Florida's New Law Against Blocking Roads During Protests Already Being Ignored By Cops Policing Protests The Governor Supports

from the behold-the-discretion-being-exercised-by-law-enforcement dept

Just a few months ago, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a broadly-written anti-protest bill that, among other things, criminalized the act of participating in a protest if other protesters did illegal things. It also criminalized the blocking of traffic and roadways by protesters, something that was already illegal but now was super-illegal with enhanced punishments that made this act a felony.

This was the Florida legislature's response to anti-police violence and Black Lives Matters protests in the state -- protests that became far more frequent and intense following the killing of Minnesota resident George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Failing (perhaps deliberately) to recognize a lighter law enforcement touch was needed to regain the trust of the public, DeSantis and likeminded legislators doubled down, making the very act of protesting police violence an opportunity to be hit with felony charges.

The new law is in the news because it very much appears it won't be enforced equitably. Miami's Local 10 wants to know why the new law wasn't deployed to stop Cuban solidarity protesters from blocking highways during recent demonstrations.

“All of a sudden you have people out there shutting down a highway. They start to do that, there needs to be swift penalties.”

Those were Gov. Ron DeSantis’ words back in April when he signed a controversial anti-riot bill.

On Tuesday?

“I think people understand the difference between going out and peacefully assembling, which is obviously people’s constitutional right,” DeSantis said on a day when South Floridians stood in solidarity with Cuban citizens’ protests by taking to the Palmetto Expressway and closing it down for hours.

The Associated Press also amplified questions about this apparent divergence from a law supposedly desperately needed to keep protests from shutting down cities.

Demonstrators on Tuesday in Miami, Tampa and Orlando temporarily blocked busy roads, chanting support for the Cubans who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other issues.

“When they protest for regime change, which aligns with the governor’s political viewpoint ... you see no enforcement from law enforcement,” said Michael Sampson, who co-founded the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, one of many groups that sprung up under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The governor had no real explanation for why officers were not only not arresting people for blocking roads, but waving people through police lines so they could head up ramps to access the highways they would soon be blocking. The only comment DeSantis offered was that this protest wasn't the kind of protest he felt needed to be shut down.

During a visit to Miami on Tuesday, DeSantis said the demonstrations in South Florida were “fundamentally different than what we saw last summer.”

The statement made by Christina Pushaw, the governor's spokesperson, wasn't any better.

“The legislation protects First Amendment freedoms, while ensuring that law enforcement professionals are empowered to use their discretion to maintain public safety,” Pushaw said. “The Governor has always urged all Floridians exercising their right to protest, to make their voices heard peacefully and lawfully.”

Well, ok then. I guess we'll see what happens the next time BLM protesters take to the streets and block a few of them off. If DeSantis doesn't want to look like he only respects the rights of people he agrees with, he'll need to keep cops from exercising their discretion and arresting people protesting against unequal treatment by law enforcement.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, black lives matter, cuba, different standards, florida, free speech, protests, ron desantis

As Cuba Tries To Block Internet Messaging, A Reminder Of Why The Open Internet Is So Important

from the this-is-important dept

I know that the internet is taking quite a beating these days, but we should not forget the promise of the internet, and how it can be used for important movements. The protests in Cuba are a perfect example of this. As you probably know, Cuba has had very limited access to the internet, though it has expanded recently. Twenty years ago we wrote about efforts to build bootleg internet connections in Cuba, and a decade later, Fidel Castro suddenly talked about how important the internet was, noting that he had become something of an internet junkie himself. It's really only in the last few years that Cuba has made it really possible for people to have internet in their homes, but only via the state operated ETECSA with fairly limited speeds.

Of course, access to information (and people) is a two-edged sword in many ways, and as many authoritarian governments have discovered in the past, the general public might not go in the direction you want them to go in. And thus, the Cuban government did what so many authoritarians have done before: as the protests picked up, the internet began to shut down. It wasn't a full internet cut-off, but what appeared to be targeted at specific messaging apps. According to Kevin Collier at NBC News:

A number of messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, are all blocked in Cuba, said Arturo Filastò, the project lead at the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).

OONI, an international nonprofit, relies on volunteers around the world to install a program that probes for which types of internet use are being censored and how. Its data showed that ETECSA began blocking WhatsApp on Sunday night, then Signal and Telegram on Monday. All three were still blocked on Tuesday, Filastò said.

"We have never seen instant messaging apps being blocked in the country,” he said. "It’s sort of unprecedented that we would see such a heavy crackdown on the internet in Cuba."

In response to this, Ron DeSantis did one of the rare right things, and suggested that Florida could step in and figure out ways to give Cuba internet access. Of course, there's quite a bit of irony here as well, since DeSantis just a few months ago signed a law that makes it harder for the public to protest in Florida without retaliation. So, sure, it's great that he's trying to help Cubans, but tough to take him seriously after he tried to block the same rights and support to his own constituents.

Either way, in a time when people are constantly berating the internet and technology as all bad, it's important to remember how much good there is -- including the ability to help people organizing to protest unfair government regimes and to make themselves heard. The fact that Cuba's first move is to try to shut down those channels of communication only serve to put an exclamation point on that fact.

Filed Under: cuba, internet messaging, open internet, protests

Cuba's Telecom Monopoly Banning Text Messages Containing Words Like 'Democracy'

from the that'll-work dept

The door to modernizing Cuba's communications networks opened slightly wider recently after the FCC removed the country from the agency's banned nation list. That allows fixed and wireless companies alike to begin doing business in Cuba as part of an overall attempt to ease tensions between the States and the island nation. And while Cuba has been justly concerned about opening the door to NSA bosom buddies like AT&T and Verizon, it's still apparently not quite ready to give up some of its own, decidedly ham-fisted attempts to crack down on free speech over telecom networks.

A recent investigative report by blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo Escobar found that the nation has been banning certain words sent via text message with the help of state-owned telecom monopoly ETECSA. The report, confirmed in an additional investigation by Reuters, found that roughly 30 different keywords are being banned by Cuba's government, including "democracy," "human rights," and the name of several activists and human rights groups. Words containing such keywords simply aren't delivered, with no indication given to the sender of the delivery failure.

Initially, the researchers thought this was just incompetence on the part of ETECSA:

"Eliecer Avila, head of opposition youth group Somos Mas, which participated in the investigation, said 30 key words that triggered the blocking had been identified but there could be more.

"We always thought texts were vanishing because the provider is so incompetent, then we decided to check using words that bothered the government," he said. "We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored," he said. "It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is."

You can understand some degree of paranoia when you've got the United States and Russia battling over who gets to bone graft surveillance technology into your fledgling communications networks, but the clumsy censorship also isn't too surprising for a nation that still bans advertising across the island.

That said, the real problem for most Cubans remains that broadband and wireless communications is a luxury commodity well out of reach of most residents. Only between 5 and 25% of Cubans even have access to the internet, and while many can access Wi-Fi via hotspots opened just last year, the cost of connection is roughly $2 an hour, or around a tenth of the average monthly Cuban salary. As such, Cubans are "fortunate" in that they can't yet even afford to be comprehensively spied on.

Filed Under: censorship, cuba, democracy, internet, mobile, text messages

PayPal Stops A Payment Just Because The Payee's Memo Included The Word 'Cuba'

from the read-the-news-lately? dept

Earlier this year, we discussed how a Treasury Department watchlist under the purview of the Office of Foreign Assets Control was mucking up all kinds of legitimate business because some partakers in said business had scary sounding (read: Islamic) names. Everyone began referring to this watchlist as a "terrorist watchlist", as most of the stories concerned people, including American citizens, who either have names that are close to the names of terrorist suspects worldwide or because certain banks can't tell when someone is writing the name of their dog in the memo section, mistaking that name for the name of an Islamic terror group, because why not?

But as it turns out, this hilariously frustrating example of bureaucratic ineptitude isn't limited to global terrorism. It also apparently applies to decades old embargo rivalries, too. Mark Frauenfelder details a wonderful story about how his wife, a book editor, used PayPal to pay for a book review about Cuba, only to have the payment suspended and the notices from PayPal begin to fly.

Carla included a message to Ben in the Paypal transaction, which read, "Hi Ben - Your Castro's Cuba review is up! Thanks so much! Carla."

As soon as she pressed the send button, she got a pop-up message on the PayPal site that informed her that the payment was being held for review. This had never happened before and she had no idea why PayPal was holding up the transaction. Last night, an email arrived from PayPal. It turns out, the problem arose because Carla's message included the forbidden word "Cuba" (and/or possibly "Castro").

Mark embedded the entire email PayPal sent in his post, but you're not going to find much useful within it. It basically just says that using words like "Cuba", which is a country oft discussed in the United States, and "Castro", which is a crazy common last name, triggered the company's compliance controls to meet OFAC requirements. As such, PayPal is asking Carla to write an essay for the class explaining why she would dare write those words in a payment for a book review.

To ensure that activity and transactions comply with current regulations, PayPal is requesting that you provide the following information via email to compliancetransactions@paypal.com:

1. Purpose of payment 0B463347YT949791N attempted on August 16, 2016 in the amount of $30.00USD, including a complete and detailed explanation of the goods or services you intended to purchase. Please also explain the transaction message: "Hi Ben - Your Castro's Cuba review is up! Thanks so much! Carla."

Read that part of PayPal's email. Now read it again. This is bureaucracy at its finest, with a $30 payment triggering all kinds of alarms because of a friendly message about a review. Two things stand out to me. First, exactly what kind of nefarious deeds are both carried out for thirty dollars and then signed off with a friendly memo in the payment section like this? Second, if PayPal is really concerned here, exactly what are they expecting to learn from the "complete and detailed explanation" they are requesting from Carla? Would a Cuban operative using their system do anything other than lie in this explanation? Is the OFAC so strict that it requires these checks, but so lax that the checks amount to the honor system?

Or is it possible that government oversight has reached a level at which it does no good other than to serve as a useful reminder of what a pain in the ass it is?

Filed Under: castro, cuba, ofac, payments
Companies: paypal

Here's A Serious Alternative To Big Pharma: Cuba

from the doing-more-with-less dept

Techdirt often points out that the current system of funding the creation of life-saving drugs is broken. But the obvious question is: what can you put in its place? The answer includes things like prizes, but also, it seems, Cuba:

Cuba has for several years had a promising therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer. The 55-year trade embargo led by the US made sure that Cuba was mostly where it stayed.

Leaving aside the fact that politics probably got in the way of saving lives (again), the more interesting issue is how Cuba managed to come up with a lung cancer vaccine. Here's the explanation from the Wired article quoted above:

Though the country is justly famous for cigars, rum, and baseball, it also has some of the best and most inventive biotech and medical research in the world. That's especially notable for a country where the average worker earns $20 a month. Cuba spends a fraction of the money the US does on healthcare per individual; yet the average Cuban has a life expectancy on par with the average American. "They’ve had to do more with less," says [Roswell Park Cancer Institute's CEO] Johnson, "so they’ve had to be even more innovative with how they approach things. For over 40 years, they have had a preeminent immunology community."

The cancer vaccine is not the only important drug Cuba has managed to develop with its limited resources. According to Wired, Cuban scientists have come up with their own vaccines for meningitis B and hepatitis B, and monoclonal antibodies for kidney transplants. That suggests the success of the "do more with less" approach isn't just a one-off, but can be applied consistently to deliver results.

That's important, and not just for people who desperately need new drugs. Big pharma is one of the main industries pushing pseudo-trade agreements like TPP and TTIP. Some of the worst elements in those are driven by that industry's desire to obtain longer patent protection and delay the entry of generics, with the justification that Big Pharma "needs" these extended monopolies to pay for costly research into novel drugs. Alternative approaches like Cuba's, which require far lower investments, offer the hope not just of doing "more with less", but also of calling the pharmaceutical giants' bluff that only they can come up with life-saving new treatments.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: constraints, cuba, drugs, embargo, innovation, lung cancer, patents, pharmaceuticals, vaccine

Let's Do Business: How Lifting The Embargo Has Opened The Door For Cuban Trademark Suits

from the hola! dept

I'll miss the Cuban embargo. The easing of relations that it brings with it will likely mean the end of the 1950s-style spy games and crazy plots -- like the CIA plot designed to make a leader's beard fall out. Instead, we've finally decided that the United States is open for Cuban business. And you know what that means: trademark lawsuits!

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of a Cuban state-owned company and refused to intervene in a dispute over the “Cohiba” trademark. This is the most recent development in the long-standing rivalry between General Cigar Co Inc., an American (and Scandinavian) company, and Cubatabaco, a Cuban company.

How fun! We finally open up the borders for some business with Cuba and one of the Castro companies decides it's trademark time! Keep in mind, of course, that the state that owns Cubatabaco is a communist nation, but not so communist that they'll refuse to use our capitalist tools to make that money. This dispute actually goes back nearly two decades, with Cubatabaco originally filing a trademark claim in 1997, which was eventually tossed in 2005 by the Second Circuit court, finding that any transfer of property, including a trademark, to a Cuban company would violate the embargo.

But now that the embargo is gone, Cubatabaco has refiled, with a lower court ruling that the Cuban company could challenge General Cigar's mark with the USPTO even before the embargo was lifted -- a ruling the Supreme Court has refused to send back for review. So there appears to be nothing standing in the way of a trademark challenge.

All that said, it's difficult to see how valid a challenge is, actually, given several factors. First, the two companies as yet don't compete in the same markets, due to the legacy of the embargo. Second, the word "cohiba" might not deserve a trademark held by anyone, given that it is simply a foreign word that means "tobacco" in Taino, a language of the Caribbean. That would be like getting a trademark on your beer brand, Cerveza.

However this turns out, welcome officially to business in the States, Cuba! Now that the embargo doesn't keep property from transfering your way, it's all trademark, patents and copyright from here on out!

Filed Under: cohiba, cuba, embargo, tobacco, trademark
Companies: cubatabaco, general cigar co

US Used Bogus HIV 'Education' Campaign As A Way To Recruit Anti-Government Activists In Cuba

from the another-bad-idea dept

Following the revelation that USAID built a special "Twitter for Cuba" in an effort to foment dissent in that country, it's now come out, via some AP reporting, that USAID also sent a bunch of Latin American youths from other countries to Cuba on a bogus "HIV prevention" campaign, which was really a cover for recruiting young Cubans to be anti-government activists.

Of course, remember that a bogus Polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan has resulted in people there no longer trusting such vaccinations and a rapid return of polio. While it's not likely that this campaign will directly lead to people totally ignoring HIV prevention advice, just the fact that the US government seems to be trying to make use of important health campaigns as part of a strategy to undermine others will have significant consequences, making people who need such information a lot less willing to actually pay attention to it. This doesn't seem like a good thing.

Filed Under: activists, cuba, hiv education, usaid
Companies: zunzuneo

US Admits It Secretly Built Similar Twitter-Like Services For Lots Of Countries

from the because-usaid dept

Following the revelations that the US had secretly attempted to build a Twitter-like service in Cuba, the US government has now admitted that it has tried to do the same thing in a bunch of different countries, some with more success than others. According to the NY Times:

The United States built Twitter-like social media programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like one in Cuba, that were aimed at encouraging open political discussion, Obama administration officials said Friday. But like the program in Cuba, which was widely ridiculed when it became public this month, the services in Pakistan and Afghanistan shut down after they ran out of money because the administration could not make them self-sustaining.

In all three cases, American officials appeared to lack a long-term strategy for the programs beyond providing money to start them.

Administration officials also said Friday that there had been similar programs in dozens of other countries, including a Yes Youth Can project in Kenya that was still active.

While you can see the appeal of better helping citizens in these countries communicate with each other, the secrecy concerning who is behind them is where it gets troubling. As the case in Cuba with ZunZuneo, we noted that this helps legitimize every crackpot theory about how various programs are really US government fronts.

In fact, as you read the details of these programs, many of them do appear to have been set up with perfectly noble intentions, to help people better communicate and share ideas. But having the US government behind them -- especially given all of the recent revelations about US surveillance -- completely undermines that intent. Furthermore, it really doesn't seem like any of these services have had much of an impact at all. Instead, in all of the cases where we've heard of social networking services having any impact, they're when citizens of a country adopt existing services, like Twitter and Facebook, rather than these specialized "local" services.

Filed Under: afghanistan, communications, cuba, kenya, pakistan, social media, state department, surveillance, usaid
Companies: yes youth can, zunzuneo

USAID Wants To Correct The Facts On Cuban Twitter: For Example, It Actually Had More Users!

from the not-very-convincing dept

It took a while, but the folks at USAID have finally responded to last week's AP story about how it created a Cuban version of Twitter, thus confirming every crackpot theory out there about how USAID is actually a wing of the CIA. In response, USAID claims that the report had a number of factual errors and it would like to set the record straight. Of course, none of the "facts" it adds seems to change the underlying story. It insists that the program was legal and not "covert" even if no one knew about it:

USAID works in places where we are not always welcome. To minimize the risk to our staff and partners and ensure our work can proceed safely, we must take certain precautions and maintain a discreet profile. But discreet does not equal covert.

The programs have long been the subject of Congressional notifications, unclassified briefings, public budget requests, and public hearings. All of the Congressional Budget Justifications published from 2008 through 2013, which are public and online, explicitly state that a key goal of USAID’s Cuba program is to break the “information blockade” or promote “information sharing” amongst Cubans and that assistance will include the use or promotion of new “technologies” and/or “new media” to achieve its goals.

In 2012, the Government Accountability Office—the U.S. government’s investigative arm—spent months looking at every aspect of USAID’s Cuba programs. GAO’s team of analysts had unrestricted access to project documents, extended telephone conversations with Mobile Accord (ZunZuneo) and even traveled to Cuba. The GAO identified no concerns in the report about the legality of USAID’s programs, including ZunZuneo, and offered USAID zero recommendations for improvements.

That may be true, but doesn't really answer the major questions about the program, and whether or not it was appropriate, or how it would appear when -- inevitably -- it was revealed as a US front. USAID also admits that it sought to create a shell company to run the program after it became successful, but says that they were unable to do so after they couldn't attract private funds. There's also clearly a bit of hurt pride, in that USAID points out that the reporters claimed 40,000 Cubans used the system when the reality was it peaked at 68,000.

There are two areas where the USAID's "facts" are a bit more on point in responding to the claims that the execs recruited to run ZunZuneo were supposed to be kept in the dark about the company's origins. USAID insists that was not the case:

A USAID staff member was present during several of the interviews for candidates to lead ZunZuneo. The staff member's affiliation with USAID was disclosed and it was conveyed that the funding for the program was from the U.S. Government.

Of course, that's worded in a way with plausible deniability. It's unclear how clear it was that the entire project was basically created by USAID, or if it was just a suggestion that USAID had provided some funds for a program that others had created. Also, having a USAID staff member "present" is different than having a USAID person note that USAID was in charge of the whole thing.

The other issue concerns the collection of private data and the use of ZunZuneo to foment anger towards the Cuban government. USAID notes that on social media, lots of people share information, but very few actually did so with ZunZuneo, and no information that was submitted was used. That narrowly avoids the question of whether the plan was to be able to make use of that data in the future, of course. Separately, USAID notes that while it did initially push some information to ZunZuneo users, that was more to get it started, and it soon stopped. Related to that, the claim that USAID hoped to use it to create Smart Mobs was a misreading of some brainstorming on a totally different project:

The “USAID documents” cited in the article appear to be case study research and brainstorming notes between the grantee and the contractor. The specific reference to “Smart Mobs” had nothing to do with Cuba nor ZunZuneo. The documents do not represent the U.S. government’s position or reflect the spirit or actions taken as part of the program in Cuba. The project initially sent news, sports scores, weather, and trivia. After which, the grantee did not direct content because users were generating it on their own.

Again, while useful clarifications, it does suggest the kinds of things that the folks behind the program, knowing full way they were funded by USAID, were thinking of doing. While it's good to see these additional details, it will do little to quell the concerns that USAID seems to be involved in programs well beyond what many people assume is reasonable. I could see the organization helping to fund a project started outside of USAID -- but being so intimately involved in the creation and management still seems quite dangerous.

Filed Under: cuba, usaid
Companies: zunzuneo