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Brickbat: Stakeout

New York City building inspectors are staking out intersections trying to spot contractors performing “non-essential” construction and remodeling work, in violation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order. Contractors caught violating the order as well as their clients face fines of up to $10,000 each.

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Brickbat: Stakeout

New York City building inspectors are staking out intersections trying to spot contractors performing “non-essential” construction and remodeling work, in violation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order. Contractors caught violating the order as well as their clients face fines of up to $10,000 each.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2X4p2Tf
via IFTTT

A Libertarian Candidate Enters the Presidential Race

We have a choice!

Next presidential election, we don’t have to decide between two big-spending candidates, neither of whom has expressed much interest in limited government.

Now, we have a third serious choice. This week, Jo Jorgensen, a psychology lecturer at Clemson University, won the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.

OK, I won’t delude myself—a libertarian is unlikely to become president. But Jorgensen’s platform is a refreshing change.

She correctly points out that government “is too big, too bossy, too nosy, and way too intrusive.”

Of course, many candidates say that when running for office.

President Donald Trump said it, but once he was elected, he increased spending by half a trillion dollars, created a new military branch designed to protect U.S. interests in space, imposed tariffs, and demanded more funds for “infrastructure” and “building a giant wall.”

Joe Biden wants to spend $532 billion more, increasing spending on things like education, climate, and health care.

By contrast, Jorgensen says government should do less and spend less.

She’s right. The founders’ insistence on limited government is what made America prosperous.

Jorgensen noticed how our big and cumbersome government slowed our response to the coronavirus.

“We had about 60 American companies making testing kits and the FDA only approved two,” she said in the final Libertarian Party debate. “What the president should have done was use the Emergency Powers Act and say, ‘FDA, you only have to prove safety, not efficacy. Get these kits out there.'”

If some tests don’t work, the free market will weed that out, says Jorgensen. “If you are a large drug company, you don’t want to put out a drug or testing kit that doesn’t work—you’ll go bankrupt.”

Trump supported the latest multitrillion-dollar stimulus bill, saying, it “will deliver urgently needed relief to our nation’s families and workers.” Biden called for another stimulus—”a hell of a lot bigger.”

Jorgensen wouldn’t sign either bill. “Let the people keep their money,” she says. “Let them decide who should stay in business and who shouldn’t.”

She points out that government is not as good as individuals at deciding where money should go. “Government money usually goes to their friends and special interests and lobbyists.”

America’s most popular government program is probably Social Security. Created to help the minority of Americans who lived past age 65 at that time, it’s now an unsustainable handout to most older people. Social Security is going broke because people my age just keep living longer. Sorry. We won’t volunteer to die.

Jorgensen would save social security by offering everyone “an immediate opt-out,” something like the Cato Institute’s 6.2 percent solution, which would let individuals invest 6.2 percent of their payroll tax into a private retirement account.

While phasing the program out, she says seniors would be paid back what they’ve put in. “Sell those government assets, mineral rights, water rights, buildings downtown,” she says. “Give that money to seniors.”

Finally, Jorgensen would end “these needless wars that caused the injuries or deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers…and the waste of trillions of tax dollars.” She’d “make America one giant Switzerland, armed and neutral…no American military personnel stationed in foreign countries. No foreign aid. No loan guarantees.”

This is not pacificism, she says, “I am proposing an American military force ready and able to defend the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and all U.S. territories against foreign attackers.”

But like most libertarians, she doesn’t want America involved in foreign wars.

As the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, Jorgensen will be on the ballot in most states. Voters will have a real choice this November.

Libertarian ideas are very different from those held by today’s Democrats and Republicans. Instead of lusting for more money and power, her party proposes a government that keeps the peace and, mostly, leaves people alone.

Sounds good to me.

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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via IFTTT

A Middle Course Between COVID-19 Hopes and Fears

Despite what many people hoped, COVID-19 is clearly worse than the seasonal flu. But despite what other people feared, it does not seem to be nearly as lethal as the “Spanish flu” of 1918, which killed about 0.7 percent of the total U.S. population—equivalent to more than 2 million people today.

As we move from lockdowns to something more closely resembling normal life, the emerging evidence about the threat posed by COVID-19 should inform our judgment about which precautions make sense. The initial, ham-handed approach—which confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes except for government-approved purposes—should be replaced by more carefully targeted measures focused on protecting the people who face the highest risk.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current “best estimate” of the death rate among Americans who develop COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. By that measure—the symptomatic case fatality rate (CFR)—COVID-19 is roughly four times as deadly as the seasonal flu but far less deadly than the Spanish flu.

Unlike the Spanish flu, which commonly struck down healthy people in the prime of life, COVID-19 primarily kills elderly people. The CDC estimates that the symptomatic CFR for people younger than 50 is just 0.05 percent, compared to 1.3 percent for people 65 or older and 0.2 percent for 50-to-64-year-olds.

In other words, older people, who account for about 17 percent of the population, are 26 times as likely to die from COVID-19 as people in the youngest age group. Age seems to be largely a proxy for serious preexisting medical conditions such as hypertension, heart and lung disease, and cancer, which are independently associated with COVID-19 deaths and become more common as people get older.

The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms, which implies that the infection fatality rate (IFR)—deaths as a share of total infections—is between 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent. That is far lower than the IFRs assumed in the horrifying worst-case scenarios that had a profound impact on COVID-19 control policies in the U.S. and around the world, which suggested that the disease could cause as many deaths per capita as the 1918 pandemic.

Those projections were never realistic, since they counterfactually assumed that people would carry on as usual despite COVID-19—that they would not take voluntary precautions such as avoiding crowds, minimizing social contact, working from home, wearing masks, and paying extra attention to hygiene. If the CDC’s current estimates are in the right ballpark, those models also were based on IFRs that were much too high.

There is an even bigger gap between these new estimates and the crude case fatality rate—reported deaths as a share of confirmed cases. Even taking into account underreporting of deaths, the crude CFR, which currently is close to 6 percent nationwide, vastly overstates the lethality of the COVID-19 virus, since testing so far has been skewed toward people with severe symptoms, who are not representative of everyone who has been infected.

The national average also obscures striking regional variations in the percentage of COVID-19 patients who succumb to the disease. The current crude CFR in New York, for instance, is nearly 8 percent, compared to 4.3 percent in Florida.

One plausible explanation for that difference is that Florida (which lifted its lockdown at the end of April) strove to keep elderly COVID-19 patients away from nursing home residents. By contrast, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis notes, “a very unfortunate decision of the governors in New York and New Jersey was to have COVID-19 patients sent to nursing homes.”

The current challenge is finding a way to emulate Florida’s apparent success in protecting people who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 without broad business closure and stay-at-home orders, which are unsustainable and economically ruinous. We need to steer a middle course between our worst fears and our highest hopes.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XwPjsH
via IFTTT

A Libertarian Candidate Enters the Presidential Race

We have a choice!

Next presidential election, we don’t have to decide between two big-spending candidates, neither of whom has expressed much interest in limited government.

Now, we have a third serious choice. This week, Jo Jorgensen, a psychology lecturer at Clemson University, won the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.

OK, I won’t delude myself—a libertarian is unlikely to become president. But Jorgensen’s platform is a refreshing change.

She correctly points out that government “is too big, too bossy, too nosy, and way too intrusive.”

Of course, many candidates say that when running for office.

President Donald Trump said it, but once he was elected, he increased spending by half a trillion dollars, created a new military branch designed to protect U.S. interests in space, imposed tariffs, and demanded more funds for “infrastructure” and “building a giant wall.”

Joe Biden wants to spend $532 billion more, increasing spending on things like education, climate, and health care.

By contrast, Jorgensen says government should do less and spend less.

She’s right. The founders’ insistence on limited government is what made America prosperous.

Jorgensen noticed how our big and cumbersome government slowed our response to the coronavirus.

“We had about 60 American companies making testing kits and the FDA only approved two,” she said in the final Libertarian Party debate. “What the president should have done was use the Emergency Powers Act and say, ‘FDA, you only have to prove safety, not efficacy. Get these kits out there.'”

If some tests don’t work, the free market will weed that out, says Jorgensen. “If you are a large drug company, you don’t want to put out a drug or testing kit that doesn’t work—you’ll go bankrupt.”

Trump supported the latest multitrillion-dollar stimulus bill, saying, it “will deliver urgently needed relief to our nation’s families and workers.” Biden called for another stimulus—”a hell of a lot bigger.”

Jorgensen wouldn’t sign either bill. “Let the people keep their money,” she says. “Let them decide who should stay in business and who shouldn’t.”

She points out that government is not as good as individuals at deciding where money should go. “Government money usually goes to their friends and special interests and lobbyists.”

America’s most popular government program is probably Social Security. Created to help the minority of Americans who lived past age 65 at that time, it’s now an unsustainable handout to most older people. Social Security is going broke because people my age just keep living longer. Sorry. We won’t volunteer to die.

Jorgensen would save social security by offering everyone “an immediate opt-out,” something like the Cato Institute’s 6.2 percent solution, which would let individuals invest 6.2 percent of their payroll tax into a private retirement account.

While phasing the program out, she says seniors would be paid back what they’ve put in. “Sell those government assets, mineral rights, water rights, buildings downtown,” she says. “Give that money to seniors.”

Finally, Jorgensen would end “these needless wars that caused the injuries or deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers…and the waste of trillions of tax dollars.” She’d “make America one giant Switzerland, armed and neutral…no American military personnel stationed in foreign countries. No foreign aid. No loan guarantees.”

This is not pacificism, she says, “I am proposing an American military force ready and able to defend the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and all U.S. territories against foreign attackers.”

But like most libertarians, she doesn’t want America involved in foreign wars.

As the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, Jorgensen will be on the ballot in most states. Voters will have a real choice this November.

Libertarian ideas are very different from those held by today’s Democrats and Republicans. Instead of lusting for more money and power, her party proposes a government that keeps the peace and, mostly, leaves people alone.

Sounds good to me.

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Xx2cCV
via IFTTT

A Middle Course Between COVID-19 Hopes and Fears

Despite what many people hoped, COVID-19 is clearly worse than the seasonal flu. But despite what other people feared, it does not seem to be nearly as lethal as the “Spanish flu” of 1918, which killed about 0.7 percent of the total U.S. population—equivalent to more than 2 million people today.

As we move from lockdowns to something more closely resembling normal life, the emerging evidence about the threat posed by COVID-19 should inform our judgment about which precautions make sense. The initial, ham-handed approach—which confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes except for government-approved purposes—should be replaced by more carefully targeted measures focused on protecting the people who face the highest risk.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current “best estimate” of the death rate among Americans who develop COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. By that measure—the symptomatic case fatality rate (CFR)—COVID-19 is roughly four times as deadly as the seasonal flu but far less deadly than the Spanish flu.

Unlike the Spanish flu, which commonly struck down healthy people in the prime of life, COVID-19 primarily kills elderly people. The CDC estimates that the symptomatic CFR for people younger than 50 is just 0.05 percent, compared to 1.3 percent for people 65 or older and 0.2 percent for 50-to-64-year-olds.

In other words, older people, who account for about 17 percent of the population, are 26 times as likely to die from COVID-19 as people in the youngest age group. Age seems to be largely a proxy for serious preexisting medical conditions such as hypertension, heart and lung disease, and cancer, which are independently associated with COVID-19 deaths and become more common as people get older.

The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms, which implies that the infection fatality rate (IFR)—deaths as a share of total infections—is between 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent. That is far lower than the IFRs assumed in the horrifying worst-case scenarios that had a profound impact on COVID-19 control policies in the U.S. and around the world, which suggested that the disease could cause as many deaths per capita as the 1918 pandemic.

Those projections were never realistic, since they counterfactually assumed that people would carry on as usual despite COVID-19—that they would not take voluntary precautions such as avoiding crowds, minimizing social contact, working from home, wearing masks, and paying extra attention to hygiene. If the CDC’s current estimates are in the right ballpark, those models also were based on IFRs that were much too high.

There is an even bigger gap between these new estimates and the crude case fatality rate—reported deaths as a share of confirmed cases. Even taking into account underreporting of deaths, the crude CFR, which currently is close to 6 percent nationwide, vastly overstates the lethality of the COVID-19 virus, since testing so far has been skewed toward people with severe symptoms, who are not representative of everyone who has been infected.

The national average also obscures striking regional variations in the percentage of COVID-19 patients who succumb to the disease. The current crude CFR in New York, for instance, is nearly 8 percent, compared to 4.3 percent in Florida.

One plausible explanation for that difference is that Florida (which lifted its lockdown at the end of April) strove to keep elderly COVID-19 patients away from nursing home residents. By contrast, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis notes, “a very unfortunate decision of the governors in New York and New Jersey was to have COVID-19 patients sent to nursing homes.”

The current challenge is finding a way to emulate Florida’s apparent success in protecting people who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 without broad business closure and stay-at-home orders, which are unsustainable and economically ruinous. We need to steer a middle course between our worst fears and our highest hopes.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2XwPjsH
via IFTTT

Has Apple opened a new legal front against the FBI—without telling it?

Our interview is with Mara Hvistendahl, investigative journalist at The Intercept and author of a new book, The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage, as well as a deep WIRED article on the least known Chinese AI champion, iFlytek. Mara’s book raises questions about the expense and motivations of the FBI’s pursuit of commercial spying from China.

In the News Roundup, Gus Hurwitz, Nick Weaver, and I wrestle with whether Apple’s lawsuit against Corellium is really aimed at the FBI. The answer looks to be affirmative, since an Apple victory would make it harder for contractors to find hackable flaws in the iPhone.

Germany’s top court ruled that German intelligence can no longer freely spy on foreigners – or share intelligence with other western countries. The court seems to be trying to leave the door open to something that looks like intelligence collection, but the hurdles are many. Which reminds me that I somehow missed the 100th anniversary of the Weimar Republic.

There’s Trouble Right Here in Takedown City. Gus lays out all the screwy and maybe even dangerous takedown decisions that came to light last week. YouTube censored epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski for opposing lockdown. It suspended and then reinstated a popular Android podcast app for the crime of cataloging COVID-19 content. Thanks to Google, anyone can engage in a self-help right to be forgotten with a bit of backdating and a plagiarism claim. And classical musicians are taking it on the chin in their battle with aggressive copyright enforcement bots and a sluggish Silicon Valley response.

In that climate, who can blame the Supreme Court for ducking cases asking for a ruling on the scope of Section 230? They’ve dodged one from the 2d Circuit already, and we predict the same outcome in the next one, from the 9th.

Finally, Gus unpacks the recent report on the DMCA from the Copyright Lobby Off, er, the Copyright Office.

With relief, we turn to Matthew Heiman for more cyber and less law. It sure looks like Israel launched a disruptive cyberattack on Iranian port facility. It was probably a response to Iranian cybermeddling with Israeli water systems.

Nick covers Bizarro-world cybersecurity: It turns out malware authors now can hire their own black-market security pentesters.

I ask about open-source security and am met with derisive laughter, which certainly seems fair after flaws were found in dozens of applications.

I also cover a Turing Test for the 21st Century: Can you sext successfully with an AI and not know it’s an AI? And the news from AI speech imitation is that Presidents Trump and Obama have fake-endorsed Lyrebird.

Gus reminds us that most of privacy law is about unintended consequences, like telling Grandma she’s violating GDPR by posting her grandchildren’s photos without their parents’ consent.

BEERINT at last makes its appearance, as it turns out that military and intelligence personnel can be tracked with a beer enthusiast app.

Finally, in the wake of Joe Rogan’s deal with Spotify, I offer assurances that the Cyberlaw Podcast is not going to sell out for $100 million.

Download the 317th Episode (mp3).

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2TGv4aN
via IFTTT

Has Apple opened a new legal front against the FBI—without telling it?

Our interview is with Mara Hvistendahl, investigative journalist at The Intercept and author of a new book, The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage, as well as a deep WIRED article on the least known Chinese AI champion, iFlytek. Mara’s book raises questions about the expense and motivations of the FBI’s pursuit of commercial spying from China.

In the News Roundup, Gus Hurwitz, Nick Weaver, and I wrestle with whether Apple’s lawsuit against Corellium is really aimed at the FBI. The answer looks to be affirmative, since an Apple victory would make it harder for contractors to find hackable flaws in the iPhone.

Germany’s top court ruled that German intelligence can no longer freely spy on foreigners – or share intelligence with other western countries. The court seems to be trying to leave the door open to something that looks like intelligence collection, but the hurdles are many. Which reminds me that I somehow missed the 100th anniversary of the Weimar Republic.

There’s Trouble Right Here in Takedown City. Gus lays out all the screwy and maybe even dangerous takedown decisions that came to light last week. YouTube censored epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski for opposing lockdown. It suspended and then reinstated a popular Android podcast app for the crime of cataloging COVID-19 content. Thanks to Google, anyone can engage in a self-help right to be forgotten with a bit of backdating and a plagiarism claim. And classical musicians are taking it on the chin in their battle with aggressive copyright enforcement bots and a sluggish Silicon Valley response.

In that climate, who can blame the Supreme Court for ducking cases asking for a ruling on the scope of Section 230? They’ve dodged one from the 2d Circuit already, and we predict the same outcome in the next one, from the 9th.

Finally, Gus unpacks the recent report on the DMCA from the Copyright Lobby Off, er, the Copyright Office.

With relief, we turn to Matthew Heiman for more cyber and less law. It sure looks like Israel launched a disruptive cyberattack on Iranian port facility. It was probably a response to Iranian cybermeddling with Israeli water systems.

Nick covers Bizarro-world cybersecurity: It turns out malware authors now can hire their own black-market security pentesters.

I ask about open-source security and am met with derisive laughter, which certainly seems fair after flaws were found in dozens of applications.

I also cover a Turing Test for the 21st Century: Can you sext successfully with an AI and not know it’s an AI? And the news from AI speech imitation is that Presidents Trump and Obama have fake-endorsed Lyrebird.

Gus reminds us that most of privacy law is about unintended consequences, like telling Grandma she’s violating GDPR by posting her grandchildren’s photos without their parents’ consent.

BEERINT at last makes its appearance, as it turns out that military and intelligence personnel can be tracked with a beer enthusiast app.

Finally, in the wake of Joe Rogan’s deal with Spotify, I offer assurances that the Cyberlaw Podcast is not going to sell out for $100 million.

Download the 317th Episode (mp3).

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2TGv4aN
via IFTTT