People in authority can violate your rights while believing they are protecting you. – The Budget
[Facebook] has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to resolve the state’s lawsuit accusing…[it] of illegally using facial-recognition technology to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without their consent…from photos and videos that users uploaded…as part of a [now-]discontinued feature called “Tag Suggestions”…Google separately is fighting a [similar] lawsuit by Texas…
Establishment media are finally beginning to admit that cops are habitual liars:
The family of Sonya Massey—whom Deputy Sean Grayson shot in the face as she stood in her kitchen, unarmed and praying for protection—recently publicized that the Sangamon County (Illinois) Sheriff’s Office initially told relatives that Sonya had killed herself. Once body-cam footage disproved Grayson’s self-serving account, he was arrested and charged…[similarly,] Sandra Bland’s cause of death was ruled “suicide by asphyxiation” (i.e., hanging)…suicidologists and suicide awareness advocates should lend expertise…whenever deaths from police brutality are ruled suicides…police “routinely lie to serve their own interests”…a type of misconduct that emerges not from just a few “bad apples” but from the systematic negligence of judges and juries…to the point that…the judicial system’s favoritism toward police has become seen as predictable…and…[encourages] schemes to victim-blame targets…Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, admitted…that police culture normalized lying…Justice Gustin Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York, echoed Keane…
Constant surveillance damages adolescents’ ability to develop in healthy ways:
…at Lawrence High [in Kansas]…every homework assignment, email, photo, and chat on…school-supplied device[s are] monitored by a[lgorithms provided by a company named]…Gaggle…to provide around-the-clock surveillance. If a word or an image triggers an alert in the…software, the result could range from the student being sent to an administrator to being referred to [compulsory] counseling to…a visit from local police…Gaggle [absurdly] claims that it has saved an “estimated” 5,790 student lives between 2018 and 2023. It did this, according to its website, by analyzing 28 billion student items and flagging 162 million of those for review…At what point is the safety you think you’re buying for students actually doing harm in unintended ways? Won’t teachers avoid assignments that challenge students to consider real-world problems?…Won’t students learn just to keep their emotions to themselves, instead of confiding in a teacher or another trusted adult? What about the chilling effect on student creativity and expression? Gaggle is the thought police for K-12 campuses…is it worth it if it turns schools into virtual prisons?
The court rejected the charges, but not the “fetal personhood” dogma behind them:
Oklahoma resident Amanda Aguilar was arrested after using marijuana while pregnant. Though Aguilar had a medical marijuana prescription, prosecutors [absurdly argu]ed that her fetus did not…[and] charged [her]…with [felony] child neglect…the state’s highest criminal court [dismissed the charges, but only because prosecutors charged her under a made-up law; they]…urged Oklahoma [politicians]…to c[riminalize all use of cannabis by pregnant women, regardless of prescription]…at least eight women have been charged under this [made-up law] since 2019…But…the Oklahoma Supreme Court…declined [to hear previous appeals]…Aguilar’s case [only] got its day in court thanks to an overzealous…prosecutor…appealing [a lower court’s dismissal of her charges] to…the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals…
Don’t let your machines call them, either:
Ford is trying to patent a way for its cars to report speeding drivers to the police. A patent application…was published…Jul. 18 2024, and was originally filed by Ford Jan. 12, 2023…the [dystopian system would use]…cars to monitor each other’s speeds. If one car detects that a nearby vehicle is being driven above the posted limit, it could use onboard cameras to photograph that vehicle. A report containing both speed data and images of the targeted vehicle could then be sent directly to a [handy pigmobile] or roadside monitoring units…It’s unclear what legal argument Ford would make should it try to implement this tech, as human [busybodies] wouldn’t be [sticking]ing the[ir noses into strangers’ business]…Ford has also tried to patent a “night drive mode” that would limit vehicle speeds at night for everyone [regardless of circumstances]. This takes things a bit further by turning drivers into unwitting snitches…
Americans’ sick lust for torture turns ordinary prison sentences into death sentences:
[Human beings caged] in Texas state prisons are being “cooked alive” by scorching temperatures in facilities without air conditioning, a new investigation [reports, yet when prisoners]…died with body temperatures nearing 107 degrees, officials have continued to blame their deaths on causes other than extreme heat. In 2023, a Texas prisoner filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s refusal to…[obey] its own laws…mandat[ing] that prison temperatures be kept between 65 degrees and 85 degrees…At one prison, Garza West Unit, temperatures stayed above 100 degrees for 11 days straight in the summer of 2023…
Cop violence is never limited to members of the public:
An…NYPD [cop named]…Imran Iqbal…was [arrested and] charged with [violently abusing] a child…[his bosses thought saying he wasn’t wearing his magical clown costume was much more important than how he was related to the child he attacked or any other pertinent information like his victim’s age]…
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