Full Text of All Articles The Berkeley Daily Planet – Berkeley Daily Planet

Posted on July 18, 2022 by admin

Worth Noting:

The July 19th Council worksession was cancelled. The Regular Council 6 pm meeting agenda for the July 26th meeting is available for comment go to the end of this post or use this link: https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas The planned July 26th 4 pm special meeting on ballot initiatives for the November election is not posted yet. Stay tuned.

Check the new city website for late postings https://berkeleyca.gov/ but dont count on the City to publish all the Berkeley City meetings that are important.

Tuesday the Land Use Committee scheduled a special meeting at 4 pm on changing zoning to allow Research and Development (R&D) in commercial districts.

Wednesday the Commission on Aging at 1 pm includes TOPA. FITES at 2:30 pm takes up GHG limits and autonomous vehicles. In the evening the Commission on Labor at 7 pm includes Fair Work Week and union action and unionizing effort at REI.

Thursday the same evening as the prime time January 6th hearing the Design Review Committee meets at 7 pm with only one agenda item, the final design review of 2440 Shattuck. Bird safe glass is still an issue.

Meetings Cancelled: Fair Campaign Practices Commission and Open government Commission, Human Welfare and Community Action Commission

Monday, July 18, 2022

City Council CLOSED SESSION at 4 pm

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87836924529

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 878 3692 4529

AGENDA: 1. Public Employee Appointment Director of Police Accountability Board.

https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-closed-meeting-eagenda-july-18-2022

Peace and Justice Commission at 7 pm

The Zoom link is listed, but there is no posted agenda, this meeting is likely cancelled check website Monday

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87617632194

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/peace-and-justice-commission

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Special Meeting City Council Land Use, Housing & Economic Development at 4 pm

Videoconference: https://cityofberkeley-info.zoomgov.com/j/1603583371

Teleconference: 1-669-254-5252 or 1-833-568-8864 (Toll Free) Meeting ID: 160 358 3371

AGENDA: 1. Robinson, Taplin, Arreguin, Harrison Keep Innovation in Berkeley naming R&D as an allowed use in commercial districts Telegraph (C-T), Downtown (C-DMU), update district purpose in MM and MU-LI.

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-land-use-housing-economic-development

BART Audit Committee at 2 pm

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84579171980

AGENDA: Check link for agenda, includes did BART spend Federal funding as allowed

https://bart.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

City Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee (FITES) at 2:30 pm

Videoconference: https://cityofberkeley-info.zoomgov.com/j/1605318273

Teleconference: 1-669-254-5252 or 1-833-568-8864 (Toll Free) Meeting ID: 160 531 8273

AGENDA: 2. Taplin - Regulation of Autonomous Vehicles, 3. Harrison, co-sponsors Bartlett, Hahn - Adopt an Ordinance establishing GHG limits, process for updated Climate Action Plan, Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Regional Collaboration.

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-facilities-infrastructure-transportation-environment-sustainability

Commission on Aging at 1:30 pm

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87859343194

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 726 7423 9145

AGENDA: 4. Vacancies, 5. TOPA, 6. Age Friendly Initiative for time coordinator, 7. Systemic Ageism, 8. Scamming Seniors

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/commission-aging

Commission on Labor at 7 pm

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85399338378

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 853 9933 8378

AGENDA: 4. Presentation and Discussion Housing, Unions and CEQA, 5. Fair Work Week, 6. Discussion/possible action regarding the role of the Commission on Labor to provide technical assistance to the community, 7. Berkeley Federation of Teachers contract negotiations with BUSD, 8. Labor Education in Schools Subcommittee updates, 9. REI Labor Organizing, 10. City Clerk Agenda Format for Commissions.

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/commission-labor

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Design Review Committee at 7 pm

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89735690377

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 897 3569 0377

AGENDA: 2440 Shattuck Final design Review demolish 1-story commercial building and construct an 8-story, mixed use building with 40 dwelling units and 2700 sq ft commercial space.

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/design-review-committee

Friday, July 22, 2022 & Saturday, July 23, 2022 & Sunday, July 24, 2022 no city meetings found

++++++++++++++++++++

AGENDA FOR JULY 26, 2022 REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89491193768

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 894 9119 3768

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas

CONSENT:

LAND USE CALENDAR:

Public Hearing to be scheduled

1201 1205 San Pablo at ZAB Date 9/29/2022

Remanded to ZAB or LPC

1205 Peralta Conversion of an existing garage

Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with the End of the Appeal Period

Bad news on tracking approved projects in the appeal period. Samantha Updegrave, Zoning Officer, Principal Planner wrote the listing of projects in the appeal period can only be found by looking up each project individually through permits online by address or permit number https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/Online-Building-Permits-Guide.pdf

The website with easy to find listing of projects in the appeal period was left on the cutting room floor another casualty of the conversion to the new City of Berkeley website.

Here is the old website link, Please ask for it to be restored item 28 on the June 14 Council agenda.

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/planning_and_development/land_use_division/current_zoning_applications_in_appeal_period.aspx

WORKSESSIONS:

June 26 Ballot Measure Development Discussion

Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations

Cannabis Health Considerations

Alameda County LAFCO Presentation

Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program

Kelly Hammargrens on what happened the preceding week can be found in the Berkeley Daily Planet http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com under Activists Diary. This meeting list is also posted at https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website.

If you would like to receive the Activists Calendar as soon as it is completed send an email to kellyhammargren@gmail.com. If you wish to stop receiving the weekly summary of city meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com.

If you are looking for past agenda items for city council, city council committees, boards and commission and find records online unwieldy, you can use the https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website to scan old agenda. The links no longer work, but it may be the only place to start looking.

Worth Noting:

Check the new city website for late postings https://berkeleyca.gov/ but dont count on the City to publish all the Berkeley City meetings that are important.

Tuesday the Land Use Committee scheduled a special meeting at 4 pm on changing zoning to allow Research and Development (R&D) in commercial districts.

Meetings Cancelled: Fair Campaign Practices Commission and Open government Commission, Human Welfare and Community Action Commission

Monday, July 18, 2022

City Council CLOSED SESSION at 4 pm

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87836924529

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 878 3692 4529

AGENDA: 1. Public Employee Appointment Director of Police Accountability Board.

https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-closed-meeting-eagenda-july-18-2022

Peace and Justice Commission at 7 pm

The Zoom link is listed, but there is no posted agenda, this meeting is likely cancelled check website Monday

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87617632194

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/peace-and-justice-commission

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Special Meeting City Council Land Use, Housing & Economic Development at 4 pm

Videoconference: https://cityofberkeley-info.zoomgov.com/j/1603583371

Teleconference: 1-669-254-5252 or 1-833-568-8864 (Toll Free) Meeting ID: 160 358 3371

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-land-use-housing-economic-development

BART Audit Committee at 2 pm

Yes, data centers use a lot of water. But a Utah company shows it doesn’t have to be that way. – Salt Lake Tribune

Posted on July 18, 2022 by admin

West Jordan Novvas new Utah data center looks like it could double as the set of a high-tech Hollywood thriller.

It has sleek modern architecture with high-end finishes. An observation deck with frosted smart glass turns transparent with just a touch. It reveals banks of servers, row upon row, humming away day and night. Clients access those servers via stiff security, including facial scanners, heat signatures and laser detectors. A pack of robotic guard dogs (programmed by Brigham Young University students) patrol dozens of miles each day across the server farm, searching for would-be trespassers and thieves.

Its just as difficult to get out of here as it is to get in, said Novva CEO Wes Swenson, snappily dressed in black from head to toe, hints of the Payson drawl of his youth occasionally peeking through as he speaks.

Beyond all the gadgets, Novva offers one innovation that should at least pique the curiosity of Utahs drought-stricken communities: Compared to most massive data centers around the state and the world, Novva uses a fraction of the water.

There are those who might shrug off the centers technology, like security drones so finely tuned they can detect vibrations that arent due to wind. Or those who turn up their nose at more data centers along the Wasatch Front, given the amount of land they consume and other environmental concerns. But with the rise of the internet, the surge of streaming, an influx of smart devices and a future of autonomous vehicles, big server farms are increasingly a mainstay of life.

The fact is, Swenson said, unless people want to put down their computers, youre going to have to have data centers.

And if we have to have them, at least they could help offer a solution to northern Utahs water-strapped cities, and potentially let more trickle downstream to the shriveling Great Salt Lake.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Novva in West Jordan.

Asked whether his facility could serve as a backdrop for the next James Bond flick, Swenson gave a tacit chuckle. But theres a reason data centers like his are designed with cutting-edge technology.

Its the worlds most expensive insurance, Swenson said of his campus, which eventually will represent a projected $1 billion investment. Youre basically guaranteeing we will stay up, no matter what.

That means its arsenal of servers cant overheat.

The United States accounts for about 40% of the worlds large cloud and internet data sites. Utah is home to at least 25 colocation data centers, according to a Data Center Map estimate, most of them near Salt Lake City. Those sites, like Novva, rent servers to a variety of customers, from gas stations to medical companies. The figure doesnt include big centers run by single entities, like the U.S. National Security Agencys operation in Bluffdale or Facebooks facility in Eagle Mountain.

And most data centers, regardless of their operators, rely on evaporative cooling to keep their servers at optimal temperatures. Some gulp down millions of gallons each month.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The extensive campus of the Facebook data center in Eagle Mountain is pictured on Wednesday, June 29, 2022.

Its a worse story than you can imagine, Swenson said. Theyre using culinary water, not irrigation [water], so its been treated by the city. ... Its a complete waste of a resource.

Data centers further treat their water with chemicals to prevent things like scale buildup and Legionnaires disease. Some of the water is lost through the evaporative process, while the rest can be reused only a few times before it has to be flushed from the system.

Unfortunately, Swenson said, the places where evaporative cooling works the best are the places where there is the least amount of water.

As climate change fuels drier conditions and the Wests current megadrought shows no signs of ending, some of those arid communities are protesting water-guzzling data facilities. In the early 2010s, Utahns worried so much about the NSA data centers water consumption along with Edward Snowdens revelations that the agency was illegally spying on U.S. citizens that a Republican legislator proposed shutting off its supply.

In 2020, Google found itself in a legal battle with a utility provider in Red Oak, Texas, which insisted it didnt have enough water to meet the companys 1.5 billion-gallon annual need. And last year, the vice mayor of Mesa, Ariz., called data centers an irresponsible use of water.

The essential difference with the Novva data center is that it cycles refrigerant instead of relying on water evaporation. Swenson incorporated a similar system as the CEO of the 97,000-square-foot C7 data center in Bluffdale, designed for 10 megawatts. That facility sold to DataBank in 2017, but Swenson said he learned a lot from the project.

Weve gotten way better at it, he said. And the systems weve adapted for this are really something weve done. Its not an off-the-shelf product.

Comparing those water-light facilities with two of Utahs largest data centers Facebook and NSA reveals conspicuously different use patterns.

(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)

The NSA facility in Bluffdale is 1 million square feet, with 100,000 square feet dedicated to its Tier III data center. It uses 65 megawatts.

In the 12 months between June 2021 and May of this year, NSA drained more than 128 million gallons, according to a records request sent to Bluffdale. Even with Utahns high water-consumption habits the U.S. Geological Survey currently rates them as the second thirstiest users in the nation thats enough water to support nearly 2,100 residents.

If the state adopted stricter conservation measures like, say, Nevada, the NSAs water could support almost 2,800 Utahns.

That might sound like a drop in a leaky bucket, considering Utahs water woes. But with subdivisions multiplying along the Wasatch Front and the Great Salt Lake receding more and more by the day, every drip counts.

Facebooks parent company, Meta, has adopted sustainability goals for its own data centers. Still, it consumed 13.5 million gallons in the year between June and May at its 970,000-square-foot Utah site, according to information provided by Eagle Mountain.

The C7/DataBank center in Bluffdale which is a tenth the size of the NSA and Facebook campuses used 6.9 million gallons in the past year.

Novva, meanwhile, has consumed about 1.1 million gallons since its servers went on line in January, according to West Jordan. In May, it used 585,000 gallons its highest monthly rate of consumption to date. By comparison, Facebook used 1.3 million that month and the NSA chugged nearly 13 million gallons.

Novva currently has 330,000 square feet of server space, designed to use up to 30 megawatts, and plans to expand to 1.5 million square feet. The center ultimately will have a 120-megawatt capacity, according to the Novva website, although Swenson said he could use as much as 200 megawatts.

If the fully built center used traditional evaporative cooling, Swenson noted, it would ingest around 300 million gallons a year.

Instead, the center will use water mostly to establish drought-tolerant, native vegetation around the campus (it also has artificial turf) for the next two years.

After that, we cut it off, and everything is just naturally growing, Swenson said. So the only water we use is for [drinking], toilets, things like that. Just like a house.

The Novva campus uses closed, recirculating pipes with refrigerant to cool its servers. It also capitalizes on Utahs high-desert climate.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The cooling system in Novva, using recirculating refrigerant and ambient air conditioning.

The advantage of sitting at this altitude, Swenson explained, is that we use the outside air, just the ambient air temperature, to cool the center about 4,000 hours a year.

Fans suck the servers hot air underground, below 5-foot insulated floors, then exchange it with outdoor air during cooler months, when temperatures are below 70 degrees.

The system has an initial upfront cost thats higher than traditional evaporative cooling, Swenson said, but he expects a payback period of eight years due to water savings.

Quite honestly, the cities and counties have not been punitive about it, he said, when asked why more data centers dont install similar systems. ... Waters cheap.

The CEO added that hes concerned about water, having lived in drought-prone places his entire life. But water-free cooling also makes business sense, especially as some areas scramble while their water supplies dry up.

Im trying to reduce my dependencies, not increase them, Swenson said. So why create another dependency on a natural resource I cant control?

Beyond water consumption, data centers dont create many jobs. They also eat up a lot of energy (more on that later). Still, the Utah cities that welcome the facilities say they offer a lot of benefits.

Bluffdales 20,000 water customers live on fairly large residential lots for an urban area, and the city has a wide secondary water system. It mostly buys water from the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District.

Construction of the NSA site helped fund a 3 million-gallon culinary water tank which helps the city during peak demand periods and four miles of municipal pipe, according to City Manager Mark Reid. The infrastructure that came to the city was fantastic.

Whats more, the spent water NSA discharges irrigates the park at City Hall and a nearby subdivision.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The National Security Agency (NSA) data center in Bluffdale, with a visible water tank visible to the right, is pictured on Wednesday, June 29, 2022.

Its really good water, Reid said. It does excellent on grass.

Speaking of infrastructure, data centers dont generate nearly the amount of traffic as some industries, including the mining activities that have traditionally occurred on the Salt Lake Valleys west side. That means less wear and tear to roads. They also have their own fire and security systems, so theyre less of a burden on a citys firefighting and police budgets.

And, Reid pointed out, the NSA isnt using anywhere near the 1.7 million gallons per day it initially projected.

In a statement, an NSA spokesperson said the agency is working to limit water use and be a responsible member of the community.

For example, the spokesperson said, during the June 2021 through May 2022 time period, the NSA, through its efficiency efforts, returned more than 34.5 million gallons of water (or approximately 27% of its water estimate needs) to Bluffdale during the summer, or returned to the Jordan River during the winter.

The agency is also working to reduce its water needs by using dry coolers instead of evaporative systems.

At Eagle Mountain, City Manager Paul Jerome said the Facebook data center provided something the growing Utah County city of more than 50,000 desperately needed tax revenue.

Its a bedroom community. It probably will be for a long time, Jerome said. We dont have the pass-through other cities have. We have far less retail than a city our size should have.

The city west of Utah Lake is also planning for a new Google data center on 300 acres. Facebook, meanwhile, expects to more than double its center, to 2.4 million square feet.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) An extensive electrical grid powers the Facebook data center in Eagle Mountain on Wednesday, June 29, 2022.

Eagle Mountain recently raised its water rates for the first time in two decades. Facebook is locked in at the highest tier $1.24 per 1,000 gallons regardless of its consumption. The city mostly relies on groundwater but has increasingly turned to the Central Utah Water Conservancy District to supplement its supply.

Still, Jerome said, hes not worried about adding more data center capacity.

Right now, to be honest, we have water for our needs, he said. ... Yes, they use water. We know this. At least the big ones do. It seems from where Im sitting that they dont use as much as everybody thought they would use.

Facebook also has made an effort to give back to the community, Jerome said. It recently partnered with Utah Valley University, for example, to build a stargazing park in Eagle Mountain.

The company has worked to offset its water impacts as well, paying the Central Utah Water Conservancy District to scale back hydropower production during the hottest months to improve fish habitat in the Provo River, according to a spokesperson for Meta.

Their whole push is to help rehabilitate state water sources so they can help create value that offsets their use of water, Jerome said. At a minimum, theyre trying to be water neutral.

Water improvements aside, data centers devour a lot of electricity. Novva is no exception. And the coal-fired power plants that supply much of the states energy are known water guzzlers, too.

Novva could add a solar farm to its 100-acre property instead, Swenson said, but that would gobble up a lot more land. A recently approved solar project in Connecticut will supply a similar megawatt load that Novva is targeting, but it sprawls across nearly 500 acres.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) A robot dog at Novva, in West Jordan, which operates without using a water to cool their servers. Tuesday, June 14, 2022.

Thats why Swenson said he buys 100% renewable energy for the Novva center through Rocky Mountain Power, emphasizing the need to invest in green energy locally. Even if Novva were to find enough land to build its own solar farm, it wouldnt provide any benefit to other energy consumers.

Whereas, if we do it as a collective with the power companies or local communities, Swenson said, were pushing [renewables] for everybody, and eventually well bring down the cost for everyone.

The approach to the data centers water and energy use, and even its weird robot dogs and super-sensitive drones, Swenson said, is all about creating a paradigm shift in the industry.

Novva, the name, comes from Latin, meaning new, he said. And thats the idea.

This article is published through The Great Salt Lake Collaborative: A Solutions Journalism Initiative, a partnership of news, education and media organizations that aims to inform readers about the Great Salt Lake.

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Yes, data centers use a lot of water. But a Utah company shows it doesn't have to be that way. - Salt Lake Tribune

Edward Snowden – National Whistleblower Center

Posted on July 9, 2022 by admin

In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), revealed the existence of previously highly classified intelligence-gathering surveillance programs run by the NSA and the U.K.s equivalent, the GCHQ. While working at the NSA, Snowden began accumulating information on NSA surveillance programs and activities while contracted there from 2009 to 2013.

In May 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong where he brought NSA documents to reporters at The Guardian, who conducted interviews of Snowden about his discoveries. With The Guardian and The Washington Post publishing reports on NSA surveillance and data-collecting activities, Snowden revealed his identity shortly thereafter. In June 2013, the U.S. government charged Snowden with espionage under the Espionage Act and attempted to extradite him. However, with the Hong Kong government not taking any action with regard to his extradition, Snowden fled to Russia where he has since remained.

Snowdens discoveries drew open the curtain on many classified NSA programs including PRISM, an undercover data-mining operation that collected private data of users from companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google and AOL. Additionally, included in Snowdens exposures was an NSA court order compelling internet service provider, Verizon, to turn over metadata for millions of its users.

In August 2013, President Obama announced proposed reforms to increase transparency of NSA and other agency programs, including updating sections of the Patriot Act and reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Additionally, President Obama convened an independent panel of outside experts to examine the U.S. governments surveillance technologies and practices. In December 2013, the panel found that the NSA should not be permitted to collect personal data and information from Internet service providers and phone carriers, among other recommendations.

In 2019, Snowden released his memoir, Permanent Record.

Go here to read the rest:
Edward Snowden - National Whistleblower Center

Commentary: The fight against excessive surveillance continues in Maine and across the country – Press Herald

Posted on July 9, 2022 by admin

Two years ago, an unidentified hacker collective compromised 251 police websites, exfiltrating 270 gigabytes of data and exposing a massive system of public-private surveillance: the regional offices of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program created in the 1990s; the fusion centers established after 9/11 to share information across all levels of government; the privately-run organized retail crime alliances set up in the last decade by corporate retailers to track shoplifters.

The transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets named this unredacted archive of police data BlueLeaks and published it on Juneteenth 2020. We have yet to fully reckon with its implications.

Appearing amid the 2020 racial justice protests, Blueleaks attracted immediate attention. The Intercept, the nonprofit founded to report on the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, provided the most comprehensive coverage, exposing the fear-mongering and political repression that passes as domestic intelligence. Intercept reporters found that intelligence analysts manufactured non-existent eco-terrorists, passed information on environmentalists to corporations, monitored racial justice protests and exaggerated their danger, and downplayed the threat of violence from the far right.

In Maine, BlueLeaks broke furthest and fastest. The hacks compromised the already-controversial Maine Information and Analysis Center (MIAC), a fusion center run by the Maine State Police. In May 2020, a state trooper blew the whistle, alleging that the MIAC illegally gathered and retained data on Mainers, including many suspected of no crime.

Drawing on BlueLeaks, journalists found that the MIAC had shift from counterterrorism to routine crimes. Subsequent peer-reviewed scholarship confirmed this point, countering vague claims from MIAC leadership about MIACs role preventing violence with hard evidence that reveals the spy center remains almost exclusively preoccupied with property crime, violent crime, drugs and homelessness. An analysis of the MIACs Civil Unrest Daily Reports on the 2020 racial justice protests found that the MIAC shared disinformation sourced from satirical websites and social media to support claims of paid protestors and pre-staging of bricks.

In response, legislators proposed two bills in 2021. An effort to close the spy center passed the house but failed in the senate. Another bill requiring an annual report on the MIAC from the State Police became law, creating a self-policing surveillance bureaucracy. Unsurprisingly, many legislators were unimpressed with this self-audit.

In anticipation of this outcome, a grassroots group prepared The MIAC Shadow Report to highlight the official reports omissions and deficiencies, while raising new questions about the extent and scope of the MIACs surveillance powers.

To give just one example, we found that an officer employed by the Scarborough Police and Maine Drug Enforcement Agency used a passcode and encryption circumvention device called a Cellebrite UFED Touch 2 to extract personal data from cell phones. The officer sent the extracted data to the MIAC for analysis. When the MIAC was hacked over a year later, the records, still languishing on the MIACs email servers, became public documents.

Police, in other words, are using surveillance systems with no oversight. Maine recently became the first state to regulate law enforcement use of facial recognition surveillance. Should police have cell phone passcode and encryption circumvention devices? This question and a similar one regarding private data brokers (see the MIAC Shadow Report for more)has been answered without public input.

Although two years have passed since their publication, BlueLeaks contains many explosive revelations that are still reverberating. The effort to close the MIAC raised the stakes and inspired others. In Oregon, activists spied on by their states fusion center filed a class action suit that alleges that the fusion center operates without legislative authority.

The fight against police surveillance continue and BlueLeaks remains as an essential resource, an unredacted archive of the police state that challenges us to claw our privacy and other freedoms back from the state and corporate powers that seek to make our lives legible for the purposes of social control and profit.

Special to the Press Herald

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Commentary: The fight against excessive surveillance continues in Maine and across the country - Press Herald

Jeff Bezos Slammed Over Biden Inflation Tweet: ‘Buyer’s Remorse’ – Newsweek

Posted on July 9, 2022 by admin

Billionaire Jeff Bezos has been slammed online after he attacked President Joe Biden for blaming gas companies for setting high prices at the pumps.

In a July 3 tweet, Biden said: "My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: This is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product. And do it now."

His comment came as Americans continue to navigate crippling inflation over the July 4 holiday weekend.

Americans face paying a staggering average of $4.812 for gas, according to gasprices.aaa.com. The website said in 2021 the national average for gas was $3.127.

The Amazon CEO soon stepped in and berated the Democrat for pleading with gas companies to bring down their prices.

Bezos said in a tweet shared the same day as Biden's: "Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It's either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics."

Bezos' comment did not go unnoticed, however, and while many praised the billionaire, there were many who hit out at him for his previous vocal support for Biden, including an Instagram post where he congratulated the Democrat for winning the 2020 presidential election.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum by Russia in 2013, simply tweeted: "Buyer's remorse."

Pedro L. Gonzalez, associate editor at Chronicles magazine, said: "Bezos criticizing is ironic because: as a company, Amazon overwhelmingly supports Biden.

"Bezos pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the Democratic Party's machine. Bezos owns the Washington Post, which does nothing but run cover for Biden."

Other commentators said they had no patience for a billionaire complaining about inflation and gas prices.

Aaron Huertas, former communications director for the U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, said: "The billionaires are on Twitter and constantly setting themselves up to be trolled. @POTUS or @WHCOS (White House Chief of Staff) or @SecMartyWalsh should be dunking on this.

"Nobody wants to hear about gas prices from an out-of-touch union-busting wannabe space cowboy."

Newsweek has contacted Amazon and the White House for comment.

Bezos has shared his critical views on politicians and fellow billionaires on Twitter on multiple occasions.

Earlier this year, the second richest person in the world raised questions about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.

In a tweet responding to New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe listing the way Tesla is dependent on the Chinese market and raw materials produced in the country, the Amazon founder said: "Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?"

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Jeff Bezos Slammed Over Biden Inflation Tweet: 'Buyer's Remorse' - Newsweek

Patrick Radden Keefe Is One of the Good Guys – New York Magazine

Posted on June 29, 2022 by admin

Photo: Caroline Tompkins/The New York Times

On a recent evening, journalist Patrick Radden Keefe was in his home office in Westchester County, toying with a story idea that involved the Russian mafia. Before calling it a day, he printed a trove of related documents and left them in a stack on his printer tray. When he returned the next morning, he found that someone had taken one of the pages a picture of a dead body inscribed with a threatening message in Cyrillic letters and placed it on his desk. The culprit had added a single word to the page: No.

As a staff writer at The New Yorker, Keefe has written about all kinds of disreputable figures an international arms broker, hackers, a dubious diamond dealer, a mass shooter, and the Mexican drug lord Joaqun El Chapo Guzman, to name just a few and this wasnt the first time someone had tried to get him to beg off a story. While working on Empire of Pain, his 2021 book about the Sackler familys role in the opioid epidemic, Keefe came to believe the family had hired an investigator to intimidate him by loitering outside his home. This time, however, the intimidation campaign was coming from inside the house.

Every time he tells me a new story idea, I feel like I have a miniheart attack. Oh jeez, another litigious asshole or murderous criminal? Cant you do a celebrity profile or something? says Keefes wife, Justyna Gudzowska, an attorney who specializes in international financial-crime policy. Patrick is intrigued by all of the bad guys.

Keefe insists that his predisposition toward bad guys is not a point of tension in his marriage, but his new book, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (Doubleday), is proof of his nearly undivided focus on scoundrels. After the enormous success of Empire of Pain and 2018s Say Nothing, a murder procedural set against the backdrop of the Troubles in Ireland, Keefes latest is a collection of 12 stories drawn from his work at The New Yorker and a reminder of his command of the magazine thriller.

I need a story about people. I always start from the ground up. There may be some kind of particular 30,000-foot phenomenon thats interesting, but I have to find an anecdotal way into it, Keefe says, sitting on a bench in Tompkins Square Park on a recent sunny afternoon. Im often thinking about these kinds of questions of the specific and the universal and to what degree can we empathize with people even if theyve done awful things.

The appetite for stories about people who do awful things has never been higher. Magazines have embraced the era of true crime with cash-starved glossies selling the rights to 8,000-word, already fact-checked features to streaming services. There is peril in that bargain: Narratives sometimes read as if theyve been engineered for Netflix; vulnerable sources, who are often victims, can feel exploited; and lurid storytelling can romanticize, or absolve, criminals. But Keefes work is mindful of the havoc his subjects unleash on their victims, their families, and the institutions around them.

In his hands, an abyss becomes a mirror. You end up learning what is the vulnerability or the vanity of the culture that got taken in by this person or that allowed this criminal to triumph or prosper. Thats why I feel like his work, admittedly emerging during a time when there is a grifting-journalism economy, stands out as singular, says Daniel Zalewski, Keefes longtime editor at The New Yorker.

Keefe has a natural tendency to key in on his subjects family lives as a means of interrogating their motives. In Rogues, nowhere does that tendency serve a story better than in the case of Amy Bishop, a disgruntled former science professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who killed three colleagues and injured three others in a 2010 mass shooting. Years before her rampage, when Bishop was 21, shed shot and killed her 18-year-old brother. Keefe tirelessly reported on that time period, making trips to Bishops hometown of Braintree, Massachusetts. His reporting pointed to a theory that Bishops parents had called their sons murder an accident instead of facing the horror of fratricide. Keefe landed a series of interviews with Bishops parents, Judy and Sam, and laid out his theory for them.

I was able to home in on some of the inconsistencies in Judys story. But, of course, I didnt feel any sense of triumph. Cruel is the wrong word. I felt great empathy, because I felt these were two people who, in order to survive, had constructed a universe of denial. And there I was poking holes in that edifice, Keefe says. They called me the night before the piece came out. It had been through fact-checking already. Sam said, We want you to know that whatever happens with the piece, were really glad that we told our story to you. Which meant the world to me. The next day, the piece came out, and they havent spoken to me since.

While Rogues represents 15 years of magazine writing, its Keefes relatively recent work that launched him to a level of success few journalists ever reach. Say Nothing was a New York Times best-seller and optioned as a limited series on FX. In the spring of 2020, as the U.S. went into lockdown, Keefe released Wind of Change, an eight-episode podcast in which he investigated the mysterious origins of the Cold Warera anthem of the same name by glam-metal band the Scorpions. It was picked up by Hulu. A year later, Keefe published Empire of Pain, which also quickly became a New York Times best-seller.

At 46, Keefe is tall and lean with a sharp nose and a trimmed thicket of salt-and-pepper hair. Hes painstakingly affable a manner that surely serves him well as a reporter. Were eating chicken sandwiches from a trendy Indian restaurant Keefe was eager to try. A self-described dedicated eater, he doesnt have much time to explore the citys culinary delights these days thanks to two young sons, work, and the promotional obligations that come with literary fame. He has just come from a podcast interview about Empire of Pain and, in 48 hours, hell be on a plane to the Maldives for the Jaipur Literature Festival, which is being held at a five-star resort there. His books have earned Keefe awards, a spot on late-night TV couches, shout-outs from A-list celebrities, and the chance to testify before Congress. Ive heard that he no longer fields blurb requests from fellow authors, because there are simply too many.

Its ridiculous, he says of the Maldives trip. Next month, Im going to Ireland and doing a bunch of speaking. I could never have imagined, until a few years ago, saying no to that kind of opportunity. But Ive had to start saying no to stuff, because the last thing I want to do is keep running a victory lap for work that came out over a year ago.

Keefe grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the son of an urban planner and a professor of philosophy. After undergrad at Columbia, Keefe went to Cambridge and the London School of Economics. Even as he was collecting masters degrees unrelated to journalism, Keefe always knew where he wanted to end up.

Working at The New Yorker was always his dream job, says Gudzowska, who also studied at Cambridge and LSE. I found this incredibly pretentious when I met him, but we were living in the U.K. together and hed find the newsstands that got The New Yorker earlier than the other newsstands and insist on going there as soon as the issue came out.

After England, Keefe and Gudzowska enrolled at Yale Law School, where Keefe took a year off to write his first book, Chatter, about the U.S.-eavesdropping-surveillance network. In 2006, the same year Chatter was published, Keefe sold his first story to The New Yorker, about Sister Ping, a prolific human smuggler in Chinatown, which Keefe would expand into his second book, The Snakehead.

He sent in a pitch, and it was so strong that I immediately agreed to work with him, said Zalewski. What was clear was that he could see that it was a crime operation, but that he was most interested in the complex motivations that had led her to embark on this endeavor to both help and exploit her community. It was that awareness of the double edge that caught my eye.

If there is a cinematic quality to Keefes work, thats because he plainly admits to drawing inspiration from the structure, pacing, and reveals in movies. When Keefe flew to Paris to interview an HSBC computer technician hed pitched to his editors as the Edward Snowden of Swiss banking, he quickly realized he was sitting across from a compulsive liar. At first, Keefe thought he needed to scuttle the story, because he couldnt build a feature around such an unreliable subject. Then he remembered The Informant!, a 2009 Matt Damon film about a disastrous FBI source, and it inspired him to lean into the unreliability of his subject. While trying to make it as a magazine writer, Keefe briefly worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, adapting a Jo Nesb novel for Channing Tatum and writing a script about Somali pirates for Jerry Bruckheimer. (It is a mercy to the world that that didnt get made and Captain Phillips did, he says.)

Back at Tompkins Square Park, Keefe is finishing the last few bites of his sandwich before getting back to work on a story about a CIA hacker on trial for allegedly leaking a massive cache of files to WikiLeaks. Before leaving, I ask whether he regrets any part of his interviews with Bishops parents. I wouldnt change a thing, he says. Its a thing that I wrestle with not so much ethically but emotionally. Its the Janet Malcolm thing, right? When you sit down to write, if you are pulling punches on behalf of the people youre writing about, youre not doing your job. There may be a necessary and inescapable cruelty in that. Which emotionally is hard for me but, professionally, I feel fine with.

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Patrick Radden Keefe Is One of the Good Guys - New York Magazine

NFT Party Report: I Met a Spy Dressed as the Riddler – Gawker

Posted on June 29, 2022 by admin

Times Square has been worse than usual this week. Since Tuesday, the standard hordes of theater attendees and people in Tin Man costumes have been joined by thousands of NFT lovers in lanyards, descending upon New Yorks most-lit neighborhood for three days of panels about NFTs for the leading annual NFT event, NFT.NYC.

By now youve likely heard the spiel on what NFTs are (Its a receipt of digital ownership for a jpeg that looks like shit, someone has maybe told you in a bar). But the broader project of NFT culture is, reductively, to turn every aspect of human interaction into a commodity. There are NFTs for drinking coffee, playing football, skating and buying streetwear, doing feminism, joining private clubs, going to conferences, and, I assure you, much more. Fortunately, this isnt going well. NFTs, as you may know, are down bad. Per the Wall Street Journal, they are flatlining; in May, daily sales had fallen 92 percent from their peak last September. That makes it a very funny time to host what Insider called the Coachella of NFTs (in perhaps a tidy illustration of his poor marketing instincts, the conferences founder prefers the clunkier epithet, the South by Southwest of NYC).

Perhaps because the money-making side of NFTs isnt making that much money, the word on everyones lips at NFT.NYC was community. The conferences Twitter bio reads: NFT.NYC brings the NFT community together in NYC. There were countless talks on topics like The Power of NFT Investment Through Community, NFT Branding and Community Building, How to Build an NFT Market and Community, Security Measures for Community Building, 7 Ways To Optimize NFTs for Community, and the ominous, NFT Community Service Hour. As one Miami real estate developer told me: I dont see NFTs as an investment. I believe in the technology, and the community. Right on.

Wednesday night, I tried to get a sense for what that community is like. Specifically, my boss wanted me to do an NFT party report, so I took a look at the conferences list of satellite and community events (which, for an expo boasting over 1,000 speakers, was relatively short), and found the Eventbrite of something called the Flyfish Club Cocktail Party. Flyfish Club, as I learned from a fast Google, is the worlds first NFT restaurant. Technically, its not a restaurant yet. They dont have a storefront. But early next year, they plan to open an international seafood-focused dining venue somewhere in New York, where only the owners of their proprietary NFT, or others who lease those NFTs for a night, can eat. For now, the party would be at Scampi, an Italian spot in Flatiron.

Much like the hypothetical blockchain-enabled restaurant, the party was invite only. But thanks to a very kind doorman, a possibly-related high ratio of men to women in attendance, and the only name that came to mind when asked if I knew someone inside (Andrew Sullivan), the community let an NFTless loafer into their temporary home. I have to say I thought the community was nice, mostly the part involving an open bar, a spread of high-end crudit, and servers milling around offering some kind of tartar on a razor clam shell. The conversations were also better than I was expecting. I had precisely three of them, excluding the sweet doorman who checked in periodically to see if Andrew Sullivan had made it.

The first guy, who I met while trying to eat giant slices of hard salami in a minimally disgusting way, had also come alone. He was not a member of the club either, but a nice restaurateur who popped in to scope out the business model. He works for a restaurant company that owns a sushi place in New York and San Francisco, the latter of which has still not reopened after the pandemic. They were mulling the pivot to NFTs. I asked him how much money he had lost in crypto, and he said Its not great right now. We exchanged LinkedIns.

Back at the salami station, I met a Miami real estate developer who goes by Chichi, though it is not his real name. He came wearing a Moonbirds hat, so this was not his first blockchain-based private club rodeo. He had joined Flyfish Club at the behest of Resy co-founder Gary Vaynerchuk, or Gary Vee. I follow everything Gary Vee says, Chichi said. He had also lost a lot on crypto and NFTs. But as noted earlier, he does not think of them as an investment, so much as a community. He didnt plan to participate much in this particular community, being based in Miami. Instead he mostly planned to generate passive income by leasing his Flyfish Club membership to interested, but less committed community members. We also exchanged LinkedIns.

The grand finale was a 20-minute chat with a man wearing a Riddler jacket, a Hawaiian shirt, and a necklace of large titanium rings. He also had a glowing, neon-green, LED backpack, but he wasnt wearing it. The Riddler had come to promote his bio-authentication hospitality tech business. The gist, if Im remembering right, is that this tech would simplify the dining experience, by scanning your face at check-in to automatically find your reservation. The ordering and eating experience would proceed normally, but instead of paying at the end you could just leave. The face-scan would charge your card. He said they had a patent pending, and that Oracle was involved in some way.

Crucially, the Riddler wasnt always into face-scanning. He claimed he used to be a spy in Hawaii. I have no idea if this is true, but for approximately 10 minutes he detailed how, after joining the army, he had worked as a satellite imagery analyst for American intelligence. Specifically, he claimed to have worked on PRISM, the NSA data collection program from which Edward Snowden leaked classified documents in 2013. The Riddler had mixed feelings about his high-profile, alleged former colleague. Im concerned about the intelligence assets in Bulgaria, who had families, he said, but I do think the American public had a right to know what was going on.

The spy life sounded great he worked only six months of the year in Hawaii but eventually he had to go his own way. After working for a novelty political party, that I wont identify to protect his identity, he started an acne-preventing pillowcase company. He claims they pioneered the pillowcase technology, but that the business cratered when his partner embezzled all their money. I could not find more information about this online. But these days, hes in face-scan services. I think its going to change the world, he said. At the end, we exchanged LinkedIns.

All told, I did find a fairly pleasant community, if one that primarily took place on LinkedIn. At about 9:30, I slipped out the door sans Andrew Sullivan, and went downtown. Unfortunately, some of my real life friends were having their own NFT party. I guess the community was coming from inside the house.

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NFT Party Report: I Met a Spy Dressed as the Riddler - Gawker

That Jan. 6 Proud Boys Documentary Will Become a 4-Part Series, but Who Will Have the Courage to Buy It? – IndieWire

Posted on June 19, 2022 by admin

Last week, Nick Quested went to Washington and pulled off a rarity for filmmakers these days: He captured the public imagination without the benefit of Spider-Man or Tom Cruise.

Quested, as some of the 20 million people who tuned into the primetime hearings may recall, testified before Congress about the actions of the Proud Boys during the January 6 insurrection. A veteran documentarian who produced the Oscar-nominated Restrepo, Quested was on the ground at the Capitol trailing the extremist group when hundreds of them amassed in Washington. By then, he had been tracking the Proud Boys for months. The night before the riots, he even trailed Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio as he was released from jail and held a clandestine parking-lot meeting with the head of another extremist group, the Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes.

The committee showed this footage and more in a roughly 10-minute assemblage during the first January 6 hearing this month, the only one to hit primetime and generate substantial ratings. Quested delivered a stern, measured testimony to the violence he witnessed, but the footage went much further with a gripping inside look at seditious rage in action.

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It was the same kind of suspenseful teaser Quested might use to lure financiers at a film market, but leveraged toward a much larger cause. This weekly column looks at case studies that have relevance to the film community and this one is a striking breakthrough moment: Not since Laura Poitras sat in a room with Edward Snowden to capture his first interview for Citizenfour has a documentary been poised for such potential crossover effect, but the specifics of his project remained unclear. This week, as the hearings continued, I called him up to ask about it.

Quested hopped onto a Zoom call still looking shellshocked from the past few days. Its pretty crazy, he said. Once you give congressional testimony, youre at the center of the world for a second. Im not used to that. The 52-year-old British director, who got his start with music videos, had a disarming sense of humor about the sudden interest in his work. You know what the best part is? he said. I am working for MI:6 and thus I am James Bond. I shouldve come into the testimony with the theme music.

About seven months ago, Quested began pursuing a Proud Boys documentary with the working title 64 Days, an allusion to the period between the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 events, when the Proud Boys solidified into the violent militia that charged the Capitol. For project, which may now become a four-part miniseries, Quested also plans to utilize flashbacks to earlier moments in the Proud Boys evolution, including its 2016 Stop the Steal campaign that fizzled after Trump won the election that year. The filmmaker largely self-financed the project through his company Goldchrest Films, though he may enlist former National Geographic executives Tim Pastore and Matt Renner to take it to market.

Needless to say, Quested turned out to be a good witness in part because hes a skilled director. He managed to weave his filmmaking chops into his testimony, discussing how he worked to find medium and wide shots in an effort to frame the crowd with the Capitol as the backdrop. He sent me a 17-minute highlight reel and its astonishing stuff: He and his team captured everything from the QAnon Shaman spouting nonsense on the street to a sea of rioters storming Nancy Pelosis office and the immediate aftermath of the protestor death that further inflamed the crowds. The camera remains steady throughout, a sober beacon of expert craftsmanship in the midst of total chaos.

Quested claimed he submitted a short cut to major U.S. festivals and was rejected by all of them; he declined to name which ones. However, he now plans to turn 64 Days into a miniseries (one episode each for November and December followed by a two-parter set in January) and hopes to finish editing his 70-odd hours of footage by the fall. The outcome of the January 6 hearings could play a role. Theres a strong possibility this could lead to a trial of a former president, he said.

He added that he wont weave his experiences into the drama. I find it belittles the story to do that, he said, singling out Vice News as the worst offender in that regard. Its like a travel show with war porn, he said. Instead of going to restaurants, they go to frontlines.

However, there was a moment where he became a part of the story: When Proud Boys member Jeremy Bertino was stabbed during a counterprotest at a Black Lives Matter event on December 12, Quested gave him first aid until an ambulance arrived. Was that crossing the line? I dont care even if it is, Quested said.

Its hard to contemplate the complex moral calculus at play here: Quested not only infiltrated a hate group but saved one of the members lives on camera. However, his willingness to engage with such troubling material stems from his conviction about the potential for filmmaking to infiltrate societys messiest corridors rather than observe them with horror from afar.

Quested said he and his producing partner Sebastian Junger (who co-directed Restrepo) had long wanted to explore the extreme rifts in American society. We wanted to make a film about why Americans were so divided when Americans have so much in common, he said. We wanted to tell this in extremis by using groups on opposing sides, whether it was the far left or far right.

Quested perked up when Donald Trump made his infamous stand back and stand by remark in the presidential debate last summer, which galvanized the group. Obviously, the Proud Boys were becoming more and more prominent in American culture over the course of the summer. We were like, Well, are these guys hooligans? Are they brown shirts? Who are these guys? Thats why we reached out. When the president name-checked them, we were like, All right, here we go. After the election, I just reached out and was like, Wassup?'

It turned out that Tarrio was a Restrepo fan, and he wasnt the only one in the group. There were a lot of veterans who werent combat veterans, he said. Theyve done the training, but dont feel that vitality and brotherhood that you get from combat deployment. You dont have that existential need to band together to fight an enemy. You see the Proud Boys come together with a common thread of fighting for Trump.

Quested, who hasnt been in touch with Tarrio for months, said he had no problem spending time around the group. My jobs not to go there to agree or disagree with them or debate them, he said. Im trying to get them to portray their ideology. Im trying to get to the bottom of what they really represent. Ive been all over the world. Whether its militias or dissidents or different political factions, its the same thing. Just because I was with the Proud Boys doesnt make me a part of the Proud Boys.

Questeds willingness to entrench himself in vile company also points to one of the biggest challenges his film may face: The most daring efforts to expose the truth scare off the business. Errol Morris sat down with Steve Bannon for American Dharma and never heard the end of it, while the movie struggled to find a release for months. A similar fate befell Bryan Fogels Jamal Khashoggi documentary The Dissident, as few major companies wanted to risk problems with Saudi Arabia by taking it on. Above all, Questeds project reminded me of the 2020 documentary White Noise: Inside the Racist Right a film produced by The Atlantic that never found a distributor.

Not to be confused with the upcoming Noah Baumbach adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel, Daniel Lombrosos White Noise is an unnerving look at alt-right media figures like Mike Cernovich, Richard Spencer, and Laura Southern. It began as a short film that contained the shocking footage of Spencer shouting Hail Trump! to a roomful of young Nazis in the aftermath of the former presidents election again, footage so powerful it had a crossover effect, exposing the way hate groups felt galvanized by the current moment.

In the feature, Lombroso follows his subjects on globetrotting journeys as they attempt to legitimize their rhetoric into a movement. Exhausting and infuriating in equal measures, White Noise provides a deeper understanding of the alt-rights ascension than any sound bite can capture, but the movie premiered at AFI Docs after facing multiple rejections from major festivals. (Its available for rent on iTunes and Amazon.)

The writing was on the wall from those first pitch meetings, Lombroso told me this past week. They all said this was important journalism, but from a business perspective its the wrong play.

Most filmmakers who struggle for a release blame the industry, but Lombroso makes a convincing case. When we heard from distributors, it sounded like they were afraid of being canceled on Twitter, he said. In the long view, I dont think its bad business at all. Its essential to study extremist movements. If there was a document of the Nazi Party in the 30s as they grew and took over the government, surely that would have mass appeal now. People would study it. Instead, Triumph of the Will did the exact opposite by glorifying it, but people study that film now.

Quested said he believed bigger companies were complicit in simplifying the publics understanding of the January 6 events. There are so few people now to do business with and those companies are trying to commoditize documentaries into subjects, not value the work of the filmmakers appropriately, he said. Our film isnt about January 6. Our film is about why January 6 happened. They havent examined the root causes of January 6. Theyve examined why people turn up there and the events of the day in what I thought was fairly cursory. These things take time.

It is possible for companies to support projects about dangerous fringe groups: the PBS-produced American Insurrection, for example, or HBOs miniseries QAnon: Into the Storm. However, Quested said those are the exceptions that prove the rule.

If youre lucky enough to sell a film, it just becomes the film about that subject, he said. Its like saying, Oh weve done a film about January 6, there cant possibly be another angle.'

Quested cited Poitras work as another example of filmmaking that can engage challenging subject matter for a broader audience. I asked Poitras if she had anything to add about the subject, but she declined beyond recommending Jessica Kingdons Ascension as recent example of ambitious filmmaking that overcame commercial hurdles.

Its true: Kingdons experimental look at the hierarchical nature of Chinese society found distribution via MTV Documentary and received an Oscar nomination. The film explores everything from factory life to a training school for butlers for a fascinating, non-narrative overview of the way China choreographs every facet of its modern identity. I thought it would be more niche, Kingdom told me earlier this year.

However, Kingdon didnt point her camera at hate groups. Her haunting, poetic assemblage and Dan Deacons awe-inspiring score is both compelling and non-confrontational; if its criticism of China had been more explicit, its hard to imagine MTV taking it on with gusto. At the same time, Ascension and Questeds work share an ambitious approach that allows them to explain vast societal forces. Filmmaking can enlighten people to the substance of real-world situations in ways that traditional reportage cannot.

MTV/Courtesy Everett Collection

Look, documentaries are based on fact, but whenever you use editing and music, youre creating an emotional impact, Quested said. It becomes a very effective way of packaging the truth. A lot of people have seen these stories in micro-bites on the news, but they havent seen it all in context. So when you see these events and how quickly they unfolded and how highly charged the rhetoric was, you can see the pattern of the narrative. Thats what were bringing to the table.

Another reason for substantial filmmaking on extremism right now is extremists make movies, however bad. A few days after Questeds testimony, the committee showed a clip of former Attorney General William Barr mocking Dinesh DSouza for his inept 2,000 Mules documentary that attempted to prove voter fraud. Laugh at him all you want, but the movies still out there.

Quested may choose his words carefully these days, but exposing the Proud Boys in action has already shown the potential of activist filmmaking in these fractured times. There are plenty of talking-heads movies with rousing soundtracks and end credits listing URLs where you can learn how to help, but they rarely impact the national conversation. Documentaries and their filmmakers need to wade into the muck to make a difference.

In 2016, I attended a luncheon for the DOC NYC festival that took place just a few weeks after the presidential election and the mood was grim. The late Jonathan Demme was an honoree that day and pushed back on the bad vibes. I dont think the election of Trump changes anybodys personal agenda, he said with a grin. We still have our agendas and were still going to push for meaningful progressive change. The bar is just higher.

It keeps rising. Filmmaking remains a critical means of cutting through the noise, but if the industry doesnt support these efforts, theyre more likely to fade into the madness than expose the truth.

Are you a filmmaker working on a project about American extremism and struggling to find an audience? Or a programmer with curatorial solutions for showcasing this kind of valuable work? Id love to get your input: eric@indiewire.com

Browse previous columns here.

Last weeks column on the potential for Broadway playwrights to improve Hollywood landed before A Strange Loop, thankfully, won Best Musical. Tickets might be elusive these days, but at the very least, try to listen to the soundtrack.

I heard from a few readers in the theater community, including several women who expressed disappointment that the story didnt showcase women playwrights. A few people drew my attention to Honor Roll!, a grassroots advocacy group for women playwrights over 40, and others shared names of playwrights worth singling out. Heres one list sent my way.

A list of women who have created, run and written for shows including Succession, Watchmen, The Morning Show, This Is Us, Better Call Saul, House of Cards, The Flight Attendant, New Amsterdam, Fosse/Verdon, Empire, Masters of Sex, The Chi, Billions, Nurse Jackie, The Americans, GLOW, Orange is the New Black, Homeland, Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why, any number of Law & Orders, Halt and Catch Fire, all the Chicago shows, In Treatment, This is Us, Maid, Shameless, The Good Fight, The Good Wife, Smash, Happy, High Maintenance, Blue Bloods, Sneaky Pete, The Goldbergs, and so many more.

Katori Halls play The Mountaintop was on Broadway, and she currently runs P-Valley, based on one of her plays. Sarah Treem went from In Treatment to create The Affair. Laura Eason runs Three Women about to premiere on Showtime, Charlotte Stoudt created Pieces of Her, Theresa Rebeck has had four plays on Broadway and created Smash, Liz Meriwether created New Girl and The Dropout, Jessica Goldberg created The Path. Suzan Lori-Parks won a Pulitzer for Topdog/Underdog, created Genius: Aretha and wrote The United States vs. Billie Holiday in 2021. The list goes on and on.

These women include multiple Pulitzer, Tony and MacArthur genius grantwinners, those with work on and off Broadway and around the country. It shouldalso be said that every playwright Ive ever met has a side hustle. For some thats TV and film. For others TV and film was a draw as well as writingfor the stage and they continue to do both. I know many of these women personally and they are fierce.

More names: Lynn Nottage, Dominique Morrisseau, Katori Hall, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tanya Saracho, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Treem, Jessica Goldberg, Laura Eason, Molly Smith Metzler, Charlotte Stoudt, Liz Meriwether, Lucy Prebble, Leslye Headland, Bekka Brunstetter, Tracey Scott Wilson, Stacey Osei-Kuffour, Leah Nanako Winkler, Pia Wilson, Sheila Callaghan, Jacquelyn Reingold, Susan Cinoman, Marsha Norman, Alison Tatlock, Diana Son, Jennifer Haley, Gina Gionfriddo, Kara Lee Corthron, Neena Beber, Sarah Gubbins, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Jamie Pachino, K.J. Steinberg, Amy Fox, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Bathsheba Doran, Heidi Schreck, Hannah Bos, Carly Mensch, Liz Flahive, Annie Weisman, Nambi Kelly, Christina Anderson, Tori Sampson, Chisa Hutchinson, Eboni Booth, C.A. Jackson, Monet Hurst-Mendoza, Dipika Guha, Cheryl Davis, Bess Wohl, Jennifer Maisel, Kate Robin, Kate Fodor, Alexandra Cunningham, Melanie Marnich, Marlane Meyer, Allison Moore, Christina Ham, Sigrid Gilmer, Stephanie Liss, Halley Feiffer, Wendy Graf, Gabrielle Fox, MJ Kang, Anna Moench, Moira Buffini, Ali MacLean, Janice Kennedy, Kim Rosenstock, Janine Nabers, Catherine Butterfield, Laura Rohrman, Nikila Cole, Laureen Vonnegut, Stacy Rose, Susan Miller, Melody Cooper, Marilyn Anderson, Karen Zacarias, Jihan Crowther, and many, many more.

Jamie Pachino, playwright and TV writer

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That Jan. 6 Proud Boys Documentary Will Become a 4-Part Series, but Who Will Have the Courage to Buy It? - IndieWire

Su Zhu Says 3AC Is "Committed to Working This Out" as Wipeout Rumors Rage – Crypto Briefing

Posted on June 19, 2022 by admin

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Su Zhu and Kyle Davies Three Arrows Capital is one of cryptos most respected hedge funds.

Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu has broken his silence after rumors that the firm may be facing liquidity issues have spread across the crypto community.

The popular trader posted a cryptic tweet early Wednesday hinting that Three Arrows Capital was looking for a solution to an issue it was facing. We are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out, Zhu wrote, prompting a flurry of supportive messages from the likes of Cobie, Byzantine General, satsdart, and other members of the crypto community.

Rumors of the firms possible issues first surfaced on Crypto Twitter early Tuesday and spread over the course of the day. Unconfirmed reports claim that the firm may have missed a margin call and experienced a liquidation event due to the recent meltdown in the crypto market. The rumors came only hours after Celsius halted customer withdrawals as it faced whats widely believed to be its own liquidity crisis.

Three Arrows Capital is one of the worlds most successful crypto hedge funds. After launching in 2012, it grew into a multi-billion dollar establishment that became known for its prescient trading calls, propelling Zhu and his longtime partner, Kyle Davies, to crypto celebrity status.

Throughout 2021, Three Arrows Capital became notorious for pushing the so-called supercycle thesis and endorsing alternative Layer 1 projects like Solana, Avalanche, and Terra ahead of their parabolic rallies. Since then, Terra has crashed to zero and Solana and Avalanche are both down about 86%. Interestingly, Zhu recently removed a number of references to Solana, Avalanche, Terra, Ethereum, and NEAR from his Twitter bio and has also deleted his Instagram account.

Three Arrows Capital has not yet published an official statement in response to the rumors, and neither Zhu nor Davies had responded to Crypto Briefings request for comment by press time.

This story is breaking and will be updated as further details emerge.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH, NEAR, and several other cryptocurrencies.

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Su Zhu Says 3AC Is "Committed to Working This Out" as Wipeout Rumors Rage - Crypto Briefing

TNW Conference 2022: Event Highlights, Everything from the Tech Festival – Tech Times

Posted on June 19, 2022 by admin

The Next Web (TNW) Conference 2022 is one of Europe's leading technology festivals that is available for everyone to take part in and experience. Still, it has already concluded the festivities from its showcases. Many things took place at the event, and it highlighted the world with technology that will bring its features and innovations to all.

Missed the event? Here is a recap of what happened at the TNW Conference 2022.

The TNW Conference 2022has already wrapped upits festivities for the public to see, and the on-site event gave the public a chance to come together among industry leaders and global entities for a showcase.

The Next Web provided ashort video highlightthat reveals what happened during the event. Here, it shows a massive complex filled with different activities and experiences for people to discover regarding technology.

It also featured keynote speeches andspeakersfrom different tech companies, including Edward Snowden, a known whistleblower, and cybersecurity expert. TNW Conference 2022 also brought giant industry names into the mix, including Seth Dobrin from IBM's Chief AI Officer; Ministry of UK's Digital Sociologist, Lisa Moretti; and more.

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The two-day festival brought innovations and advancements from the different companies that The Next Web showcased during the event. It brought their products for the public to discover and learn about more. It is one of the global events that allowed people to come to a conference setting that does not have strict health restrictions among its participants.

Technology companies usually focus on launching their showcase or event for the world to join, and one of its examples is theWorldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC)that recently took place earlier this June. Apple focused on this event to bring many of its upcoming products to life and reveal to the world their future releases for everyone's information and use.

On the other hand,Google has the I/O 2022event that brings everything regarding the internet company, including its technology, products, and innovations, that it wishes to share with the public. These showcases are essential to gather interest and connect people, giving them an insight into what is to come and what the company has to offer.

However, the TNW Conference 2022 is a different event showcase for all, as it is a one-of-a-kind technology festival that invites people to witness other keynote speakers and guests. It brings together various companies and entities in the tech landscape, from different parts of the globe, including top names to showcase their latest offers for everyone.

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Written by Isaiah Richard

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TNW Conference 2022: Event Highlights, Everything from the Tech Festival - Tech Times