Alabama Lawmakers Think The Time Is Right To Make Assaulting A Cop A 'Hate Crime'
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Another stupid, pointless effort to turn protectors and servants into professional victims is being mounted in Alabama. Cops can barely be bothered to educate themselves on the laws they're enforcing, but they're usually all over the ones that allow them to turn things they don't like into criminal activity.It's (yet another) "blue lives matter" law being foisted upon citizens by legislators who are altogether too certain they're in the right. Here's the backer of the proposed law that would turn cops into a protected group making a claim that's proven false before the end of the article at PoliceOne.“Everyone agrees that it should be a hate crime to shoot a police officer,” said state Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, and chairman of the Alabama State Senate Judiciary Committee where the hate crime legislation is reviewed. “I don’t know anyone who opposes that. The question is, ‘What gets tacked on?’ Yes, you can find a bipartisan solution.” Everyone?[Sen. Vivian] Figures said she favors “of doing everything we can to protect our law enforcement officials.” But she said she’s unsure if a hate crime law is the right vehicle. The bill, written by Senator Chris Elliott, is his second attempt to push a cop-friendly hate crime bill through the legislature. Elliott possibly figures he'll have a better chance this year because more cops have been killed in Alabama than usual. There have been six law enforcement officers killed by residents this year, which puts the state towards the top of the killed in the line of duty list.The senator who spoke for everyone (while being wrong about what "everyone" agreed with) doesn't want this bill tainted with riders that would provide similar hate crime protections for others more deserving of these protections. Sen. Figures (who does not agree with Ward's assertion that "everyone agrees") may have been responsible for the death of Elliott's previous effort when she added an LGBTQ amendment to his 2018 "blue lives matter" bill. That's the sort of "tacking on" Ward is hoping to prevent here, in order to give cops more protections while leaving more vulnerable residents less protected.Adding to the stupidity is the fact that police already benefit from a law that provides an extra deterrent to killing cops.In Alabama, killing a law enforcement while they are on the line of duty is an aggravating factor that is punishable by the death penalty. These proposals have made periodic appearances in the years following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The shooting was a flash point in police-community relationships. With the current federal administration strongly pro-law enforcement, state-level legislators perhaps feel emboldened to pursue legislation that does little to protect cops, but everything to put more distance between law enforcement and the people they serve.These proposals are reactionary in the worst sense of the word. They're legislative affirmations that might makes right and the people with most might will continue to consolidate power. There's little evidence that suggests these laws are justified at any level. Most killings of cops are impromptu, not planned assaults inspired by an insatiable hate for law enforcement.The general public receives zero benefit from these laws. All that happens is a very well-protected group of government employees gets even more protections. The laws become vehicles for abuse and there's only so much courts can do to protect citizens if their "representatives" decide to serve fellow government employees rather than their constituents.The upside here is these proposals -- at least here in Alabama -- can be neutralized by adding amendments that would extend protections to people who don't wear the blue -- especially members of the public that far too many legislators don't feel are worthy of any protection.
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posted at: 12:00am on 25-Dec-2019
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When We Fail To Understand Privacy As A Set Of Trade-Offs, Everyone's 'Solutions' Are Unhelpful
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Last week, Karl wrote up a fascinating post about a NY Times effort to use a dataset that a whistleblower at a data broker firm gave them to track the whereabouts of President Trump, by spotting the location data of what appears to be a Secret Service agent detailed to the President. Karl included two quotes from two different Senators in the article, and I found both of them amusing, as they both basically took the story and responded with their own "hobby horse" solution to the problem, even though neither one of them seemed to accurately understand or describe it:"This is terrifying, said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who has called for the federal government take a tougher stance with tech companies. It is terrifying not just because of the major national security implications, what Beijing could get ahold of. But it also raises personal privacy concerns for individuals and families. These companies are tracking our kids."Tech companies are profiting by spying on Americans trampling on the right to privacy and risking our national security, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat running for president, told us. They are throwing around their power to undermine our democracy with zero consequences. This report is another alarming case for why we need to break up big tech, adopt serious privacy regulations and hold top executives of these companies personally responsible. The Hawley quote is classic Hawley, because he immediately jumps to the claim that these companies are tracking our "kids." Many of his attempts at regulating big tech has resulted in "but think of the children" arguments. Even when he was directly asked to respond to a Techdirt article, he ignored the question and went on a rant about how much damage tech is doing to the children. Except, this story is entirely about location data on phones. So, um, maybe don't give your kid a phone and then they're not directly tracking your kid anymore? Yes, obviously it's more complicated than that, and with the kind of data at issue you could probably identify adults who were with certain kids and track them. So there are legit concerns as is clear from the initial report. But, it's kind of a weird thing to focus on "the children" when the companies themselves focusing on location data -- as bad as they are -- are not actually tracking kids unless you, the parent, give them a phone with location sharing turned on.Hawley sometimes likes to pretend he's against big government and especially against government taking over for parents. And, yet, here's a simple way that parents can take control in this situation: don't give your kid a phone with location info turned on.The Warren quote is a similar thing. She immediately latches onto her idea that the correct answer is to break up big tech. But... while the NY Times does not say exactly where it got the data from to make this report, they do explicitly say that this data is not from the big internet companies Warren has suggested breaking up (i.e., Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Apple). Those companies aren't in the business of selling or sharing your location data with third parties. Indeed, with Google and Apple, they actually tell you what data your phone is sharing and allow you to block services from accessing that data. The data appears to be coming from a smaller data broker firm who got it from elsewhere (most likely a sketchy app provider selling your location data). Yet Warren uses it as evidence that internet companies need to be broken up.Even if the data did come from such a company, it's difficult to see how breaking them up would solve any of the issues laid out in the report. Indeed, by cutting off ancillary and complementary lines of business, it's only likely to make such data collection efforts more central to a business, and push companies to rely even more heavily on such activity.So, yes, obviously the NY Times' reporting here raises all sorts of alarm bells and concerns -- and it's nice to see some Senators concerned about all of this as well. Except it would have been a hell of a lot nicer if they were actually concerned about what the report said, and didn't use it as an opportunity to spew nonsense, make a non-existent connection to their own personal stump speech talking points, and ignore what's actually happening. But, hey, I guess that's asking too much of our elected officials these days.Of course, all of this is just a symptom of a larger issue. As I've been talking about for years, we still don't fully understand what "privacy" means. Everyone seems to have a different conception of what privacy means, and that makes it quite difficult to talk about it -- but even more difficult to regulate it. This is why so many attempts at regulating privacy have insane unintended consequences. The quotes from Hawley and Warren just serve to illustrate all that. Neither are offering actual solutions to the issue of data brokers selling granular location data that can easily be de-anonymized. They're just pushing the same plan they've pushed in the past that vaguely speaks of "tech bad."
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posted at: 12:00am on 25-Dec-2019
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