Crime and Punishment

[Farm Boy]

I think you'd have to put in some sort of charging station with like mechanically loaded battery packs to change out, but then you'd need to put down gravel wherever you drive to change out your charge.

 

[Samson]

I think you'd have to put in some sort of charging station with like mechanically loaded battery packs to change out, but then you'd need to put down gravel wherever you drive to change out your charge.

That makes me think. I do not really know the size of your fields, you if you could run a 30 amp cable along the fence lines such that you had an outlet every say mile in any direction. Then you had a small trailer with the charging kit, mechanical loader and spare batteries. You would drive the trailer out with you in the morning, put it in the middle of your days work plugged in and return to it a few times over the day. You could have something in the trailer to keep your lunch hot or cold.

 

[Farm Boy]

It'd more be that you need batteries charged inside and out of the weather, so probably just in a barn to avoid buying a trailer. Then whatever you need to load the batteries. If you're doing it 3 - 4 times a day and they're heavy, that probably needs a forklift. Then, you can drive the tractor in to swap batteries. Which you're probably going to do, because fieldwork leaves things very bumpy out where you're working. Probably will want a gravel pad to maneuver on, otherwise that amount of repetitive changeouts on the same dirt in the same space will chew it into mud. Just thinking minimalistic.

Edit: I mean, I skipped it, but I really don't want to wire a fencerow. Probably have to bury the darn thing, deep enough to not accidentally dig it up, then everywhere there's a junction stuff is going to grow into it fall into it chew into it and freeze into it. Bleh.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Electric ain't there yet. You need one of those devices Marty McFly had in Back to the Future 2? where he could just stuff any old thing into it for fuel.

 

[Samson]

US judge annuls major oil lease sale over climate effect

Court decision casts uncertainty over the future of offshore drilling in a significant win for climate campaigners.

A US judge invalidated a major oil-and-gas lease sale saying the government failed to account for its climate change effect, in a significant win for environment advocates.
The decision cast uncertainty over the future of the US federal offshore drilling programme, which has been a chief source of public revenue for decades but also drawn the ire of activists concerned about its effect on the environment and contribution to global warming.

In the decision, Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled to vacate the lease, which offered about 80 million offshore acres (37.4 million hectares) in the Gulf of Mexico in an auction last November – the largest in US history.

The move drew criticism after the Biden administration pledged to move away from fossil fuels in the fight against climate change.

The sale generated more than $190m, the highest since 2019, on 1.7 million acres sold. It drew bids from US oil majors including Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp.

Thursday’s decision came after the environmental group Earthjustice challenged the sale on behalf of four other green groups, arguing US President Joe Biden’s interior department was relying on a years-old environmental analysis that did not accurately consider greenhouse gas emissions that would result from development of the blocks.

Contreras agreed, faulting the administration for excluding foreign consumption from its greenhouse gas emissions analysis and for ignoring the latest science on the role of oil-and-gas development in global warming.​

 

[Samson]

Hungarian journalists targeted with Pegasus spyware to sue state

Hungarian journalists targeted with Pegasus spyware plan to take legal action against the Hungarian state and the Israeli company NSO, which manufactures the tool.

The Pegasus Project, a consortium of news outlets including the Guardian, revealed last summer that forensic analysis of mobile devices showed that a number of journalists in the country had been targeted with Pegasus.

At the time, the Hungarian government deflected questions about whether it had used Pegasus to spy on the named individuals, and refused to confirm whether it had acquired the spyware. However, in November a senior government official acknowledged for the first time that Hungary had indeed acquired Pegasus.

Now the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) has announced it will launch legal action on behalf of six clients: Brigitta Csikász, Dávid Dercsényi, Dániel Németh and Szabolcs Panyi, all journalists; Adrien Beauduin, a Belgian-Canadian PhD student and activist; and a sixth person who requested anonymity.

The HCLU will pursue various legal avenues, including complaints to the ministers overseeing the secret services in Hungary, requests to the security services to divulge information, and legal action in the courts.

The HCLU and Eitay Mack, an Israeli lawyer, will also file a demand to the Israeli attorney general asking for a criminal case to be opened against NSO in Israel and the Israeli officials who approved the sale to Viktor Orbán’s government.​

 

[Samson]

The whole of the internet is illegal

Not actually the whole, but the 99% that uses google fonts (some exaggeration may be present). It seems that CFC does not, but (tries to) get their fonts from https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com which may have the same problem.

Earlier this month, a German court fined an unidentified website €100 ($110, £84) for violating EU privacy law by importing a Google-hosted web font.

The decision, by Landgericht München's third civil chamber in Munich, found that the website, by including Google-Fonts-hosted font on its pages, passed the unidentified plaintiff's IP address to Google without authorization and without a legitimate reason for doing so. And that violates Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Google Fonts is widely deployed – the Google Fonts API is used by about 50m websites. The API allows websites to style text with Google Fonts stored on remote servers – Google's or a CDN's – that get fetched as the page loads. Google Fonts can be self-hosted to avoid running afoul of EU rules and the ruling explicitly cites this possibility to assert that relying on Google-hosted Google Fonts is not defensible under the law.​

 

[Samson]

The GDPR came into effect in 2018, I guess it takes that long for court cases to get through the system. This one seems many orders of magnitude bigger, challenging the whole advertising business model:

All data collected about users via ad-consent popup system must be deleted

All data collected through the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) must now be deleted by the 1,000+ firms that pay international digital marketing and advertising association IAB Europe to use it. This includes Google's, Amazon's and Microsoft's online advertising businesses.

This is according to a decision handed down today by the Belgian data protection authority [PDF] finding that the "consent solution" fails to properly request consent, and relies on a lawful basis (legitimate interest) that is not permissible because of the severe risk posed by the online advertising tracking under Article 5(1)a, and Article 6 of the GDPR.

The DP watchdog also cited additional GDPR breaches, namely that: consent was not "properly requested"; there was not enough "transparency about what will happen to people's data (articles 12, 13, and 14)"; there was a failure to "implement measures" to ensure data processing was compliant with the GDPR (article 24); and that IAB failed to respect the requirement for "data protection by design" (article 25).

TCF is a "consent solution" designed to help online ad-slingers to show they comply with the EU's General Data Protection Directive (GDPR) and ePrivacy Directive when they process personal data or accessing and store information on a user's device. Broadly, this includes cookies, ads IDs, ways to identify users' devices and more. The data is then sold via real-time bidding (RTB), which automatically matches adverts with the viewers whom advertisers want to reach (based on data collected).

The litigation chamber ruled:

[A]ny personal data collected so far by means of a TC String in the context of the globally scoped consents, which is no longer supported by IAB Europe, shall be deleted without undue delay by the defendant. In addition, the Litigation Chamber orders the defendant to prohibit the use of legitimate interest as a legal ground for processing by the organisations participating in TCF in its current format, via its terms of use.
​

I guess this means we can all make a SAR to them before they delete the data. Their contact email is communication@iabeurope.eu if you want to send one off.

Also interesting is that the data seems to show it is not needed. Shockingly it seems that advertising things people are looking at is more profitable than advertising things people looked at last week:

Ryan has previously touted the benefits of contextual targeting, such as that used by privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo, citing a study showing a Dutch national broadcaster got more ad revenue when it stopped tracking users than it had netted when it followed them.​

 

[Samson]

Sins of the father? Children in Syrian ISIL prison living in dire conditions

Hundreds of children held in a prison in Syria who witnessed a bloody 10-day battle between US-backed Kurdish fighters and ISIL (ISIS) are living in “incredibly precarious” conditions and they should not have been there in the first place, the UN says.

The children’s agency UNICEF added it is ready to support a new safe place in Syria’s northeast to take care of the most vulnerable children, some of whom are as young as 12. Its statement on Sunday came a day after a visit by one of its teams to the prison in the northeastern city of Hassakeh.

UNICEF members said after visiting children at the prison that they had been living in dire conditions for years, and in January “witnessed and survived heightened violence” in and around the facility.

More than 3,000 inmates, of whom more than 600 are children, are held at the Hassakeh jail.

While boys were separated from adults, the groups mixed when ISIL fighters stormed the prison in a jailbreak on January 20. Some inmates escaped, while others including child detainees were taken hostage in the ensuing battle.

“Children should never be in detention due to association with armed groups,” Nylund said. “Children associated with and recruited by armed groups should always be treated as victims of conflict.”

International rights groups, including Save the Children and Human Rights Watch, previously said about 700 boys were held in the jail before the operation to remove the ISIL attackers.

Aged between 12 and 18, the children include many who had adult relatives inside the prison and were transferred from nearby displacement camps housing thousands of child fighters.

Kurdish forces take prison

At a press conference on January 31, the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had retaken control of the prison and confirmed that 77 prison employees, 40 Kurdish fighters, and four civilians were killed, alongside 374 ISIL detainees and attackers.

Kurdish authorities maintain no prisoners escaped, but the UK-based watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday said hundreds of ISIL members had gotten away.
​

 

[Samson]

After 20 years, Indonesia’s ExxonMobil accusers eye day in court

John Doe can still recall the moment his alleged torturers made him believe he would never see his family again.

It was in 2000 in Aceh Province, Indonesia, following his alleged capture by members of the Indonesian military working at the nearby ExxonMobil gas plant.

“They tied me up in a crucifix position and electrocuted me,” Doe, who uses a pseudonym to protect his identity, told Al Jazeera. “I just kept praying to God in my heart. I thought: ‘I’m going to die today.’”

Originally filed in 2001 in the District Court for the District of Columbia, John Doe v ExxonMobil alleges that the gas and oil giant is responsible for a litany of human rights abuses at its Aceh plant in the early 2000s, including battery, sexual assault, rape and wrongful deaths.

“I filed our human rights case against ExxonMobil in 2001 for its use of a brutal private military to protect its natural gas liquefaction facilities in Aceh, Indonesia,” human rights lawyer Terry Collingsworth told Al Jazeera.

“Exxon’s soldiers killed and tortured my clients and many others, all innocent civilians who lived near the Exxon facilities.”

Mobil Oil Indonesia, which was bought by Exxon in 1999 to become ExxonMobil Corporation, first moved into the region in the early 1970s after discovering natural gas deposits near the town of Lhoksukon. By the late 1990s, the company was generating more than $1bn in annual revenues.

At the same time, Aceh was in the grip of a 20-year civil war between the national government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM). From the 1980s through to the early 2000s, the Indonesian military regularly clashed with the separatists, prompting ExxonMobil to contract Indonesian soldiers to guard its staff and operations at its facilities.

The 11 plaintiffs in John Doe v ExxonMobil allege that the soldiers did much more than just guard ExxonMobil’s interests, and instead regularly conducted raids during which they would round up villagers and torture them into admitting they were separatists, sometimes even bringing them onto ExxonMobil property to conduct violent interrogations.

“The two key points of this case are liability and foreseeability. The plaintiffs will have to show that it was more likely than not that the individuals in question worked for ExxonMobil and that it was more likely than not that ExxonMobil knew or should have known the risks posed by the military personnel in that particular area to the civilian population,” Paradis, who is not involved in the case, added.

In court documents, ExxonMobil has claimed it was not aware of any human rights violations at the time, and cannot be held responsible for any abuses that did occur as it did not order or authorise them.

“Exxon’s lawyers have used a scorched earth approach designed to delay the case and make it as expensive as possible for us to achieve justice for our clients.”

At various points throughout the litigation, ExxonMobil has sought to cast doubt on the veracity of the plaintiffs’ claims, even going as far as accusing their counsel of having bribed them with gifts in order to get them to testify.
​

 

[Birdjaguar]

The parents have been charged with involuntary manslaughter

Mother of Michigan school shooting suspect pleaded to keep her job shortly after the shooting, boss says
(CNN)Shortly after learning that her 15-year-old son had shot fellow students at his Michigan high school, Jennifer Crumbley sent a text message to her boss at the real estate company where she worked as a marketing director.

"I need my job," she wrote to Andrew Smith. "Please don't judge me for what my son did." The text took Smith by surprise given the tragic news. "I thought she would be more worried about what was going on," he said.
He texted her a response that did not address her job status: "I can't even begin to understand what you're going thru. I'm praying for you. I asked Carolyn to txt you some attorney recommendations."

Smith testified about that November 30 text exchange in a Michigan courtroom Tuesday during a preliminary hearing for Jennifer and James Crumbley, who are accused of

giving their son a firearm and ignoring clear warning signs that he was a threat to others.
The parents have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of involuntary manslaughter for their actions -- or lack thereof -- leading up to the shooting. They were arrested days after the shooting in a Detroit warehouse following a manhunt after they failed to come to court for their initial arraignment.



Prosecutor lays out disturbing timeline in explaining why school shooting suspect's parents were charged

For prosecutors, the text exchange fits their broad argument that the parents were negligent and unconcerned about others. Yet Jennifer Crumbley's defense attorney argued that she was the breadwinner in the family and was, appropriately, concerned about money to pay for an attorney. The hearing comes more than two months after their son, Ethan Crumbley, opened fire with a 9mm handgun at Oxford High School, about 40 miles north of Detroit, killing four students and injuring seven people. He remains jailed on charges including terrorism causing death and four counts of murder. He has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys have filed notice they plan to use an insanity defense at trial.

In court Tuesday, Jennifer and James Crumbley sat on opposite ends of the defense table, with two lawyers in between. Both wore jailhouse uniforms and were kept in shackles that, one attorney said, made it difficult for them to take notes during the hearing.
The preliminary hearing is being held before a judge who will determine whether the case should proceed to trial. The hearing is expected to last multiple days.

The first two witnesses in the preliminary hearing were Smith, the former boss, and Kira Pennock, the owner of a horse farm that the parents frequented. Both showed the court a series of messages with Jennifer Crumbley in which she discussed her actions and emotions as the horrific day unfolded. Pennock testified first on Tuesday and reviewed about 28 pages of Facebook messages with Jennifer Crumbley. The Crumbley parents owned two horses at the barn and had a riding lesson scheduled for the day of the shooting, she said.
Jennifer Crumbley messaged Pennock to say her son was having a rough time and sent her a digital copy of a violent drawing he made on a homework assignment in school depicting a shooting. The drawing also had the phrases "the thoughts won't stop. help me," "blood everywhere," "my life is useless" and "the world is dead," authorities have previously said. "I was alarmed. I thought that was not normal," Pennock said. "It didn't really seem like something that a kid would do on a test in school."
Pennock later heard there had been a school shooting and reached out to Jennifer Crumbley to see if she was OK. Pennock testified that Crumbley responded later that day saying, "I need to sell my horses."

"My son ruined so many lives today," Crumbley wrote in another message.
"This doesn't even remotely make me think this is your fault," Pennock responded.
"I wish we had warnings something (sic). He's a good kid they made a terrible decision," the mother wrote. Smith, the former boss, took the stand midday Tuesday and said he received a text from Jennifer Crumbley on November 30 that she had to go to her son's school to deal with the violent drawing. Later that day, after she had returned to the office, he heard her screaming down the hallway, he testified. She said there was an active shooter at her child's school and she had to go.
He then got a call from her saying that their gun was missing.

"The gun is gone and so are the bullets," Jennifer Crumbley texted Smith.
"I'm praying everything is ok!" he replied.
"Omg Andy he's going to kill himself he must be the shooter," she wrote. "I need a lawyer at a substation with police."
The next text from Jennifer said, "Ethan did it."
Smith, who didn't reply to those texts, testified that his reaction was "complete shock." She later sent him the text about her job status and wrote, "they are taking my cell phone."

Crumbley spoke about horses more than her son, coworkers say. Two of Jennifer Crumbley's former co-workers also testified Tuesday that she spoke about her horses more often than she talked about her son. Kathy Poliquin, an HR director at the company where Crumbley used to work, said they never talked about her son getting medical attention, but "a few times she mentioned the horse was sick." When Crumbley messaged her about losing her job, Poliquin told her not to worry about it. A senior member of the company said she would be on administrative leave for a few weeks.

Shannon Smith, Jennifer Crumbley's attorney, noted that her client mainly spoke to Poliquin about work-related matters. She said Crumbley needed information from her so she could get money for a lawyer and that Jennifer was trying to get a loan so she needed check stubs. Amanda Holland, an administrative assistant at the company, testified Tuesday that Crumbley also spoke about her marital issues and a temporary separation from her husband. Holland said Jennifer didn't talk about her son very often, but said Jennifer once voiced her concerns about Ethan being lonely after a friend moved away. "She was concerned that he would be lonely. It was his main friend. She was concerned that he would be alone," Holland said. Holland also said Jennifer spoke often about her horses and that Jennifer told her she was going to the barn "almost every day."

Father called 911 after noticing missing gun
Oakland County Sheriff's Office Det. Edward Wagrowski, who works in the computer crimes unit, testified about social media accounts, call logs and text messages between the three Crumbleys.
On the day of the shooting, Wagrowski confirmed that Jennifer Crumbley sent her husband a copy of their son's violent drawing with the text, "Call now EMERGENCY."
"My God WTH," he wrote.
After some back and forth, Jennifer Crumbley wrote, "I'm very concerned." The parents went to school for a meeting with officials that lasted about 13 minutes, according to surveillance video.



Michigan shooting suspect's parents willfully disregarded signs that their son was a threat, prosecutors say

In court, prosecutor Marc Keast played a 911 call made by James Crumbley after learning about the shooting and realizing his gun was missing. "I have a missing gun at my house. I need an officer to come," he said. "I think my son took the gun. I don't know if it's him. I'm freaking out." Attorneys also played a voicemail from Oxford High School to Jennifer Crumbley saying that her son had been looking at bullets on his phone in class.
She then texted her son about the incident. "Seriosuly?? Looking up bullets in school??" she wrote. "oh yeah," he responded. "it was in first hour. All I did was look up a certain caliber because I was curious. It was on my phone completely harmless."
He said this wasn't anything to get in trouble about and his mother agreed.
"Lol I'm not mad you have to learn not to get caught," she said.

 

[Samson]

Farmer sentenced after walker killed by cattle

The couple were accompanied by two border terriers. The couple were attacked by cattle that were grazing in the field at the time with calves at foot. The cattle attacked the 83-year-old man who was trampled and pronounced dead at the scene. His wife sustained serious injuries.

Speaking after the hearing Health and Safety Executive inspector Julian Franklin said: “A number of measures could have been taken to safeguard walkers using the path, while cattle and calves were grazing in that field.

“Firstly, not using that field for cattle and calves. Most farmers will have other groups of stock that can graze fields containing rights of way, so can reduce the risk of incidents by putting sheep in them, or they could take fodder crops from them. Cattle with calves can be put in fields without rights of way, away from members of the public, or can be segregated from walkers.
​

I think this is harsh. I am making this decision based on one short new article, but:

• The only opinion they present is not using that field for cattle. They suggest "putting sheep in them", but is he also a sheep farmer? They suggest "take fodder crops from them" but is that practical, what is the soil like on this field, are they grazing cattle to fertilise the field so they can grow fodder on it next year? If a footpath across a field means you cannot put stock on it that has a big effect on many farmers, and it not the instructions given by the state.
  
• One of the first things I learnt about walking through any stock is not to walk between a mother and their child. Using this advice I have never obviously been at risk while walking through stock. My suspicion is that the victim here did not know how to approach a field of cows.

 

[Farm Boy]

Our rights-of-way are usually not so generous. They would have generally been trespassing and mostly liable for their own harm, I think. But there are places with rights of way next to fields, I have no idea how we handle that here, and that seems like the sort of thing that is going to change at least by state if not county/city/township/whatever. Then again, if it is a minor that is trespassing and they manage to mangle themselves on flat ground, our attractive nuisance laws can be oddly "you're just screwed."

 

[Sommerswerd]

Animals... wild or "domesticated", don't gaf about your rights, Constitutional or otherwise.

People get reminded of this... from time to time.

As an aside... its a little ironic for us humans to have any expectation that the animals we are imprisoning/enslaving, and/or forcibly taking their milk, eggs, offspring, etc., all for the purposes of killing, and eating... wouldn't have the temerity to kill one of us every once in a while.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Farmer sentenced after walker killed by cattle

The couple were accompanied by two border terriers. The couple were attacked by cattle that were grazing in the field at the time with calves at foot. The cattle attacked the 83-year-old man who was trampled and pronounced dead at the scene. His wife sustained serious injuries.

Speaking after the hearing Health and Safety Executive inspector Julian Franklin said: “A number of measures could have been taken to safeguard walkers using the path, while cattle and calves were grazing in that field.

“Firstly, not using that field for cattle and calves. Most farmers will have other groups of stock that can graze fields containing rights of way, so can reduce the risk of incidents by putting sheep in them, or they could take fodder crops from them. Cattle with calves can be put in fields without rights of way, away from members of the public, or can be segregated from walkers.
​

I think this is harsh. I am making this decision based on one short new article, but:

• The only opinion they present is not using that field for cattle. They suggest "putting sheep in them", but is he also a sheep farmer? They suggest "take fodder crops from them" but is that practical, what is the soil like on this field, are they grazing cattle to fertilise the field so they can grow fodder on it next year? If a footpath across a field means you cannot put stock on it that has a big effect on many farmers, and it not the instructions given by the state.
  
• One of the first things I learnt about walking through any stock is not to walk between a mother and their child. Using this advice I have never obviously been at risk while walking through stock. My suspicion is that the victim here did not know how to approach a field of cows.

The farmer pleaded guilty.
I'd want to know more before rushing to judgement. I wouldn't assume the court did.
Had this farmer a history with regard to people using the right of way? Did he have other fields where the cows with calves could have been pastured?

 

[RobAnybody]

My suspicion is that the victim here did not know how to approach a field of cows.

I don't in any way dispute your overall point, but... is this something people are supposed to know?

 

[Samson]

I don't in any way dispute your overall point, but... is this something people are supposed to know?

I am not sure exactly what "supposed" means in this context, but it was something my parents drummed into me, and if you do not then this is likely to happen to you. Thinking about it I have not seen a herd of cows on any of the footpaths I use any time in recent memory, but it used to be very common.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Most property around here have a thing called a fence.

Stops cows from wandering off their property (especially onto roadways...), and people wandering onto their property and intentionally or unintentionally interacting with the animals.

 

[Samson]

Most property around here have a thing called a fence.

Stops cows from wandering off their property (especially onto roadways...), and people wandering onto their property and intentionally or unintentionally interacting with the animals.

In the UK we have a large network of footpaths that frequently go through fields. It is impractical to fence them off from the rest of the field.

 

[AmazonQueen]

In the UK we have a large network of footpaths that frequently go through fields. It is impractical to fence them off from the rest of the field.

Although landowners have frequently placed obstacles to try and stop the public from using their rights of way.