Power Through apps, not warrants, ‘Locate X’

“There must always be two kinds of art, escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.”

~ W.H. Auden, “Psychology and Art To-day”

New York Times, In Spain, Soccer Transfers and ‘Ghost Clubs’ Collide in a Tax-Fraud Case:

The luxury homes on a Spanish island and the gleaming yachts moored in Mediterranean ports were all trappings of a life well-lived.

They were also, according to the Spanish authorities, the fruits of a multimillion-dollar money laundering and tax-evasion operation controlled by one of world soccer’s most powerful soccer agents, which last month resulted in criminal indictments against the agent, Abdilgafar Fali Ramadani, and several of his associates.

The New Yorker – As cities become ever more packed with cameras that always see, public anonymity could disappear. Can stealth streetwear evade electronic eyes? By John Seabrook: “…Advances in computer vision have occurred so rapidly that local and national privacy policies—what aspects of your face and body should be protected by law from surveillance machines—are lagging far behind A.I.’s technological capabilities, leaving the public vulnerable to a modern panopticon, a total-surveillance society that could be built before we know enough to stop it. Chris Meserole, a foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies China’s use of face recognition and other surveillance technologies—widely deployed as part of Xi Jinping’s “stability maintenance” drive—told me that policymakers in the States haven’t, so far, created governing structures to safeguard citizens. And, he added, “in the U.S., the government hasn’t thought to use it yet the way that China has.”

Thomas Piketty Turns Marx on His Head NYT

“Oh My God, It’s Milton Friedman for Kids” Slate

Google Assistant can now read webpages aloud in 42 different languages - The Verge: “Google is beginning to roll out its article-reading feature on Google Assistant that will read webpages aloud. This was previewed back at CES in January and is becoming available globally starting today. To use the feature, users can simply say, “Hey Google, read it” or “Hey Google, read this page” for Assistant to read the text on your screen. 

Volunteers needed: Human guinea pigs to be paid $7000 to be infected with coronavirus.



Why the new coronavirus may kill more men than women. Plus: “”We make these broad sweeping assumptions that men and women are the same behaviorally, in terms of comorbidities, biology and our immune system, and we just are not.” Only under pandemic conditions would a scientist feel free to make such a statement. . . . 

27 killed by alcohol poisoning in Iran trying to protect themselves from coronavirus.
 

55,000 files accessed in Melbourne Polytechnic data breach Affecting those who worked or studied prior to September 2018

Robo lawyer will sue organizations that will not delete your personal info - Fortune: “In January, a new law gave consumers the power to stop companies collecting their personal information. The law, known as the California Consumer Privacy Act (orthe CCPA), can be a powerful tool for privacy, but it comes with a catch: Consumers who want to exercise their CCPA rights must contact every data broker individually, and there are more than a hundred of them. 

Power Through apps, not warrants, ‘Locate X’ allows federal law enforcement to track phones - protocol: “U.S. law enforcement agencies signed millions of dollars worth of contracts with a Virginia company after it rolled out a powerful tool that uses data from popular mobile apps to track the movement of people’s cell phones, according to federal contracting records and six people familiar with the software. The product, called Locate X and sold by Babel Street, allows investigators to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint mobile devices that were within that area, and see where else those devices have traveled, going back months, the sources told Protocol. They said the tool tracks the location of devices anonymously, using data that popular cell phone apps collect to enable features like mapping or targeted ads, or simply to sell it on to data brokers…”

How A D&D Tool Helped Organize Our World Views

The pleasure of filling out an alignment chart is similar to that of playing a simple brainteaser, or completing an elementary-school worksheet: You’re making judgment calls, sorting, putting objects into little boxes—and you end up with something neat and composed. It has the allure of surety. If we could decide, once and for all, what is the exact best way to live, maybe everything would fall into place. – The Atlantic

The New York Times – Before Clearview Became a Police Tool, It Was a Secret Plaything of the Rich – Investors and clients of the facial recognition start-up freely used the app on dates and at parties — and to spy on the public.

Why law librarians are so important in a data-driven world- Oxford University Press Blog – Femi Cadmus Archibald and Frances Rufty Research Professor of Law & Assoc Dean Info Svcs & Tech, Duke University School of Law: “For well over a century, law librarians have been a force in leading research initiatives, preservation, and access to legal information in academia, private firms, and government

Libraries 2020: “As designated essential disaster services, libraries are poised to serve a role in the national response to the Coronavirus and COVID-19. Some changes to libraries as a public gathering place may be temporarily required, but our mission of sharing information will likely continue unchanged. They will remain great resources to access credible medical information and connect to resources to help you and your community. Libraries: Open for Information – Your local library is a great place to turn for information about COVID-19, the disease caused by the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Not only are libraries a trusted source of vetting information, there is a long history of libraries as a destination for answers to health questions.

Computers Are Amazing. They’re Not Intelligent

The amazing feats achieved by computers demonstrate our progress in coming up with algorithms that make the computer do valuable things for us. The computer itself, though, does nothing more than it ever did, which is to do whatever we know how to order it to do—and we order it to do things by issuing instructions in the form of elementary operations on bits, the 1s and 0s that make up computer code. –American Scholar

Study: building a better super-capacitor out of super-stinky durian fruit Ars Technica (chuck l)
How J. Edgar Hoover Used the Power of Libraries for Evil Literary Hub (UserFriendly):
We shouldn’t have to pay for Jack Dorsey’s $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea Guardian (david l)
Put down that veggie burger. These farmers say their cows can solve the climate crisis CNN (furzy)
Burning calories: pig starts farm fire by excreting pedometer Guardian (re Silc)
Lebanon to default on debt for first time amid financial crisis Guardian. BC: “Lebanese contagion to the Euro?”
7 countries to invade now that we’re leaving Afghanistan Duffelblog (The Rev Kev)
Alabama bill may lift yoga ban in public schools but prohibit ‘namaste’ greeting Guardian. And this at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is exhorting Indians to eschew handshakes and revert to the traditional namaste as a way to reduce coronavirus risk.