Month: March 2023

EPIC, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), and Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) submitted comments last week urging the Federal Communications Commission to improve transparency regarding the privacy practices of broadband providers in the next version of its broadband nutrition labels.

As initially proposed by the FCC, the privacy section of the consumer labels would only contain a link to the broadband provider’s privacy policy. Noting that privacy policies are notoriously lengthy and difficult to understand, and that consumers are unlikely to click through a link to read a privacy policy, EPIC and its partners urged the Commission to require providers to, directly in the label itself, explain simply to consumers whether (1) more information is collected or used about consumers than is necessary to provide the service the consumer is purchasing, (2) consumer data is shared with third parties, and (3) consumers may opt out of these data practices.

The three organizations also recommended that the FCC call attention to use of data to create behavioral profiles, identified a possible gap in transparency for providers who sell white label access to another provider’s network, and argued in support of the Commission’s legal authority to implement these privacy-protective improvements.

EPIC has long advocated for consumer privacy protections in broadband services and regularly files comments with the FCC.

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Before European settlers came to the Americas, much of North America was dominated by larger herds of bison.  While exact numbers are not known, estimates for the pre-1800 bison population range from 20 to 60 million.  Today there are only about 500,000.

Bison were a critical part of the grassland ecosystem.  They’re grazing patterns and manure helped to keep the soil rich and fertile.  Without the bison, America’s grasslands are slowly dying.

However, ecologists and ranchers have come together to find a solution.

Holistic Management

With careful, planned grazing, domesticated cattle can be used to mimic the patterns of bison to restore the Great Plains.

Churchill says he learned these techniques 20 years ago from Allan Savory, who advocates “holistic planned grazing.” Today, the Savory Institute trains ranchers around the globe to use holistic planned grazing to achieve their social and economic priorities. Savory Institute’s Byron Shelton says a key is knowing when to move animals on and off of grass.
 
“Once it’s bitten, if it starts to regrow, we move the animals away until it has regrown,” he esays. “That way we have the roots being the strongest they can to hold soil, hold the water, make the ecosystem function … and to make it viably profitable to have people who make a living and have healthy communities.”

Click here to learn more about holistic management.

It may seem counter-intuitive, since for so long we’ve been told that cattle cause overgrazing and desertification.  But we know it’s possible for larger herds of grazing animals to live on the grasslands, because 300 years ago millions of bison, elk, deer, and antelope lived sustainably on the Great Plains.  While it would be great to get the wild herds back, if we can’t do that we should at least do our best with cattle and holistic management.

What are your thoughts on holistic management?  Can cattle really be used to heal the grasslands?  Let us know in the comments.

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You have to have food. There’s no way around it. Once your stores of Mountain House and Piggly Wiggly canned vegetables run out, you’re going to have to find means of putting food on the table. If you’re in China, you spread the word about cannibalism. People in post-World War 2 Europe, turned to prostitution for a single can of food.

Lack of food makes people do stupid stuff.

Hunting is an obvious means of putting food on the table, but it’s often not as simple as it sounds. I spent all of the last deer season without ever seeing a single stupid deer. How many mornings did I freeze my butt off sitting on a log staring off into the distance only to see squirrel after squirrel?

Though it’s typically highly illegal to hunt many animals at night (there are exceptions, and I suppose I’m mainly thinking about deer), if we’re looking at a post-collapse, WROL environment, that’s not really an issue that you have to think about. And this being the case, I think that there is a case that can be made for why you would want to hunt at night and how night vision can help.

Let’s take a look…

Deer

I do think that Jericho had it right when they showed how collapse led to every bubba out there putting venison on the table, ultimately leading to a collapse in the white-tail deer population. However, you want to be that bubba.

Anybody with hostas can tell you how deer come out late in the night to eat everything you’ve just planted the day prior. Why? Because deer are partially nocturnal. Studies show that whitetail deer tend to graze in open fields until around midnight, bed down in the woods for a few hours, and then wake up and resume grazing a few hours before sunlight – only this time in “upper woodlands.”

There are some geographical and seasonal variations to this pattern, but more or less, that seems to be the general rule of thumb. So this tells you where to find them during this time, at least. Where I think this proves of benefit is that it eliminates your having to “waste” daylight during a WROL situation hunting when you could be using that daylight to complete other daily household chores, such as splitting wood, working a garden, etc.

With the ability to see at night, you could then set up shop on the opposite side of a large field and wait. Where you…

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Americans faces a data privacy crisis. For more than two decades, without any meaningful restrictions on their business practices, powerful technology companies have built systems that invade our private lives, spy on our families, and gather the most intimate details about us for profit. Through a vast, opaque system of databases and algorithms, we are profiled and sorted into winners and losers based on data about our health, finances, location, gender, race, and other personal characteristics and habits. 

Last year, in a significant step towards changing these harmful business practices, bipartisan leaders on the House Energy & Commerce Committee and Senate Commerce Committee proposed the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA). The bill went through extensive negotiations between members of Congress of both parties, industry, civil rights groups, and consumer protection and privacy groups. ADPPA received overwhelming bipartisan support in the House Energy & Commerce Committee, where it was favorably approved on a 53-2 vote. 

Unfortunately, Congress failed to enact ADPPA last session, but state legislators can now take advantage of the outcome of those negotiations by modeling a state bill on the bipartisan consensus language in ADPPA. EPIC has crafted the State Data Privacy and Protection Act to provide that opportunity. 

The fact is that many of the “privacy” bills being considered (or even enacted) by state legislatures in recent years were drafted by Amazon, Microsoft, and other industry players who benefit from harmful commercial surveillance. As investigative journalists at the Markup found:

Through lobbying records, recordings of public testimony, and interviews with lawmakers, The Markup found direct links between industry lobbying efforts and the proliferation of these tech-friendly provisions in Connecticut, Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington. And in Texas, industry pressure has shaped an even weaker bill.

The Markup, Big Tech Is Pushing States to Pass Privacy Laws, and Yes, You Should Be Suspicious (2021)

And Reuters found that “[i]n recent years, Amazon.com Inc has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states, as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers.” They did this not only by opposing strong privacy bills, but by pushing weak ones:

In Virginia, the company boosted political donations tenfold over four years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself drafted.

Reuters, Amazon wages secret war on Americans’ privacy, documents show (2021)

While industry complains to Congress of a “50 state patchwork” of state privacy laws, they are quietly pushing their version of what a “privacy” law should look like in an increasing number of states. These laws allow Big Tech to continue on conducting business as usual – collecting endless amounts of personal data and using it in ways that defy consumers’ expectations. They simply allow individuals to access, correct, and delete personal data about them, or opt-out of certain uses of data – if they have the time and expertise to do so, which is not often the case. On their own, these aren’t…

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