Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Starting-Off The Week: A Cache of Items Taken from Techdirt
Appeals Court Says Police Ballistics Expert Can Be Sued Helping Wrongfully Imprison Two Men For More Than 17 Years
from the New-Haven-PD-just-as-fucking-culpable-for-this-atrocity dept
"Judge Alex Kozinski noted back in 2015 there was an "epidemic of Brady violations" occurring during prosecutions in this country. "Brady" refers to the Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland -- one that established the right for defendants to have access to exculpatory evidence, creating an obligation for prosecutors and law enforcement to produce this evidence during trials.
Obviously, this hasn't been an absolute since this ruling. Prosecutors aren't interested in handing over evidence that undermines their cases. And cops are equally unwilling to produce evidence that undercuts their arrests, narratives, and coerced confessions.
Here's how it works out for defendants, according to Judge Kozinski, while excoriating an appeals court decision that basically blessed Brady violations as long as the government still presented some inculpatory evidence. . ."
Court: Just Because An Anonymous Yelp Reviewer Is Mean, Doesn't Mean You Get To Unmask The Reviewer
from the anonymity-matters dept
"I've never understood why so many doctors sue over bad reviews, but it just keeps happening. Dr. Muhammad Mirza has built up something of a reputation for suing people who leave bad reviews on Yelp -- and has been successful in stifling speech:
Dr Mirza says he's already won or reached settlements with three reviewers, forcing them to take down the false review and pay an undisclosed amount of money.
As that article notes, he was able to get courts to force Yelp to turn over the names of anonymous reviewers in the past, and it appears that has emboldened him to continue suing reviewers.
However, in one of his more recent cases, thankfully, a court has pushed back on the unmasking attempt. This was yet another case where Dr. Mirza had to go to court against Yelp to try to get the company to unmask an anonymous reviewer who wrote:
“Worst experience I’ve ever had! Woke up looking like a monster!!! Cheap product and he’s absolutely not experienced nor does he care!!!!!”
As Yelp pointed out to the court, this statement clearly is not defamatory as there are no statements of fact that can be proven true or false -- it's all opinion. And, thankfully, anonymous speech is protected under the 1st Amendment. In a recent ruling in NY the court agreed and rejected Dr. Mirza's attempts to unmask that reviewer. . ."
Officer Claims Sheriff's Office Told Him To Play Copyrighted Music To Shut Down Citizens' Recordings
from the future-is-Denis-Leary's-'Asshole'-on-repeat-forever dept
The new hotness for law enforcement is trying to end the careers of police accountability activists. When approached by people filming them, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies have begun playing the zero-accountability hits, hoping that notoriously litigious artists like Taylor Swift and the Beatles will join forces to keep these recordings from being uploaded to social media sites.
The thought process is so simple a cop could understand it. When someone starts recording or livestreaming, crank up some music in hopes the copyright bots will recognize the track and shut the whole thing down. Even if it can't terminate a livestream, it might terminate a few pesky accounts with enough copyright strikes.
One law enforcement officer straight up admitted to the people filming him that he was playing music in hopes of keeping the video from making it past YouTube's copyright cops, much to the eventual dismay of his fellow officers. The Alameda County Sheriff's Department has learned from this Streisanding, and has since made it official policy to forbid the playing of copyrighted content for the sole purpose of thwarting the recording of officers by members of the public.
Welcome to the flipside. Matthew Gault and Motherboard have uncovered a document written by an officer who deployed the same tactic claiming his employer specifically directed him to engage in this IP-abusing effort. . ."
Florida Presents Its Laughable Appeal For Its Unconstitutional Social Media Content Moderation Law
from the disney-exempt! dept
Now that Texas has signed its unconstitutional social media content moderation bill into law, the action shifts back to Florida's similar law that was already declared unconstitutional in an easy decision by the district court. Florida has filed its opening brief in its appeal before the 11th Circuit and... it's bad. I mean, really, really bad. Embarrassingly bad. I mean, this isn't a huge surprise since their arguments in the district court were also bad. But now that they've had a judge smack them down fairly completely, including in terribly embarrassing oral arguments, you'd think that maybe someone would think to try to lawyer better? Though, I guess, you play with the hand your dealt, and Florida gave its lawyers an unconstitutionally bad hand.
Still, I'd expect at least marginally better lawyering than the kind commonly found on Twitter or in our comments. It starts out bad and gets worse. . ."
Subject: Legal Issues
Malwarebytes Conclusion Shows Section 230's Best Feature: Killing Dumb Cases Before They Waste Everyone's Time And Money
from the 230's-procedural-benefits dept
A few years ago, Professor Eric Goldman wrote an important paper, explaining how Section 230 is better than the 1st Amendment. The key part of the argument is that if you treat Section 230 as a rule of civil procedure that kicks out frivolous and wasteful cases quickly, you realize how important it is.
Last month, a federal district court in California dismissed Enigma Software's high profile lawsuit against Malwarebytes. You may have heard about this case. We've been covering it for years, and it even got some (dubious) attention at the Supreme Court, regarding Section 230. Enigma didn't like that Malwarebytes (and others) found Enigma's "SpyHunter" software to be sketchy itself and started suing. Malwarebytes initially won on Section 230 grounds, pointing out that its opinions on what is and what is not spyware is a moderation choice -- in this case protected by Section 230's rarely used (c)(2)'s immunity for content that the provider deems "otherwise objectionable."
Unfortunately, the 9th Circuit reversed that ruling with a very weird opinion that seemed to contradict its own previous precedent. In that ruling, the 9th Circuit carved a new hole in (c)(2) arguing that you could lose 230 protections if there was an argument that the decision to block content (or call something spyware) was done "for anticompetitive reasons" . . ."
COVID Drove A Big Jump In Community Broadband Networks
from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept
For twenty-five years now, U.S. broadband has been painfully mediocre in nearly every metric that matters thanks to regulatory capture (read: corruption) and limited competition. With the occasional exception, the U.S. policy solution to this problem has been to kiss the ass of regional telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast, throw billions of dollars at these companies for networks that they repeatedly fail to complete, then stand around with a dumb look on our collective faces wondering why we still don't have affordable, widely available, next-generation broadband access.
But as COVID arrived, it brought with it a renewed focus on the problem, brought into stark relief by images of kids having to huddle in the dirt outside of Taco Bell just to attend class. And while these images did drive a lot of important changes -- like a temporary $50 broadband discount for low-income Americans, and the looming $65 billion infrastructure plan (assuming it passes) -- most of these solutions still didn't really target the real reason U.S. broadband is so painfully mediocre: regional monopolization and the state and federal corruption that protects it.
Frustrated by 25 years of this cycle, local communities all over the U.S. keep taking things into their own hands. . ."
GAO's Second Report On Facial Recognition Tech Provides More Details On Federal Use Of Clearview's Unvetted AI
from the still-greater-than-zero-agencies,-unfortunately dept
Some agencies appeared to have no internal oversight of facial recognition tech use, leading to agencies first telling the GAO no one was using the tech, only to update that answer to "more than 1,000 searches" when they had finished doing their first pass at due diligence.
A more complete report [PDF] has been released by the GAO, which includes answers to several questions asked of federal agencies using the tech. Unfortunately, it confirms that many agencies are bypassing what little internal controls are in place by asking state and local agencies to run searches for them
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Monday, September 13, 2021
VERY LIQUID COMMODITIES 7 Best Water Stocks and ETFs to Buy
7 Best Water Stocks and ETFs to Buy
These water stocks can diversify your portfolio.
Water stocks can be a choice for those seeking to diversify.
Investors seeking investments to diversify their portfolios may be drawn to water stocks since the companies produce high earnings growth and pay dividends. In the current market environment, some investors are on the hunt for nontraditional investments to decrease risk with water stocks, says Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy for E-Trade. Water utilities trade at a premium compared with other utilities such as electricity and natural gas “thanks to their steady and accelerating capital expenditure programs, favorable dividend policies and the potential for takeovers by larger utilities,” says Heike Doerr, principal analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence who covers water stocks. Here are seven ways to invest in this natural resource.
American Water Works Co. (ticker: AWK)
A public utility company that provides drinking water and wastewater services to 15 million people in 46 states, American Water Works completed 21 acquisitions in eight states and added 67,000 customers in 2019. Water utilities currently trade at 26.7 times the average projected 2021 price-earnings multiple, compared with 18.2, 18.9 and 20.4 for electric, multiutility and natural gas utilities, respectively, across S&P Global Market Intelligence's 56-company utility universe, Doerr says. Water utilities are considered more recession resistant than other utilities, since a higher percentage of their demand comes from residential usage. They’re also an excellent environmental, social and governance, or ESG, play, she says. “They are stewards of a natural resource,” Doerr says. “If you're looking at regulated utilities, water companies are a very attractive opportunity.”
Water stocks can be a choice for those seeking to diversify.
Investors seeking investments to diversify their portfolios may be drawn to water stocks since the companies produce high earnings growth and pay dividends. In the current market environment, some investors are on the hunt for nontraditional investments to decrease risk with water stocks, says Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy for E-Trade. Water utilities trade at a premium compared with other utilities such as electricity and natural gas “thanks to their steady and accelerating capital expenditure programs, favorable dividend policies and the potential for takeovers by larger utilities,” says Heike Doerr, principal analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence who covers water stocks. Here are seven ways to invest in this natural resource.
American Water Works Co. (ticker: AWK)
A public utility company that provides drinking water and wastewater services to 15 million people in 46 states, American Water Works completed 21 acquisitions in eight states and added 67,000 customers in 2019. Water utilities currently trade at 26.7 times the average projected 2021 price-earnings multiple, compared with 18.2, 18.9 and 20.4 for electric, multiutility and natural gas utilities, respectively, across S&P Global Market Intelligence's 56-company utility universe, Doerr says. Water utilities are considered more recession resistant than other utilities, since a higher percentage of their demand comes from residential usage. They’re also an excellent environmental, social and governance, or ESG, play, she says. “They are stewards of a natural resource,” Doerr says. “If you're looking at regulated utilities, water companies are a very attractive opportunity.”
Essential Utilities (WTRG)
Essential Utilities is a Pennsylvania-based water and wastewater utility company, formerly called Aqua America. The company changed its name after it acquired Peoples, a natural gas distribution utility, and 30% of its rate base is now from natural gas. The company is waiting for regulatory approval of its $276.5 million wastewater acquisition of the Delaware County Regional Water Quality Control Authority, which was announced in September 2019 and is expected to close in late 2020. Essential Utilities reported net income for the first quarter of $51.8 million on revenue of $255.6 million, an increase of 27% year over year.
Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. (AQUA)
Evoqua Water Technologies reported strong second-quarter results and has a positive outlook for the remainder of the year, says Michael Underhill, chief investment officer of Capital Innovations. “AQUA noted that it is prioritizing capital deployment in 2020 in end markets and that it expects will grow and operate without material project delays and cancellations in order to preserve liquidity and noted an outlook for neutral to positive growth in six of its 10 key end markets in the second half of 2020.” Capital Innovations has a "buy" rating for AQUA with its 12-month price target increasing to $18 a share.
Xylem (XYL)
Xylem is a smart water infrastructure player expected to benefit from the accelerated adoption of technology in the water sector, says Scott Ellspermann, director of exchange-traded products at Tortoise, a Leawood, Kansas-based investment company. The company has a strong position in the developed markets and growing exposure to Southeast Asia, where smart water infrastructure spending is increasing significantly, he says. “The utility end market exposure is expected to be relatively resilient in the near term, providing cash flow stability relative to other water players,” Ellspermann says. Water companies have the potential for attractive long-term total returns – in the low double digits, he says – since there is an estimated $5 trillion to $23 trillion in infrastructure and technology investment backlog, he says.
Pentair (PNR)
Pentair, a water treatment company, demonstrates earnings potential because of residential tailwinds that position the company to “outgrow peers given high leverage to this end market,” says Underhill, who has a 12-month price target of $54. The company has a U.S. office in Minneapolis and provides energy-efficient water treatment, filtration products, pumps and water systems for residential use worldwide. Pentair reported first-quarter sales of $710 million, which rose by 3% year over year. The company ended the quarter with $169 million in cash, $1.45 billion of total debt and $326 million available under its revolving credit facility. The company’s valuation looks the least expensive from a free cash flow yield perspective and is trading near the low end of the peer group from a P/E perspective, Underhill says.
First Trust Water ETF (FIW)
First Trust Water ETF holds 36 stocks and is based on the ISE Clean Edge Water Index, a modified market capitalization-weighted index comprised of companies that derive a substantial portion of revenue from the potable and wastewater industry. The exchange-traded fund was founded in 2007, and its top holdings include Danaher Corp. (DHR), Agilent Technologies (A), IDEXX Laboratories (IDXX) and Ecolab (ECL). FIW manages more than $500 million in assets, and its exposure includes 47% in the industrials sector, 25% in the utilities sector and 12% in the health care sector.
Invesco Water Resources ETF (PHO)
The Invesco Water Resources ETF is based on the Nasdaq OMX US Water Index and focuses on U.S.-based companies that create products designed to conserve and purify water for homes, businesses and industries. This ETF gives investors exposure to the clean water sector and invests in 35 companies. Investors who are seeking income might find the higher dividend yields to be attractive, says Jodie Gunzberg, chief investment strategist at Graystone Consulting, a Morgan Stanley business. The current dividend yields of the Dow Jones U.S. Water Index, S&P Global Water Index, NASDAQ OMX Global Water Index and S-Network Global Water Indexes are 1.73%, 2.41%, 1.83% and 2.33%, respectively. “Water can also be a good portfolio diversifier since it does not have a liquid enough futures market to be included in the major commodity indexes,” Gunzberg says, “so it is not perfectly correlated with commodities or other assets.”
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Flash News: Ukraine Intercepts Russian Kh-59 Cruise Missile Using US VAMPIRE Air Defense System Mounted on Boat. Ukrainian forces have made ...
