#Human Rights in Tech

[nando161mando]

Remember Luigi is currently innocent

Couldn't Be Any Conflict

[neosciencehub]

Future of Neurotechnology in Post - Neuralink Era!

Future of Neurotechnology in Post-Neuralink Era! @neosciencehub #neosciencehub #science #neurotechnology #neuralink #braincomputer #neurological #brainchip #NeuralinkDevelopment #DataSecurity #ArtificialIntelligence #AITech #HumanAI #NSH #Innovations

The successful human implantation of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface marks a watershed moment in the field of Neurotechnology. This achievement not only demonstrates the immense potential of merging human cognition with artificial intelligence but also sets the stage for a future filled with extraordinary possibilities and challenges. NSH’s special report is to explore what lies ahead in the…

[freewatermelon0]

Google is hiding the truth, and playing with words to change the facts, and to change the truth about what happened in Nuseirat camp, it's literally censoring the Nuseirat Massacre.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Flying Logos https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

--

KGBO https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suncorp_Bank_ATM.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[thisischeri]

instagram: cheri.png

[imaginationblur]

Ending of frontiers got me thinkin, you know what that means

FOREVER WIP HELL (Ref. Amy design)

[support-farouq-family]

An Urgent Plea: Help Farouq’s Family Rebuild After Fleeing Gaza

I’m reaching out to you during a time of deep urgency and need. Farouq’s family of eight has endured unimaginable hardship. Recently, they were forced to flee Gaza due to the ongoing conflict and have now resettled in Egypt. This journey has stripped them of everything, including their home and livelihood. Currently, they are without work, struggling to meet even their basic needs, and are urgently seeking your support to help them secure rent, food, and other essential necessities.

Their ordeal began in October when they had to leave their home in northern Gaza—the first area struck by bombings. Over the past three months, they’ve faced tremendous suffering, becoming homeless multiple times as they moved from place to place in search of safety. Initially, they found temporary shelter at a relative’s home in Rafah, but they were soon forced to flee again and are now in a refugee camp near Rafah. As they face the reality of needing a more permanent place to live, they’re met with the challenge of soaring rental prices and an overwhelming demand for housing.

The family also faces significant health challenges. Farouq has been struggling with prostate disease, while his daughter has type 1 diabetes, and both find it extremely difficult to access the medications they need to survive. Additionally, their only means of transportation—a car essential for emergencies and basic needs—was destroyed.

Your donations can provide them with immediate essentials, including shelter, life-saving medication, and food. Looking forward, it can also offer them hope and resources to rebuild their lives once this ordeal has passed.

Any contribution, no matter the amount, will make a meaningful impact and bring them a step closer to stability and safety. Please share this campaign with your network—friends, family, and colleagues—to help us reach this goal. Your compassion, generosity, and solidarity mean the world to us during this challenging time.

Thank you for standing with us. Together, we can make a difference, offering Farouq’s family the safety, security, and dignity they so urgently need.

https://gofund.me/b0c7ab1c

[thoughtportal]

Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel's strategy for domination is just about as sinister as it gets.

More Perfect Union

[nando161mando]

Yep, even though the law says the Federal Government must report on all the denials by the Health Insurance corporations, they don't.

That's why denials went from 1-3% ten years ago, to more than 15% last year.

[troythecatfish]

spiteful sanctions and embargoes only do harm to innocent civilians

[lizardywizardy]

Deaths that result from resistance against settler-colonial violence is ALWAYS the fault of the colonizers. Not the colonized.

Don't want a war? Don't spend 80 years doing an apartheid against the indigenous.

[sorrysomethingwentwrong]

Earth’s Black Box !

the scientists' creation will be installed in a remote location in Tasmania.

"Unless we dramatically transform our way of life, climate change and other man-made perils will cause our civilization to crash.

“Earth’s Black Box will record every step we take towards this catastrophe. Hundreds of data sets, measurements and interactions relating to the health of our planet will be continuously collected and safely stored for future generations.”

“The purpose of the device is to provide an unbiased account of the events that lead to the demise of the planet, hold accountability for future generations and inspire urgent action.

“How the story ends is completely up to us. Only one thing is certain, your actions, inactions and interactions are now being recorded.”

Speaking about the project, Jim Curtis, executive creative director at Clemenger BBDO, told ABC: “The idea is if the Earth does crash as a result of climate change, this indestructible recording device will be there for whoever's left to learn from that.

"It's also there to hold leaders to account – to make sure their action or inaction is recorded."

Earth's Black Box will collect measurements of ocean acidification, land and sea temperatures, human population, energy consumption, military spending and atmospheric CO2.

As for its size, the box will be made from three-inch-thick steel and cantilevered off granite.

The inside of the box sees a system of Internet-connected storage drives that are powered by solar panels on the Black Box's roof.

The project is made possible thanks to a collaboration between researchers at the University of Tasmania, agencies Clemenger BBDO and The Glue Society.

[agentfascinateur]

The real war

#erosion of human rights

#surveillance states

#palantir

[nando161mando]

Systemic Wage Disparity