> "If you’ve ever been wandering the streets of Chicago or New York, wondering why there’s no place to pee..."
Oh, there are places to pee, if you're brave. My last venture into a NYC public restroom was the one at Sun Yat-sen Plaza, which is under a beautiful pavilion. There was a man hanging around the urinals without apparent purpose other than staring at me because of course there was. There was only 1 working stall of 3, over the entire surface of which someone had managed to squirt at least a quart of liquid poo.
It's a roulette which can lead to a ticket, or an entry in the sex-offender registry, or nothing. Where it stops, nobody knows. Best just buy something at a bar, restaurant, café to get bathroom privileges.
A government may have entirely benign reasons for creating a comprehensive population database, but you cannot guarantee who will control that database later. You have to trust the people who control it, not only now, but at all times in the future, but history does not support that.
Nazi Germany and occupied forces used census data, municipal population registers, etc., to identify and track down targeted people. The United States, during World War II, used census information to assist in the removal and incarceration of citizens with Japanese, Italian, and German heritage. The Rwanda population database explicitly classified people as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. This became the mechanism to target Tutsi during the Rwandan genocide. In China today, these databases are used to surveil and imprison Uyghurs.
Those are examples of official policy turned to dark purposes. It did not even include malfeasance for malfeasance or criminality by individuals or cartels who somehow gain access.
A government won't give up on malicious acts just because it lacks accurate census. The United States does a lot more surveillance and oppression than EU countries that have national ID and mandatory ID documents.
The lack of a comprehensive population database only seems to hinder the actual useful civilian bureaucracy, not law enforcement, intelligence services, or ICE. The latter just grab anyone who looks brown enough.
In the US, where race is entirely defined by skin pigmentation and there's heavy segregation ("redlining") of living quarters, sure: databases aren't necessary. But in places where race is defined by heritage or culture, things which can be disguised by the targets of a regime, these databases are a vital part of any serious ethnic cleansing operation. I don't remember the statistic in IBM and the Holocaust that compares Jew survival rates in occupied countries with versus without digitised censuses, but the difference was stark.
Are you aware that pretty much every developed country has such database? Even the US, its guaranteed US 3 letters agencies have such comprehensive population databases
Uh? The reason is that the constitution doesn't explicitly allow the federal gov to do it, so it's a state power.
It's not like you care about all the thing you enumerated, they literally ask you for your "race" when getting a driver's license, which is the defacto ID document anyways. You're installing flock cameras everywhere and gargling palantir's balls while they implement the surveillance state.
Yeah and that's exactly what shouldn't happen. Government's should not have a power to ask a private company for data under any circumstances and they should not make "race" a compulsory data to submit, so that you could exercise your rights.
Each officer would then have malpractice insurance, like doctors or lawyers. Criminal or incompetent officers' insurance premiums would get so high that they would need to find another career.
> Think about what's happened since 2016: Populists exploit ad marketplaces, using them to bypass traditional media gatekeepers and deliver tailored messages to susceptible audiences.
I'm neither a fan of advertising nor Trump, but this reads like yet another patronizing think piece about how the wrong people get a vote and it's terrible that they use it in ways of which the author does not approve. "If only there were some way to control what these people say and hear, we would not have such problems as Trump."
The problem with controlling the flow of information, besides being morally reprehensible, is that it leads inevitably to ignoring problems that do not directly affect or concern the gatekeepers, like rural economic devastation. As well, these censorious advocates always imagine the mechanisms of control will only be used by people they agree with, never imagining the mechanisms of control will be used by their political opponents.
The author later reveals the agenda:
> “But it's free speech!” Bullshit. No one is entitled to yell at you “GET 20% OFF THIS UNDERWEAR YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY” with a dopamine megaphone in your bedroom. And to track 90% of your life to know when and how to say it. That's not free speech, that's harassment.
A fair and honest reckoning with the question would acknowledge the problems such a ban would introduce with free speech, not simply dismiss them as he does here. If you make a thing, and then you tell people about the thing, then you transgress against the advertising ban. The idea is nonsense.
While an advertising ban would fall afoul of free speech, I do think that some regulation of the digital ad auction/bid market falls squarely under the Commerce Clause. It wouldn’t even be an overreach like some “creative” uses of this clause. It’s clearly an interstate marketplace.
If we acknowledge the problems it creates in regard of free speech, we can then return to the distinction "that's not free speech, that's harassment", and take it seriously.
Primary source from Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
The key claim is: “Hoy tenemos evidencia de un cambio de direcciones IP de varios servidores de la Registraduría Nacional. Significa que se vulneró el software...” and then: “El único con capacidad de hacer eso en el mundo es el estado de Israel.”
In English: “Today we have evidence of a change in IP addresses on several National Registry servers. This means the software was breached...” and “The only one with the capacity to do that in the world is the State of Israel.”
To be clear, I think the accusation is absurd, but I am curious to see the reaction of the HN community.
Semitic does not refer to people nor to a race of people, but to a family of languages including Hebrew and Arabic. The man who coined the term "antisemitic" used it to describe his own views which were specifically anti-Jew.
The only erasure is the attempt to diffuse the term to include Akkadians, Amharics, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Black Israelites, adherents to the Nation of Islam, all 1.3 billions Arabs, what-have-you, when it always and only ever referred to anti-Jew hatred.
* Avisa Partners / iStrat, a French lobbying, intelligence, cybersecurity, and online-influence firm, has been accused in French investigations of information manipulation through ghostwritten articles, fake or undisclosed profiles, blogs, and Wikipedia interventions on behalf of powerful clients. Mediapart reported that Avisa was suspected of modifying Wikipedia pages for clients including French business elites and foreign powers. Wikimedia France also summarized the affair, saying Avisa or its subcontractors were suspected of numerous undeclared paid contributions to Wikipedia. Avisa has denied wrongdoing.
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* iStrat, Avisa's predecessor, was separately linked in French reporting to fake online personas used to publish commentary about business disputes. The Avisa Partners Wikipedia summary, based on French media reports, says JDN traced fake analyst profiles and critical commentary to iStrat-era activity, while iStrat and its owners denied the claims.
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* There was also a France-linked, though not company-linked, covert influence operation in Africa. In December 2020, Facebook/Meta removed networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting African audiences; one network was linked to individuals associated with the French military. Meta said the operation used fake accounts, pages posing as news or military entities, and off-platform domains. Graphika and Stanford described it as French and Russian influence operations going head-to-head in Africa.
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* The Washington Post reported the same Facebook takedown as people affiliated with the French military using fake Facebook accounts to meddle in African politics, while noting that Facebook said it did not have evidence that the French military institution itself directed the activity.
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> this is such a... wrong conclusion to make from the study. the study has found a correlation and by no means is it a causation.
I'm not seeing any assertion of causation from that quote.