News & Commentary

Last week I wrote about how the Internet of Things will provide an opportunity for various bureaucracies (corporate and governmental) to inject not only their information-gathering functions but also their rule-imposing functions ever more deeply into the technologies that surround us, and thus into our daily lives. In short, violating our privacy and increasing their control. But the situation is actually even scarier than that, because buried within the activity of "rule imposing" lies another function that is inherently a part of that: "judgment making." And a whole lot more trouble lies there.

Discrimination in Ferguson works in not-so-mysterious ways.
As the

Discrimination in Ferguson works in not-so-mysterious ways. 

This piece originally appeared at The Washington Post's PostEverything.
Indiana isn’t the only place where p

This piece originally appeared at The Washington Post's PostEverything. 

The Department of Homeland Security’s effort to get its hands on information about the road travels of all Americans is back. In a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) issued yesterday about a plan for using license plate reader data, Immigration and Customs Enforcement describes a plan to “procure the services of a commercial vendor of LPR information.” The agency pays lip service to public concerns about license plate readers and offers some improvements to the government’s current more or less unrestrained use of location tracking technology. It does not, however, remedy the fundamental civil liberties problems with such a project.

A disturbing image hit the newswires this week, highlighting the barbaric conditions that are all too common in the American prison system. The photo shows a young prisoner in Georgia, who appears to be badly beaten, on his knees with a makeshift leash around his neck, while two other prisoners pose behind him, one holding the leash.
Incredibly, Georgia prison officials h

A disturbing image hit the newswires this week, highlighting the barbaric conditions that are all too common in the American prison system. The photo shows a young prisoner in Georgia, who appears to be badly beaten, on his knees with a makeshift leash around his neck, while two other prisoners pose behind him, one holding the leash.

Let me get straight to the point – David Brooks’ column this week encouraging gay and transgender people to simply accept discrimination for as long as it takes for society to come around was more than misguided. It undercuts core American values of fairness and equality and advances the idea that’s it is acceptable to treat some people like second-class citizens because of who they are.
If David Brooks really thinks it