Month: January 2014

Coursera, which provides massive open online
courses (MOOC), has the noble mission of “connecting people
to a great education so that anyone around the world can learn
without limits.” Unfortunately, the State Department and the
Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC)
disagree. They recently decided that the company cannot extend such
opportunities to a few academically underprivileged countries.

The organization posted a
notice to its website on Tuesday explaining that the U.S.
government now requires it to block IP addresses in certain
sanctioned countries.

Who will miss out on hundreds of free classes, offered in 12
languages, and covering a broad range of fields, including
economics, the humanities, and medicine? Cuba, which ranks outside
the top 50 education systems in the world, Iran, which is less well
off than 40 percent of the world, and Sudan, which is worse than 90
percent.

These three aren’t the only ones who will be impacted, though.
The announcement notes that, “In rare instances, students with IP
addresses bordering on but not geopolitically within the bounds of
these countries will be affected.”

What’s behind this academic censorship? Federal regulations.
“United States export control regulations prohibit U.S. businesses,
such as MOOC providers like Coursera, from offering services to
users in sanctioned countries,” Coursera explains. The website
itself is still be viewable, because it falls under “public
information,” whereas the departments consider the educational
materials to be “services.”

Coursera has operated since April 2012, and although the company
has been talking with the State Department and OFAC “for quite some
time… only very recently were we advised… that the course
experience was determined to be a service offering and we have
since been working closely with [federal officials] to ensure that
Coursera remains in compliance with U.S. law,” co-founder Daphne
Koller
told the Wall Street Journal.

Yet, whether services are allowed in sanctioned countries is not
always clear-cut. The OFAC initially included Syria on the list of
prohibited nations, but later clarified that educational services
are permissible there. Other exceptions have been made for other
organizations. According to
Inside Higher Ed, “edX, the MOOC provider founded in
partnership between Harvard University and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology… has since last May worked with the U.S.
State Department and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign
Assets Control, and has so far applied for and received
company-specific licenses for its MOOCs to enroll
students in Cuba and Iran.”

Although it may stop some, the government-ordered IP address
block cannot prevent all Cubans, Iranians, and Sudanese from
educating themselves, thanks to easily accessible proxy servers
that disguise one’s location.

Today New York Mayor Bill de Blasio
announced that the city has reached a settlement agreement with
the lawyers who
challenged the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program in federal court.
The agreement leaves in place U.S. District Judge Shira
Scheindlin’s August 2013
ruling that the program was unconstitutional and the reforms
she ordered, including a federal monitor and body cameras to record
police encounters. Those changes had been blocked by an appeal that
De Blasio promised to drop if elected mayor. “We’re here today to
turn the page on one of the most divisive problems in our city,” De
Blasio said at a press conference today. “We believe in ending the
overuse of stop-and-frisk that has unfairly targeted young
African-American and Latino men.”

As that remark suggests, the NYPD will continue to stop and
frisk people, which the Supreme Court has said is permitted under
the Fourth Amendment when police reasonably suspect someone is
involved in criminal activity and (for the pat-down) that he is
armed. Statistics at the center of the case Scheindlin heard
indicate that street stops by New York cops, which overwhelmingly
targeted young black and Hispanic men, frequently failed this test.
Between January 2004 and June 2012, when the NYPD made 4.4 million
stops, only 12 percent of the people treated like criminals were
arrested or issued a summons. Even more striking, although police
are supposed to frisk a subject only if they reasonably believe he
is armed, 52 percent of these encounters included pat-downs, only
1.5 percent of which discovered a weapon. Even when officers
reached into subjects’ clothing after feeling what they claimed to
think was a weapon, they were right only 9 percent of the time.

Tellingly, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s main defense of
the stop-and-frisk program was that it worked by deterring young
men from carrying guns, not that it complied with the requirements
of the Fourth Amendment. Yet even before Scheindlin’s ruling, the
NYPD responded to constitutional criticism of the program by

dialing it back. The number of stop-and-frisk encounters,
which grew from
about 100,000 in Bloomberg’s first year as mayor to almost 700,000
in 2011, fell to
about 530,000 in 2012. In the first three quarters of 2013, there
were 179,000 stops.

Today New York Mayor Bill de Blasio
announced that the city has reached a settlement agreement with
the lawyers who
challenged the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program in federal court.
The agreement leaves in place U.S. District Judge Shira
Scheindlin’s August 2013
ruling that the program was unconstitutional and the reforms
she ordered, including a federal monitor and body cameras to record
police encounters. Those changes had been blocked by an appeal that
De Blasio promised to drop if elected mayor. “We’re here today to
turn the page on one of the most divisive problems in our city,” De
Blasio said at a press conference today. “We believe in ending the
overuse of stop-and-frisk that has unfairly targeted young
African-American and Latino men.”

As that remark suggests, the NYPD will continue to stop and
frisk people, which the Supreme Court has said is permitted under
the Fourth Amendment when police reasonably suspect someone is
involved in criminal activity and (for the pat-down) that he is
armed. Statistics at the center of the case Scheindlin heard
indicate that street stops by New York cops, which overwhelmingly
targeted young black and Hispanic men, frequently failed this test.
Between January 2004 and June 2012, when the NYPD made 4.4 million
stops, only 12 percent of the people treated like criminals were
arrested or issued a summons. Even more striking, although police
are supposed to frisk a subject only if they reasonably believe he
is armed, 52 percent of these encounters included pat-downs, only
1.5 percent of which discovered a weapon. Even when officers
reached into subjects’ clothing after feeling what they claimed to
think was a weapon, they were right only 9 percent of the time.

Tellingly, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s main defense of
the stop-and-frisk program was that it worked by deterring young
men from carrying guns, not that it complied with the requirements
of the Fourth Amendment. Yet even before Scheindlin’s ruling, the
NYPD responded to constitutional criticism of the program by

dialing it back. The number of stop-and-frisk encounters,
which grew from
about 100,000 in Bloomberg’s first year as mayor to almost 700,000
in 2011, fell to
about 530,000 in 2012. In the first three quarters of 2013, there
were 179,000 stops.

In mid-December I
wrote about Obamacare’s dismal poll numbers amongst the
uninsured. At that point, there was still some possibility that
the poor showing amongst those without insurance was just a lagging
indicator of frustrating with the federal exchange website, which
was essentially non-functional during October and November.

Now it’s the end of January. The biggest problems with the
federal exchange have been bandaged for almost two months. And yet
the
latest monthly tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation

finds that opposition to the law amongst the uninsured has
actually increased since December. The survey reports that 47
percent of say they have an unfavorable view of the law, up from 43
percent in December. Just 24 percent say they favor the health law,
down from 36 percent in November and December.

Here’s the chart:

This is the group of people the law was, in theory, supposed to
benefit most. And yet even as the most prominent benefits start to
kick in, their support is dropping. It’s possible, of course, that
this could turn around at any time. But it’s not a very good sign
for the future popularity of the law.