New York State Senators want "refined First Amendment," laws to prevent trolling, flaming and excluding people from online groups

New York State Senators Jeff Klein, Diane Savino, David Carlucci and David Valesky apparently missed civics class, because they think the First Amendment grants the "privilege" of free speech, not the right, and that this "refined" view of free speech should be implemented in order to stop people from saying stupid things on the Internet.

Their report suggests that a "refined" First Amendment could be used to stop "happy slapping" (a short-lived violent craze from 2005), trolling, "flaming," and "INTENTIONALLY AND CRUELLY EXCLUDING SOMEONE FROM AN ONLINE GROUP" (the caps are theirs).

Seriously? If we don't let you into the club, it's now a form of cyberbullying? It makes you wonder what happened to these particular Senators when they were kids.

The paper also attacks "anonymity," again ignoring how anonymity can often be extremely helpful to kids who wish to discuss things and ask questions without revealing who they are.

As for where they're going with this? Well, you guessed it: they're planning to introduce new laws to deal with cyberbullying (even though NY already has such a law). The plan is to extend two existing areas of law: "stalking in the third degree" will now include cyberbullying, and "manslaughter in the second degree" will be expanded to "include the emerging problem of bullycide."

(via /.)

(Image: The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from brentdpayne's photostream) This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 at 5:55 am and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Little people climbing into rum drinks

By Cory Doctorow at 4:04 pm Saturday, Oct 1

I just love the little fellers crawling around in these fancy-pants rum drinks of yore. They sure don't make 'em like that anymore.

Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.

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Integrating autistic people into the community

On the cover of today's NYT, a 8,000+ word feature on Justin Canha, an autistic high school student who has been participating in an intensive program that aims to integrate people with autism (and not just the "high-functioning" kind) into the community. Justin is a talented artist, and is often sweet and charming, but he is also extremely confused by many everyday social interactions. His teacher, Kate Stanton-Paule, has been accompanying him through a multi-year program of daily community routines (shopping, working at part-time jobs), and Amy Harmon's long, well-written piece chronicles the triumphs and failures of the new approach that aims to replace segregation and institutionalization with integration and participation.

Some advocates of “neurodiversity” call this the next civil rights frontier: society, they say, stands to benefit from accepting people whose brains work differently. Opening the workplace to people with autism could harness their sometimes-unusual talents, advocates say, while decreasing costs to families and taxpayers for daytime aides and health care and housing subsidies, estimated at more than $1 million over an adult lifetime.

But such efforts carry their own costs. In this New York City suburb, the school district considered scrapping Ms. Stanton-Paule’s program almost as soon as it began, to save money on the extra teaching assistants who accompanied students to internships, the bank, the gym, the grocery store. Businesses weighed the risks of hiring autistic students who might not automatically grasp standard rules of workplace behavior.

Oblivious to such debates, many autistic high school students are facing the adult world with elevated expectations of their own. Justin, who relied on a one-on-one aide in school, had by age 17 declared his intention to be a “famous animator-illustrator.” He also dreamed of living in his own apartment, a goal he seemed especially devoted to when, say, his mother asked him to walk the dog.

Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World - NYTimes.com (Thanks, Scott!)

(Image: A job at a bakery, Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times, used with permission)

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People pointing at things

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Identifying people by their footprints

New research suggests that individuals can be identified with a very high degree of accuracy just by looking at the pressure signature of a person's foot on the ground as they walk. Researchers from Shinshu University, University of Manchester, and their colleagues showed that a new computer-enabled image processing technique enabled them to identify almost every person, in their study of 104 individuals, by their "dynamic foot pressure patterns, which indirectly reflect the accelerations of all body parts." I reckon the technique could be useful to catch barefoot bandits. From the Journal of the Royal Society: Interface:

As dynamic pressure data are immediately usable, with little or no pre-processing required, and as they may be collected discreetly during uninterrupted gait using in-floor systems, foot pressure-based identification appears to have wide potential for both the security and health industries.

"Gait recognition: highly unique dynamic plantar pressure patterns among 104 individuals"

Image: According to legend, these footprints in marble held at the Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le mura are said to have been left by Jesus.

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Movie-industry self-piracy proves that IP addresses aren’t people, invalidates copyright enforcement schemes

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Tiny paper people and scenery

TERADA MOKEI, a Japanese company, makes dense sheets of punch-out people, animals and scenery intended for use in architectural models. The sets include sports matches, mass transit, street scenes, construction sites, and an orchestra. Sounds like a fun thing to have around on general principle, for models, art projects, and entertainment value.

TERADA MOKEI (via Core77)

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NYPD’s secret “Ancestries of Interest” list guided surveillance of innocent people identified as possible Muslim threats

Continuing in an investigative series on ties between the The New York Police Department and the CIA, and coordinated activities involving Muslim populations in NYC, the Associated Press reports that NYPD collected lists of mosques, restaurants, and other Muslim-owned businesses identified as possible security risks, for reasons that included having religiously devout customers. The report is based on hundreds of pages of internal police documents obtained by the AP.

The records reveal the extent of an undercover effort that initially studied more than 250 mosques in New York and New Jersey and identified hundreds more "hot spots" in a hunt for terrorists. Many showed obvious signs of criminal behavior, but the police explanations for targeting others were less clear.

A Bangladeshi restaurant, for instance, was identified as a hot spot for having a "devout crowd." The restaurant was noted for being a "popular meeting location for political activities."

The documents obtained by the AP, many of which were marked secret, paint the clearest picture yet of how the past decade's hunt for terrorists also put huge numbers of innocent people under scrutiny as they went about their daily lives in mosques, restaurants and social groups. Every day, undercover officers and informants filed reports from their positions as "listening posts" inside Muslim communities.

At the White House, where President Barack Obama recently urged local authorities not to cast suspicion on entire communities, spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment Tuesday on whether it endorsed the tactics outlined in the NYPD documents.

An AP investigation last month revealed that the department maintains a list of "ancestries of interest" that it uses to focus its clandestine efforts. A secret team known as the Demographics Unit then dispatched plainclothes officers into the community to eavesdrop in cafes and chat up business owners.

That effort has benefited from federal money and an unusually close relationship with the CIA, one that at times blurred the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering.

Read the full report: The Associated Press: Documents show NY police watched devout Muslims.

Image/REUTERS: A demonstrator holds a sign as he marches during a rally held in support of a proposed Islamic cultural centre and mosque in New York.

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Michele Bachmann: “Who likes white people?” (or are they merely wet?)

Bachmann: Who likes white people?

Crowd: (Cheers)

Bachmann: Yeah! That's right! I'm Michelle Bachmann and I'm a member of congress and I'm running for the presidency of the United States and I'm here to talk tonight here to tell you about the creator of the universe, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

From Towleroad: A poster at Political Hotwire writes: "Apparently, the warm-up band for Bachmann was called the 'White People Soul Band'"

But another version of the video tells an entirely different story -- "Who likes wet people?" -- with telling context that's clearly been edited out in the fast-spreading one above.

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TalkO’Clock: “P2P alarm clock” for people who want to wake up/be woken up by strangers

If you're the sort of person who likes to wake up strangers, or talk to strangers first thing in the morning, then TalkO'Clock might be right for you. It's a P2P matchmaking service that allows you to volunteer to serve as someone else's wake-up call (or to book a stranger in as your waker-upper).

TalkO’Clock allows you to choose whether you want to be called by a male or a female stranger, and it has a robot – CallO’Bot – lined up in case no one is available at the time you have to wake up.

TalkO’Clock, The Social P2P Alarm Clock (via /.)

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