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"The post office says they're raising the price of stamps by one cent because they need to upgrade their equipment. Apparently, they're going from semi-automatics to uzis."

-- Conan O'Brien

News and Opinion

Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office's covert internet operations program

The post office’s law enforcement arm has faced intense congressional scrutiny in recent weeks over its Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), which tracks social media posts of Americans and shares that information with other law enforcement agencies. Yet the program is much broader in scope than previously known and includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools and employ facial recognition software, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Yahoo News.

Among the tools used by the analysts is Clearview AI, a facial recognition software that scrapes images off public websites, a practice that has raised the ire of privacy advocates. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service uses Clearview’s facial recognition database of over 3 billion images from arrest photos collected from across social media “to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals,” according to materials reviewed by Yahoo News.

Other tools employed by the Inspection Service include Zignal Labs’ software, which it uses to run keyword searches on social media event pages to identify potential threats from upcoming scheduled protests, according to Inspection Service documents. It also uses Nfusion, another software program, to create and maintain anonymous, untraceable email and social media accounts.

The Inspection Service’s expansive surveillance program has raised concerns among lawmakers and privacy and civil liberties experts, and the use of sophisticated software tools raises even more questions.

“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service appears to be putting significant resources into covert monitoring of social media and the creation and use of undercover accounts. If these efforts are directed toward surveilling lawful protesters, the public and Congress need to know why this is happening, under what authority and subject to what kinds of oversight and protections,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Liberty & National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice.

Palestinian journalists targeted by Israel in Gaza speak out

Israel Destroyed Offices of More Than 20 Palestinian Media Outlets in Gaza

In 2008, Momen Faiz Quraiqea was a budding 21-year-old video journalist when an Israeli airstrike blew off his legs. The experience as a victim of what many considered a war crime only hardened his resolve to document the civilian costs of armed conflict. “When the Israelis attacked me, I felt it is my life’s role to spread the truth about the crimes against other civilians and journalists in Gaza,” Quraiqea said. “Israel seeks to obliterate the Palestinian message, but each injury only makes us ready to expose their crimes. Our narration will never stop.”

Despite requiring a wheelchair, Quraiqea spent the next decade establishing himself as an internationally recognized photojournalist. His images from the occupied Gaza Strip — a densely populated strip besieged by Israel’s powerful military — have appeared across international publications and in exhibitions abroad. He formed a small company called Idea Media and got an office space. In spite of the challenges and threats he endured reporting in Gaza, Quraiqea says he had “built his dream” — until last week, when an Israeli airstrike blew up his life once again. “My colleagues called, said the IDF” — Israel Defense Forces — “just warned they were going to bomb the building, so I rushed to the office,” Quraiqea told The Intercept. “But I didn’t make it in time. It was bombed before I arrived. Totally destroyed.” ...

Quraiqea’s agency is just one of more than 20 Gazan media outlets razed by Israeli airstrikes in the past week. Much attention has been focused on the airstrikes that destroyed international media organizations’ Gaza offices, but local journalists bear enormous burdens of not only their work for the foreign press, but also to tell the stories of their neighbors and kin. Unlike international colleagues, Gazan journalists cannot leave, for lack of Israeli permission, and, without the protection afforded by global media, take on added risks just by dint of being Palestinians. ...

This week, human rights groups accused Israel of disrupting international coverage of the war on Gaza and referred Israel to the International Criminal Court, following Saturday’s Israeli airstrikes on a 12-story tower housing international media, including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. “Deliberately targeting media outlets constitutes a war crime,” Reporters Without Borders said in a Sunday statement. “By intentionally destroying media outlets, the IDF are not only inflicting unacceptable material damage on news operations. They are also, more broadly, obstructing media coverage of a conflict that directly affects the civilian population.”

Amira Hass: Israeli Bombs Are Wiping Out Entire Palestinian Families. It’s No Accident.

Clashes in Jerusalem and West Bank amid protests and strikes

Serious clashes erupted in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank on Tuesday as Palestinians took part in a day of protests and strikes over Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. A Palestinian man was killed and more than 70 wounded, including 16 by live fire, in clashes with Israeli troops on the outskirts of Ramallah, according to the Palestinian Authority health ministry. Two Israeli soldiers were injured.

Hundreds of Palestinians burned tyres and hurled stones at an Israeli military checkpoint. Troops fired teargas canisters at the crowd. Large crowds also gathered in Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron and other towns in the West Bank.

In Jerusalem, police deployed water cannon in the neighbourhood Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinian families are facing eviction from homes they have lived in since the 1950s. The threat of eviction has been a key factor in rising tensions in the city over recent weeks. There were also clashes at the nearby Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. Many Palestinian-owned businesses in the Old City were shut as part of a “day of anger” over the eight-day conflict. Support for the general strike was high in towns inside Israel.

Muhammad Barakeh, one of the strike organisers, said Palestinians were expressing a “collective position” against Israel’s “aggression” in Gaza and Jerusalem, as well as the “brutal repression” by police across Israel. “This is the first time we’re seeing almost everyone participate in the strike,” Castro Othman, a resident of Tamra in northern Israel, told the Times of Israel. “We feel like we’re in an existential struggle.”

A Plea from Gaza: Israel Bombing Campaign Is Turning My Homeland into a “Wasteland”

Israeli TV reporters face attacks and threats from Jewish extremists

Israeli television stations are providing security for some of their highest-profile reporters after physical attacks and death threats from far-right Jewish extremists. According to reports in the Israeli media, the N12 channel has provided security details for four of its on-air reporters: Dana Weiss, Guy Peleg, Yonit Levi and Rina Mazliah, after a rise in online threats against them amid recent intercommunal violence.

Police have arrested one suspect in connection with threats against Weiss. Reporters from Channel 12, Kan news and Channel 13 have been physically attacked in recent days after rightwing extremists took to the streets to target Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin in various locations. ...

The incidents of violence targeting Jews and Israeli-Arabs in the midst of the conflict between Israel and Hamas have occurred as some on Israel’s right take aim at media reporting. Among them, according to the Jerusalem Post, has been the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair, who tweeted an invitation to demonstrate in front of N12’s office calling on supporters to “say no to the media’s anti-Zionist brainwashing”.

Biden awkwardly jokes about running over reporter after hearing the word 'Israel'

‘US president threatens journalist with vehicular homicide, refuses to answer simple questions’... is what the MSM headline would’ve been, if this story had been about Trump. Luckily for Joe Biden, the media adores him and laughs gleefully at his ‘jokes.’

Biden Threatens To Run Over Reporters For Asking About Israel

Biden’s meek stance on Gaza ceasefire does little to quell progressive ire

Joe Biden’s expression of support for a ceasefire between Israeli forces and Hamas has not quietened calls from progressive Democrats for more decisive intervention, but may have bought some time with the centre and right of his party.

Biden was left in little doubt about the strength of feeling on the issue on Tuesday when he visited Dearborn, Michigan, home to about 40,000 Arab Americans. The route taken by his motorcade was lined by protesting crowds waving Palestinian flags.

He was greeted there by the local congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, who has been one of the sharpest critics within the party of his response to the new surge in bloodshed in the region, and has lambasted his administration for blocking three efforts to produce a consensus UN security council resolution in the past eight days. “Apartheid-in-chief Netanyahu will not listen to anyone asking nicely. He commits war crimes and openly violates international law,” Tlaib said on Twitter. ...

Israeli reports have cited unnamed officials as saying military operations were likely to wind up in the next day or two. But Biden’s language did little to satisfy Democratic progressives, who believe administration policy is conferring impunity on Netanyahu.

Ro Khanna, a California congressman, told the Guardian: “It is not enough to express support for a ceasefire. President Biden should make an unequivocal public statement demanding a ceasefire and support the UN resolution calling for one.”

Krystal Ball: Palestinians Launch HISTORIC GENERAL STRIKE Hailed Most Significant Action In Decades

In 'Disgraceful' Cave to Biden Admin, Meeks Won't Request Delay of $735 Million US Arms Sale to Israel

Congressman Gregory Meeks, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that he has opted against requesting a delay of the Biden administration's proposed $735 million munitions sale to Israel—a decision that progressives immediately slammed as a gross capitulation to the White House.

"Disgraceful, looks like even this little step toward transparency was shut down from the top," said Palestinian-American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer after Meeks backtracked on his Monday vow to send a letter asking the Biden administration to postpone final approval of the deal.

During a virtual call with other Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee late Monday, Meeks said he was caught off guard by the administration's proposal to sell $735 million in Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions to Israel, which is currently engaged in a deadly and internationally condemned bombing campaign against the occupied Gaza Strip.

But Meeks dropped his push for a delay after "late-night discussions" with senior Biden administration officials who urged the New York Democrat not to send the letter, according to CNN's Zachary Cohen.

"Instead, the Biden administration has agreed to brief members of the House Foreign Committee," Cohen reported. "One source told me the briefing [is] expected to happen this week. Some progressives are frustrated by Meeks' change of heart."

Vox's Alex Ward tweeted Tuesday that one unnamed House Democrat he spoke to was "incensed by Meeks' decision not to send a letter asking for a delay on the Israel sale."

"It looks like Democratic leadership forced Meeks to drink the Kool-Aid overnight," the anonymous lawmaker said.

As Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and other progressives in Congress voiced outrage over the proposed arms sale, about which the Biden administration notified Congress on May 5—just days before Israel launched its latest bombardment of Gaza.

If Congress does not pass a resolution against the weapons agreement within several days, the sale will proceed.

Hamas official on Israel's US-backed rampage in Gaza and Palestinian resistance

CENTCOM: Afghanistan Withdrawal 13 to 20 Percent Complete

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Tuesday that the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan is between 13 and 20 percent complete. The command is not disclosing troop numbers but said the Pentagon has removed approximately 115 C-17 cargo planeloads of material out of Afghanistan.

CENTCOM said more than 5,000 pieces of equipment have been turned over to the Defense Logistics Agency for destruction. The US has officially handed over five facilities to the Afghan military.

Last week, the US turned over Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan to Afghan forces, which was one of the largest US bases in the country. At the height of the US presence in Afghanistan, the base housed an estimated 30,000 troops and contractors.

US and Russian foreign ministers to meet in Iceland in bid to ease friction

Briahna Joy Gray: Pentagon Spying On Its Own Service-Members, Here’s Why That's Dangerous

Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen

In a 2020 letter to management, Max Eliaser, an Amazon software engineer, said Ring is “simply not compatible with a free society”. We should take his claim seriously. Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life. What’s more, once Ring users agree to release video content to law enforcement, there is no way to revoke access and few limitations on how that content can be used, stored, and with whom it can be shared.

Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen. An estimated 400,000 Ring devices were sold in December 2019 alone, and that was before the across-the-board boom in online retail sales during the pandemic. Amazon is cagey about how many Ring cameras are active at any one point in time, but estimates drawn from Amazon’s sales data place yearly sales in the hundreds of millions. The always-on video surveillance network extends even further when you consider the millions of users on Ring’s affiliated crime reporting app, Neighbors, which allows people to upload content from Ring and non-Ring devices.

Then there’s this: since Amazon bought Ring in 2018, it has brokered more than 1,800 partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, who can request recorded video content from Ring users without a warrant. That is, in as little as three years, Ring connected around one in 10 police departments across the US with the ability to access recorded content from millions of privately owned home security cameras. These partnerships are growing at an alarming rate.

Data I’ve collected from Ring’s quarterly reported numbers shows that in the past year through the end of April 2021, law enforcement have placed more than 22,000 individual requests to access content captured and recorded on Ring cameras. Ring’s cloud-based infrastructure (supported by Amazon Web Services) makes it convenient for law enforcement agencies to place mass requests for access to recordings without a warrant. Because Ring cameras are owned by civilians, law enforcement are given a backdoor entry into private video recordings of people in residential and public space that would otherwise be protected under the fourth amendment. By partnering with Amazon, law enforcement circumvents these constitutional and statutory protections, as noted by the attorney Yesenia Flores. In doing so, Ring blurs the line between police work and civilian surveillance and turns your neighbor’s home security system into an informant. Except, unlike an informant, it’s always watching.

“Show People the Video”: DA Finds Andrew Brown’s Death “Justified” But Won’t Release All Footage

Andrew Brown shooting: officers will not face charges, says district attorney

A North Carolina district attorney on Tuesday said officers were justified in the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man, in April, and that the sheriff’s deputies who fired will not face charges for killing the 42-year-old father of seven. Andrew Womble said Brown’s death “while tragic, was justified” because three deputies “reasonably” believed deadly force was necessary to protect themselves and others while serving a warrant for Brown’s arrest on felony drug charges.

The prosecutor said deputies in full tactical gear blocked Brown in the driveway outside his Elizabeth City home to serve the warrant on 21 April. Brown ignored orders to get out of the car and struck a deputy twice while trying to escape, Womble said. Womble described the encounter, from the time police left their vehicles to when they removed Brown from his car after shooting him, as lasting 44 seconds.

Brown’s death certificate said he died as the result of a gunshot wound to the head. Brown’s family commissioned an independent autopsy which specified that he was shot five times, once to the back of his head.

Womble said he would not release body-camera video of the confrontation, for which Brown’s family and supporters have repeatedly called to ensure integrity in the investigation of his death. ... Brown’s family and lawyers had previously seen a 20-second clip of body-camera footage and said it showed officers firing at Brown’s car as he drove away.

Black homeowner says her appraisal doubled after she didn’t declare her race

A Black Indianapolis homeowner has alleged that appraisers’ valuations of her home more than doubled after she removed items that identified her race and asked a white male friend to attend an appraisal. Carlette Duffy and the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana have filed housing discrimination complaints with the federal government, alleging appraisers violated fair housing laws. The appraisers, the complaints said, purposely used comparable sale prices that were unfair and racially motivated.

One appraiser named in the complaints denied discrimination played a role, while other people and companies involved in the appraisals did not respond to the Associated Press’ requests for comment.

Duffy sought to take advantage of lower interest rates last year and refinance the mortgage loan for her home in a historically Black neighborhood just outside downtown Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Star reported. She purchased the house for $100,000 in 2017 and expected it to be valued similar to her sister’s home in the same area, which was appraised at roughly $198,000 in 2019.

An appraisal conducted by CityWide and Jeffrey Pierce of Pierce Appraisal in spring 2020 valued her home at $125,000. A second appraisal conducted by Freedom Mortgage and Indianapolis-based appraiser Tim Boston, of the Appraisal Network, valued her home at $110,000. A third appraisal, which was conducted after Duffy did not declare her race in her application and took down all family photos and African American art in her home, came back at $259,000.

People's Party Invites You To Nominate Your Next Congress Person

Steven Donziger: How Chevron Is Attacking Me For Revealing The Truth

'We're at the Brink': Researchers Warn Greenland Ice Sheet May Have Already Passed Tipping Point

Researchers in Germany and Norway said Tuesday that a major portion of Greenland's ice sheet is "at the brink" of reaching a frightening "tipping point"—the latest sign that global heating is causing irreversible damage to the world's glaciers and that policymakers must halt fossil fuel emissions without further delay.

According to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the melting of the central-western Greenland ice sheet has surged over the last 140 years.

Niklas Boers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany conducted the research with Martin Rypdal from the Arctic University of Norway, examining the height changes of the ice sheet since 1880 and comparing them to model simulations.

"We're at the brink, and every year with CO2 emissions continuing as usual exponentially increases the probability of crossing the tipping point," Boers told the Guardian. "It might have passed [the tipping point], but it's not clear."

The scientists concluded the ice sheet has reached a state of instability and is "close to a critical transition"—making it likely that it will continue melting at an accelerated rate even if policymakers manage to cap global heating at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

"Our results suggest there will be substantially enhanced melting in the future—which is quite worrying," said Boers in a statement.

The researchers pointed to a cycle in which melting gradually reduces the height of the glacier and exposes it to the warmer air at lower altitudes—which in turn causes even more melting.

"This mechanism is long known, and it is one of the prime suspects for the detected destabilization of the central-western parts of the Greenland ice sheet. But we cannot exclude that other feedbacks, for example related to the albedo of the ice sheet, play an important role too," Boers said.

Trillions of tons of Greenland's ice have already flowed into the sea, and the melting of the entire Greenland ice sheet could lead to an eventual sea level rise of seven meters, or nearly 23 feet. It could also lead to a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which keeps Europe and North America relatively warm and have "knock-on effects on the Amazon rainforest and tropical monsoons," the researchers said.

Ice-melt equivalent to more than six feet of sea level rise is likely "already doomed to melt" over the coming centuries, Boers told The Guardian. 

The researchers said that despite their fears that a climate tipping point has been reached in Greenland, significant efforts must still be made to reduce the heating of the globe by halting the burning of fossil fuels.

"Regardless of the precise interplay of the different feedbacks, we would have to considerably reduce temperatures below pre-industrial to get back to the ice sheet height levels of the last centuries," Boers said. "So practically, the current and near-future mass loss will be largely irreversible. That's why it is high time we rapidly and substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and re-stabilize the ice sheet and our climate."

Just 20 Companies Produce Over Half of All Single-Use Plastic Waste: Report

In a groundbreaking report published Tuesday, researchers revealed that just 20 companies are responsible for producing 55 percent of all single-use plastic waste worldwide.

The 20 global businesses are both state-owned and multinational corporations, consisting mainly of energy and chemical giants, and are responsible for a plastic waste footprint amounting to more than half of the 130 million metric tons of single-use plastic thrown away in 2019, the analysis found.

The first "Plastic Waste Makers Index" report was produced by the Australia-based philanthropic Minderoo Foundation and warns that production of single-use plastics is set to grow 30% in the next five years, exacerbating both the climate crisis and ocean pollution.

Single-use plastics—cheap plastic goods that are used once and then thrown away, such as face masks, bottles, shopping bags, coffee cups and cling film—account for over a third of plastics produced every year and are almost entirely (98 percent) manufactured by fossil fuels.

"The cost of single-use plastic waste is enormous," the report states. "Of all the plastics, they are the most likely to end up in our ocean, where they account for almost all visible pollution, in the range of five to 13 million metric tons each year. Once there, single-use plastics eventually break down into tiny particles that impact wildlife health—and the ocean's ability to store carbon."

These wasteful plastics, it continues, "contain chemical additives such as plasticisers that have been found in humans and are linked to a range of reproductive health problems. And if growth in single-use plastic production continues at current rates, they could account for five to 10 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050."

Despite the consequences to the environment, the report details how the plastics industry has operated with little regulation or transparency for decades and insufficient attention has been paid to the manufacturers of "polymers," the foundation of all plastics.

According to the report, Australia leads countries in generating the most single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis, followed by the United States, South Korea and Britain.

U.S. based companies ExxonMobil and Dow were the top corporate polymer producers, followed by China-based Sinopec, with these three companies together accounting for 16 percent of global single-use plastic waste.

Top global investors of the plastic industry included U.S. companies Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and Capital Group. Together with 17 other companies and financial institutions, these investors own over $300 billion in shares to parent companies of the major polymer producers. Twenty of the world's largest banks, including Barclays, HSBC, and Bank of America, are estimated to have lent nearly $30 billion for the production of polymers in the last decade.

"In the next five years, global capacity to produce virgin polymers for single-use plastics could grow by over 30 per cent—and by as much as 400 percent for individual companies," the report warns. "An environmental catastrophe beckons: much of the resulting single-use plastic waste will end up as pollution in developing countries with poor waste management systems."

According to the report's authors, "Transitioning away from the take-make-waste model of single-use plastics will take more than corporate leadership and 'enlightened' capital markets; it will require immense political will."

Leonardo DiCaprio leads $43m pledge to restore the Galápagos Islands

Leonardo DiCaprio has announced a $43m (£30.4m) pledge to enact sweeping conservation operations across the Galápagos Islands, with his social media accounts taken over by a wildlife veterinarian and island restoration specialist.

The initiative, in partnership with Re:wild, an organisation founded this year by a group of renowned conservation scientists and DiCaprio, the Galápagos National Park Directorate, Island Conservation and local communities, aims to rewild the entire Galápagos Islands, as well as all of Latin America’s Pacific archipelagos.

It has a large number of supporting and implementing partners from a range of philanthropic and environmental organisations, including Galápagos National Park Directorate, Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment and Water, and Charles Darwin Foundation.

The $43m pledge will fund Galápagos projects including efforts to restore Floreana Island, home to 54 threatened species, and reintroduce 13 locally extinct species, including the Floreana mockingbird – the first mockingbird described by Charles Darwin.

The money will also pay for a captive breeding programme and other activities to prevent the extinction of the pink iguana, and strengthen measures to protect the Galápagos’s marine resources from the human impact of ecotourism.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Israel Isn’t Entitled to ‘Self-Defense’ Against the People Under Its Occupation

1948 — No Longer Shrouded in the Mists

Israel Kills 11 Children Receiving Trauma Care in Their Homes

In Wake of HRW Apartheid Report, Israeli Propagandists Launch Global PR Offensive

Israel/Palestine Coverage Presents False Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier

Azerbaijan Holds New Large-Scale War Games After Armed Incursion Into Armenia

Biden’s attorney general puts domestic terror and civil rights at top of agenda

Homeowners’ Insurance Companies in Florida Are Raising Rates by Unprecedented Amounts, Effectively Confiscating the Stimulus Checks from Struggling Families and Seniors

Amazon in talks to buy Hollywood studio MGM for $9bn

Can We Have Both Industrial Civilization and a Habitable Planet?

Rising: Biden Gives HUGE GIFT To Putin, Media Ignores

Rising: FBI INVESTIGATING Major Susan Collins Donor For Illegal Contributions

A Little Night Music

Guitar Crusher - I Can't Help It

Guitar Crusher - I've got to know

Guitar Crusher & Wild Jimmy Spruill - Hambone Blues

Guitar Crusher - The Monkey

Guitar Crusher - Itch With Me

Guitar Crusher - Cuddle Up

Guitar Crusher - Weak For Your Love

Guitar Crusher - Since My Baby Hit the Numbers

Guitar Crusher - I'll Catch Your Tears