When you catch the subway, many of your personal details, including banking information and location, are collected and entered into a database. Walk around the city and you're being recorded by thousands of cameras. Drive into the city "and traffic cameras will automatically photograph your car, capturing your vehicle's license plate, make, model, color, distinctive markings and even passengers." Post on social media and your views, friends, thoughts, and plans can be scraped. This isn't some far of place. This is in New York City (and other cities and towns across America). So, what's the problem? As long as I don't commit a crime, isn't all this surveillance just protecting me? Well, that depends who you are: "Take a teenager living in the Marcy Houses, a public housing complex in Brooklyn. Simply because of where he lives, if he posts photos with certain classmates or if he tries out certain hashtags, he might be added to the N.Y.P.D.’s gang database, which contains active entries for more than 13,000 people, 99 percent of whom are people of color...Even if there is no suspicion that this particular young man has engaged in any crime, his presence on that database exposes him to a level of monitoring previously reserved for intensive undercover operations targeting organized crime." OK, but I'm not a teen living in public housing, so do I really need to worry? Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez explains why this kind of surveillance is a big deal for everyone. The N.Y.P.D. Is Teaching America How to Track Everyone Every Day Forever. Here's one example you may not have considered. "Today, abortion is legal in New York. But in many states it is not, and some of them are actively considering whether to criminalize out-of-state travel for abortion-related care. No current laws would prevent the federal government from demanding access to the N.Y.P.D.’s data or stop the department from granting it. The system could quickly identify out-of-state cars and people who visit or have visited Planned Parenthood. Dossiers could easily be generated for each person and then expanded to include information about their travel, social networks, habits and beliefs. From there, it would be easy to create a watch list targeting suspects for further monitoring, stops, questioning and property seizures. That may seem improbable today. Will it seem that way tomorrow?" (A few days ago, it seemed improbable that a US administration would target individuals and groups that may have different political opinions about a recently killed activist. Today, it's all but certain.) 2Left Hook"President Trump and his top advisers threatened on Monday to unleash the power of the federal government to punish what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on Charlie Kirk’s killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents. Investigators were still working to identify a motive in the death of Mr. Kirk." (We may not know the killer's motive, but we definitely know the adminstation's motives.) NYT (Gift Article): White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups. 3Online of Fire"The far-left accounts cheering political assassination and prominent right-media personalities calling for civil war against 'the party of murder' were engaged in a mirrored cosplay, both play-acting as violent revolutionaries from the comfort of air-conditioned rooms with WiFi. How can something like this happen in America? is an important question to ask, but not a difficult one to answer. To see what we are doing to ourselves, you only had to do the easiest thing: log on." Derek Thompson: All the Sad Young Terminally Online Men. "As young single men have dramatically increased their time alone and online, they’ve marinated in a unique attentional environment that is more charged with extremist ideas and emotional negativity. Political scientists have found that social isolation increases the risk that young men develop a 'need for chaos,' and law enforcement officers have independently confirmed that modern political violence is more likely the result of isolated lone wolves who stitch together a bespoke ideology of hatred that is disconnected from any formal organization." 4America Is Now Pro Cancer"In a matter of months, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, arguing that they were part of politically driven D.E.I. initiatives, and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more. It is trying to sharply reduce the percentage of expenses that the government will cover for federally funded cancer-research labs. It has terminated hundreds of government employees who helped lead the country’s cancer-research system and ensured that new discoveries reached clinicians, cancer patients and the American public. And the president’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for a more-than-37-percent cut to the National Cancer Institute — the N.I.H. agency that leads most of the nation’s cancer research — reducing it to $4.5 billion from $7.2 billion. Adjusting for inflation, you have to go back more than 30 years to find a comparably sized federal cancer-research budget." NYT Magazine (Gift Article): Trump Is Shutting Down the War On Cancer. 5Extra, ExtraKash Poor: FBI Kash Patel appeared before a Senate committee. Yelling ensued. Among other things, he was dishonest about FBI firings. Here's a look at a couple of them. A ‘Broken’ Trust: F.B.I. Agents Fired by Patel Speak Out. 6Bottom of the News"The championships are held every year in the tiny island of Easdale in the Inner Hebrides, which has a population of just 60. But the 2025 competition has been rocked by scandal after it emerged that several participants had used 'doctored stones' to make them more efficient at skimming." Cheating scandal rocks Scottish island's World Stone Skimming Championships. More here: Stone skimming championship rocked by cheating scandal.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Peep Show
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