REQUIRING POLICE BODY CAMS: Motorola and Axon Fight To Corner Lucrative Body-Worn Camera Market

"Caught on Cam" for the time being has faded-out of the intense national conversation after the prosecution for the police killing of George Floyd when evidence was based on the recorded now infamous live video images captured by a civilian on her own personal cellphone.

Derek Chauvin, the former cop who was convicted of Floyd’s murder, was wearing a body camera at the beginning of the incident, but it allegedly fell off and slid under the squad car before he knelt on Floyd’s neck.

His camera was made by a company called Axon — formerly known as Taser — the largest provider of body cameras in the United States. 

Here are some selected excerpts taken from The First Look Institute as reported back in December of last year

 

Two Companies Fight to Corner the Police Body Camera Market

Axon and Motorola lobbied Congress to promote police tech in reform bills. Their devices may not change policing — yet business is booming.

Akela Lacy

The Intercept

 

". . .Earning more than $680 million in revenue last year, Axon currently dominates the domestic body camera market. Its main competitor is Motorola, which claims to sell more affordable cameras that fit more securely to uniforms and can upload video automatically to systems that manage police evidence.

The two companies are angling for control of the lucrative police-worn body camera market, which has nearly doubled in the past five years and is projected to keep growing.

The cameras are a favorite tool of legislators who want to respond to police violence but don’t support proposals to reduce police presence, and their enthusiasm helped the global industry balloon to $1.2 billion in 2020, with projected growth to $7 billion by 2026. . .

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Readers of this blog might note that last week, there was a presentation by Travis Cartwright in front of the Mesa City Council in Arizona to approve a proposal to fund a private cellular network partnering with Motorola for part of the Mesa Public System.

The city has other contracts with Motorola for radios and ruggedized electronics.

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But for industry skeptics, at issue is whether policy changes that continue to add money to police budgets for such technologies can decrease police use of force — or change policing at all. Body cameras “don’t produce accountability or transparency,” said Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns at Color of Change, namely because they don’t reduce the number of civilian interactions with police. “What [such technology] has produced is a ton of investment, more and more money being spent on police departments.”

. . .A 2019 review of 70 available studies on the impacts of body-worn cameras on police behavior found that though “officers and citizens are generally supportive of BWC use, BWCs have not had statistically significant or consistent effects on most measures of officer and citizen behavior or citizens’ views of police.”

> Some police agencies have mandatory recording or reporting policies, but others don’t.

Those factors make it difficult to quantify how effective the technology is overall. According to Seth Stoughton, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law who studies the effectiveness of body cameras, “It was always unrealistic to expect a piece of equipment to change, fundamentally, police culture.”

 

[...] The prominence of body cameras in the national conversation comes amid a litany of lobbying by the two companies.

> One of the companies lobbying last year for the bill’s promotion of body cameras was Axon, which at the time already had a customer relationship with 17,000 of the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

According to its 2020 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company had sales representatives assigned to the 1,200 biggest agencies, which account for between 70 and 80 percent of U.S. law enforcement officers. The company claims that its “mission is to protect life” and that its body cameras allow cops “to work effectively and transparently.”

It says that its Taser weapons “protect life without taking it,” though a Fatal Encounters dataset showed that more than 500 people have died after being Tased since 2010.

Axon acquired what was then its largest competitor in 2018, becoming the main supplier of cameras to police departments in New York City, Phoenix, and Miami.

Though the Federal Exchange Commission challenged the acquisition last year — in a case that’s still pending —

> Axon’s most formidable rising competitor is Motorola, which in 2019 acquired two companies that make body cameras in the U.S. and in Europe. The company recently announced contracts in Tennessee, Illinois, France, and the United Kingdom. Its fastest growing sectors are video and security analytics, which brought in $927 million in revenue last year.

 

Numerous city councils across the country approved additional police funding for body cameras last year, as was the case several years ago after protest movements in Ferguson, Missouri. And increased investment in police technologies can provide a boon not only for body camera companies like Axon and Motorola, but also for software, artificial intelligence, and other companies that provide technologies like cloud storage and facial recognition.

“Video is data intensive,” Fredericks wrote in a September article for Police Chief magazine. “Police agencies expect to produce more visual data than any other form of computer information, so much information that outsourcing storage and management to a third party is often the only viable and cost-effective strategy for agencies currently drowning in video data. For example, Axon, one provider of cloud-based storage solutions, reports it is managing and storing more than 120,000 TB of video data from 14,000 police agencies.”

Correction: December 10, 2021

The piece has been updated to clarify that the Fatal Encounters dataset does not claim Tasers are the sole cause of death in the cases they analyzed. The dataset shows more than 500 people died “soon after” being Tased since 2010.

Reference: https://theintercept.com/2021/12/08/police-reform-body-cameras-axon-motorola/

 

BIGGS IN HINDSIGHT: Last Week's "Newsletter"...

Intro: No mention of getting ready for that Save America Rally in Florence on January 15th, but Andy is doing a Tele-Town Hall this Thursday.No mention of record cases for COVID virus transmissions here in Arizona

The Week in Review Happy Friday! I hope you all had a wonderful week. I spent my time back in D.C., working on behalf of the Fighting Fifth. In this newsletter, I’ll give you highlights from this week on Capitol Hill, most prominently, the Democrats’ push for a federal takeover of elections. Read below to learn more:   Democrats' Power Grab  On Wednesday and Thursday, Democrats made a frantic push to federalize elections by passing their misleadingly named Freedom to Vote Act, which will give federal funding to campaigns, mandate ballot harvesting, and abolish meaningful voter-ID laws. Bottom line, Democrats don’t care about election integrity; they care about power. This vote was simply another attempted power-grab by radical Democrats in their mission to centralize power in Washington, D.C. and usurp authority that the Constitution reserved to the states. Check out my full statement below:     No Mandates Act On Thursday, I introduced H.R. 6395, the No Mandates Act, which prohibits federal agencies or any other entity that receives federal funds from issuing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate as a prerequisite for service. The bill also would require any entity who received COVID-19 relief funds to repay those funds if they issue a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for customers. I previously introduced legislation to prohibit entities from imposing vaccine mandates on their employees. The American people have had enough of Big Government and Leftist corporations telling them how to live their lives. If we let these mandates continue, Democrats will attempt to impose them as a condition for grocery shopping, eating at a restaurant, flying on a plane, or any other activity outside the home. We’ve already seen instances of this. The government lacks the constitutional authority to require Americans to get a vaccine to live their daily lives, and I will not stand idly by as Democrats try to fool everyone into thinking they do. It's time to emphasize freedom and personal responsibility. Read more about my No Mandates Act below:   Demanding Transparency From Jan 6 Committee On Monday, I demanded that the January 6 Select Committee allow all House members access to transcripts of the depositions they have conducted as part of their illegitimate investigation. House rules clearly provide the ability for Members of Congress to attend depositions and review collected testimony. The January 6 Select Committee and its sham of an investigation has failed to provide members access to these materials while simultaneously leaking, out of context, fragments of testimony. It's obvious the goal of the Committee is to tarnish the reputation of Republican Members by leaking bits of information in a way that creates an alternative "truth" that fits the narrative of the Left. I demand the Committee release the full testimony and be transparent about the truth. See the full letter below: ICYMI - I started off 2022 highlighting the mistreatment of the January 6 prisoners and the illegitimacy of Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 Select Committee. Click below to see my letter, op-ed, and podcast regarding these topics! Letter: Op-Ed Podcast:   First Telephone Town Hall of 2022 This upcoming Thursday, I will host my monthly telephone town hall where I will give you a brief update on congressional happenings and answer questions from Fifth District constituents. It is an honor to be your Representative, and I will always fight to ensure your voice is heard in the halls of Congress. Check out the details below to participate, and please follow my Facebook and Twitter page to stay in the know for all upcoming telephone town halls!    Queen Creek Police Department On Tuesday, my staff was honored to attend the operational launch ceremony for the Queen Creek Police Department led by Chief Randy Brice. I’m grateful to have so many amazing men and women of law enforcement working to protect Arizona’s 5th District. Check out the photos below.     Border Security Caucus On Tuesday, we held our first Border Security Caucus meeting of the year. We were joined by Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls and Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines to discuss the impacts of the Biden border crisis. Check out pictures below:   Tweets of the Week             FOLLOW US:      Letters Co-signed Rep. Lesko letter to President Biden urging him to end his open border policies and enforce immigration law prevent individuals from being trafficked across the southern border Gooden Demands Transparency on Taxpayer Funds Going to Organizations Promoting Illegal Immigration Rep. McClain letter to President Biden demanding that he fire Secretary Cardona Unsubscribe Privacy Policy

Washington, DC S171 Cannon HOB Washington, DC 20515 Phone: (202) 225-2635 District Office 2509 S Power Rd, Suite 204 Mesa, AZ 85209 Phone: (480) 699-8239

UNKNOWN HOW IT GETS INSTALLED: SysJoker, an Advanced Threat Actor after Specific Targets

One attack was against an un-named educational institution

SYSJOKER —

Backdoor RAT for Windows, macOS, and Linux went undetected until now

Never-before-seen, cross-platform SysJoker came from an "advanced threat actor."

Dan Goodin - 1/15/2022, 7:00 AM

"Researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen backdoor malware written from scratch for systems running Windows, macOS, or Linux that remained undetected by virtually all malware scanning engines.

Researchers from security firm Intezer said they discovered SysJoker—the name they gave the backdoor malware—on the Linux-based Webserver of a “leading educational institution.” As the researchers dug in, they found SysJoker versions for both Windows and macOS as well. They suspect the cross-platform RAT—short for remote access trojan—was unleashed in the second half of last year.

The discovery is significant for several reasons. . .

[...]

SysJoker is written in C++, and as of Tuesday, the Linux and macOS versions were fully undetected on the VirusTotal malware search engine. The backdoor generates its control-server domain by decoding a string retrieved from a text file hosted on Google Drive. During the time the researchers were analyzing it, the server changed three times, indicating the attacker was active and monitoring for infected machines.

Based on organizations targeted and the malware’s behavior, Intezer's assessment is that SysJoker is after specific targets, most likely with the goal of “​​espionage together with lateral movement which might also lead to a ransomware attack as one of the next stages.”

 

Arizona Democratic Senator Sinema is a Too-Easy Decoy...So what's the Message?

Here's the intended message with strong declarative statements from Robert Reich:

". . .A large portion of the American public has become so frustrated and cynical about democracy they are willing to believe blatant lies of a self-described strongman, and willing to support a political party that no longer believes in democracy.

As I said at the outset, capitalism is compatible with democracy only if democracy is in the driver’s seat. But the absence of democracy doesn’t strengthen capitalism. It fuels despotism.

Despotism is bad for capitalism. Despots don’t respect property rights. They don’t honor the rule of law. They are arbitrary and unpredictable. All of this harms the owners of capital. Despotism also invites civil strife and conflict, which destabilize a society and an economy.

My message to every CEO in America: you need democracy, but you’re actively undermining it.""

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good.

His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now.

He is a Guardian US columnist.

His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

Corporate sedition is more damaging to America than the Capitol attack

Robert Reich

the Guardian |

"Kyrsten Sinema receives millions from business and opposes progressive priorities. Republicans who voted to overturn an election still bag big bucks. Whose side are CEOs on?

Capitalism and democracy are compatible only if democracy is in the driver’s seat.

That’s why I took some comfort just after the attack on the Capitol when many big corporations solemnly pledged they’d no longer finance the campaigns of the 147 lawmakers who voted to overturn election results.

Well, those days are over. Turns out they were over the moment the public stopped paying attention.

A report published last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington shows that over the past year, 717 companies and industry groups have donated more than $18m to 143 of those seditious lawmakers. Businesses that pledged to stop or pause their donations have given nearly $2.4m directly to their campaigns or political action committees (Pacs).

But there’s a deeper issue here. The whole question of whether corporations do or don’t bankroll the seditionist caucus is a distraction from a much larger problem.

The tsunami of money now flowing from corporations into the swamp of American politics is larger than ever. And this money – bankrolling almost all politicians and financing attacks on their opponents – is undermining American democracy as much as did the 147 seditionist members of Congress. Maybe more.

The Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema – whose vocal opposition to any change in the filibuster is on the verge of dooming voting rights – received almost $2m in campaign donations in 2021 even though she is not up for re-election until 2024. Most of it came from corporate donors outside Arizona, some of which have a history of donating largely to Republicans.

Has the money influenced Sinema? You decide. Besides sandbagging voting rights, she voted down the $15 minimum wage increase, opposed tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and stalled on drug price reform – policies supported by a majority of Democratic senators as well as a majority of Arizonans. . .

[...]

The profits of big corporations just reached a 70-year high, even during a pandemic. The ratio of CEO pay in large companies to average workers has ballooned from 20-to-1 in the 1960s, to 320-to-1 now.

Meanwhile, most Americans are going nowhere. The typical worker’s wage is only a bit higher today than it was 40 years ago, when adjusted for inflation.

But the biggest casualty is public trust in democracy.

In 1964, just 29% of voters believed government was “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves”. By 2013, 79% of Americans believed it.

Corporate donations to seditious lawmakers are nothing compared with this 40-year record of corporate sedition.

Campaigners target senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, near the US Capitol. Photograph: Ken Cedeno/REX/Shutterstock

 

A DEFEATED PRESIDENT CHOSE ARIZONA To stage a Save America PAC Rally For Mid-Term Election Season

It was a Political Action Campaign to broadcast and spread everything about Stop-The-Steal and "The Big Lie" he's been repeating for more than a year using his newly chosen cast of true believers he has endorsed -- only if his cast of new apprentice characters follow his script

 

Trump Soft-Launches His 2024 Campaign

The former president’s message at his Arizona rally was as clear as it was dishonest:

He didn’t lose to Joe Biden in 2020, and he’ll spend the next year working to elect Republicans who agree.

(Image credit: Mario Tama / Getty)

By Elaine Godfrey

The Atlantic |

FLORENCE, Ariz.—Tonight, deep in the Arizona desert, thousands of people chanted for Donald Trump. They had braved the wind for hours—some waited the entire day—just to get a glimpse of the defeated former president. And when he finally appeared on stage, as Lee Greenwood played from the loudspeakers, the crowd roared as though Trump were still the commander-in-chief. To many of them, he is.

“I ran twice and we won twice,” Trump told his fans. "This crowd is a massive symbol of what took place, because people are hungry for the truth. They want their country back."

Tonight’s rally was Trump’s first public event since July. On paper, the gathering was meant as his response to the anniversary of January 6, as well as an unofficial kickoff for his efforts to support Republicans in the midterm elections. But the event also served as the soft launch of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Although he didn’t say the words, the former president seems poised to run in two years—”Make America Great Again Again … Again,” he joked to the crowd—and tonight, his message was as clear as it was dishonest: He didn’t lose to Joe Biden in 2020, and he’ll spend the next year working to elect Republicans who agree.

Trump chose Arizona for this moment for a reason: In this state, the Big Lie thrives. Trump only lost Arizona by 10,000 votes in 2020, giving him and his supporters the space, apparently, to allege that the close outcome was the result of left-wing chicanery, the result of ballot stuffing and interference by Venezuelans, among other false claims. . .GOP politicians across Arizona adopted Trump’s lies anyway. Many of them were guests of honor tonight.

The pre-Trump headliner was Kari Lake, the former TV-news reporter running to replace Governor Doug Ducey; she alleges, falsely, that “bag loads of ballots” were dumped in Arizona last year. (“Kari Lake, she’s been with us from the beginning on the election fraud,” Trump gushed when he brought her back on stage for a cameo during his speech.)

Other speakers included secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, who was at the Capitol last January 6 and who often wears a cowboy hat and bolo-tie despite being from Michigan; Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and Debbie Lesko, three Trump-loving members of Congress who voted against certifying Biden’s win in 2020; and the state GOP chair Kelli Ward, who has embraced numerous conspiracy theories and recently received a cease and desist notice from Dominion Voting Systems after accusing the company of changing 6,000 Trump votes to Biden votes last year. Each of these Republicans has repeatedly echoed Trump’s false allegations of election mischief. Of course they have. This is the former president’s new litmus test: You endorse the lie; he endorses you.

Nearly everyone I interviewed at the rally vowed to follow Trump’s lead, and only support GOP candidates who endorse the false idea that he won the election. . .If Lake and the other Big Lie proponents at tonight’s rally can win their primary races, they’ve got a good shot at becoming the Grand Canyon State’s next generation of political leaders. Even with power, though, they’ll still owe Trump a debt of loyalty—one that he’ll expect to be repaid.

[...] Trump has still been speaking directly to his most dutiful supporters through far-right media outlets, though. (“He’s tan, fit, has lost some weight since he left office,” Newsmax’s anchors, speculating eagerly about a 2024 announcement, trilled as Trump took the stage here. “People forget that The Apprentice was the number one show on NBC.”) Now that the midterm season is fully underway, Trump will be out and about more often, hosting rallies and stumping for the any Republicans desperate enough to lie about the election in exchange for his support. He will in some ways be reintroducing himself to the country: Here I am, America, back after a stolen election, ready to win by any means possible. . .

Trump has had a remarkable 14 months. Most losing presidential candidates are forced into quiet retirement by their parties. Trump has bucked the trend, only tightening his grip on the GOP in the wake of his defeat. He has convinced Republican candidates all over the country—including those on stage tonight—to repeat his election lies, and convinced his rank-and-file supporters to treat those falsehoods as holy writ. By this point, those lies have been circulating for what feels like forever. But at tonight's rally, as Trump’s fans called for the arrests of poll workers and the reinstatement of the rightful president, I got the sense that this might be just the beginning."

DEMAND FOR ONLINE GARBAGE --- Yeah Baby! Let's Re-Cycle It

Here's just one example. Not meant to demean the source The Daily Mail does do some good things some of the time

How Fauci has profited from the pandemic: Senator he called 'moron' leaks his unredacted financial disclosures that show he raked in $5,000 from one virtual event and he and his wife are worth at least $10 million

• Dr Anthony Fauci is the highest-paid federal employee - earning more than President Joe Biden
• Fauci earns $434,312 as head of the NIAID while presidents earn $400,000 annually since 2001
• New disclosures show he also receives royalties exceeding $100,000 a year from medical textbooks
• In 2020 he accepted a $5,000 'travel reimbursement' to virtually attend the RFK Ripple of Hope gala  
• Publicly available salary information for Fauci shows he earned $3.6 million from 2010 to 2019
• He will make roughly $2.5 million more for the years 2020 through 2024 if he stays on through Biden's term
• Fauci's wife, Christine Grady, earns $176,000 as Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH 
• His investment accounts total $8,337,940.90, while she is worth $2,083,097.09, leaked declarations show  
• Fauci's records show that he was paid $13,298 to attend four galas and ceremonies - three of them virtual 

By Harriet Alexander For Dailymail.com

Published: 02:01 EST, 15 January 2022 | Updated: 13:10 EST, 15 January 2022

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Senator Roger Marshall, whom Fauci dismissed as a 'moron', is seen discussing Fauci's salary on Tuesday. Marshall has introduced the Financial Accountability for Uniquely Compensated Individuals (FAUCI) Act in Congress

NOT A PODCAST TO LISTEN TO IN PUBLIC. . .You hear them pant, moan and direct each other to orgasm

Intro: ". . .The pair say they have learned that sex is not just a pleasurable experience, but a place to work through emotions and traumas.

In an episode on “rage fucking”, they talk about the opportunity to release feelings of anger through sex and masturbation. They even talk about sex as a place where they have some of their brightest business ideas.

(Haynes even used to offer “pussy-powered” business coaching, which used their practice to help women unlock career goals.) 

Their work couldn’t have come at a better time. . .

Panting, moaning and ‘pussy-gazing’: the couple who have sex on their podcast

Coco Khan

the Guardian |

"Lacey Haynes and Flynn Talbot want to improve the world’s love life – starting by doing it live on air in every episode

Lacey Haynes is a women’s “intuitive healer”, and guides couples in yoga-informed “elevated sex”. . .

[...] But it’s not the sex that’s the main event – it’s the talk. In each episode Haynes, 37, and Talbot, 40, discuss techniques and topics around sex and relationships, covering everything from overcoming rejection to the joys of cunnilingus; from rethinking orgasm as the ultimate goal to navigating intimacy with common conditions such as UTIs and premature ejaculation.

Their mission is to help coupled-up listeners have more fulfilling sex – and to transform nonexistent or perfunctory sexual experiences into something physically pleasurable, emotionally empowering and spiritually uplifting. From there, they believe, the sky is the limit: “elevated” sex can lead to better mental and physical health, and even a better career.

After all, it’s what happened to them. As they tell their listeners, their relationship started out “hot and heavy”, before “the sex died”, says Haynes. But rather than “living out the rest of our days like that”, they decided to invest in their sex life. It became a project that they worked on together, drawing influences from yoga and books on everything from diet and anatomy to politics and memoir.

It isn’t a podcast to listen to in public. You hear them pant, moan and direct each other to orgasm

The project eventually transformed their relationship and led them to start their own business, which offers private coaching, online courses and even retreats. . . Undoubtedly, some will be put off by their grandiose terms – they refer to themselves as visionaries – or uncensored language. Their response on the podcast has been to ask listeners not to overlook their whole message because of a few disagreeable words. Personally, I’d say the same logic applies to other parts of their work, where it gets too new age, or simply too much. For example, I can appreciate the anatomical similarities between the vocal cords and the vagina. But when they mention this on the podcast in relation to women being vocally expressive during sex, my alarm bells ring. . .

> I’m curious about the troubles straight men face with sex. “The majority of men are lost in the bedroom. They know how to penetrate but they don’t know how to connect,” says Talbot. “Men have, for generations, been conditioned to suppress their emotions. And yet truly expressed emotions and vulnerability are the route to a deep connection with women.

“Not knowing how to harness the power of expression puts men at a great disadvantage, in and out of the bedroom. It’s why many men live with deep frustration and anger that’s close to the surface every day. . .

THE END

Tips for great sex

1. Communication is key
Before achieving soulful and carefree sex that involves communicating with nonverbal cues, you need to get comfortable with saying if something is a turn-on, a turn-off, triggering or painful.

2. Don’t take it personally …
… if you’re playing with your partner and they don’t enjoy it, say, “Sorry, someone else found that enjoyable. What do you find enjoyable?” Haynes says. Talbot says men need to know that “talking about sex doesn’t make you a bad lover”.

3. Discuss your sexual past
Often, current sexual issues are a result of past experiences, traumas or narratives.

4. Use more of your body
Rather than just jackhammering away, with all movement coming from the hips, Talbot suggests connecting torsos and hearts. “Be like two serpents writhing together.” Use controlled breathing to slow the rushes of feeling and prolong the experience, moving focus to other parts of your body.

5. Rewrite your power script
Haynes says that the narrative where the man holds all the power may contribute to women’s dissatisfaction with penetrative sex. But there is power in letting go and allowing someone in, emotionally and physically. That’s what soulful sex is all about."

More >> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jan/15/panting-moaning-and-pussy-gazing-the-couple-who-podcast-their-elevated-sex-sessions