Our richest corporations are much to blame for the free-market "winner take all" philosophy that has caused over half of our nation to try to survive without adequate health care and life savings.

When Dr. Jonas Salk was asked about a patent on his polio vaccine in 1955, he said, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" When Gilead Sciences recently developed an anti-Covid drug for about $12 per treatment, they set the price at $3,200.

As Republicans and business leaders decry the word 'social' as anti-American, they continue to promote the free-market "winner take all" philosophy that has caused over half of our nation to try to survive without adequate health care and life savings and job opportunities. Our richest corporations are much to blame. A review of the facts should make this clear.

They Continue to Cheat on Taxes

After building their businesses on 70 years of taxpayer-funded research and development, six dominant tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Netflix), which together are worth over $7 trillion, have avoided over a hundred billion dollars in taxes over the past decade.

The profits of some of the largest U.S. corporations are surging in this pandemic year of sickness and death. And the levels of fraud and deceit keep growing along with the profits. A shocking analysis by the Tax Justice Network concludes that "Multinational firms operating around the world are shifting over $1 trillion in profits every year to corporate tax havens." A trillion dollars a year lost to the people in need of jobs and food and housing.

They've Rigged the System

Fifty years of lobbying against their own tax responsibilities have borne fruit for the big corporations. First of all, the corporate tax rate has dropped from about 35 percent to a low of 11 percent in 2019.
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Google wants its Nest Hub to become a fixture in hotel rooms so that guests can enjoy their stay without having to actually touch any of the amenities they are paying for.

The device, which is being piloted in several hotels across the US and the UK, offers guests the chance to replace calls to hotel staff with a Hub device that listens in on requests for more towels or information about pool closing times.

Google's sell for the new "hospitality solution" is that it allows guests can use the hotel's amenities without having to speak to another actual human being or touch the room's potentially plague-ridden telephone. "Whatever reason is driving you to consider staying in a hotel room, you know you want to take as many precautions as possible," wrote Tom Franklin, product manager for Google Assistant, in a blog post.

For those worried about Google Assistant listening in on whatever it is they get up to in hotel rooms, Google says the device has no camera and its mic can be switched off. "No audio is ever stored, and any activities will be wiped from the device when it's reset for the next guest," Franklin promised.

The new features are largely hotel-centric tweaks to existing Google Assistant functions, which the company promises can be connected to in-room entertainment devices or even control the room's blinds, TV, and lights.

Google also suggests the devices could be used to replace a concierge by offering recommendations and bookings for local restaurants.

Unless hotels add their own content, one assumes that this data for hotel recommendations and the like will be scraped from Google Maps. In which case, a smartphone will provide exactly the results without all the hullabaloo. ®

https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/27/google_assistant_hotel_rooms/

We’ve been puzzling over this press release issued April 24th by the Department of Transportation of the State of Hawaii, entitled, “Improved verification process implemented for airline passenger,” which begins as follows:

The Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) has implemented improved measures to verify incoming passenger information before they leave the airport to help ensure people are abiding by the traveler quarantine order. The enhanced process is underway at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) and will begin statewide in the coming days.

We’ve read through the emergency proclamations by the Governor of Hawaii, and can’t find anything in the quarantine orders purporting to give authority to state officials to “verify passenger information.”

The press release threatens that anyone who arrives without a working cellphone, charged, with service and coverage in the arrival area at the airport, will be arrested:

An airport representative will collect the two forms and begin verifying their information. First, they will call their mobile phone number to confirm it rings right in front of them. If it does not ring, the person may have listed inaccurate information and is asked to verify the number. If the person refuses to provide a phone number that can be answered on the spot, law enforcement is contacted and they are subject to citation and arrest.

We have no idea what the purported basis would be for arresting someone who isn’t carrying a cellphone, whose phone doesn’t have service in Hawaii (especially likely if they are arriving from another country), or whose cellphone battery has run down from watching videos or playing games in airplane mode during a trans-oceanic flight.

But that’s not all:

After the phone number is verified, an airport representative will then check the address listed for lodging. For returning Hawaii residents, the address should match their government issued ID. For visitors, the airport representative will call their hotel to confirm they have a reservation. Processing personnel have phone numbers for every hotel in the state.
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Australian media are reporting new war crimes committed by Special Air Services (SAS) troops in Afghanistan, including the mass murder of unarmed civilians and planting weapons on the bodies of civilians to cover up unlawful killings. The new revelations come weeks after Australia’s special forces chief admitted that SAS soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan, and just weeks before the Australian military is set to report the findings of a four-year investigation of alleged war crimes committed during the course of the country’s nearly 19-year participation in the US-led war in Afghanistan.



‘Mass Shooting’

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) investigation found that SAS troops killed as many as 10 unarmed Afghan civilians during a December 2012 operation in and around the village of Sara Aw in Kandahar province. The raid, believed to be the deadliest unlawful killing of Afghan civilians by Australian soldiers, involved SAS and Afghan special forces searching for Taliban militants, who locals admit were operating in the area.

“There were three Taliban in nomad houses,” said local farmer Mohammad Nassim. “They resisted and were killed. But then [the SAS] killed other people, civilians.” Abdul Qadus said his brother Adbul Salim was driving a tractor when he was shot dead. “At the time he was carrying a load of onions; he was taking them to the city,” explained Qadus. “There were some other people with him as well… I saw them being shot and killed.”

“Another one was my cousin, who was sitting and packing onions when they shot and killed him,” Qadus added. Another villager identified only by his first name Rahmatullah said that the Australians came after him. “They were shooting people intentionally,” he said. “They were mass shooting.”

“Some people busy with irrigation were shot, some were shot near the onions,” said Nassim. “Some people went to the tractor and were shot there.”

‘Impossible to Forgive’
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Amazon, Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft used people's photos to train their facial recognition technologies without obtaining the subjects' permission, in violation of an Illinois biometric privacy statute, a trio of federal lawsuits filed Tuesday allege.

The photos in question were part of IBM's Diversity in Faces database, which is designed to advance the study of fairness and accuracy in facial recognition by looking at more than just skin tone, age and gender. The data includes 1 million images of human faces, annotated with tags such as face symmetry, nose length and forehead height.

The two Illinois residents who brought the lawsuits, Steven Vance and Tim Janecyk, say their images were included in that data set without their permission, despite clearly identifying themselves as residents of Illinois. Collection, storage and use of biometric information is illegal in the state without written consent under the Biometric Information Privacy Act, passed by the Illinois legislature in 2008.

The defendants "chose to use and profit from biometric identifiers and information scanned from photographs that were uploaded from Illinois; managed via Illinois-based user accounts, computers and mobile devices, and/or created in Illinois," the lawsuits say. "In doing so, [defendants] exposed Illinois residents and citizens to ongoing privacy risks within Illinois, knowing that [their] conduct would injure those residents and citizens within Illinois."

Facial recognition has faced backlash from privacy advocates and lawmakers, and a handful of cities have banned the municipal use of the technology. Last year, Democratic lawmakers proposed prohibiting public housing units from using technology like facial recognition. Still, facial recognition systems are on track to become pervasive in airports and shopping centers, and some companies are selling them to police departments.

Critics cite studies showing that the technology has low accuracy rates for women and minorities. When it works properly, they add, it has the potential to become an inescapable and invasive form of surveillance. Companies such as Clearview AI, which has technology that lets users identify people by comparing their faces to photos scraped from the internet, have raised concerns over the power of the technology.

IBM, which collected the images from the photo site Flickr, faced criticism earlier this year from some photographers, experts and activists for not informing people their images were being used to improve facial recognition technology. In response, IBM said it takes privacy seriously and that users could opt out of the data set.

IBM has been a strong proponent of regulating facial recognition, but in June the company announced it's withdrawing from the facial recognition market, saying it worries that the technology is being used to promote discrimination and racial injustice.
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An incident involving graffiti spray painted on a monument to those who fought in Adolf Hitler’s SS is being investigated as a hate crime by an Ontario police force.

Someone painted “Nazi war monument” on a stone cenotaph commemorating those who served with the 14th SS Division. The monument is located in Oakville in the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery.

The division, made up of Ukrainians who pledged allegiance to Hitler, was part of the Nazi’s Waffen SS organization. Some members of the division have been accused of killing Polish women and children as well as Jews during the Second World War.

Halton Regional Police believe the graffiti was spray painted on the cenotaph sometime around June 21. Police said they were investigating the incident as a “hate-motivated” crime but they declined to release images of the graffiti so as to stop “further spreading” of the message.
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But researcher Moss Robeson, who has written articles on Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis, provided details about the graffiti and the monument on Twitter, prompting questions about why Halton Regional Police think members of the Nazi SS can be the subject of hate crimes.

In response to questions from this newspaper, Const. Steve Elms, spokesman for Halton-Regional Police, cited a section of the Criminal Code that noted those communicating statements in any public place inciting hatred against any identifiable group could face imprisonment not exceeding two years. “This incident occurred to a monument and the graffiti appeared to target an identifiable group,” he explained in an email to questions about how a hate crime could be perpetrated against members of the SS.

The 14th SS Division, also known as the Galizien Division, was formed in 1943 when Nazi Germany needed to shore up its forces as allied troops, including those from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Russia, started to gain the upper hand and turn the tide of the war. In May 1944, SS leader Heinrich Himmler addressed the division with a speech that was greeted by cheers. “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name – namely the Jews,” Himmler said. “I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”
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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s oil and gas regulatory agency has approved 12 new permits for Chevron to conduct hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the Lost Hills Oil Field in Kern County.

The authorizations — issued late Thursday afternoon, just before the holiday weekend — will allow Chevron to frack these wells 168 times.

“It’s outrageous that Gov. Newsom is handing out fracking permits during a pandemic that disproportionately harms polluted communities,” said Hollin Kretzmann, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The governor needs to stop recklessly approving fracking and new oil and gas drilling. Instead of restarting fracking in areas already suffering from dirty air, Newsom should direct oil companies to start plugging these dangerous wells to create jobs and move us away from polluting fossil fuels.”

Newsom ended a moratorium on fracking permits in April when the California Geologic Energy Management Division approved 24 new permits for Aera Energy LLC. Including Chevron’s new permits, Newsom has now granted a total of 48 fracking permits since ending the moratorium.

Because each permit allows an operator to frack the same well multiple times, the actual number of fracking events authorized is 360. The fracking will occur in Kern County, which already suffers from some of the poorest air quality in the nation.

Newsom has also approved drilling permits for more than 1,400 new oil and gas wells so far this year. According to a California Council on Science and Technology report, it would cost more than $9.2 billion to properly plug California’s existing oil and gas wells, and operators have not set aside nearly enough money to pay for this legally required cleanup. On Thursday, 12 of those new drilling permits went to California Resources Corporation, even though multiple reports state that the company will soon be forced to file for bankruptcy.

“Approving these permits is especially dangerous now, after multiple studies have shown air pollution increases our vulnerability to coronavirus,” Kretzmann said. “Each new well and fracking event is another step backwards for public health and climate change.”

Studies have linked fracking and oil extraction to a variety of air pollution problems, including increased smog levels. Researchers have found increased rates of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases in places with higher air pollution.
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Imagine an Internet where the law required every message sent to be read by government-approved scanning software. Companies that handle such messages wouldn’t be allowed to securely encrypt them, or they’d lose legal protections that allow them to operate.

That’s what the Senate Judiciary Committee has proposed and hopes to pass into law. The so-called EARN IT bill, sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), will strip Section 230 protections away from any website that doesn’t follow a list of “best practices,” meaning those sites can be sued into bankruptcy. The “best practices” list will be created by a government commission, headed by Attorney General Barr, who has made it very clear he would like to ban encryption, and guarantee law enforcement “legal access” to any digital message.

The EARN IT bill had its first hearing today, and its supporters’ strategy is clear. Because they didn’t put the word “encryption” in the bill, they’re going to insist it doesn’t affect encryption.

“This bill says nothing about encryption,” co-sponsor Sen. Blumenthal said at today’s hearing. “Have you found a word in this bill about encryption?” he asked one witness.

It’s true that the bill’s authors avoided using that word. But they did propose legislation that enables an all-out assault on encryption. It would create a 19-person commission that’s completely controlled by the Attorney General and law enforcement agencies. And, at the hearing, a Vice-President at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) made it clear [PDF] what he wants the best practices to be. NCMEC believes online services should be made to screen their messages for material that NCMEC considers abusive; use screening technology approved by NCMEC and law enforcement; report what they find in the messages to NCMEC; and be held legally responsible for the content of messages sent by others.

You can’t have an Internet where messages are screened en masse, and also have end-to-end encryption any more than you can create backdoors that can only be used by the good guys. The two are mutually exclusive. Concepts like “client-side scanning” aren’t a clever route around this; such scanning is just another way to break end-to-end encryption. Either the message remains private to everyone but its recipients, or it’s available to others.

The 19-person draft commission isn’t any better than the 15-person commission envisioned in an early draft of the bill. It’s completely dominated by law enforcement and allied groups like NCMEC. Not only will those groups have a majority of votes on the commission, but the bill gives Attorney General Barr the power to veto or approve the list of best practices. Even if other commission members do disagree with law enforcement, Barr’s veto power will put him in a position to strongarm them.

The Commission won’t be a body that seriously considers policy; it will be a vehicle for creating a law enforcement wish list. Barr has made clear, over and over again, that breaking encryption is at the top of that wish list. Once it’s broken, authoritarian regimes around the world will rejoice, as they have the ability to add their own types of mandatory scanning, not just for child sexual abuse material but for self-expression that those governments want to suppress.
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For over half a century, worldwide growth in affluence has continuously increased resource use and pollutant emissions far more rapidly than these have been reduced through better technology. The affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts and are central to any future prospect of retreating to safer environmental conditions. We summarise the evidence and present possible solution approaches. Any transition towards sustainability can only be effective if far-reaching lifestyle changes complement technological advancements. However, existing societies, economies and cultures incite consumption expansion and the structural imperative for growth in competitive market economies inhibits necessary societal change.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y

Amazon Temporarily Halts Police Use Of Facial Recognition Software Until It Can Perfect ‘Other Faces You Might Be Interested In’ Feature

Suspending the service subscribed to by more than 1,350 police departments nationwide, Amazon announced this week it would halt use of its facial recognition software by law enforcement until the company could perfect its “Other Faces You Might Be Interested In” feature. “We have chosen to place a one-year moratorium on police access to our Rekognition platform so we can work on the function that suggests new suspects based on how similar their faces are to other people an officer has detained,” said CEO Jeff Bezos, who explained that the product did not currently meet Amazon’s efficacy standards when providing police with a list of individuals inspired by the neighborhoods in which a department typically makes its arrests. “Rest assured, we have many talented coders hard at work sequencing the faces of individuals law enforcement may wish to apprehend because they have certain visible indicators in common with the current prison population. This decision to pause access comes after several glitches were reported, including one that somehow allowed police officers themselves to be included among the list of suggested faces.” At press time, Amazon had reportedly offered as a concession free same-day shipping on any evidence police forces might need to plant until the issue was resolved.

https://www.theonion.com/amazon-temporarily-halts-police-use-of-facial-recogniti-1844038618