Good News Everyone!

The forces of evil have failed in their efforts to emasculate Colorado's right to repair laws.

I am pleased and shocked by this. 

A controversial bill in Colorado that would have undone some repair protections in the state has failed. The bill had been the target of right-to-repair advocates, who saw it as a bellwether for how tech companies might try to undo repair legislation more broadly in the US.

Colorado’s landmark 2024 repair law, the Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment, went into effect in January 2026 and ensured access to tools and documentation people needed to modify and fix digital electronics such as phones, computers, and Wi-Fi routers. The new bill, SB26-090, would have carved out an exception to those repair protections for “critical infrastructure,” a loosely defined term that repair advocates worried could be applied to just about any technology.

SB26-090 was introduced during a Colorado Senate hearing on April 2 and was supported by lobbying efforts from companies such as Cisco and IBM. It passed that hearing unanimously. The bill then passed in the Colorado Senate on April 16. On Monday evening, the bill was discussed in a long, delayed hearing in the Colorado House’s State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee. Dozens of supporters and detractors gave public comments. Finally, the bill was shot down in a 7-to-4 vote and classified as postponed indefinitely.

It's rare to get a pleasant surprise these days. 

Maybe I Was Too Cynical

While I was not pleased when Abigail Spanberger won the Democratic primary for Governor of Virginia, former CIA officers are not my first choice for elected officials, she is clearly better than her predecessor the antediluvian Glenn Youngkin.

Since her taking office, I have been impressed by her actions, such as her stripping tax exemption from Confederacy huggers, rolling back executive orders requiring law enforcement to collude with ICE, and supporting a constitutional amendment restoring felon voter rights.

She is not playing nice, as can be seen by her signature on a bill ending Robert E. Lee license plates in the Commonwealth.

Being willing to stick it to racist dirt-bags is a good thing. 

Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed Del. Dan Helmer’s bill to end the renewal of commemorative Robert E. Lee license plates in Virginia Wednesday, according to a press release.

A portion of the sale of these plates has previously supported the neo-Confederate organization known as the Sons of the Confederacy.

“The Confederacy was a four year period in which traitors hellbent on preserving slavery tried – and then failed – to divide the Union,” said Helmer in a statement. “The Confederacy and its leaders do not deserve our commemoration, and its adherents certainly do not deserve taxpayer dollars.”

More red meat please.

The Finest Bit of Politics Theory That I Have Heard in a Long Time

This is about Canadian politics, which is something that I know little about, beyond the fact that there are two sorts of Canadians, those who hate Donald Trump, and those who are committing treason in an attempt to sell their province to Donald Trump. (Mostly, but not entirely, in Alberta)

In any case, there were recently party elections for the leadership of the New Democratic Party, the most progressive of Canada's 4 major political parties, and had been completely trounced in the last elections, largely because the last permanent leader Jagmeet Singh had decided to walk back party priorities in order to be in the government (as a second party) with the centrist (I would argue center-right, but I am a Pinko) Liberal Party.

(I said that I know little about Canadian politics, not that I could not read about Canadian politics)

So, they had leadership elections, and Avi Lewis, who is associated with the party's left wing won, and many of the party stalwarts (read careerist assholes and fossil fuel stooges) have expressed dismay, and some have moved away from the party, with some NDP MPs crossing the floor to serve with the (not-so) Liberals. 

Their electoral blowout was a direct result of their selling their souls for proximity to power.

After that long introduction, let me quote Jason's analysis:

People are calling this a split in the NDP, but it's not.

This is what happens when a party finally decides what it is and what it represents.

For the last decade, the NDP has been drifting to the center by working alongside the Liberals, softening its message and trying to appeal to as many people as possible.

They thought that that was a strategy, but really it created a problem.

If you're offering a softer version of the Liberals, voters are just going to choose the Liberals. And that's what they did in this last election. The party blurred itself, its identity, and its message so much that it collapsed, and that collapse forced a choice.

………

And that's being framed as a split. But it's not dysfunction, it's alignment.

Centrists are being forced to decide where they belong.

Soft Liberals are being pushed back toward the Liberal Party of Canada. And the NDP is stopping its attempt to be a party that only cares about proximity to power and is putting an effort into defining itself. 

 Watch the whole thing, it's only about 6 minutes.

Justice

Rapper Afroman, best known as the artist who produced the song, "Because I Got High," just prevailed in a defamation suit filed by Adams County sheriffs for his mockery of them for breaking into his house, disconnecting his security cameras, and stealing his money. (See here for my earlier thoughts on this)

Afroman took the incident, and made lemonade, or possibly lemon pound cake, over, and the sheriff's deputies decided that being help up for mockery for their egregious and unprofessional behavior hurt their delicate feelings, so they sued, and lost.

Before Friday, Grammy-nominated musician Afroman might have been best known for his Y2K hit, “Because I Got High.” But now he has a new claim to fame, as the man who fought the law—and won. The southern Ohio resident, whose legal name is Joseph Edgar Foreman, prevailed in a nearly $4 million lawsuit filed against him by seven police officers in 2023, all of whom claimed that songs and videos he released regarding a raid on his home were defamatory and an invasion of their privacy.

The saga began on August 21, 2022, when a group of Adams County, Ohio, Sheriff's Office deputies raided Foreman's Winchester, Ohio home, which is about 55 miles east of Cincinnati. According to a Fox 19 report from the time, police had obtained a warrant to search the residence based on “probable cause that drugs and drug paraphernalia were located on the property and that trafficking and kidnapping had taken place there.”

Foreman, who was not home at the time, posted security footage of the raid to Instagram, including a door-busting breach into the kitchen, followed by a police pause at a dessert stand populated by what we'd later learn was a lemon pound cake. An additional video showed police rifling through his closet, as one law enforcement agent asks “is he a Raiders fan? Still?”

According to Foreman, police confiscated a joint, a vape pen, and $5,031 in cash. (The latter was returned.) He was never charged. A spokesperson for the Adams County Prosecutor’s Office later admitted that the raid “failed to turn up probative criminal evidence.”

Well, it was about $400.00 short, the cops, "Misplaced," the cash.  Yeah, sure. 

………

In the wake of the event, Foreman says he thought about suing the police, but decided against it. "I asked myself, as a powerless Black man in America, what can I do to the cops that kicked my door in?" he asked NPR. “And the only thing I could come up with was make a funny rap song about them and make some money, use the money to pay for the damages they did and move on.”

The result was Lemon Pound Cake, an album released by Afroman in 2022. Tracks such as “The Police Raid,” “Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera,” and the title song retold details of the breach in an exaggerated, hyperbolic, and oft-comedic fashion. Another song, “Will You Help Me Repair My Door," was accompanied by a video that included footage from the breach, set to lines like “Did you find what you were looking for/ Would you like a slice of lemon pound cake/ You can take as much as you want to take/ There must be a big mistake.”

………

It wasn't until this week that the trial began, with Foreman in attendance in a suit patterned with the American flag. He took the stand on Tuesday, WCPO reports. “All of this is their fault,” Foreman said. "If they hadn't wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit, I would not know their names, they wouldn't be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs ... my money would still be intact."

“After they run around my house with guns and kick down my door,” he said. “I got the right to kick a can in my backyard, use my freedom of speech, turn my bad times into a good time.”

The next day, the jury reached its verdict after six hours of deliberation. "It's been an emotional case, it's been a well-tried case," the judge said. “In all circumstances, the jury finds in favor of the defendant. No plaintiff verdict prevailed. So the matter will be concluded with defense verdicts.”

I'm not sure what he can do legally in response to what was obviously a SLAPP suit, but there is clearly material for another album in this.

I Want This So Badly

This is positively brilliant. 

Are there online plans for this? 

Well Played, The Nation, Well Played

That journal of progressive politics has announced that they are nominating the city of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize| The Nation.

You have to appreciate the quality of the trolling that they are throwing at Donald Trump here. 

The editors of The Nation magazine are in the process of formally nominating the city of Minneapolis and its people for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. The following nomination statement, which is addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the five-member body that is charged by the Parliament of Norway with selecting the recipient of the Peace Prize, has been prepared for submission on Friday.

TO: The distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee

As longtime observers of struggles to establish peace and justice in the United States and around the world, and as the editors of a magazine that is proud to have included several Nobel laureates on our editorial board and masthead—including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—we are honored to nominate the city of Minneapolis and its people for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.

While individuals and organizations have been granted this prize since its inception in 1901, no municipality has ever been recognized. But, in these unprecedented times, we strongly believe that the case can be made that Minneapolis, the largest city in Minnesota, has met and exceeded the committee’s standard of promoting “democracy and human rights, and work aimed at creating a better organized and more peaceful world.”

In December 2025, President Donald Trump and his administration deployed thousands of armed and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement and United States Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis, a beautifully multiracial and multiethnic city of nearly 430,000 people. These agents have targeted the city’s diverse immigrant communities and struck fear into all of its residents. As Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in late January, the campaign has been “more about tragically terrorizing people than it is about safety” and has been guilty of “discriminating only on the basis of race.”

The people of Minneapolis have suffered countless abuses, including harassment, detention, deportation, and injury. And, in incidents that shocked the world, federal agents have killed multiple residents, including poet and mother of three Renee Nicole Good and intensive care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti.

In response to these horrific developments, elected officials, clergy, and labor leaders in Minneapolis and Minnesota have called for nonviolent protest, in accordance with the US Constitution’s promise that Americans have a right to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances. The people of Minneapolis and neighboring communities have answered that call with peaceful mass demonstrations that have drawn tens of thousands of protesters to the streets in frigid weather. They have coupled their cry for federal agents to withdraw from Minneapolis with chants that declare, “No hate, no fear… immigrants are welcome here!”

The people of Minneapolis have also engaged in mutual support and care for neighbors who have been targeted because of the color of their skin or the language they speak. They have delivered groceries to residents who are afraid to leave their homes and provided financial support to neighbors who haven’t been able to go to their places of work because of the federal assault on their rights and humanity. 

(emphasis original)

You can read the rest at the link.

According to Snopes, the submitter was made, and it met all the requirements for an official nomination, and was accepted by the committee.

If they get it, Trump's head will explode.

Another Promise Kept

New York Mayor Zorhan Mamdani has promised to disband the NYPD's notorious Strategic Response Group (SCG), which has been repeatedly called out, and successfully sued, for its outrageous behavior and brutality directed toward peaceful protestors.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday he’s committed to disbanding an NYPD unit that responds to protests in the city – a day after officers from the unit arrested anti-ICE demonstrators for occupying a Manhattan hotel lobby.

In a statement, a Mamdani spokesperson said the mayor was pleased with the NYPD’s response to the protest. Nevertheless, on Wednesday, he renewed a campaign promise to disband the department's Strategic Response Group.

The SRG, which was established in 2015, responds to a number of emergency calls across the city, including protests. Their response to demonstrations has been widely criticized for years, including by elected officials, who have accused officers in the unit of racial bias and violence against protesters. When the city settled claims brought by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, the NYPD agreed to limit how the officers could respond to demonstrations.

“We don't believe that there should be a unit that has both counterterrorism responsibilities and responsibilities to responding to protests,” Mamdani said of the SRG at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday.

Mamdani’s statement comes as demonstrators have repeatedly taken to the streets in the city in recent weeks to protest President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. On Wednesday, he said he’s had conversations with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on how best to disband the unit.

This is a very good thing. 

 

Snark of the Day

Finally, someone has an ICE reeducation program that might work.

As my reader(s) are aware, I'm generally not in favor of training to change organizational culture, but this suggestion seems to be to be eminently reasonable while also having a good chance of success.

………

I propose a sort of long-term residential program for everyone who remains with ICE and CBP after this week, along with more or less everyone hired since the start of the second Trump administration. This would have to be a mandatory program, reflecting the seriousness with which we ought to take proper law enforcement training in this country.

Obviously, ICE agents will not be able to continue working while they are undergoing this rigorous new training program. And in order for retraining to be effective, it will take a long time—perhaps even years. Because we can’t accept one-size-fits-all solutions, we should expect this mandatory residential retraining program to be somewhat open-ended. I would recommend we place these agents on an indefinite leave of absence from their jobs while they are retraining, and have their essential duties taken over by other agencies, preferably outside the Department of Homeland Security (which will have a lot of its agents undergoing this long-term residential training).

This will not be a cheap program, admittedly. Fortunately the immigration enforcement agencies are currently funded at extremely high levels, and Democrats have already shown a reluctance to clawing back that money, out of fear of being labeled soft on crime. But what could be more pro-law enforcement than additional training? And as the Trump administration has decisively shown, using appropriated money for its official purpose is more of a “suggestion” than a requirement of our constitutional system, so a future administration can repurpose that funding for this new mandatory long-term residential training program.

(emphasis mine)

I think that this recommendation is is worthy of comparison to the proposals of Jonathan Swift back in the day.

H/t Atrios 

Walking the Talk

What follows is the full text of the new rules banning hotel junk fees, as Zohran Mamdani promised during his campaign for Mayor 

3 weeks from swearing in to a rule. Not too shabby 

FYI, DWCP = Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

Mamdani Administration Bans Hotel Hidden Fees and Unexpected Credit Card Holds

What you should know 

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined Commissioner Sam Levine and business, consumer and labor leaders to announce DCWP’s final rule banning hidden junk fees and unexpected credit card holds on hotel stays, ensuring transparency for consumers and saving millions of dollars overall.
• In 2025, the City’s DCWP received hundreds of complaints from consumers related to hidden hotel fees or unexpected holds

NEW YORK, NY – TODAY, the Mamdani administration issued a final rule banning hotels across the city and country from charging consumers hidden junk fees—often mislabeled as “destination fees,” “resort fees,” or “hospitality service fees”—as well as unexpected credit card holds or deposits, that cheat consumers and hurt honest small businesses.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined Commissioner Sam Levine and business, consumer and labor leaders to announce DCWP’s final rule banning junk fees on hotel stays. This rule will protect both consumers coming to New York City, and New Yorkers traveling elsewhere around the country. Some economists estimate that banning hotel junk fees will save consumers more than $46 million in 2026. The junk fee prohibitions of the final rule go into effect in New York City on February 21, 2026.

When you book a room, the price you see is often not the price you pay. Many hotels utilize “junk fees,” advertising a base room rate and only later revealing additional mandatory charges that make it harder for consumers to understand the true overall cost. Many hotels also issue unexpected credit card holds or deposits with misleading terms. In 2025, DCWP received over 300 complaints from consumers related to hidden hotel fees or unexpected holds.

To address this problem, DCWP proposed a rule modeled on a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule that makes it a deceptive trade practice under the City’s Consumer Protection Law to offer, display or advertise a price for a hotel without clearly and conspicuously disclosing the total price of the stay, including all mandatory fees. The new rule goes a step further than the FTC's rule requiring transparency on mandatory credit card holds or deposits taken as well.

Today’s announcement builds on the work the Mamdani Administration is doing to hold companies accountable and protect New Yorkers from deceptive practices, including issuing two Executive Orders that crack down on citywide junk fees and subscription traps, and creating a Citywide Junk Fee Task Force to target predatory companies.

Hotels in New York City are also required to comply with other key consumer and worker protections, including the Hotel Service Disruption Act, which requires that consumers be notified of changes to service during their stay, and the Safe Hotels Act, which prohibits illegal subcontracting at hotels. Together these laws ensure that the city’s hotel industry is transparent with its consumers and compliant with nation-leading workers’ rights requirements.

“Whether you’re visiting the five boroughs for the World Cup or leaving our city for a well-deserved vacation, you deserve to know how much a hotel costs up front. This new rule will ensure that New Yorkers and visitors alike are not stuck paying hidden hotel fees, and will instead save millions of dollars each year,” said Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani. “In just three weeks, our administration has made it clear that deceptive business practices do not have a home here—and that City Hall will always fight for New Yorkers to know exactly what they’re paying for.”

“This final rule delivers on affordability—for New Yorkers traveling across the country to see the World Cup, and visitors who want to experience our incredible city,” said DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine. “DCWP will use its full enforcement authority to ensure hotels comply with the laws and rules of our city and we will be vigilant to ensure consumers have transparency in their transactions and that workers’ rights are respected.”

###

Media Contact

pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov

(212) 788-2958

(emphasis original)

China Gets a Couple of Things Right

Th PRC has decided to ban algorithmic price discrimination.

Chinese regulators have issued new rules to curb e-commerce platforms’ use of consumer data to charge different prices for the same goods or services, targeting a long-criticized practice in which loyal or high-spending users were often quoted higher prices than others.

The measures, announced Jan. 7 by multiple government agencies, tighten oversight of algorithmic pricing and data profiling, marking the clearest move yet to draw a regulatory line between “big data” price discrimination and lawful promotions after years of consumer complaints and court cases.

Under the new rules, platforms are prohibited from using data profiling to offer different prices to different users, and barred from practices that restrict consumer rights or shift liability without notice.

For years, loyal or high-spending users of platforms ranging from travel apps to social media shops have complained that they are often quoted higher prices than others, prompting some to experiment with ways to “game” opaque pricing algorithms — from switching devices to masking browsing behavior.

This shit, which includes things like Uber's surge pricing, should be illegal everywhere.

Also, China is cracking down on high frequency trading.

Chinese stock markets have come under renewed pressure in recent days as Beijing intensifies its clampdown on high-frequency trading, a move that has rattled sentiment but reflects a deeper regulatory shift toward control and stability amid a US$1.2 trillion rally.

………

Commodities futures exchanges in Shanghai and Guangzhou have instructed brokers to relocate client servers away from exchange-operated data centers, a step that removes the ultra-low-latency access on which high-frequency trading strategies depend, Bloomberg reported.

While the changes apply to all market participants, high-frequency traders are expected to bear the brunt of the impact. The Shanghai Futures Exchange has set staggered deadlines for server relocation, requiring equipment used by high-speed trading clients to be removed by the end of February, with other clients given until April 30, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the matter.

In addition, some futures exchanges have drawn up preliminary plans to impose an extra two milliseconds of latency on connections routed through third-party data centers, the people said. Any such delay would be layered on top of the additional lag firms already face from relocating servers away from exchanges, further diluting the speed advantages enjoyed by high-frequency traders.

China is looking at making sure that businesses provide useful goods and services, and that investment is more important than various forms of exotic trading that turn markets into casinos.

Maybe we should address this shit in the USA as well? 

I Needed This So Much, and So Do You

I did not know that I needed this, but I really, really did;

Thank you Hank Azaria.

I have been a fan since Herman's Head. 

So Much Winning, Not Sarcasm Edition

I am referring, or course, to New York City's congestion pricing, which, much like London's earlier program, is a resounding success, with decreases in air pollution, noise, congestion, traffic deaths, pedestrian fatalities, and improved commute times.

Gee, hoocoodanode? (Basically anyone who saw what happened when "Red" Ken Livingstone did this same thing decades earlier.)

Surprise! A public policy initiative panned by drivers and pro-car pundits turned out to instead be a roaring success that improved traffic congestion, road safety, and even reduced pollution — a godsend not just for those living in Manhattan, but for transit riders, drivers, and outer-borough residents.

Congestion pricing is a policy which charges drivers a toll of up to $9 for using surface-roads below Manhattan’s 60th street, an area known as the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ), which is enforced by over 1,400 license-plate cameras.

……… 

As a result, those who do drive or use surface-level transit like buses experience much less traffic. Over the past year, average travel speeds increased 4.5 percent in the congestion zone, while the rest of New York City experienced a 1.4 percent increase. Local bus speeds are also up noticeably, increasing 2.4 percent in the CRZ, and 0.8 percent throughout the rest of the city.

The gains haven’t just been about convenience, either. The reduced volume of cars has led to marked improvements in pollution and traffic safety for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. It also raised more than half a billion dollars for the city’s beleaguered public transportation system. 

Car centric cities are an idea that has failed.

True Evil Genius

Fucking Brilliant 

On occasion, I have suggested that if you are out for revenge, you should dig two graves.

I am man enough to admit that I was wrong, though clearly this is a special case.

This is the Gordian Knot of payback, and I am still chuckling.

Clearly at some point, "Rob" is destined to rule all of Asia. 

The Best News So Far This Year (For Me)

Yes, I know, it's only January 2, and yes, I know that the article is from 6 months ago, but the fact that there large stands of mature American Chestnut trees producing offspring in multiple locations on the Eastern Searboard is news to me.

There has always been a scattered American Chestnut trees out there, but they were too far away from each other to pollinate, which meant that there was no future.

There are now (small) chestnut forests that one can hike through.

Hundreds of years ago, American chestnut trees dominated the Appalachian Mountain forest-scape. They stood an imposing 100 feet tall and eight feet wide at maturity, lived for up to 600 years, and covered an estimated 200 million acres of land from Mississippi to Maine. Carpenters prized their lumber. Farmers regaled their ability to produce cheap and nutritious feed for livestock. Gourmands crowned their nuts the world’s finest.

Then an invasive blight from East Asia arrived around 1904. The fungus attacked tree trunks and felled the giants by the tens of thousands. While lone trees survived here and there, their nuts were infertile without others to cross-pollinate them, and by 1950 American chestnuts became functionally extinct.

“The devastation represents one of the greatest recorded changes in natural plant population caused by an introduced organism in history,” says West Virginia University emeritus professor of plant pathology and former American Chestnut Foundation president William MacDonald. Had the tragedy been avoided, hikers on the iconic Appalachian Trail would not only experience a “radically different landscape” but enjoy “some very tasty treats around their fall campfires,” he says.

The ACF has spent the past seventy-five years working with various conservation agencies to crossbreed blight-resistent American chestnut trees using clippings from anomalous survivors and Chinese or Japanese varieties. 

The Asian trees “introduce a degree of immunity into the genome and produce a first-generation hybrid,” says John Scrivani, a forester and former president of the ACF Virginia chapter. The new trees are then back-bred with American progenitors across multiple generations until they produce blight-resistent offspring that are genetically indecipherable from those once found in the wild.        

A Meadowview, Virginia, research center spearheads the effort, and more than a dozen experimental, large-plot plantings on state public lands have not only survived but reached maturity. Lesesne State Forest in Nelson County, for instance, holds about thirty acres of natural, second-growth woods anchored by seventy-foot-tall American chestnut trees that are more than sixty years old—and produce delicious wild nuts that few living people beyond foresters and researchers have ever tasted.

………

Large stands of publicly accessible American chestnut forests are now found in more than a dozen locations spread across the Virginia mountains. Other smaller experimental plots exist in Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Maine, but the largest and oldest sit within ten miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway at Lesesne and Matthews State Forest in Galax. Sky Meadows State Park in Delaplane and the Mountain Lake Wilderness near Blacksburg also hold destination-worthy groves.  

For the first time in my life, I want to go on a hiking trip.

Meme Police, I’d Like to Report a Murder

Generally, I do not approve of dead cat jokes, but in Mack's Cats case, I'll make an exception.

Hillary would’ve been president if not for this woman https://t.co/gq48RhXsUD pic.twitter.com/a7114YYWfF

— Professional Zoomer 🌹☭ (@Zoomer_Doomer_) December 20, 2025

More seruiously, the fact that Hillary ran an incompetent and profoundly lazy (Bernie gave more speeches for her than she did in September 2016) campaign has been emphatically ignored by the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) because Hillary Clinton was at the time the apotheosis of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

There is a reason that the Democratic National Committee has decided to suppress their report on the 2024 election cluster-fuck.  

Notwithstanding their claims that releasing this report would be a distraction, it's really about protecting the power centers of the party, the incompetent consultants, the hyper-rich donors who insist on campaigning about nothing, and the rest of that scurvy lot.

Here’s Hoping This Takes Them Down

A judge has ruled that the output from Flock spy cameras are public records which must be made available to the public.

Hopefully this will turn over rocks and to see the corruption beneath. 

A judge in Washington has ruled that police images taken by Flock’s AI license plate-scanning cameras are public records that can be requested as part of normal public records requests. The decision highlights the sheer volume of the technology-fueled surveillance state in the United States, and shows that at least in some cases, police cannot withhold the data collected by its surveillance systems.

In a ruling last week, Judge Elizabeth Neidzwski ruled that “the Flock images generated by the Flock cameras located in Stanwood and Sedro-Wooley [Washington] are public records under the Washington State Public Records Act,” that they are “not exempt from disclosure,” and that “an agency does not have to possess a record for that record to be subject to the Public Records Act.”

She further found that “Flock camera images are created and used to further a governmental purpose” and that the images on them are public records because they were paid for by taxpayers. Despite this, the records that were requested as part of the case will not be released because the city automatically deleted them after 30 days. Local media in Washington first reported on the case; 404 Media bought Washington State court records to report the specifics of the case in more detail.

Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are used in thousands of communities around the United States. They passively take between six and 12 timestamped images of each car that passes by, allowing the company to make a detailed database of where certain cars (and by extension, people) are driving in those communities. 404 Media has reported extensively on Flock, and has highlighted that its cameras have been accessed by the Department of Homeland Security and by local police working with DHS on immigration cases. Last month, cops in Colorado used data from Flock cameras to incorrectly accuse an innocent woman of theft based on her car’s movements.

………

The case highlights the lengths that police departments and cities are willing to go to in order to prevent the release of what they incorrectly perceive to be private information owned by their surveillance vendors (in this case, Flock). Stanwood’s attorneys first argued that the records were Flock’s, not the city’s, which is clearly contradicted in the contract, which states “customer [Stanwood] shall retain whatever legally cognizable right, title, and interest in Customer Generated Data … Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Generated Data.” The attorneys then argued that images taken by Flock cameras do not become requestable data until it is directly accessed and downloaded by the police on Flock’s customer portal: “the data existing in the cloud system … does not exist anywhere in the City’s files as a record.” The city’s lawyers also argued that Flock footage is police “intelligence information” that should be exempt from public records requests, and that “there are privacy concerns with making ALPR data accessible to the public.”

The degree to which the state security apparatus is using private vendors to conceal theoir violations of our privacy is truly appalling.

Quote of the Day

I Wish Andrew Cuomo Only the Best in Private Life. But Let Tonight Be the Final Time I Utter His Name.

—Zohran Mamdani during his victory speech after winning election as Mayor of New York

Here's hoping that the rest of us never have to hear his name uttered ever again. 

Justice on a Roll

So Washington, DC's own HERO, Sean Charles Dunn, aka, "Sandwich Guy," has been found not guilty of assaulting a CBP officer (assault with a DELI weapon?) by throwing his salami hoagie at him.

It's good that the jury was not SUBservient to the prosecutors.

Understand this Donald Trump and your evil minions, don't BREAD on me.

A jury on Thursday acquitted a D.C. man who was charged with assault after throwing a sandwich at a federal agent during President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital.

The one-sided food fight, which was captured on video and spread through social media, became a slapstick symbol of resistance to Trump’s summertime takeover of local law enforcement. The defendant, Sean C. Dunn, said he was speaking out against what he characterized as fascism and anti-migrant policies from the Trump administration.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said the 37-year-old Air Force veteran was not on trial for protesting but for “throwing a sandwich at a federal officer at point-blank range.” Prosecutors sought to indict Dunn on a felony assault count, but a grand jury rejected that charge, and prosecutors downgraded it to a misdemeanor.

The trial jury in U.S. District Court rejected that charge as well, deliberating for seven hours over two days before returning the not-guilty verdict.

It was the highest-profile repudiation to date of Pirro’s efforts to ratchet up penalties for local offenses. Grand juries have declined to indict several people accused of assaulting federal officers this year. A trial jury last month acquitted a D.C. woman, Sydney L. Reid, who had rowdily protested an immigration arrest at the doors of the city jail and was charged with the same misdemeanor as Dunn.

 

TikTok of the Day

This is beautiful. 

If you want to see the original on TikTok, you can do so here.

Until I can find a way to embed TikTok videos that do not auto-play, I'll be downloading the video and re-upload it to Youtube.

Basically, a delivery driver got hassled by the recipients of a package for his rainbow earing, and his response is one for the ages.

In Union There is Strength

The University of Indiana is upset that their newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, is reporting on news, so the university admins  decided to stop printing the paper except for 5 advertising fluff editions a year for events attracting alumni. (It would remain online)

When the journals at the paper said that they would front page stories about problems at the university in their homecoming edition, administrators shut down printing completely.

In response, management at the Purdue Exponent, who own their own printing press, printed the homecoming issue of the Daily Student and got the copies back to campus so that they could kiosks in time for homecoming.

To hed quotes Aesop.  (Probably, we don't know if Aesop ever really existed)

Last week, Indiana University administrators fired the school newspaper’s (Indiana Daily Student) advisor and ordered students to stop printing the paper.

The student journalists say that University administrators didn’t like the student paper’s decision to increasingly criticize University President Pamela Whitten’s decision to coddle the authoritarian Trump administration, or, at best, remain silent as the Trump administration and state leaders take direct aim at free expression, the First Amendment, and any curriculum teaching about race or gender discrimination.

Enter students at the Purdue student paper, The Exponent, who stepped up and traveled two hours from West Lafayette to Bloomington to help Indiana University students deliver a physical paper to local students anyway:

………

Like many broader mainstream media outlets, what academic administrators want is a sort of pseudo-news that’s devoid of anything that might upset anyone (think of a Ken Doll with all the important bits sanded off to a smooth hump). A sort of feckless simulacrum of journalism that focuses on “safe” issues that, most importantly, don’t upset right wing Americans:

 “According to an Oct. 7 email the IndyStar obtained, Rodenbush passed on guidance from the Media School administration that the IDS’s print publication should solely focus on a special theme, such as homecoming or fall sports, and contain “no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.”

It's gone viral now, so I think that now that this whole sordid affair has gone viral, President Whitten is not oong for her position.

Maybe instead, she should have just made Bari Weiss editor in chief.