Technology Archives - Kit O'Connell: Approximately 8,000 Words

Elizabeth Holmes & The Meat-Grinder Of Capitalism

Elizabeth Holmes gestures while speaking at a conference. She's wearing her signature black turtleneck and her blonde hair is artfully dissheveled.

The Elizabeth Holmes verdict is an endorsement of capitalism's ever-growing death toll. (Flickr / Fortune Global Forum 2015, CC NC ND license)

January 16, 2022

Kit

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Elizabeth Holmes & The Meat-Grinder Of Capitalism

Posted in Creative Commons, and Journalism

Elizabeth Holmes’ guilty verdict chilled me in a way I didn’t expect until it happened.

The popular media suggested a guilty verdict might put the brakes on some of the worst behavior of the tech giants. And the jury found Holmes guilty earlier this month … of some of the accusations against her.

Out of the 11 counts against Holmes, the jury could only agree to a guilty verdict on 4 — all of them involving defrauding investors. On the rest, the jury either deadlocked or acquitted. That includes all the charges involving misleading doctors and patients with false testing results.

Threat Modeling For Activists: Tips For Secure Organizing & Activism

Threat modeling helps activists anticipate and respond to police repression. A line of SFPD officers in riot gear block Occupy SF Protesters after clearing them from Market Street in San Francisco.

Police block a roadway during Occupy SF protests, December 7, 2011. Threat modeling helps activists anticipate and respond to police repression. (Flickr / Thomas Hawk, CC-BY-NC license)

October 22, 2018

Kit

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Threat Modeling For Activists: Tips For Secure Organizing & Activism

Posted in Creative Commons, and Journalism

Threat modeling is a fancy term for “knowing how to protect yourself in different situations.”

The idea of “threat modeling” originated in the military before being adopted by security experts. While the field includes many advanced concepts that don’t interest us here, threat modeling can help us get a handle on our personal security choices. In an age of mass surveillance, choosing what steps to take can feel overwhelming. For a lot of people, it may be easier to do nothing at all than worry about protecting yourself online.

Unfortunately, even if you feel like “you’ve got nothing to hide,” many of us are still vulnerable: to government repression, to police brutality and surveillance, and to threats from fascist forces. Even if you’re completely safe, your social networks might be used to target other people close to you. You might not even be aware that someone near you is taking actions that make them a target for surveillance.

Developed In Iraq, Deployed At the DNC?: Cell-Jamming Technology Is Being Turned On Journalists

n July 27, 2016, activists, media and citizen journalists with smartphones surround a group of anticapitalist activists burning a U.S. flag. Journalists, including a MintPress News reporter, found it difficult or impossible to upload video of incidents like this one while near the entrance to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (MintPress News / Kit O'Connell)

August 12, 2016

Kit

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Developed In Iraq, Deployed At the DNC?: Cell-Jamming Technology Is Being Turned On Journalists

Posted in Journalism, MintPress News, and Occupy Wall Street

Technology developed to jam cellphones during the Iraq War may be getting deployed against journalists reporting on protests against the political establishment in the United States.

While police and government surveillance of protests, including monitoring of cellphone use, is well-documented, efforts to block signals at protests remains an oft-repeated, but never proven, rumor.

It may be impossible to definitively prove that authorities are using cellphone “jamming” technology, but journalists working with both mainstream and independent media reported unusual difficulties accessing the internet during recent protests at the gates of the Democratic National Convention, consistent with the effects this very real technology could have.

Inside The Fight To Protect Face-To-Face Visitation For Prisoners

In a cartoon image from "(In)securus Technology: An Assault on Prisoner Rights," a woman and child visit with a prisoner through a plexiglass window. (Grassroots Leadership)

May 24, 2016

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Inside The Fight To Protect Face-To-Face Visitation For Prisoners

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and The Establishment

When you’re behind bars, “there’s something psychologically uplifting about knowing someone is coming to visit you,” Jorge Renaud explained.

Renaud is an organizer with Grassroots Leadership and Texas Advocates for Justice who spoke with me by phone from Austin, Texas. He told me that unless you’ve been incarcerated, you can’t understand the emotional impact of a visit from a friend or loved one. His voice vibrated with emotion as he recalled those desperately needed visits, his tone expressing more than words could say.

This crucial connection with the outside world is endangered around the country, as more and more prisons and jails install video visitation systems. While the technology theoretically offers a new way to connect with prisoners—for those who can afford it—jails across the nation are also doing away with in-person visitation entirely, in favor of relying exclusively on these video visitations.

UPDATE: Uber & Lyft Cease Operations In Austin After Voters Reject Record-Breaking Electoral Campaign

In this June 15, 2013 photograph, a car with a pink Lyft "mustache" attached drives through San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood. (Flickr / Spiros Vathis)

May 6, 2016

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UPDATE: Uber & Lyft Cease Operations In Austin After Voters Reject Record-Breaking Electoral Campaign

Posted in Archive, Austin, Journalism, and MintPress News

Two big corporations with almost limitless bank accounts are bent on circumventing local law by buying a municipal election, according to their opponents.

Facing new regulations from the Austin City Council, Uber and Lyft, the popular ride-booking apps, brought the battle to the ballot box, launching a campaign to pass Proposition 1. Both drivers and paid petitioners canvassed widely for the issue last year, collecting thousands of signatures in order to trigger the election.

Based on the most recent electoral filings, Uber and Lyft have sunk over $8 million into Ridesharing Works For Austin, their joint PAC urging voters to vote in favor of Prop 1, the sole item on the ballot in the special election. By contrast, two smaller PACs opposed to the resolution, Our City Our Safety Our Choice PAC and Austin Unites, have raised less than $100,000 combined.

The election comes after months of negotiations between the City Council and the corporations, according toDelia Garza, a City Council member from Austin’s District 2. “Every time we tried to solve an issue they’d bring up, they’d move the ball,” she told MintPress News.

Map Of Cannabis Genome Could Keep Greedy Corporations From Patenting Pot DNA

Phylos 'Galaxy' app is a data visualization tool showing the relationship between different strains of cannabis. (Phylos Bioscience)

April 28, 2016

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Map Of Cannabis Genome Could Keep Greedy Corporations From Patenting Pot DNA

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

An innovative digital map of the cannabis genome could help deepen scientific understanding of the plant, and it may also protect it from greedy corporations.

That’s the hope of Phylos Bioscience, a Portland-based company which recently launched The Phylos Galaxy. The app offers a 3D visualization of the relationship of hundreds of strains of cannabis, from the popular varieties sold in Oregon’s legal dispensaries to indigenous varieties found globally known as “landrace strains.”

Types are linked by their hereditary sequences to ancestor strains and visually grouped into “tribes” by their chemical and genetic similarities.

On April 23, Carolyn White, sales and marketing manager at Phylos, told the Willamette Week that her organization “set out to bring more knowledge and transparency to the industry” with the Galaxy and other efforts to document the diversity of the cannabis genome.