August 2021 - Page 4 of 4

EPIC Submits Feedback on the European Commission’s Proposal for Harmonized Rules on Artificial Intelligence

EPIC submitted comments identifying gaps and proposing privacy and fundamental rights-preserving updates to the European Commission’s Proposal for Harmonized Rules on Artificial Intelligence (the Artificial Intelligence Act or “AIA”). The AIA is intended as a step forward in proactive regulation of AI system use. However, EPIC’s comment describes how unaddressed privacy and human rights concerns may allow AI systems to be used in ways that cause serious harm to individuals interacting, knowingly or unknowingly, with those systems. EPIC recommends that the Commission (i) remove the broad exemptions on regulatory requirements for AI systems and expand prohibitions where necessary, (ii) mandate prior notification to individuals subject to AI system decision-making, (iii) fully ban emotion recognition and biometric categorization systems, and (iv) mandate review and approval of AI system conformity assessments by data protection authorities prior to use. EPIC advocates for algorithmic justice, transparency, and accountability, and recently submitted comments on the OECD Framework for Classifying AI Systems, recommending changes to more robustly address privacy concerns.

Mass. Supreme Judicial Court Rules Two Days of Mass Transit Records Not Enough to Constitute a Search Under the Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment

Carpenter v. United States Commonwealth v. Zachary Fourth Amendment amicus

Mass. Supreme Judicial Court Rules Two Days of Mass Transit Records Not Enough to Constitute a Search Under the Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued an opinion in Commonwealth v. Zachary finding that when Boston Police accessed two days of rider history from a metro pass they did not perform a search under the Fourth Amendment. The court first followed an argument from EPIC’s amicus brief urging the court to reject the third-party doctrine for electronic data collected by a third party from an individual for the purpose of obtaining a service. The court decided, “we reject the doctrine as applied to this case, where the data at issue has no connection to the limited purpose for which an individual uses a CharlieCard.”

The court then applied the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment which looks at the whole sweep of a government action and the insights derived when individual data points are aggregated to determine whether a search occurred under the Constitution. The court held that while “an extensive record of an individual’s MBTA activity could constitute a search under the mosaic theory, the minimal amount of data obtained in this case does not constitute a violation of art. 14 or the Fourth Amendment.” EPIC previously filed an amicus brief in the landmark location privacy case Carpenter v. United States, in which the Supreme Court held that collecting seven days of cell phone location data, considered in aggregate, constituted a search.

How to Start Your Own Fish Farm – reThinkSurvival.com

As someone who is self-sufficient and off-the-grid, you want to be able to provide everything for you and your family. Homesteaders aim to source their food, water and other needs for themselves rather than rely on grocery stores and other mainstream resources.

Although many homesteaders resort to growing their own produce and raising cattle, chickens, pigs and other animals with legs, you might be missing the taste of fish and seafood. By raising your own fish, you can add another protein source right in your backyard.

Backyard fish farming is just as practical as any other type of farming. You already have a freshwater source for your water needs, so why not implement that in another way? Fish provide another way to offer a healthy diet to your family, and you can achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency.

Starting your own fish farm may seem like a daunting task to some, but with a little bit of planning and a few resources, you can get started raising your own fish.

Why Should You Start Your Own Fish Farm?

Aquaculture is ideal for rural and small communities. Often, those communities don’t have access to fresh fish and have to source it from grocery stores where the food may travel from thousands of miles away.

When you start your own fish farm, you have the opportunity to provide fresh fish for yourself, and if you desire, you can sell that fish to others in your community, offering them local, sustainable food.

Throughout history, aquaculture as a whole has had a negative reputation. Many people associate it with commercial fish farming facilities. These facilities often require significant amounts of energy and water and are usually a significant source of pollution for both the air and water.

However, with modern and sustainable fish farming techniques, you can be a provider of environmentally friendly food. You likely already have a lot of the skills it takes to be an aquaculture farmer, too. Both gardening and fishing require similar care — they need warmth, a particular season to grow, regular maintenance and your time. Once you get started, you can master raising several types of fish, whether indoors or outdoors, throughout the year.

Learn the Types of Fish Farming: Intensive and Extensive

Before you begin your own fish farm, you need to learn the types of fish farming. There are two types — intensive and extensive. You can do both of these in your backyard.

Intensive fish farming occurs when a company uses smaller tanks to raise the fish. The fish farmers who use intensive farming must ensure that they are correctly managing the tanks. They produce a lot of fish in a small area.

Extensive fish farming, on the other hand, uses larger ponds for their fish. This type of fish farming makes the ecosystem more natural. There are plants and other organisms that the fish can feed on, offering them a lifestyle similar to those fish in the wild.

Consider…

These All-American Chickens Were Made In The USA

You can find nine chicken breeds named after the state in which they originated. But only three states have a chicken as an official symbol. Rhode Island has the Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire has the New Hampshire chicken and Delaware has the Blue Hen.

Here’s a look at each of the chicken breeds named after their state of origin.

Buckeye

Nettie Metcalf of Warren, Ohio, developed the Buckeye as a dual-purpose farmstead chicken that adapts well to cold weather. It’s the only breed classified as American that has a pea comb, a feature that helps it survive Ohio’s bitter winter weather.

When this breed was developed during the late 1800s, it was originally called Pea Comb Rhode Island Red. But that name did not enhance the breed’s popularity. So, since it originated in the Buckeye State, the breed name was changed to Buckeye.

Buckeye chickens come in large and bantam sizes and a single color: a rich reddish brown of about the same shade as a buckeye nut. The hens lay eggs with brown shells and also brood easily.

Although the buckeye tree is the Ohio’s official state tree, the state bird is the Cardinal. Ohio has no official state chicken. You can find more information on this breed on the website maintained by the American Buckeye Poultry Club.

California Gray

The concept of the California Gray originated in the early 1920s in Corvallis, Oregon, where Professor James Dryden at Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University) crossed barred Plymouth Rocks and white Leghorns to develop a superior white-egg layer. Dryden called his hybrid creation the Oregon.

Ironically, crossbreeding was considered to be heresy at that time. The Oregon legislature even debated eliminating the college’s poultry department.

Upon retiring, Dryden moved to Modesto, California, where his son Horace continued a similar breeding program that eventually led to the development of a new breed. Called the California Gray, its introduction to the public came in 1949.

This breed has a single comb, has no bantam counterpart and comes only in a barred pattern that is autosexing (pullets are darker than cockerels). At maturity, a hen’s barring is white and dark gray, a cock’s barring is white and light gray.

The hens lay white-shell eggs and seldom brood.

The California Gray is known for its gentle temperament and outstanding egg production. Now quite rare, this breed is also used primarily to produce California White hybrid layers.

California has no state chicken. The state bird is the California quail.

Delaware

The Delaware breed was developed in the 1940s from silver sports arising from hybrid broilers created by crossing barred Plymouth Rock cocks with New Hampshire hens. George Ellis, owner of the Indian River Hatchery in Ocean View, Delaware, collected some of these sports to breed back to New Hampshire hens….

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Cuba Blocks Internet and Ham Radio. Could It Happen Here?

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by Aden Tate

Author of Zombie Choices and The Faithful Prepper

On July 11, Cuban citizens rallied in the streets to protest food and medicine shortages and electricity outages. The demonstration was one of the biggest since the days of Castro. Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis in decades, along with a resurgence of coronavirus cases. Cuban officials blame the decades-long embargo with the United States for the collapsing economy.

Within two days, the Cuban government began restricting internet access

The internet, basically unavailable until 2008, has only been widely available in Cuba Since July 2019, when the Cuban government began lifting restrictions on internet access. Since that time, Cuba has slowly entered the digital world, with mobile access to the internet becoming available in December 2018.

As Cuba’s citizens protested, many of them pulled out their cellphones to post videos and images across social media platforms. The Cuban government began immediately blocking access to those platforms. This is reminiscent of Arab Spring, when the governments of Egypt, Libya, and Syria completely shut down the internet to quell the protests. Other governments in the Arab world were rumored to have arrested and even executed people for things they posted on the internet. (source)

Reports state the Cuban government partially blames the U.S. for the street protests saying it used social media tools such as Twitter to help organize.

Relatives say the government is keeping them in the dark about family members

Norges Rodríguez: Right now, there are no protests…there is a lot of repression. There are people who are missing, and their families don’t know anything about them…[source]

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) say the majority of those arrested are incommunicado, and the location of some is still unknown. [source]

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed her concerns over the alleged use of excessive force when calling for the release of those detained. “I am very concerned at the alleged use of excessive force against demonstrators in Cuba and the arrest of a large number of people, including several journalists,” Bachelet said. [source]

The internet is not the only thing down in Cuba

Due to the internet outages, likely done to block the flow of information from Cuba, some citizens have turned to what many preppers see as their fallback, ham radio. They’ve been using the 40m ham band to communicate with family members in Florida.

Now, mysteriously, nearly all of the 40m band is…

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EPIC & CDT Amicus Brief Highlights Dangers of Unchecked Government Collection of E-Scooter Location Data

EPIC and the Center for Democracy & Technology have filed an amicus brief supporting Los Angeles residents’ court fight against a city initiative to collect detailed location information on all individual e-scooter trips taken in Los Angeles. The lawsuit is currently on appeal after the trial court dismissed the case because it found no privacy interest in the data. EPIC and CDT’s amicus brief describes how Los Angeles spearheaded a new data collection pipeline called the Mobility Data Specification (or MDS) to standardize the location data that ride share providers collect so that the data can easily be disclosed to governments for analysis—and, potentially, surveillance. EPIC and CDT wrote that MDS has the “power to turn a so-called ‘smart city’ into a surveillance state that is inimical to the Fourth Amendment.” The amicus brief describes how MDS was developed to track any shared mobility vehicle, and that Los Angeles already had plans to expand the program to rideshare data from Uber and Lyft. EPIC and CDT also argued that the city’s policy goals could be achieved without collecting individual trip data, and described how aggregation, differential privacy, and sampling are widely used to analyze mobility data and protect privacy more than bulk disclosure of individualized trip data. EPIC routinely files amicus briefs in cases applying the Fourth Amendment to novel technologies.