So After Congressional Hearings, Facebook Changes the Rules

Posted on April 24, 2018April 24, 2018 by Denise Simon

The rules eh? Yeah those where employees are free to remove content with no explanation or often an appeals process. What is missing from the new rules, which Facebook states can change from time to time is the whole censorship issue especially when it comes to conservatives.

It was an internal secret on how Facebook controlled and managed content, in fact it still appears to be a secret. That means lawyers are involved, lots of them.In this day and time, definition of words and terms has become slippery and subjective and that continues to be the case at Facebook. So what are ‘community standards’ and exactly who decided those standards? Well 8000 words later describing community standards, that is IF anyone takes the time to read the text, we still don’t know.

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Oh yeah, one other item….that fake news thing…..crickets….further Mark Zuckerberg himself is quite naive about the ugliness around the world…connecting people to talk about rainbows and bunnies will make it all better?

Facebook Terms and Policies

Facebook Terms of Service, still from 2015

MENLO PARK, Calif. (Reuters) – Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Tuesday released a rule book for the types of posts it allows on its social network, giving far more detail than ever before on what is permitted on subjects ranging from drug use and sex work to bullying, hate speech and inciting violence.

Facebook for years has had “community standards” for what people can post. But only a relatively brief and general version was publicly available, while it had a far more detailed internal document to decide when individual posts or accounts should be removed.

Now, the company is providing the longer document on its website to clear up confusion and be more open about its operations, said Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of product policy and counter-terrorism.

“You should, when you come to Facebook, understand where we draw these lines and what’s OK and what’s not OK,” Bickert told reporters in a briefing at Facebook’s headquarters.

Facebook has faced fierce criticism from governments and rights groups in many countries for failing to do enough to stem hate speech and prevent the service from being used to promote terrorism, stir sectarian violence and broadcast acts including murder and suicide.

At the same time, the company has also been accused of doing the bidding of repressive regimes by aggressively removing content that crosses governments and providing too little information on why certain posts and accounts are removed.

New policies will, for the first time, allow people to appeal a decision to take down an individual piece of content. Previously, only the removal of accounts, Groups and Pages could be appealed.

Facebook is also beginning to provide the specific reason why content is being taken down for a wider variety of situations.

Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has become a dominant source of information in many countries around the world. It uses both automated software and an army of moderators that now numbers 7,500 to take down text, pictures and videos that violate its rules. Under pressure from several governments, it has been beefing up its moderator ranks since last year.

Bickert told Reuters in an interview that the standards are constantly evolving, based in part on feedback from more than 100 outside organizations and experts in areas such as counter-terrorism and child exploitation.

“Everybody should expect that these will be updated frequently,” she said.

The company considers changes to its content policy every two weeks at a meeting called the “Content Standards Forum,” led by Bickert. A small group of reporters was allowed to observe the meeting last week on the condition that they could describe process, but not substance.

At the April 17 meeting, about 25 employees sat around a conference table while others joined by video from New York, Dublin, Mexico City, Washington and elsewhere.

Attendees included people who specialize in public policy, legal matters, product development, communication and other areas. They heard reports from smaller working groups, relayed feedback they had gotten from civil rights groups and other outsiders and suggested ways that a policy or product could go wrong in the future. There was little mention of what competitors such as Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) do in similar situations.

Bickert, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, posed questions, provided background and kept the discussion moving. The meeting lasted about an hour.

Facebook is planning a series of public forums in May and June in different countries to get more feedback on its rules, said Mary deBree, Facebook’s head of content policy.

FROM CURSING TO MURDER

The longer version of the community standards document, some 8,000 words long, covers a wide array of words and images that Facebook sometimes censors, with detailed discussion of each category.

Videos of people wounded by cannibalism are not permitted, for instance, but such imagery is allowed with a warning screen if it is “in a medical setting.”

Facebook has long made clear that it does not allow people to buy and sell prescription drugs, marijuana or firearms on the social network, but the newly published document details what other speech on those subjects is permitted.

Content in which someone “admits to personal use of non-medical drugs” should not be posted on Facebook, the rule book says.

The document elaborates on harassment and bullying, barring for example “cursing at a minor.” It also prohibits content that comes from a hacked source, “except in limited cases of newsworthiness.”

The new community standards do not incorporate separate procedures under which governments can demand the removal of content that violates local law.

In those cases, Bickert said, formal written requests are required and are reviewed by Facebook’s legal team and outside attorneys. Content deemed to be permissible under community standards but in violation of local law – such as a prohibition in Thailand on disparaging the royal family – are then blocked in that country, but not globally.

The community standards also do not address false information – Facebook does not prohibit it but it does try to reduce its distribution – or other contentious issues such as use of personal data.

Lesley Stahl vs. Betsy DeVos on Education

Posted on April 23, 2018April 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

US Parents Involved in Education, USPIE, explains more details about the Federal government in public education. Common Core is still alive in many states, while in others, it just has a different name. Furthermore, not only is the Federal government at the state level working on regulating homeschooling, there is the whole matter of zero privacy for students. This is a terrifying condition.

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Wonder if Lesley Stahl reads The Hill and this significant report or if Betsy DeVos has read it.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ recent interview with Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” caused quite a bit of backlash from critics.

DS: As my colleague Jonathan Butcher has written, “60 Minutes” ignored many of the facts about the state of education in America. Response to the interview drew quite a bit of criticism of DeVos and her policy solutions.

Perhaps one of the most pivotal moments came when she suggested that the United States’ heavy federal investment in education has not yielded any results. Stahl hit back, asserting that school performance has been on the rise.

But the latest government data show otherwise. According to the recently released 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s “report card,” we now have more evidence that DeVos was correct.

In fact, recent scores show virtually no improvement over 2015 scores. Eighth-grade reading saw a single point improvement over 2015 scores (10 points is considered equivalent to a grade level), while all other categories saw no improvement.

These lackluster results come on the heels of declines on the 2015 assessment, suggesting the beginning of a trend in the wrong direction for academic outcomes.

>>> Nation’s ‘Report Card’ Shows Federal Intervention Has Not Helped Students

Indeed, Stahl’s claim that the state of public schools has gotten better simply doesn’t hold up to the data. It fact, DeVos is entirely correct to point out that public school outcomes have not meaningfully improved, and that our nation’s heavy federal intervention in K-12 education has failed to help the problem.

As Heritage Foundation education fellow Lindsey Burke writes:

Forty-nine out of 50 states were stagnant on the 2017 report card, and achievement gaps persist. Historically, federal education spending has been appropriated to close gaps, yet this spending—more than $2 trillion in inflation-adjusted spending at the federal level alone since 1965—has utterly failed to achieve that goal.

Increasing federal intervention over the past half-century, and the resulting burden of complying with federal programs, rules, and regulations, have created a parasitic relationship with federal education programs and states, and is straining the time and resources of local schools.

Indeed, for decades, Washington has poured billions of dollars into the public education system under the assumption that more federal spending will close achievement caps and improve the academic outcomes of students. With mounting evidence that more federal spending is not the answer, it may be time to consider other policy approaches.

DeVos is correct to suggest school choice as a solution to lackluster school performance. Parents who cannot afford to send their child to a school that is the right fit deserve to have options. As DeVos told Stahl:

Any family that has the economic means and the power to make choices is doing so for their children. Families that don’t have the power, that can’t decide, ‘I’m gonna move from this apartment in downtown whatever to the suburb where I think the school is gonna be better for my child.’ If they don’t have that choice, and they are assigned to that school, they are stuck there. I am fighting for the parents who don’t have those choices. We need all parents to have those choices.

In light of recent evidence from the nation’s report card, “60 Minutes” and other school choice critics should consider that DeVos was correct in her framing of problems facing the nation’s schools and is on the right track with possible solutions—namely, that empowering parents is the right approach to improving American education.

The DNC Sues, Counter Suits in the Making

Posted on April 23, 2018April 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

Tom Perez, Chairman of the Democrat National Committee has filed a lawsuit against 15 entities/people including John Does (which could be 10 or more people). The question is who is funding this lawsuit as the DNC is at least $6.1 million in debt. Oh wait, the DNC is also fundraising off this lawsuit….okay…moving on. The DNC has also requested a jury trial.

Levin: 'The Democrat Party just made a massive mistake' photo

Lawsuits require something called discovery which would be a long process and you can bet the Russian Federation will not even bother with any kind of compliance. Ah yes, we cannot overlook that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is also funding raising to file a counter suit against the DNC. Will any of this go anywhere even if a judge accepts the case? Likely no….it is a collective fundraising gesture and a matter of dragging out the hacking scandals for years to come.

Meanwhile, TechDirt has an interesting summary of this legal warfare.

Most of the time when we see these laws used, they’re indications of pretty weak lawsuits, and going through this one, that definitely seems to be the case here. Indeed, some of the claims made by the DNC here are so outrageous that they would effectively make some fairly basic reporting illegal. One would have hoped that the DNC wouldn’t seek to set a precedent that reporting on leaked documents is against the law — especially given how reliant the DNC now is on leaks being reported on in their effort to bring down the existing president. I’m not going to go through the whole lawsuit, but let’s touch on a few of the more nutty claims here.

The crux of the complaint is that these groups / individuals worked together in a conspiracy to leak DNC emails and documents. And, there’s little doubt at this point that the Russians were behind the hack and leak of the documents, and that Wikileaks published them. Similarly there’s little doubt that the Trump campaign was happy about these things, and that a few Trump-connected people had some contacts with some Russians. Does that add up to a conspiracy? My gut reaction is to always rely on Ken “Popehat” White’s IT’S NOT RICO, DAMMIT line, but I’ll leave that analysis to folks who are more familiar with RICO.

But let’s look at parts we are familiar with, starting with the DMCA claim, since that’s the one that caught my eye first. A DMCA claim? What the hell does copyright have to do with any of this? Well…

Plaintiff’s computer networks and files contained information subject to protection under the copyright laws of the United States, including campaign strategy documents and opposition research that were illegally accessed without authorization by Russia and the GRU.

Access to copyrighted material contained on Plaintiff’s computer networks and email was controlled by technological measures, including measures restricting remote access, firewalls, and measures restricting acess to users with valid credentials and passwords.

In violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), Russia, the GRU, and GRU Operative #1 circumvented these technological protection measures by stealing credentials from authorized users, condcting a “password dump” to unlawfully obtain passwords to the system controlling access to the DNC’s domain, and installing malware on Plaintiff’s computer systems.

Holy shit. This is the DNC trying to use DMCA 1201 as a mini-CFAA. They’re not supposed to do that. 1201 is the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA and is supposed to be about stopping people from hacking around DRM to free copyright-covered material. Of course, 1201 has been used in all sorts of other ways — like trying to stop the sale of printer cartridges and garage door openers — but this seems like a real stretch. Russia hacking into the DNC had literally nothing to do with copyright or DRM. Squeezing a copyright claim in here is just silly and could set an awful precedent about using 1201 as an alternate CFAA (we’ll get to the CFAA claims in a moment). If this holds, nearly any computer break-in to copy content would also lead to DMCA claims. That’s just silly.

Onto the CFAA part. As we’ve noted over the years, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is quite frequently abused. Written in response to the movie War Games to target “hacking,” the law has been used for basically any “this person did something we dislike on a computer” type issues. It’s been dubbed “the law that sticks” because in absence of any other claims that one always sticks because of how broad it is.

At least this case does involve actual hacking. I mean, someone hacked into the DNC’s network, so it actually feels (amazingly) that this may be one case where the CFAA claims are legit. Those claims are just targeting the Russians, who were the only ones who actually hacked the DNC. So, I’m actually fine with those claims. Other than the fact that they’re useless. It’s not like the Russian Federation or the GRU is going to show up in court to defend this. And they’re certainly not going to agree to discovery. I doubt they’ll acknowledge the lawsuit at all, frankly. So… reasonable claims, impossible target.

Then there’s the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which is a part of ECPA, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which we’ve written about a ton and it does have lots of its own problems. These claims are also just against Russia, the GRU and Guccifer 2.0, and like the DMCA claims appear to be highly repetitive with the CFAA claims. Instead of just unauthorized access, it’s now unauthorized access… to communications.

It’s then when we get into the trade secrets part where things get… much more problematic. These claims are brought against not just the Russians, but also Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Even if you absolutely hate and / or distrust Assange, these claims are incredibly problematic against Wikileaks.

Defendants Russia, the GRU, GRU Operative #1, WikiLeaks, and Assange disclosed Plaintiff’s trade secrets without consent, on multiple dates, discussed herein, knowing or having reason to know that trade secrets were acquired by improper means.

If that violates the law, then the law is unconstitutional. The press regularly publishes trade secrets that may have been acquired by improper means by others and handed to the press (as is the case with this content being handed to Wikileaks). Saying that merely disclosing the information is a violation of the law raises serious First Amendment issues for the press.

I mean, what’s to stop President Trump from using the very same argument against the press for revealing, say, his tax returns? Or reports about business deals gone bad, or the details of secretive contracts? These could all be considered “trade secrets” and if the press can’t publish them that would be a huge, huge problem.

In a later claim (under DC’s specific trade secrets laws), the claims are extended to all defendants, which again raises serious First Amendment issues. Donald Trump Jr. may be a jerk, but it’s not a violation of trade secrets if someone handed him secret DNC docs and he tweeted them or emailed them around.

There are also claims under Virginia’s version of the CFAA. The claims against the Russians may make sense, but the complaint also makes claims against everyone else by claiming they “knowingly aided, abetted, encouraged, induced, instigated, contributed to and assisted Russia.” Those seem like fairly extreme claims for many of the defendants, and again feel like the DNC very, very broadly interpreting a law to go way beyond what it should cover.

As noted above, there are some potentially legit claims in here around Russia hacking into the DNC’s network (though, again, it’s a useless defendant). But some of these other claims seem like incredible stretches, twisting laws like the DMCA for ridiculous purposes. And the trade secret claims against the non-Russians is highly suspect and almost certainly not a reasonable interpretation of the law under the First Amendment.

DNC Lawsuit by Zerohedge on Scribd

End of the Castro Era, yet Communism Prevails Under new Leader

Posted on April 19, 2018April 19, 2018 by Denise Simon

In February of 2013, the 600 members of the National Assembly of People’s Power and the 1600 provincial government representatives voted for Miguel Diaz Canal to be vice president. As of April 2018, Miguel Diaz Canal will reign supreme over Cuba as Raul Castro steps down.

While the Cuban military runs most of the operations in Cuba including all tourism, it is predicted under Miguel Diaz Canal, the junta will expand in Cuba. Cuba remains on the U.S. State Department Tier 2 Watchlist because of human trafficking.

For a historic slide show on Cuba, go here.

El ALBA: Trece años de "una poderosa esperanza" | Cubadebate photo

Cuba remains in an economic crisis and has been patching this crisis with oil agreements with Venezuela, attempting to increase agriculture production and applying some reforms. Meanwhile Cuba has asked Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom for debt forgiveness which in total is estimated in the $11 billion range. Russia wrote off $32 billion in Soviet era debt of Cuba in 2014.

As a continued threat to the United States, Russia re-opened a signals intelligence facility at Lourdes and two Russian oil companies, Gazprom and Zarubezhneft have continued offshore oil drilling exploration operations. In 2014, President Xi of China visited Cuba to sign 29 trade agreements along with debt and credit cooperation concessions.

Putin in Cuba, hopes for more trade with Latin America ... photo

In 2013, a weapons shipment on board a North Korea ship that left Cuba bound for the return to North Korea was discovered raising additional concerns for sanctions violations of both countries. The ship’s cargo was discovered in Panama due to suspicions of carrying illicit narcotics.

In 2009, the Obama administration began a significant shift in policy toward Cuba launching a new beginning which led to the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana. Yet nothing in Cuba changed with regard to human rights violations but some dissident prisoners were released and there were some Cuba spies released from the United States back to Cuba. U.S. citizen Alan Gross was also released from prison by Cuba and returned to the United States. In at least four rounds of talks with Cuba to reestablish diplomatic relations with the United States, Barack Obama sent a resolution to Congress to removed Cuba from the designation of a State Sponsor of International Terrorism. There were no objections by Congress and the rescission of this designation was removed.

Further, under Barack Obama many other initiatives were launched including law enforcement cooperation, smuggling prevention, technical exchanges, environmental, banking, maritime issues, counter-narcotics, trade, travel and cyber-crime. Continued health cooperation, direct mail services and oil spill preparedness were all part of the Obama new era policies.

The Trump administration has made statements indicating a reversal to some of the policy changes made during the Obama administration. This also includes operations at Guantanamo Bay.Meanwhile, Cuba still protects fugitives from justice including Assata Shakur also known as Joanne Chesimard that killed a New Jersey State police officer when she was a member of the Black Liberation Army. Another fugitive is William Guillermo Morales, a member of FALN that a domestic terror group convicted in New York for bomb production and weapons charges in cases going back to 1978.

There are continued property claims totaling 5911 where private property and that of U.S. corporations were confiscated by the Cuban government. The value of these claims is in the $10.9 billion and no resolution is in sight.

So, as Raul Castro passe power to a younger groomed and mentored communist, there is no reason to consider that relations and conditions will improve or move closer to a democratic process in Cuba. Not to be overlooked, the matter of a still unclear health attack of U.S. and Canadian diplomats assigned to the embassy in Havana has not been resolved. Both the United States and Canada have removed personnel as a result of debilitating health issues where Cuba has not protected or mitigated these acoustic attacks in and around the homes of diplomatic housing quarters.

Miguel Diaz Canal will continue to carry on the Castro regime and communist party platform. In fact, it is said that Miguel Diaz Canal will in fact be much more of a hardliner than that of the previous Castro regime.

In a videotaped private meeting with Communist Party members, Cuban Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel — often portrayed as a moderate politician with a quiet disposition — took on an all too familiar hardline tone that offered a rare glimpse into his ideology.

In the video, which has quickly spread across social media platforms, Díaz-Canel lashed out against Cuban dissidents, independent media and embassies of several European countries, accusing them all of supporting subversive projects.

For the United States, he had this message: Cuba will not make any concessions.

“The U.S. government… invaded Cuba, put the blockade [embargo] in place, imposed restrictive measures. Cuba did not do any of that, so in return for nothing they have to solve those asymmetries if they want relations and if they want normalization of the relations,” Díaz-Canel said in the February meeting captured on video and published by Cuban dissident Antonio Rodiles on YouTube this week.

Have you Met James Fraser? Students may Know him Soon

Posted on April 16, 2018April 16, 2018 by Denise Simon

This fella took over where Howard Zinn left off…beware parents…

James W. Fraser, Professor of History and Education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University, holds a joint appointment in the departments of Humanities and Social Sciences and Teaching and Learning. Fraser’s teaching and research is motivated by his concern with the challenges facing future Social Studies and History teachers who must find ways of engaging sometimes bored students with American and world history. His most recent book, By the People: A History of the United States is designed to help make US History courses more lively, with a focus on the agency of everyday Americans of many different communities, times, and places. Fraser’s work also reflects his concern with complex debates about the place of religion in public schools, especially in the United States, but also internationally. He has written, taught, and consulted about the state of teacher education in the United States and elsewhere, and also written and spoken about the future of the History of Education as an academic field of study. Fraser is the president of the History of Education Society for 2013-2014. He has served on the Editorial Board of the History of Education Quarterly, and as the NYU liaison to New Design High School, a public high school in New York’s Lower East Side, and to Facing History and Ourselves. He is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the NYU Department of Teaching and Learning, and serves on the committees responsible for the NYU programs in London, England and Accra, Ghana.

From 2008 to 2012, Fraser was the Senior Vice President for Programs at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, where he coordinated the different Fellowship programs and led the launch of the Foundation’s Fellowships for Teachers. Now back to full-time teaching at NYU, he remains a senior advisor to the Foundation. Fraser was the founding dean of Northeastern University’s School of Education, serving from 1999 to 2004. He was a member and chair of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Education Deans Council, the Boston School Committee Nominating Committee, and other boards. He was also a lecturer in the Program in Religion and Secondary Education at the Harvard University Divinity School from 1997 to 2004. He has taught at Lesley University, the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Boston University, and Public School 76, Manhattan. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and was pastor of Grace Church in East Boston, Massachusetts, from 1986 to 2006 and is now a member of Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, New York.

*** That church by the way is an activist ‘justice’ church. And that activism is pervasive in Mr. Fraser as he is pushing a new high school advanced class history textbook, full of indoctrination.

*** In part:

The final section of the book, titled “The Angry Election of 2016,” is highly critical of Trump.

“Most thought that Trump was too extreme a candidate to win the nomination, but his extremism, his anti-establishment rhetoric, and, some said, his not-very-hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters,” Fraser wrote.

A new AP history textbook that covers the 2016 election is coming under fire for being “blatantly biased” against Trump and his supporters. (Courtesy of Terra Snyder)

Trump voters are described as “mostly older, often rural or suburban, and overwhelmingly white” while the book uses the viewpoint of Clinton voters to describe Trump’s supporters as fearful, backwards, sexist people who supported a mentally ill candidate.

“Clinton’s supporters feared that the election had been determined by people who were afraid of a rapidly developing ethnic diversity of the country, discomfort with their candidate’s gender, and nostalgia for an earlier time in the nation’s history,” the textbook says. “They also worried about the mental stability of the president-elect and the anger that he and his supporters brought to the nation.”

The book also bashes police for its handling of the Ferguson riots.

In a section titled “Black Lives Matter,” Fraser wrote that after the shooting of Michael Brown, Brown’s “parents were kept away at gunpoint.” He paints a negative view of police while glossing over violent tactics carried out by some rioters, critics say.

“The nearly all-white police force was seen as an occupying army in the mostly African American town…the police increased the tensions, defacing memorials set up for Brown and using rubber bullets on demonstrators,” he wrote.

According to his bio, Fraser wrote the book to “help make U.S. History courses more lively, with a focus on the agency of everyday Americans or many different communities, times, and places.” More of the story here.