Stats, math and logic are not required for an American journalism degree. One might think the precipitous loss of jobs in journalism + market forces would have raised these low standards.

One would be wrong.

This is easy to explain: Shills for the 0.001% try to make as big a mockery of democracy as possible by spinning their pseudo populist nonsense as being "democratic" or "of the people."

So they hire as many air heads as possible.

This one apparently thinks there's privacy on public roads:

https://www.citylab.com/transportati...rivacy/596260/

Are these apps getting popular in the U.K.?

The writer is unwittingly an apologist for or even a supporter of the text book description of despotism aka "libertarianism":

"Despotism, by it's very nature suspicious, sees the isolation of men as the best guarantee of its own permanence. So it usually does all it can to isolate them. Of all the vices of the human heart egoism is that which suits despotism best. A despot will lightly forgive his subjects for not loving him provided they do not love one another. He does not ask them to help him guide the state; it is enough if they do not claim to manage it themselves. He calls on those who try to unite their efforts to create a general prosperity 'turbulent and restless spirits' and twisting the natural meanings of words, he calls those 'good citizens' who care for none but themselves."

-- Tocqueville "How the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism By Free Institutions" (1833) George Lawrence Translation (1966).

Koch was never the main driver of libertarianism in the U. S. Most of it comes from the main stream media.

In the app above there is no state involvement in the gathering or dissemination of data. When done by the public, "gathering or dissemination of data" is just a modern term for "free speech." Like any defender of any despotism, the author is merely bemoaning freedom of communication.

It's a completely different situation when the gathering or dissemination of data is done by the police where they have an opportunity to plant evidence.

https://www.theverge.com/interface/2...eland-security

Up until a few years ago you could watch ACLU fund raisers squirm trying to pander to the "privacy on public streets" types even though they knew full well it violates free speech and trivializes unreasonable searches and seizures.

Baltimore cops plant drugs and Florida cops guns to bolster their cases. They do it so often that some, out of sheer force of habit, even while being recorded on their own body cams. The FBI doesn't do this yet that I know of but times can change rapidly.

There are supposedly powerful media personalities in the U. S. who fantasize about stuffing a dead body into the closet of any private citizen who exposes them as being shills. But it never gets beyond the fantasy stage. The shill flails out powerlessly while the intended victim is free to taunt him even more.

When law enforcement wants a fantasy outcome, they can make it look like it happened.


Bret Cahill