Month: March 2022

In a letter sent Monday, EPIC urged members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson questions about key privacy and open government issues she is likely to confront as a justice.

“We urge you to explore her views on government transparency, on Article III standing, and on the interaction of the Fourth Amendment and emerging technologies,” EPIC wrote. “Judge Jackson’s views on these issues could have far-reaching implications for civil liberties, consumer protection, and the future of privacy in the digital area.”

While serving on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Jackson issued scores of decisions in Freedom of Information Act cases, including several rulings in EPIC’s suit for records about the government’s secret use of pen register and trap-and-trace devices to collect call metadata. EPIC urged the committee to ask Judge Jackson about the role of courts in enforcing open government laws and scrutinizing agency decisions to withhold information from the public.

EPIC also advised senators to ask Judge Jackson about the Supreme Court’s recent narrowing of Article III standing doctrine, which increasingly limits Congress’s ability to establish privacy and other rights that individuals can vindicate in court. And EPIC urged the committee to ask Judge Jackson how courts’ interpretations of the Fourth Amendment should adapt to the emergence of new technologies that collect and store vast amounts of personal information.

If confirmed, Judge Jackson will succeed retiring Justice Stephen Breyer and will become the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. EPIC regularly reviews the privacy records of Supreme Court nominees, including Justice Barrett, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kagan, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts.

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Editor’s Note: This interview is from Issue 49 of our print magazine, which will be published on April 12th, 2022. Due to its relevance to current events involving Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, we’re publishing the entire article here before it hits newsstands. History tends to repeat itself, so read on and consider what you can learn from Greg’s accounts of how his family and community survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Chernobyl disaster.

I first met Greg Mihovich while training at Deep Woods Ranch, home to former SEAL and firearms trainer Rich Graham — owner of both Deep Woods Ranch and his training company, Full Spectrum Warrior. Greg and Rich are coauthors of some of FSW’s training material, including their unique Combat Mobility Program, which we’ll showcase in more depth in an upcoming issue.

Photos by Cal Coulthard

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During my time at the ranch, I had an opportunity to sit down with Greg and discuss his background and the experiences that brought him to partnering up with Full Spectrum Warrior. I was quite surprised to learn about the landmark disasters that had tested this soft-spoken man with a calmly commanding presence. His story is not only a Cinderella-slipper fit for the guiding principles of this brand but is also chock full of the realest of real-life lessons about living preparedness as a lifestyle and the risks of complacency.

Growing Up in the Soviet Union

RECOIL OFFGRID: Tell us a little bit about your background and childhood growing up in the USSR.

Greg Mihovich: I was an early ’80s child, born in Minsk — the capital of Belarus. My parents split early, and I was raised by my mother, stepdad, and grandparents on my mom’s side.
My mother was the creator and director of the Center for Esthetic Development, a project she built in 1984. The CED focused on preschool education in speech development, motor learning development, music, drawing, and other age-specific topics. It successfully operated about 12 schools with 400 kids each, aged 4 to 6.

My stepdad was a police officer with 10 years spent in narcotics, 10 years in homicide, and the last five years of his career as a dean of the five-year police university program. Many of the city’s cops were his alumni.

My granddad was a World War II distinguished veteran with four combat crests. Among many other feats, he helped liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp and participated in capturing Berlin. During my childhood, he was retired from the military and worked in the city’s council.

I lived right in the middle of the city and had a great childhood with lots of awesome adventures and a healthy dose of mischief. Thankfully, my generation never knew about cell phones and computers when we were kids. We had lots of places to play and explore — the apartment building playground with tons of climbing and obstacle course equipment; massive parks with plenty of trees and…

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The “Non-Concurring” voters included a number of entities associated with the manned aviation industry or privacy issues, including the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Helicopter Association International (HAI), and Praxis Aerospace Concepts (PACI).

Read more here.

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By Jeramie D. Scott, EPIC Senior Counsel and Director, EPIC Surveillance Oversight Project

Facial recognition is a powerful surveillance technology that can easily be implemented on a mass scale because of the abundance of pictures and videos online and the ubiquitousness of cameras in our society. This ease of implementation is part of the reason facial recognition technology is so dangerous—making misuse an ever-present likelihood.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is no stranger to the misuse of technology, particular facial recognition technology where they have leveraged state DMV databases to run facial recognition searches and have contracted with Clearview AI—a controversial facial recognition platform that has scoured the internet for photos to create a facial recognition database of billions of images. But has ICE used the power of facial recognition technology to track people who, according to the agency, have threatened their agents?

Documents obtained by EPIC through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit suggest they might have. EPIC obtained the following excerpt from an email:

The subject of the email is pretty straightforward about what ICE wants to do with facial recognition, “ICE wants to use facial recognition to track people threatening its agents online.” If ICE ever used facial recognition in this way, it would be a serious abuse of the technology. ICE does not get to just track people that the agency feels threatened by. If the threat is serious, there are other means to address the issue.

This email raises several questions the most pressing of which is whether ICE ever did use facial recognition in this way. The email is between privacy officials within DHS ICE, so this begs the question of how they handled this desire by ICE to use facial recognition to track people who apparently threatened ICE agents. The privacy officials at DHS should release more information on this and be completely transparent on how this issue was handled and whether ICE ever used facial recognition this way.

Unfortunately, it’s not far fetched to think ICE not only used facial recognition technology this way but did so before privacy officials at DHS ever formally reviewed such a use. In fact, the documents obtained by EPIC clearly indicate that ICE was using Clearview before it was assessed by privacy officials. An email obtained by EPIC shows DHS asking to be briefed about the use of Clearview well after ICE had already started using it.

This is not how things are suppose to work. Section 208 of the E-Government Act of 2002 requires federal agencies to complete, review, and publish a privacy impact assessment (PIA) before initiating the collection of personal data or procuring information technology. According to Office of Management and Budget regulations, agencies are suppose to “draft a PIA with sufficient clarity and specificity to demonstrate that the agency fully considered privacy and incorporated appropriate privacy protections from the earliest…

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Last year, I just didn’t have time to till and plant my great big garden. But I still wanted to grow some vegetables for my family, so I tried something new – edible landscaping. Over the winter, I added a bit of compost, rabbit manure, and veggie scraps to the flowerbeds around my house, making them rich and full of organic matter.

In the spring, it was easy to incorporate some herbs and vegetables within easy reach of my kitchen. This type of planting went so well that I can’t wait to expand on the idea, surrounding my house with delicious edible plants that make a beautiful landscape, as well. 

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In this article, we’ll talk about how to create an edible landscape around your home. Then, we’ll talk about what to plant where and what the benefits are to edible landscaping. But first, let’s take a quick look at what edible landscaping really is. 

What is Edible Landscaping?

Edible landscaping takes the traditional ideas of aesthetic landscaping and incorporates edible plants so that your landscape is both functional and beautiful. Creating an edible landscape can be as simple as adding a few perennial herbs to your flowerbeds or as complex as creating an entire food forest in your yard. It’s a great way to grow your own food without having to make a traditional-looking garden. 

There are a lot of benefits to using edible landscaping as opposed to a traditional garden. 

Benefits for Edible Landscaping

• HOA Rules. If you live where there is a housing authority, you might have to abide by specific rules in your neighborhood. If your HOA doesn’t allow gardens, you may be able to incorporate edible landscaping that still meets the HOA requirements. 
• Close to the kitchen. Planting vegetables close to your home instead of a garden puts them in closer proximity to the kitchen, making them easier to access. You might even be able to reach out your window and pluck something.
• Growing your own food. Homegrown food is healthier and has more nutrients than food that has had to travel across the country to get to the grocery store. In addition, edible landscaping makes nutrient-dense food more accessible. 
• Saves money. Edible landscaping saves money on food and on landscaping because vegetables can be both beautiful and nutritious. 
• Incorporates perennials. You can include a lot of perennials into your edible landscaping, such as berry bushes and herbs, for easy-care food plants.
• Secret food. If you’re a prepper, you’ll love edible landscaping because it is less obvious that you’re growing food than if you were to plant a traditional garden. In addition, your vegetable plants can easily blend in with your flowers.

The Best Plants for Your Edible Landscape 

Edible Flowers 

Edible flowers add flavor to salads, teas, and desserts. Some can be used in jellies and preserves, while sunflower seeds are an excellent source of protein, fat, and <a…

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Global supply shocks are historically rare events. All the more extraordinary to have two such shocks in quick succession—the second arriving even before the first has entirely faded away. That is what the world now experiences in the form of the Great Pandemic followed by the Great West-Russia economic war. The most visible symptom of the supply disruption is the sky-high price of energy and a range of other commodities.

What Is the Effect of Sanctions?

The waging of a long and all-out military war usually, if not always, exerts a toll in terms of surging prices. But what about economic war waged through Western sanctions by states not simultaneously engaged in direct military conflict? The laboratory of history for such warfare is small. Indeed, there is no experience with which usefully to compare the West’s economic war against Russia in the present. There are grounds to think that there will be serious long-term price-inflation-fueled damage on the perpetrators. (The consequences of price increases for the country on the receiving end of sanctions is a subject for another day).

Let’s take one step back to consider what is new about the nature of this economic war.

First, it started as a clear threat by the USA and its main European allies. Spelled out in all its menacing detail, albeit with some ambiguity at the start, aimed at deterring a Russian invasion of Ukraine. It failed in that first objective. Both the economic war and the military war are now in a “dig-in” phase. A snapshot of the dominant view at present in the marketplace is that the Russia’s military campaign will reach a “permanent ceasefire stage” long before the effective end of the economic war.

Sanctions Are Very Broad

Second, this economic war’s scope is unbounded. The campaign plan in the present dig-in phase is apparently to “close down” large parts of the world’s seventh- or eighth-largest economy (around the same size as Canada’s). There is no historical parallel. Yes, in the mid- and late 1930s, various sanctions were imposed against Italy, Japan, and Germany by Western powers acting separately. But these sanctions did not prevent Polish troops finding in the German onslaught of September 1939 that most of the German motorized transport had been made by GM and Ford; and they did not stop the Bank of England delivering the Czech holdings of gold in London to the Reichsbank (the central bank of Germany, now the “protector” of Prague) as late as spring 1939.

Much of the World Remains Neutral in Terms of Trade

In considering scope, though, we should recognize that in the West’s economic war against Russia, much of the world is neutral—including China, India, Latin America, and Middle Eastern nations. So what appears initially as a cutoff of trade and financial intermediation might quickly mutate into something more like geographical diversions on a large scale. The media is understandably full of the workarounds which Russia might find, whether front companies in the neutral world; financial institutions…

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Canning dog food

If you do your own canning and have dogs either for working or as pets why not make and can your own dog food. Canning granny has the recipe and the directions for how to do it.

Pamela offered her own advise regarding canned dog food:Canning Homemade Dog Food DIY Recipe

“When I buy a whole chicken to use in making chicken salad or chicken and dumplings, I have, in the past, simply thrown out the little “bag” of “innards”… we don’t eat necks, gizzards, hearts and livers. I got to thinking about this waste, and seeing as we have a new canine member of the family (our 7 year old rescue German Shepherd, Smokey), I started reading up on the nutritional needs of the dog… it seems most (if not all) commercial dog foods contain a LOT more filler ingredients than is really healthy for dogs.”, Pamela said.

This will do a single batch of 6 or so pint jars.

• 3.5 Cups of Meat
• 2 Cups of Rice
• 2-3 Large Cooked Carrots
• Half a bag of Cooked Spinach or a Handful of Cooked Green Beans
• One Boiled Egg still in the shell
• 2-3 TBS of Cider Vinegar
• 1 TBS of Garlic Powder
• 1 Cup of “Meat Stock”

You can also check the below vide to find out more:

Old hippy homesteaders: I used carrots, green beans, zucchini, sweet potato white rice, beef I did not cook the meat, I layered all items in a quart jar and pressured canned for 90 minutes at 14 psi you can use any kind of meat just make sure you know what’s in it and you can make cat food too make sure the items you use are safe for dogs I try to do 50% meat & 50% veggies I use no grains.

Reasons You Might Want to Can Raw Pet Food

• You aren’t comfortable feeding raw but want to know exactly what is in your pet’s food
• To use to transition your pets to raw
• Your friend or pet sitter is not comfortable feeding raw while you are away
• It’s not practical to take raw food while you are traveling
• To include in your disaster evacuation go boxes
• To entice a raw-fed sick cat to eat (cooked food has more aroma than raw)
• It is fit for human consumption

Canning Homemade Dog Food DIY Recipe

 

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Asher’s earth science education methods through The Soil Book nurture a sense of working together to discover solutions in the soil – without always having to have all the answers. Asher wants kids to go from looking down in wonder at all the diverse plant and animal life in the ground to growing up and running city councils that value biodiversity. “Children are the future, yah?” he says.

From rhymes and storytelling of “slippery, spinnyspideynemotodes” to illustrations of mycelium and mushrooms and colouring sections with protozoa and rhizome, The Soil Book is a real-life adventure for kids and adults alike. The soil kit teems with activities from an interactive board game to cards, science photos, soil tests, and teacher’s references. 

The Soil Book engages every learning style just as nature does, for a true and tactile depth of experiential wisdom rooted in childlike learning. 

Asher’s own childlike instinct comes through when asked to be the voice of the soil by Regen Ray. Regen Ray asks him, “If you were to become the soil and embody the energy of our soil and you could give it a voice, what would you tell us all here on Earth?”

Asher happily plays the voice of soil: “I’d say be very humble like me, the soil, where I just let – let it all in, and let it all sort itself out. You know, let’s encourage some biodiversity. Let’s rethink the universe that we live in. Let’s rethink life and empty our minds so that we can let them fill up again with some concepts that might ensure that we’ve got a healthy planet to live on in the future. So, yeah, stay curious. Stay humble. Keep on learning. Keep on digesting. Just like I do, the soil.”

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EPIC has launched the 2022 FOIA Gallery in celebration of Sunshine Week, a week long initiative promoting open government. Since 2001, EPIC has annually published highlights of EPIC’s most significant open government cases and documents obtained through government records requests. This past year was yet again filled with success stories. For example, EPIC was victorious in its ongoing lawsuit against the IRS to obtain President Trump’s tax settlements. A federal court ruled that the IRS must conduct a search and disclose any accepted offers in compromise to EPIC. In another case, a federal court ordered the DOJ to disclose more new material from the Mueller Report, adding to EPIC’s previous wins in EPIC v. DOJ that forced the DOJ to release initially withheld material on three prior occasions. EPIC also forced the DOJ to identify the number of location data requests in several U.S. Attorney’s Offices.

In addition to litigation successes, EPIC FOIA Gallery highlights documents that EPIC obtained such as information about ICE’s use of Clearview AI, 2018 DHS election security briefing material, Google’s 2016-2018 privacy assessment under the Consent Order, and information about Baltimore’s controversial aerial surveillance program.

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Build a Big Box Large Concrete Planter

This step by step tutorial of how to build a big box large concrete planter from inexpensive mostly recycled materials can save you hundreds of dollars. Oh my, have you ever checked into the price of large concrete planter ? Wow, talk about price tag sticker shock which had me quickly scrambling to find a do it yourself project that takes more effort than money !

You won’t be disappointed with this gorgeous must have weather resistant planter.

You can get creative with different shapes of cut cardboard pieces to make indentations.

A few weeks back we shared a few ideas for making an entry more welcoming, in which we included some photos of a concrete planter we made and a promise to follow-up with a how-to.

Photo Source

Build a Big Box Large Concrete Planter

That first planter was just the beginning. I later went on to make counter tops and a tile back-splash from concrete. Recently I made the top for our bathroom vanity with cast concrete.

The cool thing about concrete is that it’ll take whatever shape you pour it into. I don’t remember exactly where I got the idea for this particular shape and form? It may be a copy of one I saw somewhere else. It may be a unique design. I can’t quite remember. This one is essentially a copy of the one I made back then. I improved the build a bit and did a better job creating the form for the cast.

I love sharing this kind of project because it’s one of those kind of things that looks impossible when you first see it, but it doesn’t require advanced skills or special tools. There’s something empowering about tackling a new project like this, and I really hope that someone out there reading this will try their hand at making one (and let us know how it goes for you).

This won’t be an exact step-by-step, but it should be detailed enough that if you decide you want to make one, you can figure it out from my directions. Feel free to ask follow up questions in the comment section if you have any, and we’ll do our best to help out if you plan on trying this. It really is a cool project to do, and unlike many things we tackle it could be done in a weekend.

Suggested Materials:

• 1-2 bags of Quickrete 5000
• Melamine board or plywood
• Wood screws
• 1×1 inch lumber (for toekick reveal)
• 8 L shaped brackets (To hold the inner box together)
• Cardboard
• Foam pipe insulation
• Scrap lumber (for handle on inner box)

Tools:

• Table saw
• Drill
• Hot glue gun

The first thing was to build a form, which requires an outer box (which is the size of the finished planter) and an inner box….

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