Open Access at the Movies; Inside Higher Ed, September 10, 2018

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed; Open Access at the Movies

"[Jason] Schmitt's film raises some important questions -- how is it possible that big for-profit publishers, such as Elsevier, have fatter profit margins than some of the biggest corporations in the world? Why can't everyone read all publicly funded research for free?

Discussion of these questions in the film is undoubtedly one-sided. Of around 70 people featured in the film, just a handful work for for-profit publishers like Springer-Nature or the American Association for the Advancement of Science -- and they don't get much screen time. There is also no representative from Elsevier, despite the publisher being the focus of much criticism in the film. This was not for lack of trying, said Schmitt. “I offered Elsevier a five-minute section of the film that they could have full creative control over,” he said. “They turned me down.”

Schmitt said he made Paywall not for academics and scholars but for the general public. He wants people to understand how scholarly publishing works, and why they should care that they can’t access research paid for with their tax dollars."

[Documentary] Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, 2018

[Documentary] Paywall: The Business of Scholarship

"Paywall: The Business of Scholarship is a documentary which focuses on the need for open access to research and science, questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers, examines the 35-40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher Elsevier and looks at how that profit margin is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google.  

Staying true to the open access model: it is free to stream and download, for private or public use, and maintains the most open CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons designation to ensure anyone regardless of their social, financial or political background will have access.   

If you are interested in screening this film at your university, please fill out our contact form."

Why Facebook Will Never Be Free of Fakes; The New York Times, September 5, 2018

Siva Vaidhyanathan, The New York Times; Why Facebook Will Never Be Free of Fakes

"Facebook has put impressive effort into reforming itself around the margins. But considering the harm that Facebook has caused — sharing user data with unauthorized third parties, spreading propaganda that sets off ethnic violence, hosting attacks on elections around the world — exterminating most of the pests is not good enough. Stopping all of them is impossible. Facebook is too big to govern and too big to fix. We might just have to accept that.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.”"

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration; The New York Times, September 5, 2018

Anonymous, The New York Times;

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

 

[Kip Currier: The New York Times' controversial decision to publish on September 5, 2018 an anonymous Op-Ed essay penned by a "senior official" within the Trump administration, triggers a rash of thought-stirring, thorny ethical questions:

Chief among them: What were the considerations in deciding whether to permit the senior official to publish the Op-Ed essay anonymously? (--And did The Times and "Anonymous" discuss revealing the individual's identity at some point in the future?)]

Who were the stakeholders that were and were not considered by The Times' editorial staff in making this decision?

What roles are The Times' editorial staff assuming in publishing this piece by Anonymous?

Has The Times communicated sufficient transparency about its editorial decision-making?]

"The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here...."

[Excerpt]

"The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making."

From Mountain of CCTV Footage, Pay Dirt: 2 Russians Are Named in Spy Poisoning; The New York Times, September 5, 2018

Ellen Barry, The New York Times;

From Mountain of CCTV Footage, Pay Dirt: 2 Russians Are Named in Spy Poisoning

[Kip Currier: Fascinating example of good old-fashioned, "methodical, plodding" detective work, combined with 21st century technologies of mass surveillance and facial recognition by machines and gifted humans.

As I think about the chapters on privacy and surveillance in the ethics textbook I'm writing, this story is a good reminder of the socially-positive aspects of new technologies, amid often legitimate concerns about their demonstrated and potential downsides. In the vein of prior stories I've posted on this blog about the use, for example, of drones for animal conservation and monitoring efforts, the identification of the two Russian operatives in the Salisbury, UK poisoning case highlights how the uses and applications of digital age technologies like mass surveillance frequently fall outside the lines of "all bad" or "all good".]

"“It’s almost impossible in this country to hide, almost impossible,” said John Bayliss, who retired from the Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, in 2010. “And with the new software they have, you can tell the person by the way they walk, or a ring they wear, or a watch they wear. It becomes even harder.”

The investigation into the Skripal poisoning, known as Operation Wedana, will stand as a high-profile test of an investigative technique Britain has pioneered: accumulating mounds of visual data and sifting through it...

Ceri Hurford-Jones, the managing director of Salisbury’s local radio station, saluted investigators for their “sheer skill in getting a grip on this, and finding out who these people were.”

It may not have been the stuff of action films, but Mr. Hurford-Jones did see something impressive about the whole thing.

“It’s methodical, plodding,” he said. “But, you know, that’s the only way you can do these things. There is a bit of Englishness in it.”"

Computer Programmers Get New Tech Ethics Code; The Conversation via Scientific American, August 11, 2018

Cherri M. Pancake, The Conversation via Scientific American; Computer Programmers Get New Tech Ethics Code: The guidelines come from the Association for Computing Machinery

"That’s why the world’s largest organization of computer scientists and engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, of which I am president, has issued a new code of ethics for computing professionals. And it’s why ACM is taking other steps to help technologists engage with ethical questions...

ACM’s last code of ethics was adopted in 1992, when many people saw computing work as purely technical. The internet was in its infancy and people were just beginning to understand the value of being able to aggregate and distribute information widely. It would still be years before artificial intelligence and machine learning had applications outside research labs.

Today, technologists’ work can affect the lives and livelihoods of people in ways that may be unintended, even unpredictable. I’m not an ethicist by training, but it’s clear to me that anyone in today’s computing field can benefit from guidance on ethical thinking and behavior."

This Music Theory Professor Just Showed How Stupid and Broken Copyright Filters Are; Motherboard, August 30, 2018

Karl Bode, Motherboard; This Music Theory Professor Just Showed How Stupid and Broken Copyright Filters Are

"German music professor Ulrich Kaiser this week wrote about a troubling experiment he ran on YouTube. As a music theory teacher, Kaiser routinely works to catalog a collection of public domain recordings he maintains online in order to teach his students about Beethoven and other classical music composers."

The searing photos that helped end child labor in America; The Washington Post, September 3, 2018

Jessica Contrera, The Washington Post;

The searing photos that helped end child labor in America

 

"Hine’s photos showed the price: unsafe working conditions, dangerous machinery and business owners who refused to educate the children or limit their working hours.

Though there had been investigations that attempted to expose these circumstances in the past, “The industry simply dismissed those reports as — the term they would use today is — ‘fake news,’ ” said Hugh Hindman, a historian of child labor. “When Hine comes along and supplements the investigations with pictures, it creates a set of facts that can’t be denied anymore.”"

"Breaker Boys working in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Co." South Pittston, Pennsylvania. Photographer: Lewis Hine. Archived: Library of Congress

 

Letter to the Editor: "Get the Facts on Readers", Emailed to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Kip Currier, September 1, 2018

[Kip Currier: I'm copying below a Letter to the Editor--titled "Get the Facts on Readers"--that I emailed today (September 1, 2018) to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. For additional background, see this story.]

Get the Facts on Readers

Dear Editor,

The Post-Gazette is running a multi-platform ad campaign that weaponizes variations of the line “I will never go digital” to make fun of older readers, depicted as fuddy-duddy Luddites. In one particularly offensive TV spot, a digitally-savvy granddaughter openly mocks her grandmother who prefers print.

Research refutes the ageist “messages” in the P-G’s divisive marketing campaign. Many adult U.S. readers—of all ages—are hybrid readers who want the choice of information in both print and digital formats.

As evidence, take a look at some of the key findings from a Jan. 3-10, 2018 national survey of 2,002 U.S. adults, reported by the well-respected, non-partisan Pew Research Center:

Despite some growth in certain digital formats, it remains the case that relatively few Americans consume digital books (which include audiobooks and e-books) to the exclusion of print. Some 39% of Americans say they read only print books, while 29% read in these digital formats and also read print books.

And the coup de grace to the P-G’s graceless stereotyping:

Some demographic groups are more likely than others to be digital-only book readers, but in general this behavior is relatively rare across a wide range of demographics. For example, 10% of 18- to 29-year-olds only read books in digital formats, compared with 5% of those ages 50-64 and 4% of those 65 and older.

The P-G’s preening effort to digitally divide users borders on farce, given that P-G writers and staff repeatedly concede the deplorable state of the newspaper’s digital search and archival features. 

The P-G’s tagline is “One of America’s Great Newspapers”. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, that tagline is not supported by facts. So, here’s a “message” for P-G ownership:

Hire some of the Pittsburgh region’s highly educated information professionals to help the P-G become a bona fide leader in print and digital content, search, and delivery. Give the Pittsburgh region a truly great newspaper that inclusively serves and respects all of its readers and residents.

James “Kip” Currier

Mt. Lebanon

Post-Gazette Is Going Digital, At Least On Some Days, With An Ad Campaign That Is Raising Eyebrows; KDKA 2 CBS Pittsburgh, August 22, 2018

Jon Delano, KDKA 2 CBS Pittsburgh; Post-Gazette Is Going Digital, At Least On Some Days, With An Ad Campaign That Is Raising Eyebrows

"The PG has billboards up around town and television ads on-air, featuring those who say they will never go digital.

One TV advertisement: “PGe and PG NewsSlide, who the bleep needs them. Last time I went on line they tried to track my cookies. They’ll never get my cookie recipe.” 

Another TV advertisement: “Now they’re telling me PG is going digital. They can stick their digital. I’m not doing that.” 

“It’s a little insensitive to the readers who really are connected to print, who really depend on print,” said [Andrew] Conte [director of Point Park University’s Center for Media Innovation].

Not true, says [Allan] Block [chairman of Block Communications that owns the PG]."

Want to revive the political center? Fight corruption.; The Washington Post, August 31, 2018

Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post;

Want to revive the political center? Fight corruption.

"Any serious anti-corruption, anti-fraud platform should also have an international angle, because the spread of corruption in the United States is part of a larger sickness that now afflicts the entire Western alliance. Jointly, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, the rest of Europe — as well as Japan and Australia — are now locked in a real, life-and-death struggle against international kleptocracy. All of our political systems are now vulnerable to Russian and Chinese bribery and influence-buying. All of our online media is now the target of full-time political manipulation.

To preserve our democracies and maintain rule of law, we need to push back, as allies, using not just sanctions but also new laws limiting — or eliminating — the use of tax havens and the broader money-laundering toolkit."

How to honor John McCain’s memory; The Washington Post, August 31, 2018

Ken Burns, The Washington Post;

How to honor John McCain’s memory

"[John McCain] realized we could learn from these stories. But, as with all stories, you have to be willing to listen. In a world where considering opposing views seems increasingly endangered, you can honor the memory of John McCain by stopping to hear the stories of others."

‘This week he became a legend’: A solemn and glorious send-off for John McCain; The Washington Post, September 1, 2018

Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post;

‘This week he became a legend’: A solemn and glorious send-off for John McCain

 

"Years from now we will remember Meghan McCain’s emotion and the elegance of the eulogists but perhaps most of all the magnificent music. Beyond words, beyond rational argument, it lifted and moved those in attendance. It took us out of the mundane and to higher aspirations: to be better. In that respect, in the lines of the songs and the melodies of the band, John McCain was very much present in the cathedral."

AI Meets Ethics: Can the Resulting Problems Be Addressed?; Legaltech News, Law.com, August 22, 2018

Rhys Dipshan, Legaltech News, Law.com;

AI Meets Ethics: Can the Resulting Problems Be Addressed?

 

"For Johannes Stiehler, CTO at e-discovery and analytics company Ayfie, the ethical concerns with AI mostly relate back to the issue of accountability. “The question of culpability is going to be key to these ethical discussions, in law as much as in medicine,” he said...

A 2016 investigation by ProPublica found that COMPAS showed bias against African-American prisoners.

Katz, however, noted that bias in the criminal justice program would exist with or without AI.  “There are plenty of complaints of biases of judges and police,” he said, adding that it’s interesting that there is so much focus on fixing AI, but little focus on addressing human biases."

 

Honoring All Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech: featuring Kathy Pham & Friends from the Berkman Klein Community; Berkman Klein Luncheon Series, Harvard University, April 17, 2018

[Video] Berkman Klein Luncheon Series, Harvard University;

Honoring All Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech:
featuring Kathy Pham & Friends from the Berkman Klein Community

"The Ethical Tech Working Group at the Berkman Klein Center will host a series of lighting [sic] talks exploring social responsibility and ethics in tech. Speakers will draw on their perspectives as computer scientists, critical race and gender scholars, designers, ethnographers, historians, lawyers, political scientists, and philosophers to share reflections on what it will take to build more publicly-accountable technologies and how to bridge diverse expertise from across industry and academia to get there."

[Kip Currier: One of the speakers in this video is Ben Green, Computer Science PhD Student, Harvard University. His talk is titled "Travails in CS Academia".]

Ben Green quote:

[8:46 in video] "What was particularly disturbing for me as I entered the [computer science] field was to see the actual dismissal of non-technical voices and non-technical perspectives in the field. 

I had one experience where I heard a fellow graduate student of mine scoff at the idea of a social scientist being an actual scientist. And I had several conversations with faculty members in the department where they told me that the work that I wanted to do that was socially- and policy-minded was not computer science and wasn't worth doing."

AI Ethics: Silicon Valley Should Take A Seat At The DoD Table; Breaking Defense, August 29, 2018

Jonathan D. Moreno, Breaking Defense;

AI Ethics: Silicon Valley Should Take A Seat At The DoD Table 

 

"As well as their role in the work, scientists and engineers need to consider the consequences of their deliberate absence from a conversation. If they don’t insist on building acceptable and verifiable safeguards for their work into a system someone else will, and not necessarily in a form they would endorse. To have a voice at the table, you need to have a seat at the table."

Ethics in Computing Panel; InfoQ, August 28, 2018

[Video] InfoQ; Ethics in Computing Panel

"Summary
 
The panelists discuss the important points around privacy, security, safety online, and intent of software today." 

"Kathy Pham is currently researching the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab."

Kathy Pham quote from video: 

[13:11 in video] "What a good engineer is maybe is something we should rethink as well.

I spend a lot of time in academia now. And I hear over and over again that people who are of the computer science plus philosophy or computer science plus social science background, have the hardest time finding jobs. Even if they're within the CS Department they have such a hard time getting jobs because they're not like the real hard science, or the real hard engineering discipline...

Those kinds of people provide a really different perspective on how we build our products. So if you're in charge of hiring for your companies, perhaps we all just need to rethink how we hire people and what makes a good engineer."

"Natalie Evans Harris is COO and VP of Ecosystem Development at BrightHive."

Natalie Evans Harris quote from video:

[12:28 in video:] "While we look at resumes and we care where you get your skills and degrees from, we also want to know what your ethical code of conduct is."

N.Y. Mayor Taps Drexel Professor For First Algorithm Quality-Control Task Force; Drexel Now, June 4, 2018

Drexel Now; N.Y. Mayor Taps Drexel Professor For First Algorithm Quality-Control Task Force

"But how do we ensure that the algorithms are the impartial arbiters we expect them to be? Drexel University professor Julia Stoyanovich is part of the first group in the nation helping to answer this question in the biggest urban area in the world. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tapped Stoyanovich to serve on the city’s Automated Decision Systems Task Force, a team charged with creating a process for reviewing algorithms through the lens of fairness, equity and accountability...

The [Automated Decision Systems] Task Force is the product of New York City’s algorithmic accountability law, which was passed in 2017 to ensure transparency in how the city uses automated decision systems. By 2019, the group must “provide recommendations about how agency automated decision systems data may be shared with the public and how agencies may address instances where people are harmed by agency automated decision systems,” according to one of the provisions of the law."

Predatory publishers: the journals that churn out fake science; The Guardian, August 10, 2018

Alex Hern and Pamela Duncan, The Guardian;

Predatory publishers: the journals that churn out fake science

"A vast ecosystem of predatory publishers is churning out “fake science” for profit, an investigation by the Guardian in collaboration with German publishers NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin has found.

More than 175,000 scientific articles have been produced by five of the largest “predatory open-access publishers”, including India-based Omics publishing group and the Turkish World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, or Waset."

California Bill Is a Win for Access to Scientific Research; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), August 30, 2018

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); California Bill Is a Win for Access to Scientific Research

"In Passing A.B. 2192, California Leads the Country in Open Access

The California legislature just scored a huge win in the fight for open access to scientific research.

Now it’s up to Governor Jerry Brown to sign it. Under A.B. 2192—which passed both houses unanimously—all peer-reviewed, scientific research funded by the state of California would be made available to the public no later than one year after publication. There’s a similar law on the books in California right now, but it only applies to research funded by the Department of Public Health, and it’s set to expire in 2020. A.B. 2192 would extend it indefinitely and expand it to cover research funded by any state agency...

Finally, it’s time for Congress to pass a federal open access bill. Despite having strong support in both parties, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR, S. 1701, H.R. 3427) has been stuck in Congressional gridlock for five years. Take a moment to celebrate the passage of A.B. 2192 by writing your members of Congress and urging them to pass FASTR."

The problem with ethics in data; Human Resources Director New Zealand, August 29, 2018

Emily Douglas, Human Resources Director New Zealand; The problem with ethics in data

"The problem of ‘ethics in data’ has become entrenched in HR. A recent paper published in Philosophical Transactions A by Luciano Floridi and Mariarosaria Taddeo, questioned the nature of ‘data ethics’ and what it means in a corporate setting.

“While the data ethics landscape is complex, we are confident that these ethical challenges can be addressed successfully,” commented Floridi.

“Striking a robust balance between enabling innovation in data science technology, and respecting privacy and human rights will not be an easy or simple task. But the alternative, failing to advance both the ethics and the science of data, would have regrettable consequences.”

It serves as both a scary reminder of what exactly is at stake here, and a rousing challenge for HR practitioners. HR should take on the role of a gatekeeper to employee data – rather than procurer."

Southerners Tore Down Silent Sam. Now Northerners Need to Tear Down Confederate Flags.; HuffPost, August 29, 2018

Alex Pareene, HuffPost; Southerners Tore Down Silent Sam. Now Northerners Need to Tear Down Confederate Flags.

"At a certain point, we stopped telling ourselves about how we freed the United States."

Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism; The Atlantic, August 23, 2018

Ian Bogost, The Atlantic; Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism

"Your data is everywhere, and nowhere, and you cannot escape it, or what it might yet do to you."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: what sports have taught me about race in America; The Guardian, August 28, 2018

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Guardian;

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: what sports have taught me about race in America

"Athletes who speak out are proclaiming their loyalty to a constitution that demands equality and inclusiveness, not to the government officials who try to undermine those ideals by silencing its critics."

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out; Intellectual Property Watch, August 27, 2018

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch;

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out

"The World Intellectual Property Organization’s committee seeking to find solutions against misappropriation of traditional knowledge opened this morning. While delegates are expected to negotiate wording of a potential treaty, the fund allowing indigenous peoples to participate in the discussions is empty with no foreseeable new donors, described by the chair as a historical situation. The committee is also trying to agree on recommendations for the upcoming WIPO General Assembly next month. On core issues, such as what the protection should cover, who would benefit from it, and under which conditions, delegates still have to find common positions."

The Story of the American Inventor Denied a Patent Because He Was a Slave; Gizmodo, August 28, 2018

Matt Novak, Gizmodo;

The Story of the American Inventor Denied a Patent Because He Was a Slave

"The world of invention is famous for its patent disputes. But what happens when your dispute wasn’t with another inventor but whether the Patent Office saw you as a person at all? In 1864, a black man named Benjamin T. Montgomery tried to patent his new propeller for steamboats. The Patent Office said that he wasn’t allowed to patent his invention. All because he was enslaved."

Here’s why Trump can’t perform his job; The Washington Post, August 28, 2018

Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post; Here’s why Trump can’t perform his job

"This is what comes from electing someone emotionally and intellectually incapable of seeing beyond his own emotional needs or understanding the moral authority a normal president enjoys by fulfilling the role of head of state. Trump’s lack of decency, civility and respect for others’ accomplishments prompt him to attack Americans (especially minorities) who disagree with him; in turn, Trump’s conduct provokes honorable people to shun the president."

Who Gets to Read the Research We Pay For?; Slate, August 21, 2018

Aaron Mak, Slate; Who Gets to Read the Research We Pay For?: Scientific journals’ lock on new studies has ignited tension for years. When it comes to access for people with rare diseases, it becomes an ethical issue too.

"This does not sit well with academics and other members of the research community, who often publicly complain about the company’s profit margins, its allegedly restrictive copyrights, and the fact that much of the research it sells access to is taxpayer-funded. This public outrage seems to have gotten under the skin of William Gunn, Elsevier’s director of scholarly communications. When one user argued that people in rare-disease families “shouldn’t have to jump through additional hoops to access information,” Gunn responded, “Yes, everyone should have rainbows, unicorns, & puppies delivered to their doorstep by volunteers. Y’all keep wishing for that, I’ll keep working on producing the best knowledge and distributing it as best we can.”

This is just one reckless tweet in the heat of a Twitter spat (though it’s worth bearing Gunn’s job title in mind), and, sure, he later apologized. But the issue of rare-disease families trying to avoid the high fees associated with accessing research on potential treatments goes beyond this Twitter spat: It’s a real problem that has not been adequately fixed by the company."

Trump rejected plans for a White House statement praising McCain; The Washington Post, August 26, 2018

Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post; Trump rejected plans for a White House statement praising McCain


"McCain allies said they did not expect an outpouring of praise from Trump after their contentious past.

“It certainly doesn’t bother me or the people I know close to John,” Weaver said. “I don’t think it bothers John one bit. If we heard something today or tomorrow from Trump, we know it’d mean less than a degree from Trump University.”"

How This Will End: Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers.; The Atlantic, August 24, 2018

Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic; How This Will End:

Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers.

"But to really get the feel for the Trump administration’s end, we must turn to the finest political psychologist of them all, William Shakespeare. The text is in the final act of what superstitious actors only refer to as the “Scottish play.” One of the nobles who has turned on their murderous usurper king describes Macbeth’s predicament:

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

And so it will be for Trump...

But in the moment of losing power, the two will be alike. A tyrant is unloved, and although the laws and institutions of the United States have proven a brake on Trump, his spirit remains tyrannical—that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end, these fall away as well."

Yes, Manafort and Cohen are guilty, but the rule of law is still in danger; The Washington Post, August 23, 2018

Joyce White Vance, The Washington Post; Yes, Manafort and Cohen are guilty, but the rule of law is still in danger

"There does not seem to be any bottom — nothing that goes too far for Republican elected officials, whom our Constitution entrusts with the last line of defense. Prosecutors are upholding their responsibility to the rule of law, but without similar action by the majority party in Congress, it is in danger of winking out of existence."

NewsGuard Wants to Fight Fake News With Humans, Not Algorithms; Wired, August 23, 2018

Issie Lapowsky, Wired; NewsGuard Wants to Fight Fake News With Humans, Not Algorithms

Kip Currier: I just heard veteran journalist Steve Brill talking about a new information assessment tool called NewsGuard on MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports. Brill delivered this money quote on how NewsGuard provides evaluation of often-visited Internet sites by human (translation: not AI!) experts:

"That's what librarians have been doing since the invention of the library." 

--Steve Brill, August 24, 2018,
Andrea Mitchell Reports Program, MSNBC

[Excerpt]

"The patchwork nature of promoting trustworthy sources online has had the unintended consequence of seeding fears of bias. 

That's one reason why a group of journalists and media executives are launching a tool called NewsGuard, a browser plug-in for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that transcends platforms, giving trustworthiness ratings to most of the internet's top-trafficked sites. Those ratings are based on assessments from an actual newsroom of dozens of reporters who comprise NewsGuard's staff. They hail from a range of news organizations, including New York Daily News and GQ. Together, they've spent the last several months scoring thousands of news sites."

President Trump brings mafia ethics to the GOP; The Washington Post, August 23, 2018

Paul Waldman, The Washington Post; President Trump brings mafia ethics to the GOP

"But Trump is big on people keeping their mouths shut. As head of the Trump Organization, as a candidate and as president, he has forced underlings to sign nondisclosure agreements forbidding them from revealing what [sic] saw while in his employ. In many cases, those agreements included non-disparagement clauses in which the signer had to pledge never to criticize Trump or his family for as long as they lived. The mafia had “omerta,” and Trump has the NDA."

The Complexity of Simply Searching for Medical Advice; Wired, July 3, 2018

Renee Diresta, Wired; The Complexity of Simply Searching for Medical Advice

"As we increasingly rely on search and on social to answer questions that have a profound impact on both individuals and society, especially where health is concerned, this difficulty in discerning, and surfacing, sound science from pseudo-science has alarming consequences."

Can Facebook, or Anybody, Solve the Internet’s Misinformation Problem?; The New York Times, August 22, 2018

Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times;Can Facebook, or Anybody, Solve the Internet’s Misinformation Problem?

"Alex Stamos, who until recently was Facebook’s chief security officer, has a dimmer view. 

In an article published on Wednesday on Lawfare, a news site that covers national security, Mr. Stamos wrote that the string of attacks revealed by Facebook, Microsoft and others were evidence that “America’s adversaries believe that it is still both safe and effective to attack U.S. democracy using American technologies and the freedoms we cherish.”

The government’s failure to address these threats have left the United States “unprepared to protect the 2018 elections,” Mr. Stamos said. He outlined a set of legislative, regulatory and law enforcement steps Americans might take to secure their digital house.

If we move fast, he said, we might be able to salvage 2020."

Verizon under fire for 'throttling' firefighters' data in California blaze; The Guardian, August 22, 2018

Olivia Solon, The Guardian; Verizon under fire for 'throttling' firefighters' data in California blaze

"Internet service providers (ISPs) are entitled to throttle people who use excessive amounts of data, depending on the terms of the individual plan. However, Verizon has a policy to remove restrictions if contacted in an emergency situations.

“We have done that many times, including for emergency personnel responding to these tragic fires. In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us. This was a customer support mistake,” said the company in a statement published on Tuesday.

Harold Feld, from Public Knowledge, one of the organisations bringing the suit, said: “Companies need to be liable for their actions,” adding: “Verizon’s response of ‘I’m terribly sorry your state is burning down, let me sell you this new package’ is not good enough. We need rules to prevent it from happening in the first place.”"

Is the Internet evil? We will decide.; The Washington Post, August 22, 2018

Christine Emba, The Washington Post; Is the Internet evil? We will decide.

"Has the Internet been good or bad for humanity?

I stumbled upon a new way to think about the question (on the Internet, naturally), in the form of a quietly radical 1998 talk given by the author and cultural critic Neil Postman. The title, “Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change ,” is a snoozer, but the contents are eye-opening."

Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment; The New York Times, August 21, 2018

Kelly Marie Tran, The New York Times; Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment

"Editors’ note: The actress deleted her Instagram posts this summer in response to online harassment. Here she speaks out for the first time...

"I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. I want to live in a world where women are not subjected to scrutiny for their appearance, or their actions, or their general existence. I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings.

This is the world I want to live in. And this is the world that I will continue to work toward.

These are the thoughts that run through my head every time I pick up a script or a screenplay or a book. I know the opportunity given to me is rare. I know that I now belong to a small group of privileged people who get to tell stories for a living, stories that are heard and seen and digested by a world that for so long has tasted only one thing. I know how important that is. And I am not giving up.

You might know me as Kelly.

I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a “Star Wars” movie.

I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair.

My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."

All Eyes on the Presidency; The Atlantic, August 22, 2018

Adam Serwer, The Atlantic; All Eyes on the Presidency

"Manafort and Cohen may see prison time. But even if they are held to account, no one should be under the illusion that the outcomes of their cases on Tuesday legitimize a system of justice in which wealthy people who commit financial crimes can fully expect to get away with them. Trump did not create the rot in this system. He has merely made it obvious."

Calculating (and Acknowledging) the Costs of OER; Inside Higher Ed, July 25, 2018

Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed; Calculating (and Acknowledging) the Costs of OER

"The news releases regularly roll in to the email inbox these days with headlines like "College X has saved students $5 million by adopting open educational resources." Not only have these initiatives made a higher education more affordable, the colleges and universities note, but students who might have forgone buying an expensive textbook in the past are actually getting and using the OER content, ideally contributing to their academic success.

Amid those successes, rarely mentioned is the reality that in many cases, the institution itself is picking up the costs that were formally borne by the students, through some combination of direct subsidies to instructors to create the content and a loss of textbook revenue to a campus store, among other costs.

A session this week at the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers addressed that issue head-on, in a way that would be unusual at a conference of OER advocates. It's not that the session took a skeptical view of OER -- far from it. The featured institution, the Pierce College District in Washington State, has fully embraced the use of open resources for affordability and efficacy, among other reasons. But the enthusiasm of the community college's open education project manager, Quill West, was balanced by the even-keeled acknowledgment of Choi Halladay, the district's vice president of administrative services, that OER comes at a price to the institution -- though a price very much worth paying, he said."

Copyright vs. Conscience: Lawyering Up Isn’t Always the Right Move; PetaPixel, August 21, 2018

Blair Bunting, PetaPixel; Copyright vs. Conscience: Lawyering Up Isn’t Always the Right Move

"You read stories about photographers going after copyright abuse all the time, and it’s nearly always justified. In this case, I hope you can agree with me that seeking monetary compensation through legal recourse was not the right move. Sometimes you have to step back and remember that this may be a business, but it’s a business that relies on people. Once in a while, you have to remember that everyone featured in a photograph is a human, and as such all deserve compassion.

Rest in peace, Old Man."

How Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ Became a Battle Cry for Musicians Seeking Royalties; The New York Times, August 17, 2018

Ben Sisario, The New York Times;How Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ Became a Battle Cry for Musicians Seeking Royalties

"It was Aretha Franklin’s first No. 1 hit, the cry of empowerment that has defined her for generations: “Respect.”

But for the roughly seven million times the song has been played on American radio stations, she was paid nothing.

When Ms. Franklin died on Thursday at age 76, fans celebrated the song all over again as a theme for the women’s rights movement. But in the music industry, “Respect” has also played a symbolic role in a long fight over copyright issues that, advocates say, have deprived artists like Ms. Franklin of fair royalty payments...

[Aretha Franklin] also added what became the song’s signature line: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Find out what it means to me.” 

Ms. Franklin’s reinvention of Mr. Redding’s song has continued to fascinate critics. Peter Guralnick, the author of books like “Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom,” noted that she transformed the original meaning “not so much by changing the lyrics, as by the feeling that she imparted on the song — so that ‘Respect’ became a proclamation of freedom, a proclamation of feminism, a proclamation of an independent spirit.”"

Giuliani Says ‘Truth Isn’t Truth’ in Defense of Trump’s Legal Strategy; The New York Times, August 19, 2018

Melissa Gomez, The New York Times;Giuliani Says ‘Truth Isn’t Truth’ in Defense of Trump’s Legal Strategy

 

"First, the facts were alternative, Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to President Trump, suggested last year.

And now, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, said “Truth isn’t truth,” adding his own phrase to memorable — and sometimes head-scratching — comments made by those close to the president...

After the interview on Sunday, Merriam Webster tweeted the definition of “truth,” while Mr. Comey was more direct, tweeting: “Truth exists and truth matters. Truth has always been the touchstone of our country’s justice system and political life.”

Mr. Giuliani, meanwhile, addressed his remarks on Monday morning. “My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic ‘he said, she said’ puzzle,” he tweeted. “Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t.”"

What Are “Ethics in Design”?; Slate, August 13, 2018

Victoria, Sgarro, Slate; What Are “Ethics in Design”?

"Examples of product design that fail on the ethics front are all too easy to find—like news feeds promoting fake news, ride-hailing companies psychologically exploiting workers, and virtual home assistants perpetuating negative gender stereotypes. It’s not that product designers don’t care about the ethical ramifications of their work—far from it. It’s that, too often, they assume that such considerations fall outside of their job description

Mike Monteiro, co-founder and design director of Mule Design and author of the influential essay “A Designer’s Code of Ethics,” says that this ignorance has become an issue with the rapid change in scope of design over the past decade. “Designers have been running fast and free with no ethical guidelines,” he told me. “And that was fine when we were designing posters and sites for movies. But now design is interpersonal relationships on social media, health care, financial data traveling everywhere, the difference between verified journalism and fake news. And this is dangerous.” 

Increasingly, though, the industry is taking ethics seriously. Every year at SXSW, John Maeda, the global head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic, presents the “Design in Tech Report,” which serves as a kind of State of the Union on design in technology. This year, Maeda focused on inclusion as the future of design. Maeda defines inclusive design as designing products for a broader audience—whether that’s people with disabilities, people living outside of the U.S., people of color, or older people. On his list of “the top 10 most critical issues and challenges currently facing design,” “ethics in design” came in third, behind “design not having a ‘seat at the table’ ” (No. 1), and “diversity in design and tech” (No. 2)."

We can’t ignore this brutal cleansing in China; The Washington Post, August 14, 2018

Editorial Board, The Washington Post;

We can’t ignore this brutal cleansing in China

 

"Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs, along with Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities, have been sequestered in the camps, which now number more than 1,000, according to outside experts. An estimated 2 million other people have been forced to undergo indoctrination sessions without formal detention. Those detained include Uighur intellectuals and relatives of journalists who have reported on the campaign, including those of U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Asia. Ms. McDougall said more than 100 Uighur students returning from abroad had disappeared and some had died.

Inside the camps, detainees are bombarded with propaganda, forced to recite slogans and sing songs in exchange for food, and pressured to renounce Muslim practices. A statement released by Chinese dissidents last week said torture in the centers is common, as are deaths. In all, the campaign is the largest and most brutal repression the regime has undertaken since the Cultural Revolution."

A Better Way to Ban Alex Jones; The New York Times, August 7, 2018

David French, The New York Times; A Better Way to Ban Alex Jones

"The good news is that tech companies don’t have to rely on vague, malleable and hotly contested definitions of hate speech to deal with conspiracy theorists like Mr. Jones. The far better option would be to prohibit libel or slander on their platforms.

To be sure, this would tie their hands more: Unlike “hate speech,” libel and slander have legal meanings. There is a long history of using libel and slander laws to protect especially private figures from false claims. It’s properly more difficult to use those laws to punish allegations directed at public figures, but even then there are limits on intentionally false factual claims. 

It’s a high bar. But it’s a bar that respects the marketplace of ideas, avoids the politically charged battle over ever-shifting norms in language and culture and provides protection for aggrieved parties."

What Does It Mean to Ban Alex Jones?; The Atlantic, August 7, 2018

Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic; What Does It Mean to Ban Alex Jones?

"In banning the Infowars page, Facebook took the next logical step in restricting access to Infowars content, but it still hasn’t outright banned the domain, and it has not disclosed how the News Feed algorithm is dealing with URLs from Infowars.com.  

All of which is to say: There are many kinds of bans, and they each represent a different tool technology companies can use to police speech. Platforms can weaken the distribution of content they don’t like. They can ban the discovery of content they don’t like, as Apple has with Jones’s podcasts. Platforms can decline to host content they don’t like, as YouTube and Facebook have with InfoWars videos and pages, respectively. Or platforms can ban the presence of content they don’t like, regardless of where it is hosted or discovered."