From Jonathan Turley's blog.
This story illustrates how intellectually dishonest many intellectuals have become. Wait a minute - maybe they actually believe they are right!!! If so, they are even more dangerous?
Keep your children away from them.
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There is an interesting lawsuit in Ohio against Oberlin College by a small family-owned bakery over a racially charged case of shoplifting. Gibson’s Bakery alleges that school officials encouraged a boycott over false accusations of racism after three Oberlin students were arrested at the business. What is curious is that the students pleaded guilty to the charges and the Oberlin police found no evidence of racism, but the bakery is still be accused of racial profiling and running a “racist establishment.”
We have previously discussed Oberlin’s controversies over cultural appropriation and speech codes, including an effort to ban “sushi” as a cultural appropriation.
The latest controversy began in November 2016 when three black Oberlin students — Jonathan Aladin, Endia Lawrence and Cecelia Whettstone — were caught stealing wine. In August, the students admitted their guilty and also agreed that the store had not engaged in racist conduct in their arrest. Moreover, the students reportedly punched and kicked the shopkeeper. They initially claimed to have been racially profiled and that they only crime was using fake ids. However, Allyn Gibson said that he was attacked immediately after catching them with the stolen bottles of wine. The students ultimately dropped the claims and admitted that their guilt.
The police Incident Report online, adds disturbing details:
On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, at approximately 4:58pm, officers responded to the area of Gibson’s Bakery in reference to a report of a fight in progress. As officers were responding to the area, dispatch advised that this was involving an alleged theft complaint. Dispatch advised that Allyn Gibson, who is an employee of Gibson’s Bakery, was attempting to apprehend a subject who Allyn had witnessed attempt to steal several items. As officers approached the area, Sgt. Ortiz, and Officer Feuerstein both stated they observed Allyn Gibson lying on his back with several individuals kneeling over him punching and kicking him with several other individuals in the immediate area. Officers attempted to gain control of the situation and were met several times with resistance from several different individuals. After a few minutes officers were finally able to take one female into custody and calm the incident and attempt to figure out what had taken place.
Moreover, the Oberlin police conducted an investigation into arrests at Gibson’s and found “a complete lack of evidence of racism.” The police looked at arrested over a five-year period, and found 40 adults arrested for shoplifting but only six were African-American.
None of that seems to matter.
A boycott has been maintained against Gibson’s, which was the victim of a crime by Oberlin students. There is a great deal in the complaint below that is deeply troubling in terms of the conduct of Oberlin faculty and students.
A lawsuit was filed in November against Oberlin and Meredith Raimondo, vice president and dean of students, for slander. The complaint details how school faculty encouraged demonstrations and supported the protests with suspended classes and resources. Raimondo allegedly appeared at the demonstrations with a bullhorn and distributed a flyer that said the bakery is a “RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.” The complaint also alleges that the school has warned visitors that Gibson’s is a racist establishment.
Notably, the complaint discusses the prior controversy over the firing of Joy Karega, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, after she posted anti-Semitic statements. We discussed that controversy. The complaint suggests that Raimondo was brought in to reinforce the school’s relationship to black students after the firing of Karego, who is African American.
There is also an interesting discussion of how the school canceled its long-standing order with the bakery and, when the owner met with then-President Marvin Krislov and Tita Reed, assistant to the president of Oberlin College. He alleges that the officials pressured him to drop any criminal charges against the students.
The complaint alleges libel, slander, interference with business relationships, interference with contracts, deceptive trade practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent hiring and trespass and asks for more than $200,000 in damages.
Here is the complaint: Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Hundreds of Professors Seek Removal Of Statues To Christopher Columbus and Teddy Roosevelt
Here is Jonathan Turley's blog entry.
JT is on target.
People like these professors are not likely to provide objective information or advocate for freedom. Keep your children away from them.
My bet is that at some time in their lives they have behaved in ways that, by their own standards, would call for their dismissal.
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I have been writing and speaking about the movement to remove statues that range from confederate leaders to Columbus to Supreme Court justices to Founders
(here and here and here and here). I specifically wrote about the call for the removal of monuments to George Washington and others as the list lengthens of figures to be cleansed from public historical displays. In a particularly concerning development, hundreds of professors have now joined this movement in signing a letter calling for New York City to remove monuments honoring Theodore Roosevelt and Christopher Columbus. The open letter to New York’s Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers declares such historical figures as representing “white supremacy” and “objects of popular resentment.” The letter is an embarrassment for higher education as these academics adopt over-simplified and ahistorical approaches to this controversy.
The scholars state:
As scholars of American art, cultural history and social analysis, we are writing to urge that the Commission recommend the removal of several monuments from public view in New York City. They have long been highlighted as objects of popular resentment among communities of color and anti-racist scholars, artists, and movements. It is thus no surprise that these monuments have risen to the top of the list of the “symbols of hate,” to quote Mayor de Blasio, singled out during the Commission’s recent public hearings. For too long, they have generated harm and offense as expressions of white supremacy. These monuments are an affront in a city whose elected officials preach tolerance and equity.
It is important to note that they are speaking of Teddy Roosevelt and Columbus. The attack on Roosevelt is illustrative of the simplistic treatment given the history of the period:
As an imperialist, and frank advocate of eugenics, Roosevelt’s views on racial hierarchy are well-known to historians. The Museum (center of the American eugenics movement in the early years of the twentieth century) now pays tribute to his conservationist efforts, without acknowledging the link to those racialist beliefs. The dedication of the Museum’s memorial in 1936 and of the adjoining equestrian monument in 1939 was celebrated by its officials as a consummation of the theories of Henry Fairfield Osborn, who had presided over the institution’s early growth at the same time as he championed eugenics within and without.
Roosevelt was indeed expansionist in his policies and those policies are troubling in many respects. However, he was also a great leader in many other respects, including his leading role in laying the foundations for American conservationism.
I may be naive in believing that academics are joined by a deep intellectual commitment to history and objectivity. However, to see professors joining this blind rage against historical figures is truly depressing. The letter simply sweeps too broadly in seeking the removal of such memorials.
JT is on target.
People like these professors are not likely to provide objective information or advocate for freedom. Keep your children away from them.
My bet is that at some time in their lives they have behaved in ways that, by their own standards, would call for their dismissal.
----------------------------------------------
I have been writing and speaking about the movement to remove statues that range from confederate leaders to Columbus to Supreme Court justices to Founders
(here and here and here and here). I specifically wrote about the call for the removal of monuments to George Washington and others as the list lengthens of figures to be cleansed from public historical displays. In a particularly concerning development, hundreds of professors have now joined this movement in signing a letter calling for New York City to remove monuments honoring Theodore Roosevelt and Christopher Columbus. The open letter to New York’s Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers declares such historical figures as representing “white supremacy” and “objects of popular resentment.” The letter is an embarrassment for higher education as these academics adopt over-simplified and ahistorical approaches to this controversy.
The scholars state:
As scholars of American art, cultural history and social analysis, we are writing to urge that the Commission recommend the removal of several monuments from public view in New York City. They have long been highlighted as objects of popular resentment among communities of color and anti-racist scholars, artists, and movements. It is thus no surprise that these monuments have risen to the top of the list of the “symbols of hate,” to quote Mayor de Blasio, singled out during the Commission’s recent public hearings. For too long, they have generated harm and offense as expressions of white supremacy. These monuments are an affront in a city whose elected officials preach tolerance and equity.
It is important to note that they are speaking of Teddy Roosevelt and Columbus. The attack on Roosevelt is illustrative of the simplistic treatment given the history of the period:
As an imperialist, and frank advocate of eugenics, Roosevelt’s views on racial hierarchy are well-known to historians. The Museum (center of the American eugenics movement in the early years of the twentieth century) now pays tribute to his conservationist efforts, without acknowledging the link to those racialist beliefs. The dedication of the Museum’s memorial in 1936 and of the adjoining equestrian monument in 1939 was celebrated by its officials as a consummation of the theories of Henry Fairfield Osborn, who had presided over the institution’s early growth at the same time as he championed eugenics within and without.
Roosevelt was indeed expansionist in his policies and those policies are troubling in many respects. However, he was also a great leader in many other respects, including his leading role in laying the foundations for American conservationism.
I may be naive in believing that academics are joined by a deep intellectual commitment to history and objectivity. However, to see professors joining this blind rage against historical figures is truly depressing. The letter simply sweeps too broadly in seeking the removal of such memorials.
Escaping Modernity
Here is a comment from Don Boudreaux that provides the right perspective about markets.
One interesting observation by Don is:
Fortunately, anyone so disliking market forces that he truly wants to escape them can do so while leaving the rest of us alone. All such a person must do is to find a few acres of land and become self-sufficient.
This suggests that some of those who are against the "big bad market" are more interested in forcing others to live their way than simply living their way themselves.
You can use Don's perspective and insights to destroy the pseudo-intellectuals at your next cocktail party.
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Many writers have described the mishmash of emotions and ideas that motivate the “antiglobalization” protesters who have been so much in the news since the 1999 Seattle riots. To point out that many of these ideas are irreconcilably at odds with each other is now old hat. (What, for example, does it mean to be an anarchist who advocates government controls on commercial activity?)
I want here to take these ideas as seriously as possible. Perhaps we can find a way to make the protesters happy without bringing civilization to a screeching halt.
Already, any antiglobalization advocate reading this article will likely accuse me of stacking the rhetorical deck against him. “We don’t seek to crush civilization,” he might argue.
He would be wrong. The core idea of these protests is deep animosity toward commercial exchange–a gut loathing of economic activity beyond the simple sort that took place among a small handful of people living on self-sufficient medieval manors or in tiny primitive villages.
Civilization is impossible, however, without substantial commercial exchange and a deep specialization of work. It exists only when most of our economic wants are satisfied by the market–that is, by people who produce output mostly for strangers rather than for themselves, and who are guided in their decisions of what to produce not by the commands of a sovereign but, instead, by what each of these people perceives to be his own best means of prospering. And in the market the signals that guide producers come principally from the prices determined by consumers voluntarily spending their own money.
In short, civilization requires wealth, and wealth requires a free market, extensive commerce, and a deep division of labor. Will Durant put it nicely: “Every cultural flourishing finds root and nourishment in an expansion of commerce and industry. . . . For society, as well as for an individual, primum est edere, deinde philosophari–eating must come before philosophy, wealth before art.”
But no law requires anyone to value civilization. Someone might well decide that civilization’s fruits, no matter how succulent and healthy, aren’t worth the downside.
And there indeed is a downside. It’s one that to most of us is so insignificant relative to the upside that we seldom think of it. But the downside is real, and it is the focus of many of those who so bitterly loathe the market. The downside is that everyone in civilization is enormously dependent on the choices and actions of millions of others. Every civilized person depends on the creativity, efforts, and choices of countless strangers spanning the globe.
One interesting observation by Don is:
Fortunately, anyone so disliking market forces that he truly wants to escape them can do so while leaving the rest of us alone. All such a person must do is to find a few acres of land and become self-sufficient.
This suggests that some of those who are against the "big bad market" are more interested in forcing others to live their way than simply living their way themselves.
You can use Don's perspective and insights to destroy the pseudo-intellectuals at your next cocktail party.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Many writers have described the mishmash of emotions and ideas that motivate the “antiglobalization” protesters who have been so much in the news since the 1999 Seattle riots. To point out that many of these ideas are irreconcilably at odds with each other is now old hat. (What, for example, does it mean to be an anarchist who advocates government controls on commercial activity?)
I want here to take these ideas as seriously as possible. Perhaps we can find a way to make the protesters happy without bringing civilization to a screeching halt.
Already, any antiglobalization advocate reading this article will likely accuse me of stacking the rhetorical deck against him. “We don’t seek to crush civilization,” he might argue.
He would be wrong. The core idea of these protests is deep animosity toward commercial exchange–a gut loathing of economic activity beyond the simple sort that took place among a small handful of people living on self-sufficient medieval manors or in tiny primitive villages.
Civilization is impossible, however, without substantial commercial exchange and a deep specialization of work. It exists only when most of our economic wants are satisfied by the market–that is, by people who produce output mostly for strangers rather than for themselves, and who are guided in their decisions of what to produce not by the commands of a sovereign but, instead, by what each of these people perceives to be his own best means of prospering. And in the market the signals that guide producers come principally from the prices determined by consumers voluntarily spending their own money.
In short, civilization requires wealth, and wealth requires a free market, extensive commerce, and a deep division of labor. Will Durant put it nicely: “Every cultural flourishing finds root and nourishment in an expansion of commerce and industry. . . . For society, as well as for an individual, primum est edere, deinde philosophari–eating must come before philosophy, wealth before art.”
But no law requires anyone to value civilization. Someone might well decide that civilization’s fruits, no matter how succulent and healthy, aren’t worth the downside.
And there indeed is a downside. It’s one that to most of us is so insignificant relative to the upside that we seldom think of it. But the downside is real, and it is the focus of many of those who so bitterly loathe the market. The downside is that everyone in civilization is enormously dependent on the choices and actions of millions of others. Every civilized person depends on the creativity, efforts, and choices of countless strangers spanning the globe.
Sunday, December 10, 2017
23 State Attorneys General support concealed carry reciprocity
Here is the text of a letter to congressional leaders from the Attorney General of Missouri signed by 23 state Attorneys General supporting constitutional concealed carry reciprocity.
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As the chief legal officers of our States, we, the undersigned 23 state Attorneys General, write in support of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (S. 446) and the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (H.R. 38). We share a strong interest in the protection of our citizens’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and we are committed to supporting federal and state policies to preserve that constitutional right. These bills, if enacted, would eliminate significant obstacles to the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms for millions of Americans in every State.
The core interest protected by this right is self-defense by law-abiding citizens. This right therefore extends to weapons “in common use” and “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 624–25, 627 (quoting United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 179 (1939)).
The Second Amendment, moreover, applies to both the Federal Government and the States. The Second Amendment is a right “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty,” and so it applies not just to the Federal Government but also to the States under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. McDonald, 561 U.S. at 767; see also Caetano v. Massachusetts, 136 S. Ct. 1027, 1027 (2016) (per curiam).
The citizen interest in self-defense, supported and protected by the Second Amendment, is called into serious question by such blanket refusals to permit carrying firearms in self-defense outside the home or to allow non-resident visitors to carry concealed weapons. Because some States refuse to give the Second Amendment its full import, Congress should enact concealed-carry reciprocity legislation, to help implement and enforce the constitutional right to self-defense for millions of law-abiding Americans across the country.
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As the chief legal officers of our States, we, the undersigned 23 state Attorneys General, write in support of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (S. 446) and the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (H.R. 38). We share a strong interest in the protection of our citizens’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and we are committed to supporting federal and state policies to preserve that constitutional right. These bills, if enacted, would eliminate significant obstacles to the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms for millions of Americans in every State.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides an individual right to own and carry a firearm for self-defense. The Amendment states that “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. Const. amend. II. As the Supreme Court recognized in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 592 (2008), the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” Indeed, “individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right.” McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 767 (2010) (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 599).
The core interest protected by this right is self-defense by law-abiding citizens. This right therefore extends to weapons “in common use” and “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 624–25, 627 (quoting United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 179 (1939)).
The Second Amendment historically has guaranteed the right to carry firearms outside the home for self-defense. In Heller, the Supreme Court relied on the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation, William Blackstone, who explained that the right to self-defense, codified by the framers in the Second Amendment, was an “individual right protecting against both public and private violence.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 594 (citations omitted). As Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have written, “‘[s]elf-defense has to take place wherever the person happens to be,’ and in some circumstances a person may be more vulnerable in a public place than in his own house.” Peruta v. California, 137 S. Ct. 1995, 1998–99 (2017) (Thomas, J., and Gorsuch, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari) (quoting Eugene Volokh, Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for Self– Defense: An Analytical Framework and a Research Agenda, 56 UCLA L. REV. 1443, 1515 (2009)).
To be sure, the right to carry firearms for self-defense is not unlimited, and the Supreme Court has stated that its decisions do not cast doubt on the “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27. But these exceptions all assume that the right to carry a weapon in self-defense applies in public places generally.
The Second Amendment, moreover, applies to both the Federal Government and the States. The Second Amendment is a right “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty,” and so it applies not just to the Federal Government but also to the States under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. McDonald, 561 U.S. at 767; see also Caetano v. Massachusetts, 136 S. Ct. 1027, 1027 (2016) (per curiam).
Nevertheless, some activist courts have held that the Second Amendment has no application at all outside the home, and thus have upheld state laws banning any firearm ownership outside the home. See, e.g., Peruta v. California, 137 S. Ct. 1995, 1997, 1999 (2017) (Thomas, J. and Gorsuch, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari) (collecting cases); e.g., Williams v. State, 10 A.3d 1167, 1177 (Md. 2011); Mack v. United States, 6 A.3d 1224, 1236 (D.C. 2010). Further, ten states refuse to recognize any out-of-state concealed carry permits, and many more refuse to recognize out-of-state concealed carry permits unless certain conditions are met.
The citizen interest in self-defense, supported and protected by the Second Amendment, is called into serious question by such blanket refusals to permit carrying firearms in self-defense outside the home or to allow non-resident visitors to carry concealed weapons. Because some States refuse to give the Second Amendment its full import, Congress should enact concealed-carry reciprocity legislation, to help implement and enforce the constitutional right to self-defense for millions of law-abiding Americans across the country.
Thursday, December 07, 2017
Climate change theory that makes sense
Here is a link to a Youtube presentation by Henrik Svensmark.
An important, credible climate change theory.
Those who accuse others of being "Climate Deniers" cannot be trusted to be objective.
An important, credible climate change theory.
Those who accuse others of being "Climate Deniers" cannot be trusted to be objective.
Self-learning computer program supreme at games - what next?
Here is a link to a paper "Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm.
The significance of this algorithm goes well beyond games to many aspects of human activity.
Here is the paper's abstract. Keep in mind that previous world champion chess programs are superior to the best human Chess Masters.
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The game of chess is the most widely-studied domain in the history of artificial intelligence. The strongest programs are based on a combination of sophisticated search techniques, domain-specific adaptations, and handcrafted evaluation functions that have been refined by human experts over several decades. In contrast, the AlphaGo Zero program recently achieved superhuman performance in the game of Go, by tabula rasa reinforcement learning from games of self-play. In this paper, we generalise this approach into a single AlphaZero algorithm that can achieve, tabula rasa, superhuman performance in many challenging domains. Starting from random play, and given no domain knowledge except the game rules, AlphaZero achieved within 24 hours a superhuman level of play in the games of chess and shogi (Japanese chess) as well as Go, and convincingly defeated a world-champion program in each case.
The significance of this algorithm goes well beyond games to many aspects of human activity.
Here is the paper's abstract. Keep in mind that previous world champion chess programs are superior to the best human Chess Masters.
-----------------------------------------------
The game of chess is the most widely-studied domain in the history of artificial intelligence. The strongest programs are based on a combination of sophisticated search techniques, domain-specific adaptations, and handcrafted evaluation functions that have been refined by human experts over several decades. In contrast, the AlphaGo Zero program recently achieved superhuman performance in the game of Go, by tabula rasa reinforcement learning from games of self-play. In this paper, we generalise this approach into a single AlphaZero algorithm that can achieve, tabula rasa, superhuman performance in many challenging domains. Starting from random play, and given no domain knowledge except the game rules, AlphaZero achieved within 24 hours a superhuman level of play in the games of chess and shogi (Japanese chess) as well as Go, and convincingly defeated a world-champion program in each case.
Is the Sea Level Stable at Aden, Yemen?
This link is to a paper by Parker and Ollier.
Some reports show a rising sea level trend at Aden and Yemen. P&O say that this is likely due to questionable statistical adjustments. Their conclusion follows.
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The tide gauge record of Aden is a composite derived from 5 distinctive sets of measurements, with the historical data, comprising 4 of these sets, ending in 1969, and the novel measurements with a new tide gauge, starting in 2007. By revising the alignment of the data up to 1969, and neglecting the misaligned new measurements, the sea levels are only very weekly rising at − 0.05 to 0.24 mm/year in Aden over the 20th century.
In Mumbai, the tide gauge record is the composite of 3 distinctive sets of measurements, with the historical data, comprising 2 of these sets, ending in 1994, and the novel measurements with a new tide gauge, starting in 2005. By revising the alignment of the data up to 1994, and neglecting the misaligned new measurements, the sea levels are perfectly stable over the 20th century.
In Karachi, the tide gauge record is the composite of 4 distinctive sets of measurements, with the historical data, comprising 3 of these sets, ending in 1995, and the novel measurements with a new tide gauge, starting in 2007. By revising the alignment of all the data, the sea levels were previously shown in Parker (2016) to be weekly increasing at +0.18 mm/year over the twentieth century.
The sea levels have, therefore, been stable in Aden, as at Karachi and Mumbai, over all the 20th century.
These and other key sites of the Indian Ocean indicate a stable sea level of about zero mm/year over the last 50 years, as shown in Mörner (2007, 2010, 2014, 2015a, b, 2016a, b), Parker and Ollier (2015) and Parker (2016).
Some reports show a rising sea level trend at Aden and Yemen. P&O say that this is likely due to questionable statistical adjustments. Their conclusion follows.
----------------------------------------
The tide gauge record of Aden is a composite derived from 5 distinctive sets of measurements, with the historical data, comprising 4 of these sets, ending in 1969, and the novel measurements with a new tide gauge, starting in 2007. By revising the alignment of the data up to 1969, and neglecting the misaligned new measurements, the sea levels are only very weekly rising at − 0.05 to 0.24 mm/year in Aden over the 20th century.
In Mumbai, the tide gauge record is the composite of 3 distinctive sets of measurements, with the historical data, comprising 2 of these sets, ending in 1994, and the novel measurements with a new tide gauge, starting in 2005. By revising the alignment of the data up to 1994, and neglecting the misaligned new measurements, the sea levels are perfectly stable over the 20th century.
In Karachi, the tide gauge record is the composite of 4 distinctive sets of measurements, with the historical data, comprising 3 of these sets, ending in 1995, and the novel measurements with a new tide gauge, starting in 2007. By revising the alignment of all the data, the sea levels were previously shown in Parker (2016) to be weekly increasing at +0.18 mm/year over the twentieth century.
The sea levels have, therefore, been stable in Aden, as at Karachi and Mumbai, over all the 20th century.
These and other key sites of the Indian Ocean indicate a stable sea level of about zero mm/year over the last 50 years, as shown in Mörner (2007, 2010, 2014, 2015a, b, 2016a, b), Parker and Ollier (2015) and Parker (2016).
Wednesday, December 06, 2017
We are doomed
Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal, by Eli Stopkols.
It seems that too many young people do not understand that Capitalism offers a higher standard of living and more freedom than Socialism, the latter being well known for ruining economies and tyranny. A simple test of economic and civil liberty understanding is to ask someone which they prefer.
There also seems to be a lack of understanding that power leads to corruption, and that Socialism puts more power in fewer hands than Capitalism - hence leads to more corruption - or that the competition fostered by Capitalism tends to reduce the opportunities for corruption.
Too many people also view more inequality as synonymous with more poverty. Which is better, more inequality with a higher standard of living for all or less inequality with a lower standard of living for some? Another misconception about inequality is that it reflects some taking advantage of others. Virtually no one appreciates that random walks produce increasing inequality, hence that it is a normal outcome of a "fair playing field". For example, if all people start with the same income and income for each person has the same positive trend growth rate plus an identical independent random element, then there will be increasing income inequality over time.
We are doomed to in increasingly inefficient economy and further loss of freedom due to economic dumbth.
-------------------------------------------
ELON, N.C.—John Della Volpe, who has been polling millennials for 17 years, stood before about 150 students in a gleaming new center at Elon University this fall in search of an answer.
In his 2016 survey for Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, 42% of younger Americans said they support capitalism, and only 19% identified themselves as capitalists. While this was a new question in his survey, the low percentage of young people embracing capitalism surprised him. He had come here, in part, to better understand why.
“Maybe it had to do with the ‘American Dream,’ and how capitalism was correlated with it, but a lot of young people don’t believe in it anymore,” said Ana Garcia, a junior at the Elon event. “We don’t trust capitalism because we don’t see ourselves getting ahead.”
Largely because of such millennials, generally those born in the 1980s and 1990s, socialism has moved from being a taboo because of its associations with the Cold War to something that has found rising appeal among those polled by Harvard and in other surveys that compared different generations.
Grace Magness, an Elon freshman, has experienced the shift firsthand. Her great grandfather, she said, was named Eugene Debs after the labor leader who ran for president five times for the Socialist Party at the turn of the 20th century. “He was so embarrassed about it when he was older that he would never introduce himself using his full name,” Ms. Magness said.
For her, she says, “socialism has gotten less spooky; it’s no longer associated with communism the way it was.” She adds: “straight-up capitalism seems like it has a lot of potential to be really corrupt.”
Young people across the generations tend to be viewed as more left-leaning than their elders. Underlying the millennial generation’s leftward tilt is angst about the future, Mr. Della Volpe said. In a new smaller Harvard survey, released Tuesday, 67% of those polled said they are more worried than hopeful about the direction of the country. The fall survey sampled 2,037 peopled aged 18 to 29 in live interviews.
“If something unites these young people,” Mr. Della Volpe said, “it’s fear,” driven by their perception that they have limited economic opportunities and that society as a whole has become more unequal.
The 2016 poll also found that the millennial generation is less religious than their parents and losing faith in institutions—a finding consistent with other polls that track some of that loss of faith to the slow recovery from the deep recession that began in 2008.
“Every new group of voters is disproportionally affected by whatever was salient when they were growing up,” said Celinda Lake, a long-time Democratic pollster. “That’s led this group to be really cynical about institutions: military, government.”
In the view of Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and the author of, “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America and How Republicans Can Keep Up,” the idea that young people tend to be liberal and become more conservative with age is misguided. “The oldest millennials are actually the most left-leaning,” she said. “If you came of age, graduated college and were job hunting around the time of the financial crisis, you might be asking, What have free markets done for you? The easy rhetoric that ‘markets are bad, government is bad’ is appealing.”
The Harvard survey has polled roughly 1,000 respondents between 18 and 29 years old annually since 2001. The sample size has grown over time. In the spring 2016 survey, it was a measure of nearly 3,200 people. The survey has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
Still, millennials polled say they want a bigger role for government in making conditions better for their future. The number of young people who believe that tax cuts spark economic growth, which had held fairly steady for years, fell seven points over the past two years, according to the 2016 Harvard survey.
It seems that too many young people do not understand that Capitalism offers a higher standard of living and more freedom than Socialism, the latter being well known for ruining economies and tyranny. A simple test of economic and civil liberty understanding is to ask someone which they prefer.
There also seems to be a lack of understanding that power leads to corruption, and that Socialism puts more power in fewer hands than Capitalism - hence leads to more corruption - or that the competition fostered by Capitalism tends to reduce the opportunities for corruption.
Too many people also view more inequality as synonymous with more poverty. Which is better, more inequality with a higher standard of living for all or less inequality with a lower standard of living for some? Another misconception about inequality is that it reflects some taking advantage of others. Virtually no one appreciates that random walks produce increasing inequality, hence that it is a normal outcome of a "fair playing field". For example, if all people start with the same income and income for each person has the same positive trend growth rate plus an identical independent random element, then there will be increasing income inequality over time.
We are doomed to in increasingly inefficient economy and further loss of freedom due to economic dumbth.
-------------------------------------------
ELON, N.C.—John Della Volpe, who has been polling millennials for 17 years, stood before about 150 students in a gleaming new center at Elon University this fall in search of an answer.
In his 2016 survey for Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, 42% of younger Americans said they support capitalism, and only 19% identified themselves as capitalists. While this was a new question in his survey, the low percentage of young people embracing capitalism surprised him. He had come here, in part, to better understand why.
“Maybe it had to do with the ‘American Dream,’ and how capitalism was correlated with it, but a lot of young people don’t believe in it anymore,” said Ana Garcia, a junior at the Elon event. “We don’t trust capitalism because we don’t see ourselves getting ahead.”
Largely because of such millennials, generally those born in the 1980s and 1990s, socialism has moved from being a taboo because of its associations with the Cold War to something that has found rising appeal among those polled by Harvard and in other surveys that compared different generations.
Grace Magness, an Elon freshman, has experienced the shift firsthand. Her great grandfather, she said, was named Eugene Debs after the labor leader who ran for president five times for the Socialist Party at the turn of the 20th century. “He was so embarrassed about it when he was older that he would never introduce himself using his full name,” Ms. Magness said.
For her, she says, “socialism has gotten less spooky; it’s no longer associated with communism the way it was.” She adds: “straight-up capitalism seems like it has a lot of potential to be really corrupt.”
Young people across the generations tend to be viewed as more left-leaning than their elders. Underlying the millennial generation’s leftward tilt is angst about the future, Mr. Della Volpe said. In a new smaller Harvard survey, released Tuesday, 67% of those polled said they are more worried than hopeful about the direction of the country. The fall survey sampled 2,037 peopled aged 18 to 29 in live interviews.
“If something unites these young people,” Mr. Della Volpe said, “it’s fear,” driven by their perception that they have limited economic opportunities and that society as a whole has become more unequal.
The 2016 poll also found that the millennial generation is less religious than their parents and losing faith in institutions—a finding consistent with other polls that track some of that loss of faith to the slow recovery from the deep recession that began in 2008.
“Every new group of voters is disproportionally affected by whatever was salient when they were growing up,” said Celinda Lake, a long-time Democratic pollster. “That’s led this group to be really cynical about institutions: military, government.”
In the view of Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and the author of, “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America and How Republicans Can Keep Up,” the idea that young people tend to be liberal and become more conservative with age is misguided. “The oldest millennials are actually the most left-leaning,” she said. “If you came of age, graduated college and were job hunting around the time of the financial crisis, you might be asking, What have free markets done for you? The easy rhetoric that ‘markets are bad, government is bad’ is appealing.”
The Harvard survey has polled roughly 1,000 respondents between 18 and 29 years old annually since 2001. The sample size has grown over time. In the spring 2016 survey, it was a measure of nearly 3,200 people. The survey has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
Still, millennials polled say they want a bigger role for government in making conditions better for their future. The number of young people who believe that tax cuts spark economic growth, which had held fairly steady for years, fell seven points over the past two years, according to the 2016 Harvard survey.
Tuesday, December 05, 2017
The AP provides another example of how media pushes an anti-gun agenda
John Lott in The Hill. Lott is the President of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
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It is usually pretty hard to definitively identify media bias. Often pressed for time, reporters are just unaware of opposing opinions or facts. And there is no way for readers to tell what information has been left out. But an Associated Press article, which appeared in hundreds of papers from the Los Angeles Times to the Houston Chronicle, provided a unique peek at how the media selectively picks anti-gun information in order to push for gun control.
The Associated Press article edited-down a 441-word version of a longer, 1,000-word article that appeared in the Indianapolis Star and a quote from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. While the original articles in the Star and Journal Gazette were balanced, the AP cut down the piece by systematically excluding one side of the argument — any information that concealed handgun permit holders are law-abiding and don’t pose a risk to others.
The AP article was concerned with Indiana’s decision to allow legislators and staff to legally carry concealed handguns inside the state Capitol. It’s the 21st state to officially allow carrying of handguns in some fashion at the Capitol. The Star gave a little more information, noting that Indiana is one of just two states that restricts concealed-carry to lawmakers and their staffs when inside the Capitol. The other 19 states allow permitted citizens to carry in a wide variety of places.
The AP included quotes from four people. “It’s a constitutional right,” said Republican state Rep. Jim Lucas, one of the new law's sponsors. “Everyone’s right to protection should be recognized.”
The other three people went on record as concerned about the dangers of allowing civilians to have guns in the state capitol.
Is it reasonable to be concerned that people may misuse their guns? Certainly. But only the original article in the Indianapolis Star provided another perspective on these concerns. It cited a report by the Crime Prevention Research Center, an organization that I head:
On state government grounds across the country, the Crime Prevention Research Center hasn’t found any instances of injuries due to firearms….
The Crime Prevention Research Center has tracked only two instances in the nation where a handgun misfired in a statehouse and a handful of instances where lawmakers temporarily misplaced their weapons.
The AP also ignored that the Journal Gazette cited the same Crime Prevention Research Center report to note how rare any problems were. The Journal Gazette went so far as to note my organization’s “goal is to provide an objective and accurate scientific evaluation of the costs and benefits of gun ownership.”
Could space limitations explain the AP’s decision to only use quotes that point to potential dangers from law-abiding people carrying concealed handguns? The AP could have easily replaced one of the quotes with this information. The three people’s quotes took 53, 66, and 52 words, respectively. The entire quote about the Crime Prevention Search Center took only 52 words.
Instead, the AP pushed only the narrative that concealed handgun permit holders pose a danger to others.
But states have had concealed carry laws for decades. Six states even allow concealed carrying in state capitols without permits, and eight states allow people to openly carry their guns. There have been zero reported problems with non-legislators and non-staff being able to carry on statehouse grounds.
And permit holders are extremely law-abiding. While the U.S. population commits misdemeanors and felonies at a rate 37 times higher than police, police are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at about six times the average rate for concealed handgun permit holders in Florida and Texas.
The Associated Press has quite a reach. Its article also created a misimpression for at least some Canadians. Based on the AP article, Russell Wangersky wrote a piece for 39 Canadian newspapers about the dangers posed by permitted concealed handgun holders. I contacted Wangersky after I noticed that he had accidentally confused Illinois and Indiana, and, unlike the AP, he was honest enough to update his piece with this note:
The debate on guns would be very different if the national news media would report on some of the dozens of mass public shootings that have been stopped by concealed handgun permit holders. The media would also change public opinion if it reported on how virtually all mass public shootings take place in areas where citizens are banned from possessing firearms for protection.
Rarely is there such clear evidence of biased self-censorship by a news organization. The AP portrayed concealed handgun permit holders as a danger to others while editing out information showing that no such danger exists.
---------------------------------------------------
It is usually pretty hard to definitively identify media bias. Often pressed for time, reporters are just unaware of opposing opinions or facts. And there is no way for readers to tell what information has been left out. But an Associated Press article, which appeared in hundreds of papers from the Los Angeles Times to the Houston Chronicle, provided a unique peek at how the media selectively picks anti-gun information in order to push for gun control.
The Associated Press article edited-down a 441-word version of a longer, 1,000-word article that appeared in the Indianapolis Star and a quote from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. While the original articles in the Star and Journal Gazette were balanced, the AP cut down the piece by systematically excluding one side of the argument — any information that concealed handgun permit holders are law-abiding and don’t pose a risk to others.
The AP article was concerned with Indiana’s decision to allow legislators and staff to legally carry concealed handguns inside the state Capitol. It’s the 21st state to officially allow carrying of handguns in some fashion at the Capitol. The Star gave a little more information, noting that Indiana is one of just two states that restricts concealed-carry to lawmakers and their staffs when inside the Capitol. The other 19 states allow permitted citizens to carry in a wide variety of places.
The other three people went on record as concerned about the dangers of allowing civilians to have guns in the state capitol.
- “The possibility of the presence of firearms during tense personnel situations would worry human resources professionals,” said Christopher Schrader, government affairs director for Indiana State Council of Society of Human Resource Management.
- Republican House Majority Leader Matt Lehman understood the desire to have guns for self-defense, but supported limitations on people carrying because, he said, in “confrontational [situations] someone might respond irrationally.”
- The AP article concluded with an ominous quote from Democratic Rep. Phil GiaQuinta. The representative was worried about permit holders “intimidating” others and that a permit holder may misuse his gun because “tempers can fly at night.”
On state government grounds across the country, the Crime Prevention Research Center hasn’t found any instances of injuries due to firearms….
The Crime Prevention Research Center has tracked only two instances in the nation where a handgun misfired in a statehouse and a handful of instances where lawmakers temporarily misplaced their weapons.
The AP also ignored that the Journal Gazette cited the same Crime Prevention Research Center report to note how rare any problems were. The Journal Gazette went so far as to note my organization’s “goal is to provide an objective and accurate scientific evaluation of the costs and benefits of gun ownership.”
Could space limitations explain the AP’s decision to only use quotes that point to potential dangers from law-abiding people carrying concealed handguns? The AP could have easily replaced one of the quotes with this information. The three people’s quotes took 53, 66, and 52 words, respectively. The entire quote about the Crime Prevention Search Center took only 52 words.
Instead, the AP pushed only the narrative that concealed handgun permit holders pose a danger to others.
But states have had concealed carry laws for decades. Six states even allow concealed carrying in state capitols without permits, and eight states allow people to openly carry their guns. There have been zero reported problems with non-legislators and non-staff being able to carry on statehouse grounds.
And permit holders are extremely law-abiding. While the U.S. population commits misdemeanors and felonies at a rate 37 times higher than police, police are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at about six times the average rate for concealed handgun permit holders in Florida and Texas.
The Associated Press has quite a reach. Its article also created a misimpression for at least some Canadians. Based on the AP article, Russell Wangersky wrote a piece for 39 Canadian newspapers about the dangers posed by permitted concealed handgun holders. I contacted Wangersky after I noticed that he had accidentally confused Illinois and Indiana, and, unlike the AP, he was honest enough to update his piece with this note:
The error was not without value — I received a note from the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, John Lott, not only pointing out that mistake, but suggesting that I hadn’t told the whole story, in that in the 20 other states that allow the practice, there have not been any recorded weapons injuries or deaths as a result. Every piece of a debate informs the result.
The debate on guns would be very different if the national news media would report on some of the dozens of mass public shootings that have been stopped by concealed handgun permit holders. The media would also change public opinion if it reported on how virtually all mass public shootings take place in areas where citizens are banned from possessing firearms for protection.
Rarely is there such clear evidence of biased self-censorship by a news organization. The AP portrayed concealed handgun permit holders as a danger to others while editing out information showing that no such danger exists.
Friday, December 01, 2017
The road to tyranny is paved with making it easy to get the bad guys
Jonathan Turley gets it right again.
People ignore the unavoidable tradeoff between making it easy for the government to get the bad guys and loss of freedom.
----------------------------------------------------
The cellphone is rapidly becoming the most universal accessory among human beings anywhere in the world. The expansion of its use and capability has made the cellphone not just a communications device but the planner, personal computer, mapping mechanism and record storage device for most people.
It has another function that most people do not fully appreciate: tracking device. The use of the cellphone as a surveillance tool is at the heart of a major privacy case heard by the Supreme Court this week in Carpenter v. United States. At issue may be the very future of privacy in America. This argument is occurring almost 50 years to the day that the court issued its historic decision in Katz v. United States, which established the current test for privacy. The question is whether the court will celebrate that anniversary with a new ruling effectively gutting privacy for future generations.
The great burden of civil liberties is that we often must fight for our most cherished principles in defense of the least redeeming persons. As is often the case, this controversy starts with a thoroughly unsympathetic character: Timothy Ivory Carpenter, who was the ringleader of a gang accused of a series of robberies including, ironically, the robbery of cellphone stores in and around Detroit. The gang valued smartphones and so did the police. The police asked cellphone carriers to track Carpenter’s phone for 127 days. The companies supplied 12,898 tracking locations from Carpenter’s movements, including locations near the robberies. He was arrested and eventually given 116 years.
Privacy and technology has always been locked in an existential struggle. The Supreme Court has repeatedly (and rather dim wittedly) adopted privacy protections that were tied to fixed technological capability. Technology quickly made a mockery of such protections. For example, the court adopted the “trespass doctrine” in 1928 as the core protection of privacy of the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant for any surveillance involving trespass on a target’s person or property. Advances soon made the ill-conceived doctrine irrelevant as the government adopted forms of surveillance like laser-window pickups, parabolic microphones, and other devices that could place citizens under surveillance without touching their homes or property.
The Supreme Court responded in December 1967 with what many consider to be one of its greatest and most eloquent decisions in Katz. That case rejected the trespass doctrine and declared that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” The decision reversed a long erosion of privacy protection and required greater use of warrants by the government. Under the Katz test, warrants are needed when there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” by a citizen. However, that test planted the seed for its own demise. The danger is that, as forms of surveillance increase, particularly with private surveillance in workplaces, businesses and homes, our expectations fall. As expectations falls, warrantless surveillance increases further in a vicious cycle that continues to lower privacy protections.
The fact is that my students live in a surveillance-saturated environment and have a fraction of the privacy protections that my generation enjoyed. The Carpenter case shows how flimsy our laws have become in protecting privacy, a trend that has been accelerated by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who see little advantage in defending privacy over new police powers. Thus, in this case, the police simply avoided asking a judge for a warrant with a showing of probable cause. Notably, probable cause itself is relatively easy to establish and warrants are rarely denied. In this case, it would have been quickly granted. Instead, the police demanded the information under the Stored Communications Act, which requires only a showing that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that the records sought “are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Notably, the government is relying on the 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, which is itself based on a technological relic. In that case, the court ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in phone numbers because we all “give” the numbers to a third party (the telephone company) to make calls. It is an anachronistic view that raises the image of a switchboard operator as opposed to computerized systems that merely transmit and connect numbers. Yet, the government is arguing that cellphones are no different in “sharing” a signal with companies like AT&T. This ignores that consumers have little choice. Moreover, even under the myth of the Smith case, there is no active sending of the signal for a cellphone user. It is part of this ubiquitous technology. If you have a cellphone, it emits this signal. The government wants the court to treat the use of a cellphone as a type of waiver of privacy.
In 2012, the Supreme Court resisted the encroachment of technological advances in United States v. Jones, when it ruled that police need a warrant to attach a GPS tracker on a car. Now, however, the government can negate that case by just using the cellphone inside the car to achieve that same result. Indeed, the case could negate a host of rulings in allowing the government to follow you within buildings, despite a 2011 ruling barring the warrantless use of thermal devices for such purposes.
The government hopes that the “third-party” mythology will drive a stake into the heart of privacy protections under Katz and these other cases. The fact that a warrant would have been easy to obtain in this case is both telling and chilling. Historically, governments have resisted any limitations on their power even when those limitations are workable and reasonable. Yet, it is not always easy to get a free people to surrender their privacy. To do so, citizens are fed false tradeoffs between privacy and security despite the fact that courts overwhelmingly approve warrants. Indeed, technology has made it faster and easier to obtain warrants by telephone and email.
Members of both parties have yielded to the demands for greater and greater surveillance power. They know that they are rarely given credit for defending privacy but could be blamed for not being sufficiently tough on crime or terrorism. For them, the choice is easy. For the rest of us, it is far more serious. If successful, most citizens will not only be practically forced to carry around a government surveillance device but will literally pay for the privilege. Make no mistake. To paraphrase the AT&T slogan, the government is on the verge of “rethinking possible” under the Fourth Amendment and could force the rest of us to rethink privacy in America.
People ignore the unavoidable tradeoff between making it easy for the government to get the bad guys and loss of freedom.
----------------------------------------------------
The cellphone is rapidly becoming the most universal accessory among human beings anywhere in the world. The expansion of its use and capability has made the cellphone not just a communications device but the planner, personal computer, mapping mechanism and record storage device for most people.
It has another function that most people do not fully appreciate: tracking device. The use of the cellphone as a surveillance tool is at the heart of a major privacy case heard by the Supreme Court this week in Carpenter v. United States. At issue may be the very future of privacy in America. This argument is occurring almost 50 years to the day that the court issued its historic decision in Katz v. United States, which established the current test for privacy. The question is whether the court will celebrate that anniversary with a new ruling effectively gutting privacy for future generations.
The great burden of civil liberties is that we often must fight for our most cherished principles in defense of the least redeeming persons. As is often the case, this controversy starts with a thoroughly unsympathetic character: Timothy Ivory Carpenter, who was the ringleader of a gang accused of a series of robberies including, ironically, the robbery of cellphone stores in and around Detroit. The gang valued smartphones and so did the police. The police asked cellphone carriers to track Carpenter’s phone for 127 days. The companies supplied 12,898 tracking locations from Carpenter’s movements, including locations near the robberies. He was arrested and eventually given 116 years.
Privacy and technology has always been locked in an existential struggle. The Supreme Court has repeatedly (and rather dim wittedly) adopted privacy protections that were tied to fixed technological capability. Technology quickly made a mockery of such protections. For example, the court adopted the “trespass doctrine” in 1928 as the core protection of privacy of the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant for any surveillance involving trespass on a target’s person or property. Advances soon made the ill-conceived doctrine irrelevant as the government adopted forms of surveillance like laser-window pickups, parabolic microphones, and other devices that could place citizens under surveillance without touching their homes or property.
The Supreme Court responded in December 1967 with what many consider to be one of its greatest and most eloquent decisions in Katz. That case rejected the trespass doctrine and declared that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” The decision reversed a long erosion of privacy protection and required greater use of warrants by the government. Under the Katz test, warrants are needed when there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” by a citizen. However, that test planted the seed for its own demise. The danger is that, as forms of surveillance increase, particularly with private surveillance in workplaces, businesses and homes, our expectations fall. As expectations falls, warrantless surveillance increases further in a vicious cycle that continues to lower privacy protections.
The fact is that my students live in a surveillance-saturated environment and have a fraction of the privacy protections that my generation enjoyed. The Carpenter case shows how flimsy our laws have become in protecting privacy, a trend that has been accelerated by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who see little advantage in defending privacy over new police powers. Thus, in this case, the police simply avoided asking a judge for a warrant with a showing of probable cause. Notably, probable cause itself is relatively easy to establish and warrants are rarely denied. In this case, it would have been quickly granted. Instead, the police demanded the information under the Stored Communications Act, which requires only a showing that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that the records sought “are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Notably, the government is relying on the 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, which is itself based on a technological relic. In that case, the court ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in phone numbers because we all “give” the numbers to a third party (the telephone company) to make calls. It is an anachronistic view that raises the image of a switchboard operator as opposed to computerized systems that merely transmit and connect numbers. Yet, the government is arguing that cellphones are no different in “sharing” a signal with companies like AT&T. This ignores that consumers have little choice. Moreover, even under the myth of the Smith case, there is no active sending of the signal for a cellphone user. It is part of this ubiquitous technology. If you have a cellphone, it emits this signal. The government wants the court to treat the use of a cellphone as a type of waiver of privacy.
In 2012, the Supreme Court resisted the encroachment of technological advances in United States v. Jones, when it ruled that police need a warrant to attach a GPS tracker on a car. Now, however, the government can negate that case by just using the cellphone inside the car to achieve that same result. Indeed, the case could negate a host of rulings in allowing the government to follow you within buildings, despite a 2011 ruling barring the warrantless use of thermal devices for such purposes.
The government hopes that the “third-party” mythology will drive a stake into the heart of privacy protections under Katz and these other cases. The fact that a warrant would have been easy to obtain in this case is both telling and chilling. Historically, governments have resisted any limitations on their power even when those limitations are workable and reasonable. Yet, it is not always easy to get a free people to surrender their privacy. To do so, citizens are fed false tradeoffs between privacy and security despite the fact that courts overwhelmingly approve warrants. Indeed, technology has made it faster and easier to obtain warrants by telephone and email.
Members of both parties have yielded to the demands for greater and greater surveillance power. They know that they are rarely given credit for defending privacy but could be blamed for not being sufficiently tough on crime or terrorism. For them, the choice is easy. For the rest of us, it is far more serious. If successful, most citizens will not only be practically forced to carry around a government surveillance device but will literally pay for the privilege. Make no mistake. To paraphrase the AT&T slogan, the government is on the verge of “rethinking possible” under the Fourth Amendment and could force the rest of us to rethink privacy in America.
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