[Plura-list] Nnedi Okarafor and me in conversation tonight; LA schools returned grenade launchers, kept assault rifles; Black box voting

Sun Jun 14 12:01:19 EDT 2020

Today's links

* Nnedi Okarafor and me in conversation tonight: Torcon's closing
keynote, 4PM Pacific/7PM Eastern.

* LA schools returned grenade launchers, kept assault rifles: An M-16
for teacher.

* Black box voting: Voting machine vendor won't give election officials
a login.

* This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

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👷🏾 Nnedi Okarafor and me in conversation tonight

Today is the last day of TorCon, the free online sf convention from
@TorBooks, and for the closer, Nnedi Okarafor and I will be in
conversation at 4PM Pacific/7PM Eastern, moderated by Kayti Burt from
Den of Geek, discussing sf and politics (what else?).

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/DoctorowOkorafor

Other Torcon events today:

* Readings from Jenn Lyons and Nathan Makaryk

* A panel on challenging the traditions of sf/f with Kate Elliott,
Andrea Hairston, Alaya Dawn Johnson and Ryan Van Loan

https://www.torforgeblog.com/torcon-2020/

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👷🏾 LA schools returned grenade launchers, kept assault rifles

The Defense Logistics Agency's Law Enforcement Support Office operates
the 1033 program, through which the US military buys weapons it doesn't
need, then passes them on as "surplus" to police departments, including
school police departments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Support_Office

So it's not just big-city police departments that have MRAPs (gunless
tanks), assault rifles, and the other trappings of an occupying army;
nor is it merely small town forces that go about like they're patrolling
Mosul.

It's *school cops*.

The LA Unified School District is one of the districts whose cops get
military weapons to use in connection with schoolchildren.

In 2014, LAUSD returned its 3 grenade launchers.

They kept their assault rifles, though.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-schools-weapons-20140917-story.html

LAUSD had procured 61 M-16 rifles through 1033. They also got an MRAP,
and they kept that, too.

They called the rifles "essential life-saving items."

Writing in the LA Times in 2014, Stephen Ceasar interviewed Stockton
school police Chief Bryon Gustafson about his school's stockpile of
AR-15s. The Chief's response is as good an explanation of why we need to
defund the police as you're apt to see.

"The job of police officers and the standards are the same whether you
are Stockton police or Stockton school police … even if we have very
different missions. My job is about facilitating education and making
sure that students are safe at school."

If you think that "facilitating education" involves an AR-15, you should
not be allowed within 10 miles of any educational institution, for the
rest of your life.

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👷🏾 Black box voting

At least half of the voting machines in use in America come from
Election Systems & Software, including the systems used by Broward
County, whose Supervisor of Elections is ultimately responsible for
running the county's polling places.

https://thewestsidegazette.com/election-data-sits-in-a-database-county-election-office-is-denied-access/

Investigative journalist and data analyst Perry Busby asked the SOE
about some discrepancies discovered by the nonpartisan Broward Citizens
Audit initiative's investigation of the March 17 primary. He was seeking
details of the way the system's SQL databases tabulate the vote.

This is the most fundamental question about how a voting machine works,
and Busby naturally assumed the SOE Pete Antonacci and his team could
answer his query, but instead, the SOE's office told Busby that ES&S;
does not give them a working login to *their own voting machines*.

"We can log into the server where the SQL Server database files are
located, but we don’t have user access to the database." - John Wolf,
Broward County election office IT Director.

ES&S; is owned by the secretive private equity giant McClatchy Group,
and processes some 70m US votes in national elections. It has a long
history of suing cities and competitors when ESS contracts are canceled
in favor of a rival's products.

The company has also sued citizen groups calling for voting
transparency, and, as Busby points out, ES&S; systems have been at the
center of many scandals, especially in predominantly Black precincts,
with hundreds of thousands of votes disappearing.

And yet the company refuses to provide the election officials that buy
its products with logins that allow them to verify the most basic
functions of its machines.

As Busby discovered, ES&S; threatens to cancel the contracts of any
election official who independently audits their machines and
"automatically revoke all results pending certification."

ES&S; says it's "a preventative measure to reduce the risk of record
tampering."

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👷🏾 This day in history

#10yrsago Music industry lobbyist calls for death penalty for piracy
https://boingboing.net/2010/06/14/music-industry-lobby.html

#10yrsago Pinkwater's BEAUTIFUL YETTA: touching picture book about a
country chicken and feral Brooklyn parrots
https://boingboing.net/2010/06/14/pinkwaters-beautiful.html

#10yrsago Tortured Canadian that US deported to Syria will not get
justice https://www.wired.com/2010/06/arar-supreme-court/

#5yrsago Kate Milford's Greenglass House: lyrical, tense YA mystery
https://boingboing.net/2015/06/14/kate-milfords-greenglass-hou.html

#1yrago Porno copyright troll sentenced to 14 years: "a wrecking ball to
trust in the administration of justice"
https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison-190614/

#1yrago Ukrainian oligarchs accused of laundering $470b, buying up much
of Cleveland
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-kolomoisky-does-business-in-the-united-states/

#1yrago Empirical review of privacy policies reveals that they are
"incomprehensible" drivel
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/12/opinion/facebook-google-privacy-policies.html

#1yrago Beyond lockpicking: learn about the class-breaks for doors,
locks, hinges and other physical security measures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnmcRTnTNC8

#1yrago Hong Kong's #612strike uprising is alive to surveillance
threats, but its countermeasures are woefully inadequate
https://news.yahoo.com/surveillance-savvy-hong-kong-protesters-digitally-dark-003014805.html

#1yrago Reverse mortgages: subprime's "stealth aftershock" that is
costing elderly African-Americans their family homes
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/06/11/seniors-face-foreclosure-retirement-after-failed-reverse-mortgage/1329043001/

#1yrago Maine's new ISP privacy law has both California and New York
beat
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/447824-maine-shakes-up-debate-with-tough-internet-privacy-law

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👷🏾 Colophon

Today's top sources: JWZ (https://jwz.org/).

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Friday's progress: 505 words (26982 total).

* A short story, "Making Hay," for MIT Tech Review. Friday's progress:
334 words (657 total)

Currently reading: Adventures of a Dwergish Girl, Daniel Pinkwater

Latest podcast: How Big Tech Monopolies Distort Our Public Discourse
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/06/01/how-big-tech-monopolies-distort-our-public-discourse/

Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote, Transparency By Design, Jun 17,
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/transparency-by-design-tickets-103925443800#

* Discussion with Nnedi Okorafor, Torcon, June 14
https://www.torforgeblog.com/torcon-2020/

* In Conversation with Hank Green, Jul 10,
https://www.magersandquinn.com/product_info?isbn_id=26578312&products;_id=163359157

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book
about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla

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