Lemmy Today

im old and lonely but i feel cute for no reason at all right now anyways and i think that is just fine ✨

A draft emergency executive order to declare a national emergency to allow President Donald Trump to take unprecedented control over voting is being circulated by anti-voting activists who said they are in coordination with the White House.

Voting rights experts, democracy advocates, and at least one state election chief said Trump doesn’t have the authority to claim such powers — and any attempt would be blatantly unconstitutional.

The draft order — which is said to be based on a conspiracy theory that China interfered with the 2020 election — would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference.

The order comes from MAGA activists who have been coordinating with the White House. One of the advocates for the order is Peter Ticktin, the attorney for Tina Peters, the former GOP Colorado county clerk who is currently serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a 2021 voting system breach, in an attempt to find voter fraud based on election conspiracies.

The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives states — not the president — sole authority over elections.

archive article: https://archive.is/hsr5u

We’ve been saying this for years now, and we’re going to keep saying it until the message finally sinks in: mandatory age verification creates massive, centralized honeypots of sensitive biometric data that will inevitably be breached. Every single time. And every single time it happens, the politicians who mandated these systems and the companies that built them act shocked—shocked!—that collecting enormous databases of government IDs, facial scans, and biometric data from millions of people turns out to be a security nightmare.

Well, here we go again.

A couple weeks ago, Discord announced it would launch “teen-by-default” settings for its global audience, meaning all users would be shunted into a restricted experience unless they verified their age through biometric scanning. The internet, predictably, was not thrilled. But while many users were busy venting their frustration, a group of security researchers decided to do something more useful: they took a look under the hood at Persona, one of the companies Discord was using for verification (specifically for users in the UK).

What they found, according to The Rage, was exactly what we would predict:

Together with two other researchers, they set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco-based startup that’s used by Discord for biometric identity verification – and found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a US government authorized server.

In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting – and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies.

Let me say that again: 2,456 publicly accessible files sitting on a government-authorized server, exposed to the open internet.

Palantir Technologies has a permanent desk at the U.S.-led Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC) headquarters in southern Israel, three sources from the diplomatic community inside the CMCC told Drop Site News. According to the sources, the artificial intelligence data analytics giant is providing the technological architecture for tracking the delivery and distribution of aid to Gaza.

The presence of Palantir and other corporations—along with recent changes banning non-profits unwilling to give data to Israeli authorities—is creating a situation in which the delivery of aid is taking a backseat to the pursuit of profit, investment, and the training of AI products, experts say.

Graph is from Yahoo finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DUOL/?guccounter=1

Reuters news article: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/duolingo-prioritizes-user-growth-over-monetization-forecasts-softer-bookings-2026-02-26/

"The language-learning app has spent recent years fine-tuning monetization through more ads and subscription prompts, helping lift bookings per user. But that coincided with slower user growth." Yes Reuters, that's called enshittification.

Unavailable at source.

Helicopters are for C-UAS

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/64461862

Staff at a for-profit Pennsylvania immigrant prison serially falsified detention records about a man who died in 2023, according to a federal death review obtained exclusively by The Intercept earlier this month.

Despite these findings, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to punish the facility’s politically connected operator, GEO Group. Instead, records show the agency gave GEO even more money to run the facility after the man died: $4 million in additional funds, just three months after the death review was completed. After an April 2024 visit at the facility, ICE’s acting director called GEO a “valued partner.”

Serial Falsification of Safety Checks Frankline Okpu died in solitary confinement at GEO Group’s Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center in Clearfield County on December 6, 2023. According to the detainee death report, two days before his death, staff sent the 37-year-old Cameroonian father of three to solitary confinement following an altercation with a guard in which he allegedly swallowed an unknown substance they believed to contain “k2,” a synthetic form of cannabis, “mixed with a tranquilizer.”

A physician who treated Okpu upon his placement in segregation instructed facility staff to take him to the emergency department. According to GEO, Okpu refused informed consent for this course of treatment; the doctor ordered GEO to house him in the facility’s infirmary for observation. GEO staff claim Okpu refused this course of treatment, too. The provider ordered prison staff to conduct 15-minute visual checks to ensure his safety.

But records show that did not always happen before Okpu died, according to ICE’s death review.

Surveillance footage revealed 94 of 219 required visual inspections (42 percent) did not occur as ordered. In 23 instances, GEO staff recorded checks that never occurred at all. In another 33, staff logged visual inspections without looking in the cell window to personally observe Okpu. And in 38 logged events, the checks staff claimed to perform every 15 minutes occurred outside that required timeframe.

Federal prosecutors have previously indicted GEO staff for falsifying visual inspection logs during the period preceding an incarcerated person’s death in custody.

The Intercept sought comment and posed a series of detailed questions to ICE and GEO. An ICE spokesperson said the agency was unable to provide a response by deadline, citing “the blizzard in the Northeast.” GEO Group did not respond.

https://www.lecanardenchaine.fr/politique/50876-une-insoumise-chez-les-poutinistes

Transcript provided by the artist:

Panel 1

The power has gone out and Gustopher (August - Alligator - A soft spoken single father who works in IT. Gustopher's dad) is trying to figure out what happened. This has also conveniently made this panel extremely easy to draw.

Gustopher (Gustopher - Alligator - An easily excitable child who loves making friends. August's son.): Dad! Did the power go out?

August: I think so. Help me find my phone. I'll get a light.

Panel 2

August has turned on the light on his phone. This means I actually had to draw this panel. Mewbert (Cat - Animal - August and Gustopher's pet cat).is peacefully sleeping on the couch in the background. Gustopher is momentarily stunned by the light, but at least his dad found his phone.

August: This will help. My phone should be in this room.

Panel 3

Gustopher is confused. His dad is looking for his phone while using said phone as a light. He fights the urge to say anything and wonders how long it will take his dad to realize what's going on. Mewbert is annoyed at the commotion. Nougat (Cat - Animal - August and Gustopher's pet cat) has found herself on the top of the couch and is amused by the commotion.

August: I was just using it. I don't know where I-

Panel 4

August suddenly realizes that he is using is phone to try to find his phone. Embarrassment washes over him. Gustopher will remember this.

August: Oh.

Mewbert closes her eyes and attempts to go back to sleep. Nougat watches from above and it calculating how funny it might be if she pounces on Mewbert right now.