Britain: Police Fine Pedestrian £90 for Disorderly Behaviour After Hiding His Face from Facial Recognition Camera
May 16th, 2019Via: Daily Mail:
Police fined a pedestrian £90 for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face when he saw a controversial facial recognition camera on a street in London.
Officers set up the camera on a van in Romford, East London, which then cross-checked photos of faces of passers-by against a database of wanted criminals.
But one man was unimpressed about being filmed and covered his face with his hat and jacket, before being stopped by officers who took his picture anyway.
After being pulled aside, the man told police: ‘If I want to cover me face, I’ll cover me face. Don’t push me over when I’m walking down the street.’
It comes just weeks after it was claimed the new technology incorrectly identified members of the public in 96 per cent of matches made between 2016 and 2018.
Man Makes Videos Critical of New Zealand Government, Gets Visits by Armed Police
May 15th, 2019Here are the videos that attracted the attention of the police.
This is a Facebook post with the video of one of the police visits. In case you don’t use Facebook, someone mirrored the video on YouTube:
Via: Cross the Rubicon:
Drone Attack on Saudi Aramco Facilities
May 14th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Oil prices rose on Tuesday after the world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia said explosive-laden drones had attacked two pumping stations belonging to state oil company Aramco.
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The Saudi state news agency quoted Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih as saying that Aramco had halted pumping on the East-West pipeline until the damage was evaluated, but that production and exports were continuing without disruptions.
Falih said the attack was an “act of terrorism” that targeted the world’s global oil supply.
Saudi Arabia said earlier that two of its oil tankers were among those attacked off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, incidents which ratcheted up tensions in the world’s top oil exporting region.
A U.S. official said Iran was the likely culprit, but Iranian officials denied responsibility for the incident.
Monsanto ‘Compiled Dossier’ on Political Opponents
May 13th, 2019Via: BBC:
French officials are investigating after revelations that agro-chemicals firm Monsanto compiled a potentially illegal file on critics on chemicals and genetically modified crops.
The document was made by a PR agency working for Monsanto, which makes the controversial weed killer glyphosate.
Marketed as Roundup by Monsanto, the weed killer has come under fire in France with calls to ban it.
Its parent company Bayer has apologised over Monsanto’s dossier.
“This is not the way Bayer seeks dialogue with society and stakeholders,” Bayer said, adding that there was no indication of illegal activity.
The list of some 200 people included politicians, journalists and scientists who had raised concerns about Monsanto’s activities, including French MEPs and the environment minister at the time, Ségolène Royal.
It was compiled in 2016, ahead of a vote in late 2017 on whether to approve the use of glyphosate in the European Union for the next five years.
That vote passed. Glyphosate has been classified as a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization, but the US Environmental Protection Agency says it is unlikely to cause cancer in humans, and the European Chemicals Agency said there was not enough evidence to label it as carcinogenic.
France, however, voted against approval, and has since declared it will ban the chemical in the coming years.
All Four Major Wireless Carriers Hit With Lawsuits Over Sharing, Selling Location Data
May 13th, 2019Via: TechDirt:
We’ve noted repeatedly that if you’re upset about Facebook’s privacy scandals, you should be equally concerned about the wireless industry’s ongoing location data scandals. Not only were the major carriers caught selling your location data to any nitwit with a checkbook, they were even found to be selling your E-911 location data, which provides even more granular detail about your data than GPS provides. This data was then found to have been widely abused from everybody from law enforcement to randos pretending to be law enforcement.
Throughout all this, the Ajit Pai FCC has done absolutely nothing to seriously police the problem. Meaning that while carriers have promised to stop collecting and selling this data, nobody has bothered to force carriers to actually confirm this. Given telecom’s history when it comes to consumer privacy, somebody might just want to double check their math (and ask what happened to all that data already collected and sold over the last decade).
Compounding carrier problems, all four major wireless carriers last week were hit with a class action lawsuit (correctly) noting the carriers had violated Section 222 of the Federal Communications Act by selling consumer proprietary network information (CPNI) data:
“Through its negligent and deliberate acts, including inexplicable failures to follow its own Privacy Policy, T-Mobile permitted access to Plaintiffs and Class Members’ CPI and CPNI,” the complaint against T-Mobile reads, referring to “confidential proprietary information” and “customer proprietary network information,” the latter of which includes location data.”
It’s likely that the sale of 911 data is where carriers are in the most hot water, since that’s their most obvious infraction of the law.
WordPress.com Took Down Jon Rappoport’s Blog
May 13th, 2019There is a purge underway on the wordpress.com platform.
Anyone dealing with controversial topics has to self host. It doesn’t mean that your hosting provider won’t terminate you, but you have a much better chance of remaining up than on any of the major blogging or social media platforms.
Via: Jon Rappoport:
On May 11, 2019, WordPress suddenly took down my blog after 10 years of continuous operation. There was no warning or advance notice of any kind.
Research Credit: Pookie
California Jury Hits Bayer with $2 Billion Award in Roundup Cancer Trial
May 13th, 2019Via: Reuters:
A California jury on Monday awarded more than $2 billion to a couple who claimed Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused their cancer, in the largest U.S. jury verdict to date against the company in litigation over the chemical.
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It was the third consecutive U.S. jury verdict against the company in litigation over the chemical, which Bayer acquired as part of its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto last year. Both other jury verdicts also came in California, one in state court and one in federal court.
Tesla Battery Researcher ‘Excited’ About New Battery Tech Developed by U.S. Army
May 13th, 2019Via: Electrek:
A new Li-ion battery technology developed by the US Army has piqued the interest of Jeff Dahn, Tesla’s main battery research partner.
In the latest issue of the journal Nature, the CCDC Army Research Laboratory (ARL), which is an element of the U.S. Army, released a study demonstrating a new battery technology based on a new cathode chemistry.
They claim that the chemistry is “completely free of transition metal and delivering unprecedented high capacity by reversibly storing Li-ion at high potential (~4.2 V).”
According to the findings, the new technology “opens a possibility to significantly increase the lithium-ion battery energy density while preserving safety due to the aqueous nature of the electrolyte.”
Science, Coca-Cola Style
May 13th, 2019Via: Discover Magazine:
Coca-Cola has poured millions of dollars into scientific research at universities. But if the beverage giant doesn’t like what scientists find, the company has the power to make sure that their research never sees the light of day.
That’s according to an analysis published in the Journal of Public Health Policy that explains how Coca-Cola uses contract agreements to influence the public health research it financially supports.
The paper explains that Coca-Cola uses carefully-constructed contracts to ensure that the company gets early access to research findings, as well as the ability to terminate studies for any reason. Researchers say this gives the beverage company the ability to squash unfavorable research findings, such as studies that connect the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages to obesity.
Amazon Rolls Out Machines That Pack Orders and Eliminate Jobs
May 13th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Amazon.com Inc is rolling out machines to automate a job held by thousands of its workers: boxing up customer orders.
The company started adding technology to a handful of warehouses in recent years, which scans goods coming down a conveyor belt and envelopes them seconds later in boxes custom-built for each item, two people who worked on the project told Reuters.
Amazon has considered installing two machines at dozens more warehouses, removing at least 24 roles at each one, these people said. These facilities typically employ more than 2,000 people.
