Massachusetts residents: call on your state legislators to enact limits on state use of facial recognition.

Here's the text I gave as my personal message.

Please vote to enact the recommendations of the Special Commission on Facial Recognition Technology. Those recommended rules will limit the use of facial recognition by and for state government agencies so that it does not become oppressive — presuming that the rules apply to all jurisdictions that are part of the state. (I can't see an explicit statement about that.)

However, this will certainly not be enough to protect us from the repressive potential of facial recognition. Private companies can also use facial recognition in ways that repress people. Imagine that Amazon Ring joins forces with Clearview AI: it could track almost everyone almost everywhere. It could report every person from Texas that visits an abortion clinic in Massachusetts, for possible prosecution in Texas. There are many other unjust possibilities. Other methods of tracking, for instance through cellular phones, can have the same effects.

To prevent tracking technology from threatening many human rights, we need to legislate that it not be used in Massachusetts.

Thus, I urge you to follow the adoption of the commission's recommendations about governmental use of facial recognition with strict limits on private use of tracking technology.

US citizens: phone your senators (each one) and call on them to explicitly enact the authority for the EPA to regulate total emissions of any greenhouse gas.

The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.

If you call, please spread the word!

*Mark Meadows's associate threatened [Cassidy Hutchinson] before her testimony.*

Ecuador has reached a harmful deal to end indigenous protests: cutting the fossil fuel price.

This eases the immediate suffering of the poor, at the cost of making future suffering worse for them and everyone else.

The right way to help poor people cope with various kinds of high prices is to give them extra money which is independent of the amount of fossil fuel they use.

The desl also includes stricter geographic limits on search for and exploiting fossil fuel. That part is good.

*California passes first sweeping US law to reduce single-use plastic.*

Queensland, Australia, will ban some kinds of single-use plastics.

Helium is scarce and it is needed for some important uses. We should not permit it to be used for inflating balloons!