RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Dec.1 to Dec. 7, 2019 Each week brings new reports of atrocities involving China and its ongoing repression of Muslims. These include Beijing's organization of mass detentions of Muslims, its demolition of mosques, and allegations that it is harvesting organs from prisoners. This week's frightening news is more forward-looking: The New York Times reports that China is working to combine DNA with artificial intelligence tocreate a powerful new tool of surveillance: In a dusty city in the Xinjiang region on China's western frontier, the authorities are testing the rules of science. With a million or more Ethnic Uighurs and others from predominantly Muslim minority groups swept up in detentions across Xinjiang, officials in Tumxuk have gathered blood samples from hundreds of Uighurs — part of a mass DNA collection effort dogged by questions about consent and how the data will be used. In Tumxuk, at least, there is a partial answer: Chinese scientists are trying to find a way to use a DNA sample to create an image of a person's face. The technology, which is also being developed in the United States and elsewhere, is in the early stages of development and can produce rough pictures good enough only to narrow a manhunt or perhaps eliminate suspects. But given the crackdown in Xinjiang, experts on ethics in science worry that China is building a tool that could be used to justify and intensify racial profiling and other state discrimination against Uighurs. In the long term, experts say, it may even be possible for the Communist government to feed images produced from a DNA sample into the mass surveillance and facial recognition systems that it is building, tightening its grip on society by improving its ability to track dissidents and protesters as well as criminals. Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Text: House Democrats' Impeachment Report, House Intelligence Committee
Text: GOP Rebuttal Report on Impeachment Inquiry, Republican House Staff
Text: White House Declines Nadler Impeachment Hearing, White House
Chilly FalloutFromSchiff Release of Phone Records, Washington Examiner
Leaks: Barr Disputes Watchdog's View FBI Probe Justified, Washington Post
10 Things to Look for in the Russia Probe FISA Report, John Solomon Reports
Lisa Page Speaks, Decries Trump's 'Demeaning Fake Orgasm', Daily Beast
Giuliani Phone Calls Hint Direct Trump Ukraine Role, New York Times
AlexandraChalupa'sMission to Take Down Trump, Breitbart
Charge: Mueller Witness Touted Clinton Access, Yahoo Other Noteworthy Articles and Series A Serial Jail Snitch Who May Soon Send a Man to His Death
ProPublica, New York Times Magazine
In this jointly supported effort, Pamela Colloff of ProPublica unpacks the epic mendacity of prisoner Paul Skalnik, a serial liar and career offender who may be one of the most prolific jailhouse informants in U.S. history. Now Florida is planning to execute a man based largely on his word. The problem of unreliable jailhouse snitches has long been noted (including by ProPublica). But the practice of relying on them persists, and Skalnik's case illustrates why: their symbiotic relationship with prosecutors willing to cut them breaks to make cases. "Given how opaque and unchecked prosecutors' use of jailhouse informants is, it is impossible to quantify how often they factor into criminal cases," Colloff writes. They Loan You Money, Then Get a Warrant for Your Arrest
ProPublica
Congress banned debtors'prisons in 1833. Yet, across the country, debtors are routinely threatened with arrest and sometimes jailed. Following itsrecent storydetailing how medical debt collectors are using the law in Kansas, this ProPublica investigation, which focuses on Utah, reports on how payday lenders and similar high-interest- loan companies are using the courts as a cudgel. Technically, debtors are arrested for not responding to a court summons requested by the creditor. But for many that's a distinction without a difference: Low-income people unfamiliar with court proceedings often lack access to transportation, child care options, or time off, or move frequently and thus may not receive notifications. Tinder, Other Dating Apps Let In Known Sex Offenders
Columbia Journalism Investigations/ProPublica
The dating website Match.com first agreed to screen for registered sex offenders in 2011 after a Harvard-educated woman filed suit because she had been raped by someone she met on the site. This article reports that the service's parent company, Match Group, has not extended the practice of screening customers against government sex offender registries to the dozens of free dating sites it owns, including Tinder,OkCupidandPlentyofFish. It analyzed 157 incidents of sexual assault involving dating apps, culled from a decade of news reports, civil lawsuits, and criminal records. Most incidents occurred in the past five years and during the app users' first in-person meeting, in parking lots, apartments,and dorm rooms. How Foreigners Spread a Dubious Story AboutIlhan Omar and Qatar
Daily Caller
From her love life to her finances to her comments about Israel, Rep.IlhanOmar is surrounded by so many controversies she doesn't need another - especially if its fake. This article reports that a Jerusalem Post story suggesting the Minnesota Democrat could secretly be a foreign agent for the nation of Qatar "is highly dubious." It says the story is based on the claims of Alan Bender, a self-described fixer for the Saudis, who are Qatar's sworn enemies. He claims Qatari officials summoned him and divulged their innermost secrets. The accusation, however, appears to be part of a campaign by "Imam of Peace" MohamadTawhidi, an Australian who positions himself as a Western-friendly, anti-extremist Muslim, but who studied under an ultraconservative cleric. The Low Bar for Fingerprint 'Expertise' to Lock People Away
The Intercept
It's one of the few forensic facts at our fingertips: no two fingerprintsare the same. In fact, this story reports, "there's no proof that is the case." What's more, crime scene prints are often distorted — or, "noisy" — partial prints that may be smudged or otherwise degraded, which is where errors occur. This becomes especially problematic when a latent print is pulled off a piece of evidence but there is no suspect already identified for comparison purposes. So an examiner can feed the crime scene print into a database with millions of prints, which generates a list of potential matches based on similar characteristics. While it may or may not be true that no two prints are exactly alike, there are plenty of very similar prints. This article also reports that many fingerprint experts - and, moreimportant, most jury members - are not aware of the problem, believing that fingerprint evidence is ironclad. 2020 U.S. Census Plagued by Hacking Threats, Cost Overruns
Reuters
In 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau thought it would be cheaper and safer to hire an outside contractor to collect and process data. Three years after choosingPegasystemsInc, the project faces seriousreliability and security problems. ThePega-built website was hacked from addresses in Russia during 2018 testing of census systems. And its projected cost has doubled to $167 million — about $40 million more than the bureau's 2016 cost projection for building the site in-house.The potential costs of a hacking incident or a system failure go beyond busted budgets or stolen data. A technological breakdown could compromise the accuracy of the census, which has been a linchpin of American democracy since the founding of the republic more than two centuries ago. In a worst-case scenario, poorly secured data could be accessed by hackers looking to manipulate demographic figures for political purposes. How Herpes Became a Sexual Boogeyman
Slate
Few people had heard of herpes until thelate1970s, when fearsabout sexual freedom and then the rise ofAIDs broughtpanickedattention to a range of sexually transmitted diseases, captured by a Time article headlined: "Herpes: The New Sexual Leprosy." Today there is a still a strong stigma attached to genital herpes, which is quite widespread: about 12 percent of Americans aged 14 to 49haveit. This article reports that herpes is, in fact, "no big deal." Since many people with HSV-2 have either no symptoms or very mild symptoms, themajority never seektreatment and are never diagnosed. The article then goes back in time to see how the media and other forces turned herpes - which back then was untreatable - into a "sexual bogeyman" while publicizing drug-company hype on the herpes peril in order to sell treatments they were developing. I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It.
New York Times Magazine
What's it like to work for the alleged conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his websiteInfowars? Josh Owens gives one answer in this article, which portrays Jones as an often angry self-promoter who enjoys guns and cocktails. The most interesting part of this "I once was blind but now I see" account by Owens is what attracted him to Jones in the first place. "Jones," the onetime film school dropout writes, "had a way of imbuing the world with mystery, adding a layer of cinematic verisimilitude that caught my attention. Suddenly, I was no longer a bored kid attending an overpriced art school. I was Fox Mulder combing through the X-Files, RodSerlingopening a door to the Twilight Zone, even Rosemary Woodhouse convinced that the neighbors were members of a ritualistic cult. I believed that the world was strategically run by a shadowy, organized cabal, and that Jones was a hero for exposing it." Owens said he always rejected some of Jones' false claims, such as his claim the Sandy Hook massacre of schoolchildren was a hoax. "But it was easy to brush off thesefever dreams as eccentricities and excesses-not the heart of the Alex Jones operation but mere diversions." Inside a Fake 'Heil Trump,' Anti-Gay Indiana Church Hate Crime
Washington Post
On the Sunday morning after the 2016 election,NathanStang, the organist at St. David's Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana, reported that the church's walls had beendefaced with black spray paint: a swastika, along with the words "HeilTrump" and "Fag Church."The incident became national news, trumpeted by Stephen Colbert and CNN among others. This article reports that it was hoax, perpetrated byStang, a gay man angered by Trump's election. It is also one of the most sympathetic and forgiving portraits ever written about a man who sought to stigmatize half the country by fabricating a hate crime. |
