banning it through fiscal blackmail, making such care inaccessible, even though not technically illegal.

==

2026-04-16
[oral arguments on CO SupCt case ordering reopening of trans health care clinic noted trial court sympathetic to the plaintiffs, denied relief for fear of potential reactions from feds re hospital financing.]

District Court [trial] Judge Ericka F.H. Englert was wrong. She was not being asked to "call the bluff of the federal government." She was being asked to rule in accordance with the Colorado constitution without relying on speculation of what actions the feds might take outside the court system.

And, oh yeah, there is no federal law involved here. Neither an Executive Order nor an agency declaration is a law.

It's an indication of how far were have come towards authoritarianism that even a state judge is treating whatever foams out of the mouths of RFK "My dad would be ashamed of me" Jr. and hydroxychloroquine fan Mehmet "I really am from" Oz as instantly becoming law.

==

2026-04-17
[DOJ demanding Reddit turn over personal info re user who criticized ICE]

"Be careful what you say" is exactly what we should not do. Be honest, yes. Be truthful, yes. If you are asserting particular facts (as opposed to expressing opinion), be correct or at least have a reasonable basis to believe you are correct. (In other words, don't just make crap up. There are more than enough hard facts to suffice.) In any event, do not engage in the self-censorship of "be careful." Rather, be defiant.

As for this particular case, the latest news I can find is that John Doe is going to file a motion to quash the subpoena. Personally, I would think the absence of any legitimate law enforcement purpose would suffice, but we'll have to keep watching.

==

2026-04-18
[comment on YT vid: "I never imagined I'd see the rise of the 4th Reich in this country." response: because people "got complacent," ignored warning signs. then: "not that simple; super rich have been undermining the system."]

"It's not that simple" is a truism, but we should never forget that it implicitly acknowledges that the original assertion [i.e., that people got complacent] is indeed part of the cause. Shifting blame does not absolve us of our responsibility as citizens.

==

2026-04-18
[meme cited CNN story to say 62M cishet men "attend" "online rape academy" re sex with women either drunk, drugged, or asleep]

First, I found the link to the original CNN article. I also found an analysis by Snopes.

(The link is to a re-posting because Snopes.com is now behind a paywall.)

The criticism Snopes had is that the “62 million” figure is an estimate of the total traffic to the entire website over that month, which safely does not consist of 62 million individual cishet men going once each.

And please don’t anyone try to claim I’m downplaying or minimizing the horror here. It’s rather my conviction that when what you can prove is bad enough, exaggeration only invites dismissal.

Footnote: What was not clear from either the CNN article or Snopes was if the whole site is the sort of stuff that is the topic here or is it a pornsite where that is one part.

So I bit the bullet and went there.

It is indeed a site with what I suppose would be the usual range of material; I didn't even find a link on the main page to "sleep" content, although I may well have missed it or it might be deliberately buried. (The main page being as far as I went.)
 
I think this reinforces my concern about exaggeration. You never want to be in a position where your argument leans on a number where a more accurate figure could generate the response "Actually, it's only such-and-so," thereby trying to dismiss your entire argument even if the "only" number is more than enough to make the point.

==

2026-04-18
[re-post opened "Republicans just introduced a bill to force doctors [to] build a government list of trans people."]

Links, dammit! What GOPpers? Where? This reads like it’s referring to a state-level proposal in which case “where” matters in terms of resistance.

Certainly it is painfully obvious to anyone who looks that the ultimate goal is to wipe trans folks from society altogether, to drive them so far into the closet that they couldn’t even find the door even with a flashlight. But while resistance is rooted in awareness, it requires actionable knowledge to bloom.

[Posts and memes with no source provided is an on-going complaint of mine.]

==

2026-04-18
So the real estate salesman who became The Orange Overlord convincing people to vote for him on a promise of “no more wars” is now saying the federal government “can’t take care of day care ... Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

Why? “We’re fighting wars.”

So everything that doesn't involve being ever-more ready to kill ever-more people has to be up to individual states.

I'd say "Any questions?" but if at this point you still have any, it's too late for you.

==

2026-04-18
[Re why some folks don't realize are trans until well into adulthood.]

I thank you for this even though as a cis male I have little to add to the conversation.

I do have one passing observation: When folks say "I always knew," I don't think they're saying they had "independently formulate[d] an entirely different theory of gender" but rather that looking back later, they "always knew" that things just felt, well, wrong; not that they always knew "I'm really a boy" or "really a girl," but that what was expected of them didn't fit somehow.

Thanks for adding to my understanding, including to some degree of myself.

==

2026-04-19
[Re April 17 The Fucking News.]

This certainly up to your usual standard. (How's THAT for a politician's answer?)

However, the phrase "will 'restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC'" sent a little shiver through me.

"Gold standard" is a term used regularly in trying to deny gender-affirming care on the grounds that the evidence is "low quality" - most commonly by people who don't know the first thing about the scale or what it's for. 

The term "gold standard" in this context is usually taken to mean blind randomized controlled studies. The problem is that a great deal of modern medicine is not based on such studies but on observational studies, i.e., "what has been tried, what worked, what didn't," which are by definition lower quality.

What's more, it is sometimes impossible to do those kinds of controlled studies in an ethical manner. Consider puberty blockers and hormone therapy. It's well-established that they work and how they work. Doing such a study today would mean denying people needed medication, giving people undesired medication, or both.

And blind? How is a young person to not know if they are or are not going through puberty? If they are or aren't experiencing the effects of prescribed hormones?

Hearing The Orange Overlord reference "the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE" in the context of the CDC does not give hope; it gives me pause. We need to watch this space.

==

2026-04-19
[Oligarch Watch: AI cos push use chatbots for guidance on personal health care.]

I thought this might be worthy of inclusion. Back in November I took a YouGov survey related to public perceptions about the use of AI in healthcare. Three of the questions asked for general responses rather than picking from among multiple choices. This is quoting my responses.

Q: What ethical considerations are most important to think about when adding AI tools to healthcare?
I was told by my surgeon some years ago “You treat the patient, not the X-ray.” The more we use AI, the more that adage is reversed. During my recent hospitalization my PCP came by on their rounds, during which they displayed not through words but tone and demeanor a genuine personal concern for my health, something of which AI is incapable of expressing or feeling, at best offering instead merely an algorithmically-driven facade of concern, a programmed pretense, which well could be likened to the comforting reassurances of the scammer.

Q: What is your overall impression of AI in healthcare?
Not ready for prime time. For now, it’s a bandwagon promising what it can’t (and perhaps never will) deliver, driven less by public health than by the profit-driven preferences of the corporate spectrum of health care (i.e., hospitals and the insurance industry) who pursue a goal of “efficiency” (read as “fewer employees”) and would, as I suggested earlier, “treat the X-ray, not the patient,” with us coming to exist less as patients than as datasets.

Q: Is there anything else about AI in healthcare that you would like to share with us?
AI is good for, indeed excellent at, analyzing large amounts of data, producing results that can be viewed and considered mathematically because that’s what they are - mathematical derivations from mathematical data. But healthcare in general and medicine within that reach involves more than mere data but also includes personalities and foibles and trust and other human interactions along with unavoidable judgment calls driven by such non-mathematical considerations, all of which are beyond its capabilities. Which makes the use of chat boxes by consumers for health information advice fraught with risk and worse as shown by recent suits against various companies whose chat boxes are accused of having encouraged teenager users to commit suicide. AI simply is not up the task to which the health care industry is trying to set it in pursuit of profit.

==

2026-04-20
[Open ended YouGov poll Q: "How do you feel about the use of AI in making movies?"]

I can see its use as a tool in areas such as special effects in ways similar to how previous technologies have been used to make them more realistic. Beyond such areas, that is, where it functions as an improved version of already-existing tools employed under the same sorts of conditions, direction, and control as those, I would strongly prefer it was not used at all.

==

2026-04-21
[Ruling en banc, 5th CCoA upheld TX law requiring 10 Commandments in every classroom.]

Wait wait wait.

"They compared it to the Pledge of Allegiance - which is also religious, with its “one Nation, under God” line - to argue that students aren’t forced to say it."

Did they actually say the part about the Pledge being religious? You say they made the comparison but don't present it as a quote, so it's not clear.

Because if they did, I clearly recall a SCOTUS decision that said the Pledge was NOT religious and "under God" was a mere "civic exercise" which had at most a "tinge" of religion - which was why having to say it did not intrude on the rights of atheists.

In either event, I have to say I disagree on one point: The majority was not "delusional." That knew damn well what they were doing and they did it consciously and deliberately.
-
2026-04-21
[SCOTUS will deny cert, and it will stand.]
Just to make it clear, it will stand in the 5th Circuit, nowhere else. However, the danger there is that it will serve as precedent for other circuits to consider. So either it will spread to significant parts of the country or at some point there will be a split in circuits, at which point SCOTUS would feel entirely justified in stepping in, even feeling obligated to.

Remember when...

 

...privacy from government snooping was a significant issue? Maybe I mean definitely it should be again. Two recent stories tell us why.

 

In the first, 404 Media reported on May 29 that earlier that month, a Texas cop, suspecting that a woman had gotten a self-administered abortion, performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to try to find her. The search included states where abortion is legal such as Washington and Illinois. 

 

A company called Flock markets the cameras, usually marketed to cities and towns to address concerns about local crime or find missing people. Instead, it has become another means for police to conduct sweeping, warrantless surveillance, enabling police in one state to "investigate what is a human right in another state because it is a crime in another," in the words of Kate Bertash of the Digital Defense Fund.

 

(Sidebar: I first wrote about ALPRs in 2007 when New York City was about to install its first of them.)

 

The second comes from The Intercept, which reported on May 22 that US intelligence agencies are evading the 4th Amendment and obtaining vast amounts of personal and sensitive information that normally would require a search warrant to obtain.

 

How? Simply by buying it from data brokers, a vast and growing - and largely unregulated - market.

 

But there's a problem: There's too much data for sale from too many sources and oh dear, the spooks can't use it efficiently. So, the article informs us,

[t]he Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a system to centralize and “streamline” the use of commercially available information.... The data portal will include information deemed by the ODNI as highly sensitive, that which can be “misused to cause substantial harm, embarrassment, and inconvenience to U.S. persons.”

That data will be available to the 18 separate agencies and offices that comprise the federal intelligence "community" - and perhaps others beyond those. It will also enable use of unreliable, hallucination-prone AI large-language models and pseudoscientific “sentiment analysis,” which claims being able to know someone’s opinion about a topic by analyzing implicit signals in their behavior, movement, or speech.

But don't worry, really - the spooks insist this is just about efficiency and is not any threat to First or Fourth Amendment rights. Really. They mean it this time. They do. Because efficiency in government spying on us is all about freedom.

 

Footnote: The program to establish this "Data Consortium" was started during the Biden administration.

050 The Erickson Report for March 17 to 30

 

050 The Erickson Report for March 17 to 30

Good News: Relief for the USPS
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/08/usps-senate-biden/

Ukraine: "The War Drags On"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeH5rVUgios
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/10/2085119/-Ukraine-update-A-war-on-the-concept-of-civilization-itself
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22967674/russia-ukraine-no-fly-zone-limited-nuclear-war
https://twitter.com/MMazarr/status/1501688603042361346
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/03/no-fly-zone-test/363099/
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-zelenskyy-kyiv-europe-congress-058c8b72b81044f861b30b7ceb500a15
https://www.politico.eu/article/zelenskyy-peace-talks-russia-realistic-accept-compromise-nato/

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages
Clowns:
    DC "truckers convoy"
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/11/2085314/-D-C-freedom-truckers-threaten-to-abuse-911-system-if-Washingtonians-don-t-stop-flipping-them-off
    US Senate
    https://www.aol.com/news/u-senate-approves-bill-daylight-184244252-204613821.html

Outrage:
    Illegitimate "state secrets privilege" used to conceal torture and spying
    https://freedom.press/news/supreme-court-entrenches-state-secrets-privilege-dealing-a-blow-to-accountability/
    https://www.aclu.org/other/background-state-secrets-privilege
    http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2004/04/must-read.html

Julian Assange closer to being extradited
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/14/uk-top-court-rejects-assanges-request-appeal-extradition-decision
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/06/13/worlds-most-powerful-imprison-julian-assange-his-virtues-not-his-vices
https://rsf.org/en/news/uk-home-secretary-gives-green-light-extradite-julian-assange-us
https://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/06/wikileaks.investigation/index.html
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2010/12/once-more-into-breach.html
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/assange-kidnapping-wikileaks-cia-senate/
https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2010/12/once-more-into-leak.html
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/06/245-news-on-chelsea-manning-and-julian.html
https://rsf.org/en/news/uk-rsf-calls-home-office-block-assange-extradition-following-supreme-court-refusal-consider-appeal
https://freedom.press/news/appeals-court-says-that-nixons-attempt-to-prosecute-pentagon-papers-reporter-must-stay-secret-50-years-later/

035 The Erickson Report for April 8 to 21, Page Three: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrage]

035 The Erickson Report for April 8 to 21, Page Three: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrage]

We end with our Outrage and this one is a bit different because it's not about an incident or a policy, but a topic, one I've been meaning to mention for a while.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on digital privacy and free speech reports that during the pandemic, a dangerous business has prospered: invading students’ privacy with proctoring software and apps.

The group says that in the last year, universities have been compelling students to download apps that collect their face images, driver’s license data, and network information. And it does beyond solely extensive ID requirements: Students who want to move forward with their education are sometimes forced to accept being video recorded in their own homes and having the footage reviewed for “suspicious” behavior.

But believe it or not, that's not the Outrage here.

Unsurprisingly, students and educators have been pushing back against these invasions of privacy. Last fall, Ian Linkletter, a remote learning specialist at the University of British Columbia, became one of them.

Linkletter looked at what the software actually did and compared it to what Proctorio, the company that sold the spy apps to the university, was telling people about it. He posted some of his criticisms on Twitter, and included links to Proctorio's publicly-available YouTube videos.

So Proctorio has sued him, claiming - and I had to admit I read this a couple of times to make sure they were really saying this - that by linking to publicly viewable YouTube videos, Linkletter had violated both Proctorio's copyright and a confidentiality agreement between the university and the company on the grounds that even though the videos were publicly available, they were confidential. Note well, Linkletter did not alter the videos, he didn't re-use them in any way, he didn't even copy them. He just linked to them. But according to Proctorio, that's enough.

The case is transparently absurd, but that's not the point. This is - and this is why I bring this up - a classic SLAPP, a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, a suit not with the goal of winning a judgment but of silencing opposition by saddling an individual or small group with back-breaking legal costs, aiming to financially break them or force them to agree to shut up in exchange for the suit being dropped.

Fortunately for Linkletter, British Columbia has a sort of “anti-SLAPP” law, allowing a defendant to bring an early challenge to the lawsuit against them on the basis that their speech is on a topic of “public interest.” If the court accepts that, the suit is dismissed unless the plaintiff can meet a very high standard for it to continue. Dismissal could also result in the defendant getting their legal fees back.

Which is good, but hardly good enough. Getting your fees back is not guaranteed and in any event it requires being able to pay them in the first place. Linkletter, for example, has had to raise $50,000 to defend himself. For the corporation, "losing" can be written off as a cost of doing business, worth it to silence a critic. For the defendant, "winning" can be bankrupting, spiritually if not financially.

Stopping SLAPPs will take more than enabling recovery of costs after the fact. There must be actual penalties to these corporations, including being liable for personal damages, not just legal fees.

SLAPPs have been a weapon wielded by the strong against the weak for some time. They are still being used but we don't hear about a lot of them because the defendant often is required to never discuss the case as a condition of the suit being dropped.

Their purpose is to make the cost of objecting to corporate power too high. It's time we made the cost of silencing speech even higher.

For more on this, check out anti-slapp.org

030 The Erickson Report for January 21 to February 3

 030 The Erickson Report for January 21 to February 3

This episode: 
- The best thing that happened at the Inauguration is that nothing happened 

- Good News
https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania-supreme-court-police-warrantless-vehicle-searches-commonwealth-alexander-gary-odor-marijuana-20201222.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/falsely-claiming-someone-gay-no-longer-defamation-se-n-y-n1254175
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/15/arc-of-universe/
https://www.aol.com/news/trump-appointees-pressure-census-report-144949540-022320987.html
https://www.aol.com/nra-seeks-bankruptcy-protection-plans-222201836.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/betty-white-99th-birthday_n_60037324c5b697df1a06250c
https://www.aol.com/news/u-court-deals-final-blow-161627823-164453168.html

- Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages
https://digg.com/2021/one-main-character-sarah-huckabee-sanders
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/pastor-robert-henderson/
https://www.biblehub.com/matthew/19-24.htm
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-insurrection-2649882126/
https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-2649963543/
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/534178-marjorie-taylor-greene-says-she-will-introduce-impeachment-articles-against
https://greene.house.gov/media/in-the-news/congresswoman-marjorie-greene-makes-statement-masks-house
https://www.inforum.com/news/government-and-politics/6840725-North-Dakota-rep-wants-American-as-race-option-on-forms-says-Black-Americans-glad-their-ancestors-were-brought-here
https://www.aol.com/trump-receives-moroccos-highest-award-190526011-021545219.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/24/western_sahara_a_rare_look_inside
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021
https://freedomhouse.org/country/western-sahara/freedom-world/2020
https://www.aol.com/trump-receives-moroccos-highest-award-190526011-021545219.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-consulate-turning-point-disputed-western-sahara-75160219
https://www.king5.com/article/news/nation-world/us-official-presence-in-western-sahara/507-d5a10e16-2c0f-4324-a66c-4ff38e45bd82
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/24/pompeo-us-consulate-western-sahara-450371
https://www.fastcompany.com/90594683/the-damning-mlk-fbi-doc-shows-how-poorly-martin-luther-king-jr-was-treated-in-his-time
https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/12/7204453/martin-luther-king-fbi-letter
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/01/mlk-fbi-surveillance/617719/
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/01/18/ostracized-conservatives-not-allowed-to-honor-mlk-after-they-enabled-a-racist-president-1018116/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/don-lemon-attacks-republicans-quoting-mlk
https://www.michiganadvance.com/2021/01/18/column-republican-praise-of-martin-luther-king-sounds-even-more-hollow-and-hypocritical-now/
https://gsgriffin.com/2016/12/08/the-socialism-of-martin-luther-king-jr/

The Erickson Report for November 11 to 24, Page 4: Five things noted in passing

The Erickson Report for November 11 to 24, Page 4: Five things noted in passing

Next up, an occasional feature called Five Things Noted in Passing, five things on which I'm only going to spend a minute or two each but I wanted to make sure got mentioned.

First, I have a prediction for you.

There is some speculation circulating around that Tweetie-pie will either pardon himself before he's kicked out of office or that he will resign before the Inauguration and let then-President Mike NotWorthAFarthing do the job.

I don't know if either of those will happen but I do say that there is no need for him to do either. Because I predict that a Joe Blahden administration, a Blahden DOJ, will not prosecute Tweetie-pie for any of his crimes, for any of his corruption.

Instead, Blahden will grandly say, just as the Amazing Mr. O said, coming into office faced with clear evidence of Bush the Lesser's war crimes, some version of "We must look forward, not backward, we must unite as one nation moving into a better future." And Tweetie-pie will walk.

Either way, Tweetie-pie may still not be off the hook, because Presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes, so any state-level prosecution, such as New York's case about taxes, would be unaffected.

But prosecuted by the Blahden administration? Not a chance.

=

Next, filed under the heading "All Your Data is Belonging to US," Facebook is demanding that a team of New York University researchers stop their work analyzing the micro-targeting of political ads on the platform.

The researchers have a team of 6500 volunteers across the US using a browser plug-in allowing the researchers to see what political ads are being shown to what viewers, enabling them to study how Facebook has been used for disinformation and manipulation.

But on October 16, Facebook demanded that the team disable the  plug-in and destroy all data gathered, threatening "additional enforcement action" if this is not done by November 30. The claim is that the tool violates the site's rule against automated bulk collection of data - the very thing Facebook itself does all the time in order to have the very demographic data it can use to - for its own considerable profit - enable advertisers to micro-target users.

It should be noted that the threatening demand, first reported a week after it was sent, has gotten heavy pushback from journalists, academics, and First Amendment lawyers.

=

Another fallout of the COVID pandemic is that the United Nations is facing a financial crisis. As of November 2, nearly one-third of the 193 member states have not paid up their yearly assessments, leading to a shortfall of $5.1 billion, which in the context of the UN budget is enough to threaten to undermine the world-wide operations of the organization.

The UN has never actually lived up to its promise but it's still a valuable organization, particularly in its international agencies such as UNESCO, UNICEF, the Relief and Works Agency, and the World Health Organization. (You did know that the WHO is part of the UN, yes?)

By the way, over half the shortfall is due to the failure of one nation to pay what it owes. Guess who.

=

Speaking of the WHO brings me to some news I have been wanting to share since I heard it, so forgive me for referring to an announcement made back on August 25. That was the day that the WHO declared that polio has been eradicated from the entire continent of Africa.

Polio, for those of you too young to remember it, is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that attacks the central nervous system, leading to paralysis. As recently at the 1980s, polio - also known as infantile paralysis - was a dread disease, endemic in 125 nations and claiming 350,000 children a year.

Now, it is endemic in just two, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have seen a combined total of 102 cases so far in 2020. That is a reduction of over 99.9% from the 1980s.

This the result of a campaign sparked in 1988 by Rotary International, which gained powerful partners in the form of UNICEF, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), and the WHO, among others. The campaign was to bring polio vaccines, which had been available in the industrialized world for decades, to those still in need.

The goal of making polio join smallpox in the dustbin of history is obviously not achieved, but it is in sight.

=

Finally, under the heading "this just in," it appears that the Affordable Care Act will for the third time survive a challenge at the Supreme Court.

At oral arguments on November 10 on the right wing's latest attempt to have the law struck down, two of the right-wing judges - John "The Smirk" Roberts and Brett "The Rapist" Kavanaugh - appeared ready to agree that the law's mandate to have insurance, the penalty for which was eliminated by Congress in 2017, should be thrown out but at the same time seemed prepared to have the rest of the law stand.

For his part, Roberts wondered aloud why, if Congress wanted the ACA to be dependent on the mandate, it didn't revoke the law when it eliminated the penalties while Kavahaugh said that precedent pointed in the direction of striking down the mandate but leaving the rest of the law intact.

Add the three judges considered liberal and you have a 5-4 majority.

Not a sure thing and clearly the whole issue of health care is something we'll be talking about a lot more, but for right now there is cause to be optimistic that we will at least not lose what has been gained.

A decision is expected by late spring.

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Quick News Hits

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Quick News Hits

A couple of headlines of things that would have made it into the show this time were it not for it being our traditional Thanksgiving show.

-

ISRAEL
On November 21, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as long predicted and recently expected, has been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He faces the possibility of more than 10 years in prison. To show some things are truly transnational among the right wing, he called the charges a "witch hunt" and a "political coup" and called for an investigation of the investigators.

This comes as Benny Gantz failed to form a ruling coalition for the Israeli parliament, meaning the nation is now facing its third parliamentary elections in less than a year.

It also comes just days after the Tweetie-pie administration announced it was reversing 41 years of US foreign policy, now declaring that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are not "inconsistent with international law," even though they clearly are and remain so in the eyes of much of the world, including the EU.

This is the latest in a string of extreme rightwing Christian fundamentalist moves by the administration, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, closing the Palestinian mission in Washington, DC, and halting of Congressionally-appropriated aid to the West Bank and Gaza.

-

PRIVACY
Bloomberg News reported on November 22 that a database aggregating 1.2 billion users' personal information, including social media accounts related to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Github, with associated email addresses and phone numbers, was discovered unprotected on a Google cloud server last month.

So far, no one knows for certain how it got there, including whether this is the result of data being compromised or just plain stupidity.

But remember, your privacy is their primary concern.

-

BOLIVIA
This is something I absolutely don't have time for because covering all the neCessary ground would take too long, I hope it can be the subject of A Longer Look a show or two down the road, but it needs to be said now:

When Bolivian president Evo Morales left office on November 10, he did not "resign." He did not "step down." He was forced out in a military coup, one which was recognized as such by, among others, the governments of Mexico and Uruguay, the president-elect of Argentina, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, former OAS Secretary General Miguel Insulza, and US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and which is daily becoming more repressive and violent - although if you relied on mainstream US media, you'd think the coup was equivalent to overthrowing Hitler himself.

As the media watchdog organization FAIR put it, when is a coup not a coup? When the US government is glad it happened.

-
 
SCOTT WARREN
And we'll end on a happy note: Dr. Scott Warren of the immigrant aid group No More Deaths was facing 10 years in prison on a charge of "harboring unauthorized migrants" for the heinous act of providing food, water, and a place to sleep overnight for some immigrants making the risky and sometimes deadly trek across the Sonoran Desert.

After a six-day trial, on November 20 it took the jury just two hours to acquit him. Take that, Border Patrol.

The Erickson Report, Page 2: On Privacy

The Erickson Report, Page 2: On Privacy

I used to talk a lot about privacy issues, about personal privacy and government and corporate intrusions into our personal space. I haven't done so recently. Consider this re-introducing the topic.

On October 21, a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from four US citizens’ for a fair process to get their names off the government’s No Fly List.

The No Fly List is a secret government database of people - many of whom have not been charged with a crime - that the government has barred from flying in or over the US. As of June 2016, there were about 81,000 people on the List, including about 1,000 American citizens or legal residents. The No Fly List is a subset of a larger terrorism watchlist, which as of 2017 had about 1.2 million people, of whom about 5,000 are American citizens or legal residents.

None of the four men in this particular case, Kashem v. Barr, have ever been charged with a crime; nonetheless, each has been barred from flying for more than nine years.

In an earlier ruling in the case, in 2014, the government’s procedures for someone to challenge their placement on the No Fly List were “wholly ineffective” and violated due process. The government had to revise those procedures, as a result of which several of the original plaintiffs were cleared to fly, which itself should give you an idea of how reliable the list is.

The four remaining plaintiffs, still barred from flying, argued that the changed procedures are still constitutionally inadequate, saying their ban was based on second-hand assertions and secret evidence they could not meaningfully contest and that the government’s criteria for placing people on the list are unconstitutionally vague.

Citing the "national security concerns at issue" - silly me, I thought it was Constitutional rights that were at issue - the court said, in effect, "better safe than sorry" and dismissed the challenge.

I didn't read the whole opinion (it was over 50 pages), but I did read the court's summary and was particularly struck by this passage:

The panel determined that the No Fly List criteria are not impermissibly vague merely because they require a prediction of future criminal conduct, or because they do not delineate what factors are relevant to that determination.

That is, the standards for declaring you too dangerous to be allowed on an airplane are based in part on predictions of your future behavior without even being able to lay out what lead to that prediction.

We are headed for "The Minority Report" territory.

34.9 - For the Record: UN death penalty vote, IRS no-bid contract, Warren torches Equifax executive, Yahoo data breach growing

For the Record: UN death penalty vote, IRS no-bid contract, Warren torches Equifax executive, Yahoo data breach growing

Next up, we have one of our occasional features. This one is called For the Record, where we cover a few things quickly just to make sure the don't get ignored.

So first, For the Record: On September 27, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on the death penalty. It called on countries "that have not yet abolished the death penalty" not to use it for "crimes" such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery, and consensual same-sex relations; to ensure that it is not applied in a discriminatory fashion; and not to apply it to persons with mental or intellectual disabilities or who are under 18 or to pregnant women.

That is, it didn't even call for an end to the death penalty but only that those nations that have it do not apply it unjustly. The resolution passed 27-13. The US voted no.

Note that homosexuality is illegal in over 70 countries. In 13 of them, the penalty is death.

For the record: On September 30, the IRS issued a $7.25 million no-bid contract for services to "verify taxpayer identity" and "assist in ongoing identity verification and validations" at the IRS.

The contract was given to Equifax.

For the record: As a natural follow-up that, at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on October 4. Sen. Elizabeth Warren scorched former Equifax CEO Richard Smith, who retired after the September disclosure of a massive security breach that exposed personal information of nearly 150 million Americans.

She forced Smith to admit that Equifax actually profits from data breaches because they create business opportunities for the company to sell services such as credit monitoring to people who now face increase risk of fraud and identity theft.

She was even able to quote Smith as calling fraud a "huge opportunity for us" and noted that Equifax's profits had gone up 80% since 2013 despite having admitted to four separate data breaches in that same time.

Smith didn't even try to refute Warren's argument, perhaps because he doesn't care: Despite being CEO at the time of the breach, he still will collect a $90-million retirement payout.

Finally, For the record: On the other hand, perhaps Smith could have tried to insist the breach was no big deal: After all, it only affected nearly 150 million people.

Meanwhile, the number determined to be affected by Yahoo's 2013 data breach keeps growing. It's now thought to encompass all user accounts, which brings the number of compromised accounts to something like three billion.

34.1 - Good News: White House cybersecurity coordinator wants to end the use of SSNs as ID

Good News: White House cybersecurity coordinator wants to end the use of SSNs as ID

Starting off the week with some Good News, it seems that the reality is finally sinking in. Speaking at the Washington Post's annual Cybersecurity Summit on October 3, Rob Joyce, who is the White House's cybersecurity coordinator, said the US should end the use of a Social Security number as a form of ID. It has "outlived its usefulness," he said.

Joyce noted that every time you use your Social Security number as ID, it increases the chance it could be compromised - and if it is, you can't even change it.

This is something I've been advocating for a long time and I have for a good number of years been refusing to give my Social Security number to anyone when it is not legally required, which essentially meant my employer, my bank, and the IRS. So it's Good News to see that even TheRump's White House can get something right.

24.5 - News on Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

News on Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

Something I wanted to bring up just because hey it's my show so why not.

Chelsea Manning

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated the release of Chelsea Manning from prison. At the time, the  only image I had of her was a black-and-white selfie of her wearing a wig - an image I have since learned was never supposed to be circulated: She sent it privately in an email to her therapist and commanding officer and it somehow got out.

Anyway, I wanted to note that we now have this new one. That is Chelsea Manning, in her first photo as a free transgender woman.

Unavoidably intertwined with Manning's case is that of Julian Assange, director of Wikileaks, an organization the Obama administration, demonstrating its claimed commitment to transparency, tried to bankrupt by blocking any source of funding. The Department of Justice tried every way it could think of to find something they could charge Assange with that did not also implicate major publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which published portions of the documents that Wikileaks released.

There simply is no rational question but that the highly harsh treatment of Manning, including extended solitary confinement, and the massive and threatening charges filed against her, were an attempt to force Manning to finger Assange as having induced or better yet directed her to copy and send him the documents involved, giving the US a way to get Assange without worrying about little things like freedom of the press.

When they couldn't break her, they were left without a case against Assange.

Julian Assange

But that didn't mean they gave up trying. And now, after seven years of effort, according to reports, they think they have found a way to get Julian Assange and Attorney General Jeff "too racist to be a judge" Sessions said recently that getting Assange is a "priority."

Meanwhile, in one of those moments of deliciously overt hypocrisy, CIA director Mike Pompeo has labeled Wikileaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia" and proclaimed that "we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us" while calling Assange himself "a fraud," "a coward," and "a narcissist."

This is the same Mike Pompeo who last July gloated over the DNC emails released by Wikileaks, calling them "proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down," and who during the fall campaign repeatedly referred to those emails to attack Hillary Clinton.

As a final note on this, Sweden has dropped its fishy-fron-the-start "investigation" of Assange, an investigation that, contrary to the impression you no doubt got from the media, never involved actual charges. Supposedly, he was only wanted for questioning, and the Swedish prosecutors have now said they are giving up because there is no way to question him - even though he has previously offered to be questioned in the Ecuadorian embassy where he has been given asylum or by videoconference; significantly, he even said he would go back to Sweden if the government would guarantee he would not be extradited to the US. Sweden refused all proposed compromises.

The UK still says Assange will be arrested the instant he steps out of that embassy (which is in London) on a charge of missing a court date. Like Sweden, the UK will give no assurance that if he gives himself up he won't be bundled off to the US on whatever charge the DOJ can conjure up in the hopes of destroying Assange and Wikileaks along with him.

24.3 - Footnote: Supreme Court might reconsider "third party doctrine"

Footnote: Supreme Court might reconsider "third party doctrine"

As a Footnote to that, there is also a hope that SCOTUS will use the opportunity to revisit and from my perspective hopefully reverse the so-called "third party doctrine."

That is a to-me-bizarre legal principle derived from two 1970s Supreme Court cases. This principle holds that information you voluntarily share with someone else - whether that "someone else" is your bank (such as your account information, your record of deposits and withdrawals), the phone company (what numbers you call, when and for how long), or anyone else - isn't protected by the Fourth Amendment because you can't expect that third party to keep that information secret.

There is, of course, the notion of "reasonable expectation of privacy," but this doctrine holds that as soon as you share any information with anyone, you willingly surrender all such expectation. Ultimately, the principle means that in the absence of specific legal protection (such as doctor-patient or lawyer-client confidentiality) or - maybe - a binding legal contract with that other party, the government is entitled to know anything you tell anybody. Suppose you send a private letter to someone. As soon as they open that letter, you have "voluntarily shared" whatever is in it and so the government can see it, too. Your only true legal privacy lies in information and thoughts which you never share with anyone.

I always found it offensive and absurd, more the logic of a police state than a free one, and it's even more absurd and yes dangerous now.

As Sonia Sotomayor said back in 2012 in another Supreme Court decision, the "third party doctrine" is

ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks

and that it's time to stop treating "secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy."

Again, recent cases give some reason to hope that SCOTUS will move from 1977 to 2017. And if that happens, yeah, that would be really Good News.

24.2 - Potential Good News: Supreme Court will review a case of cell phone tracking

Potential Good News: Supreme Court will review a case of cell phone tracking

Next up, we have a case of potential Good News. It's not Good News yet, but if it works out the way some people are thinking it well might, it would indeed be Good News.

On June 5 the Supreme Court announced it will review United States v. Carpenter, a case involving long-term, retrospective tracking of a person's movements using information generated by their cell phone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on digital privacy, called this "very exciting news."

The case involves two defendants, Timothy Carpenter and Timothy Sanders, convicted of a string of armed robberies in 2011.

The issue at hand is that the prosecution won the convictions at least in part by convincing the jury that the two were at the scene of each of the robberies by using the cell site location information (or CSLI) data for their cell phones for some months around the time of the crimes: records that the FBI obtained without a warrant. The pair contended that such a warrantless search was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument, insisting that the information from the CSLI records was merely "information necessary to convey" a call and did not include the content of the call, so access to CSLI records was not a "search" under the Fourth Amendment - ignoring the fact that those same records can reveal where you were, when you were there, and for how long you were there: precisely the info used to convict both Carpenters.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the court's ruling "shows a complete disregard for the sensitive and revealing nature of cell site location information" as well as equating analog technologies addressed in old cases with "the data-rich technologies of today." In other words, the court didn't know what it was talking about and so just fell back on "Sure, cops, whatever you say."

Which is one reason why groups like the EFF wanted SCOTUS to take up the case, especially in light of the fact that the Court has twice recently heard cases involving digital privacy and both times has ruled against the cops and in favor of privacy. There is a reasonable hope that the Supreme Court, which seems more aware of the technological implications involved than the lower courts do, will do so again.

And that would be Good News.

What's Left #24

What's Left
for the week of June 8 to 14, 2017

This week:
Good News: Supreme Court supports right of third-party repair
https://www.wired.com/2017/06/impression-v-lexmark/?google_editors_picks=true
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf
https://www.wired.com/2017/03/right-to-repair-laws/

Potential Good News: Supreme Court will review a case of cell phone tracking
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/supreme-court-will-hear-significant-cell-phone-tracking-case
https://www.eff.org/document/united-states-v-carpenter-sixth-circuit-court-appeals-csli
http://fortune.com/video/2017/06/05/supreme-court-data-privacy-case/?xid=gn_editorspicks&google_editors_picks=true

Footnote: Supreme Court might reconsider "third party doctrine"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/graham-enbanc
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/third-party-records-privacy-doesnt-require-secrecy

Not Good News: Congressional reactionaries want to make Section 702 of FISA permanent
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/05/2036-traitor-act-provisions-up-for.html
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/way-nsa-uses-section-702-deeply-troubling-heres-why

News on Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2010/12/they-say-that-information-wants-to-be.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2010/12/once-more-into-leak.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/julian-assange-wikileaks-us-charges/index.html
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/14/trumps-cia-director-pompeo-targeting-wikileaks-explicitly-threatens-speech-and-press-freedoms/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-14/wikileaks-issues-response-cia-director-mike-pompeo
http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/hypocrite-cia-director-who-delighted-in-wikileaks-dnc-release-threatens-julian-assange/
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/24/politics/kfile-mike-pompeo-wikileaks/index.html

Update on voter ID laws
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/06/233-good-news-north-carolina-voter.html
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article154384454.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/6/5/1668987/-Massive-win-Supreme-Court-strikes-down-North-Carolina-s-GOP-drawn-maps-for-racial-gerrymandering
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article151912142.html

Ya Gotta Laugh: TheRump "vindicated" by Comey
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/07/trump-says-he-feels-completely-and-totally-vindicated-after-co/22131560/
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/trump-expected-loyalty-sacked-fbi-boss/news-story/db911fdb61b6bad91401e808f2fcc510

Clown Award: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/20/what-is-fueling-fake-hate-crimes-across-u-s.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-model-society
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/05/209-clown-award-mick-mulvaney.html

Outrage of the Week: TheRump quits Paris Accord
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/paris-climate-agreement-fact-check
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-oppose-climate-pact-pullout-plurality-rejects-economic/story?id=47847725
https://weather.com/science/environment/news/mayors-governors-denounce-trump-climate-accord-decision
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/01/climate-alliance-washington-california-new-york-239038

20.8 - For the Record: Desiree Fairooz convicted of laughing

For the Record: Desiree Fairooz convicted of laughing

[Note: Due to time constraints, of the following, only the one about Desiree Fairooz appeared on the show as broadcast.]

Next, it's For the Record, where we cover a few items very quickly just to make sure they get mentioned.

So, For the Record: You surely recall the flap over the size of the crowd for TheRump's inauguration, a crowd he claimed was just like you know the absolute bigliest ever - only to almost immediately have someone in the National Park Service send out on the agency's Twitter account a side-by-side comparison of TheRump 2017 versus Barack Obama 2009.

Through an FOIA request, CBS News was able to report on May 2 that TheRump was directly and personally involved in agency efforts to find out who did it, efforts which included tracing the IP addresses to an certain ISP and checking all National Park Service social media points of contact in that area. They never did find the person.

For the Record: That's not the only such example, either. Another, even worse case because it didn't even involve an agency account, involved the attempts by the US Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department for the Protection of The Fatherland, to unmask the owner of a private Twitter account run by someone claiming to be an employee of the agency who was critical of TheRump's harsh immigration policies. Customs and Border Protection actually served Twitter with a summons demanding to know the name of the account holder.

Twitter, to its credit, responded by suing the CBP and the Department, forcing them to back off.

And it now develops that the agency's conduct was so bad that the Department's Office of the Inspector General has launched an internal investigation into the attempt, citing the possibilities of improper actions and abuse of authority. Inspector General John Roth added that his office is "also reviewing potential broader misuse of summons authority" by the Department.

Desiree Fairooz being arrested

For the Record: Back in January, Desiree Fairooz, an activist with Code Pink, was in the rear of the audience for the confirmation hearing on Jeff Sessions for attorney general. When Sen. Richard Shelby claimed that Sessions has an "extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law," Fairooz laughed. Which, considering how nonsensical that claim is, is a natural reaction.

She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct intended to "impede, disrupt, and disturb" congressional proceedings and with "parading" in the Capitol, evidently because she held up a sign while she was being dragged out.

The laugh was a one-off and indeed is barely audible on the C-SPAN video of the hearing; there are coughs that are louder. Shelby didn't even pause in his statement.

Despite that, on May 3 she was convicted by a jury on both charges and now faces a year in prison and a $2000 fine. For laughing. For spontaneously laughing at an absurdity. For failing to pretend that Jeff Sessions, who in 1986 was thought too racist to be a federal judge, has an "extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law." For failing to be able to let the lie pass unnoticed. For laughing at the lies.

Finally, For the Record: Speaking of Code Pink, the group says that since April 17, over 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have been on a hunger strike to demand basic human rights and dignity, including proper medical care, family visits, an end to the use of solitary confinement, and an end to administrative detention, where Palestinian prisoners are held without charge or trial.

Since the strike began, others have joined, bringing the total number of hunger strikers to 1,700.

The Israeli response has not been to has not been to accede to this call for a level of treatment prisoners should expect in any civilized nation but to try to break the strike, putting the leaders in isolation, further restricting family visits, and threatening ongoing punishments.

There are calls for the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to urge the Israelis to give a positive response to the hunger strikers goals.

15.12 - Update: government spying on citizens

Update: government spying on citizens

Finally, last week I also talked some about privacy in a digital age, specifically, government intrusions into that privacy.

Here's another aspect of that.

Court records have revealed that the FBI has recruited and paid technicians at Best Buy's Geek Squad to do deep scans of the hard drive of computers brought in for service and report anything they find that seems sketchy to them.

Defenders of the practice argue that when you bring in a computer for service, you allow the technicians access to your hard drive and if they find something criminal - kiddie porn is the example invariably thrown up - it's their obligation to report it.

Which is all true and all completely irrelevant because here we are not talking about accidentally finding criminal material, we are talking about people actively looking for it - and no, contrary to what I have seen claimed, except for some potential unusual circumstances, you do not have to actually examine the content of de-allocated sectors on a hard drive in order to service it. You may see something is an image file or a text file, but you do not have to view the image or read the text to do your job - unless your job is to be a paid snoop for the feds.

Two bits of advice: encrypt your data and don't go to Geek Squad.