Abuse and Disinformation

Facebook is claiming to be adding a new tool for fighting these on its platform.

The Ad Archive API will allow researchers, journalists, publishers, and watchdog groups to efficiently analyze and search for ads to determine if anything untoward is happening.

Who, though, are going to be authorized access to the databases—which researchers, journalists, publishers, and watchdog groups, and what selection criteria will be used?  We’ve already seen how Facebook, under the guise of identifying what it’s pleased to call fake news, has selected “fact checkers” almost exclusively from the Left (a few tokens from the right have been invited)—Associated Press, Snopes.com, ABC News, and Politifact—as a mechanism for making the identification and then deleting the allegedly fake material.

We’ve also seen how, using this new capacity, Facebook censors and deletes Conservative posts and suspends Conservative accounts, and on being caught claiming “mistake” and undoing the deeds.  And continuing to make those “mistakes” apace.

Given Facebook‘s history of this, on what basis would we think this latest move has value?

Flipping Witnesses

President Donald Trump decries it.  So have I in writing about the Manafort case and the credibility of Mueller’s prosecutors’ witnesses.

What’s interesting to me and saddening, and what’s dangerous to our system of justice—which includes justice for the accused as well as the victim—is prosecutors’ response to Trump’s decrial.

Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor, said that Mr Trump’s comments amount to “an absolutely outrageous statement and to any prosecutor would just be shocking to hear.”

“It’s hard to overstate how fundamental” to prosecutions cooperating witnesses are, Mr Zeidenberg said.

And Stephen Gillers, a New York University School of Law professor:

Trump’s idea would effectively demolish one of the basic and valuable tools of criminal law enforcement in the US.

It’s dangerous for our prosecutors to so blatantly and avidly rely on their ability to do the testifying by using the mouths of “witnesses” they’ve either browbeaten into testifying in a certain way or who’ve sold their testimony to the prosecutors like Thursday night hookers.

If the prosecutors can’t make their case without such witnesses, they don’t have a case to make.

Voting and Respect

I received a text message from a representative of Beto O’Rourke, Texas’ Progressive-Democratic Party US Senate candidate:

Hi Edward, this is [the rep] volunteering w/ Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for US Senate. We’re texting Texas voters today about the upcoming November election. Will you be voting for Beto O’Rourke or Ted Cruz for Senate?

I texted her back:

I’ll be voting for the one who respects our flag, our national anthem, and generations of veterans who have fought, been maimed, and killed to defend the rights of others, in the words of John Kerry, to be stupid.

You might find my blog interesting: APlebesSite.com.

“Nothing More American”

Texas Senate Progressive-Democratic Party candidate Beto O’Rourke has said, in response to a question about NFL players kneeling during our national anthem

I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee for your rights anytime, anywhere, any place.

It’s the American thing to do to kneel and disparage our national anthem, to deprecate our flag, to insult generations of veterans who have fought, been maimed, and been killed for the right of folks like this…candidate…and those NFL personages to insult of the symbol and defenders of that right.

Right.

Remember the Progressive-Democrat’s version of respect and of patriotism this fall.

A Question of Credibility

Google is being sued for invasion of privacy and for what approximates false advertising.

“Google expressly represented to users of its operating system and apps that the activation of certain settings will prevent the tracking of users’ geolocations,” says Patacsil’s suit, which was filed Friday in California federal court. “This representation was false.”
“Despite users’ attempts to protect their location privacy, Google collects and stores users’ location data, thereby invading users’ reasonable expectations of privacy, counter to Google’s own representations about how users can configure Google’s products to prevent such egregious privacy violations,” the complaint says.

The plaintiffs want Google to cease and desist and to destroy all data obtained “from unlawful recording and use of the location information.”

Let’s say Google is guilty as charged, and the court orders it to “cease and desist and to destroy all data obtained ‘from unlawful recording and use of the location information.'”  The trial hasn’t begun, yet, much less reached a verdict, so Google isn’t actually guilty of anything yet.

On the premise of guilt, though, my questions are these: on what basis would we believe that Google will have stopped collecting the data, and on what basis would we believe that the heretofore collected data have been destroyed?

What mechanism would exist to confirm any of that?  What independent body—capable of the forensic analysis required, since Google has claimed it doesn’t collect the data without prior permission and so unauthorized data don’t exist in Google’s systems—would do the verification, and how deeply and broadly would it be allowed to penetrate Google’s software and hardware systems in order to carry out any verification inspection(s)?

How often would that body—or those bodies, since multiple sets of eyes are better than a single one—be allowed to conduct those inspections and with how much notice (no notice at all would be optimal)?