20110219
U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’
The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.
As part of “Operation Save Our Children” ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center has again seized several domain names, but not without making a huge error. Last Friday, thousands of site owners were surprised by a rather worrying banner that was placed on their domain.
“Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,” was the worrying message they read on their websites.
As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized.
The domain in question is mooo.com, which belongs to the DNS provider FreeDNS. It is the most popular shared domain at afraid.org and as a result of the authorities’ actions a massive 84,000 subdomains were wrongfully seized as well. All sites were redirected to the banner below.
This banner was visible on the 84,000 sites
The FreeDNS owner was taken by surprise and quickly released the following statementon their website. “Freedns.afraid.org has never allowed this type of abuse of its DNS service. We are working to get the issue sorted as quickly as possible.”
Eventually, on Sunday the domain seizure was reverted and the subdomains slowly started to point to the old sites again instead of the accusatory banner. However, since the DNS entries have to propagate, it took another 3 days before the images disappeared completely.
Most of the subdomains in question are personal sites and sites of small businesses. Asearch on Bing still shows how innocent sites were claimed to promote child pornography. A rather damaging accusation, which scared and upset many of the site’s owners.
One of the customers quickly went out to assure visitors that his site was not involvedin any of the alleged crimes.
“You can rest assured that I have not and would never be found to be trafficking in such distasteful and horrific content. A little sleuthing shows that the whole of the mooo.com TLD is impacted. At first, the legitimacy of the alerts seems to be questionable — after all, what reputable agency would display their warning in a fancily formatted image referenced by the underlying HTML? I wouldn’t expect to see that.”
Even at the time of writing people can still replicate the effect by adding “74.81.170.110 mooo.com” to their hosts file as the authorities have not dropped the domain pointer yet. Adding mooo.com will produce a different image than picking a random domain (child porn vs. copyright), which confirms the mistake.
Although it is not clear where this massive error was made, and who’s responsible for it, the Department of Homeland security is conveniently sweeping it under the rug. In a press release that went out a few hours ago the authorities were clearly proud of themselves for taking down 10 domain names.
However, DHS conveniently failed to mention that 84,000 websites were wrongfully taken down in the process, shaming thousands of people in the process.
“Each year, far too many children fall prey to sexual predators and all too often, these heinous acts are recorded in photos and on video and released on the Internet,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano commented.
“DHS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to shut down websites that promote child pornography to protect these children from further victimization,” she added.
A noble initiative, but one that went wrong, badly. The above failure again shows that the seizure process is a flawed one, as has been shown several times before in earlier copyright infringement sweeps. If the Government would only allow for due process to take place, this and other mistakes wouldn’t have been made.
Coverage on previous copyright related seizures can be found here, here and here.
As part of “Operation Save Our Children” ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center has again seized several domain names, but not without making a huge error. Last Friday, thousands of site owners were surprised by a rather worrying banner that was placed on their domain.
“Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,” was the worrying message they read on their websites.
As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized.
The domain in question is mooo.com, which belongs to the DNS provider FreeDNS. It is the most popular shared domain at afraid.org and as a result of the authorities’ actions a massive 84,000 subdomains were wrongfully seized as well. All sites were redirected to the banner below.
This banner was visible on the 84,000 sites
The FreeDNS owner was taken by surprise and quickly released the following statementon their website. “Freedns.afraid.org has never allowed this type of abuse of its DNS service. We are working to get the issue sorted as quickly as possible.”
Eventually, on Sunday the domain seizure was reverted and the subdomains slowly started to point to the old sites again instead of the accusatory banner. However, since the DNS entries have to propagate, it took another 3 days before the images disappeared completely.
Most of the subdomains in question are personal sites and sites of small businesses. Asearch on Bing still shows how innocent sites were claimed to promote child pornography. A rather damaging accusation, which scared and upset many of the site’s owners.
One of the customers quickly went out to assure visitors that his site was not involvedin any of the alleged crimes.
“You can rest assured that I have not and would never be found to be trafficking in such distasteful and horrific content. A little sleuthing shows that the whole of the mooo.com TLD is impacted. At first, the legitimacy of the alerts seems to be questionable — after all, what reputable agency would display their warning in a fancily formatted image referenced by the underlying HTML? I wouldn’t expect to see that.”
Even at the time of writing people can still replicate the effect by adding “74.81.170.110 mooo.com” to their hosts file as the authorities have not dropped the domain pointer yet. Adding mooo.com will produce a different image than picking a random domain (child porn vs. copyright), which confirms the mistake.
Although it is not clear where this massive error was made, and who’s responsible for it, the Department of Homeland security is conveniently sweeping it under the rug. In a press release that went out a few hours ago the authorities were clearly proud of themselves for taking down 10 domain names.
However, DHS conveniently failed to mention that 84,000 websites were wrongfully taken down in the process, shaming thousands of people in the process.
“Each year, far too many children fall prey to sexual predators and all too often, these heinous acts are recorded in photos and on video and released on the Internet,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano commented.
“DHS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to shut down websites that promote child pornography to protect these children from further victimization,” she added.
A noble initiative, but one that went wrong, badly. The above failure again shows that the seizure process is a flawed one, as has been shown several times before in earlier copyright infringement sweeps. If the Government would only allow for due process to take place, this and other mistakes wouldn’t have been made.
Coverage on previous copyright related seizures can be found here, here and here.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/17/freedombox-wall-wart.html
The FreedomBox Foundation is a newly formed charity that has set out to make wall-wart sized, self-contained Linux routers that will provide important anonymizing and networking services, even when the government (or some other entity) terminates or surveils your network access. The project is led by Eben Moglen, formerly of the Free Software Foundation, now with the Software Freedom Law Center.
TSA Screenings and Your Rights cheat sheet
<click title for PDF. I am very bothered by the part where is says "Don't resist. Sue them later.">
20110218
Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature Law: A Modern-Day Scarlet Letter
Download the Crime Against Nature Factsheet (PDF)
Louisiana’s Solicitation of a Crime Against Nature statute, which dates back to the 19th century, is an archaic law founded on moral disapproval of what kinds of sex acts are acceptable. The statute criminalizes sexual conduct considered contrary to the laws of nature because it is nonprocreative.
The Crime Against Nature statute harshly punishes individuals who offer or agree to have oral or anal sex — acts historically associated with homosexuality — for money by requiring them to register as a sex offender upon conviction.
This is the only instance in which an offense that does not involve children, the use of force, violence, a weapon or lack of consent requires registration. Louisiana’s own prostitution statute does not trigger a registration requirement, and this stands to reason, because a simple prostitution conviction also does not involve force, lack of consent, violence, or children.
The inclusion of offenses under the Crime Against Nature statute on Louisiana’s sex offender registry is both discriminatory and unconstitutional, and disparately affects women, people across the spectrum of gender and sexuality, including gay, lesbian and transgender people, African Americans
and poor people.
A Situation Ripe for Abuse and Discrimination
Most of the people convicted of Crime Against Nature by Solicitation law are poor women of color and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) people who often must turn to sex work to survive.
The statute brands poor women and LGBTQ people with a modern-day scarlet letter and disproportionately affects members of the black community.
In Orleans Parish, almost 40 percent of registered sex offenders are on the registry because they were convicted under the Crime Against Nature statute – despite the fact that their convictions did not involve any force, lack of consent or children. Furthermore, 75 percent of those registered are women, 79 percent of them are African American.
Police officers and prosecutors have complete discretion in applying the statute throughout the entire legal process – from the initial arrest and charges to conviction and subsequent mandatory registration as a sex offender. This creates a situation ripe for abuse and discriminatory enforcement.
An Unconstitutional and Unjustifiable Law
Disparate punishment for the solicitation of - or only offering or agreeing to engage in - oral or anal sex for money more harshly than for solicitation of vaginal sex has no rational or legitimate purpose. In reality, individuals convicted solely for Crime Against Nature who are required to register as sex offenders pose no threat to children or the community.
Until August 2010, even a first Crime Against Nature conviction would trigger a registration requirement. Despite legislative amendments to the law, anyone convicted of a first offense before August 2010 or with a second charge must continue to register on the sex offender registry.
A Modern-Day Scarlet Letter
For individuals convicted under the statute, sex offender registration has a devastating effect on every aspect of their lives, including their rights to housing, employment, travel, identification documents and access to evacuation services in the event of an emergency or natural disaster. This is what one experiences if convicted under the Crime Against Nature statute:
If you are convicted under the statute twice, registration is required annually for 15 years. Any subsequent convictions lead to a lifetime registration. During this 15 year period, you must carry a state ID with the words “SEX OFFENDER” in bright orange capital letters. If you fail to pay annual registration fees, it is likely that you will receive prison time or a $500 fine.
You must mail neighbors postcards notifying them of your name, address, description and your Crime Against Nature conviction – which requires that you spend additional hundreds of dollars every time you move. Your name, address and photograph will appear on a sex offender website, and you may be required to publish your name and Crime Against Nature conviction in the local newspaper. You must disclose the fact that you are registered as a sex offender to your landlord, employer, school, parks department, community centers and place of worship.
It is very possible you will be denied access to homeless shelters and drug treatment because such facilities do not accept sex offenders. And in the case of an evacuation in a natural disaster or other emergency, you will not be allowed to stay with your children or family in a publicly-run emergency shelter, and you must present yourself as a registered sex offender in all emergency situations.
The Crime Against Nature sex offender registration requirement ultimately shuts down access to the services necessary for people to live a productive life and to take care of themselves and their families.
The case of Doe v. Jindal
In February 2011, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Andrea J. Ritchie, Esq., and the Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law filed a federal civil rights complaint challenging the continued use of the 206 year-old Crime Against Nature statute that brands people who solicit or agree to oral and anal sex as sex offenders. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans on behalf of nine anonymous plaintiffs. Some of the plaintiffs have multiple convictions of Crime Against Nature by Solicitation and must register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
The lawsuit alleges that being forced to register as a sex offender because of a Crime Against Nature conviction (which is the only offense requiring registration that includes no element of force, coercion, lack of consent, use of a weapon, or the involvement of a minor) serves no legitimate purpose whatsoever. As such, it is unjustifiable and unconstitutional. CCR further contends that the only reason our clients are registered sex offenders is that they were convicted under the provisions of a 200-year-old statute that condemns non-procreative sex acts and sex acts traditionally associated with homosexuality, solely on grounds of moral disapproval.
The Louisiana Legislature must:
- Stop putting individuals convicted under the Crime Against Nature statute on the sex offender registry;
- Remove Crime against Nature from the list of offenses that require registration as a sex offender; and
- Remove individuals who are currently registered as sex offenders under Crime Against Naturefrom the registry; stop subjecting them to the onerous requirements of the registry law and expunge their registry records
Louisiana’s Solicitation of a Crime Against Nature statute, which dates back to the 19th century, is an archaic law founded on moral disapproval of what kinds of sex acts are acceptable. The statute criminalizes sexual conduct considered contrary to the laws of nature because it is nonprocreative.
The Crime Against Nature statute harshly punishes individuals who offer or agree to have oral or anal sex — acts historically associated with homosexuality — for money by requiring them to register as a sex offender upon conviction.
This is the only instance in which an offense that does not involve children, the use of force, violence, a weapon or lack of consent requires registration. Louisiana’s own prostitution statute does not trigger a registration requirement, and this stands to reason, because a simple prostitution conviction also does not involve force, lack of consent, violence, or children.
The inclusion of offenses under the Crime Against Nature statute on Louisiana’s sex offender registry is both discriminatory and unconstitutional, and disparately affects women, people across the spectrum of gender and sexuality, including gay, lesbian and transgender people, African Americans
and poor people.
A Situation Ripe for Abuse and Discrimination
Most of the people convicted of Crime Against Nature by Solicitation law are poor women of color and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) people who often must turn to sex work to survive.
The statute brands poor women and LGBTQ people with a modern-day scarlet letter and disproportionately affects members of the black community.
In Orleans Parish, almost 40 percent of registered sex offenders are on the registry because they were convicted under the Crime Against Nature statute – despite the fact that their convictions did not involve any force, lack of consent or children. Furthermore, 75 percent of those registered are women, 79 percent of them are African American.
Police officers and prosecutors have complete discretion in applying the statute throughout the entire legal process – from the initial arrest and charges to conviction and subsequent mandatory registration as a sex offender. This creates a situation ripe for abuse and discriminatory enforcement.
An Unconstitutional and Unjustifiable Law
Disparate punishment for the solicitation of - or only offering or agreeing to engage in - oral or anal sex for money more harshly than for solicitation of vaginal sex has no rational or legitimate purpose. In reality, individuals convicted solely for Crime Against Nature who are required to register as sex offenders pose no threat to children or the community.
Until August 2010, even a first Crime Against Nature conviction would trigger a registration requirement. Despite legislative amendments to the law, anyone convicted of a first offense before August 2010 or with a second charge must continue to register on the sex offender registry.
A Modern-Day Scarlet Letter
For individuals convicted under the statute, sex offender registration has a devastating effect on every aspect of their lives, including their rights to housing, employment, travel, identification documents and access to evacuation services in the event of an emergency or natural disaster. This is what one experiences if convicted under the Crime Against Nature statute:
If you are convicted under the statute twice, registration is required annually for 15 years. Any subsequent convictions lead to a lifetime registration. During this 15 year period, you must carry a state ID with the words “SEX OFFENDER” in bright orange capital letters. If you fail to pay annual registration fees, it is likely that you will receive prison time or a $500 fine.
You must mail neighbors postcards notifying them of your name, address, description and your Crime Against Nature conviction – which requires that you spend additional hundreds of dollars every time you move. Your name, address and photograph will appear on a sex offender website, and you may be required to publish your name and Crime Against Nature conviction in the local newspaper. You must disclose the fact that you are registered as a sex offender to your landlord, employer, school, parks department, community centers and place of worship.
It is very possible you will be denied access to homeless shelters and drug treatment because such facilities do not accept sex offenders. And in the case of an evacuation in a natural disaster or other emergency, you will not be allowed to stay with your children or family in a publicly-run emergency shelter, and you must present yourself as a registered sex offender in all emergency situations.
The Crime Against Nature sex offender registration requirement ultimately shuts down access to the services necessary for people to live a productive life and to take care of themselves and their families.
The case of Doe v. Jindal
In February 2011, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Andrea J. Ritchie, Esq., and the Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law filed a federal civil rights complaint challenging the continued use of the 206 year-old Crime Against Nature statute that brands people who solicit or agree to oral and anal sex as sex offenders. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans on behalf of nine anonymous plaintiffs. Some of the plaintiffs have multiple convictions of Crime Against Nature by Solicitation and must register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
The lawsuit alleges that being forced to register as a sex offender because of a Crime Against Nature conviction (which is the only offense requiring registration that includes no element of force, coercion, lack of consent, use of a weapon, or the involvement of a minor) serves no legitimate purpose whatsoever. As such, it is unjustifiable and unconstitutional. CCR further contends that the only reason our clients are registered sex offenders is that they were convicted under the provisions of a 200-year-old statute that condemns non-procreative sex acts and sex acts traditionally associated with homosexuality, solely on grounds of moral disapproval.
The Louisiana Legislature must:
- Stop putting individuals convicted under the Crime Against Nature statute on the sex offender registry;
- Remove Crime against Nature from the list of offenses that require registration as a sex offender; and
- Remove individuals who are currently registered as sex offenders under Crime Against Naturefrom the registry; stop subjecting them to the onerous requirements of the registry law and expunge their registry records
Call on the Justice Department to stop Houston's brutal police culture
A shocking video released last week shows four Houston police officers mercilessly beating a 15-year old burglary suspect while at least eight other officers looked on. Some kicked him repeatedly in the head and legs, others punched his torso — all while young Chad Holley was lying face down with his hands behind his head in surrender.
The officers who beat Holley have only been charged with misdemeanors, and many of the officers on the scene that day are still working as police officers in Houston.
It’s time to demand real accountability for the Houston Police Department — and when we do, it’ll send a clear message to other departments with a similar problem. It starts with the four officers who brutalized Holley, but it can’t stop there. What happened to Chad Holley isn’t merely an isolated incident — it’s the result of a police culture in Houston (and in police departments across the nation) that places little value on Black lives.
Your voice can help change that. Please join us in calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate Chad Holley’s brutal beating, and the culture that led to it.And please ask your friends and family to do the same — it’s the first step for reform in Houston and can help shine a light on police brutality in other parts of the country:
Chad Holley ran from Houston police following a burglary — but as soon as he was captured, he immediately stretched out on the ground and put his hands behind his head. But before arresting him, a pack of officers descended on him, stomping, kicking and punching the young man until he blacked out, and leaving him with a broken nose.1,2
Despite this, the officers who beat Holley have only been charged with misdemeanors. All four were charged with "official oppression," while two of them face an additional misdemeanor charge of violating Holley's civil rights.3 Each charge carries a maximum of a year in prison — a light penalty for such a clear abuse of power and violation of the public's trust.
But this is bigger than just the actions of these four officers — Houston Police Department (HPD) has a problem. Misbehavior is rampant among Houston police, with more than 14,000 complaints against HPD officers over the last six years — half of which were upheld. But the real amount of misconduct is likely to be much greater, with much of it not being investigated. Because Black residents distrust the process — and even fear retaliation due to holes in the process — many don't ever file complaints against police officers.4,5
HPD has painted Holley's beating as an isolated incident of misconduct, but that's hard to believe if you watch the video of the incident. Officers attacked Holley simultaneously and without hesitation, as if this kind of violence is routine. There were no fewer than a dozen officers on the scene during the beating, yet HPD leaders didn't learn of the assault until the security video was mailed to the chief of police and District Attorney — all the officers on the scene were silent until then, willing participants in a cover-up.
This speaks to an important reality: Chad Holley's beating appears to be the product of a problematic culture within the Houston Police Department — one where officers don't fear punishment, and where they stick together to hide serious incidents of misconduct. Most recently, this led Houston activist Quanell X, who released the Chad Holley tapes to the public, to announce the release of several more videos of unwarranted police violence.6
The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division can help. They have the power to bring charges with penalties that accurately reflect the heinousness of the Holley incident. This is not just important for justice in Holley's case or for reform in Houston — but for helping to send a signal to other departments across the country. The Department of Justice can also investigate the entire police force, and force changes to the culture that allowed this happen.
If there's enough public outcry, we can push the DOJ to take a hard look at Chad Holley's case. That's why it's important that as many of us speak up as possible. And after you do, please, urge your friends and family to do the same. It takes just a moment:
20110215
South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers
A bill under consideration in the Mount Rushmore State would make preventing harm to a fetus a "justifiable homicide" in many cases.
— By Kate Sheppard
A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.
"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers."
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.
Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill, which is cosponsored by 22 other state representatives and four state senators. UPDATE: Jensen spoke to Mother Jones on Tuesday morning, after this story was published. He says that he disagrees with this interpretation of the bill. "This simply is to bring consistency to South Dakota statute as it relates to justifiable homicide," said Jensen in an interview, repeating an argument he made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. "If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion." Jensen also aggressively defended the bill in an interview with theWashington Post's Greg Sargent on Tuesday morning.
"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers," says Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. Since 1993, eight doctors have been assassinated at the hands of anti-abortion extremists, and another 17 have been the victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes have tried to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. "This is not an abstract bill," Saporta says. The measure could have major implications if a "misguided extremist invokes this 'self-defense' statute to justify the murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer," the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families warned in a message to supporters last week.
The original version of the bill did not include the language regarding the "unborn child"; it was pitched as a simple clarification of South Dakota's justifiable homicide law. Last week, however, the bill was "hoghoused"—a term used in South Dakota for heavily amending legislation in committee—in a little-noticed hearing. A parade of right-wing groups—the Family Heritage Alliance, Concerned Women for America, the South Dakota branch of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, and a political action committee called Family Matters in South Dakota—all testified in favor of the amended version of the law.
Jensen, the bill's sponsor, has said that he simply intends to bring "consistency" to South Dakota's criminal code, which already allows prosecutors to charge people with manslaughteror murder for crimes that result in the death of fetuses. But there's a difference between counting the murder of a pregnant woman as two crimes—which is permissible under law in many states—and making the protection of a fetus an affirmative defense against a murder charge.
"They always intended this to be a fetal personhood bill, they just tried to cloak it as a self-defense bill," says Kristin Aschenbrenner, a lobbyist for South Dakota Advocacy Network for Women. "They're still trying to cloak it, but they amended it right away, making their intent clear." The major change to the legislation also caught abortion rights advocates off guard. "None of us really felt like we were prepared," she says.
Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor at George Washington University who frequently testifies before Congress about abortion legislation, says the bill is legally dubious. "It takes my breath away," she says in an email to Mother Jones. "Constitutionally, a state cannot make it a crime to perform a constitutionally lawful act."
South Dakota already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, and one of the lowest abortion rates. Since 1994, there have been no providers in the state. Planned Parenthood flies a doctor in from out-of-state once a week to see patients at a Sioux Falls clinic. Women from the more remote parts of the large, rural state drive up to six hours to reach this lone clinic. And under state law women are then required to receive counseling and wait 24 hours before undergoing the procedure. (Click here for an interactive map of abortion restrictions.)
Before performing an abortion, a South Dakota doctor must offer the woman the opportunity to view a sonogram. And under a law passed in 2005, doctors are required to read a script meant to discourage women from proceeding with the abortion: "The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." Until recently, doctors also had to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she had "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that was protected under the Constitution and state law and that abortion poses a "known medical risk" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide." In August 2009, a US District Court Judge threw out those portions of the script, finding them "untruthful and misleading." The state has appealed the decision.
The South Dakota legislature has twice tried to ban abortion outright, but voters rejected the ban at the polls in 2006 and 2008, by a 12-point margin both times. Conservative lawmakers have since been looking to limit access any other way possible. "They seem to be taking an end run around that," says state Sen. Angie Buhl, a Democrat. "They recognize that people don't want a ban, so they are trying to seek a de facto ban by making it essentially impossible to access abortion services."
South Dakota's legislature is strongly tilted against abortion rights, which makes passing restrictions fairly easy. Just 19 of 70 House members and 5 of the 35 state senators are Democrats—and many of the Democrats also oppose abortion rights.
The law that would legalize killing abortion providers is just one of several measures under consideration in the state that would create more obstacles for a woman seeking an abortion. Another proposed law, House Bill 1217, would force women to undergo counseling at a Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) before they can obtain an abortion. CPCs are not regulated and are generally run by anti-abortion Christian groups and staffed by volunteers—not doctors or nurses—with the goal of discouraging women from having abortions.
A congressional investigation into CPCs in 2006 found that the centers often provide "false or misleading information about the health risks of an abortion"—alleging ties between abortion and breast cancer, negative impacts on fertility, and mental-health concerns. "This may advance the mission of the pregnancy resource centers, which are typically pro-life organizations dedicated to preventing abortion," the report concluded, "but it is an inappropriate public health practice." In a recent interview, state Rep. Roger Hunt, one of the bill's sponsors, acknowledged that its intent is to "drastically reduce" the number of abortions in South Dakota.
House Bill 1217 would also require women to wait 72 hours after counseling before they can go forward with the abortion, and would require the doctor to develop an analysis of "risk factors associated with abortion" for each woman—a provision that critics contend is intentionally vague and could expose providers to lawsuits. A similar measure passed in Nebraska last spring, but a federal judge threw it out it last July, arguing that it would "require medical providers to give untruthful, misleading and irrelevant information to patients" and would create "substantial, likely insurmountable, obstacles" to women who want abortions. Extending the wait time and requiring a woman to consult first with the doctor, then with the CPC, and then meet with the doctor again before she can undergo the procedure would add additional burdens for women—especially for women who work or who already have children.
The South Dakota bills reflect a broader national strategy on the part of abortion-rights opponents, says Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate with the Guttmacher Institute, a federal reproductive health advocacy and research group. "They erect a legal barrier, another, and another," says Nash. "At what point do women say, 'I can't climb that mountain'? This is where we're getting to."
— By Kate Sheppard
A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.
"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers."
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.
Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill, which is cosponsored by 22 other state representatives and four state senators. UPDATE: Jensen spoke to Mother Jones on Tuesday morning, after this story was published. He says that he disagrees with this interpretation of the bill. "This simply is to bring consistency to South Dakota statute as it relates to justifiable homicide," said Jensen in an interview, repeating an argument he made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. "If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion." Jensen also aggressively defended the bill in an interview with theWashington Post's Greg Sargent on Tuesday morning.
"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers," says Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. Since 1993, eight doctors have been assassinated at the hands of anti-abortion extremists, and another 17 have been the victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes have tried to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. "This is not an abstract bill," Saporta says. The measure could have major implications if a "misguided extremist invokes this 'self-defense' statute to justify the murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer," the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families warned in a message to supporters last week.
The original version of the bill did not include the language regarding the "unborn child"; it was pitched as a simple clarification of South Dakota's justifiable homicide law. Last week, however, the bill was "hoghoused"—a term used in South Dakota for heavily amending legislation in committee—in a little-noticed hearing. A parade of right-wing groups—the Family Heritage Alliance, Concerned Women for America, the South Dakota branch of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, and a political action committee called Family Matters in South Dakota—all testified in favor of the amended version of the law.
Jensen, the bill's sponsor, has said that he simply intends to bring "consistency" to South Dakota's criminal code, which already allows prosecutors to charge people with manslaughteror murder for crimes that result in the death of fetuses. But there's a difference between counting the murder of a pregnant woman as two crimes—which is permissible under law in many states—and making the protection of a fetus an affirmative defense against a murder charge.
"They always intended this to be a fetal personhood bill, they just tried to cloak it as a self-defense bill," says Kristin Aschenbrenner, a lobbyist for South Dakota Advocacy Network for Women. "They're still trying to cloak it, but they amended it right away, making their intent clear." The major change to the legislation also caught abortion rights advocates off guard. "None of us really felt like we were prepared," she says.
Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor at George Washington University who frequently testifies before Congress about abortion legislation, says the bill is legally dubious. "It takes my breath away," she says in an email to Mother Jones. "Constitutionally, a state cannot make it a crime to perform a constitutionally lawful act."
South Dakota already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, and one of the lowest abortion rates. Since 1994, there have been no providers in the state. Planned Parenthood flies a doctor in from out-of-state once a week to see patients at a Sioux Falls clinic. Women from the more remote parts of the large, rural state drive up to six hours to reach this lone clinic. And under state law women are then required to receive counseling and wait 24 hours before undergoing the procedure. (Click here for an interactive map of abortion restrictions.)
Before performing an abortion, a South Dakota doctor must offer the woman the opportunity to view a sonogram. And under a law passed in 2005, doctors are required to read a script meant to discourage women from proceeding with the abortion: "The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." Until recently, doctors also had to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she had "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that was protected under the Constitution and state law and that abortion poses a "known medical risk" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide." In August 2009, a US District Court Judge threw out those portions of the script, finding them "untruthful and misleading." The state has appealed the decision.
The South Dakota legislature has twice tried to ban abortion outright, but voters rejected the ban at the polls in 2006 and 2008, by a 12-point margin both times. Conservative lawmakers have since been looking to limit access any other way possible. "They seem to be taking an end run around that," says state Sen. Angie Buhl, a Democrat. "They recognize that people don't want a ban, so they are trying to seek a de facto ban by making it essentially impossible to access abortion services."
South Dakota's legislature is strongly tilted against abortion rights, which makes passing restrictions fairly easy. Just 19 of 70 House members and 5 of the 35 state senators are Democrats—and many of the Democrats also oppose abortion rights.
The law that would legalize killing abortion providers is just one of several measures under consideration in the state that would create more obstacles for a woman seeking an abortion. Another proposed law, House Bill 1217, would force women to undergo counseling at a Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) before they can obtain an abortion. CPCs are not regulated and are generally run by anti-abortion Christian groups and staffed by volunteers—not doctors or nurses—with the goal of discouraging women from having abortions.
A congressional investigation into CPCs in 2006 found that the centers often provide "false or misleading information about the health risks of an abortion"—alleging ties between abortion and breast cancer, negative impacts on fertility, and mental-health concerns. "This may advance the mission of the pregnancy resource centers, which are typically pro-life organizations dedicated to preventing abortion," the report concluded, "but it is an inappropriate public health practice." In a recent interview, state Rep. Roger Hunt, one of the bill's sponsors, acknowledged that its intent is to "drastically reduce" the number of abortions in South Dakota.
House Bill 1217 would also require women to wait 72 hours after counseling before they can go forward with the abortion, and would require the doctor to develop an analysis of "risk factors associated with abortion" for each woman—a provision that critics contend is intentionally vague and could expose providers to lawsuits. A similar measure passed in Nebraska last spring, but a federal judge threw it out it last July, arguing that it would "require medical providers to give untruthful, misleading and irrelevant information to patients" and would create "substantial, likely insurmountable, obstacles" to women who want abortions. Extending the wait time and requiring a woman to consult first with the doctor, then with the CPC, and then meet with the doctor again before she can undergo the procedure would add additional burdens for women—especially for women who work or who already have children.
The South Dakota bills reflect a broader national strategy on the part of abortion-rights opponents, says Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate with the Guttmacher Institute, a federal reproductive health advocacy and research group. "They erect a legal barrier, another, and another," says Nash. "At what point do women say, 'I can't climb that mountain'? This is where we're getting to."
20110214
The Best Questions For A First Date
First dates are awkward. There is so much you want to know about the person across the table from you, and yet so little you can directly ask.
This post is our attempt to end the mystery. We took OkCupid's database of 275,294 match questions—probably the biggest collection of relationship concerns on earth—and the 776 million answers people have given us, and we asked:
What questions are easy to bring up, yet correlate to the deeper, unspeakable, issues people actually care about?
Love, sex, a soulmate, an argument, whatever you're looking for, we'll show you the polite questions to find it. We hope they'll be useful to you in the real world.
First—define "easy to bring up"
Before we could go looking for correlations to deeper stuff, our first task was to decide which questions were even first-date appropriate. I know each person has his own opinion on what's okay to talk about with a stranger. I also know that if I had to wade through hundreds of thousands of user-submitted questions like these verbatim examples:
If you were to be eaten by cannibal, how would you like to be prepaired?
do u own 3 or more dildos in your room?
Do you hsve a desent job?
I would go fucking insane. The basic currency of the Internet is human ignorance, and, frankly, our database holds a strong cash position!
So, instead of judging each question's first-date appropriateness subjectively, I turned to statistics. I decided our candidates were the ones that (a) most people were comfortable discussing publicly, and (b) were mathematically likely to tell you something you couldn't just guess. I sliced OkCupid's question pool like this:
That blue rectangle is our highest-quality, least-invasive questions, and we next examined each of them for interesting correlations. (If you're interested in knowing more about the above graph, you can drop-down an explanation here, complete with an interactive scatter plot that took me forever to make.)
Now let's get right to the results. This is the shallow stuff to ask when you want to know something deep:
Okay, if you want to know...
Will my date have sex on the first date?
Ask...
Do you like the taste of beer?
Because...
Among all our casual topics, whether someone likes the taste of beer is thesingle best predictor of if he or she has sex on the first date.
No matter their gender or orientation, beer-lovers are 60% more likely to be okay with sleeping with someone they've just met. Sadly, this is the only question with a meaningful correlation for women. For men there are a few others:
predictive question
implied odds
of first-date sex
Q: In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?
'yes'⇒83%
Q: Assuming you were in the position to do so, would you launch nuclear weapons under any circumstances?
'yes'⇒82%
Q: Could you imagine yourself killing someone?
'yes'⇒82%
First, I have to give guys credit for logical thinking: in the post-apocalypse, THERE ARE NO SECOND DATES.
Also, I will never look at fingerless gloves the same way again.
If you want to know...
Do my date and I have long-term potential?
Ask your date (and yourself!)...
Do you like horror movies?
Have you ever traveled around another country alone?
Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?
Of all questions appropriate to a first date, the three listed above were the ones couples most often agreed on.
Here's how we know...
When someone deletes their OkCupid account, they have these 3 questions correlated best to a real-world relationshipthe option of giving us a reason, and if that reason is 'I met somebody on OkCupid,' they can give us their significant other's username. Many hundreds of people a day go through the trouble of doing this, so we've compiled an excellent dataset of real-world couples. Agreement on these three questions correlated best to an actual relationship.
In fact, 32% of successful couples agreed on all of them—which is 3.7× the rate of simple coincidence. These questions as a trio even out-performs OkCupid's top three user-rated match questions.
Turistas: the best date movie of all time?
If you want to know...
Do my date and I have the same politics?
Ask him or her...
Do you prefer the people in your life to be simple or complex?
Because...
We were very surprised to find that this one question very strongly predicts a person's ideas on these divisive issues:
Should burning your country's flag be illegal?
Should the death penalty be abolished?
Should gay marriage be legal?
Should Evolution and Creationism be taught side-by-side in schools?
In each case, complexity-preferrers are 65-70% likely to give the Liberal answer. And those who prefer simplicity in others are 65-70% likely to give the Conservative one.
This correlation is for a nationwide dataset; it won't be as useful in places where one ideology is much more prevelant than the other. For example, in New York City there are lots of people who like simplicity and yet have Liberal politics.
If you want to know...
Is my date religious?
Ask...
Do spelling and grammar mistakes annoy you?
If your date answers 'no'—i.e. is okay with bad grammar and spelling—the odds of him or her being at least moderately religious is slightly better than 2:1.
As someone who is not himself a believer, I found it rather heartening that tolerance, even on something trivial like this, correlated with belief in God, although I should've figured out that religious people are okay with small mistakes. Next to intelligent design, what's a couple typos?
It's also nice when two completely independent datasets corroborate each other. Last summer, we analyzed the profile text of half a million user profiles, comparing religion and writing-level. For every one of the faith-based belief systems listed, the people who were the least serious wrote at the highest level.
This post is our attempt to end the mystery. We took OkCupid's database of 275,294 match questions—probably the biggest collection of relationship concerns on earth—and the 776 million answers people have given us, and we asked:
What questions are easy to bring up, yet correlate to the deeper, unspeakable, issues people actually care about?
Love, sex, a soulmate, an argument, whatever you're looking for, we'll show you the polite questions to find it. We hope they'll be useful to you in the real world.
First—define "easy to bring up"
Before we could go looking for correlations to deeper stuff, our first task was to decide which questions were even first-date appropriate. I know each person has his own opinion on what's okay to talk about with a stranger. I also know that if I had to wade through hundreds of thousands of user-submitted questions like these verbatim examples:
If you were to be eaten by cannibal, how would you like to be prepaired?
do u own 3 or more dildos in your room?
Do you hsve a desent job?
I would go fucking insane. The basic currency of the Internet is human ignorance, and, frankly, our database holds a strong cash position!
So, instead of judging each question's first-date appropriateness subjectively, I turned to statistics. I decided our candidates were the ones that (a) most people were comfortable discussing publicly, and (b) were mathematically likely to tell you something you couldn't just guess. I sliced OkCupid's question pool like this:
That blue rectangle is our highest-quality, least-invasive questions, and we next examined each of them for interesting correlations. (If you're interested in knowing more about the above graph, you can drop-down an explanation here, complete with an interactive scatter plot that took me forever to make.)
Now let's get right to the results. This is the shallow stuff to ask when you want to know something deep:
Okay, if you want to know...
Will my date have sex on the first date?
Ask...
Do you like the taste of beer?
Because...
Among all our casual topics, whether someone likes the taste of beer is thesingle best predictor of if he or she has sex on the first date.
No matter their gender or orientation, beer-lovers are 60% more likely to be okay with sleeping with someone they've just met. Sadly, this is the only question with a meaningful correlation for women. For men there are a few others:
predictive question
implied odds
of first-date sex
Q: In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?
'yes'⇒83%
Q: Assuming you were in the position to do so, would you launch nuclear weapons under any circumstances?
'yes'⇒82%
Q: Could you imagine yourself killing someone?
'yes'⇒82%
First, I have to give guys credit for logical thinking: in the post-apocalypse, THERE ARE NO SECOND DATES.
Also, I will never look at fingerless gloves the same way again.
If you want to know...
Do my date and I have long-term potential?
Ask your date (and yourself!)...
Do you like horror movies?
Have you ever traveled around another country alone?
Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?
Of all questions appropriate to a first date, the three listed above were the ones couples most often agreed on.
Here's how we know...
When someone deletes their OkCupid account, they have these 3 questions correlated best to a real-world relationshipthe option of giving us a reason, and if that reason is 'I met somebody on OkCupid,' they can give us their significant other's username. Many hundreds of people a day go through the trouble of doing this, so we've compiled an excellent dataset of real-world couples. Agreement on these three questions correlated best to an actual relationship.
In fact, 32% of successful couples agreed on all of them—which is 3.7× the rate of simple coincidence. These questions as a trio even out-performs OkCupid's top three user-rated match questions.
Turistas: the best date movie of all time?
If you want to know...
Do my date and I have the same politics?
Ask him or her...
Do you prefer the people in your life to be simple or complex?
Because...
We were very surprised to find that this one question very strongly predicts a person's ideas on these divisive issues:
Should burning your country's flag be illegal?
Should the death penalty be abolished?
Should gay marriage be legal?
Should Evolution and Creationism be taught side-by-side in schools?
In each case, complexity-preferrers are 65-70% likely to give the Liberal answer. And those who prefer simplicity in others are 65-70% likely to give the Conservative one.
This correlation is for a nationwide dataset; it won't be as useful in places where one ideology is much more prevelant than the other. For example, in New York City there are lots of people who like simplicity and yet have Liberal politics.
If you want to know...
Is my date religious?
Ask...
Do spelling and grammar mistakes annoy you?
If your date answers 'no'—i.e. is okay with bad grammar and spelling—the odds of him or her being at least moderately religious is slightly better than 2:1.
As someone who is not himself a believer, I found it rather heartening that tolerance, even on something trivial like this, correlated with belief in God, although I should've figured out that religious people are okay with small mistakes. Next to intelligent design, what's a couple typos?
It's also nice when two completely independent datasets corroborate each other. Last summer, we analyzed the profile text of half a million user profiles, comparing religion and writing-level. For every one of the faith-based belief systems listed, the people who were the least serious wrote at the highest level.
20110209
São Paulo: A City Without Ads
In 2007, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil's most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Known on one hand for being the country's slick commercial capital and on the other for its extreme gang violence and crushing poverty, São Paulo's "Lei Cidade Limpa" or Clean City Law was an unexpected success, owing largely to the singular determination of the city's conservative mayor, Gilberto Kassab.
As the driving force behind the measure, mayor Kassab quelled the rebellion from the advertising industry with the help of key allies amongst the city's elite. On many occasions, Kassab made the point that he has nothing against advertising in and of itself, but rather with its excess. He explained,
"The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution . . . pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution."
Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the allowable size of storefront signage. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape.
One sore loser in the battle was Clear Channel Communications. Having recently entered the Brazilian market, the corporation was purchasing a Brazilian subsidiary as well as the rights to a large share of the city's billboard market. Weeks before the ban took effect, Clear Channel launched a counter-campaign in support of outdoor ads, with desperate slogans that failed to resonate with the masses: "There's a new movie on all the billboards – what billboards? Outdoor media is culture."
Although legal challenges from businesses have left a handful of billboards standing, the city, now stripped of its 15,000 billboards, resembles a battlefield strewn with blank marquees, partially torn-down frames and hastily painted-over storefront facades. While it's unclear whether this cleanup can be replicated in other cities around the world, it has so far been a success in São Paulo: surveys indicate that the measure is extremely popular with the city's residents, with more than 70 percent approval.
Though materialism and consumerism, along with gang violence will continue to pollute the city of São Paulo, these human dramas may at least begin to unfold against a more pleasant visual backdrop.
– David Evan Harris
†
†
On The Media's Bob Garfield interviewed Vinicius Galvao, a reporter for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper, about São Paulo's ban on visual pollution.
I've seen photos of the city, and it's amazing to see this sprawling metropolis completely devoid of signage, completely devoid of logos and bright lights and so forth. What did São Paulo look like up until the ban took place?
Vinicius Galvao: São Paulo's a very vertical city. That makes it very frenetic. You couldn't even realize the architecture of the old buildings, because all the buildings, all the houses were just covered with billboards and logos and propaganda. And there was no criteria.
And now it's amazing. They uncovered a lot of problems the city had that we never realized. For example, there are some favelas, which are the shantytowns. I wrote a big story in my newspaper today that in a lot of parts of the city we never realized there was a big shantytown. People were shocked because they never saw that before, just because there were a lot of billboards covering the area.
BG: No writer could have [laughing] come up with a more vivid metaphor. What else has been discovered as the scales have fallen off of the city's eyes?
VG: São Paulo's just like New York. It's a very international city. We have the Japanese neighborhood, we have the Korean neighborhood, we have the Italian neighborhood and in the Korean neighborhood, they have a lot of small manufacturers, these Korean businessmen. They hire illegal labor from Bolivian immigrants.
And there was a lot of billboards in front of these manufacturers' shops.And when they uncovered, we could see through the window a lot of Bolivian people like sleeping and working at the same place. They earn money, just enough for food. So it's a lot of social problem that was uncovered where the city was shocked at this news.
BG: I want to ask you about the cultural life of the city, because, like them or not, billboards and logos and bright lights create some of the vibrancy that a city has to offer. Isn't it weird walking through the streets with all of those images just absent?
VG: No. It's weird, because you get lost, so you don't have any references any more. That's what I realized as a citizen. My reference was a big Panasonic billboard. But now my reference is art deco building that was covered through this Panasonic. So you start getting new references in the city. The city's got now new language, a new identity.
BG: Well, cleaning up the city's all well and good, but how do businesses announce to the public that they're open for business?
VG: That was the first response the shop owners found for this law, because the law bans billboards and also even the windows should be clean. Big banks, like Citibank, and big stores, like Dolce & Gabbana, they started painting themselves with very strong colors, like yellow, red, deep blue, and creating like visual patterns to associate the brand to that pattern or to that color.
For example, Citibank's color is blue. They're painting the building in very strong blue so people can see that from far away and they can make an association with that deep blue and Citibank.
BG: Now, the city has said, having undertaken this effort, it will eventually create zones where some outdoor advertising will be permitted. Do you expect São Paulo eventually to just revert to its previous clutter?
VG: Not to revert to previous clutter, but I think like very specific zones, I think they're going to isolate the electronic billboards in those areas, in the financial center. I don't think they should put those in residential areas as we had before.
BG: Now, the advertising industry is obviously not happy about this. They're complaining that they're deprived of free speech and that it's costing them jobs and revenue. But is there anyone else in São Paulo who's unhappy about this? Tell me about the public at large. What's their view?
VG: It's amazing, because people on the streets are strongly supporting that. The owner of the buildings, even if they have to renovate a building, they're strongly supporting that. It's a massive campaign to improve the city. The advertisers, they complain, but they're agreeing with the ban. What they say is that we should have created criteria for that to organize the chaos.
BG: Vinicius, thank you very much for joining us.
VG: Thank you so much.
BG: Vinicius Galvao is a reporter for Folha de São Paulo.
As the driving force behind the measure, mayor Kassab quelled the rebellion from the advertising industry with the help of key allies amongst the city's elite. On many occasions, Kassab made the point that he has nothing against advertising in and of itself, but rather with its excess. He explained,
"The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution . . . pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution."
Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the allowable size of storefront signage. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape.
One sore loser in the battle was Clear Channel Communications. Having recently entered the Brazilian market, the corporation was purchasing a Brazilian subsidiary as well as the rights to a large share of the city's billboard market. Weeks before the ban took effect, Clear Channel launched a counter-campaign in support of outdoor ads, with desperate slogans that failed to resonate with the masses: "There's a new movie on all the billboards – what billboards? Outdoor media is culture."
Although legal challenges from businesses have left a handful of billboards standing, the city, now stripped of its 15,000 billboards, resembles a battlefield strewn with blank marquees, partially torn-down frames and hastily painted-over storefront facades. While it's unclear whether this cleanup can be replicated in other cities around the world, it has so far been a success in São Paulo: surveys indicate that the measure is extremely popular with the city's residents, with more than 70 percent approval.
Though materialism and consumerism, along with gang violence will continue to pollute the city of São Paulo, these human dramas may at least begin to unfold against a more pleasant visual backdrop.
– David Evan Harris
†
†
On The Media's Bob Garfield interviewed Vinicius Galvao, a reporter for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper, about São Paulo's ban on visual pollution.
I've seen photos of the city, and it's amazing to see this sprawling metropolis completely devoid of signage, completely devoid of logos and bright lights and so forth. What did São Paulo look like up until the ban took place?
Vinicius Galvao: São Paulo's a very vertical city. That makes it very frenetic. You couldn't even realize the architecture of the old buildings, because all the buildings, all the houses were just covered with billboards and logos and propaganda. And there was no criteria.
And now it's amazing. They uncovered a lot of problems the city had that we never realized. For example, there are some favelas, which are the shantytowns. I wrote a big story in my newspaper today that in a lot of parts of the city we never realized there was a big shantytown. People were shocked because they never saw that before, just because there were a lot of billboards covering the area.
BG: No writer could have [laughing] come up with a more vivid metaphor. What else has been discovered as the scales have fallen off of the city's eyes?
VG: São Paulo's just like New York. It's a very international city. We have the Japanese neighborhood, we have the Korean neighborhood, we have the Italian neighborhood and in the Korean neighborhood, they have a lot of small manufacturers, these Korean businessmen. They hire illegal labor from Bolivian immigrants.
And there was a lot of billboards in front of these manufacturers' shops.And when they uncovered, we could see through the window a lot of Bolivian people like sleeping and working at the same place. They earn money, just enough for food. So it's a lot of social problem that was uncovered where the city was shocked at this news.
BG: I want to ask you about the cultural life of the city, because, like them or not, billboards and logos and bright lights create some of the vibrancy that a city has to offer. Isn't it weird walking through the streets with all of those images just absent?
VG: No. It's weird, because you get lost, so you don't have any references any more. That's what I realized as a citizen. My reference was a big Panasonic billboard. But now my reference is art deco building that was covered through this Panasonic. So you start getting new references in the city. The city's got now new language, a new identity.
BG: Well, cleaning up the city's all well and good, but how do businesses announce to the public that they're open for business?
VG: That was the first response the shop owners found for this law, because the law bans billboards and also even the windows should be clean. Big banks, like Citibank, and big stores, like Dolce & Gabbana, they started painting themselves with very strong colors, like yellow, red, deep blue, and creating like visual patterns to associate the brand to that pattern or to that color.
For example, Citibank's color is blue. They're painting the building in very strong blue so people can see that from far away and they can make an association with that deep blue and Citibank.
BG: Now, the city has said, having undertaken this effort, it will eventually create zones where some outdoor advertising will be permitted. Do you expect São Paulo eventually to just revert to its previous clutter?
VG: Not to revert to previous clutter, but I think like very specific zones, I think they're going to isolate the electronic billboards in those areas, in the financial center. I don't think they should put those in residential areas as we had before.
BG: Now, the advertising industry is obviously not happy about this. They're complaining that they're deprived of free speech and that it's costing them jobs and revenue. But is there anyone else in São Paulo who's unhappy about this? Tell me about the public at large. What's their view?
VG: It's amazing, because people on the streets are strongly supporting that. The owner of the buildings, even if they have to renovate a building, they're strongly supporting that. It's a massive campaign to improve the city. The advertisers, they complain, but they're agreeing with the ban. What they say is that we should have created criteria for that to organize the chaos.
BG: Vinicius, thank you very much for joining us.
VG: Thank you so much.
BG: Vinicius Galvao is a reporter for Folha de São Paulo.
20110203
Immigration officer fired after putting wife on list of terrorists to stop her flying home
By Steve Doughty
Sacked: The UK Border Agency official was fired for gross misconduct, having placed his wife's name on a list of people not allowed into Britain
An immigration officer tried to rid himself of his wife by adding her name to a list of terrorist suspects.
He used his access to security databases to include his wife on a watch list of people banned from boarding flights into Britain because their presence in the country is 'not conducive to the public good'.
As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after travelling to the county to visit family.
The tampering went undetected until the immigration officer was selected for promotion and his wife name was found on the suspects' list during a vetting inquiry.
The Home Office confirmed today that the officer has been sacked for gross misconduct.
The incident is likely to raise new questions over levels of efficiency in the UK Border Agency, the organisation formed nearly three years ago by then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to take over all immigration controls.
It has been criticised for poor performance by the Parliamentary Ombudsman and has suffered its share of humiliating incidents - for example the incident 19 months ago when an illegal immigrant escaped from the channel tunnel port at Folkestone by clinging to the underside of a bus carrying Border Agency staff.
The Agency is charged with putting into operation the Coalition's policy of reducing numbers of workers from outside Europe allowed into Britain.
Prime mover: Jacqui Smith set up the UK Border Agency three years ago, but these latest revelations have led to calls for tighter vetting
A spokesman said: 'We expect the highest levels of integrity. Allegations of misconduct are thoroughly investigated and we always take action swiftly where we find members of staff who have abused their position.
'On the extremely rare occasions where this occurs, the strongest action is taken.'
The officer in the latest incident to come to light was employed by a unit maintaining watch lists.
He is understood to have worked at the Agency's headquarters at Lunar House in Croydon, South London.
His wife visited family in Pakistan but when she tried to return to Britain she was not allowed onto the aircraft. Airline and immigration officials refused to explain to her why.
She was forced to remain in Pakistan for three years until her husband's manipulation of the suspect list came to light.
He is understood to have applied for a promotion that would have meant a higher level of security clearance.
During the vetting process the name of his wife was discovered on the suspect list, to the surprise of security staff.
When questioned, the officer confessed to his alteration of the lists and was sacked.
Sacked: The UK Border Agency official was fired for gross misconduct, having placed his wife's name on a list of people not allowed into Britain
An immigration officer tried to rid himself of his wife by adding her name to a list of terrorist suspects.
He used his access to security databases to include his wife on a watch list of people banned from boarding flights into Britain because their presence in the country is 'not conducive to the public good'.
As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after travelling to the county to visit family.
The tampering went undetected until the immigration officer was selected for promotion and his wife name was found on the suspects' list during a vetting inquiry.
The Home Office confirmed today that the officer has been sacked for gross misconduct.
The incident is likely to raise new questions over levels of efficiency in the UK Border Agency, the organisation formed nearly three years ago by then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to take over all immigration controls.
It has been criticised for poor performance by the Parliamentary Ombudsman and has suffered its share of humiliating incidents - for example the incident 19 months ago when an illegal immigrant escaped from the channel tunnel port at Folkestone by clinging to the underside of a bus carrying Border Agency staff.
The Agency is charged with putting into operation the Coalition's policy of reducing numbers of workers from outside Europe allowed into Britain.
Prime mover: Jacqui Smith set up the UK Border Agency three years ago, but these latest revelations have led to calls for tighter vetting
A spokesman said: 'We expect the highest levels of integrity. Allegations of misconduct are thoroughly investigated and we always take action swiftly where we find members of staff who have abused their position.
'On the extremely rare occasions where this occurs, the strongest action is taken.'
The officer in the latest incident to come to light was employed by a unit maintaining watch lists.
He is understood to have worked at the Agency's headquarters at Lunar House in Croydon, South London.
His wife visited family in Pakistan but when she tried to return to Britain she was not allowed onto the aircraft. Airline and immigration officials refused to explain to her why.
She was forced to remain in Pakistan for three years until her husband's manipulation of the suspect list came to light.
He is understood to have applied for a promotion that would have meant a higher level of security clearance.
During the vetting process the name of his wife was discovered on the suspect list, to the surprise of security staff.
When questioned, the officer confessed to his alteration of the lists and was sacked.
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