True crime…[is] entertainment masquerading as news. – “Paul”
Bad Fantasy, Good Reality
Now that the moral panic is over, expect articles like this to become more common:
…In my interviews with over two hundred sex workers in four Latin American countries, [cases that]…substantiated the trafficking myth…are the exception. Instead, stories of economic need, single motherhood, and disgust with the sex but gratitude for the lifeline sex work has provided are so common that they’ve become routine…Writing about the sex industry often takes the form of sensationalized stories that, when examined closely, fall apart…and…when travel is involved, our ideas about prostitution become even more fantastical…
Unsafe for Human Consumption (#1428)
Politicians are happy to wreck lives by inventing new crimes from copaganda:
…the HALT…Fentanyl Act…aims to make permanent a…DEA…temporary emergency rule from 2018, which has been extended twice by Congress. This rule classifies derivatives of the synthetic opioid fentanyl not yet approved by the [FDA]…as Schedule I controlled substances…Celebrating the passage of [it]…as a new effort to combat fentanyl trafficking and overdose deaths is merely an example of performance art…But [it’s] also delusional. For decades, Schedule I classification has done nothing to halt the flow and use of cannabis, heroin, or psychedelics…Classifying fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I will hinder progress in therapeutic research…fill…prisons, ruin…the futures of drug users, disrupt…families, and provide…aggressive prosecutors with coercive plea-bargaining strategies…
Eavesdropping (#1476)
Some politicians are starting to admit Shotspotter is a boondoggle:
The city government of Little Rock, Arkansas, recently dumped ShotSpotter, a…controversial [surveillance tool with]…a history of unreliability, generating large numbers of bogus reports. Also, being based on the use of microphones, ShotSpotter can capture sounds other than gunshots, including private conversations…[not only is] the contract with…ShotSpotter…[itself] expens[ive]…the original deal cost $290,000 for two years…[valuable] resources [are] tied up in responding to false ShotSpotter reports. Other cities have run into the same problem, finding that relatively few incidents reported by the technology result in the discovery of criminal activity…
The Mob Rules (#1491)
Ambulance-chasers have given themselves the power to rob internet companies:
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is suing the owner of 13 pornographic websites, [exploit]ing…a law passed last year [demand]ing age verification systems be placed on adult content. Kobach [claims] SARJ LLC, a Washington-based company…owns, licenses and distributes content for the 13 [targeted] websites…and…made [furtive movements in his pants]…at…the [fantasy of robbing the company]…for over $50 million…
Shame, Shame (#1494)
Bird-brains still think realistic porn cartoons are the worst use for this technology:
…a YouTube channel called True Crime Case Files…[contain]ed more than 150 [computer-generated] videos o[f fictional crimes which were not labeled as such]…The plots were…often hypersexual. They described parents selling teenagers into sex slavery with a sheriff, and transgender teachers committing murders to hide affairs with students. The video thumbnails were perverse, with clickbaity phrasing in big blocky text…Each one was made with [image-generation software] and the crimes described did not happen. There was no language on the channel’s homepage or in video descriptions to tell a viewer otherwise…[because] the man who ran the page…believed people wouldn’t want to watch his videos if they knew they were fake…the [channel is now down due to bad publicity, but the creator is wholly unrepentant, saying]…“I really felt like I needed to stake my claim before anybody else thought of it”…
The Widening Gyre (#1500) 
Cops don’t like it when non-cops falsely accuse innocent people of “crimes” that didn’t happen:
A…[Virginia drunk] was arrested after breaking into a Bible study session, [drun]kenly [imagin]ing it to be a human trafficking operation…David Campbell…called the…[cops because] his neighbors had doubled-parked their vehicles. Campbell then [attacked and threaten]ed his neighbors…and w[hen] deputies…[arrived] they found Campbell [ranting] in the middle of the road…
Pyrrhic Victory (#1510)
Everyone abused by cops using this error-prone surveillance system needs to sue:
Chris Gatlin spent 17 months in jail for a crime that [cops claimed] he committed, only to be freed after the prosecutor learned there was no real evidence. A grainy surveillance photo of an assault suspect…[was fed to] a computer facial recognition program to [mis-]identify Gatlin…and the…[cops] ran with it…without doing any other investigation…even [though] the…victim didn’t…think Gatlin was the right guy…and…picked two different suspects…[until] the [cops pushed him to pick]…Gatlin…“I felt I was being pointed into something,” the victim said…Gatlin [is suing]…St. Louis County…
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There’s nothing wrong with “sexological bodywork”, as long as you understand that…[it’s] no different from what many thousands of sex workers do every day, all over the world, without the fancy title. – “Accredited Whores (#1187)”
