I suspect most of these events never even come before judicial review. The defendants enter a plea, and there's never even an opportunity for a judge to say no.
Yes, NYPD has a bad history of racial profiling and discrimination and they should be viewed with suspicion on those grounds. However, as others have pointed out, it depends entirely on how this software was being used.
If they were using it to identify "hot spots" of certain ethnic concentrations to inform officer deployment, yeah that's bad. You can't do that.
If they were retaining the footage so they could go back when searching for a specific subject, trying to find historical clues as to his or her whereabouts, that's bad too - at least in my mind but for reasons unrelated to race. At that point, race is just a filter on the database query to speed the process.
If they're using it on live footage to look for a specific suspect based on physical description, that just makes sense. If, however, they are NOT doing that "specifically to avoid even the suggestion or appearance of any kind of technological racial profiling" then that's also bad, because it's stupid. If you know your suspect is a "short, white male, 35-45, light brown hair," don't waste time having the system look at where all the tall, brown, black, quite young, quite old, or red-headed people are. That's pointless.
Re: Re: It's a perfectly normal search constraint.
Like all information, demographic information about things like religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc can be used for good or ill. In our rightly suspicious view of governments - it's hard to see how it can possibly be good, but considering census data is public - it can actually be a powerful tool against governments. For example, how do you point out that a wildly disproportionate percentage of prison inmates in the US are black males, if you don't know what percentage of the total population they constitute for comparative purposes?
That seems to be one of the regular tripping point in this larger discussion. It certainly seems, from my non-journalist pov, that many of the "traditional" news orgs don't view amateurs of any sort as journalists, and many of them seem to give only a grudging nod to issue-focused publications that arose online (such as TD or Ars). Forbes, the Economist, etc seem to have been grandfathered into the club on the basis of their print bona fides.
That makes answering your question difficult because there doesn't seem to be a general consensus on a the definition of "journalist."
I think, in the broad strokes at least, you've laid out the best course (barring some mind-blowing innovation) for them to take. Sadly, it doesn't mean that it would be easy or that they will do so.
Wonderful analogy. That's exactly why many of us laughed when Germany and Spain tried it with very predictable results, but are quite a bit more worried about an entire continent giving it a try. If it goes forward, this entire law stands the risk of effectively creating an internet quarantine around all of Europe as every major content provider decides it's too risky to operate there. Suddenly, Europe finds itself (at least temporarily) without any real internet content, and the rest of us have a hard time using the internet to find out what's happening in Europe or connecting to people there.
You're both right, and there's the rub. It's absurd to consider funding news organizations through either charity (if enough people were willing to pay, we wouldn't be having this discussion) or coercion (talk about undermining trust and independence). It's equally ridiculous consider a world without independent, reliable news sources.
Mike, however, is right as well. There are steps that news orgs could take (or could have taken at some point in the past) that could have reduced costs through increased efficiency rather than just firing reporters. Take the Washington Press Court as an example. At its base, it's a bunch of journalists whose job is to show up at White House press conferences, ask some questions if those are allowed, and then report what happened. This is a prestige assignment. The members of the Press Court aren't newbies, they're veteran journalists. Obviously, there's more to their job than just attending press conferences, but it still costs a not inconsiderable sum of money to have 20-40 journalists plus assorted camera and support personnel show up at these events. Then end product of that is 20-40 virtually identical recordings of a prepared speech and sometimes evasive answers to a handful of softball questions. Why not just pay one independent camera operator to go down and record the thing and live-stream it back to them. Then, let these veteran reporters get on with their actual jobs?
Obviously, we should fear the bandana gangs more. Both groups are armed, violent, and deeply involved in the drug trade, but come on! The bandana gang members let their pants hang down too low. The badge gang always wear belts and usually ties! /s
It's very possible that this is exactly what will happen if this moronic law passes, but I think on the whole, EU politicians will not be hurt nearly so much as the rest of us. I, for one, am not looking forward to having to jump through hoops to talk to my friends in Europe.
Depending on how this bill is worded (i.e. do they "define" social media platforms, or are there specifically named platforms) this is either an effort of gross incompetence in the name of "doing something", or this is a very poorly disguised attempt to force large American companies out of Europe to make way for domestic competitors in the space. Neither is good as both will lead to a regional fracturing of the internet that I don't think any of us is really prepared to handle.
Even if the DOJ is ultimately successful and the courts order FB to do this, what on earth makes you think the government would allow FB to announce the results? To the government's way of thinking, if the "bad guys" know their secure communications are no longer secure, the investigation is compromised. That's probably the point of sealed proceedings in the first place.
Yes, to some extent by putting people in filter-bubbles/echo chambers, you avoid the problem, for a time at least. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if that exact behavior contributed to the extreme polarization we see in public discourse these days. If people rarely ever hear/see an opinion they disagree with, they're more likely to react badly or over-react in the rare times they do, and filter bubbles often propagate an us v. them attitude. Then, all it takes is someone getting aggressive/trollish and posting something were they know the other readers won't like it, and *poof* - instant dumpster fire.
And that's the situation these platforms seem to find themselves in so often. Someone from r/TheDonald cross-posts something to r/Politics and instead of everyone saying "Wow, that guy's an idiot, moving on..." they engage, yell at each other, and the place becomes toxic. Now the admins feel they have to act before the whole place becomes a cesspool, but they're a) human, b) understaffed to deal with the volume of content, and c) never going to please everyone with any attempt at censorship - even if it's warranted and totally within their rights.
With all the ridiculous IP lawsuits discussed here, you don't see how it might be hard to market an open protocol rather than a proprietary platform to VCs?
@Mike & Leigh - I was typing this while you were responding to my post above. Yes, people make money off e-mail in all sorts of ways, but that wasn't always the case, only now that it's an established protocol in wide use. Yes, VC money is flowing into tokens/cryptocurrency because it's largely uncharted territory with the potential for a huge payoff. You're talking about combining those two business issues in the worst possible way. Marketing an unknown protocol (even a great one) in a profitable way in an already crowded and dominated space. That's a tall order.
Mike, you're not wrong, but I think you may be indulging in too much idealism. I responded above to Mark Murphy (as AC since I forgot to log in first) about protecting your niche as a social media platform, and I think it touches on the actually important give and take of the debate, the business vs. the tech. The further you move from platform toward protocol, the harder it is to square the business end of things, the harder it is to say how you will profit today and tomorrow from the tech you have created and the service you provide. It's not impossible, but anyone who has ever worked tech support can tell countless stories about how clueless upper management can be about the tech at their disposal. Anyone who has ever worked the management side of a business can tell that, usually, tech guys don't have a very good grasp on exactly how much negative impact a service outage or network slowdown can be. There's a reason VC incubators for tech companies exist.
For really the first time we have something that looks sort of like competition in this marketplace, instead of everyone abandoning Geocities for LiveJournal, then abandoning LiveJournal for Myspace, etc, but it's not exclusive competition. If I use Twitter, that doesn't mean I don't also use FB, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat. What they're competing for is time and attention to keep eyes on adds - but that makes each of those sites, large and powerful as they seem to us, uniquely vulnerable to public outcry and so they cave to vocal minorities. We all know this. The question is, is there a solution that's satisfactory to both end users and the bean counters? Is there another revenue stream they could focus on that didn't make them so vulnerable to passing public whimsy? Is there an option they could explore that would leverage their incredible public presence to lessen the absurd tribal animosity currently prevalent in social and political discussions to undermine brigading types of behavior?
I had the same thought, initially, but I was unfamiliar with this specific weapon, so I did some checking. This firearm is one of a a growing number of handguns that uses a grip safety - applying appropriate grip pressure to the spring-driven mechanism (on the back of the grip in this particular instance) pops the firing pin, or striker, back into a ready position. As is the case with most handguns with this feature, the firing pin actually projects from a small aperture in the back (about where the hammer would be on a more traditional firearm) when it's ready to fire, so it is visible.
While it gives me the willies to stand up for a cop, I think I actually disagree in this case. Sure, he could have intervened on the scene and tried to stop his partner, but at least he a) recorded it all, and b) handed over the recordings in both cases. While the situation theoretically could have ended at the scene, in the end he provided the necessary exonerating evidence to his partner's apparent "surprise."
I will note, however, that him just doing his job properly is warmingly good news, and that's worrisome.
IANAL (broke family trend), but I have taken law courses. I'm familiar with stare decisis, and am generally in favor of it as legal doctrine, but how on earth did this become case law? My understanding was that it was impossible to annul such a contract because it was null and void at inception - the contract never actually existed because the minor fails to meet the competency requirement to create a contract.
On the post: Officer Who Killed Unarmed Man Now Teaching Officers How To Go About The Difficult Business Of Being Alive
Sharing my pain
On the post: Florida Appeals Court Tells Law Enforcement It Needs Warrants To Deploy Stingrays
Re: Do it right or don't bother
On the post: Documents Show IBM Pitched The NYPD Facial Recognition Software With Built-In Racial Profiling Options
It Depends... ?
If they were using it to identify "hot spots" of certain ethnic concentrations to inform officer deployment, yeah that's bad. You can't do that.
If they were retaining the footage so they could go back when searching for a specific subject, trying to find historical clues as to his or her whereabouts, that's bad too - at least in my mind but for reasons unrelated to race. At that point, race is just a filter on the database query to speed the process.
If they're using it on live footage to look for a specific suspect based on physical description, that just makes sense. If, however, they are NOT doing that "specifically to avoid even the suggestion or appearance of any kind of technological racial profiling" then that's also bad, because it's stupid. If you know your suspect is a "short, white male, 35-45, light brown hair," don't waste time having the system look at where all the tall, brown, black, quite young, quite old, or red-headed people are. That's pointless.
On the post: Documents Show IBM Pitched The NYPD Facial Recognition Software With Built-In Racial Profiling Options
Re: Re: It's a perfectly normal search constraint.
On the post: A Link Tax Won't Bring Back Journalists; It Will Do Even More Harm To Them
Re: Re: Re: Are there fewer journalists
That makes answering your question difficult because there doesn't seem to be a general consensus on a the definition of "journalist."
On the post: A Link Tax Won't Bring Back Journalists; It Will Do Even More Harm To Them
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: A Link Tax Won't Bring Back Journalists; It Will Do Even More Harm To Them
Re: Re:
On the post: A Link Tax Won't Bring Back Journalists; It Will Do Even More Harm To Them
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Mike, however, is right as well. There are steps that news orgs could take (or could have taken at some point in the past) that could have reduced costs through increased efficiency rather than just firing reporters. Take the Washington Press Court as an example. At its base, it's a bunch of journalists whose job is to show up at White House press conferences, ask some questions if those are allowed, and then report what happened. This is a prestige assignment. The members of the Press Court aren't newbies, they're veteran journalists. Obviously, there's more to their job than just attending press conferences, but it still costs a not inconsiderable sum of money to have 20-40 journalists plus assorted camera and support personnel show up at these events. Then end product of that is 20-40 virtually identical recordings of a prepared speech and sometimes evasive answers to a handful of softball questions. Why not just pay one independent camera operator to go down and record the thing and live-stream it back to them. Then, let these veteran reporters get on with their actual jobs?
On the post: How The EU May Be About To Kill The Public Domain: Copyright Filters Takedown Beethoven
Re:
Oh sure. It was originally copyrighted on the album "Wednesday Morning, 3AM" - released October 19th, 1964.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday_Morning,_3_A.M.
On the post: American Muslim Challenges Warrantless Border Device Search From An Unexpected Legal Angle
Re: SSDD
I initially read that as abattoirs of justice. Doesn't actually change much...
On the post: Two-Person Police Department's Million Dollar Military Gear Grab Ends In Arrest Of Police Chief
Re:
On the post: EU Commission Moving Forward With Legislation Demanding One Hour Removal Of 'Terrorist Content'
Re:
Depending on how this bill is worded (i.e. do they "define" social media platforms, or are there specifically named platforms) this is either an effort of gross incompetence in the name of "doing something", or this is a very poorly disguised attempt to force large American companies out of Europe to make way for domestic competitors in the space. Neither is good as both will lead to a regional fracturing of the internet that I don't think any of us is really prepared to handle.
On the post: DOJ Asking Court To Force Facebook To Break Encryption On Messenger Voice Calls
Re:
On the post: Platforms, Speech And Truth: Policy, Policing And Impossible Choices
Re: You've put your finger on something...
And that's the situation these platforms seem to find themselves in so often. Someone from r/TheDonald cross-posts something to r/Politics and instead of everyone saying "Wow, that guy's an idiot, moving on..." they engage, yell at each other, and the place becomes toxic. Now the admins feel they have to act before the whole place becomes a cesspool, but they're a) human, b) understaffed to deal with the volume of content, and c) never going to please everyone with any attempt at censorship - even if it's warranted and totally within their rights.
On the post: Platforms, Speech And Truth: Policy, Policing And Impossible Choices
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Platforms, Speech And Truth: Policy, Policing And Impossible Choices
Re:
On the post: Platforms, Speech And Truth: Policy, Policing And Impossible Choices
For really the first time we have something that looks sort of like competition in this marketplace, instead of everyone abandoning Geocities for LiveJournal, then abandoning LiveJournal for Myspace, etc, but it's not exclusive competition. If I use Twitter, that doesn't mean I don't also use FB, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat. What they're competing for is time and attention to keep eyes on adds - but that makes each of those sites, large and powerful as they seem to us, uniquely vulnerable to public outcry and so they cave to vocal minorities. We all know this. The question is, is there a solution that's satisfactory to both end users and the bean counters? Is there another revenue stream they could focus on that didn't make them so vulnerable to passing public whimsy? Is there an option they could explore that would leverage their incredible public presence to lessen the absurd tribal animosity currently prevalent in social and political discussions to undermine brigading types of behavior?
On the post: Risky Click: Adding Undercover Cop As Friend Nets Man Conviction For Gun Charges
Re:
On the post: Cop Costs Taxpayers $60,000 And One (1) Drug Bust After Lying About Almost Everything Related To The Traffic Stop
Re: Re:
I will note, however, that him just doing his job properly is warmingly good news, and that's worrisome.
On the post: EPIC Bravely Defeats 14 Year Old's Mom In Court To Continue Lawsuit Against Her Son For Cheating In Fortnite
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Can someone please explain?
Next >>