Factual Dispatch

This dispatch assumes you're vaguely aware of the news, so it will endeavor to provide perspectives, visualizations, analysis, and odds & ends you won't find anywhere else.

In somewhat confusing news, the Senate formally condemned Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the day after the House added a provision in the Farm Bill to make punishing the Saudis for their actions more difficult. The pair of votes by the Senate were the part of the first use of the War Powers Act to demand an end to a war in 40 years. To be fair, there are plenty of ways we could punish Saudi Arabia directly for the acts of Mr. Bone Saw. But that might not be necessary, given the announcement of a tentative ceasefire in the Yemeni city of Hodeidah between Houthi & Yemeni government forces. Yes, you read that right, Saudi Arabia is not at this table. Both the Saudis & the UAE back the Yemeni government, with Houthi rebels attempting to unseat the current regime following a series of missteps after taking power after the Arab Spring. The USA has supported Saudi Arabia's actions under the pretext that the Houthi rebels are actually Iranian sleeper cells. While the Houthis are a distinctly non-Iranian group and Iranian influence on the Houthis is overblown, they are receiving assistance from Iran's Revolutionary Guard. What is known for sure is that we are making this conflict worse. With 13 million at risk of starvation, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is growing by the day. Playing politics with the lives of more people than the population of the New York metro area is a terrible choice, and the Democrats who helped the House GOP leadership get away with that provision in the Farm Bill should be ashamed of themselves.

Facial recognition is back in the news, with Taylor Swift being the first Western celebrity to use facial recognition to monitor her crowds. Chinese concert venues first revealed the capability in the spring, with several suspects being nabbed leaving venues. Not only is China's surveillance system essentially pervasive, but companies have started to sell sunglasses (shown above), that allow law enforcement to connect directly to facial recognition grids & watch lists. It also helps identify people who are useful for non-criminal reasons as well.In the West, facial recognition has generated significant pushback, not only because the tech is far from perfect, but because it is inherently biased and that bias can cause real harm. A few months ago, The Intercept in partnership with The Investigative Fund, discovered that IBM & the NYPD had created a facial recognition video search where you could search by "skin tone" as early as 2012. IBM has worked in urban video surveillance since 2005, but they are in no way the only player in urban data analytics. Palantir has been engaging in similar work in New Orleans, so even after their semi-hilarious falling out with the NYPD, they are still a force to be reckoned with. Amazon's attempts to work with ICE have been well documented, and public support for this is so minimal, even Google has announced a complete about-face on the issue.Even without private companies assisting the government, 117 million Americans are in facial recognition databases. In 16 states, the FBI is allowed to use driver's license & ID photo matching against photos of alleged criminals, ensuring that 64 million do not even have a choice in the matter. There is also no good legal framework, or agency based review of this technology or its use by law enforcement. While certain forms of make-up and fashion make your harder to spot at protests, driver's license & passport photos cannot be altered. We need regulation of this tech, similar to how wiretaps and other surveillance technology is (ostensibly) restricted. 

One of the clearest things I remember after 9/11 was John Ashcroft & Ari Fleischer & Condy Rice going to war with the media, and the chilling effect they, and the greater War on Terror had, on journalism. With the USA moving down 2 notches to 45 in the World Press Freedom Index this year, we have very little to be proud of, but we are not alone. In the last couple of years alone, journalists have faced murder, abduction, incarceration and repression in Italy, France, Malta, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Turkey, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar the Philippines, Syria, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and of course, right here in the good old US of A  (See here & here for the 58 journalist murders attributed to Russia between 1992 & 2018). With journalists fighting both active harassment and disruption of their business model, we all suffer. The Columbia Journalism Review found that as local newspapers close, governments are more likely to mismanage public funds. Traditional journalism is deeply unsexy until it changes the world. We need to make room for it, even if it's less profitable than listicles or sponsored content. As one journalist said "When I see a Buzzfeed or HuffPo reporter at a Baltimore Zoning Board hearing, then I'll know we've gotten somewhere new."

Eye-Watering Data Visualization of the Week:

Vaguely Dystopian News of the Week: Waymo self-driving vans in Arizona are being threatened with guns and violence by irate residents, who are sick of them driving through their neighborhood.Annoying But Correct Take of the Week: Progress on wage inequality can only occur when an economy is operating at full employment, says former Fed Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. Unskilled workers will always be exploited in a high unemployment situation.Huh, Interesting" Read of the Week: Wind turbines affecting the color of lizards, producing a lovely demonstration of the odd secondary effects from switching from fossil fuels to renewables.Dunk of the Week: 

Good tidings to you, wherever you are.T