Encryption is either protecting everyone or it is broken for everyone. – Meredith Whittaker
No female motorist is safe while the state continues to pay sexual predators to harass us:
A [typical and representative]…Tennessee [cop named]…Jonathan Kelly…was charged with…aggravated rape a[fter he raped]…a woman during a traffic stop…Kelly t[threatened to arrest] the woman [for a bogus]…crime if she [refused to submit to]…him…
Where Are the Protests? (#945)
I’m sure the “anti-trafficking” crusaders will be going after this any day now:
Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country…This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota. Largely from Central America, the children are driven by economic desperation that was worsened by the pandemic. This labor force has been slowly growing for almost a decade, but it has exploded since 2021, while the systems meant to protect [them] have [been allowed to break] down [because money is instead going to grow the apparatus of surveillance, censorship, and carceral violence]…
The Pro-Rape Coalition (#1117)
Fanatics’ crusade to control all human thought is never-ending:
A…[pack of censorious politicians]…studying [ways to impose harsher censorship] in the United Kingdom [wants people to believe] that not only is porn a major contributor to real-world violence, it is violence…the group echoes old radical feminist tropes about pornography—that there is no such thing as ethical porn, that it’s all “exploitation,” and its mere existence is “a form of violence against women”…All-Party Parliamentary Groups “have no official status within Parliament…[but] can sometimes be influential“…So it’s worrying to see statements like these from Diana Johnson, a [politician with a long history of working to increase violence vs sex workers]…
The head of the messaging app Signal has warned that it will quit the UK if the forthcoming online safety bill [demands the intentional weakening of] end-to-end encryption…Meredith Whittaker said…“we would absolutely 100% walk rather than ever undermine the trust that people place in us to provide a truly private means of communication”…The bill has been criticised by privacy campaigners for a provision allowing Ofcom, [a surveillance agency], to order a platform to use certain technologies to [spy on users] and [censor anything the government demands as long as it belches out “THE CHILDREN!!!” first]…the bill could force encrypted messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage to [spy on] users’ messages and create vulnerabilities in their platforms that could be exploited by rogue actors and governments. Whittaker told the BBC it was “magical thinking” to believe there can be privacy “but only for the good guys”…Whittaker also criticised a system called client-side scanning, where images are scanned before being encrypted…[because] such a system would turn everyone’s phone into a “mass surveillance device that phones home to tech corporations and governments”…
The Vultures Descend (Vulture Watching)
Medical confidentiality has gone the way of the dodo:
A Greenville [South Carolina] woman was arrested…and charged with performing or soliciting an abortion. In October 2021…[she] sought medical help at St. Francis Hospital after having labor pains…an[d naively believed she could trust] medical personnel [with the knowledge that] she had taken abortion pills to end a pregnancy…[of course one of them called the cops on her]…
Cop deals with others exactly as he normally does, and the press is shocked:
An Opa-locka [Florida cop has been] arrested…on…domestic abuse charges [because he regularly beat] and threatened to kill [his wife and children] for almost a decade…The wife of Johane Hendrik Taylor [reported] that [many] times dating back to 2014 her husband hit her with closed fists, once even breaking a rib and trying to drag her outside while she was unconscious. Another time…he…hit one of h[is]…children over the head with a vacuum cleaner…he…has abused the children since the oldest…was three…she is currently 13…Taylor…is the youngest son of former Opa-locka Mayor Myra Taylor and the brother of the city’s current Mayor John Taylor…[which may partially explain] how he was hired as a…[cop] despite twice failing his police exam and having a criminal past involving domestic battery. He resigned in 2013 when [reporters] discovered th[is but]…was rehired…about two years later…[and soon] promoted…
The Last Shall Be First (#1309)
Trans people have become another canary in the civil rights coal mine:
Mississippi [has] bec[o]me the seventh state to enact a restriction on…transition-related health care for minors. Gov. Tate Reeves…[turned the signing into a political event, babbling culture-war nonsense centered around THE CHILDREN!!!]…the…bill also bans public funding from going to any institution or individual that provides such care to minors. Health care providers who infringe the law can have their licenses revoked. The law also allows minors who receive transition-related care to sue providers for 30 years after they receive care…In the last two years…Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and, now, Mississippi…have [enacted] such measures into law, though judges have blocked Arkansas’ and Alabama’s laws…pending the outcome of lawsuits…
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