Link Roundup August 2019

Judge Calls NYPD's Handling Of Precarious Civil Forfeiture Database 'Insane'

The revelation, included in a civilian NYPD tech employee's affidavit, reaffirmed concerns that have brewed for years that the NYPD's civil forfeiture process, twice ruled unconstitutional, lacks an accountability system to track, protect, or rightfully return personal property. The NYPD is supposed to return property seized during an arrest once a criminal case ends, so long as the person has a signed release from prosecutors. But public defenders say these requests are often ignored without consequence.

Disability backlog tops 1M; thousands die on waitlist

The average wait for a hearing is 602 days. Five years ago, it was less than a year.

FBI Ranks 'Black Identity Extremists' Bigger Threat Than Al Qaeda, White Supremacists: Leaked Documents

"Animal rights/environmental extremists" and "anti-authority extremists" were also deemed top existential threats.

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here

Besides, tracking quantity is slow, tedious and unglamorous work: setting and checking traps, waiting years or decades for your data to be meaningful, grappling with blunt baseline questions instead of more sophisticated ones. And who would pay for it? Most academic funding is short-term, but when what you’re interested in is invisible, generational change, says Dave Goulson, an entomologist at the University of Sussex, “a three-year monitoring program is no good to anybody.” This is especially true of insect populations, which are naturally variable, with wide, trend-obscuring fluctuations from one year to the next.

British army 'leaning on' under-18s to help fill its ranks

The most recent official recruitment figures released show that in the year to the end of March 2019 the army enlisted 1,000 16-year-olds and a further 820 17-year-olds, accounting for 28.8% of recruitment into the ranks. The army also recruited more 16-year-olds than any other age, the figures show.

For Young Female Coders, Internship Interviews Can Be Toxic

Fifty-four percent of respondents said they encountered a noticeable lack of diversity at the company, 25 percent said the interview process focused on their personal attributes, rather than their technical skills, 21 percent said they were asked questions they viewed as biased or that the interviewer made inappropriate verbal remarks, and 16 percent reported biased technical exercises.

A Spectre is Haunting Unicode

In the end only one character had neither a clear source nor any historical precedent: 彁. The most likely explanation is that it was created as a misreading of the 彊 character, but no specific incident was uncovered.

Rainforest on Fire

Stopping the process before the burning and planting means confronting gangs of armed land-grabbers in isolated areas littered with the bones of a half-century of land conflict. As the government withdraws from the forest, other forms of deterrence will be needed, including Indigenous patrols that can move and communicate unseen and unheard, and whose serrated arrows may announce themselves with a whisper. But any violence is surely to be asymmetrical, as it has always been. The Pastoral Land Commission, operated by Brazil’s Catholic Church, has recorded more than 600 land-related murders in the country since 2003, most in the Amazon region, with a 20 percent increase in 2018. Most victims are Indigenous and other traditional forest dwellers, killed organizing to protect land from illegal extractive activity.

US moves to abolish child migrant custody limits

In June 2019, a Trump administration lawyer was admonished by federal judges in San Francisco after she argued that the Flores settlement did not require the government to provide detained children with soap or toothbrushes.

Mark Zuckerberg Is a Slumlord

Knowing what it isn’t, let’s plainly define what Facebook is: an entity which extracts monetizable data in exchange for a place to store and grow our digital lives.

Planned Parenthood Withdraws From Title X Program Over Trump Abortion Rule

The new rules, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year, prohibit Title X grantees from providing or referring patients for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency.

Detention of Muslims at UK ports and airports 'structural Islamophobia'

One of Cage’s complaints is that the Home Office does not respond to freedom of information requests breaking down the number of people stopped by their religion. But a study conducted by Cambridge University researchers in 2014 concluded 88% of those stopped were Muslim.

General Electric shares tank following accusation of 'bigger fraud than Enron'

Markopolos is best known for his role as the whistleblower who warned the SEC about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Madoff was jailed for 150 years in 2009 after pleading guilty to swindling investors out of $65bn in savings.

A Top Financier of Trump and McConnell Is a Driving Force Behind Amazon Deforestation

Two Brazilian firms owned by a top donor to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are significantly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest, carnage that has developed into raging fires that have captivated global attention.

Queen approves Boris Johnson's request to suspend Parliament ahead of Brexit

The British government was accused of bringing the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis Wednesday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked the queen to temporarily suspend Parliament. Opponents see the move as an extraordinary attempt to make it harder for lawmakers to thwart the prime minister's Brexit plans before Oct. 31, the date the U.K. is scheduled to leave the European Union.

'Damage has been done': Newark water crisis echoes Flint

A corrosion control study found that processes at the city’s Pequannock water treatment plant were not working. Before the study, the city largely defended its water, despite state data that showed high levels of lead. “Newark’s water is absolutely safe to drink,” the city said on its website and on social media. “The city’s water is NOT contaminated with lead. The only high lead readings were taken inside older 1 and 2 family homes that have lead pipes leading from the city’s pure water into those homes.” After the corrosion study was published, in October 2018 the city announced it would provide 40,000 residents with filters until affected pipes could be replaced.

DMVs Are Selling Your Data to Private Investigators

Documents explicitly note that the purpose of selling this data is to bring in revenue. "This is a revenue generating contract," one document from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles obtained by Motherboard reads. A spokesperson from the Wisconsin DMV wrote in an email that "Wisconsin DMV directly informs customers that their information may be sold."

Police are now a leading cause of death among young American men

A new study found that shootings, choke holds, and other uses of force by police officers, whether warranted or not, are now the sixth-highest cause of death for males between the ages of 25 and 29. The study, conducted by researchers at Rutgers University-Newark and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that black men are two-and-a-half times more likely to be killed by law enforcement over their lifetime than white men, and that African-American women, American Indian/Alaska native men and women, and Latino men also face higher odds of dying at police hands.

Maria Soto Was Born in the U.S., yet the Trump Administration Won't Give Her a Passport. We're Suing.

In 2018, Maria and her husband hoped to travel to Peru for vacation, so she applied for her passport like anyone would. She sent in her original birth certificate, along with a certified copy issued by the State of California, and other documentation, including her driver’s license, social security card, a letter from her school in Mexico, and medical records. In response, the government denied her application, sending her a letter telling her that she had submitted insufficient evidence to prove her U.S. citizenship.

The Cherokee Nation wants a representative in Congress, taking the US government up on a promise it made nearly 200 years ago

As a result of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, the Cherokee were ultimately made to leave their homes in the Southeast for present-day Oklahoma in exchange for money and other compensation. Nearly 4,000 citizens of the tribe died of disease, starvation and exhaustion on the journey now known as the Trail of Tears. A delegate in the House of Representatives was one of the ways the US government promised to compensate the Cherokee Nation.