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Cake day: 8 juin 2023

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  • Last year on the Fourth of July, a small group from Dallas-Fort Worth held a night-time noise demonstration, setting off fireworks outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility south of the cities, in solidarity with the detainees. A few protesters broke away and spray-painted graffiti on employees’ cars and a security post, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. The facility’s guards ordered the protesters to disperse, and most of them did. When a police officer arrived at the scene, drawing his gun, an armed protester shot her rifle, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

    After a three-week trial, a jury found eight of nine protesters guilty of “providing material support to terrorists”, among other crimes. For the Sotos, this “material support” included owning a “printing press” used to print anarchist zines and being part of a leftist book club, the federal government argued. The couple had already left the scene by the time guns were drawn. All eight of the defendants sentenced so far have received unusually harsh sentences – 30 to 100 years – essentially life in prison.

    Their attorneys announced their intention to appeal, but many supporters are doubtful that anything short of a presidential pardon from a future administration would free them.

    The Prairieland case was the first tried and convicted under the Trump Department of Justice’s “counter-terrorism” initiatives targeting “antifa” – short for antifascist – a decentralized movement the administration has officially categorized as a “domestic terrorist organization”. The federal government argued the Prairieland defendants, what they called a “North Texas Antifa cell”, had planned the demonstration as an assassination attempt against a law enforcement officer. The government alleged this conspiracy even though the defendants were loosely connected, and some who attended the protest did not even know each other.

    The conviction of the Prairieland defendants has shocked legal and civil liberties experts, who say the Trump administration is making examples of them and setting a dangerous precedent for what this means for the first amendment right to protest and to create and distribute information.

    “It is not only an attempt at chilling speech,” said Chip Gibbons, policy director at the advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent, “but an indication that the [the Trump administration is] going to continue going after protests extremely hard.”

    In total, 22 people have been charged in connection with the protest: five others took plea deals, another five have state charges pending and three more were indicted last month. What the federal government has described as “antifa extremists” are activists you’d find anywhere in the US: trans people, tattoo artists, vegans and anti-ICE community members who engage in mutual aid. The federal government’s focus on the possession of leftwing literature, including zines, and other basic security measures common in our modern era – like owning Faraday bags, meant to block wireless signals to prevent surveillance; using the encrypted messaging app Signal; or dressing in all-black clothing – is alarming to activists.

    “Zines are a foundational first amendment document” going back to the Federalist papers, said Xavier de Janon, the director of mass defense at the National Lawyers Guild and the attorney representing Elizabeth in her state case. “Zines discussing ideas of revolution, mutual aid, ideas of a world after capitalism, should not be able to be criminalized in and of themselves … That’s just dangerous to all of us.”





  • With no serious debate, including on proposed amendments, Canada is blazing full speed ahead with Bill C-22, which would threaten encryption and increase surveillance. Also known as the Lawful Access Bill, Bill C-22 is currently moving forward quickly to a vote despite the many, many criticisms civil liberty groups and the tech industry have hurled at it.

    As we’ve discussed before, Bill C-22 is dangerous on multiple levels. It pushes for requirements for metadata retention, expands information sharing with foreign governments, and establishes a mechanism that allows Canada’s Ministry of Public Safety to demand that companies create backdoors, effectively breaking encryption. That mechanism was a key facet of Part 2 in Bill C-22, and the government prevented it from being independently debated.

    In a deep analysis of the bill, Citizen Lab and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association detail every one of flaws of this proposal, concluding that most elements are unsalvageable.

    A wide range of tech companies agree. Signal, Apple, Google, and several VPN providers oppose the bill, and some have said they’d likely be forced to either cut Canadians off from certain features or shut down services in Canada altogether.

    The Canadian government wants this dangerous, complicated, overreaching bill passed before June 19. Bill C-22 is riddled with privacy problems that affect millions of people. It should be debated and studied fully, not jammed through on an arbitrary deadline.

    OpenMedia is offering a tool for Canadians to contact their elected representatives about the bill. Actions taken on OpenMedia’s website are governed by OpenMedia’s privacy policy, not EFF’s.



  • Since August of last year, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has been building and operating a fleet of gas-fired combustion turbines in Memphis-area Black neighborhoods, in order to power a massive data center called Colossus. Each turbine is the size of a single-family home.

    As of five weeks ago, xAI has installed at least 57 of these turbines at the Colossus Gas Plant in Southaven, Mississippi, about 15 minutes south of Memphis. Combined, they have the potential to spew over 5,300 tons of nitrogen oxides and 430 tons of particulate matter into the atmosphere every year, among other hazardous air pollutants.

    Even short-term exposure to nitrogen oxides or particulate matter can cause hospitalization and premature death. And some communities are especially vulnerable: Scientific evidence shows that children, older adults, and people of color—especially Black people—face heightened health risks. Nearly 160,000 people live within a six-mile radius of the Colossus Gas Plant. Around 22 percent of them are children or older adults, and 77 percent are people of color. U.S. Census Bureau data further shows that many neighborhoods near the plant have a higher percentage of people of color and children than 95 percent of other census tracts.

    In short, xAI is releasing a staggering amount of pollutants into the environment, precisely where it can do the most harm.

    So, two months ago, the NAACP sued xAI and its subsidiaries, aiming to shut down xAI’s Colossus Gas Plant “unless and until they obtain the required permits.” In May, the organization also asked a federal district court for an order prohibiting operation of the plant while the case is pending. The NAACP’s filings highlight that Musk has publicly griped about how environmental regulations require polluters to get “permission in advance” rather than just “paying a penalty” later, and urge the court to stop him from treating Black people like “just one more natural resource the companies can buy and exploit in pursuit of their business goals.”

    Now, the Trump administration is trying to come to Musk’s aid. The Clean Air Act’s provision allowing citizen enforcement also allows the EPA administrator to “intervene as a matter of right at any time in the proceeding.” And on Monday, Trump’s Department of Justice filed a motion to intervene in the NAACP’s lawsuit as the plaintiff—and to dismiss the NAACP’s suit with prejudice.

    In the memo accompanying its motion, the DOJ characterizes the NAACP’s lawsuit as a national security threat—Colossus powers Grok, an AI model that the Department of Defense uses in military operations—and contends that enforcing the Clean Air Act against xAI is not “consistent with federal policy and the public interest.” This ignores the fact that the Clean Air Act is a federal policy, enacted by Congress based on its assessment of the public interest. The DOJ further argues that the NAACP may not enforce the Clean Air Act “over the United States’ objection,” because the government’s “express and unconditional right to intervene” in a citizen suit “necessarily includes the right to unilaterally dismiss the case in its entirety.”

    Congress created the EPA and the Clean Air Act to protect people from big companies that might steamroll them and destroy the environment. And Congress provided for citizen enforcement so that people could protect themselves. In attempting to dismiss the NAACP’s lawsuit against xAI, the Trump administration is simultaneously retreating from its legal duty to enforce Black people’s right to a livable environment, and declaring that Black people have no rights under the Clean Air Act that xAI is bound to respect.











  • This seems like a bullshit article using old data. But let’s take it at face value for the sake of argument.

    Perhaps we should prioritize water given to humans (which they require to live).

    Data centers have contaminated local water supplies, and often have a priority for access to free water.

    The question isn’t exactly the amount of water it takes to power “ai”. The real question is if we are actually aware of the cost for something which is not actually required to solve the problems of the world.