Category Archives: ethics

There’s Surveillance

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…and there’s surveillance.

The FBI is looking at ways to scan Facebook (and Twitter, et al.) postings with a view to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.

In late 2016, following an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union into social-media monitoring done by outside developers on behalf of law enforcement, Facebook and Twitter cracked down on those services and explicitly banned the use of their data for surveillance purposes….
Facebook’s ban allowed law-enforcement agencies to look at public profiles manually but not use software designed for large-scale collection and analysis of user data.

Because

the restrictions reflect a growing understanding that even information posted to a public social network can be misused when gathered in large quantities and paired with outside data sources.

But Facebook’s objections (and they’re not the only Big Tech objectors) are just a bit precious and not a little bit hypocritical. Facebook does exactly that sort of surveillance—with software, mind you—explicitly with a view to selling those connections to advertisers, and others.

The only difference is claimed purpose.

If such surveillance is a bad thing—and it most assuredly is—Facebook, et al., need to cut it out, too.

The People’s Republic of China Threatens

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Now they’re getting overt regarding the protests in Hong Kong against the local pseudo-autonomous government’s misbehaviors.

…those who play with fire will perish by it.

That’s pretty stark considering the overtly peaceful nature of the protests.  Yang Guang, speaking for the PRC’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of State Council:

[PRC] central government has “immense strength” and that punishment for those behind the demonstrations is “only a matter of time.”
…
“Don’t ever misjudge the situation and mistake our restraint for weakness.”

No, it’s the PRC’s fear of dissent that clearly demonstrates weakness. The PRC’s strength, such as it is, lies solely in its People’s Liberation Army, units of which are preparing for a move against Hong Kong.  Xi is the living embodiment of the rule from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book that says that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Guns and Deaths

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Here are some actual data—facts that the Progressive-Democrats running for President are pleased to ignore—as produced by Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra):

Average # of deaths per day in US:Abortion: 1,778
Heart disease: 1,773
Cancer: 1,641
Medical error: 685
Accidents: 401
Stroke: 401
Alzheimer’s: 332
Diabetes: 228
Flu: 150
Suicide: 128
Opioids: 115
Drunk driving: 28
Underage drinking: 11
Teen texting-and-driving: 8
All Rifles: 1

His sources:

Abortion: (link: https://nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/FS01AbortionintheUS.pdf )
Heart disease/cancer/accidents/stroke/alzheimers/flu/suicide: (link: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm )
Medical error: (link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html )
Opioids: (link: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html )
Drunk driving: (link: https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html )

Yet those Progressive-Democrat politicians want to control rifles, ultimately to take away all of our weapons.

And with the killings over which they cry their crocodile tears, they shed none for the babies’ lives lost to abortion. Instead they shrilly demand women’s right to kill those babies, pretending that those killings are matters of “health.”

A Misbehaving Judge

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PG&E is in a world of hurt, still, over the California fires that its shoddy power line maintenance contributed so heavily to starting.  However, the Federal district judge overseeing a related court case has overstepped his own bounds.

William Alsup, a US district judge in Northern California, ordered PG&E to respond “on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis” to the Journal article published July 10.

This is just plain wrong.  Leaving aside the fact that newspaper articles, no matter how seemingly well-documented, are not evidence of anything—they’re only allegations, and they were not brought to Alsup by any parties to that case; he went and got them all by himself.

Beyond that, the cited article didn’t even contain identifiable evidence.  “Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal” was the paper’s primary source, and not a single citation or link was provided to any of those…documents…so even their existence could not be independently verified, much less the newspaper’s interpretation of them checked.

Alsup is not a feudal-era English judge; he doesn’t get to do his own investigation into a case before him.  Especially should he not bring newspaper articles, which don’t even remotely approach evidence, into the matter.