Mediaboss Marketing

from the lobbying-for-a-worse-America dept

A COP IN EVERY HOUSE: that's the American dream. Maybe they can't enter the home, what with the Fourth Amendment and all, but they can be invited to every online get-together thrown by apps that promise neighborhood unity while asking law enforcement to get in on the action.

Ring, Amazon's doorbell/camera company, has made the relationship between neighborhood "sharing" and law enforcement explicit. It's right there in the term sheets. While Ring takes the PR reins to steer the official discourse, it's offering cops steeper discounts on Ring cameras they can hand out to citizens in exchange for pushing citizens to sign up for Neighbors, Ring's snitch app. Once attached to the app, Ring makes sharing of camera footage seamless and encourages homeowners to report suspicious people and activities. Unsurprisingly, many of the suspicious people reported are minorities.

It's not just Ring and Neighbors, as Citylab has discovered. Nextdoor -- a hyperlocal Facebook clone (and hotbed of bigotry) -- is courting cops as forcibly silenced partners in its plans to increase its user base.

Charles Husted, the chief of police in Sedona, Arizona, couldnt contain his excitement. He had just been accepted into the Public Agencies Advisory Council for Nextdoor, the neighborhood social networking app.

Youre the best!!! A great Christmas present, he wrote in a December email to Parisa Safarzadeh, Government Relations Manager for Nextdoor.com Inc., obtained by CityLab through a public records request.

The invitation was too good to turn down: an all expenses paid trip to Nextdoor's headquarters in San Francisco. The company covered the costs for all invitees. In exchange for their participation, Nextdoor picked up the estimated $16,900 tab. And it swore participants to silence with a non-disclosure agreement.

Unfortunately for Nextdoor, this doesn't cover public records, which is what Citylab used to uncover this unseemly relationship between the social media company and US law enforcement. Chief Husted has no regrets -- or at least none he's willing to share publicly, possibly because of the NDA he signed. From what he can see, this isn't questionable. It's just a step in the right direction.

Husted says that leaning on social media not just Nextdoor, but also Facebook or Twitter in the line of duty is an inevitability of the current age. Its naive to think as public safety folks that we can keep doing our work the same as we have for years and years, he said. We have to evolve with the times, and the times have to do with social media: Thats where our communities are at. We have to find a way to be there too.

He's right. Social media can't be ignored. But Nextdoor isn't inviting anyone from its largest group of stakeholders: members of the public. Instead, it's paying for government employees and officials to travel to San Francisco to hear its pitch for greater government involvement in a private company's communications platform. Nextdoor may claim to be connecting locals with each other, but its efforts are focused on roping in the people who are supposed to be serving its users: public servants.

Robbie Turner, a senior city strategist with Nextdoor, wrote to Husted that when expanding Nextdoors reach to Canada, the company was using the same strategy we used when we first launched in the U.S. recruit the major Police Departments and have them help us grow membership and engagement quickly.

That's the bottom line: bumps in usage and users. Turning public entities into tools of corporations is seldom a good idea and it's certainly a bad idea when Nextdoor's user base appears to be willing to turn themselves into snitches at the drop of a hyperlink. If cops want to break bias patterns, they need to steer clear of unsubstantiated reports from biased Nextdoor users. Instead, Nextdoor is encouraging police to embrace the platform and all the problems inherent in its "see something, say something" nudges.

As for other public officials who took advantage of Nextdoor's all-expense-paid offer, they're having a problem seeing a problem with any of this. Never mind the optics. Officials want everyone to focus only on the letter of the law, which contains enough loopholes to drive an entire junket through.

Several public officials who were part of the Public Agencies Advisory Council say that the trip didnt conflict with any city policies. Lara Foss, a corporate communications marketing consultant for the City of Austin, told CityLab that since the trip was work-related, it did not violate the citys gift policy. Sedonas Husted also said there were no endorsement regulations that prohibited him from participating. Katie Nelson, social media and public relations coordinator for the Mountain View Police Department in California, said that because the citys policy prohibits taking paid trips on clocked time, she took a few days off from work to participate in the San Francisco meet-up.

Being wined and dined on a corporate tab makes people more receptive to their pitches. Everyone knows this. And that's why nearly everyone thinks things like this reek of buying off cops and politicians. Everyone, that is, but the cops and politicians being seduced by a whirlwind trip to a tech company's headquarters.

Once the dirty has been done, it's time to let what happened at Nextdoor HQ stay at Nextdoor HQ. This isn't so much a slogan as it is an existential lawsuit threat. Shut up, says Nextdoor, or it will be more than an un-invite to future events. It will be your proverbial ass in a litigation sling. Public officials owe a duty of transparency to their constituents. But Nextdoor is appending a whole lot of asterisks to the duties of public officials. The exceptions include a completely separate arm of the government.

In the terms of Nextdoors NDA, advisory council members are not allowed to release public statements about the partnership without the consent of Nextdoor, nor are they able to follow a court order to disclose any information deemed confidential by Nextdoor without alerting the company first.

And Nextdoor has made it easy for its snitchiest users to bring the government in on conversations other Nextdoor users might have thought were private. The platform can't allow users to file actual police reports but it does give users an option to screw other users over. A feature called "Forward to Police" allows users to send copies of private conversations to officers monitoring accounts. This feature is activated by police departments themselves, so those willing to further demonstrate their indifference for the people they serve can give people an one-click solution for all their snitching needs.

Sure, any participant in a private conversation could take screenshots and hand them to law enforcement. Removing the minimal tech hurdles, however, encourages people to use this option anytime they come across something that bothers them. It's a "speak to the manager" button, but one that potentially involves government-blessed use of deadly force. If people don't even have to leave their chairs to engage in SWATting-adjacent activities, they won't. Giving them a button just increases the chance someone's going to get hurt or killed.

At the end of the day, it's problematic all over. Public officials are endorsing a platform that paid to have them feel good about it -- both by covering their trip to San Francisco and by giving them the impression they are doing something to make their communities better by making them members of a private company's "Public Advisory Council."

Filed Under: law enforcement, nextdoor, police, social media, surveillanceCompanies: nextdoor

Go here to see the original:
Nextdoor Is Courting Cops And Public Officials Using All-Expenses-Paid Trips To Its Headquarters - Techdirt

Accenture and the Digital Dollar Foundation have published a whitepaper laying out proposals for the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the US.

The partnership, known as the Digital Dollar Project, is seeking to future-proof the dollar against developments in the way consumers and businesses transact across the world.

Specifically, the Project wishes to protect the USDs status as the worlds reserve currency, which may be under threat with other national governments exploring launching CBDCs.

The paper also highlights the decline in the use of cash accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis, while also emphasising the potential financial inclusionary benefits of a digital dollar, as is stressed in all discussion around digital currencies.

However, the contribution of a digital dollar to international payments is also emphasised. The whitepaper points to the possibilities of enhancing competition in international payments and integrating financial markets, which would appear to be a statement of intent regarding the importance of the dollar retaining the status it has enjoyed for decades as the worlds de facto currency.

It cites the $30 billion in remittances that were sent from the US to Mexico in 2019 as an example of the potentials in cross-border payments without the need for an intermediary, while also reducing costs and other frictions.

The whitepaper concludes that the US must decide the role it wishes to play as this wave of digital token innovation gains momentum and questions over the dollars ability to remain a default analog instrument and unit of account.

The US must therefore take a prominent role in development of CBDCs the launch of a digital dollar is a logical step in achieving this.

This is a widespread view among experts in digital currency innovation, who believe that that the US has the most to lose in a race to develop and rollout a CBDC that achieves international use.

Carlos Cocuzzo, economist at ING, has noted that while countries like Canada and Japan could take a wait and see approach with their CBDC plans, the US cannot afford to.

If, for example, the Peoples Bank of China were to allow foreign customers or clients to access the digital yuan, that would have an impact on the demand for dollars in the foreign exchange market, he said in March.

Opportunity for modernisation

The Project puts forward a champion model that it proposes a digital dollar should follow. This would operate as a third form of money alongside existing fiat currency and commercial bank money and be distributed through the existing architecture of commercial banks and regulated money transmitters.

The whitepaper also favours a token-based system as it more closely replicates the use of cash, rather than an account-based model which relies on the authentication to updates balances on a ledger.

Addressing privacy, the Project describes the balance that needs to be found between complete anonymity and full traceability. The former would be incompatible with law enforcement, while the latter could inhibit adoption.

The whitepaper cites the Fourth Amendment which protects citizens from unreasonable searches or seizures of property, which one assumes would extend to the possession of digital currency.

Developers of a digital dollar would then need to consider where to draw the line, according to the Project, between sensible privacy rights and necessary KYC/AML compliance.

It suggests that one approach would be to treat the CBDC similarly to how cash is in the present system, though acknowledges that the comparison cannot be fully born out: cash is anonymous by its nature rather than by design.

Nonetheless, submitting an IRS form is required when receiving a cash payment of $10,000 or more, which points towards some parameters put in place to control who is allowed to possess digital dollars and in what quantity.

The champion model would also explore the use of blockchain technology, possibly with a number of both private and public organisations validating transactions.

A digital dollar would then spark a flurry of modernisation in the existing ecosystems throughout the banking and payments industries.

This could be compared to the advent of the internet and smartphones, which ushered in a wave of innovation and ingenuity in the way people and businesses are able to transact. A digital dollar, the paper claims, would provide a modern currency architecture to be leveraged and built upon.

One of these areas is cybersecurity, a key requirement of a digital dollar. While there are many solutions that can mitigate risk in this area, the current financial infrastructure is built on legacy systems that could be prone to exploitation.

The Fed would, of course, demand the highest standards of cybersecurity from any organisations wishing to use a digital dollar, which would require new infrastructure with updated technology.

Read more:
US must look to 'future proof' the dollar with a CBDC - Finextra

Submitted by William Elder.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Boy, is it tough to lay down laws about communications in the early Nineteenth for application in the Twenty-First Century. Search and seizure or the probable cause amendment, to which the Fourth Amendment is often shortened, like so much of American jurisprudence, has its roots in English Common Law long before electronic devices. Common because prior judicial decisions as opposed to specific statute rulings are recognized as general guides for current decisions across all English courts making of them precedents. As an English colony, America was brought into that system and it was made a foundation for American jurisprudence by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in 1789. Because the British had so flagrantly ignored this part of their own English law during the Revolutionary Period, the Fourth Amendment was cemented into our Bill of Rights in 1791, almost as a matter of course.

This Amendment also bans evidentiary fishing searches and seizures by authorities of citizens and their property, requiring instead a specific warrant, upon demonstrated probable cause, and stating just what the search is looking for and where it is likely to be found. In 1914, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Weeks v. United States that any evidence obtained by federal law enforcement officers in violation of the Fourth Amendment could not be used in federal criminal proceedings.

Mapp vs Ohio, in 1961, extended the Supreme Courts ruling that the exclusion of such evidence obtained by such methods applies also in state courts. A judicial fistfight ensued. The Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments were invoked. Justice Clark reasoned the exclusionary rule is an essential part of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments is not only the logical dictate of prior cases, but it also makes very good sense. There is no war between the Constitution and common sense. He reversed the Supreme Court of Ohios judgment against Dolly Mapp (a colorful case involving Ohio anti-pornography laws). Justice John Marshall Harlan II and three others disagreed, arguing the principle of privacy which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment should only apply. Stay tuned.

Related

Read more here:
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America - The Suburban Times

As members of Congress and advocacy groups on Friday condemned President Donald Trump's "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" threat against Minneapolis protesters as morally repugnant, legal experts also warned that law enforcement officials or military personnel carrying out such an order from the president would be in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"Trump doesn't care at all about the Constitution, of course, especially when he's trying to scare voters," tweeted Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "But actually following a policy of 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts' would violate the Fourth Amendment, for starters."

Kerr pointed to Tennessee v. Garner, a 1985 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the use of deadly force by law enforcement "to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable."

"Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so," the high court's ruling states.

Trump doesn't care at all about the Constitution, of course, especially when he's trying to scare voters. But actually following a policy of "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" would violate the 4th Amendment, for starters. See Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985). https://t.co/BRWSUn8CaK pic.twitter.com/GA6dAnHwm7

Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) May 29, 2020

I imagine Trump at his phone trying to decide whether to advocate violating the First Amendment (punishing social media for its speech) or the Fourth Amendment (shooting looters).

But then he chooses both, of course.

Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) May 29, 2020

In a tweet early Friday morning as nationwide protests against the police killing of George Floyd intensified for the fourth straight day, Trump called Minneapolis demonstrators "thugs" and said he is prepared to send in the U.S. military to occupy the city with a green light to open fire on those who damage property and steal goods.

"Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts," Trump tweeted. "Thank you!"

Twitter posted a content warning over the tweet and said the president's message violated the platform's rules against "glorifying violence."

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Get our best delivered to your inbox.

As HuffPost's Sara Boboltz pointed out, Trump "did not coin the phrase 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts.' The line is half a century old, and combative Miami Police Chief Walter Headley Jr. originally used it during the height of civil rights protests in the 1960s."

"Headley led the Florida city's law enforcement from 1948 until his sudden death in 1968," Boboltz noted. "He attracted national attention and condemnation in December 1967, when he threatened to step up already severe policing practices that included use of tear gas and an aggressive stop-and-frisk policy."

George Wallace, the racist former governor of Alabama, also used the phrase during his 1968 presidential bid.

Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, an NBC News legal analyst, said "Trump's tweet threatening 'shooting' in Minneapolis is disgusting and repulsive to our system of laws."

"Every American should denounce this threat to use unconstitutional deadly force," McQuade tweeted.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) condemned the president's threat as a call "for violence against Black Americans."

"His advocacy of illegal, state-sponsored killing is horrific," tweeted Warren. "Politicians who refuse to condemn it share responsibility for the consequences."

Donald Trump is calling for violence against Black Americans. His advocacy of illegal, state-sponsored killing is horrific. Politicians who refuse to condemn it share responsibility for the consequences.

Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) May 29, 2020

In a statement on Friday, Jeffery Robinson, director of the ACLU's Trone Center for Justice and Equality, urged the hundreds of National Guard members who have been activated in Minneapolis as well as the city's police force to "comply with the law and not President Trump."

"President Trump has told police officers in New York that they should feel free to use violence against 'thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon,'" Robinson said. "He did not hesitate to claim to a foreign leader that there is no racial problem in America. The president's latest suggestion that law enforcement or the military should literally murder protesters is, unfortunately, no longer shocking."

"Trump's response ignores the fact that the inherent problem is not the reaction to Mr. Floyd's murder," Robinson added. "The problem is Mr. Floyd's murder."

Read the rest here:
Carrying Out Trump's "When the Looting Starts, the Shooting Starts" Order Would Violate 4th Amendment, Warn Legal Experts - Common Dreams

As the legal scholar Orin Kerr noted, Actually following a policy of when the looting starts, the shooting starts would violate the 4th Amendment, for starters. He cited the precedent in Tennessee v. Garner.

Evelyn Douek: Trump is a problem Twitter cannot fix

That case originated in Memphis, where two police officers, including Elton Hymon, were dispatched to catch a prowler. In the backyard of a house, Hymon saw a suspect he judged to be 17 or 18 run to a back fence. Halt, he said, police. The suspect tried to climb over the fence to escape. Hymon shot him in the back of the head and recovered a purse with $10 in it. He later cited a Tennessee statute that said, If, after notice of the intention to arrest the defendant, he either flee or forcibly resist, the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.

The Supreme Courts holding in the 1985 case sets forth a different standard:

The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable. It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect. A police officer may not seize an unarmed, non-dangerous suspect by shooting him dead. The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against such fleeing suspects.

That is the law of the land.

The decision goes on to note that:

where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force. Thus, if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape, and if, where feasible, some warning has been given.

More succinctly: Cops cant just shoot someone looting gadgets from a Target or whiskey from a liquor store.

Trump swore to protect and defend the Constitution. He just violated that oath. When he wrote when the looting starts, the shooting starts, he implicitly urged law enforcement to adopt an approach that would transgress the Constitution, violate Fourth Amendment rights, and cause unlawful deaths. Rioting is abhorrent. Trumps incendiary call for illegal acts is more likely to fuel than stop itespecially if any police act on his irresponsible words.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

More:
Trumps Looting Tweet Violates His Oath of Office - The Atlantic