Category Archives: Around the World

“Congress should focus on Facebook – but equally on Cambridge Analytica, engaging in theft and misuse of personal data, dirty tricks, and services for Russians”

The Washington Post: FTC opens investigation into Facebook after Cambridge Analytica scrapes millions of users’ personal information.

“Recently, though, former FTC officials have said that Facebook’s entanglement with Cambridge Analytica may have violated the company’s legal agreement with the federal watchdog agency. Whistleblowers in recent days contend that Cambridge Analytica collected information about users and their friends under a since-ceased policy governing third-party apps on Facebook – then kept that data even after Facebook asked that it be deleted.

About 270,000 users downloaded Cambridge Analytica’s app. But the firm was able to obtain personal information about their friends, who likely had no knowledge that their data was being collected. Roughly 50 million people may have been affected.

If the FTC ultimately finds that Facebook broke that agreement, it could fine the company $40,000 for each violation.”

More on this at MetaFilter : Six Degrees Of Surveillance.

“Whatever you came into government to do […] you have to commit to serve the public.”

The Washington Post: Trump’s view of public service: Officials serve him, not the public. “Trump’s use of nondisclosure agreements in the White House is the latest violation of the public trust.” By Ian Bassin. “Ian Bassin is the executive director of Protect Democracy and formerly served as an Associate White House Counsel to President Barack Obama.”

“That’s why it has been disturbing to have witnessed for the past year a complete upending of this concept by the current holder of that office. This week’s revelation by Ruth Marcus that President Trump had White House staff sign a nondisclosure agreement compelling their silence long after their government service is over, ostensibly to be enforceable by Trump personally, is the latest example. It’s not just a matter of law (though government does restrict disclosure of some confidential or classified information, these NDAs go far beyond those rules); it’s about principle, and what these NDAs signify about the president’s view of government work. At root, it has become clear that Trump doesn’t view public office as a public trust, but rather as a personal fiefdom, to be controlled by whomever is declared the winner of an election.”

Michael Wolff’s Trumpland tell-all, Fire and Fury, has set Washington ablaze

Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin: Michael Wolff, Chronicler of Chaos in Trumpland. (Listen or download, 53 minutes.)

“The man behind the book has gotten surprisingly little attention, even though it was partly Wolff’s position at the top of New York media’s social heap that won him Trump’s trust, and access to the White House. Alec set out to do a different Michael Wolff interview. At a live event at Manhattan’s Town Hall, audience-members learned about the Jewish kid from Jersey with a shoeleather reporter for a mom, who gave up on being a novelist to do big-money media deals – even as he wielded his poison pen against peers in the New York media elite. And Wolff lives up to his reputation as one of New York’s best conversationalists, giving answers by turns open, cantankerous, and very, very funny.”

If you prefer, you can also listen to the interview on YouTube.

This was published on 13 February, 2018, but I only listened to it tonight.

“We have a right to a safe education.”

The Washington Post: Thousands of students walk out of school in nationwide gun violence protest.

Some quotes from the students – and one senator – that stroke me:

Fatima Younis, a student organizer with Women’s March Youth Empower, one of the lead coordinators of Wednesday’s walkouts:

“We want our Congress to know that some of us will be old enough to vote in the midterm elections, and the rest of us are going to be able to vote in 2020 or 2022, and they’re going to lose their job if they don’t do what we want to keep us safe”.

Dominic Barry, 16, a junior at Minnetonka High School southwest of Minneapolis-St. Paul:

“We’re tired of sitting around and listening to politicians tell us what they are going to do without ever actually doing anything. And we’re also just kind of tired of adults not making it happen — adults saying what they are going to do and then just entirely blowing us off”.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.):

“We need to make sure that every member of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, people of all political stripes, are more afraid of the next school massacre, more afraid of the next death on our streets, more afraid of that, than they are of the NRA. Let’s go get them.”

Gabe Ozaki, a 16-year-old junior:

[He] addressed his schoolmates first, saying, “Every person who has ever died in a school shooting started their day like we did today.” He went on to say that he thinks America is being robbed of its youth, but that he and others are energized by a wave of activism.

Larnee Satchell, 17, a senior at Hartford Magnet:

“We will not allow our elected officials to just tweet their thoughts and condolences without any gun reform. We need Congress to enact a resolution declaring gun violence a public health crisis. We need Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. We need Congress to expand background checks to all gun sales.”

Freshman MaKayla Woodard:

“I’m walking out because they weren’t safe and we aren’t, either” […] The teen, whose father hunts, said she wants to see stricter background checks and mental health screenings for those seeking to buy guns. And she opposes President Trump’s proposal to arm teachers, saying she worries that a police officer will mistake an armed black teacher for an aggressor. “If a cop sees a black teacher with a gun, that teacher will get shot,” she said.

Bonus article:

The Toronto Star: U.S. teacher accidentally fires his gun in the classroom. He was trained in gun use. “The incident comes amid a national debate on how to protect students from mass shootings. A male student was reported to have sustained non-life-threatening injuries.”

Arming teachers to protect children at school instead of changing gun laws sounds like a daft and downright dangerous idea to this foreigner who is not American, but is a teacher at a highschool (grades 5 through 13 here in Germany).