Tuesday, October 22, 2019

What ‘Rights’ Do We Have When..

Reason

What 'Rights' Do We Have When 
We're Talking About Our Private Online Data?

Defining terms is tricky, particularly when governments with bad track records on privacy want to call the shots.

datarights_1161x653
(Wrightstudio / Dreamstime.com) 

Do you have a "right" to your digital data? It is a popular thought in today's debates over privacy and surveillance.

The European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) attempted to codify specific rights for individuals over their own data, including the rights to be informed, to be forgotten, and to object. Ideas like a "data dividend," where individuals would be monetarily compensated for their data by online platforms (similarly to how the state of Alaska pays residents an oil dividend) are another attempt to create rights to data.

For those who understand the value of property rights and market allocation, the notion that rights to data are underprovided has intuitive appeal. Property rights and market activity efficiently and fortuitously direct economic goods to their most highly valued uses, except in a few special circumstances of market failure. It makes sense that having a system of rights to govern data use would solve many of the problems that so vex us in the digital age.

But if the solution of rights to data appears so straightforward, why has the market struggled so far to produce these rights? A new Competitive Enterprise Institute research paper by Chris Berg and Sinclair Davidson, "Selling Your Data Without Selling Your Soul: Privacy, Property, and the Platform Economy," provides some insight into this question.

The authors discuss some of the economic barriers that have complicated the path to a rights regime for personal data before considering why top-down efforts to erect one like the GDPR or data dividends are ill-suited to that purpose. Rather, they see common law remedies and technological developments as a surer path to an appropriate system of enforceable rights for online data.

Data is different

Is "data" really the new oil?

In a sense, data "fuels" the operation of many online platforms. Businesses combine user-provided data on an individual's name, demographics, and interests with observed data of how individuals interact on their platforms to produce inferred data about a user's likely commercial habits that can be monetized for other parties.

Because it is data that keeps the whole operation monetarily afloat, and the harvesting of this data necessitates keeping tabs on information that some people may wish to keep private, some conclude that users should receive special government protections or revenue streams relating to the use of their data. As Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), a frequent tech critic, recently asked: "Isn't our data our property?"

But data, unlike oil, isn't rivalrous. Once someone uses oil, it's gone. But data is just information, and that information can be used and obtained in different ways. It is simply there, and it exists regardless of who uses it and how it is used.

Can I really "own" the right to make judgments about me based on the fact that I am an American woman in my thirties with interests in baby products and cryptocurrency? It's especially hard to make this case if I freely provided this information to a platform that makes use of this data. Things get dicier when it comes to the observed data of my associates that platforms may use to make inferences about me. But still, do I have the right to tell others not to behave in such a way that I am affected?

Once we think deeper about the implications of treating data like rivalrous tangible property, with all the attendant rights and duties, the problems from a libertarian perspective become clearer.

Why market-driven data rights haven't emerged

Because data is different, property rights have not emerged for data like they have for things like clean air and beaver furs. Berg and Davidson review the literature in law and economics to help shed light on why this is so.

First, data-driven online platforms are generally two-sided markets. Facebook serves two customer bases: normal social network users and advertisers. The profits made on the advertising side are used to cross-subsidize the free user experience. And users agree to divulge data to Facebook that it then monetizes.

Online platforms would not have grown to the impressive size that they have if they did not create a correspondingly great amount of value for both types of users. Really, when we worry about data, we're worrying about externalities, or the social costs or benefits that are not internalized in market exchange.

Why do people sign up for platforms in the first place? They'd like to capture some of the positive externality that advertisers are subsidizing: they are hoping that being on the platform will increase their chances of meeting their future spouse, or connecting with a business opportunity, or just enjoying chatter among friends. No one wants the positive externalities from platforms to go away.

What people worry about are the negative externalities: they don't want other parties' data or activities to adversely influence how they are treated. They don't want a sketchy data reseller to shuttle their information to an unauthorized party who targets junk to them. They don't want to get hacked. And they certainly don't want to be put on secret blacklists that limit their opportunities or liberty.

Complicating the picture even further is the fact that each person has their own idea of what a positive or a negative externality looks like when it comes to data. I cringe whenever someone shares a picture of me on a social media platform. Others love it. When governments try to make these decisions for us, a lot of people will inevitably be left unsatisfied.

In an ideal world, externalities problems can be resolved through property rights, which would accrue to the party that most values them—this is the insight of the economist Ronald Coase. But for the Coase theorem to hold, transactions costs must be minimized.

The problem, as the authors point out, is that those transactions costs appear great and quite hard to overcome. In fact, perhaps such a right has not yet emerged because it is "not particularly valuable" in the current market, since it means nothing without a way to maintain secrecy.

Governments don't really care about your rights

Okay, so can the government step in to kickstart the definition of such rights? Many see no other way. But as Berg and Davidson point out, governments are among the least trustworthy entities when it comes to protecting data privacy.

Consider the many surveillance and data retention policies operated by governments across the world. They have no intention of curtailing the public collection of private data when it suits their interests. Indeed, many of their surveillance programs rely on private data repositories as sources.

It is not surprising, then, that government forays into defining data rights have so far proven so inept. The GDPR, for instance, has mostly protected the market dominance of Google and Facebook in the European advertising market. Ironically, the GDPR has also been exploited by malicious actors to extract others' personal data or punish market rivals.

Really, the GDPR has mostly ended up as a way for European governments to extract revenue from foreign companies. The EU has no intention of ceasing their various member state surveillance programs and other mandates that data be processed in ways that further government goals. We shouldn't expect other top-down, government-driven regulatory regimes to do much better.

Common law and innovation are better remedies

This does not mean there are no solutions, nor that governments have no role in discovering an appropriate rights regime for online data.

It is clear that some kind of formalized regime articulating harm and remedy would be valuable. But GDPR-style regulation has proven unwieldy and counterproductive.

Berg and Davidson point instead to a common law approach advocated by classical liberals like Friedrich Hayek and Bruno Leoni as an "evolutionary and adaptive approach to managing social conflicts." Rather than trying to trying to identify and resolve all disputes through one-stop-shop legislation, an iterative common law approach allows us to iterate thoughtfully and learn from a developing body of precedent. It's not perfect, and it can't rush the market to develop property rights before they are adequately valuable, but it's at least a lot better than GDPR-like brouhahas.

In the meantime, what can we do? We are fortunate to live in a world with public encryption technologies. They are getting more accessible all the time, and innovators are applying these techniques to solve data externality problems in ways that governments can't. Berg and Davidson point out that these technologies empower users to effectively protect their "rights to data" even before such "rights" have officially emerged.

Take the problem of transaction tracing, where companies use your card purchases to build advertising profiles on you that are sold to other parties. We have always had good, old-fashioned cash to serve as a buffer to this commercial panopticon, but this was obviously limited to in-person transactions. Now digital cash, or cryptocurrencies, can provide privacy online and cut the trail of private transaction tracking well before governments have developed the wherewithal to effectively address this problem.

For many data problems, there already exists a pretty good technology solution. Sick of Google? Download Brave and use Startpage for search. Worried about OS tracking? Linux may be for you, and Ubuntu is a great and accessible option. For many years, these projects have been successfully building a world where users are in a better position to internalize the negative externalities (data tracking) that they wish to avoid, while enjoying the positive externalities (camaraderie, reputation management, and simple entertainment) that they feel is worth it for them.

Then there is the frontier. Consider a project like Urbit, which hopes to fundamentally change the user's relationship to how their data is processed. Instead of requiring users to navigate and interrelate a hodgepodge of the features and products listed above, Urbit aims to build data control into each component of the computing experience. Newer projects like these could provide even more robust user controls that help us make our own data tradeoffs even more precisely.

It is predictable that as we moved more of our lives online, more problems from the use of data would result. But it's also predictable that legal and technological solutions to these problems would emerge, as well, and this study is a helpful reminder of this potent and underappreciated force for progress on data privacy issues.

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Corporate America Discovers..

Reason

Corporate America Discovers 
the Limits of Political Posturing as a Marketing Tactic

Defining a company with political branding is risky business.

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(Ivan Cheung/ZUMA Press/Newscom) 
After years of companies gilding themselves with virtue by associating with causes popular among some customers (and implicitly telling folks with different politics to take a hike), Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, and the NBA find themselves torn between the values of an open society and pleasing the authoritarian Chinese government and the vast market it controls. It's a no-win situation that was inevitable once companies took to exploiting political posturing as an opportunity to appeal to favored factions.

"Political discourse is finding its way into the brand world. Or, to be more accurate, brands are joining the political discourse," Patricio Robles of marketing firm Econsultancy noted two years ago. But there are risks to that strategy. "It's simply not possible for brands to craft simple messages around [political topics] that aren't bound to offend large numbers of people who hold reasonable but opposing views," the piece went on to warn.

Many companies have been willing to risk offending large numbers of people in hopes of winning over even more. The NBA, for example, has happily enjoyed the gloss of players and coaches who denounce racism and police brutality and take stands on other issues—some of them explicitly partisan, such as when the Golden State Warriors met with former President Obama rather take the traditional meeting at the White House with current President Trump. Apple's Tim Cook attached himself to calls for racial justice and against police brutality. Nike gambled that dumping Betsy Ross-themed shoes over dubious allegations of racist connotations would play well with more customers than it alienated.

A legion of companies and corporate executives align themselves with the gun control movement out of a perception that they'll curry more favor with Americans fearful of violence—even in a period of declining crime—than they'll lose from those who favor self-defense rights.

Netflix backed out of filming in North Carolina over the state's requirement that people use bathrooms that correspond with their sex at birth, and national retailer Target slapped at the same law.

If those companies please more customers than they offend, it can be a successful strategy, at least in the short-term. But an adopted aura of virtue can be easily dissipated if you run up against somebody who can render it very unprofitable, or simply put you in an impossible position.

For the NBA. that somebody turned out to be Chinese officials and consumers who expressed their displeasure after Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters in their struggle against the Chinese government. The team's owner promptly distanced himself and his team from Morey. The NBA itself groveled in a press release noting that Morey's personal statement in support of demonstrators almost universally seen throughout the free world as the good guys "deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable." Among other brand-name players, LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, no stranger to political statements of his own, ripped into Morey as "misinformed" and failing to consider "the consequences and ramifications of the tweet."

Earlier statements about domestic politics may have worked as outreach to customers who share those takes on the same issues. But Morey's tweet in favor of protesters demanding recognition of the rights available to the residents of free countries posed a very expensive threat to the NBA's plans to expand in China.

Similarly, concerns about police conduct end at the border for Apple's Tim Cook. He and his colleagues briefly agonized before deciding they didn't want Hong Kong residents tracking abusive cops with apps made available by his company. "Apple initially rejected HKmap.live from the App Store earlier this month, then reversed its decision a few days later. Now it has reversed its reversal," reported The Verge. "The app and accompanying web service has been used to mark the locations of police and inform about street closures during the ongoing pro-democracy protests." Apple then dumped the app for Quartz, a news service that closely tracks Hong Kong protests, claiming its content is illegal in China.

Concerns about Chinese reactions also weighed heavily on video game company Blizzard Entertainment, which banned and briefly confiscated the winnings of Hong Kong-based gamer "Blitzchung" after he voiced support during a livecast for pro-liberty protesters in his city. The company later returned the purse and reduced the ban—only to punish an American University team for similar pro-Hong Kong sentiments. Unsurprisingly, Blizzard is expanding in China and worries that the wrong politics will be a problem.

Blizzard has less of a history than Apple or the NBA in terms of political marketing, but the company does have a plaque on its campus promising that "every voice matters"—which was covered by outraged employees in protest of management's conduct.

Apple, the NBA, and Blizzard would have run up against China's censoriousness, no matter what, while doing business there. But a history of political posturing makes Apple's and the NBA's stroking of the world's largest police state that much harder to stomach. For its part, Blizzard's first major foray into political expression is one that explicitly supports an authoritarian regime and violates its own stated values.

The impossible situation and the reaction it engendered was predictable; once companies started down the path of favoring one political position or faction over another, they were guaranteeing conflict and just hoping that they'd picked the winning side. Even before these firms ran up against the impossibility of finding a political position that could please both pro-democracy protesters and thuggish authoritarians, companies were discovering the downside of alienating some people in order to win the favor of others.

For example, Target's opposition to North Carolina's bathroom law sparked a backlash among social conservatives who, like other customers, also have money to spend. Starbucks had to respond to push back from customers who saw the company's pledge to hire refugees as conflicting with its earlier promise to hire veterans. Neither reaction gained much national notice, but they should have been taken as indicators that companies enter a minefield by politicizing their brands.

How do businesses navigate a world in which people hold opposing views on many issues and different interpretations of right and wrong? There's no clear and easy answer but submitting to the demands of an authoritarian government will always be a bad look, rendered that much worse if you've made a habit of cloaking yourself in assumed virtue by embracing political causes.

As an alternative, businesses could respect the free speech rights of employees and customers and keep the businesses themselves as free as possible from political entanglements that just alienate potential customers.

"Brands should also consider that there's a huge difference between true values and political positions and consider how their statements, initiatives and decisions can unnecessarily conflate the two, dividing their customers and turning themselves into political props in the process," Econsultancy's Robles cautioned in 2017.

In the weeks and months to come, Apple, Blizzard, the NBA, and lots of other companies may have to reconsider the choices they've made about politicized branding for their efforts.

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Head of European Central Bank Says President Trump Outwitting Global Control Officers

Welcome to America First Maganomics

Leftists love to trot out Christine Lagarde as the pontificating elite to defend their multinational interests.  Recently the former IMF leader was elected to take control of the European Central Bank.   As a direct result, Ms. Lagarde is now taking an adverse position toward a strong U.S. economy and decrying the ‘America-First’ policies of President Trump that have removed the tentacles of global financial control.

If you follow trade, finance and the interests of the multinationals, this is actually quite funny.  In this first brief interview segment Ms. Lagarde, has the elitist audacity to warn President Trump that lowering U.S. interest rates defeats the agenda of the EU.  She doesn’t put it in those terms, but watch and we’ll explain: 



Notice how Lagarde magnanimously claims that lowering interest rates when the U.S. economy is strong, and the U.S. unemployment rate is at historic lows, could lead to rising prices inside the U.S.  Too damned funny; how very kind of the EU to be worried about U.S. consumers… (pro tip: they ain’t).

What she’s really worried about is the dynamic that President Trump has created that is crushing the globalists. Let’s expand.

♦ The EU economy writ large is contracting, shrinking, due to a lack of investment. The EU has dropped their interest rates in a futile effort to stimulate internal investment… but it ain’t happening. The consequence of the EU lowering rates into negative territory is a weakened EU currency. Two things are happening:

#1) The EU currency dropping means any exports from the EU are less expensive. This is part of the reason for lowering the value of their currency, to keep an export dependent economy alive. However….

#2) By dropping interest rates and driving down their own currency, the value of the dollar increases. This dynamic means EU banks actually purchase U.S. Treasuries for a return. [There is no return in the EU] And simultaneously this drives up the value of the dollar, making any U.S. imports of EU products cost less.

The combination of a weaker EU and a stronger dollar means the prices of the products we would import from the EU are lower. In essence, much like China, the U.S. is importing deflation from Europe.

Any U.S. import company that is not now renegotiating the prices of purchases is a fool. Now is the time for all U.S. companies to drive hard bargains from Asian and EU corporations who wish to sell goods into the U.S. From all current indicators these renegotiations for lower prices is happening both on the Chinese side and the European side.

Ms. Lagarde is not worried that lower U.S. interest rates will drive up U.S. prices, she is worried that lowered U.S. interest rates means greater internal investment in the U.S., while her EU is in direct competition for those investment dollars. Additionally, Lagarde knows that President Trump has boxed them into a trade spiral with no escape.

The lower price of EU products means President Trump can apply greater tariff pressure on the EU and still not create inflation within the U.S. on the imported categories. This is the same outcome Trump’s ‘America-First’ policy is doing to China.

♦ Secondly, it is President Trump’s confrontation with China that has caused Beijing to slow down, and in some cases stop, their industrial purchases. The EU economy, specifically Germany, Italy and France, are dependent on purchases from China. As China stops buying stuff, the EU economy contracts. This is what is happening right now.

If you elevate your perspective what you realize is that every dollar the U.S. does not give to China means one dollar less that China has to purchase from the EU. Yes, that is correct… the U.S. $500 billion annual deficit with China is what allows Beijing to purchase industrial goods from Europe.

As President Trump resets the U.S. trade imbalance with China, he simultaneously diminishes the EU economy. THIS dynamic is what Christine Lagarde is really upset about.

So now we look at the second Lagarde “citizen of this world” soundbite (embedded in tweet) listen carefully:



In that soundbite “U.S. losing leadership” really means the America-First policies of President Trump means the U.S. is no longer spreading American wealth to the rest of the world.

♦ For more than three decades global economies have grown by removing wealth from the United States.  The U.S. multinationals (Wall Street Corporations and pundits) have countered the economic arguments by claiming those global economies have purchased U.S. treasuries; but that means we trade our current wealth for future debt.
President Trump has reversed this dynamic.  We are repatriating our national wealth through new trade policies and will pay for any incurred foreign debt by expanding our own economy and controlling our own destiny.

This is really what’s happening within the global economy that is causing massive reactions by those who were dependent on the status quo.   The ‘America-First’ agenda uses the size and scale of the U.S. market to drive up U.S. wealth, and then stops the export of the dollars generated by making the U.S. the best place to retain investment.

You might remember back in July the IMF, which is euro-centric, increased the projected U.S. economic growth for 2019 to 2.6 percent. They then warned everyone else, that globally the world economy is in a position of weakening, or shrinking etc; and you won’t be surprised at the reason for the IMF negative global forecast. Of course it’s horrible Trump and his strategic trade reset that’s to blame. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

♦ In the bigger picture this is why President Trump is the most transformative economic President in the last 75 years. The post-WWII Marshall Plan was set up to allow Europe and Asia to place tariffs on exported American industrial products. Those tariffs were used by the EU and Japan to rebuild their infrastructure after a devastating war. However, there was never a built in mechanism to end the tariffs…. until President Trump came along and said: “it’s over”!

After about 20 years (+/-), say 1970 to be fair, the EU and Japan received enough money to rebuild. But instead of ending the one-way payment system, Asia and the EU sought to keep going and build their economies larger than the U.S. Additionally, the U.S. was carrying the cost of protecting the EU (via NATO) and Japan with our military. The EU and Japan didn’t need to spend a dime on defense because the U.S. essentially took over that role. But that military role, just like the tariffs, never ended. Again, until Trump.

The U.S. economy was the host for around 50 years of parasitic wealth exfiltration, or as most would say “distribution”. [Note I use the term *exfiltration* because it better highlights that American citizens paid higher prices for stuff, and paid higher taxes within the overall economic scheme, than was needed.]

President Trump is the first and only president who said: “enough”, and prior politicians who didn’t stop the process were “stupid” etc. etc. Obviously, he is 100% correct.

Fast forward to 2017 through today, and President Trump is now engaged in a massive and multidimensional effort to re-balance the entire global wealth dynamic. By putting tariffs on foreign imports he has counterbalanced the never-ending Marshal Plan trade program and demanded renegotiation(s).

President Trump’s goal is reciprocity; however, the EU and Asia, specifically China, don’t want to give up a decades-long multi-generational advantage. This is part of the fight.
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Elizabeth Warren Threatens Israel With A Quid Pro Quo




Oddly enough, the media aren’t describing Warren’s threat as a quid pro quo even though it clearly is. Weird, right?

The presumptive (but not necessarily actual) frontrunner of the Democratic party primary went on record yesterday announcing that she’ll withhold aid from Israel unless they do what she wants, which is negotiate and make concessions with terrorists.


Lest we pretend this isn’t to Warren’s political benefit, this is a major, major issue on the left and there’s no logical reason to punish Israel outside of quelling her base. Sticking it to the Jewish state and delivering the goods to the terrorist supporting Palestinian Authority is like crack for liberals.

Andy McCarthy notices the hypocrisy here.


Of course it’s extortion, or more aptly a quid pro quo. She’s quite literally saying that unless Israel does what she wants, she’ll cut off vital military aid (we stopped giving economic aid a while ago). And this is a far more relevant and damaging quid pro quo to U.S. interests than anything to do with Ukraine.

Now, some might say “well, that’s different!” How? How is different than Mulvaney saying we weren’t going to give Ukraine money unless they investigated corruption dealing with 2016? Because I’m pretty sure the media lost their minds and published half a million “Mulvaney Admits to Quid Pro Quo” headlines in response.

The answer is that it is not different. All foreign policy is a quid pro quo. All aid comes with strings attached. The only question involving Ukraine was whether Trump did something that could provably be shown to only be political. Mulvaney clearly said that situation had nothing to do with Biden and only legitimate concerns about corruption, something Joe Biden himself threatened Ukraine over, yet the media still called it an evil “quid pro quo” and feigned outrage.

Even on the legal aspects, this is hypocritical. If Congress appropriates the money for a certain country to receive aid, the President either has power to hold it up or not. With Trump, we are assured it’s impeachable and illegal for him to do so. So why are the media not pointing out what Warren is saying would be impeachable and illegal as well?

What you see here is a prime example of how the left uses language to push their narratives. When Mulvaney points out that all foreign policy has conditions, it’s a quid pro quo and super bad. When Elizabeth Warren threatens to extort one of our closet allies by withholding aid, it’s just her being tough.

Also, note that Warren whined and complained when the Trump administration cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority for not negotiating in good faith, yet she wants to punish Israel. That’s some mighty fine anti-Semitism on display because there’s no other logical reason for her flip-flop on the issue.

In closing, our mainstream media are partisan hypocrites and Elizabeth Warren shows that she toes the typical Israel hating line of her party. We also call that Tuesday. 

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Trump Smashes Through A Fundraising Record And It Has Democrats Worried



President Donald Trump’s fundraising isn’t slowing down, and it’s now smashed through a record high that has Democrats fearing the worst.

According to Politico, Trump has now blown past any amount that previous presidents have had at this point during their reelections:
Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee have raised more than $300 million this year for his reelection — more than any other sitting president in history at this point in the campaign.
Trump has nearly twice as much cash on hand — $158 million, between his campaign account and the RNC — as Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee had at this time in his successful re-election run.
Because of the influx of cash, Trump’s campaign already spent close to $23 million on advertising on various mediums, which is 10 times the amount the Democrats major PAC have spent so far. This gap in spending and fundraising is making Democrats afraid, according to Politico:
“The resources he has will be put to work anywhere and everywhere that he feels like he can scare up electoral votes, and Democrats will never catch up. It’s just too much money,” said Chris Lippincott, a Texas-based Democratic strategist who ran a super PAC opposing Sen. Ted Cruz last year. “That’s real trouble … I’m not here to curse the dark, but it’s dark.”
And the situation stands to get worse.
Since the start of the year, Trump’s campaign operation has run an expensive, far-reaching effort to find new small-dollar donors that is already beginning to pay dividends. The campaign netted 313,000 new donors between July and the end of September, according to numbers provided by the RNC, after spending $4.2 million in advertising on Facebook over the last 90 days.
Democrats, meanwhile, are still four or five months away — at the earliest — from settling on a nominee.
“We don’t know if the Democratic candidate is going to be able to even compete with such a shorter timeline, even if they have significant resources after the convention,” said Tara McGowan, founder and chief executive officer of the progressive group ACRONYM.
This failure to fundraise as well as the Trump campaign as Democrats turning their guns on one another, specifically on Democrat party chair, Tom Perez.

“Tom Perez is as useless as tits on a boar hog,” said two-time South Carolina Democratic Party chair, Dick Harpootlian. “My advice to Tom Perez is quit, get out of the way or do something different. Maybe they need to send a spy to the Republican shop and find out how they’re raising hundreds of millions of dollars off of a guy like Donald Trump.”

It would appear that Democrats are focusing on the wrong problem. They’re more worried about fundraising efforts not being undertaken to take in more cash, and not worried about the underlying reason that Trump raised so much money in the first place.

The DNC has yet to offer a viable candidate among the crop they’ve presented us. The popularity among these candidates may fluctuate within the Democratic party, but the Democratic party itself is shrinking because it has embraced a radical kind of leftism that has most of American turned off.

Even wealthy Democrat donors have threatened to turn their back on the DNC and give their money to Trump if someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren takes the nomination, which at this time, it looks like she is.

Democrats aren’t fundraising as well because people don’t want to hand their money to someone who they believe will be bad for the country, and radical leftism has shown to be bad for the country. It’s as simple as that.
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Empowering Users to Withdraw Their Data...

National Review

Hawley Introduces Bipartisan Bill Empowering Users to Withdraw Their Data from Social Media Giants


Sen. Josh Hawley at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, May 23, 2019. (James Lawler Duggan/Reuters)

Senate Republican and big-tech critic Josh Hawley joined forces with Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday to introduce legislation designed to increase competition among social media platforms.

Titled “The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act,” the bill aims to force platforms to make user data portable, giving consumers the power to transfer their data — like friends lists and profile information — across platforms with a simple tool, as well as let third parties update and manage account and privacy settings.

Large platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, and others would also have to allow potential competitors access to their user faces, by making key services interoperable.

“Your data is your property. Period. Consumers should have the flexibility to choose new online platforms without artificial barriers to entry,” Hawley said in a statement. “This bill creates long-overdue requirements that will boost competition and give consumers the power to move their data from one service to another.”

Warner, who partnered with Hawley earlier this year to propose the DASHBOARD and Do Not Track acts, explained the bill in the context of cell phone numbers, saying individuals should have the same level of control over their social media data.

“As a former cell phone guy, I saw what a game-changer number portability was for that industry. By making it easier for social media users to easily move their data or to continue to communicate with their friends after switching platforms, startups will be able to compete on equal terms with the biggest social media companies,” he stated.

Blumenthal added that “as we learned in the Microsoft antitrust case, interoperability and portability are powerful tools to restrain anti-competitive behaviors and promote innovative new companies.”

The bill’s announcement appears to be a sort of compromise between Hawley and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who have sparred in the past over antitrust checks on big tech. During his first weeks on Capitol Hill, Hawley sent Zuckerberg a letter asking to shift Facebook’s business model away from the monetization of user data.

In September, when the two met, Hawley said Zuckerberg refused to sell Instagram and WhatsApp to break up Facebook’s market share. But in a March op-ed in The Washington Post, Zuckerberg argued in favor of data transfer. “Regulation should guarantee the principle of data portability,” Zuckerberg wrote. “This is important for the Internet — and for creating services people want.”

Zuckerberg is scheduled to meet tomorrow with House lawmakers to discuss Facebook’s business impact.
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Jimmy Carter hospitalized with fractured pelvis after falling in his home.

Former President Jimmy Carter has been hospitalized with a fractured pelvis after falling in his Georgia home Monday night, a spokesperson said in a statement. This is the second time 95-year-old Carter has taken a fall at his home in Plains this month.
Carter Center spokesperson Deanne Congileo described Mr. Carter's injury as a "minor pelvic fracture." The 39th U.S. president is in "good spirits" at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center and is looking forward to recovering at home, according to the statement.
Mr. Carter previously fell on October 6, just days after his 95th birthday. He ended up with a black eye and needed 14 stitches, but went ahead with plans to attend the opening ceremony for a Habitat for Humanity build in Nashville along with his wife Rosalynn, who is 92.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jimmy-carter-hospitalized-former-us-president-fractured-pelvis-fall-home-plains-georgia/
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Per CNN: Mexico Has Essentially Built Trump’s Wall And Is Paying For It



You may have noticed in reports about illegal immigration that there’s been a precipitous drop in apprehensions at the border. That’s not because there are fewer being caught, that’s because there are fewer coming across. 

That’s in large measure due to the cooperation deal that President Donald Trump struck with Mexico. 

In fact, even CNN has had to admit Trump’s success, as Newsbusters observed.

In an astonishing case of pigs flying, CNN actually ran article on Sunday by Catherine Shoichet and Natalie Gallón, 
“Why some say Mexico already built Trump’s wall — and paid for it.”

In it they note that Mexico has effectively built the wall, that Mexico by marshaling thousands of their troops to prevent people from coming in and not going north to the U.S. is acting as the wall itself. 

Among the things they have done:
Nearly 15,000 troops are deployed to Mexico’s northern border, where they’ve set up 20 checkpoints, Mexican Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said last week at a press briefing on the country’s security strategy. At the southern border, 12,000 troops are deployed and have set up 21 checkpoints.
And it’s worked.
Asked to respond to claims that Mexico is effectively paying for the wall Trump wanted, foreign ministry spokesman Roberto Velasco told CNN that migration flows have notably decreased in recent months, and that efforts continue for a regional development plan to address the root causes of migration in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
“The number of migrants presented before Mexican authorities has decreased by 70% from June to September,” he said.
This all came after the threat of tariffs from Trump earlier in the year.

CNN doesn’t seem completely pleased while noting this success, quoting Univision’s Jorge Ramos, “It’s true: President Trump is using Mexico. And, against all logic, Mexico is letting him get away with it,” he wrote. “This has to change.”

Why would you want to stop success? Because it doesn’t align with the Democratic effort to open the borders? 

But in this case, it’s also to Mexico’s benefit because they’re protecting their own sovereignty as well as preventing folks from getting north to get to the United States. 
So will other media pick up on this and give credit where credit is due? 

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Pelosi's Precarious Position: Investigating Political Corruption is Grounds for Impeachment

Nancy Pelosi released a “fact sheet” outlining her justification for the impeachment process.  Within the justification Speaker Pelosi/Lawfare intentionally conflates investigating past political corruption/interference (2016) with the current 2020 election.


Speaker Pelosi’s self-serving position boils down to: any effort by the executive branch to investigate prior political corruption is grounds for presidential impeachment.  



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President Trump Full Interview With Sean Hannity

President Trump sat down for an extensive interview with host Sean Hannity.  
Here’s the interview as broadcast:


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Sleight of Hand


 Article by Deana Chadwell in "The American Thinker":

Nothing is what it appears to be. We know this deep in our bones, but rarely do we spend much time digging into ultimate realities. America’s wealth and vitality have made it possible for most of us to entertain ourselves and go about our business, rarely thinking too deeply about anything. We had a little flurry of shock and curiosity when JFK was assassinated, but that has petered out. The tragedy of 9/11 has worn off. Those things came and went, but didn’t seem to hit at the core of the American soul.  All that’s happening now does.

If it weren’t for my firm belief that Almighty God controls history, I’d be beside myself; things seem so unsettled. We no longer have two political parties, rather two separate realities, which, given the Law of Non-contradiction, means one of them is highly delusional. Which camp is that? Which one is the cult?

One can’t watch the frantic activity in the progressive camp and not be both amused and alarmed. How did these nutcases end up in power?  The answer to that question is thoroughly upsetting -- our fellow Americans voted for them. This has to mean that a substantial number of Americans either hate their own country, are mired in a quicksand of ignorance and self-indulgence, or a poisonous combination of the two. Did the Broad Squad run on ruining this country? Who could have possibly voted for Sandy O or Omar? How is it that lowlifes like Schiff and Nadler keep their seats? Who, in their right minds votes for them? Are there that many of our fellow Americans who have gone stark raving mad?
From where I sit I see the House Democrats running round pointing fingers and making up bizarre stories, dredging up make-believe semi-witnesses. They keep screaming things like, “Mommy, Mommy, Donny called me a bad name!” or, “I’m going to take all your guns!” And now they’ve gone and done it, announced and heavily publicized an impeachment dog-and-pony show. Is anyone but me wondering what they’ll do for an encore? Once Trump has called all of their bluffs, once the Barr/Durham investigation bears its predictable fruit, what will they do? It is not possible even now for them to pull a Gilda Radner, lighthearted “Nevermind.”

They’ve burned every available bridge back to normalcy. They’ve ruined people’s lives, destroyed their finances, their reputations, their livelihoods. They have severely damaged the morale of this country. And they have lied –- openly, brazenly, stupidly lied. “Oh, that was just a parody,” only works if there’s something to make fun of. The title “Prince of Lies” comes to mind.

Now these same wackjobs want the American people, who are just now starting to remember what it means to be proud to be Americans, to help said wackjobs attack the man who revived their dignity and patriotism, their hopes and their American dreams. I don’t think this leftist plane will even get down the runway, let alone take off. It’s going to sputter and die on the asphalt and where do they go from there? That dead plane is out on that runway, and obvious to us all. It has the word “FAILURE” scrawled across the fuselage and the tires will be flat.

What will be the next Democrat move? Right now they don’t have a viable presidential candidate. There isn’t one of that cuckoo’s nest collection of Marxist stooges that will ever sit in the Oval Office. We hear rumors that Hillary is gearing up, but I can’t imagine that she’d make it through another campaign, besides, she’ll be under indictment by then. Michelle? Maybe we deserve another dose of the Obamas, but I can’t imagine that a plurality of Americans are willing to erase these last three years and go back to “managing the decline” of our great country.

So how do we push that dead plane off the runway? I don’t know. I think Trump has a few moves in mind, but I don’t think the lunatics do. In the 70s when someone we loved got involved in a cult, we would gather friends and relatives and confront the cultist with the ugly fact of his ignorance and gullibility.

Our fellow Americans need an intervention. I’ve had to do a couple of those and they were not pleasant conversations. One wasn’t even, on a long-term basis, very effective. Neither discussion was one I wanted to be part of, and yet duty called -- friends tell friends the truth.

I suspect we conservatives have been too conservative in our willingness to confront those with whom we don’t agree, but one of Donald Trump’s greatest achievements has been to show us how to stand firm. He’s shown us how to fight back and has reminded us that we have something holy to fight for.

Why we are so reluctant to speak up? Are we unsure about what we believe? If so, that has to change and fortunately the facts are on our side. We have history to rely on, but we have to make sure we are reading the real thing and not some Howard Zinnish reshaping of actual events.  We have science on our side, as long as we make sure we are reading scientists who haven’t sold out to peer pressure and funding greed. We have statistics on our side – stats about gun violence, about abortion, about sexual mores, but we need to learn those facts and pay attention to how they are interpreted.

And we need to know this information well enough that we aren’t shaken by the nasty retorts that will come our way. People who don’t know what they’re talking about will be the first to start calling us names, berating us personally, but it’s easy to slough that off  -- naming-calling (Racist, sexist, homophobic bigot!), after all, is their first admission of guilt. They don’t have an actual rebuttal. The first point goes to our side.

But it isn’t easy. When they get done lambasting us personally, they go for our friends. That’s not fun. Then they start belittling all we hold dear -– our Constitution, our God, the Bible.  They try to convince us that logic and facts are unimportant (In the delusional leftist world they aren’t of any value.).

I am done playing nice. This scares me because some of the people I love most are going to need an intervention and I don’t want to lose them, but we can’t keep pushing the moldy leftovers to the back of the frig. If we are to be a self-governed people we have to do the work required. We have to confront our schools about the propaganda they’re teaching – sixty-three million angry citizens pounding on the schoolhouse door should have an effect. We have to have those uncomfortable conversations at family gatherings and neighborhood get-togethers.

Bumper stickers and banners are good. Memes are fun and sometimes make a permanent point. It’s good that we support Christian filmmaking, watch conservative television, write our congressmen now and then. But that’s not joining the battle and we are in a place now where we either fight or run up the white flag and snap on our own shackles.

If we want the glories of this amazing country to continue we have to dig in and fight. Demonic forces have sickened the media, the entertainment industry, our entire educational system in a masterful slight-of-hand operation. These forces have even infiltrated and robbed our churches of their most positive influence. All have conspired to force on us an alternate, delusional worldview, one that will kill us all.  We must bone up on reality and fight, for nothing is what it seems.
 
 
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