https://soranews24.com/2021/03/19/travelers-entering-japan-will-have-to-install-location-confirmation-app-skype-on-smartphones/

Don’t have a smartphone? You’ll be required to rent one, and pay for it out of your own pocket.

This week a new policy went into effect for travelers entering Japan through Haneda and Narita Airports, the two major international air hubs for the Tokyo area. Enacted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the regulation affects all classes of inbound travelers (Japanese citizens, foreign residents of Japan, and temporary business/tourism travelers).

As of March 18, inbound travelers will be required to install three apps on their smartphones before leaving the airport. The three apps are the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s COCOA COVID-19 contact tracing app, Skype, and OSSMA, a location confirmation app. The combined apps are to be used in confirming compliance with the 14 days of self-quarantine that inbound travelers are required to complete before moving about the general population.

So what if you don’t have a smartphone, or are using an outdated model that can’t run the apps? You’ll be required to rent a phone that can from the airport, and pay for it out of your own pocket.

In addition to showing that the apps are installed and running, inbound travelers will also be required to sign a written pledge to comply with the protocols. Failure to do so can result in public publishing of the violator’s name and, in the case of foreign nationals, deportation, including the revocation of residence status for foreigners living in Japan on work or study visas.

The requirement is expected to be expanded to entrants in Japan via other airports in the near future.

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On modern versions of macOS, you simply can’t power on your computer, launch a text editor or eBook reader, and write or read, without a log of your activity being transmitted and stored.

It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it. Lots of people didn’t realize this, because it’s silent and invisible and it fails instantly and gracefully when you’re offline, but today the server got really slow and it didn’t hit the fail-fast code path, and everyone’s apps failed to open if they were connected to the internet.

Because it does this using the internet, the server sees your IP, of course, and knows what time the request came in. An IP address allows for coarse, city-level and ISP-level geolocation, and allows for a table that has the following headings:

Date, Time, Computer, ISP, City, State, Application Hash

Apple (or anyone else) can, of course, calculate these hashes for common programs: everything in the App Store, the Creative Cloud, Tor Browser, cracking or reverse engineering tools, whatever.

This means that Apple knows when you’re at home. When you’re at work. What apps you open there, and how often. They know when you open Premiere over at a friend’s house on their Wi-Fi, and they know when you open Tor Browser in a hotel on a trip to another city.

“Who cares?” I hear you asking.

Well, it’s not just Apple. This information doesn’t stay with them:
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While communities across the U.S. have been struggling with massive pollution from the military’s use of firefighting foam that contains PFAS, Japan has awoken to its own environmental crisis from the industrial chemicals in the foam. The growing awareness of the issue in Japan is largely due to one reporter: Jon Mitchell, a British investigative journalist based in Tokyo, who has spent years chronicling environmental contamination in the Asia-Pacific region.

His most recent book, “Poisoning the Pacific: The U.S. Military’s Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange,” is based on thousands of pages of documents he obtained from the U.S. military through the Freedom of Information Act; they detail the widespread contamination of bases and the areas surrounding them with PFAS and other hazardous substances, including chemical weapons, Agent Orange, jet fuel, and PCBs.

In the U.S., the fight over PFAS contamination from military installations, which The Intercept was first to report in 2015, now usually centers on the degree to which the Department of Defense is obligated to clean it up. But in Japan, which is home to 78 U.S. military facilities, bilateral agreements release the U.S. government from any obligation to test for contamination caused by its operations or remove it if it’s detected.

The Intercept spoke with Mitchell about his reporting on the environmental consequences of U.S. military operations in Japan and how it’s been received in both countries; the interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have described massive contamination in so many parts of Japan. How many releases of AFFF (aqueous film-forming foams, or firefighting foam) did you find through the documents you received?

They were literally countless. Some were from crashes, some were from leaks, some accidents.

What has the U.S. military told the Japanese people about the PFAS released from its bases there?

The U.S. military has never released to the public any information about contamination within the installations. Marine Corps accident guidelines go so far as to order commanders not to tell Japanese officials about politically sensitive incidents.
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Proposals to prosecute individuals for hate crimes based on what they discuss in their own homes need to be more widely debated, free speech organisations have said.

The suggestion to remove the “dwelling” privacy exemption from criminal legislation is buried in a few paragraphs of the Law Commission’s 544-page consultation on hate crime published in September.

The commission said on Wednesday that it was “not intending for private conversations at the dinner table to be prosecuted as hate speech”, although that appears to be one possible consequence of the proposed change.

Until 1986, the offence of using words or behaviour intended or likely to incite racial hatred could only be committed in a public place. The scope was later expanded, but an exception remains “where words or behaviour are used or written material displayed within a dwelling, provided that they cannot be seen or heard outside.”

The proposal was spotted by the organisation Fair Cop, which campaigns against what it says is misuse of legislation to curb free speech. Sarah Phillimore, a barrister and member of the organisation, said it would encourage “state surveillance or people to inform on their friends. How else would they get the evidence? It will be like the East German Stasi security service.”

The Index on Censorship also raised concerns about the proposals. Its chief executive, Ruth Smeeth, a former Labour MP and member of the Jewish Labour Movement who received death threats during her time in parliament, said: “It’s extremely complicated and needs to be looked at in the round.

“We need to have a proper national debate if we are going to start putting restrictions on language like this. There could be unintended consequences. People have a right to debate issues at home. If someone reads from Mein Kampf at home because they are studying it, would they get reported to the police? Where do you draw the line between intellectual curiosity and crime?”

A spokesperson for the Law Commission said: “We found that the current law on incitement of racial and other forms of hatred is inconsistent and poorly targeted. Our proposals aim to clarify and improve the laws. We look forward to hearing from members of the public on how we can improve our proposals.”
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European trade union leaders, including three UK unions, have called on the European commission to open an investigation into Amazon’s “potentially illegal” effort to spy on workers for union activities.

The heads of some of Europe’s biggest unions, representing more than 12 million workers, wrote to the commission to demand an investigation into Amazon’s work practices across the continent. The move comes after the US tech firm advertised jobs for which part of the description was investigating the threat of organised labour against the company.

Paddy Lillis, the general secretary of Usdaw, along with Mick Rix, a national officer of GMB, and Dave Ward, the general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, are among the 37 signatories to the letter. They also include the German union ver.di, the French Democratic Confederation of Labour and Spain’s biggest trade union, CCOO.

“Amazon’s plans to ramp up surveillance of workers across Europe and globally are yet another reminder that EU institutions should closely investigate Amazon’s business and workplace practices throughout the continent, as we suspect them to be in breach of European labour, data and privacy laws that our citizens expect to enjoy,” says the letter, which is addressed to Nicolas Schmit, the European commissioner for jobs and social rights, and Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for internal market.

Vice and others reported this month that Amazon had posted job listings for two “intelligence analysts” to track “labor organizing threats against the company” and “funding and activities connected to corporate campaigns (internal and external) against Amazon”. The company deleted the listings hours after posting them, after they drew heavy criticism from labour activist groups.

The posting had sought an analyst fluent in languages including French and Spanish, suggesting that European workers would be monitored, says the letter to the commission, quoting the media reports.

Amazon has been hostile to attempts by employees to form unions to improve working conditions, especially in the US. The company has recently enjoyed strong sales growth because of a surge in online shopping since the coronavirus outbreak, and has gone on a global hiring spree, taking on 27,000 seasonal and permanent workers in the UK alone this year.

“Further, we don’t want to see the growth of a union busting industry in Europe as we have seen in the US,” the letter says.
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Amazon wants its palm recognition technology in stores, stadiums, and office buildings

Amazon is unveiling its own palm recognition technology today that will be used initially to turn your hand into a personal credit card inside the company’s physical retail stores. Amazon One uses the palm of your hand to identify you, using a combination of surface-area details like lines and ridges, alongside vein patterns to create a “palm signature.”

At first, this palm signature will be used in Amazon’s own Go stores in Seattle, and the company also plans to add Amazon One to other Amazon stores in the coming months. Amazon One usage will eventually extend beyond just palm-based payments. “We believe Amazon One has broad applicability beyond our retail stores, so we also plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places,” says Dilip Kumar, vice president of Amazon’s physical retail business.

While many companies have experimented with palm recognition biometrics over the years, Amazon’s strong retail presence could certainly help make palm scanning a reality. Amazon hasn’t confirmed if any other retailers, venues, or businesses will make use of Amazon One, but the company says it’s “in active discussions with several potential customers.”

Amazon says it picked palm recognition over other technologies like face recognition because of some privacy benefits. “One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm,” explains Kumar. “It also requires someone to make an intentional gesture by holding their palm over the device to use.”

Amazon One will use image scanning hardware that includes proprietary computer vision algorithms to capture and encrypt a palm image. You won’t even need an Amazon account to use the service, just a phone number and a credit card. Amazon One users will also be able to delete their biometric data from the company’s online portal if they no longer want to use the service.

Amazon has been working on this service for years, having applied to patent palm recognition technology at the end of 2019. Amazon One will appear initially in two Seattle-based stores, but the company has clear ambitions to bring this to a lot more locations beyond just its own stores.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/29/21493094/amazon-one-palm-recognition-hand-payments-amazon-go-store

A woman sacked from her job as a school assistant after flagging up concerns about the teaching of LGBTQ+ rights has told a tribunal it was her Christian duty to speak out to defend the “Bible truth”.

Kristie Higgs, 44, was dismissed for gross misconduct by the state secondary school where she worked in 2019 after sharing and commenting on social media posts about relationship education proposed for the primary school of one of her sons.

Higgs said her faith as a Christian meant she had no choice but to make her feelings known and told the tribunal in Bristol that she was shocked to be dismissed and frightened to go out because she worried that everyone in her small Gloucestershire town would know she had been sacked.

The mother of two shared and commented on Facebook posts in 2018 about the No Outsiders programme, an approach to diversity and inclusion for primary schools.

“I was concerned that a lot of parents all over the country and the world simply did not know what was going on,” Higgs said in a statement submitted to the employment tribunal in Bristol.

As a Christian, I believe it is morally necessary to speak out in defence of the Bible truth when false and harmful doctrines are being promoted.”

An anonymous complaint was made to Farmor’s school in Fairford, where Higgs worked, and she was dismissed for gross misconduct.

She told of her shock at being suspended from the school: “I was still shaking when I came home. I rang my dad and then rang my husband. Both of them were in shock. My boys were also in shock to know I was not going back to work.”
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While remembering their past has not prevented history from repeating itself, it is not possible for the descendants of the world’s first successful large-scale slave revolt to forget the trauma inflicted by their northern neighbours.

One hundred and five years ago today a brutal US occupation of Haiti began. To commemorate an intervention that continues to shape that country Solidarity Québec Haiti is organizing a sit in in front of the US Consulate on Saint Catherine St.

On July 28, 1915 the USS Washington, with 900-men and 20 canons, docked in Port-au-Prince. US troops withdrew in 1934 but Washington largely controlled the country’s finances until 1941 and the Banque de la République d’Haïti remained under US supervision until 1947.

The occupation wasn’t Washington’s first instance of interference in Haiti but rather consolidated its grip over the country. Six months beforehand US Marines marched on the treasury in Port-au-Prince and took the nation’s entire gold reserve.

At the height, 5000 US Marines were stationed in the country of less than 3 million. US-led forces brutally suppressed a largely peasant resistance movement, killing 15,000 Haitians.

In one of many instances of overt US racism, a top commander in the occupation, Colonel Littleton (Tony) Waller, descendent of a prominent family of slaveowners, said, “I know the nigger and how to handle him.”

To suppress the anti-occupation movement the US employed the nascent technique of aerial bombardment. Most of the fighting ended when rebel leader Charlemagne Peralte was killed, pinned to a door and left on a street to rot for days at the end of 1919. The US military described Peralte as the “supreme bandit of Haiti”.

In a famous mea culpa, an architect of the occupation confessed he was in fact the true “gangster”. Describing himself as a “high class muscle man for Big Business” and “gangster for capitalism”, Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wrote in an article years later, “I helped make Haiti … a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in.”
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Decentralised Month of Solidarity with Assange, Whistleblowers and Press Freedom Worldwide

On September 7th 2020, the farcical extradition hearing of Julian Assange resumes for 3-4 weeks. If extradited to the US – where granted no “First Amendment” protection – he faces 175 years in a super-max prison. The US, the UK, aided by Ecuador, Sweden and others, are attempting to silence Assange and WikiLeaks. Their aim is to set a precedent that will globally harm the ability to publish information that governments want to keep secret, along with our collective capacity to organise and act based on that information.

The show trial of Assange heralds the intended destruction of our right to a free, independent, incisive and investigative press. The US seeks to criminalise and deter national security reporting in particular, as well as actions journalists take to protect their sources. The attempted labeling of journalism and the organising of public access to information as “conspiracy for espionage” [1] by the US is unacceptable by democratic standards as it cripples the right of the public to know what governments do in their name.

The documents released by WikiLeaks for which Assange stands accused provide comprehensive evidence of the brutal war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan [2], accessible in an undeniable, authentic and searchable form. WikiLeaks operates as any investigative journalist should in the 21st century; protecting their sources and securing their communications in their exposing of government lies and corruption.

As many international experts, NGOs, lawyers, journalists and UN special rapporteurs have observed[3], the documents published by WikiLeaks are undoubtedly of immense interest to the public around the world. These releases have earned Assange and WikiLeaks many global distinctions and prestigious journalistic awards [4].

It is now time to reclaim this essential part of our collective history, by defending Assange, investigative journalists and whistleblowers worldwide.

During the weeks of the hearing and beyond [5], groups and individuals across the globe will be using all the creative means available offline and online to express their solidarity, denounce this parodic fraud of justice, defend Julian Assange and celebrate the protection of journalistic sources.

In many joyful and inventive ways including music, performances, occupation of the public space and wikis, and through decentralised means, we intend to remind everyone of our collective right and duty to hold power to account by exposing governments’ secrets, their lies and crimes.
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