Behind The Woodshed Blogcaster – January 15, 2017.

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The Fix Has Been In

  • Moody’s to Pay $864 Million for its Role in Subprime Mortgage Crisis

    In the deal, announced January 13, the ratings agency will give $437.5 million to the Justice Department and $426.3 million to be divided among the 21 involved states and the District of Columbia.

    The settlement does not come close to the hardship caused by the global crisis theirs and other ratings set into motion, of course. The US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission found in 2011 that the 2008 mortgage crisis wiped out $11 trillion of American household wealth, Bloomberg notes.

    “We conclude the failures of credit rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction,” the conclusions in its final report read.

420 Health and Safety Evidence

  • Study of Fatal Car Accidents Shows Medical Marijuana May Help Curb Opioid Use

    A study conducted at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found that there were fewer drivers killed in car crashes who tested positive for opioids in states with medical marijuana laws than before the laws went into effect. The study is one of the first to assess the link between state medical marijuana laws and opioid use at the individual level. Findings are published online in the American Journal of Public Health.

    Researchers analyzed 1999-2013 Fatality Analysis Reporting System data from 18 U.S. states that tested for alcohol and other drugs in at least 80 percent of drivers who died within one hour of crashing. They looked at opioid positivity among drivers ages 21 to 40 who crashed their cars in states with an operational medical marijuana law compared with drivers crashing in states before those laws went into effect. There was an overall reduction in opioid positivity for most states after implementation of an operational medical marijuana law.

    “We would expect the adverse consequences of opioid use to decrease over time in states where medical marijuana use is legal, as individuals substitute marijuana for opioids in the treatment of severe or chronic pain,” explained June H. Kim, MPhil, a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, and lead author.

     

  • Study: Legalizing medical marijuana reduces traffic fatalities

    States that have passed initiatives to legalize medical marijuana have also seen a decline in traffic fatalities, according to a new study out this week by the Institute for the Study of Labor.

    Opponents of medical marijuana often focus on the social detriment to making America’s most valuable cash crop available to those approved by doctors, arguing that medical marijuana legalization makes it easier for teens to buy pot and that they’ll soon move to more dangerous drugs. They also suggest that legalization would increase the number of vehicle accidents — and that very argument was one of the main reasons why California voters did not approve full legalization in 2010.

    But far from marijuana acting as a “gateway” to more dangerous drugs, as authorities often claim, researchers found that it’s more commonly used as a substitute for alcohol, which is often more harmful and inebriating than marijuana.

    Studying data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, researchers also found that legalizing medical marijuana did, in fact, drive up usage among adults. But contrary to medical marijuana critics’ claims, they were unable to find evidence of it growing the number of minors on the drug.

    A further analysis of data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, spanning from 1990 to 2009, revealed that states which legalized medical marijuana saw a decline in alcohol consumption. A decline in traffic fatalities was a direct side effect of that.

    Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death for Americans age 35 and under.

     

  • Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows

    Since Colorado voters legalized pot in 2012, prohibition supporters have warned that recreational marijuana will lead to a scourge of “drugged drivers” on the state’s roads. They often point out that when the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, there was a surge in drivers found to have smoked pot. They also point to studies showing that in other states that have legalized pot for medical purposes, we’ve seen an increase in the number of drivers testing positive for the drug who were involved in fatal car accidents. The anti-pot group SAM recently pointed out that even before the first legal pot store opened in Washington state, the number of drivers in that state testing positive for pot jumped by a third.  As you can see, roadway fatalities this year are down from last year, and down from the 13-year average. Of the seven months so far this year, five months saw a lower fatality figure this year than last, two months saw a slightly higher figure this year, and in one month the two figures were equal.

     

  • Marijuana legalization: Research review on crime and impaired driving

    In November 2016, voters in at least nine states will decide whether to legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use, according to a running tally by The Cannabist, a project of The Denver Post. Recreational use of the drug is already permitted in a handful of states, and can be prescribed by doctors in over half, though it remains banned under federal law.
    Reports on the issue suggest voters are concerned: does marijuana use affect crime rates? A growing body of research addresses the question, tackling arguments used often by opponents and advocates of marijuana liberalization.
    Opponents often claim that people who use marijuana are more likely to move on to harder drugs — the “gateway drug” theory — and that users of hard drugs engage in predatory crimes to feed their habits. Critics of legalization also argue that increasing accessibility means more youth will smoke or eat weed, that marijuana shops and growers are attractive targets for criminals, that marijuana use encourages alcohol abuse, and that stoned drivers are a public menace.
    On the flip side, advocates for legalization argue it will undercut the black market, which is associated with criminals and violent elements. Crime may fall as police resources are reallocated to other pressing issues, they argue. Researchers have found, moreover, that some people substitute marijuana for alcohol, which means they drink less. And legalization of marijuana may reduce racial disparity in drug arrests. Black men, according to federal data collated by the American Civil Liberties Union and widely cited by scholars, are almost four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, even though both groups use the drug at roughly the same rate.
    Most research on the link between marijuana and crime finds that medical marijuana laws (often abbreviated as MML) cause a general uptick in the use and availability of marijuana — beyond the patients who are prescribed the drug. “The legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes approaches de facto legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes,” write D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University and Daniel I. Rees of the University of Colorado Denver in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. By examining pre- and post-legalization in these MML states, they can “make predictions about what will happen in” states that legalize marijuana for recreational use.
    Impact on crime
    Several studies have found reductions in crime after marijuana is legalized for medical use, demonstrating a relationship, but not necessarily causation.

  • Why Medical Marijuana Laws Reduce Traffic Deaths

    States that legalize medical marijuana see fewer fatal car accidents, according to a new study, in part because people may be substituting marijuana smoking for drinking alcohol.

    Sixteen states and the District of Columbia, have legalized medical marijuana since the mid-1990s. For the new study, economists looked at 1990-2009 government data on marijuana use and traffic deaths in the 13 states that had passed legalization laws during that time period. The data were from the National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

    Comparing traffic deaths over time in states with and without medical marijuana law changes, the researchers found that fatal car wrecks dropped by 9% in states that legalized medical use — which was largely attributable to a decline in drunk driving. The researchers controlled for other factors like changes in driving laws and the number of miles driven that could affect the results.

    Medical marijuana laws were not significantly linked with changes in daytime crash rates or those that didn’t involve alcohol. But the rate of fatal crashes in which a driver had consumed any alcohol dropped 12% after medical marijuana was legalized, and crashes involving high levels of alcohol consumption fell 14%.

     

Electronic Persons Are ‘People’ Too

  • Robots Could Soon Be Classified as ‘Electronic Persons’ in Europe

    Europe’s growing army of robot workers could be classed as “electronic persons” and their owners liable to paying social security for them if the European Union adopts a draft plan to address the realities of a new industrial revolution.

    Robots are being deployed in ever-greater numbers in factories and also taking on tasks such as personal care or surgery, raising fears over unemployment, wealth inequality, and alienation.

    Their growing intelligence, pervasiveness, and autonomy requires rethinking everything from taxation to legal liability, a draft European Parliament motion, dated May 31, suggests.

The Digital Gulag

  • YouTube removes influential conservative website’s channel

    The YouTube channel of influential conservative politics and law website Legal Insurrection has been removed by the video sharing service, citing copyright infringement claims.

    “This account has been terminated because we received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material the user posted,” explains YouTube, in a notice posted to channel’s page.

    Legal Insurrection founder and publisher and Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson voiced his anger and astonishment at the channel’s removal. “It’s very frustrating, it’s very scary, to have 8 years of content removed without a chance to defend yourself.”

     

Intel Inside

  • WhatsApp vulnerability allows snooping on encrypted messages

    A security vulnerability that can be used to allow Facebook and others to intercept and read encrypted messages has been found within its WhatsApp messaging service.
    Facebook claims that no one can intercept WhatsApp messages, not even the company and its staff, ensuring privacy for its billion-plus users. But new research shows that the company could in fact read messages due to the way WhatsApp has implemented its end-to-end encryption protocol.  Privacy campaigners said the vulnerability is a “huge threat to freedom of speech” and warned it could be used by government agencies as a backdoor to snoop on users who believe their messages to be secure.
    WhatsApp has made privacy and security a primary selling point, and has become a go to communications tool of activists, dissidents and diplomats.
    WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption relies on the generation of unique security keys, using the acclaimed Signal protocol, developed by Open Whisper Systems, that are traded and verified between users to guarantee communications are secure and cannot be intercepted by a middleman.
    However, WhatsApp has the ability to force the generation of new encryption keys for offline users, unbeknown to the sender and recipient of the messages, and to make the sender re-encrypt messages with new keys and send them again for any messages that have not been marked as delivered.
    The recipient is not made aware of this change in encryption, while the sender is only notified if they have opted-in to encryption warnings in settings, and only after the messages have been re-sent. This re-encryption and rebroadcasting effectively allows WhatsApp to intercept and read users’ messages. Explained — What’s Up With the WhatsApp ‘Backdoor’ Story? Feature or Bug!

     

  • Cloudflare Finally Able To Reveal FBI Gag Order That Congress Told Cloudflare Couldn’t Possibly Exist

    Another one of the FBI’s thousands of National Security Letters has been made public — along with its recipient. Cloudflare’s latest transparency report (its seventh to date) contains a bonus: a 2013 NSL [PDF] the FBI felt no longer needed to kept secret.
    This NSL was received in 2013, and was challenged by Cloudflare and the EFF. It’s only now being made public, and that’s largely due to litigation and the USA Freedom Act’s changes to NSL review policies. Rather than review them every three years-to-never, the FBI must now review them more frequently. Better still, recipients are now allowed to challenge NSL gag orders within one year of receiving them. This places the burden back on the government to prove ongoing secrecy is needed.
    Shortly before the new year, Cloudflare received a letter from the FBI rescinding the NSL’s gag order.
    The letter withdrew the nondisclosure provisions (the “gag order”) contained in NSL-12-358696, which had constrained Cloudflare since the NSL was served in February 2013. At that time, Cloudflare objected to the NSL. The Electronic Frontier Foundation agreed to take our case, and with their assistance, we brought a lawsuit under seal to protect its customers’ rights.
    In this particular case, the NSL itself was pulled by the FBI as a result of the lawsuit.
    Early in the litigation, the FBI rescinded the NSL in July 2013 and withdrew the request for information. So no customer information was ever disclosed by Cloudflare pursuant to this NSL.
    So much secrecy surrounds NSLs — by default — that Ken Carter of Cloudflare wasn’t even able to correct a Senate staffer who told him things that were completely untrue.
    In early 2014, I met with a key Capitol Hill staffer who worked on issues related to counter-terrorism, homeland security, and the judiciary. I had a conversation where I explained how Cloudflare values transparency, due process of law, and expressed concerns that NSLs are unconstitutional tools of convenience rather than necessity. The staffer dismissed my concerns and expressed that Cloudflare’s position on NSLs was a product of needless worrying, speculation, and misinformation. The staffer noted it would be impossible for an NSL to issue against Cloudflare, since the services our company provides expressly did not fall within the jurisdiction of the NSL statute. The staffer went so far as to open a copy of the U.S. Code and read from the statutory language to make her point.
    That’s what a gag order does: allows misinformation to go uncorrected. The staffer’s interpretation of US Code may have been more to the letter of the law, but Cloudflare’s Carter knew — from personal experience — that the FBI’s interpretation was different.
    Because of the gag order, I had to sit in silence, implicitly confirming the point in the mind of the staffer. At the time, I knew for a certainty that the FBI’s interpretation of the statute diverged from hers (and presumably that of her boss).
    Not only does the default secrecy allow the FBI to continue to pursue questionable requests with NSLs, but it also allows it to deploy them in apparent violation of US law, right under the nose of its Congressional oversight.

Could a Million+ Be Wrong?

 

Eventually Truth . . . Partially

  • Leaked Kerry Audio Shows Hidden Syria Backstory

    It appears CNN and The New York Times gave the public a sanitized report on US Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Syrian opposition leaders back in September.

    Unlike those two media giants, Wikileaks released the full, unscrubbed audio of the 35-minute conversation this week. Included was the revelation that the White House knew of the growing threat the Islamic State presented in the region and that it actually hoped ISIL’s progress would lead to regime change in Syria.

    CNN decided to remove the audio from its site months ago, while the NYT never actually published the audio in the first place, and reported around the most embarrassing passages.

    Meanwhile, giving US foreign policy the benefit of the doubt against charges the White House stood idly by during the rise of ISIL is becoming an untenable position.

    As reported back in September after the meeting, Kerry wanted the West to use force in Syria. What’s new is that he was apparently overruled by an administration that saw ISIL as a tool for ousting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. What’s also new, as Kerry concedes, is that Russia came to Assad’s rescue largely for the purpose of halting ISIL’s advance.

    “And we know that this was growing, and we were watching,” Kerry can be heard saying. “We saw that Daesh (ISIL) was growing in strength. We thought, however, that we could probably manage. You know, that Assad might then negotiate.”

    That seems to fly in the face of stated White House policy for over half a decade that ISIL is an enemy that must be taken out.

     

 

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Required Reading

Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars

  • The people know that they have created this farce and financed it with their own taxes (consent), but they would rather knuckle under than be the hypocrite. Factor VI – Cattle Those who will not use their brains are no better off than those who have no brains, and so this mindless school of jelly-fish, father, mother, son, and daughter, become useful beasts of burden or trainers of the same.
  • Mr. Rothschild’s Energy Discovery
    What Mr. Rothschild [2] had discovered was the basic principle of power, influence, and control over people as applied to economics. That principle is “when you assume the appearance of power, people soon give it to you.”

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