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government transparency Update

Public Surveillance Forced to Become Transparent

“Just like humans may err in recognizing faces, facial recognition technology (FRT) is not without its flaws,” writes Meagan O’Rourke at Reason. “Multiple defendants have blamed the technology for wrongful arrests as more and more law enforcement agencies rely on the technology to identify suspects.”

Ms. O’Rourke goes on to expand on the ruling, reporting that in “State v. Tybear Miles, New Jersey’s Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors must disclose how FRT was used to identify defendant Tybear Miles, who had been charged with ‘first-degree murder and weapons offenses.’”

While this new transparency is being induced by a state court, states “including Maryland, Montana, and Washington,” have legislated requirements that “law enforcement agencies to disclose the use of FRT to defendants before trial.”

It is worth remembering that there is another route to secure your privacy and public anonymity from surveillance hardware and facial recognition software: technological innovation. A serial killer in the TV series Dexter Resurrection found a way, with lights inside his “camera-shy hoodie.” But there are many more ways. And more will be developed. Prying creates its own counter-measures. Even among the law-abiding.

Categories
Thought

Aeschines

ὁμολογοῦνται γὰρ τρεῖς εἶναι πολιτεῖαι παρὰ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, τυραννὶς καὶ ὀλιγαρχία καὶ δημοκρατία· διοικοῦνται δ᾿ αἱ μὲν τυραννίδες καὶ ὀλιγαρχίαι τοῖς τρόποις τῶν ἐφεστηκότων, αἱ δὲ πόλεις αἱ δημοκρατούμεναι τοῖς νόμοις τοῖς κειμένοις.

It is acknowledged, namely, that there are in the world three forms of government, autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy: autocracies and oligarchies are administered according to the tempers of their lords, but democratic states according to established laws.

Aeschines, Against Timarchus (346/5 BC), I.4.

Categories
Today

The Archduke Shot!

On the 28th of June in 1914, 19-year-old Gavril Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and the Archduke’s wife Sophie. The Archduke had earlier missed a bomb thrown at his car, which necessitated a change in the motorcade route, which the driver forgot, which is why the car paused at the precise intersection in which Princip fired his fatal shots.

The shooting began a series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”

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Update

Do They Know What They’re Doing?

A year ago, on June 24, 2025, a resolution was introduced into Congress to once again impeach President Donald Trump. But that was not the most interesting Trump-related story of the day. The president, walking towards Marine One (the name of the helicopter when in service of the president) was accosted by reporters who asked about Iran and the country’s commitment to peace:

The subject was Iran, but Trump brought up Israel’s breaking of the peace, and stated that Israel and Iran “have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” Trump’s expletive-laden remarks followed an incident where Israel reported intercepting a missile launched by Iran, shortly after he had celebrated an “epic ceasefire” between the two nations.

On the same day, Trump also posted on Truth Social, urging Israel not to launch further attacks on Iran, specifically writing: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”

Since then, the president has sided with Israel’s desire to escalate a regime-change war with Iran. This has not proven successful, by most observers’ judgments, and the president has tried repeatedly to obtain some lasting peace. This has been a less-than-coherent peace process, however. Exactly a year after his “they don’t know what the” comment, Trump expressed chagrin at what he said was an Iranian attack on a cargo ship. Then followed retaliation:

U.S. forces launched strikes on Iran on June 26 in response to a drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said later the same day that it targeted American positions in the region in response to the U.S. attack, but did not clarify what those positions were. The United States has not issued any statements on Iran’s latest action.

Ryan Morgan, “U.S. Strikes Iran in Response to Attack on Cargo Ship,” The Epoch Times (June 26, 2026).

The political reaction has been pointed, from the White House:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday called Iran’s attack a violation of the ceasefire reached by the two countries.

Vice President JD Vance followed up in a post on X, saying “violence will be met with violence.”

“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement,” Vance also wrote. “We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the [memorandum of understanding] is being applied, they can pick up the phone.”

The Epoch Times, ibid.

Categories
Today

Anarchists, Arms & Martyrs

In 1556 on the 27th of June, the thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs.

In 1844, on this date, Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois, jail.

Paul von Mauser was born on June 27, 1838, and would go on to become a weapons designer. Other June 27th birthdays include Emma Goldman, born in 1869, to later become known as a feminist, anarchist and early leftist opponent of Soviet Communism; and Helen Keller, born in 1880 — and she, too, was an anarchist “of the left.”

Categories
Thought

Juvenal

Difficile est saturam non scribere.

It is difficult not to write satire.

Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis (c. 55 – c. 140), Satire One, Line 30.
Categories
fraud ideological culture Internet controversy political economy

X Marks the Success

Elon Musk, grift, government contract, private enterprise, taxes, technology

Yesterday, I defended the honor, so to speak, of Elon Musk against Eric Peters’s charge — published, on his website — that the high-tech magnate is a “grifter.”

I focused only on the free speech angle. But Mr. Peters (“the libertarian car guy”) didn’t limit himself to criticizing X. He also criticized Tesla, SpaceX and DOGE.

Musk, Peters notes, “has just become a trillionaire by dint of the IPO of his Space Xcrement grift.” Folks bought into SpaceX, he says, because “they believe there is a Tesla roadster in orbit around the Earth and that we’ll soon be able to buy tickets for a trip to Mars.”

Is Peters suggesting that Musk did not send a Tesla Roadster into space? Is this some new sort of (forgive me) “conspiracy theory”? Truth is, the Roadster orbits the Sun, coming back from beyond the Martian orbit.

What does he think is really going on here? What Musk’s investors “have bought into is the grift of government contracts,” he says, “which are paid for with dollars fleeced from the tax sheep. People who buy Space Xcrement stock can share in the grift, of course. But it does not change the nature of the grift.”

While the bulk (but definitely not the whole) of SpaceX’s clients are government agencies, most importantly NASA, remember something that one might forget while reading Peters’s fun rant: Musk is indeed putting objects into orbit, with new and astounding technology of amazing efficiency, and NASA has announced that SpaceX’s biggest and best will soon take astronauts back to the Moon.

As for Tesla, these cars are on the road. They work. I wouldn’t buy one, but I wouldn’t call it a grift a million times, or even once. And Musk himself has said he’d happily produce cars without the subsidies. But he continues to use the system set up for more than just him — the usual businessman rationale.

Criticizable? Yes. Wholly a grift? No.

And as for DOGE, it’s not as if Musk did not try. He just got little support from Congress . . . or the President. Too bad. Still not a grift.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Julian the Apostate

Thou hast conquered, Galilean!

Alleged famous last words of Imperator Caesar Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus, as first attributed to him a century after his death (June 26, A.D. 363, from wounds fighting the Sassanid Empire in the Battle of Samarra) by Theodoret in his Ecclesiastical History, Book III, Ch. 20. The reference, of course, is to Jesus of Nazareth; Julian, a neoplatonic philosopher, was the last pagan (non-Christian/anti-Christian) Roman emperor, nephew to Constantine the Great.
Categories
Today

To Hercules!

On June 26, 1783, William Herschel presented his calculation of the Solar Apex to the Royal Society, identifying the direction of the Sun’s motion through space for the first time in history.

Scientists today say Herschel was off by 10 degrees, but still got the constellation right: Hercules. The actual direction is towards a spot near the star Vega.

Categories
ideological culture individual achievement social media

X Marks the Grift?

Elon Musk, X, free speech, censorship, freedom

Most of the calumnies against Elon Musk come from people who are either envious or completely unaware of the basic principles of economics. Or both.

That being said, not everyone “in my camp” admires or defends the South African-American tech magnate. On Sunday, Eric Peters — “the libertarian car guy” — published, on his website, “Xcrement Is Just That (and more).”

“I have written a number of articles critical of Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ social media grift,” Mr. Peters asserts, “which I say is just that because it isn’t free. . . .” 

Since I pay nothing for X, I was surprised. What?

Peters is “assuming you want more than a few people to know you’ve spoken.” That’s how he put it. “You must pay a recurrent fee for what is styled ‘reach.’ Even then, your ‘reach’ is subject to being limited via completely obscure parameters known only to Elon and his algorithm.”

And the complaint is . . . ?

The Twitterverse prior to Elon’s acquisition of the platform, asserted, with some perspicacity, that “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.” The “freedom of reach” part was nothing other than “freedom of the press” — and the technological and business platforms that make up “the press” have never been “free of price.” Someone must pay for getting ideas out there far and wide.

Yet Mr. Peters seems to think that “Free ought to mean not just without cost but open. As in everyone can use it and no one is limited in any way from using it. Xcrement does not work like that.”

Well, the telephone system in days of yore was indeed open to everyone, but that did not mean “free.” And if you wanted to make a long-distance call, you had to pay the phone company.

While old-time telephony isn’t equivalent to modern-day social media, the parallel is close enough to show that this specific case against Elon is without merit.

Still, I wouldn’t call it excrement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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