Blog Archives

Massachusetts courts’ long-delayed computer system may leave public out – Metro – The Boston Globe

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This could be the Sagrada Familia of IT projects, probably even surpassing it in the number of generations (of technology) it has been under construction. Will it be as awesome when it is finally completed?

If there actually was work being done, and deliverables produced, over the almost two decades, it might be fascinating to dissect how it came about. How, for instance, did the vision, functional specifications and implementations evolve to adapt to the changes in technology?

Massachusetts courts’ long-delayed computer system may leave public out – Metro – The Boston Globe

Meet the man whose utopian vision for the Internet conquered, and then warped, Silicon Valley – The Washington Post

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Barlow once wrote that “trusting the government with your privacy is like having a Peeping Tom install your window blinds.” But the Barlovian focus on government overreach leaves its author and other libertarians blind to the same encroachments on our autonomy from the private sector.

Libertarians didn’t develop this blind spot because they saw technology as a liberating force. They only ever saw encroachments on the individual by the state and all too often equated the state’s regulation of corporations with the regulation of individuals. The control of corporate power over individuals was never their concern. The utopia that many of them still expect technology to deliver remains untouched by the messy reality that the rest of us live in, the one where their darling “market” transfers wealth only upward and private money ensures that the state maintains this system.

Meet the man whose utopian vision for the Internet conquered, and then warped, Silicon Valley – The Washington Post

No, Jyoti Singh is not India’s daughter – Quartz

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… how can India claim her making, when she was a dreamer—dare we say it—despite India, not because of it? What did India give Jyoti Singh? Not a society that respected her. Not an education for which her family didn’t have to sacrifice every little thing. Not even a safe bus to take home.

The rapists—Mukesh Singh who recounts his crime and talks to the camera without showing the slightest regret (nor a full understanding of the inconceivable gravity of his actions) and his criminal companions—aren’t they, perhaps, India’s real sons? “What kind of human beings are these?” asks former chief of justice Leila Seth in the film. They are, let’s repeat it, India’s sons. The product of poor education, of centuries of patriarchy, and of violence, poverty and impunity.

No, Jyoti Singh is not India’s daughter – Quartz

This _is_ who we are: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’

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The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

  • Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
  • Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
  • Shackling for prolonged periods.
  • Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
  • Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

This _is_ who we are: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’

Inmates took over a part of a private immigration prison in Texas.

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(Reuters) – Law enforcement said they were making progress on Saturday ending a disturbance at a federal correctional facility in southern Texas were as many as 2,000 inmates were protesting medical services…

The primary purpose of these prisons, and of the imprisonment of their inmates, is to profit the owners or share holders of the prisons. Fusion.net published an investigative report on this earlier this month:

The U.S. government has quietly created a second-class federal prison system specifically for immigrants. For years the Department of Homeland Security has been known as the agency that houses immigrants awaiting deportation. However, tens of thousands of additional immigrants, most serving sentences for immigration crimes, are held by the Bureau of Prisons each night before being sent back.

And it’s all part of a lucrative business model which has funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into the private prison industry.

A Fusion investigation found that without a single vote in Congress, officials across three administrations: created a new classification of federal prisons only for immigrants; decided that private companies would run the facilities; and filled them by changing immigration enforcement practices.

Inmates took over a part of a private immigration prison in Texas.