Every transportation system that tracks people's movements is a massive surveillance system, since a company can follow who goes where. At any moment, the state can convert it into state surveillance.

In Los Angeles, that moment is now. The city plans to require hire-scooters to transmit their GPS locations all the time when in use.

We need to develop anonymizing systems to pay for renting these devices — systems that collect the rental fee but don't record anything about who goes where. Even recording the start and end points of each trip would track some users, since it will often be possible to guess with high probability who used the scooter based on the endpoints.

Eyeglass sales in the US have become nearly a monopoly. The unsurprising result is high prices ten times what they ought to be.

My progressive sales tax proposal can be adapted to increase the tax rate for a given market depending on what fraction of that market a company has.

I saw a petition demanding that Virginia pressure Amazon to stop providing support for the US deportation thugs. Why Virginia? Because Virginia agreed to give Amazon a handout of 3/4 billion dollars.

I could not sign it, because I think it legitimizes the handout itself. The handout would still be unacceptable even if Amazon terminated all its services to nasty government activities.

Governor Northam's kidding around with racism may have ended 30 years ago, but his support for plutocracy evidently has not stopped. I hope Virginia replaces him in the next election with someone more progressive.

Employees report that Wells Fargo Bank is still following practices that harm its customers.

Privacy Advocates Call on U.S. Congress to Release Information Crucial for Surveillance Reform Debate.