Crystal Huff (they/them)

Trump and the Coronavirus I wrote a lot about the coverage of Trump’s response to the pandemic, and here is what was clear all along: He had no real plan to restore the country to health other than to peddle false hope, predict a quick end, adopt fake deadlines and shift the blame to others. The most urgent need was to test, test, test, and either he didn’t get it or he didn’t want to know the results because they would “look bad”. The media blew its coverage by letting political reporters lead instead of health and science reporters. Political reporters paid way too much attention to whatever Trump said, such that whatever it was made headlines. They let Trump set the agenda instead of letting knowledgeable people do it. Political reporters also gave Trump way too much credit for trying. They covered up for his incoherence, ignorance, cluelessness, gaslighting, and yes, just plain stupidity. They failed to properly exploit their rare access to him by confronting him with facts and piercing his bubble. They remained complacent in the face of a massive death toll, instead of relentlessly demanding more forceful action.

History repeats itself. Remember how devastatingly incompetent Trump was during Covid? How he had no plan? And how news outlets didn’t call him on it? Let me refresh your memory: presswatchers.org/category/tru...

I do have another thought. This is the second finance committee meeting in which there have been police grants related to DHS and UASI before them, and only 2 days prior to the general city council voting on the items.

Idk if it's intentionally nefarious, but I do not love having committee […]

On the video call, tensions rose. At one point, Lidia Morawska, a revered atmospheric physicist who had arranged the meeting, tried to explain how far infectious particles of different sizes could potentially travel. One of the WHO experts abruptly cut her off, telling her she was wrong, Marr recalls. His rudeness shocked her. “You just don’t argue with Lidia about physics,” she says. Morawska had spent more than two decades advising a different branch of the WHO on the impacts of air pollution. When it came to flecks of soot and ash belched out by smokestacks and tailpipes, the organization readily accepted the physics she was describing—that particles of many sizes can hang aloft, travel far, and be inhaled. Now, though, the WHO’s advisers seemed to be saying those same laws didn’t apply to virus-laced respiratory particles. To them, the word airborne only applied to particles smaller than 5 microns. Trapped in their group-specific jargon, the two camps on Zoom literally couldn’t understand one another.

Happy International Women's Day!

A reminder that this specific screwup has now killed ~25 million people.

A world that allows an influential, entitled, ignorant man to just shout down a smarter and more knowledgeable woman 👉can literally kill you.👈

www.wired.com/story/the-te...

Mmmm, yes, very deep, much philosophical wow, let me counter with:

The people building concentration camps will always be my enemy

It sounds like these are literally the funds that they would use to buy the masked helmets and the shields that our police would wear when they form ranks against a protest.

Literally that money.

58/?

I am too disgusted with this meeting to continue now. I'll rewatch the meeting later when I can watch it on double speed. I'm gonna go throw up, and concentrate on my homework, and leave this fucking farce. Sorry, folks. What a fucking time. Hate this for us.

The police say "We're not going to outrun AI. This is the trend in the industry, and all of our tools and resources are being built out this way."

We're so fucking fucked. So utterly, absolutely fucked. We've handed over the writing, analysis, and enforcement of the law to the torment nexus.

50/?

Now they're laying the cop AI software onto the table to recommend for approval at the end of this meeting.

So glad we're willing to reject money from DHS in these troubling times? No, wait, we're (again) not willing to reject DHS money, and we will suffer the consequences. Coooooooool.

Strezo is talking about rape victims now. So fun, to see my experiences leveraged for an argument I fundamentally, vehemently disagree with.

The councilors have gotten some written responses to questions they submitted to the cops about GreyKey and AI software in the police dept. Sure wish they were public records, easily downloaded from the city website. I'm not finding them.

Yeah, but this is the most recent surveillance tech report I could find on GreyKey, from 2021 (Curtatone's admin).
https://somervillema.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6766276&GUID=6B0E7DEF-387E-41F2-8E03-4037B0C3D028&Options=&Search=

@somershade.bsky.social

Chris Dwan (he/him) (@somershade.bsky.social) The cops have had GrayKey for two years and have done 58 digital examinations in that time. Most of those were violent offenses - 16 were sexual assaults or rapes. I don't type fast enough to catch the other numbers that he rattled off. 43/?

Again, Dwan has more of the details on this meeting. (I am really supposed to be getting my homework done tonight, god dammit, although that's not going well right now.)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xkngkuljerb2mnflvfdolyro/post/3mgqj7p3uys2r

The most recent surveillance tech report on GreyKey that I can find to city council is from 2021, submitted by Mayor Curtatone.

This detective is saying they have been using GreyKey extensively in the past 2 years.

This is the most recent one I can find in search […]

"We primarily use GreyKey to access locked mobile phones. We've had GreyKey for 2 years, and we've used it 58 times."

I feel like I remember councilors assuring me last week that city council gets official reports when surveillance tech is used! @somershade.bsky.social am I somehow misremembering?

Cool, and now we're moving on to the item about GreyKey, Somerville PD's proposal to pay for (continue paying for??) DHS software to unlock digital evidence in phones.

Detective Schneider, now speaking, says they've been doing this over the past 2 years? This is NOT something I've seen […]

Coming back from recess now. The clerk is gonna redact the email thread and then forward it to the committee members (which does not actually provide these documents to the public on the public record, to be clear!). Laying this item on the table for picking back up later in this meeting […]

Last week, all but one city councilor voted to take grant money from DHS and use it to install surveillance cameras at the fire dept: https://somervillema.granicus.com/player/clip/2783?view_id=1&meta_id=154744&redirect=true

I would just like to see people VOTE as though they have to align their […]

I would just like to see our city willing to put our money where our mouth is.

Last month, every city councilor signed onto an item saying that the 4th amendment is super important. That civil liberties are super important. This item was originally written by Councilor Hardt […]

We are in recess. As several people have texted me, this meeting is a HOT MESS. I blame Strezo, personally.

Hahahaha, and now the clerk of the meeting says that she was reading from an email exchange that wasn't public, and she doesn't want to trample on the councilor's privacy by sharing the email with the committee (and the public). So Strezo's suggestion to forward the emails and then vote, because […]

Strezo is also attempting to drive the committee despite not being the chair. Good lord. She wants them to take a vote NOW.

Strezo now says that emails to the council are public record, so that should satisfy people.

COME ON. Getting emails from the city council to my inbox is hard, actually. WTF.

Jon Link says that wouldn't satisfy him, and he'd like the writing to be in the public record so that the public can also review the documents.

Strezo suggests that we take a quick recess while the cops email everything in writing, and then come back to committee to be able to vote.

UH. COOL.

Oh, and now we are getting some responses to questions that were asked earlier, which now Chief Benford is really certain of? But he wasn't sure 30 minutes ago.

It's now our belief that there's no data sharing with the federal government. Even though the grant specifically requires that sharing […]

Strezo argues that everyone on this committee signed up to make decisions and they should decide things.

Wheeler says they're also in charge of assessing the situation, when there are tradeoffs.

Oh, and Chief Bedford says there are cops watching this meeting "on their personal time" and are […]

Chief Benson is concerned that we're approaching the warm season and we wouldn't want to deprive children of basketball games with the police.

Officer Wisdom (in the SPD) says they have until Nov 30th to expend the grant if it's accepted.

Seems like that's not time-urgent on the scale of days […]

Hardt would like to speak on the motion, and says that she "wouldn't mind discharging without a recommendation." She also says this program "obviously has a lot of benefits." But says she "wouldn't mind more time."

So that's 3 likely votes to discharge without a recommendation. But we are […]

FUCK YEAH. Jon Link points out that there's no bigger disenfranchisement than losing your liberty or your life.

Strezo hates that, and feels disrespected.

And now Strezo feels accused and is talking over the chair of the meeting. She says Link was insulting her, and that's against the rules! […]

Wheeler suggests the committee could decide to send this item to the full council without a recommendation.

Strezo hates that idea, and says to think of the children. The poor children. City councilors chose to be councilors to support our community, and should vote now.