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By now, you have already heard what happened last week on the New York Subway. A gentleman named Jordan Neely, who seemed to be experiencing a mental health crisis, reportedly had a threatening interaction with other subway passengers. One of those passengers, a Marine Veteran named Daniel Penny subdued Mr. Neely and in the course of doing so, allegedly caused his death.

My experience with urban public transportation is from a different city, and a few decades earlier, but I have seen my share of shady characters on the subway. I always felt safe on the subway during rush hour, when it was very white-collar and there seemed to be safety in numbers, but after-hours travel in the shadowy underground is not for the timid.

I also recall that the specter of homeless people suffering from mental illness is a part of everyday life in the city. Sometimes they ask for money; sometimes they yell at intersections. Often, we know them by name and associate them with specific neighborhoods. They were usually animated and could be disruptiveand they didnt always smell greatbut in my experience, they never hurt anyone.

Like most stories, there are bound to be two sides. I think the case will come down to what witnesses say that Mr. Neely did or didnt do immediately before he was restrained. Was Neelys provocation an assault, or was it speech? If it was only speech, was it speech that would make the elusive reasonable person perceive a threat of violence? I wasnt there and I take no position. We will see.

What I find more interesting about the case is the sequence of events after the incident. First, Mr. Penny was questioned and released without charge. Then, protesters quickly organized and demanded his arrest. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Penny was invited downtown for a free sitting with a photographer and to post a $100,000 bond.

The question raised in my mind today is one that has been debated by legal scholars since long before the launch of our relatively young judicial system. How, when, and to what extent should public opinion influence justice?

The easy answer is that law enforcement should be in contact with the citizens. Were learning, I think a bit late, that their demographics should even reflect the citizens. In most cases, the enforcement side of the equation is answerable to their respective governing authorities (i.e. state, federal, or local), except in the case of County Sheriffs, who are typically elected. The prosecutors follow a similar model. Federal, state, and municipal prosecutors, answer to elected officials but are directly elected at the county level.

Courts, on the other hand, should be independent and free of external influence. They should be able to rely upon and maintain the laws passed by representatives of a free people. That part makes sense to me. An alternate point of view is that courts wield a great deal of power and need to be held accountable. Public scrutiny keeps those powers in check and public approval is a source of much-needed legitimacy.

Personally, I think we enjoy sufficient representation from elected officials and that our justice system is robust enough to sort out any bad actors.

Resorting to mob action doesnt cross my mind, but I have the privilege of knowing that my elected officials will return my phone call. People who feel less enfranchised will undoubtedly have another point of view.

Here in Nebraska, we vote to retain our judges after whats called an assisted appointment. Im comfortable with that system, but in Texas, Illinois, and a handful of other states, judges have full-blown, partisan elections with campaign contributions and all of the baggage that follows. Is that an appropriate amount of public influence? Whats the right formula? How do we best balance public accountability with independence and freedom from systemic compromise? Its a tricky equation, and I sometimes wonder if were getting it right.

I also find it ironic that public influence would be linked to legitimacy. I suppose a court could go too far with an unpopular decision and lose public support, but at least for now, I am confident that the courts are better informed, more cautious, and ultimately more trustworthy than the general public.

Historians tell us that our founding fathers wrote our Constitution with two threats in mind: tyrants and the mob. Our Fourth Amendment is intended to protect us against law enforcement, but the founders dedicated a whole unelected branch of government to counter our mob-controlled, publicly elected officials.

When I see prosecutors appear to bend to public sentiment, I think of our darker days when hooded rioters plucked people out of jail for pre-judicial lynchings. Im not suggesting thats what happened in New York.

We simply cant know, but its one of those areas that we need to watch carefully. Our system of justice is far from perfect, but I think its fair to most people, most of the time, and we need to preserve that trust with our watchful eyes.

View post:
Column: : Justice, tyrants and the mob (5/19/23) - McCook Daily Gazette

On April 3, 2018, Jeffrey Parker called 911 from his Huntsville, Alabama residence and threatened to blow his head off. Huntsville Police Department (HPD) officers Pegues and Beckles were dispatched to the call. Upon arrival, Pegues drew her pistol and made a partial entry through the front door, thereby exposing half her body to the inside. She observed Parker sitting on a couch with what appeared to be a gun at his own head. She told Beckles, still outside, what she saw. Beckles informed police dispatch that Pegues had seen Parker with a gun to his head. [1]

Officer Darby heard Beckles radio call about a guy with a gun threatening suicide and responded. Darby arrived and saw that Pegues had her gun drawn but pointed down. He commanded her to point her gun at Parker because he thought that Parker could kill her. Pegues moved completely into the residence and briefly raised her gun but almost immediately lowered it. Both Beckles and Darby followed her inside and demanded that Parker drop the weapon.

Pegues also pleaded with Parker to drop the weapon, but he kept it pointed at his head and refused to drop it. Darby, believing that all three officers were in danger of being shot, fired at Parker and killed him.

Darby was charged with murder. After a jury trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Officer Pegues testified at Darbys trial that prior to Darbys arrival, she attempted to de-escalate the situation, but that once Darby entered the residence, she could feel the tension just rising. She testified that Parker didnt threaten her or do anything to make her believe he wanted to do anything other than commit suicide.

Officer Beckles testified that at no time during this event did he feel the need to take deadly force action. He stated that Parker didnt make any overt action to indicate that he was about to point his weapon at the officers. He estimated that Parker was ordered to drop the weapon about seven times but failed to comply.

An HPD detective investigated the shooting incident and testified that he found no evidence that Parker ever made a hostile determination towards anybody other than himself.

Officer Darby testified that upon entering the residence he realized that all three officers had no cover between them and Parker. He ordered Parker to drop the gun twice, but Parker refused. Darby shot and killed him. Darby also presented testimony from three other law enforcement officers (expert witnesses) who each testified that Parker's refusal to put his weapon down constituted an imminent threat to the responding officers' lives. [2]

After both sides presented their evidence, Darby requested the trial judge to charge the jury as follows: "The reasonableness of an officer's actions in using deadly force must be objectively reasonable judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, the fact that officers are forced to make split-second decisions, and in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them at the time.

In support of his requested jury instruction, Darby cited the United States Supreme Court opinion in Graham v. Connor. [3]The trial judge rejected Darbys requested instruction. Instead, the judge provided the jury with a general self-defense instruction that is available to all citizens who assert self-defense as a justification for their actions. This permitted the jury to examine Darbys conduct from the perspective of an ordinary citizen rather than a trained law enforcement officer.

Darby appealed and argued that the trial judge delivered an erroneous self-defense instruction that permitted the jury to ignore, as irrelevant, the expert testimony from several witnesses that reasonable law enforcement officers would believe they were facing an imminent threat to their personal safety.

The decision of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals [4]

The Alabama Court of Appeals reversed Darbys conviction and ordered that he receive a new trial. The court ruled that it was not bound to accept Darbys offered instruction that was based upon the Supreme Courts opinion in Graham v. Connor. The court explained that Graham does not govern a state courts application of state criminal statutes because it involved a civil action brought under 42 U.S.C. 1983. (The federal civil rights statute). [5]Nonetheless, the court observed that the Alabama legislature passed a self-defense statute designed for Alabama peace officers that states: "A peace officer is justified in using deadly physical force upon another person when and to the extent he reasonably believes it necessary in order [t]o defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force." [6]

The court ruled that the trial judge erred by giving the jury a self-defense instruction designed for ordinary citizens instead of an instruction intended by the Alabama legislature to be used for peace officers in self-defense situations. The court explained, [T]he Alabama Legislature has made clear that there is a unique standard to be used in judging a police officer's use of deadly force in self-defense or defense of another while acting in his capacity as a police officer. Thus, the proper perspective from which to evaluate a police officer's use of deadly force in such situations is indeed that of a reasonable police officer in the same situation.

The court observed that the ordinary citizen self-defense instruction given to the jury permitted the jury to ignore extensive testimony from multiple witnesses regarding the training a police officer receives with respect to confrontations with an armed person. The court noted that this testimony supported a finding that a reasonable police officer in Darby's situation could have concluded that Parker's conduct represented the imminent use of deadly force. In other words, that testimony supported a finding that Darby acted in self-defense or defense of another when he shot Parker.

Heres a summary of the lessons law enforcement officers can take from this case:

1.It would later be determined that Parker was holding a flare gun that had been intentionally painted black,but there is no evidence indicating that any of the officers were aware of that fact.

2.Quote is taken from the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals opinion.

3.490 U.S. 386 (1989}. In Graham, the Supreme Court created an objective reasonableness standard for police use of deadly force grounded in the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that the reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. Further, the Court ruled that when police use of force situations are evaluated, the fact that officers are forced to make split-second judgments must be considered.

4.Darby v Alabama, (CR-20-0919) (3/24/23).

5.The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals determined when reviewing state criminal statutes, it is not bound to follow a constitutionally grounded Fourth Amendment-based opinion of the United States Supreme Court regarding the standard for police use of deadly force. The Alabama court cited a quote from a California case, People v. Perry, 36 Cal. App. 5th 444, 465, 248 Cal. Rptr. 3d 522, 536 n.10 (2019) as authority for declining to follow Graham v. Connor regarding its application to a states criminal statutes. The California court ruled, Perry contends throughout his briefing that we are bound to apply the standards articulated in Graham in this case. Graham was a civil rights action brought pursuant to section 1983 of title 42 of the United States Code and it involved an alleged violation of the Fourth Amendment. Long-standing and deeply held principles of federalism counsel that we have no obligation to import those standards into our state law defining criminal offenses."

See also, People v. Couch, 461 N.W.2d 683, 684 (1990) in which the Michigan Supreme Court rejected the prosecutions argument that the U.S. Supreme Courts opinion in Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), requires it to change the Michigan fleeing felon rule to comply with the Supreme Courts ruling in Garner, (i.e. Deadly force cannot be used against unarmed and non-dangerous fleeing felons). The Michigan Supreme Court explained that Clearly, the power to define conduct as a state criminal offense lies with the individual states, not with the federal government or even the United States Supreme Court.

The Alabama court did not offer any United States Supreme Court opinion or federal appellate opinion as authority for its decision on this issue. It is unknown whether the federal courts would agree with the Alabama, California and Michigan courts that have considered this issue.

6. 13A-3-27(b)(2), Ala. Code 1975.

7.490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989). See also, recent university law review articles that take the position that state courts are not bound to follow the Supreme Court opinions in Graham and Garner when confronting use of deadly force issues involving state criminal charges directed at police officers. For example, see, Flanders, Chad and Welling, Joseph (2015) Police Use of Deadly Force, State Statutes 30 Years after Garner, Saint Louis University Public Law Review, Vol. 35: No.1, Article 7. And Shah, Raoul, (2018) Licensed to Kill? An Analysis of the Standard for Assessing Law Enforcements Criminal Liability for Use of Deadly Force, Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice, Vol. 39/ Issue 1.

8.The new bill, commonly referred to as AB-392 is found at Calif. Pen. Code 835a (c)(1), (A)-(B).

9.SeeKathleen Y. Murray, Exploring A Necessary Standard For the Use of Excessive Deadly Force by Law Enforcement: A Flawed Solution With Positive Potential,University of Toledo Law Review, Vol. 52, p. 397 (Spring 2021).

10.Calif. Pen. Code 835a (c)(1), (A). Deadly force must be necessary To defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.

11.Calif. Pen. Code 835a (e)(2). Based on the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable officer would believe that a person has the present ability to immediately cause death or serious bodily injury.

12.See, Calif. Pen. Code 835a (e)(3).

Read the original here:
Alabama appeals court reverses murder conviction of Ala. officer ... - Police News

The Oakland Town Commission voted at its May 9 meeting to terminate interim town manager Jack Butler without cause and to appoint Town Clerk Elise Hui as the interim manager until a permanent one can be hired. A search is being conducted.

The town of Oakland has voted to terminate Jack Butler without cause effective immediately, Mayor Kathy Stark said. Severances will be paid based on his contract terms.

Butler has been serving as interim manager since the previous town manager, Steve Koontz, retired April 1.

Its not for cause, and we wish him well, Stark stressed of Butlers termination.

The Town Commission engaged an executive recruitment firm to manage the process of recruiting a permanent town manager. The town has looked at all the applications, and the search has been narrowed to five.

We have some very good candidates, Stark said. We are hopeful that well be able to make an offer next Friday (May 19).

Hui will handle both job duties until a new manager is hired.

The five candidates will be in Oakland Thursday, May 18, to take a tour of the town with Stark and Public Works director Mike Parker. That evening, a reception will be held from 5:30 to 7 at the Oakland Meeting Hall, 221 N. Arrington St., and Stark said the public is invited to meet the candidates. Those interested in attending should RSVP to [emailprotected]

IN OTHER NEWS:

The Oakland Town Commission approved its consent agenda, which included an agreement to allow the Oakland Police Department to conduct traffic enforcement in the gated communities of Johns Cove and Johns Landing. The homeowners associations made the request. State statute doesnt allow traffic enforcement on private property without a written agreement. The police department will solely be responsible for enforcement, including the scheduling of patrols and the use of radar. All decisions regarding the level of traffic enforcement on the private roads and staffing will be within the sole discretion of the police department.

The commission approved a fourth amendment to the development agreement with Oakland Park regarding a buffer fence between Macchi Avenue and the seventh phase of the neighborhood.

The town proclaimed May 15, 2023, Peace Officers Memorial Day and May 15 through 21, 2023, National Police Week. The proclamation was presented to Chief Darron Esan.

I cant tell you how happy I am with our community policing police department, Mayor Kathy Stark said.

You guys are phenomenal, Commissioner Mike Satterfield said.

A proclamation was read declaring May 21 through 27, 2023, National Public Works Week and presented to Public Works director Mike Parker.

We love the job that you do, Stark said. You have been for a very long time a welcome addition to this town.

Continued here:
Oakland narrows town manager search to five | West Orange Times ... - West Orange Times & SouthWest Orange Observer

On Monday, Special Counsel John Durham released the conclusions of his three-year investigation into the FBI's surveillance of former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, arguing that the FBI used uncorroborated evidence to secure search warrants against a former Trump campaign aide and "displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor" toward information they received from partisan sources.

Durham's 316-page report found that the FBI failed to act with "appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power" and that the agency "discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia."

Former Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham in 2020 to investigate whether any federal officials had violated the law in connection with the intelligence and law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns. On that score, Durham's investigation has been long on expectations from Trump and his supporters, but short on results. After three years, Durham has secured one guilty plea and lost two cases at trial after the defendants were acquitted.

However, the investigation has highlighted serious deficiencies with the FBI's warrant applications before the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which is supposed to provide oversight of surveillance activities by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The Durham report found that the FBI's decision to open an investigation into possible foreign influence on several members of Trump's campaign team and apply for electronic surveillance search warrants against them was "based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" that likely did not meet the standard for probable cause.

Some of the Durham report's findings have been corroborated by other investigators. In 2019, the Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a bombshell report that FBI agents made a number of significant omissions and errors in their four warrant applications to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. It also found that FBI personnel "did not give appropriate attention to facts that cut against probable cause." However, unlike Durham, the OIG did not conclude that anti-Trump bias fueled the investigation.

But if FBI agents were willing to cut corners to get a FISA warrant against a presidential campaign aide, it seems highly unlikely Page was the only victim. Follow-up investigations revealed just that.

In a 2020 report, the OIG determined that the FBI regularly ignored its own procedures to make sure FISA warrant applications were accurate. In a review of 29 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrantapplications to surveil Americans, the OIG found that 25 of them had errors or "inadequately supported facts."

As Reason's Scott Shackford wrote, the fact that the FBI was regularly botching search warrant applications before a court with no outside review or oversight should be alarming: "This should be seen as a big dealthe secrecy of the FISC means that Americans who are targeted for surveillance don't know they've been singled out and don't have any defense or due process to stop it. The court itself serves as oversight to protect citizens' Fourth Amendment rights. But until all of this came out, we had little idea how carelessly these warrants were written and reviewed."

Durham's report notes one suggestion from former National Security Agency general counsel Stewart Baker to improve oversight of potentially partisan FBI investigations: having an FBI official who will challenge them at every stepessentially a devil's advocate, or in this case perhaps an angel's advocate.

"As a way to ensure full consideration of the issues in applications that may present very difficultand vitally importantissues, we recommend that the Department seriously consider Baker's proposal for an official to challenge both a politically sensitive FISA application and other stages of the investigation," says the report.

Trump's fantasies of Durham prosecuting and locking up a coterie of deep state agents who orchestrated the "crime of the century" against him are just thatfantasiesbut the civil liberties problems inside the FBI are very real.

More:
The Durham Report Is Right About the Need for More FBI Oversight - Reason

Can an AI become sentient? As fantastic as it sounds, maybe its already happened. Skeptical. Me too. But when I read the conversation between a researcher and Googles LaMDa, I didnt know what to think. Listen to it on Hashtag Trending the weekend edition when it goes live on Saturday morning and judge for yourself.

The US government is using invasive, AI-powered monitoring to track refugees, asylum seekers and their own citizens. OpenAI puts ChatGPT on the iPhone. And Microsoft is placing a bet on nuclear fusion.

These top tech news stories and more for Friday May 19, 2023, Im your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada, and Tech News Day in the US.

According to a report in Vice, Customs and Border Protection in the US is using an invasive, AI-powered monitoring tool to screen travelers.

Theyll be using this on refugees, people seeking asylum and even citizens and permanent residents.

The tool is called Babel X and it can take a specific piece of information about a person name, email, telephone number or social security number and get back an enormous amount of data from social media and other sources. The data includes things like name, address, date of birth, email, phone number, drivers license, social security number and even employment history. But it doesnt stop there. It gets info from social media postings, location data linked and even the unique identifiers from their mobile phone used by advertisers.

A lot of this information is publicly or commercially available from providers who gather it on the so-called dark web, where hackers exchange information and the deep web which is not necessarily nefarious but consists of content that is not indexed by standard web search.

Critics say that even legitimately purchasing some of this data without a warrant may violate Fourth Amendment rights.

For example, warrants are required to access location data from cell towers, but the location data obtained by Babel X is generated from a variety of other sources using location data generated by smart phone apps.

In addition, the system not only collects information, but it also uses AI tools to do sentiment analysis from social and other data. But that data can be used to geo-fence a person and very accurately track a person, without them ever knowing.

The use of these tools was uncovered by a Freedom of Information filing by journalists at Motherboard. Organizations are required to file a document called a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) when they are initiating or updating a program that is regarded as privacy invading.

While these assessments must be done every three years, the data that is captured may be stored in other systems for up to 75 years.

Opponents of the program, like Carrie DeCell, an attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute, argue that the government has no legitimate interest in collecting and retaining such sensitive information on an immense scale.

Customs and Border Services, it turns out are just the tip of the iceberg. The company that makes Babel X has also sold their system to the TSA, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Navy, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI and the State Department according to public records.

Sources include: Vice

Open AI has released a version of ChatGPT for the iPhone.

While the app largely functions much like the web version, it does address a concern about the vast number of apps that have proliferated, many of which contain malware or are used as a part of cyber scams. Microsoft has already addressed these same concerns with an app for their Bing AI.

The iOS app will bring this same security to those who want to use ChatGPT directly.

Like the web offering, it allows users to subscribe for a fee and get the more advanced capabilities of GPT-4.

The app does have one difference from the web version. Speech input is supported using Whisper, OpenAIs open-source speech recognition system.

The app will be available in the U.S. and expanding to other countries in the coming weeks. Android users may take heart. In a posting announcing the app and the timing, they noted:

P.S. Android users, youre next. ChatGPT will be coming to your devices soon.

Sources include: Axios

And the US Supreme Court upheld the legal protections provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that protect internet companies from lawsuits regarding content posted by users.

Section 230 provides safeguards for what it terms interactive computer services by ensuring that they are not regarded as a publisher or speaker.

The Supreme Courts 9-0 ruling reversed a lower court decision where a family had sued Twitter maintaining that their son had been killed in a New Years celebration by Islamist gunmen arguing that the presence of militant groups on their platforms on Twitter was related to the killing. The family argued Twitter had aided and abetted the Islamic State by failing to police the platform for the groups accounts or posts and that this was a violation of the Anti-Terrorist act.

Controversial conservative Justice Clarence Thomas authored the Supreme Court ruling and said, the allegations point to no act of encouraging, soliciting or advising the commission of the attack and didnt constitute anything that could be described as aiding or abetting an act of terrorism.

While Twitter was the party in the suit, other companies like Google and Facebook were certainly watching this closely, but one of the most interested parties may have been Reddit and Wikipedia, who worried that their armies of volunteer moderators would have been severely affected if Twitter had been found liable.

Sources include: Reuters

And Microsoft is placing a big bet on an incredible technological leap to cut its carbon emissions fusion power.

Fusion is a nuclear reaction that has been used to develop bombs that have immense destructive power. But fusion reactors dont explode. Nor do they use uranium or other radioactive elements.

They use hydrogen and turn it into harmless gases like helium and the process generate huge amounts of heat energy. Its the same reaction that powers the sun.

The catch is, its amazingly difficult to contain that reaction which happens at temperatures of over 100 million degrees Kelvin, which for those who are still struggling with Fahrenheit or Celsius, is six times hotter than the core of the sun.

The other catch is that it takes an enormous amount of energy to start the reaction and until recently, nobody has been able to get more power from the reaction than it took to heat it up and contain it. That is, until recently.

Last year, researchers at Lawrence Liverpool National Laboratories made a major breakthrough and, if you do a little fuzzy accounting, could make the claim that they generated more energy than it took to kick off the reaction. They got 3.15 megajoules of energy and it took 2.05 megajoules to kick it off. Success.

Well, unless you count the fact that it need power to run the lasers that start the reaction and those lasers take 322 megajoules.

And before we get carried away about megajoules 3.15 megajoules is about .875 kilowatt hours not even enough to run a small air conditioner.

Despite that, it was a victory. Based on that, a company named Helion has convinced Microsoft that it will have a commercial reactor producing commercial levels of power by 2028.

One critic calls their claims voodoo fusion.

Despite that, and other issues, Microsoft has agreed to buy power from the company to run its many data centres.

It seems a little fantastic, but Microsoft is serious enough to agree to buy the power no one knows if theyve invested money in the company as well.

Is it a good decision? Well, lets ask our WWBD. What would Bill do? Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft is investing in small nuclear reactors, using standard nuclear fission but on a small scale to make them safer and generating less nuclear waste. Its also a technology that is proven and functioning.

Who will win the bet on this one? We dont care. But with data centers using about one per cent of electrical energy and expect to grow to eight per cent of global electrical energy by 2030, we just know that we cant power our lust for computing on current carbon burning technology.

Source: The Register

And Montana became the first state to ban TikTok on personal devices. Governments around the world have insisted that users removed TikTok from government supplied devices, but this is the first instance of it being banned on private devices.

TikTok responded saying that there were hundreds of thousands of users in Montana and that the ban infringes on the first amendment rights of the people of Montana. TikTok is expected to challenge the ban.

There are going to be difficulties in enforcing this ban because the penalties apply only to corporations and not individual users. That would mean that Apple or Google or others who have an app store could be fined up to 10,000 dollars if they fail to comply with the Montana ban which, unless the penalty was per download would be minimal. Plus, almost everyone in Montana who wants TikTok probably has downloaded it already.

But the ban might be the thin edge of the wedge. Despite its popularity with over 150 million users in the US, just under half of the population of the country use TikTok governments seem inclined to weather the storm and take action against what they perceive is a threat from the Chinese government. Early in March the US government said that the Chinese parent company ByteDance should sell TikTok or face a ban.

Even the claim that the data is stored and protected by Oracle, a US company, has not reduced the criticism.

So if Montana, where perhaps a third of the population use the app, is willing to face the heat and ban it, it could encourage others. And if other governments join in, it could become a trend the ban could go viral.

Just a matter of time.

TikTok.

Sources include: BBC

Thats the top tech news for today. We go to air with a daily newscast five days a week, as well as a special weekend interview with an expert on topics relevant to todays tech news.

Follow Hashtag Trending on Google, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can even get us on your Alexa or Google smart speaker. You can even find us on YouTube only. We are called TechNewsDay.

We love your comments. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or on Mastodon as @therealjimlove on our Mastodon site technews.social. Or if thats too much, just leave a comment under the text version at itworldcanada.com/podcasts and you can find all of the links in those text versions.

Im your host, Jim Love. Have a Fantastic Friday!

Originally posted here:
Hashtag Trending May 19- U.S. government use invasive AI to track refugees; OpenAI releases iOS ChatGPT app; Microsoft bets on nuclear fusion - IT...