Quick. Think of a single good reason why they should be monitoring or spying on social media outlets. Maybe that good-for-everything cover "Situational Awareness".
The two-pager points out that the most worrying stuff inspectors came across emanated from Parler. But even at its most concerning, the iCOP effort came up with nothing but some wasted tax dollars and a few incursions into inalienable rights territory.
The United States Postal Service is still in the spying business. The USPS has been scanning pretty much every piece of mail that runs through its system, creating a massive database of metadata that serves whatever purpose the USPS imagines it does.
"National security" or whatever the fuck.
When not helping the DEA find cash and the occasional drug shipment, the USPS is also apparently keeping tabs on social media users. This includes social media services with smaller, but perhaps more concerning, user bases. The name of the game is still "national security," but it's unclear why the Postal Service -- which has a hard enough time divvying up its limited resources -- is engaged in this sort of surveillance.
A two-page report [PDF] from the USPS's "iCOP" (Internet Covert Operations Program) [again, why is this actually a thing?] -- first reported by Yahoo News -- details the internet sleuthery of US Postal Service Inspectors. . .
Here are just a few: just the "teasers" to start you off >
Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology's legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues, in context of the digital revolution.
It focuses on intellectual property y, patent, information privacy and copyright reform in particular.Wikipedia
We've talked about the problem with bloated, expensive cable TV channel bundles for a long time. You might recall the push for "a la carte" TV channels (being able to buy cable TV channels individually) was even a pet project of the late John McCain, though his legislative efforts on that front never really went anywhere. And while the rise of streaming competition helped mitigate the problem somewhat, the tactic of forcing US cable TV consumers to buy massive bundles filled with channels they don't watch remains a very real annoyance.
The latest case in point: many folks are realizing that the attempt to drive advertisers away from white supremacy apologists like Tucker Carlson aren't really working, in part thanks to the traditional cable TV bundle. In short, because Fox News is included in most cable TV lineups, millions of Americans are throwing money at Fox News despite never watching the channel:
....Go ahead and read more!
2
The Other George Floyd Story: How Media Freedom Led To Conviction In His Killer's Trial
When 17-year-old Darnella Frazier started recording video of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd, she initiated a series of historic events that led to Chauvin’s conviction.
The constitutional protections enjoyed by U.S. citizens empower and encourage everyday Americans to discover, record, expose and distribute evidence of governmental malfeasance. This freedom to publicize crimes committed by state actors creates the possibility of improving policing and making the administration of justice more sensitive, effective and responsive.
To understand how the United States developed this unconstrained news culture, you need to return to Minneapolis, to a moment one century ago, when a newspaper exposed police corruption and provided a key turning point in protecting the American public’s right to expose governmental crimes. . .
Senator Marco Rubio keeps trying to act Trump-like, but he just can't pull it off. He actually knows what he's saying is bullshit and unlike some other politicians, it's pretty obvious when Rubio is play-acting populist nonsense, rather than having any real conviction behind it. His latest is a NY Post opinion piece in which he takes on the new favorite punching bag of Republicans-who-have-no-principles-left: what is stupidly being referred to as "woke" corporations.. This is, of course, somewhat hilarious for anyone who followed decades of Republican politics in which over and over the politicians insisted that companies could do no wrong. But now that some companies are pushing back on Republican-inspired nonsense, suddenly they have to be labeled as "woke" and punished.
I won't go through the entire op-ed, but I will just pull out a quote towards the end that sums up how ridiculous and authoritarian this kind of nonsense truly is. In it, Rubio basically says that political views from companies he disagrees with are on the same level as pollution. . .
The Pasco County (FL) Sheriff's Office decided to bring some of its predictive policing nonsense indoors. It also started looking for smaller targets. The program used to harass residents over things like uncut lawns and missing mailbox numbers was extended to schoolchildren, who were subjected to the same sort of spreadsheet bullshit. Low grades? Miss a few school days? Victim of domestic violence?
According to the Pasco County Sheriff "juvenile intelligence analysts," these were all risk factors that could signify future criminal behavior. The Sheriff claimed it wasn't trying to pre-crime children, but its own documentation said "analysts" should use the so-called "predictors" to "identify at-risk youth who are destined to a life of crime."
Not only is the program arguably morally wrong, it's also generally wrong. Predictive policing rarely works as intended since it relies on skewed data. Those inputs produce more skewed data, sending officers into the same areas they already believe criminal activity will occur and aims them at the same people they've already assumed are criminals. It's basically confirmation_bias.xls. But this program targets kids and uses data it's not clear the Sheriff's Office has any legal right to access.
That means the program may also be legally wrong. As in "illegal." Analysis of the program and the data-sharing agreements with schools by student privacy advocates resulted in the determination that this access to student data without parental consent violated FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) -- a federal student privacy law passed in 1974. . .
A woman who was recently arrested for drugs said she found a tracking device on her vehicle over the weekend. She said she watched law enforcement officers place it on her car Friday.
The device was found under the passenger side of her car. It's a black box with a lithium battery inside and a large magnet.
The woman, Tiara Beverly, was arrested last month on "serious drug charges." A few days after her arrest, five officers showed up at her door to ask about someone she knew. She had no answers for them and went down and filed a complaint against the state troopers because she felt they had treated her poorly during this interaction.
Two days later, she saw people hanging around her car. A day after that, she found the tracking device. Not sure what it was (she thought it might have been a bomb) and not particularly keen to interact with law enforcement again at that point, she spoke to the NAACP to find someone to approach law enforcement for her.
That's when law enforcement finally decided to open up about the device now in Beverly's possession:
Eugene Collins [Baton Rouge NAACP President] said State Police contacted him Monday demanding the return of the device.
"They asked me to return the box," Collins said. "It could make the situation more difficult for me."
Why this would make things "more difficult" for a third party not actually in possession of the tracking device is unknown. Either way, the device was ultimately returned to law enforcement after it was found attached to a utility pole across the street from a local middle school.
But the device wasn't found by the agency demanding its return or by the investigators unwilling to speak about the super-sensitive tracking device because doing so would jeopardize the investigation officers were currently bungling. It was found by WBRZ reporters following up on Tiara Beverly's story. . .
This isn't the first time a surveillance target has discovered, removed, and, consequently, received threats from law enforcement for "taking" something investigators willfully attached to someone else's property. But judging from that viral experience, there's not much in it for the target of this attempted surveillance either.
A Redditor who found an FBI tracking device attached to his car received a visit from agents after he removed the device and asked questions about it on Reddit. The FBI made angry noises about any lack of cooperation from the target of its failed surveillance attempt being perceived as its own criminal act, but in the end, no additional charges were filed. Unfortunately, a lawsuit brought against the FBI failed because it wasn't clear at that point that warrants were needed and all other privacy violation allegations were dismissed because the person chose to bring it to the attention of Reddit, which soon brought to the attention of journalists and commentators all over the nation.
This is just officers being bad at their job. They're probably not going to get another chance to turn Beverly's vehicle into rolling probable cause. They had a shot and they blew it. Then they got angry and never even bothered to track down the current location of the device investigators said should be immediately returned to them because of their ongoing investigation.
What's it all about: Contaminated Toxic Groundwater around former military bases - there are not one but two of those here in Mesa, Falcon Field Airport in northeast Mesa and Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport in southeast Mesa.
Growing fast around both of them are massive residential real estate developments as well as industrial facilities.
It is NOT a new story, but let's throw what did percolate yesterday after noting that there were a number of posts on the same serious issues years ago
Probably nobody likes what could be another potential public relations nightmare about a basic necessity and the most precious commodity here in The Salt River Valley/Watershed - water. We already have the ongoing fraud-and-bribery jury trial of Mesa ex-legislator Gary Pierce using his public office on the Arizona Corporate Commission in a scandal to benefit Johnson Utilities in Queen Creek over the paltry sum of $350,000 and a bribe of $35,000. That amount pales in comparison to over $360,000,000 spent by the City of Mesa for water treatment and wastewater treatment. The Environmental Protection Agency recently looked into substances called PSFAs and chemicals that are used in those processes. Here's some more local details from previous posts on this blog Dollar amounts (City Council Meeting in June 2017) 4 Take action on the following contracts:
Item 4-a 17-0665 Three-Year Term Contract for Water/Wastewater Treatment and Pool Chemicals for the Water Resources and Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities Departments, and the Materials and Supply Warehouse (Citywide)
Not to exceed $4,7000,000 annually This contract will provide the various chemicals Water Resources needs to treat raw water and wastewater, and the chemicals Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities needs to treat swimming pool water. The Water Resources, Parks Recreation and Community Facilities Departments, and Business Services, and Purchasing recommend awarding the contract to the lowest, responsive and responsible bidders: A & M Corson's Aqua Value; AllChem Industries Holding Corp, dba AllChem Performance Products; BHS Marketing, dba BHS Specialty Chemical Products; Brenntag Pacific, Inc.; Chemrite, Inc.; DPC Enterprises; Evoqua Water Technologies LLC; Hill Brothers Chemical; Kemira Water; Leslie's Poolmart, Inc.; Norwalk Wastewater Equipment Co. Inc., dba Norweco Inc.; Pencco, Inc.; Polydyne, Inc.; Salt Works (a Mesa business); and Thatcher Company of Arizona, Inc.
August 9, 2016 As part of the study, which was published Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, the researchers examined concentrations of six types of PFAS chemicals in drinking water supplies around the country. The data came from more than 36,000 samples collected by the Environmental Protection Agency between 2013 and 2015.
They also looked at sites where the chemicals are commonly found — industrial plants that use them in manufacturing, military bases and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam is used and wastewater treatment plants. Source: The Washington Post
30 August 2017
PUBLIC RIGHT-TO-KNOW: 2.8M Arizonans Live Within Vulnerable Zones from Toxic Chemical Leaks
2.8 million Arizonans live within vulnerable zones from toxic chemical leaks [Editor’s Note: This is part of an ongoing series of stories in which the ABC15 Investigators and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting collaborated to explore how Arizona regulates the storage and transportation of hazardous chemicals across the state.] By Brandon Quester, AZCIR | Lauren Gilger and Maria Tomasch, ABC15
BLOGGER NOTE: This study was done in 2014 and needs some updating.Here in Mesa an additional facility needs to be added to the list of the four vulnerable sites farther on this post
23 August 2017
Problem Here In Mesa? Sites of Military Bases & Water Contamination
. . .the BIG ISSUE of an impending 18-Year Drought is now getting some attention simultaneously with more build-out of residential, manufacturing and industrial facilities, like data centers that consume huge amounts of both water and electricity in East Mesa. _________________________________________________________________________ HERE ARE SOME UPDATES from previous posts on this blog _________________________________________________________________________
The question now arises is - beyond any questionable actions known or un-known by "bad actors" - how do we MANAGE THE PUBLIC HEALTH RISKS IN THE ENVIRONMENT? [These are man-made risks] Way too often they get ignored until there's a crisis: Clean Air + Clean Water Nearly every day HIGH POLLUTION alerts and advisories _________________________________________________________________________
Here's something we all might have missed last week published by ProPublica:
Suppressed Study: The EPA Underestimated Dangers of Widespread Chemicals
The CDC has quietly published a controversial review of perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that indicates more people are at risk of drinking contaminated water than previously thought.
One can hope this is just a coincidence, but there's one guy here in Mesa who has a work history at not one but two former military airfields that have been designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as Superfund Clean-Up Sites for toxic chemicals left to percolate into underground aquifers around the now de-commissioned bases. Both are now business parks and commerce ports. One in Portsmouth NH and one here in southeast Mesa: Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. Both are locations where J Brian O'Neill has a work history WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? The former Williams Field here in Mesa gets scant attention as an EPA Superfund Clean-Up Site. Portsmouth NH has a much more active group of citizens. Please see the post-script after the main body in this post. Just like the risks and hazards to public health from contaminated dirty dangerous air here in Mesa there are significant costs involved in our water resources where taxpayers bear the brunt to deal with consequences. _________________________________________________________________________
ADDENDUM/UPDATE: Readers of this blog may like to note that the City of Mesa's Economic Development Advisory Board - charged with the responsibility to act as the advisory board to the Mesa City Council on matters pertaining to economic development, including goal setting, strategic planning, marketing and business recruitment, retention and expansion - unanimously approved this motion at their June 4, 2019 meeting against residential development: ". . . to direct a letter to the Planning & Zoning Board, the Mayor and City Council expressing this Board’s strong recommendation against any residential development anywhere near or within the “Elliot Road Tech Corridor”. Specifically, the area that lies between Power Road and Signal Butte Road (West to East), and the power line corridor and Elliot Road (North to South), as well as anywhere directly adjacent to existing or planned employment uses. The motion was seconded by Deb Duval for the purpose of discussion. After discussion by the Board, Brian Campbell moved to amend the motion to oppose the Hawes Crossing application as it doesn’t meet the goals stated in the Office of Economic Development’s Strategic Plan - including but not limited to (a) the Application contemplates residential development between 80th Street and Hawes Road (between the existing power line and Elliot Road); (b) the Application contemplates mixed use (and thus potential residential development) east of Loop 202 adjacent to the anticipated SRP 230kv transmission line; (c) the Application contemplates residential use in the flightpaths of PHXMesa Gateway Airport and does not consider the anticipated increase of flights due to SkyBridge and other Airport expansion; and (d) the Application fails to consider its contemplated residential uses’ impact on existing community services and neighboring communities (including the Gilbert School District). The amended motion was agreed to by Mr. Adams and seconded by Deb Duval. Upon tabulation of votes, it showed: AYES: Ovando-Karadsheh, Kasselmann, Adams, Campbell, Christensen, Duvall, Likens, Nickerson, Perry NAYS: None Motion carried by unanimous vote _________________________________________________________________________
Readers might want to take note that water is a precious resource here in the desert and the East Valley. On top of the $150,000,000 for SBWTP and the $200,000,000 for the GWTP, take a look > As you can see in the infographic to the right, the taxpayer burden for costs in the City of Mesa's FY17/18 Wastewater Treatment Bond Projects in this fiscal year's budget amount to $45,3000,000 > 23.9%. Together with the costs of water at $80,9000,000 (42.5%) they consume 2/3 or 66.3% of the entire Budget Pie. Wastewater costs more than 2X as much as the total amount spent on Parks and 5x as much as money spent on Electric. ________________________________________________________________________ Abundant Water and Waste Water Capacity – The City of Mesa maintains a substantial water and wastewater infrastructure network in the Zone, and is continuing to expand to accommodate for future industry growth. The City is investing over $150 million to construct the Signal Butte Water Treatment Plant, which will add an additional 24 million gallons per day (MGD) of pumping capacity to the area by Summer 2018. In addition, a $200 million expansion of the existing Greenfield Water Reclamation Plant will also enhance wastewater capacity in the area by 14 MGD, bringing the total plant capacity to 30 MGD.. . . two manufacturing operations were cited as sources of possible contaminants discharged into the city's wastewater treatment pipeline - both the Signal Butte Water Treatment Plant and the Greenfield Water Treatment Plant, in the southeast and northeast quadrants of Mesa are in close proximity to former military bases where the discharge of contaminants have been issues for remediation. ADEQ the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, has the responsibility for both clean air and water. Major Employers
Bridgestone Americas – R&D facility conducting research and developing manufacturing process to produce rubber from the Guayule plant
CRM Rubber – Producer and supplier of crumb rubber to the asphalt industry. Largest crumb rubber producer in the western U.S.
FUJIFILM – Manufacturer of chemicals for the semiconductor industry
Matheson TriGas – Producer and supplier of industrial gasses used in manufacturing industries such as steel, fabrication, medical, water treatment, semiconductors, chemicals and food freezing
Metso – Provider of industrial equipment repair and field services for the mining, aggregates, and process industries
Mitsubishi Gas Chemical – manufacturer of chemicals for the semiconductor industry
TRW Vehicle Safety Systems – Manufacturer of airbag components
The two companies that are mentioned in response to Councilmember Freeman's question are included in the map image here:
________________________________________________________________________ The response included why the city put the ordinance on the agenda: actions about monitoring, measuring and reporting toxic emissions taken by ADEQ
Feb 6, 2018 - ... these sectors are complying with their permit limits and conditions. Working with authorized states, EPA's focus on facilities in these industrial sectors, driven by water pollution data, will build compliance with Clean Water Act discharge permits and cut illegal pollution discharges, that impact water quality
>> 2.8 million Arizonans live within vulnerable zones from toxic chemical leaks [Editor’s Note: This is part of an ongoing series of stories in which the ABC15 Investigators and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting collaborated to explore how Arizona regulates the storage and transportation of hazardous chemicals across the state.] By Brandon Quester, AZCIR | Lauren Gilger and Maria Tomasch, ABC15 The EPA is tasked with collecting and maintaining these records, but a patchwork of state and federal regulations make it unclear whether the plans are effective in protecting surrounding communities,READ MORE > https://azcir.org/az-risk-management-plans-epa/
"In 2015, Andrea Amico found out her kids and husband had been drinking highly contaminated water for years at a former Air Force base-turned-business park in Portsmouth. The water came from a well beneath her husband's office and her toddler's daycare. It was full of PFAS chemicals from firefighting foam that the military used for decades. ANDREA AMICO: My radar kind of went up, like, oh, jeez, what are these chemicals? I've never heard of them. . .
PHOENIX —Governor Doug Ducey is calling on the U.S. Department of Defense to take prompt action to address Pentagon-related groundwater contamination near Arizona’s military installations.
In an April 27 letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Governor Ducey requested DOD to identify and treat water in Arizona contaminated in the areas surrounding four DOD installations and to prevent additional human exposure to PFAS from other DOD facilities in Arizona.
The four installations with known impacts to groundwater—Luke Air Force Base, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Morris Air National Guard Base and the former Williams Air Force Base—are located in the two most populous metropolitan areas in Arizona, and each is surrounded by businesses and residential communities where thousands of Arizonans live, work and rely on clean groundwater for drinking.
The water is contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
"Ensuring that all Arizonans have the cleanest possible drinking water from public water systems today and for our future is critical for our health and well-being and a top priority of our state,” said Governor Ducey. “The situation in Arizona deserves attention. Arizona, through the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, is acting to contain the spread of PFAS now, and I ask you to make a similar commitment on behalf of DOD for prompt remedial actions to address the DOD-related PFAS contamination of groundwater throughout Arizona and protect the health and safety of Arizonans.”
View Governor Ducey’s Letter to the Secretary of Defense HERE.
Ducey called for sharing of data and taking other steps to protect public drinking water systems, including
stopping spread of underground plumes of contaminants.
