Wasted Capital – How Child Poverty Blocks Talent and Wastes Billions Nachdenkseiten via machine transaltion
Dollar Dominance Monitor: “The US dollar has served as the world’s leading reserve currency since World War II.
Today, the dollar represents 58 percent of foreign reserve holdings worldwide. The euro, the second-most-used currency, accounts for only 20 percent of foreign reserve holdings.” But in recent years, and especially since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the Group of Seven (G7)’s subsequent escalation in the use of financial sanctions, several countries have signaled their intention to accelerate efforts to diversify away from dollars.
Left or right, the real source of extremism is right in front of our faces
In ICE Detention, Rising Deaths and Neglect: ‘They Wouldn’t Really Do Anything’ The Marshall Project
Influencers and Multipliers reinforce political Polarization Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
David Foster Wallace Tried to Warn Us About these Eight Things Honest-Broker (Chuck L). On the impact of screen technology
How Surveillance Firms Use ‘Democracy’ As a Cover for Serving ICE and Trump
404 Media: In a blog post published in June, Garrett Langley, the CEO and co-founder of surveillance company Flock, said “We rely on the democratic process, on the individuals that the majority vote for to represent us, to determine what is and is not acceptable in cities and states.”
The post explained that the company believes the laws of the country and individual states and municipalities, not the company, should determine the limits of what Flock’s technology can be used for, and came after 404 Media revealed local police were tapping into Flock’s networks of AI-enabled cameras for ICE, and that a sheriff in Texas performed a nationwide search for a woman who self-administered an abortion. Langley’s statement echoes a common refrain surveillance and tech companies selling their products to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other parts of the U.S. government have said during the second Trump administration: we live in a democracy. It is not our job to decide how our powerful capabilities, which can track peoples’ physical location, marry usually disparate datasets together, or crush dissent, can or should be used.
At least, that’s the thrust of the argument. That is despite the very clear reality that the first Trump administration was very different to the Biden administration, and both pale in comparison to Trump 2.0, with the executive branch and various agencies flaunting ordinary democratic values. The idea of what a democracy is capable of has shifted. Some other examples include:
- In an interview with the technology publication Indicator, the founder of GeoSpy, a company that uses AI to quickly geolocate images, Daniel Heinen said “It’s not my job to play the ethics game because our elected officials will eventually figure that out. I have full faith in the American people to decide who to elect and what to vote on.” A GeoSpy demo video showed how it could potentially be used to track down illegal immigrants; in the case of the video, those people were alleged murderers. The LAPD, which has been especially violent towards anti-ICE protesters, has shown interest in the technology.
- Langley, the CEO of Flock, told Forbes in an on-camera interview “That’s one of the cool things about this country; no one elected me the police chief of America. I’m the CEO of Flock. And so I’m going to build technology that I think will help communities solve crime and build thriving communities. But it’s up to those elected officials to vote and decide as a group, what’s right for their community.”
- On ICE specifically, and local governments choosing to work with the agency on immigration enforcement or not, Langley said: “Flock really has no input, has no opinion, has no, really, control over what a local government chooses to do or not do.” After 404 Media’s reporting, Flock made radical changes to its product including removing certain states from the national lookup tool to comply with state law; the company also paused a pilot that gave Customs and Border Protection (CBP) direct access to Flock cameras.
- In internal Palantir material in which Palantir justified its work with ICE, the company pointed to the shifting conversation around immigration enforcement in the U.S., and how it was something that both parties wanted. “The country is experiencing an increased (and bipartisan) public desire for more focused effort on border security and the enforcement of existing immigration law. This was a prominent element of both parties’ recent campaigns, and with this level of attention there is both a lot of opportunity to do good work, as well as risk of potential harm.”
Current and former employees of some of these companies see this stance as a way to skirt responsibility for how their technology is used. 404 Media granted multiple sources for this article anonymity to protect them from retaliation…”
