Woman Who Refused To Wear Mask At Starbucks Wants Half The $100k In Tip Money Barista Got From GoFundMe Campaign

from the wear-a-mask dept

I know you've heard this before, but just so we're all clear: wear a fucking mask, people. It's truly not that big of a deal. I wear one at work any time I am not seated in my office. It's crazy easy and you can even get a little fun out of it by wearing a personalized one like our Techdirt masks.

But, if you're not going to wear a mask, don't also be an insufferable jerk like Amber Gilles. Amber got really mad when a Starbucks barista named Lenin Gutierrez refused to serve her because she wasn't in a mask. She decided to take a picture of Gutierrez and post it on Facebook, complaining about it. When the internet saw the post, it did its thing.

A stranger in Orange County, Matt Cowan, said he wanted to donate a few dollars to the barista in tip money, so he started a GoFundMe. As the photo on Facebook filled with hundreds of thousands of interactions and comments from people supporting the barista, the tip money eventually hit more than $100,000 to be donated to the barista. Lenin said he plans to use that money to further his education and also follow his dreams of dancing.

It should have ended there: a nice little story about the kindness of strangers responding to one self-important dolt. But Amber Gilles claims that the real reason she refused to wear the mask is because medical conditions exempt her from the requirement. I'd normally point out that medical exemptions don't necessarily remove a business' right to refuse service by policy, but instead I think I'll give you the deets on Gilles' proof of her condition.

She went on to describe the symptoms that prevent her from wearing a mask, saying “One of them I get shortness of breath, dizziness and it messes with the heartbeat. And I do have asthma as well, and I do get mask-acne. So there’s several things going on and not only that but it doesn’t even work.”

She provided KGTV with two documents to prove her medical exemption. One is a pelvic exam from 2015 with results that say “probable exophytic fibroid arising from the anterior wall of the uterus measuring 2.9 cm size,” and “simple 2.5 cm left ovarian cyst.” A second piece of paper is a handwritten note with letterhead from a San Diego chiropractor who she asked not be named. The handwritten note reads “Amber has underlying breath conditions that prevent her from wearing a mask or any type of facial covering whatsoever. Please contact me if have any questions.”

I shouldn't have had to do this, but the Mayo Clinic's list of symptoms for uterine fibroids includes absolutely nothing about breathing. And no offense to chiropractors out there, but I somehow don't think your scribbles mean Starbucks can't require a mask to be serviced.

But the real upshot of all of this is that Gilles would like half of that GoFundMe money, please.

Gilles said she now wants half of that money.

“It was discrimination and everybody is OK with it and enabling and rewarding that behavior,” said Gilles.

That's obviously not how any of this works. She could consider suing Starbucks, but she'd lose. Suing an employee for sticking to company policy doesn't somehow mean you get half of a gift given to him by strangers. Also, lawyers are expensive, but Gilles has a plan for that.

Gilles said she's spoken to a few lawyers about taking her case for getting half of the money but said they're all expensive so she started her own GoFundMe to try to raise money.

Here's hoping that the Starbucks barista is going to ask for half that money, too. It's like a crowdfunding Inception!

Filed Under: amber gilles, covid-19, crowdfunding, entitlement, lenin gutierrez, masks
Companies: gofundme, starbucks

Sketchy Bogus Crowdfunding Campaigns To 'Buy' Congress's Private Web Browsing... Only Now Realize That's Impossible

from the well,-duh dept

Look, we warned everyone about this. Right after Congress stupidly stripped privacy protections so that ISPs could more actively sell your data (and make it harder for you to realize it or do anything about it), there were a few crowdfunding campaigns that popped up on GoFundMe, claiming that they were raising money to then buy the web browsing data of Congress. We pointed out at the time that this was dumb and dangerous because you can't just go buy someone's web surfing data. That's not how any of this works. But, you know, it was one of those stories that people just really, really wanted to believe, so apparently unaware of it being flat out impossible (more people should read Techdirt...), tons and tons of people donated tons and tons of money, without realizing there was absolutely no way these campaigns could do what they they claimed. The more well-known campaign, by a self-declared "privacy activist" named Adam McElhaney, ended up raising over $200k (despite others claiming that it looked like a pure scam). The slightly lesser well-known one, by actor Misha Collins, took in just under $90k. Between them, they raised about $300k... with promises of obtaining data that anyone with any knowledge of the situation would know they couldn't obtain.

So, uh, take a wild guess what has happened? If you guess they didn't get any data with that money, well give yourself a prize, because that's exactly 100% what happened.

And... some of the folks snookered into handing over the cash for something that was pretty clearly bogus are... not happy. Many have been requesting refunds. McElhaney is now claiming that he was never planning to buy the data from ISPs, but rather get it by FOIA, though he's now admitting in a GoFundMe update that it's not working either:

When I started, I said I wanted to get the internet histories of those who voted for this law.

That has not changed.

What I didn't mention was *WHERE* I planned on getting the data. If I told you that I was going to come after your web habits, your search history, you might - as I imagine many of you did - change what you look up on your home computers. This is what I wanted our legislators to think - their home internet connections where being targeted. When in fact I was coming for their office server data. That data is subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and very obtainable.

Even if they didn't change their habits the data stored in their work proxy servers would still be a trove of information. Maybe even more telling than home.

The reason I am telling this to you now is, I think the cat is out-of-the-bag. After the first forty paper requests went out, a few days later I was contacted by a friend who happens to work in the offices of a senators. She said that word is getting around that "the GoFundMe guy that has raised all that money for privacy is trying to get our work internet history."

Now after about 80 paper requests have gone out, I have received responses back from three. They simply stated they do not have the data I requested. Oddly enough they were all requests for the same person, Marsha Blackburn. But, it makes sense. I am in Tennessee and three of her offices are in Tennessee so the mail would have gotten to her offices faster. After that I have received no other responses.

He then notes that anyone who wants a refund should request it and GoFundMe would return the money -- but for those who didn't request a return, he'd hand the money over to EFF. Hopefully that is true -- EFF obviously does great work. But, still, this whole episode is an unfortunate one. There remain very real issues around the privacy rules being killed and the way in which ISPs handle our private info. But going nuts and exaggerating the situation helped no one (well, perhaps EFF will benefit in the end... but still not the best way to handle this). Keeping things in perspective and accurate is important. Flying off the handle and assuming you can just go buy everyone's internet browsing history without actually understanding the legal change that was happening was dumb -- and it was dumb that many in the press helped make the story go viral without any explanation that it was bullshit. If you want to donate to organizations for doing good work, donate to them directly -- not through some sketchy scheme like these.

Filed Under: congress, crowdfunding, fcc, privacy
Companies: gofundme

DailyDirt: Crowdfunding Science!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Crowdfunding wallet designs and various gadgets may be fun and bring about some innovative products that might not normally get funding, but a lot of popular crowdfunding campaigns are relatively straightforward development projects and shouldn't be all that risky for backers. Crowdfunding actual scientific ventures adds a bit more risk for backers because no one can really say how an experiment will turn out -- unless the experiment has been done before. Adding to the challenge for scientific crowdfunding is the jargon and scientific understanding necessary for a backer to know what a particular project is actually trying to do. If you want to support some science, here are just a few science-related projects to check out.

• There's a non-zero chance that an effective Ebola treatment already exists in the database of FDA-approved drugs. Computational models could help identify which existing drugs might be suitable targets, and this approach has worked for other diseases, finding possible antimalarial drugs and anti-viral targets. [url]
• Some biohackers wanted to see if they could extend the range of human vision by taking vitamin A2 doses for a while. They've published the data they've collected, but the conclusion seems to be that you probably shouldn't take vitamin A2 for long periods of time in the hopes of being able to see in the near infrared. Also, the participants in this study reported an increase in nightblindness. [url]
• TRUDI (Tele-Robotic Ultrasound Distance Imaging) is an ultrasound robot that allows doctors to obtain diagnostic measurements remotely. It might look a little creepy for a robot arm to go straight for a patient's neck in the pitch video, but this robot can measure other parts of the circulatory system, too. [url]
• If you ever wanted an open source real-time PCR machine, you can pre-order one for about $1,300. This isn't the first open source PCR thermocycler, but this version has a lot of nice bells and whistles, including a touchscreen and some analytics software. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: biohackers, crowdfunding, ebola, nightblindess, open source, pcr, real-time pcr thermocycler, science, telemedicine, trudi, ultrasound robot, vitamin a2
Companies: experiment.com, gofundme, kickstarter, medstartr