Captain America: Civil War – conflicted heroes and a clash of philosophies; Guardian, 4/21/16

Mark D. White, Guardian; Captain America: Civil War – conflicted heroes and a clash of philosophies:

"These days the world feels precarious. It seems we face new threats every day from extremist forces both domestic and international. At the same time, we’re developing new ways to detect and predict these threats, using advanced surveillance and drone technology to enhance our safety and security – but at what cost to our liberties and freedoms? Must we choose which of these we value most and give up on the other?

Some of our favorite superheroes can help us think about this timeless conflict. In Marvel Comics’s Civil War storyline, the latest movie version of which is released on 6 May, Captain America, Iron Man and the rest of the Marvel heroes face off over the same issues of liberty and security that we face in the real world every day, and they find the answers neither easy nor simple.

As it happens, these very same issues are discussed by moral philosophers in terms of the work of classic figures such as Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant. This makes it irresistible for a philosophy professor who is also a lifelong comics fan to write a book drawing out the relationships between the fictional superhero battles in Civil War, the all-too-real conflicts we deal with in the real world, and the underlying philosophical ideas they share."

How to Be Good: Why you can’t teach human values to artificial intelligence; Slate, 4/20/16

Adam Elkus, Slate; How to Be Good: Why you can’t teach human values to artificial intelligence:

"As Collins pointed out, computers acquire human knowledge and abilities from the fact that they are embedded in human social contexts. A Japanese elder care personal robot, for example, is only able to act in a way acceptable to Japanese senior citizens because its programmers understand Japanese society. So talk of machines and human knowledge, values, and goals is frustratingly circular.

Which brings us back to Russell’s optimistic assumptions that computer scientists can sidestep these social questions through superior algorithms and engineering efforts. Russell is an engineer, not a humanities scholar. When he talks about “tradeoffs” and “value functions,” he assumes that a machine ought to be an artificial utilitarian. Russell also suggests that machines ought to learn a cross-section of human values from human cultural and media products. So does that mean a machine could learn about American race relations by watching the canonical pro-Ku Klux Klan and pro-Confederacy film The Birth of a Nation?

But Russell’s biggest problem lies in the very much “values”-based question of whose values ought to determine the values of the machine. One does not imagine too much overlap between hard-right Donald Trump supporters and hard-left Bernie Sanders supporters on some key social and political questions, for example. And the other (artificial) elephant in the room is the question of what gives Western, well-off, white male cisgender scientists such as Russell the right to determine how the machine encodes and develops human values, and whether or not everyone ought to have a say in determining the way that Russell’s hypothetical A.I. makes tradeoffs...

The harder problem is the thorny question of which humans ought to have the social, political, and economic power to make A.I. obey their values, and no amount of data-driven algorithms is going to solve it."

Mitsubishi Motors Admits Falsifying Fuel Economy Tests To Make Emissions Levels Look More Favorable; Reuters via Huffington Post, 4/20/16

Reuters via Huffington Post; Mitsubishi Motors Admits Falsifying Fuel Economy Tests To Make Emissions Levels Look More Favorable:

"Mitsubishi Motors Corp said it falsified fuel economy test data to make emissions levels look more favorable, and its shares slumped more than 15 percent, wiping $1.2 billion from its market value on Wednesday.

Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Japan’s sixth-largest automaker by market value, bowed in apology at a news conference in Tokyo for what is the biggest scandal at Mitsubishi Motors since a defect cover-up over a decade ago."

The Courage To Inform: Our mission requires brave librarians; Library Journal, 4/18/16

John N. Berry III, Library Journal; The Courage To Inform: Our mission requires brave librarians:

"In this election year, public libraries are being attacked. Robocalls to voters in Illinois’s Plainfield Public Library District were financed by Americans for Prosperity, the national conservative political action group founded by David Koch and contributed to by him and his brother Charles, co-owners of Koch Industries. The calls exaggerated the cost to the average homeowner of the $39 million bonds on the ballot for a new library building.

The library valiantly responded, “Here at the Library, helping people access accurate information is a critical part of what we do. For that reason, the planning process for the referenda included 22 public meetings over eight months, a telephone survey, and online feedback surveys. Every step of the process was documented on the Building & Expansion Planning web page, with supporting documentation available.” The library blog posts addressed all the questions about the bonds as well as the sources of misinformation, yet the robocalls continued, and the bond measure was defeated.

To those who have decided not to get too close to election issues and controversies, I understand, and in your situation I might make the same choice. I only wish the conditions and forces that prevent a library from informing the electorate didn’t exist. In America today, however, anyone who offers data that runs contrary to the views of voters energized by the current rhetoric of this campaign has to face the probability that the information will be challenged. Considering the damage to the library that it can cause, it will take a brave librarian to proceed.

To those who do choose to go forth, take strength from knowing that nearly two centuries of our professional history support your actions. You are carrying out the mission libraries were founded to accomplish."

Have Comment Sections on News Media Websites Failed?; New York Times, 4/18/16

[1000th post since blog started in 2010]

Room for Debate, New York Times; Have Comment Sections on News Media Websites Failed? :

"Many newspapers and online media companies have begun disabling comment sections because of widespread abuse and obscenity. Of course, that vitriol is not meted out equally: The Guardian analyzed its comments and found the 10 most abused writers of the past decade were female and/or black. (The Times moderates comments in an effort to keep them on-topic and not abusive.)

Have comment sections — once thought to be a democratizing force in the media — failed?"

We will look back at cyber-harassment as a disgrace – if we act now; Guardian, 4/15/16

Danielle Citron, Guardian; We will look back at cyber-harassment as a disgrace – if we act now:

"Attitudes towards online abuse have undergone a sea change over the last decade. In the past, cyber-harassment – often a perfect storm of threats, impersonations, defamation, and privacy invasions directed at an individual – was routinely dismissed as “no big deal”.

So it was for one Yale law student. Starting in 2007, on an online discussion board, a cyber-mob falsely accused her of having herpes and sleeping with her dean. Anonymous posters described how they would rape her; they chronicled her daily whereabouts and prior jobs. Yet law enforcement told the student to ignore the attacks because “boys will be boys”. Officers advised her to “clean up” her cyber-reputation, as if she could control what appeared about her. Trivialising online abuse and blaming victims was the norm.

Today, the public has a deeper appreciation of victims’ suffering. As advocacy groups like the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative have shown, and as society has come to recognise, the costs of cyber-harassment are steep. Because searches of victims’ names prominently display the abuse, victims have lost their jobs. They have had difficulty finding employment. Employers do not interview victims because hiring people with damaged online reputations is risky. Victims struggle with anxiety and depression. They withdraw from online engagement to avoid further abuse. Women, especially younger women, are more often targeted than men, but in either case, the abuse often has a sexually demeaning and sexually threatening cast.

Legal developments reflect a growing understanding of cyber-harassment’s harms. In the US, 27 states have criminalised revenge porn – also known as non-consensual pornography."

The terror of swatting: how the law is tracking down high-tech prank callers; Guardian, 4/15/16

Dan Tynan, Guardian; The terror of swatting: how the law is tracking down high-tech prank callers:

"The first 911 call came at 4.30pm. The caller told dispatchers that a man, woman, and boy had been shot and another child was being held hostage. Police responded in force, sending more than half a dozen cruisers and emergency vehicles to a sprawling house in the affluent Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek.

But when they arrived there were no signs of a shooting; inside, police found a nanny with two small children. When the mother returned from shopping she found her home surrounded by emergency vehicles. The father, who had been on a plane, landed at Atlanta’s international airport to see his house on TV, with news reports declaring that his wife and children had been shot.

They were victims of a swatting attack, a malicious form of hoax where special weapons and tactics (Swat) teams are called to a victim’s home under false pretenses, with potentially deadly results...

In November 2015, around the same time that reports about Obnoxious became public, congresswoman Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a bill that made swatting a federal crime. (The bill has been referred to the House subcommittee on crime, terrorism, homeland security, and investigations.)...

In March, Clark addressed the second part of the problem – the lack of law enforcement expertise – by introducing the Cybercrime Enforcement Training Assistance Act, which would allocate $20m a year to train local police departments on how to investigate and prosecute cybercrime."

UC Davis Tries to Scrub Pepper-Spray Incident From Web, Which Means It’s Now the First Result on Google; New York Magazine, 4/15/16

Brian Feldman, New York Magazine; UC Davis Tries to Scrub Pepper-Spray Incident From Web, Which Means It’s Now the First Result on Google:

"An incredibly effective way to get people to talk about something online is to say that you don’t want people to talk about it. This is known as the Streisand Effect, so called after Barbra Streisand, in 2003, tried to get outlets to stop publishing pictures of her house.

The latest very expensive and profoundly funny example of this phenomenon comes from UC Davis, which spent a whopping $175,000 trying to bury posts about the infamous 2011 incident in which a campus police officer pepper-sprayed protesting students. According to the Sacramento Bee, the university was very concerned about the search-engine results that were being served up following the event, as well as social media posts, and so they hired a number of consultants to try and improve the situation."

Hardly Anyone Trusts The Media Anymore; Huffington Post, 4/18/16

Nick Visser, Huffington Post; Hardly Anyone Trusts The Media Anymore:

"Only 6 percent of people say they have a great deal of confidence in the press, about the same level of trust Americans have in Congress, according to a new survey released on Sunday.

The study mirrors past reports that found the public’s trust in mass media has reached historic lows, according to data gathered by the Media Insight Project, a partnership between The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute. The report found faith in the press was just slightly higher than the 4 percent of people who said they trusted Congress.

Alongside the dire findings, the report found respondents valued accuracy above all else, with 85 percent of people saying it was extremely important to avoid errors in coverage. Timeliness and clarity followed closely, with 76 percent and 72 percent respectively saying those attributes were imperative among media sources."

Obama’s Secrecy Problem; Slate, 4/15/16

Fred Kaplan, Slate; Obama’s Secrecy Problem:

"Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told me Thursday, “This is a time of particularly promising ferment over secrecy policy. There is a recognition, even within the national-security apparatus, that the classification system has overreached and needs to be pruned back.” Yet by all measures, the bureaucracies persist in resisting this pruning, Congress won’t allocate the money for the shears, and the president hasn’t mustered the full attention and commitment that the task requires. Information may want to be free, but Washington has it wrapped in a tangle."

Doonesbury; GoComics.com, 4/17/16

Garry Trudeau, GoComics.com; Doonesbury

Oxford professor calls for European ethical codes on patient data; Guardian, 4/12/16

Paul Hill, Guardian; Oxford professor calls for European ethical codes on patient data:

"Prof Luciano Floridi, director of research at Oxford University’s Internet Institute believes the time has come for new European ethical codes to govern “data donation” and its use for medical research.

He says debate in Europe over individual privacy versus societal benefits of shared data has been “swinging like a pendulum between two extremes”. Medical research with big data should be part of the future of Europe, according to Floridi, “not something we need to export to other countries because it is not do-able here”.

“The patient has to be informed and willing to share the information that researchers are collecting – for the benefit of the patient and anyone else affected by the same problems,” said Floridi, who is also chair of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Medical Information Framework, the largest EU project on the unification of biomedical databases...

Floridi, who has advised Google on the ethics of information and the right to be forgotten, proposes the creation of two new ethical codes.

The first would govern the use and re-use of biomedical data in Europe – an ethical code from the practitioners’ perspective.

The second would relate to “data donation” and the informed choice of an individual to share personal information for research."

Panama Papers: inside the Guardian's investigation into offshore secrets; Guardian, 4/16/16

Juliette Garside, Guardian; Panama Papers: inside the Guardian's investigation into offshore secrets:

"The security guard handed over a key with a small yellow label. The Guardian’s secure room had housed the team that in 2013 worked through data leaked by Edward Snowden to expose unchecked surveillance by British and American spy agencies.

Now it was to be home to a small group of journalists gathered from all corners of the newsroom to work on a project code-named Prometheus. Our investigation into the murky world of tax havens, underpinned by the biggest leak in history, would eventually surface eight months later with the publication of the Panama Papers."

Captain America: Civil War reaction: 7 non-spoilery thoughts; Entertainment Weekly, 4/15/16

Darren Franich, Entertainment Weekly; Captain America: Civil War reaction: 7 non-spoilery thoughts:

"Captain America: Civil War won’t open in theaters in the U.S. until May 6, but after the Marvel film’s official world premiere on Tuesday, the internet erupted with reactions that seemed to range from favorable to euphoric. Here are seven non-spoilery observations about the movie, which pits Captain America against Iron Man, introduces Black Panther, and finally finds a reason for Scarlet Witch to exist.

1. Civil War does Batman v Superman better than Batman v Superman.

Superhero Ethical Debates: So hot right now! Where Batman v Superman used the destruction of Metropolis in Man of Steel to pit its two heroes against each other, Civil War sees the world reacting against the Avengers, partially because of the calamitous final battle in Avengers: Age of Ultron. But while Batman v Superman mostly kept its characters apart in the long lead-up to their showdown, Civil War takes time to let Captain America and Iron Man argue their respective cases. It really is an ethical debate."

Tweaking Genes to Save Species; New York Times, 4/16/16

Hillary Rosner, New York Times; Tweaking Genes to Save Species:

"This kind of genetic meddling makes many environmentalists deeply uncomfortable. Manipulating nature’s DNA seems a hugely risky and ethically fraught way to help save the natural world. And yet, we may need to accept the risks...

But many people — and many conservation biologists — argue that it is hubris to think that we can plan how this interference will unfold. History is full of examples of good intentions gone awry...

We can’t save every species, of course. The planet is losing its biodiversity at an alarming rate, and there are too many species circling the drain. Conservation professionals acknowledge that we will need to perform a sort of conservation triage, a painful process of deciding which species to try to rescue and which to let go. As an increasing number slip away, we will face ever more difficult ethical decisions — not just about which species we want to save, but how far we are willing to go to save them, and even what “saving” them really means."

The Right to Privacy for Children Online; New York Times, 4/15/16

Teddy Wayne, New York Time; The Right to Privacy for Children Online:

"Nevertheless, it is striking that both famous billionaires, aware of how staunchly they must defend their own privacy (Beyoncé, for instance, rarely gives interviews), seemingly have few qualms about sacrificing their children’s."

Cirque Du Soleil Scraps Shows In Protest Over North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law; Huffington Post, 4/15/16

Ryan Grenoble, Huffington Post; Cirque Du Soleil Scraps Shows In Protest Over North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law:

"In a statement published Friday on Facebook, Cirque du Soleil announced three separate tours of two different shows would be canceled, and called HB 2 a “regression to ensuring human rights for all.”

#CirqueduSoleil is opposed to discrimination in any form. Due to #HB2, we are canceling shows in #NorthCarolina: https://t.co/PTBdqn6MIu.

“Cirque du Soleil believes in equality for all,” the statement added. “It is a principle that guides us with both our employees and our customers. We behave as change agents to reach our ultimate goal of making a better world with our actions and our productions.”"

Couple Threatened With Jail For Overdue Library Books; Huffington Post, 4/15/16

Michael McLaughlin, Huffington Post; Couple Threatened With Jail For Overdue Library Books:

"A Michigan couple faces more than three months in jail and hundreds of dollars in penalties for two overdue library books.

Catherine and Melvin Duren were arraigned Thursday in Lenawee County Court on a misdemeanor charge of failure to return rental property. If convicted, they could be sentenced to 93 days in jail and fined $500 for a Dr. Seuss title that’s missing and for a novel that they returned late.

The county prosecutor said the case is necessary to protect taxpayers’ money. The Durens said they’re being unfairly harassed over a small mistake."

Pearls Before Swine; GoComics.com, 4/15/16

Stephan Pastis, GoComics.com; Pearls Before Swine

New Documents Show Oil Industry Even More Evil Than We Thought; Huffington Post, 4/14/16

Chris D'Angelo, Huffington Post; New Documents Show Oil Industry Even More Evil Than We Thought:

"In 1968, a pair of scientists from Stanford Research Institute wrote a report for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for America’s oil and natural gas industry. They warned that “man is now engaged in a vast geophysical experiment with his environment, the earth” — one that “may be the cause of serious world-wide environmental changes.”

The scientists went on: “If the Earth’s temperature increases significantly, a number of events might be expected to occur including the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, a rise in sea levels, warming of the oceans and an increase in photosynthesis.”

That 48-year-old report, which accurately foreshadowed what’s now happening, is among a trove of public documents uncovered and released Wednesday by the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law. Taken together, documents that the organization has assembled show that oil executives were well aware of the serious climate risks associated with carbon dioxide emissions decades earlier than previously documented — and they covered it up...

The Center for International Environmental Law, or CIEL, a nonprofit legal organization, said it traced the industry’s coordinated, decades-long cover-up back to a 1946 meeting in Los Angeles by combing through scientific articles, industry histories and other documents.

It was during that meeting that the oil executives decided to form a group — the Smoke and Fumes Committee — to “fund scientific research into smog and other air pollution issues and, significantly, use that research to inform and shape public opinion about environmental issues,” CIEL says on a new website devoted to the documents."

‘The Trump Effect’: Hatred, Fear And Bullying On The Rise In Schools; Huffington Post, 4/13/16

Christina Wilkie, Huffington Post; ‘The Trump Effect’: Hatred, Fear And Bullying On The Rise In Schools:

"It was only a matter of time before kids started picking up the aggressive, divisive language that’s become a hallmark of the 2016 presidential campaign.

According to a new report by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center titled “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on our Nation’s Schools,” the race is stoking fears and racial tensions in America’s classrooms...

The report identified two troubling trends: more openly racist and vicious bullying of minorities, and more fear and anxiety among immigrants and minorities about what would happen to them if certain candidates for president are elected.

The survey did not name specific candidates, but teachers named Trump, the Republican front-runner, in more than 1,000 comments — five times more often than they mentioned any of the other candidates."

Intel chief weighs trimming of classification system; CNN, 4/13/16

Laura Koran, CNN; Intel chief weighs trimming of classification system:

"The top U.S. intelligence official is considering eliminating the lowest tier of classification for government information.

The possible change comes amid a heated controversy over the so-called over-classification of materials and an FBI probe into whether classified information on Clinton's private email server was mishandled.

In a recent memo, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asked the heads of the country's intelligence agencies "whether the CONFIDENTIAL classification level can be eliminated" from agency guides as well as "the negative impacts this might have on mission success."

In his memo, Clapper said the change "could promote transparency," specifically noting how the United Kingdom "successfully eliminated CONFIDENTIAL without impact in April 2014.""

Lifting the Patent Barrier to New Drugs and Energy Sources; New York Times, 4/12/16

Eduardo Porter, New York Times; Lifting the Patent Barrier to New Drugs and Energy Sources:

"Malaria has preyed on humans for centuries. Hundreds of thousands of children die each year from the disease. Considering the market’s size, why haven’t pharmaceutical companies rushed to develop a vaccine against the deadly parasite that causes it?

The answer is easy: There is no money to be made from a vaccine for poor children who could not possibly pay for inoculation.

Last year, GlaxoSmithKline finally introduced the world’s first malaria vaccine for large pilot tests among African children. The move, however, is not an endorsement of the profit motive as a spur for innovation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation picked up much of the tab. And Glaxo does not expect to make money on its investment.

The lack of interest of the pharmaceutical industry, which generates huge profits protected by a web of patents enforced around the world, raises an important question.

Do we need a different way to spur innovation and disseminate new technologies quickly around the world? Are patents, which reward inventors by providing them with a government-guaranteed monopoly over their inventions for many years, the best way to encourage new inventions?"

Whatever Happened to Ethics?; Huffington Post, 4/13/16

Tom Allon, Huffington Post; Whatever Happened to Ethics? :

"It’s the underpinning of all knowledge and behavior, yet no one teaches ethics anymore. For the last five decades we have seen the waning of civics classes in high schools and ethics classes in colleges. In the corporate world, learning ethics has become an anachronistic notion...

Ethics is something that was taught in ancient Greece and was once neatly woven into our secondary education system. Ethics classes, like civics classes, are now rarely found on the high school level in this country. Isn’t it time to resurrect this again?...

So where do we go from here? I am a firm believer that mandatory ethics classes for all professions are one smart route. All those involved in government - from staffers to lobbyists to consultants to elected leaders - need to take continuing ethical education each year. Lawyers and doctors must do ongoing training to keep their licenses, so why not those in the political world?...

It’s time for ethics classes for our leaders.

And for our children. Perhaps as early as pre-K so we can ensure the next generation behaves better than this one."

The dark side of Guardian comments; Guardian, 4/12/16

Becky Gardiner, Mahana Mansfield, Ian Anderson, Josh Holder, Daan Louter and Monica Ulmanu, Guardian; The dark side of Guardian comments:

"Comments allow readers to respond to an article instantly, asking questions, pointing out errors, giving new leads. At their best, comment threads are thoughtful, enlightening, funny: online communities where readers interact with journalists and others in ways that enrich the Guardian’s journalism.

But at their worst, they are something else entirely.

The Guardian was not the only news site to turn comments on, nor has it been the only one to find that some of what is written “below the line” is crude, bigoted or just vile. On all news sites where comments appear, too often things are said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable face to face – the Guardian is no exception.

New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.

Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men...

At the Guardian, we felt it was high time to examine the problem rather than turn away.

We decided to treat the 70m comments that have been left on the Guardian – and in particular the comments that have been blocked by our moderators – as a huge data set to be explored rather than a problem to be brushed under the carpet.

This is what we discovered."

Making the Most of Clinical Trial Data; New York Times, 4/12/16

Editorial Board, New York Times; Making the Most of Clinical Trial Data:

"Some researchers may oppose sharing data they have worked hard to gather, or worry that others will analyze it incorrectly. Creating opportunities for collaboration on subsequent analysis may help alleviate these concerns.

Of course, any data sharing must take patients’ privacy into account; patients must be informed before joining a clinical trial that their data may be shared and researchers must ensure that the data cannot be used to identify individuals.

By making data available and supporting analysis, foundations, research institutions and drug companies can increase the benefit of clinical trials and pave the way for new findings that could help patients."

ALA Releases State of America’s Libraries Report 2016 (Includes List of Most Challenged Books of 2015); Library Journal, 4/11/16

Gary Price, Library Journal; ALA Releases State of America’s Libraries Report 2016 (Includes List of Most Challenged Books of 2015) :

"Out of 275 challenges recorded by the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom, the “Top Ten Most Challenged Books in 2015” are:

Looking for Alaska, by John Green Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.

Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).

I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).

The Holy Bible Reasons: Religious viewpoint.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).

Habibi, by Craig Thompson Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.

Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.

Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”)."

Panama Papers Leak Signals a Shift in Mainstream Journalism; New York Times, 4/10/16

Jim Rutenberg, New York Times; Panama Papers Leak Signals a Shift in Mainstream Journalism:

"But the leak signaled something else that was a big deal but went unheralded: The official WikiLeaks-ization of mainstream journalism; the next step in the tentative merger between the Fourth Estate, with its relatively restrained conventional journalists, and the Fifth Estate, with the push-the-limits ethos of its blogger, hacker and journo-activist cohort, in the era of gargantuan data breaches.

Back at the dawn of this new, Big Breach journalism, The Times’s then-executive editor, Bill Keller, wondered aloud in the paper’s Sunday magazine whether “The War Logs,” a huge cache of confidential war records and diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in conjunction with The Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian and others, represented “some kind of cosmic triumph of transparency.” He concluded, “I suspect we have not reached a state of information anarchy, at least not yet.” That was in 2011.

Five years later, it is safe to say that we are getting much closer. This is changing the course of world history, fast. It is also changing the rules for mainstream journalists in the fierce business of unearthing secrets, and for the government and corporate officials in the fiercer business of keeping them."

Reddit Steps Up Anti-Harassment Measures With New Blocking Tool; New York Times, 4/6/16

Mike Isaac, New York Times; Reddit Steps Up Anti-Harassment Measures With New Blocking Tool:

"Reddit has in recent months started to address online abuse, and on Wednesday it took one of its bigger steps toward helping individuals gain some control over tormentors: The company said it would give people a blocking feature to shield themselves against harassment on the site, moving to prohibit abusive users from sending messages to others.

The blocking feature will build on the concept that the less exposed to negative speech users are on Reddit, the more they will want to engage with the community. That is important for the company, based in San Francisco, which aims to spread far beyond the 243 million unique monthly visitors it currently serves and break into the mainstream consciousness, much like a Facebook or a Twitter — with a similar ability to command online advertising.

The blocking tool could also serve to curtail the spread of online abuse beyond Reddit’s walls. Vitriol on the site can sometimes erupt into larger memes, spilling over into social media and other avenues and creating further repercussions. That behavior is also stoked by other digital haunts that are the favorite of trolls, including sites like 4chan and 8chan."

Obama claimed to want transparency. His actions suggest the opposite; Guardian, 3/9/16

Trevor Timm, Guardian; Obama claimed to want transparency. His actions suggest the opposite:

"The Obama administration has taken a lot of well-deserved criticism over the years for claiming to be the most transparent presidency ever while actually being remarkably opaque, but they’ve now reached a new low: newly released documents show they aggressively lobbied Congress to kill bipartisan transparency reform that was based on the administration’s own policy.

In a move open government advocates are calling “ludicrous”, the administration “strongly opposed” the passage of bipartisan Freedom of Information Act (Foia) reform behind closed doors in 2014. The bill was a modest and uncontroversial piece of legislation which attempted to modernize the law for the internet age and codify President Obama’s 2009 memo directing federal agencies to adopt a “presumption of openness”.

Through a Foia lawsuit, the Freedom of the Press Foundation (the organization I work for) obtained a six-page talking points memo that the Justice Department distributed to House members protesting virtually every aspect of the proposed legislation in incredibly harsh language – despite the fact that some of the provisions were based almost word-for-word on the Justice Department’s own supposed policy (you can see a side-by-side comparison here).

Worse, Vice’s Jason Leopold is also reporting that the administration is conducting similar lobbying efforts around this year’s attempt to reform Foia in time for the law’s 50th anniversary this summer.

This is a shameful move by an administration that is constantly touting its open government and transparency bona fides despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary."

Swim. Bike. Cheat?; New York Times, 4/8/16

Sarah Lyall, New York Times; Swim. Bike. Cheat? :

"The winners were announced: Julie Miller first, Susanne Davis second. “She didn’t come down and shake our hands,” Davis said, referring to Miller. “In my entire 20 years of racing, I’ve never had that happen. That’s when I looked at her and said: ‘Gosh, I didn’t see you. Where did you pass me?’ ”

Miller replied that she had been easily recognizable in her bright green socks and then all but ran off the awards stage, Davis said, telling Davis that she would see her at the world championships in Kona, Hawaii.

Davis compared notes with the third- and fourth-place finishers. They, too, were mystified. They had not seen Miller on the course, either.

This odd series of events eventually touched off an extraordinary feat of forensic detective work by a group of athletes who were convinced that Miller had committed what they consider the triathlon’s worst possible transgression. They believed she had deliberately cut the course and then lied about it.

Dissatisfied with the response of race officials, they methodically gathered evidence from the minutiae of her record: official race photographs, timing data, photographs from spectators along the routes, the accounts of other competitors and volunteers who saw, or did not see, Miller at various points. Much of it suggested that Miller simply could not have completed some segments of the race in the times she claimed, and all of it raised grave questions about the integrity of her results at Whistler and other races."

Exclusive: X-Men's Chris Claremont talks through five key storylines; Empire, 4/6/16

Dorian Lynskey, Empire; Exclusive: X-Men's Chris Claremont talks through five key storylines:

"A major theme of your X-Men stories was using mutants as a metaphor for other persecuted groups. Where did that idea come from?

I went to Israel for two months in 1970 and worked on a kibbutz. It affected me on levels that I hadn’t anticipated, working on a daily basis with people who were actual survivors of the Holocaust. You’d see military patrols going by every day. We would have armed volunteers walking around the property all night. It brought home international conflicts on a very personal level.

With the X-Men, were you thinking only of antisemitism or racism and homophobia as well?

It was blended in. There’s a lot of talk online now that Magneto stands in for Malcolm X and Xavier stands in for Martin Luther King, which is totally valid but for me, being an immigrant white (Claremont was born in England), to make that analogy felt incredibly presumptuous. An equivalent analogy could be made to [Israeli prime minister] Menachem Begin as Magneto, evolving through his life from a terrorist in 1947 to a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 30 years later. That evolution was something I wanted to apply to the relationship between Xavier and Magneto. It’s an evolving 150-issue arc: Magneto’s resurrection as an angry, anti-human, pro-mutant terrorist. In #150 he lashes out and the person that gets hit is Kitty Pryde, a 13-year-old kid. His shattering realisation is: "What kind of monster have I become? Has what the Nazis did to me in the Shoah made me a Nazi?" Ultimately, my goal for the character was that he would come full circle and become Xavier’s heir, as headmaster of the school and leader of team. For me he was a much more fascinating character because of his flaws and there was always a risk that he might fall from grace...

Of course, you took the idea of mutants facing genocidal hatred to extremes with Days of Future Past (X-Men #141-142), where mutants are outlawed and murdered by the Sentinels…

The idea was to show our heroes why their fight is so necessary. There is a tragic cost to failure. The line we always used to describe these characters was ‘feared and hated by the world they are sworn to protect’. Their struggle is not simply to defeat the bad guys; it is to establish themselves as credible, honourable fellow citizens of the planet. The idea with Days Of Future Past was this is what’s lying in wait if you falter. If you ever needed a reason to try and try again, this is it."

Leading businesses take stand against states' new anti-LGBT laws; Guardian, 4/10/16

Edward Helmore and Matt Kessler, Guardian; Leading businesses take stand against states' new anti-LGBT laws:

"Local business leaders and educators warned that the legislation could harm the state’s competitiveness in attracting business and investment. “These assholes talk about gay women and gay men using the exact same language they were using in the 50s and 60s for segregationist purposes,” said the award-winning chef John Currence, owner of several restaurants in Oxford, Mississippi. He warned that Mississippi’s HB1523, known as the Religious Liberty Accommodation Act, would put businesses off from setting up in the state.

“When people see this kind of regressive social politics going on, it affects the quality of life”, he said. The new laws, he added, “could not be any more vile or regressive”.

Ivo Kamps, a University of Mississippi English professor, warned the law “will have a chilling effect on our ability to recruit students and faculty”, despite the university chancellor’s assurance that nothing would change...

Academics say the current legislation, combined with the Citizens United bill of 2010 that in effect gave corporations the rights of citizens, has placed corporations at the forefront of efforts to contain the spread of ideologically extreme legislation."

Panama Papers reveal offshore secrets of China’s red nobility; Guardian, 4/6/16

Juliette Garside and David Pegg, Guardian; Panama Papers reveal offshore secrets of China’s red nobility:

"Since Monday, China’s censors have been blocking access to the unfolding revelations about its most senior political families. There are now reports of censors deleting hundreds of posts on the social networks Sina Weibo and Wechat, and some media organisations including CNN say parts of their websites have been blocked."

“A remarkable feat of collaboration”: The incredible story of how the Panama Papers came to be; The Conversation via Salon, 4/6/16

Richard Sambrook, The Conversation via Salon; “A remarkable feat of collaboration”: The incredible story of how the Panama Papers came to be:

"The ICIJ has been criticised by some on social media for not putting all the material into the open for anyone to look through. For open media evangelists this would be the most transparent action to take. However, with such a huge trove of documents, any media organisation will want to ensure they act legally and responsibly – putting the material through an editorial and legal filter before publishing.

This is one of the defining differences between professional media and open data activists. In broad terms these are literally stolen documents – can news organisations justify publishing them in the greater public interest? Will undue harm to innocent figures be caused by open publication? The public interest seems clear in this case – but without knowing what else the documents contain it is hard to make a judgement about whether they should all be placed online.

The Panama Papers – like The Pentagon Papers in the 1970s, like Wikileaks Iraq War logs and like the Snowden revelations – lifts the lid on the activities of political and business elites in ways which will be discussed for many years to come.

They are also a rich example of how investigative journalism increasingly works in the age of big data and global media. We can expect to see more leaks, more international media collaborations and more reaction from governments trying to clamp down on embarrassing revelations."

In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed; New York Times, 3/30/16

Carol Pogash, New York Times; In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed:

"The concept of free public libraries gained support in the 1830s and was popularized by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie , who helped build 1,689 libraries around the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s on the notion that all people should have an opportunity to improve themselves. But public libraries like San Jose’s are struggling to find money to pay for books and services.

In San Jose, libraries began charging 50 cents a day for an overdue book, and what Jill Bourne, who become director of libraries in 2013, called “an exorbitant processing fee” of $20 for lost materials. Those high fines have come at a cost.

In impoverished neighborhoods, where few residents have broadband connections or computers, nearly a third of cardholders are barred from borrowing or using library computers. Half of the children and teenagers with library cards in the city owe fines. Around 187,000 accounts, or 39 percent of all cardholders, owe the library money, Ms. Bourne said.

Outsiders might think that “everyone in Silicon Valley is affluent and hyperconnected,” said Mayor Samuel T. Liccardo. He represents San Jose’s one million residents, 40 percent of whom are immigrants. “We still have a digital divide.”"

The Panama Papers’ Sprawling Web of Corruption; New York Times, 4/5/16

Editorial Board, New York Times; The Panama Papers’ Sprawling Web of Corruption:

"The first reaction to the leaked documents dubbed the Panama Papers is simply awe at the scope of the trove and the ingenuity of the anonymous source who provided the press with 11.5 million documents — 2.6 terabytes of data — revealing in extraordinary detail how offshore bank accounts and tax havens are used by the world’s rich and powerful to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes.

Then comes the disgust. With more than 14,000 clients around the world and more than 214,000 offshore entities involved, Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm whose internal documents were exposed, piously insists it violated no laws or ethics. But the questions remain: How did all these politicians, dictators, criminals, billionaires and celebrities amass vast wealth and then benefit from elaborate webs of shell companies to disguise their identities and their assets? Would there have been no reckoning had the leak not occurred?

And then the core question: After these revelations, will anything change? Many formal denials and pledges of official investigations have been made. But to what degree do the law and public shaming still have dominion over this global elite? A public scarred by repeated revelations of corruption in government, sports and finance will demand to know."

Joe Biden gives charged speech on campus sexual assault: 'It is a crime, period'; Guardian, 4/5/16

Ciara McCarthy, Guardian; Joe Biden gives charged speech on campus sexual assault: 'It is a crime, period' :

"US vice-president Joe Biden spoke emphatically about the need to address sexual assault on college campuses on Tuesday as part of multi-campus tour to highlight the issue.

“The legal system and the court of public opinion still allowed [sic] prosecutors to ask victims of rape: ‘What were you wearing?’” he told nearly 1,000 students at the University of Pittsburgh. “What difference does it make, what a woman was wearing?”

The city was his first stop in a series of events to discuss sexual assault and promote the It’s On Us initiative, launched by the White House in 2014. The campaign promotes a pledge to keep women and men safe from sexual assault, and focuses in particular on campus sexual assault. Some estimates show that as many as one in five women are assaulted during their college years. Biden implored students to intervene and prevent sexual violence."

Transparency International

Transparency International:

"From villages in rural India to the corridors of power in Brussels, Transparency International gives voice to the victims and witnesses of corruption. We work together with governments, businesses and citizens to stop the abuse of power, bribery and secret deals.

As a global movement with one vision, we want a world free of corruption. Through chapters in more than 100 countries and an international secretariat in Berlin, we are leading the fight against corruption to turn this vision into reality."

Obama calls for international tax reform amid Panama Papers revelations; Guardian, 4/5/16

Rupert Neate and David Smith, Guardian; Obama calls for international tax reform amid Panama Papers revelations:

"Barack Obama has called for international tax reform in the wake of the revelations contained in the Panama Papers.

“There is no doubt that the problem of global tax avoidance generally is a huge problem,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “The problem is that a lot of this stuff is legal, not illegal.”

The US president said the leak from Panama illustrated the scale of tax avoidance involving Fortune 500 companies and running into trillions of dollars worldwide.

“We shouldn’t make it legal to engage in transactions just to avoid taxes,” he added, praising instead “the basic principle of making sure everyone pays their fair share”.

Obama described the Panama revelations as “important stuff” and highlighted the impact upon ordinary citizens, adding that “a lot of these loopholes come at the expense of middle-class families, because that lost revenue has to be made up somewhere.

“Alternatively, it means that we’re not investing as much as we should in schools, in making college more affordable, in putting people back to work rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our infrastructure, creating more opportunities for our children.”"

What are the Panama Papers? A guide to history's biggest data leak; Guardian, 4/5/16

Luke Harding, Guardian; What are the Panama Papers? A guide to history's biggest data leak:

"The Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ then shared them with a large network of international partners, including the Guardian and the BBC.

What do they reveal?

The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens."

Unpacking The Panama Papers; NPR, On Point, 4/5/16

[Podcast 45 min. 48 sec.] Tom Ashbrook, NPR, On Point; Unpacking The Panama Papers:

"A massive leak of more than 11 million documents reveals a global web of corruption and tax hidden wealth. What we’re learning about the Panama Papers.

Everybody’s talking about the Panama Papers. The biggest leak of financial data in history, and it’s all about the shadowy world of hidden offshore money. Wealth. Terabytes of data lighting up the hidden finances of presidents and prime ministers. Celebrities. Soccer stars. FIFA. A cellist who is the best friend of Vladimir Putin and two billion offshore dollars. The prime minister of Iceland has resigned. This hour On Point, hidden wealth, and the story told by the Panama Papers."

Most College Students Want Free Speech On Campuses — But Not When It’s Hate Speech; Huffington Post, 4/4/16

Marina Fang, Huffington Post; Most College Students Want Free Speech On Campuses — But Not When It’s Hate Speech:

"College students want free speech on their campuses but want their administrators to intervene when it turns into hate speech, though they disagree on whether college campuses are open environments and on how the media should cover campus protests, according to a new Gallup survey on the First Amendment released Monday.

About 78 percent of students surveyed said that colleges should allow “all types of speech and viewpoints,” while 22 percent noted that “colleges should prohibit biased or offensive speech in the furtherance of a positive learning environment.”"

Don't mourn the loss of libraries – the internet has made them obsolete; The Telegraph, 3/29/16

John McTernan, The Telegraph; Don't mourn the loss of libraries – the internet has made them obsolete:

"The truth, and it is a sad truth for former librarians like myself, is that the public are voting with their feet. Councils are only following the lead of the public with library closures.

We can, and should, still love books, but we should not be sentimental about libraries, because they are a means to an end. Access to information is now widely available via smartphones: three quarters of us have one, it was one in five in 2010. Library and information services have to be designed with that reality in mind.

The true inequality remains access to books and reading. Children who grow up with and around books do better educationally than those who don’t. That is where childcare, nurseries and schools are the key. Libraries must adapt to the changing habits of adults, where there is a clear and irreversible trajectory there. But they must never abandon children."

GSK Eases IP Rights For Poorest Countries, Considers Patent Pooling For Cancer; Intellectual Property Watch, 3/31/16

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; GSK Eases IP Rights For Poorest Countries, Considers Patent Pooling For Cancer:

"The global medicines manufacturer said it wishes to widen access to its innovative new medicines around the world. The company, which already set tiered pricing, data-sharing, and “innovative partnerships,” said it recognises that improved access “requires a flexible and multi-faceted approach to intellectual property (IP) protection,” according to a press release.

GSK is evolving its graduated approach to filing and enforcing patents so that IP protection reflects a country’s economic maturity, said the release.

“For Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Low Income Countries (LICs), GSK will not file patents for its medicines, so as to give clarity and confidence to generic companies seeking to manufacture and supply generic versions of GSK medicines in those countries.”

“For Lower Middle Income Countries (LMICs) generally, GSK will file for patents but will seek to offer and agree licences to allow supplies of generic versions of its medicines for 10 years.” A small royalty on sales is envisaged for those countries, said the release.

For the rest of the countries, GSK “will continue to seek full patent protection...”"

“Other companies, such as Roche, Novartis, Bayer, Astellas, and BMS, with important oncology drugs should begin to engage on expanding access to their patented medicines, beyond just HIV and HCV drugs,” KEI urged."

This scientist nearly went to jail for making up data; Washington Post, 4/1/16

Amy Ellis Nutt, Washington Post; This scientist nearly went to jail for making up data:

"Scientific integrity took another hit Thursday when an Australian researcher received a two-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to 17 fraud-related charges. The main counts against neuroscientist Bruce Murdoch were for an article heralding a breakthrough in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. And the judge's conclusions were damning.

There was no evidence, she declared, that Murdoch had even conducted the clinical trial on which his supposed findings were based.

Plus, Murdoch forged consent forms for study participants, one of whom was dead at the time the alleged took place.

Plus, Murdoch fraudulently accepted public and private research money for the bogus study, published in 2011 in the highly reputable European Journal of Neurology.

"Your research was such as to give false hope to Parkinson's researchers and Parkinson's sufferers," said Magistrate Tina Privitera, who heard the case in Brisbane. Still to go to trial is Murdoch's co-author, Caroline Barwood, who has also been charged with fraud."

Sheila Corrall and Kip Currier win LIBER Innovation Award; 45th Annual Conference of LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries)

LIBER 2016; Sheila Corrall and Kip Currier win LIBER Innovation Award:

The Program Committee for the 45th Annual Conference of LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries) has selected a paper by Sheila Corrall and James D. “Kip” Currier for a LIBER Innovation Award. The paper on "Legal, Ethical, and Policy Issues of “Big Data 2.0” Collaborative Ventures and Roles for Information Professionals in Research Libraries" will be presented at the conference in Helsinki, Finland, on June 29-July 1, 2016.

The awards are sponsored by OCLC and awarded to the 3 most innovative and relevant papers submitted to the LIBER Conference. Award recipients receive a grant of 1000 euros towards travel and conference registration. The award ceremony takes place at the conference plenary on July 1.

Conference Theme: Libraries Opening Paths to Knowledge

Google Apologizes For Terrible April Fools’ Day Prank; Huffington Post, 4/1/16

Damon Beres, Huffington Post; Google Apologizes For Terrible April Fools’ Day Prank:

"Whatever your thoughts on the joke, it’s a good reminder that Gmail — free as it might be — isn’t a public service. It’s a privately owned product subject to the impulses of corporate enterprise. And yes, many of us are accustomed to our entire lives revolving around it...

At the time, cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier raised a couple of important points to The Huffington Post.

“You should be concerned that Facebook can without any due process kick you off their network. You should be concerned that Gmail can lock you out of your email. You should be concerned that the U.S. government can spy on anyone,” Schneier said.

“All of these things can happen without knowledge or consent. We are giving these companies an enormous amount of power over our digital selves and therefore our lives,” he added.

The postal service is obligated to deliver your mail. Google is not obligated to provide you a free email service, nor an email service that’s free from bad April Fool’s Day pranks.

That’s a sobering thought, considering how many of us rely on it. As of February, it’s estimated that 1 billion people use Gmail worldwide."

Museum Reverses Position, Will Mention Bill Cosby’s Alleged Crimes; Slate, 4/1/16

Christina Cauterucci, Slate; Museum Reverses Position, Will Mention Bill Cosby’s Alleged Crimes:

"“We understand but respectfully disagree” with that suggestion, Bunch wrote. “For too long, aspects of African American history have been erased and undervalued, creating an incomplete interpretation of the American past. This museum seeks to tell, in the words of the eminent historian John Hope Franklin, ‘the unvarnished truth’ that will help our visitors to remember and better understand what has often been erased and forgotten.”

Bunch is right—the contributions of people of color have been underplayed and written out of every branch of historical study. In arts and culture in particular, white people have adopted and profited from black traditions for generations. But the lives of sexual assault survivors have been excised from popular histories, too, bolstering the legacies of men who abused their power at others’ expense...

The case of the NMAAHC is both weightier than that of the African Art Museum, since it’s a permanent display, and less so, because the entire exhibition does not hinge on Cosby’s name. The museums’ equivocation speaks to the predicament of many African-American cultural institutions that are grappling with the prospect of Cosby as a fallen star. The Cosby Show was a treasured reflection of black life for people who rarely saw their families represented in popular media, and it both normalized and complicated white America’s understanding of the black upper-middle–class family. There is no doubt that Cosby was an influential force in American comedy and a groundbreaker for black actors and comedians—that’s why the revelations about his alleged history of sexual abuse have so completely shocked and appalled the country. Cosby should absolutely have a place in a museum of black history and culture. But if we are to do right by future generations who’ll interpret Cosby’s legacy from exhibitions like this one, it must not evade the complicated truths of his story."

Grade Inflation Nation; Inside Higher Ed via Slate, 3/29/16

Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed via Slate; Grade Inflation Nation:

"The first major update in seven years to a database on grade inflation has found that grades continue to rise and that A is the most common grade earned at all kinds of colleges...

The trends highlighted in the new study do not represent dramatic shifts but are continuation of trends that Rojstaczer and many others bemoan. He believes the idea of “student as consumer” has encouraged colleges to accept high grades and effectively encouraged faculty members to award high grades.

“University leadership nationwide promoted the student-as-consumer idea,” he said. “It’s been a disastrous change. We need leaders who have a backbone and put education first.”

Rojstaczer said he thinks the only real solution is for a public federal database to release information—for all college—similar to what he has been doing with a representative sample, but still a minority, of all colleges."