#creepy entitled Congress

[unicornbeck]

Keep your opinions off my body

What baffles me most is how far out of their own spheres some people are willing to crane their ugly opinions about matters that HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM and HAVE NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER ON THEIR LIVES.

The legislation of, dominance over, and interference with female bodies, whether they be trans or pregnant or lactating or obese or skinny or elderly or underage or "virgin" or unmarried or married bodies, or bodies employed in sex work, makes me need to scream and gasp and tear violently at my hair and clothes.

I'm so sick of my body not belonging exclusively to me.

[mojoflower]

WHY is fanfiction not the appropriate venue for your political or social battle?

We can all agree, I posit, that there are changes that need to be made in the world (racism, for example;  patriarchal inequalities;  rape culture;  capitalism;  plug in your personal cause here).

We can all ALSO agree, I think, that the way culture, media, etc. portray things influences a consumer on an unconscious level.

We can agree that, in real life, certain things are clearly bad:  abuse of others, non-consensual sex, systemic inequality, I can go on….

So.  Let me feel my way through this.  I, personally, feel like fanfiction (specifically on AO3, since that’s where I encounter it) is NOT an appropriate battleground for enforcing cultural change by:

Leaving comments about how someone’s work is (in your, the commenter’s, opinion) wrong, damaging, unfair, insensitive, etc.

Telling the writer they should change this or that.

Telling the writer they must add or delete tags.

Broadcasting your opinion of the writer’s egregiousness outside AO3 (twitter, for example, or here on tumblr).

Organizing a campaign of harassment against the author if they don’t change to suit your personal requirements.

First of all:

 Be the change you want to see.

Fanfiction, unlike any other media out there, is INDIVIDUAL.  It is one work, from one single person – voluntary and unpaid.  You yourself are one single person.  You can have as much influence as this writer.  Write the works you want to read, instead of demanding that the writer change to suit you.  This is how romance novels changed from non-con, non-condom-wearing, shudderingly unequal stories in the 70s and 80s to where they are now, for example.  New people started writing stories, and eventually established authors started changing, too (or dwindled away).

Remember that you know nothing about the author.

You don’t know their culture, their skin color, their age, their gender.  You don’t know their socioeconomic status or how much free time they have.  You don’t know their current mental or physical conditions.  You don’t know any of the things going on in their life.  AND.  You are not entitled to know these things.  When you lash out at an author for not doing research, for not editing, for… anything at all… you cannot assume that they’re not fourteen, not suicidal, not a native speaker, not disabled such that writing a single paragraph is a tremendous effort.  You don’t know they’re not in an abusive situation, or economic peril.  You do not have the right to tell them to change.  Whether you are asking them to change text, tone, tagging, ships, plot, you name it.  Anything.

Dead Dove:  Do Not Eat.

Don’t like, don’t read.  These are simple concepts, and the tagging system on AO3 helps you to avoid many triggers.  Simple common sense, once you're into a story that’s raising your hackles, will warn you away from the rest.  If you say, ‘no, this person can’t write that, it’s contributing to pain in the Real World’ then you are functioning as a censor.  I mean, at its most basic level, a censor is someone who strikes out passages in books or other media because it’s… immoral/bad/etc.  The problem is that morality is incredibly tailored to the group you’re in, and also incredibly fluid, shifting over time.  So… why do YOU get to be the censor and not the author?  What makes YOU the final word?  Seriously, think about it.

Fanfiction writers are the most vulnerable group you could target.

Which makes them easy prey, and possibly makes them the juiciest and most satisfying targets.  Address your anger to Hollywood or Simon & Schuster or Congress – and your voice will doubtless get lost in the shuffle.  Address it to an author on AO3 and you can deliver your blow personally, one on one, and witness the damage.  There is no professional buffer between your resentment and their reaction.

Who are fanfiction writers?  Overwhelmingly women, overwhelmingly queer, often very young and inexperienced.  Wow.  What a rewarding group to start slapping around.  You wouldn't be the only one to think so.  Seriously.  Aim your anger at someone who is STRONGER than you.  Not someone who is (likely) weaker than you.  You’re kicking a kitten, while a lion lounges behind you.

Censoring someone’s thoughts is bad.

People should be allowed to THINK.  And they can think whatever they want.  Whether and where and how it should be expressed is another matter.  AO3 is a safe place for whatever weird-ass thoughts you have.  It is expressly written into their mission statement.  AO3 was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED so that authors could have a place for their dead dove fics.

So.  Why is [your pet cause] okay on AO3 and not on a script in Hollywood?

AO3 requires membership before you can post anything, so it’s arguably private.  AO3 provides tools for readers to avoid works they might find triggering.  AO3 profits no one.  Follow the money, and there are your true culprits.  Not a housewife from Hoebokken.

Fanfiction writers make no money.  When they write, they are not lawmakers, filmmakers, teachers or preachers.  This is not their job.  They do not have a responsibility to the community, because they are vested with no power and no paycheck.  Please move your battlefield to one of these other venues.  Your fight will be harder, but it will also do a lot more good than traumatizing some naive  kid away from writing forever.

Fanfiction comprises an individual’s personal thoughts and personal works, written for their own enjoyment, shared only through AO3 to (presumably) like-minded readers.  Fanfics are a person’s fantasies and daydreams.  They might be an author’s therapeutic exercise.  Or someone trying to explore something new, whether it be cultures, ideas, sexualities or kinks.  Humans need a place where they can be wrong and make mistakes.  Think about that, I implore you.  If you are constantly pointing out someone’s errors, you may eventually either silence them forever, or instill in them permanent resentment.  This does not further your cause.

You have your personal cause.

I’ve seen a lot of them.  Incest is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Pedophilia is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Abusive relationships are bad, you’re not allowed to write about them.  Racism is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Genderswap is transphobic, you’re not allowed to write about it.  A/B/O romanticizes damaging gender inequalities.  There are many.  If every single one of you got to stamp out your personal crusade, then fic would be scant on the ground and many people wouldn’t try to create anymore.  It’s stifling to creativity and terrifying to an author that they might slip up and be called out.  No one, as far as I know, likes to think of their fanfiction as something that will be turned in for a grade.

Your standards are your own.

What are the precise parameters of an abusive relationship?  Transphobia?  Racism?  Pedophilia?  Fetishism?  Where does dub-con become non-con?  No one is the mouthpiece for the whole world.  You are only the mouthpiece for yourself.

If you think to yourself that it’s not okay to tell someone they can’t write about, say, a gay relationship, but it IS okay to tell them they can’t write about a certain ship or dynamic (for Reasons), then maybe you should step back and check yourself and your entitlement to someone else’s endeavor.

In conclusion:

I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist in fanfiction.  Or creepy sexual abuse, or glorification of harmful dynamics.  It certainly does.  I’m not trying to play semantics with you.

But when you see these things, when they bother you... back right out.

That’s it.  Just back out, ignore it and find a different fic.  (Or better yet, write your own!)  Shower the fics you approve of with love and comments about why you think they’re great.  Give them kudos and bookmarks and shout-outs on your blog.  Eventually, if your opinion is popular, authors who thought otherwise will realize that readership is looking for something different.  They’ll change or they won’t, but the body of work will change over time, and THAT is what you’re looking to accomplish.  Not to stamp out fanfiction altogether.

[beesandwasps]

I already reblogged this once without comment, but I was thinking it over while out on a walk, and I realized that the later comments distract from something important, which is:

Obama was, in general terms, at least as far to the right as Ronald Reagan on many fronts, but specifically on war, a part of the reason the Obama administration was so bad was because he had Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

She was a vocal supporter of the Iraq invasion in 2003 — at the time, she was one of the Democrats who kept getting play from Republicans in media to show that support was bipartisan — despite the more intelligent Democrats stating in advance that the war was going to be a disaster and also in spite of a majority of New York, the state she notionally represented in the Senate, being against the war and furthermore in spite of having been warned in a memo by the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that the claims made by the Bush administration were lies.

Despite the example of Iraq being within the last decade, according to Obama, Hillary as Secretary of State insisted that we had to do a “preemptive” attack on Libya that nobody else in the administration wanted. (Everybody assumed at the time — and there’s no particular reason to believe that they were wrong — that she wanted to have been the driving force behind a “successful” war when she launched her 2016 presidential campaign. If so, the tens of thousands of Libyans who died, and the unknown number who were put into actual chattel slavery when that revived in the wake of the invasion, suffered and died purely to assist Hillary Clinton’s ego-driven entitled run for President. Next time somebody asserts that Trump is so much worse than Clinton, think about all those dead bodies and ruined lives sacrificed so she could say she was good at war.) When Congress refused to authorize the invasion, Clinton also — again, according to statements made by Obama after the fact — insisted on using NATO to do an end-run around Congressional war powers, and made the presentation to NATO which British military intelligence said proved, via internal evidence, that she knew, as she was speaking, that she was telling lies.

(And, of course, she was also in charge of the State Department during their backing of the neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine in 2014, the one which was used by Putin to justify his invasion now. She didn’t just start wars during her tenure, she helped set up extra ones later on, with the added thrill of a possible nuclear exchange!)

Although it went under the radar because of Trump, multiple newspapers ran articles during the 2016 campaign pointing out that she was so explicitly pro-war and vicious that actual generals found her creepy and offputting for her casual indifference to human suffering and death.

During the Obama years, since it was fairly clear that the national committee was going to throw its weight behind Hillary Clinton in 2020, it became impossible for Democrats to condemn any wars, because to do so would be to condemn the presumptive next candidate.

Hate hate hate hate how in my adult life being anti-war went from being the majority opinion to a wacky fringe idea and I'm somehow not supposed to blame the democrats who had power over the military much of that time

[anthonybialy]

Fallibly Failing

The cure will kill you, but at least you won't feel sick anymore. Pass on a fallible government. Unfailing oafs tried to act like this wave of global disease offered proof of omniscience. Presenting itself as the ultimate authority on what disaster is happening and the merciful source of how to fix it worked great except for how it turned out. Extinguishing your house fire with napalm is effective in its way. A caring Congress would pass the Unburned Dwelling Act which makes flames illegal.

Please don't take note of how governors who were most heavily involved had the worst performances, as they're trying to maintain facades. Countless victims waiting for an apology from jobless Andrew Cuomo may as well expect Hannibal Lecter to show remorse. New York's savior inflicted a way worse death toll with infinitely less charm.

The all-time serial killer's enchanted enablers are the ones who should apologize for the rest of their days on behalf of their hero taking so many. An obvious putzing psychopath was portrayed as if the Almighty had sent a messiah to battle a satanic virus. It doesn't take theologists to guess which supernatural figure on behalf he toiled. Writing his own bible is a troubling clue.

Those who helped the Devil's human representative should truly apologize to those no longer here. The quantity is unfathomable thanks to his appallingly horrific decision to pack nursing homes with the sick, which aliens experimenting on us would've admired. Forcing restaurant patrons to dine outside in inside tents somehow didn't cancel out a rather bleak Grandparents Day.

Your leaders are fantastic at spending. It's just they don't buy anything good with it. The fault is yours, of course, as you selfishly refuse to fork over more of your precious dollars to let people who can't fix roads repair society. The first couple trillions were insufficient.

An astounding government they've decided should be involved in managing every life aspect doesn't have enough to do anything with present budgeting. But how can they do what they're not supposed to unless they have more funds to which they're not entitled?

Liberty junkies possess the temerity to suggest those in charge could be incorrect. It should be illegal to point out the lawmaking contraption screwed up anything. Those in charge are undisputed despite how they're dumb and awful. Attention whore Anthony Fauci is merely the most prominent recent example of a village idiot speaking against science itself. Changing what the last word is first thing every morning sure seems research-based.

Government's phoniest doctor since Jill Biden is aided by an ever-helpful media who presumes anyone in such an official capacity must be the best. Billing him as America's top scientist is an insult to a nation built precisely on not being bossed around. Anyone who's the best at something wouldn't be toiling for a federal agency.

Worshiping a Washington vulture leads to presuming an unaccountable dweeb who takes your money and decisions without understanding your needs is skilled at delivering insurance or education.

Those in charge must be the best at running things, so they should run everything. Look at how few corpses they produced with emergency diktats, just like there's barely any debt for all that neat stuff they bought for us. If emergency protective measures continue into a second year, it's either not an emergency or they don't protect.

The classless ruling class actually enjoyed bossing around everyone suffering together while apart. The hardest symptom to contain is joy. Those whose solutions to every life problem involves telling others what to do suddenly became epidemiology experts.

Life's guardians paired their new science knowledge with their natural propensity for bossiness to stop everything about the virus but its spread and symptoms. Mutations that require endless breathing concealing are a convenient excuse to impose order. One can't just get vaccinated as a wise call, as panic continues to be the primary symptom.

The breathing death using it as an opportunity to communalize. A pandemic just happened to be a swell excuse. One aching to hear the cries of humanity from within the prison walls after a year in the hole can faintly hear “We're all in this together” as the creepy mantra presented by dead-eyed cultists who won't leave you alone. The urge to treat individuals as nothing more than horde members may inspire voluntary seclusion. Misanthropes discovered themselves this past year.

If you think everyone's as awful as they are dumb, you're bound to decide how to fix their pathetic tendencies. Our newly communal world can't let humans have the sense to seclude themselves while they're sick. We've lost an unimaginable amount of productivity and chances to offer what we have for what we could use, which you might call the economy. There's not a switch that allows conglomerates to profit off orphan sweat. If there were, Democratic governors would've flipped it.

Every ghastly projected outcome came true. Of course, it was with every safety measure in place. But impositions didn't go far enough, you see. Those sneaking unfiltered breaths murdered the compliant by the truckload. This is like government ruining the economy only because it didn't drain enough capital from it. As always, the biggest screwups imaginable just didn't have enough power.

[projectrepublic-blog]

Women of Senate call for Franken to quit as sex allegations grow

Six female Democratic senators called for Al Franken to resign after a sixth woman accused him of unwanted advances.  So far, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Maggie Hassan, Mazie Hirono, Claire McCaskill and Patty Murray called for Franken to step aside Wednesday.  Six women senators in quick succession on Wednesday called for Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) to step aside after a new accusation emerged from a woman who said the senator had sought to forcibly kiss her in a 2006 incident.  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) was the first to release a statement calling for Franken to step down.  She was quickly followed by Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).  The quick statements suggested coordination from the senators, and heightened the pressure on Franken to leave the Senate. Just last week, a number of senators questioned about Franken said they were waiting for the Ethics Committee to complete its review of multiple allegations that have been raised against Franken.     Fifth Accuser: Army Veteran Claims Al Franken Felt Her Up in 2003     “While Senator Franken is entitled to have the Ethics Committee conclude its review, I believe it would be better for our country if he sent a clear message that any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn’t acceptable by stepping aside to let someone else serve,” Gillibrand said in a statement on Facebook.  “In the wake of the election of President #Trump, in just the last few months, our society is changing, and I encourage women and men to keep speaking up to continue this progress. At this moment, we need to speak hard truths or lose our chance to make lasting change.”     Watch: Bill Clinton Is Asked About Sen. Franken Scandal — His Response Is Creepy     The women calling on Franken to resign include the third-ranking Democrats in the Senate and possible 2020 hopefuls in Gillibrand and Harris.  “Sexual harassment and misconduct should not be allowed by anyone and should not occur anywhere. I believe the best thing for Senator Franken to do is step down,” Harris said in her statement.     Clinton Accusers Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey Storm Al Franken’s Office Demanding His Resignation (VIDEO)     The calls also come a day after Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) resigned from the House amid his own sexual harassment controversy.  More allegations also emerged Wednesday, with a woman accusing Franken of forcibly trying to kiss her – this time after a taping of his radio show in 2006.  The woman, who spoke to Politico, claims the Minnesota Democrat pursued her after her boss had left and she was collecting her things. The woman was in her 20s at the time.  The accuser, who was not identified, said Franken tried to kiss her but that she ducked. Franken, a former “Saturday Night Live” performer who was a host on the now-defunct “Air America” radio network at the time, allegedly followed up by telling her it was his “right as an entertainer.”  “He was between me and the door and he was coming at me to kiss me,” she told Politico. “It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like ‘Wait, what is happening?’ But I knew whatever was happening was not right and I ducked.  The post  Women of Senate call for Franken to quit as sex allegations grow  appeared first on  Project Republic | Headlines, News, Politics .

  #MAGA #White #SJW #LIbrals #Conservative #Liberal #Congress

[go-redgirl]

The Senate Votes To Approve The Controversial Spending Caps, Debt Ceiling Bill. The Final Passage Vote Was 67-28. This Bill Now Goes To President Trump to sign.

The Senate votes to approve the controversial spending caps, debt ceiling bill. The final passage vote was 67-28. This bill now goes to President Trump to sign.

_____________________________________________________________

INDIVIDUALS/COMMENTS/POSTS:

Steven Jones ​yep! Torrok 01 is a paid Leftist TROLL! Everyone just iggy it. Bye Troll! no one cares anymore about you internet morons.

Ya'akov benAwake ​Citizenship question on census please .

Phil Mueller ​Vote Trump to protect America from socialism

caro sato ​1000 dollars for everyone is a Ponzi scheme

Destiny Menzies ​Yeah because y'all are lining your pockets with it rather then spending the money on what it was meant for!!! Gggggrrrrr wake up people!!!

Uganda Knuckles Christ ​ANTIFA = terrorisme

greywolfe ​TRUMP 2020👍

Rod Bender ​the census aids gerimandering

HK ​Artemis Fow Thank you i was confused 😸

Drill Bit ​torrok 01​, Yea, That*s why he gives his Salary to Charity.

Star Dust ​What did you do with those taxes before Trump became President ? Talk to Obama about high drug prices.. He did that

Merlin Krisp ​Where’s my royals Roy’s 😂😂 JK

andrew richardson ​Balance the G da..mn budget, get your sh..t together CROOKS

John Ortiz ​War famine diseases natural disasters and civil war is coming soon to America. Christians prepare

text kite ​CREEPER, AW MAN

Joey Big Things Poppin ​The kids shouting for Trump is because their parents are part of the 1%. while these children never worked a day in their life ,college paid for lmfao..

Havefunplayguitar ​Baltimore? Send money I need to pay my beach house mortgage

Why are you so Angry? ​Thats what we pay you clowns to do! Do your jobs, or fear, fear our LIBERTY!

torrok 01 ​If you make $50k a year Trump tax cut gave you $570. If you make $1m it gave you $70k. Is that fair? I would rather $1k a month

Annika_green ​@Joey that’s a broad generalization .

awildbill rightous ​HK ,, may the force be with you!👀👌

Happy Voice ​tax cuts for the rich lead to higher deficits and diminishing returns for the country

Travis Jackson ​Our President Trump is making Me proud.

GDPops ​Government shouldn't spend money they don't have. TRY DOING THAT AT HOME

Fuzz Man ​1 state 1 vote

Rebecca Brown ​Trump 2020!

Nothing ​Vote for democrats if you want your cities filled with 💩💩💩 and 💉💉💉

Edward Wallace ​Government bad answer to all problems. Marianne Williamson 2020

Mo Hamhead ​If it was up to me there would be zero free stuff for lazy unambitious parasites

nighttr ​I have an idea lets give the super wealthy a tax break,

Danny Hemphill ​the people that make a lot of money pay a lot of taxes idiot

Ramiro Garcia ​RINO'S & DEM'S SUCK.

David Hensley ​shut down the government good do it

Merlin Krisp ​True Danny 👍

richardcvlr5 ​there's creepy joe he's moving kinda slow in the men's room.

IR_Dankenstein ​Will there still be gummy bears? If not, it's on like Donkey Kong!

Drill Bit ​46% of people, don*t pay taxes.

Why are you so Angry? ​Many take pride in the fact that their children are made to work in honorable situations, with the word of god in their hearts, integrity in their minds, and a knowing of behavior. Who made you stupid

torrok 01 ​$1000 a month to everyone stimulates growth better than giving money to the rich

Havefunplayguitar ​I was blocked

abc def ​Joey why u watch fox,no tin foil hats here

Friendly Tourist ​I ❤ Cop Splash 💦🐖🐖

Niobokupletskite ​i say having it in your hand now is better then going out and find it

Uganda Knuckles Christ ​trump 2020 Landslide

HoarderCatG ​Nicole junkermann

Rod Bender ​people that make 12k a year and afford 1k per year taxes dumbocrats

awildbill rightous ​Master Jedi Trump leading the Jedi now! 2020 The lightside will defeat the darkside!🤜

Amy Tyler ​🚬🚬🚬🚬🚬🚬🚬🚬

Bob A ​Richard he’s in there with booker

Rebecca Brown ​We The People demand Term Limits for congress and grandfather the limits.

Annika_green ​If there’s a crash & the bankers and corps get bailout, I will be upset!!! I think a check one time to WE THE PEOPLE IS FINE

Fuzz Man ​all the money all the billionaires in the world has would not pay for dems dreams

Dan Williams ​if there is more of something, does it increase in value?

Edward Wallace ​So don't spend pay the dog gone debt. Marianne Williamson 2020

Last Days ​What a fool. OH BUT THEY want to give everybody free S___! to put that debt on the backs of his grands

origine online ​Free education Free medical 5 weeks vacation bigger salary thx , try to be more like my friends in europe

Joey Big Things Poppin ​Never watched fox ever.. Alphabet

Happy Voice ​Raise taxes to reduce the deficit and fulfill budget shortfalls, it's not rocket science. Can't tighten the belt much more.

Stephen Rothwell ​maybe the good senators can donate his salary and half his net worth if he loves the kids so much

L Yachty ​TRUMP 2020

MsMyxlplyx

​CUT SPENDING....START WITH CONGRESS PORKERS Welcome to live chat! Remember to guard your privacy and abide by our community guidelines. LEARN MORE

Leandro Garcia ​leave here , and go to the CSPAN live stream if you like

window789456123 ​trump 2020

Mo Hamhead ​There's too much parasite and not enough host now

Steven Jones ​do not buy the 1% LIE! That is all it is. LIES! Taxes went to everyone almost. THIS IS A LIE!

Why are you so Angry? ​Get a job, vote the Nanny government OUT of OUR lives! Figure it out, grow up. Most of us do, with or without the perpetually pubescent.

Danny Hemphill ​oh yes. free this free that equals loss of freedom

Blue Wizard ​🏆TRUMP 2020🏆

nighttr ​Trump supporters sure could use the free education

Drill Bit ​The rich make their money just like you do. Have you ever been hired by poor person???

torrok 01 ​Google Andrew Yang and check out his policies

Merlin Krisp ​Shut up 🤐

KritterKracker ​It's called stealing from Peter to pay Paul

De Dowd ​this guy is a Phoney Windbag! All talk and no action as long as his palm is greased with cash. Just watched a press conference in Baltimor and the Feds are cracking down on the drug dealers. Finally!

andrew richardson ​torrok 01, you sir, are an idiot, don;t breed

GDPops ​$22,022,376,894,711.12 National Debt

Kirrsty Locklear ​this dude is full of it our money is being stolen and not spent on the issues and foreign countries ain't paying their bills

Havefunplayguitar ​Why am I being censored?

Uganda Knuckles Christ ​Eat bacon our leave USA🥓

Amy Tyler ​This is so interesting! NOT!

Nothing ​no such thing as free you will have uneducated taxpayers paying for top earner college graduate degrees

Niobokupletskite ​tax break for the rich is a disinfection for the rip of businesses that surround us

Adrana West ​VOTE THE RIGHT WAY FOR AMERICA: TRUMP 2020

john doe ​ugh...

ascii ​Has anyone mentioned Israel yet?

AA14/MoshDuck ​Amy Tyler: Then why are you here?

Friendly Tourist ​🌚 PAGAN 🌛

IR_Dankenstein ​Word of the day is: Entitlement

Rod Bender ​"healthcare" should not be confused with "health insurance" DUMBOCRATS

Edward Wallace ​No one should be taxed by Government. Marianne Williamson 2020

grabitz ​slow mode

Bill Bush ​n

Star Dust ​why did you let Bush and Obama have all that money ?

Annika_green ​Stop taking too many meds and eat healthy. Again, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

No Regrets ​vote Trump 2020 President Trump 20/20 all the way

Happy Voice ​It's fiscally responsible to raise taxes on everyone, not just the rich, but middle class as well, before we even talk about changing healthcare or education.

Greig Ballantine ​oh my omar

BayouSef1 ​I don't know what he is talking about. It didn't cost me that much for a 12 year old.

Drill Bit ​Mushroom Williamson, Throw back from Woodstock

Steve Landy ​Trump 2020 ok

torrok 01 ​Trump has done nothing for you. Google Andrew Yang

AnabelleLee100 ​CAPS ARE ONLY WAY TO FIX HEALTHCARE COSTS

Joey Big Things Poppin ​Talk deficit yet their spending more than they can print

andrew richardson ​National debt goes up 100 million per hour 24/7

GDPops ​DISGUSTING DEMOCRATS - BOHICA

Spiny Norman ​taxation is theft, crime does not pay

DRUNKEN RAMBLE ​We're all gonna get a Skyscraper on 5th Ave one day. It's gonna be Huge!!!!......lololol

David Hensley ​so who is this guy lobbying for big pharma?

Uganda Knuckles Christ ​Omar antifa leader?

Dawn Gray ​Joe Biden SAID it last night. GOV'T has failed us 40yrs. Joe has BEEN THERE 49 THERE LIES THE PROBLEM. #TermLimits #ForthepeopleBythePeople

Danny Hemphill ​torrok01. your delusional. never gonna happen. IT'S called communism

DFG ​Corey Booker is the whitest person running for president

junior ​Andrew Yang 2020

KritterKracker ​The Superiority of the Republics freedom TRUMPS the inferiority of Congress

Keonte ​Andrew Yang 2020

awildbill rightous ​We clearly need Master Jedi Trump another 4 years ,💯

HK ​Torrok 01 come on man don't be Rude

abc def ​soros antifa and dem leader,fact

Mo Hamhead ​How come the Democrats aren't talking about Mueller any more? It's like he never existed

360Nomad ​I AM THE SENATE

Ganesh Jayatpal ​🚩🚩🚩

American Patriot 1776 ​Andrew Yang 2020 I agree Keonte

Happy Voice ​Taxes are used to support a government that provides necessary public services, such as a police force, public education, and public infrastructure, "taxation is theft" is simply idiotic.

Roger Clinton ​F Dems

Drill Bit ​Spiny Norman​ It pays for these people. They all rich.

SAND BLAST ​DEMOCRATS WERE IS MULLER ?

Jenny Ward ​I I bet Nancy Pelosi cart and baby roaches and lice flee from her arse.

Jim Brauer ​YANG 2020 / FREEDOM DIVIDEND / M4A / Humanity First / Abundance Mindset / $1,000 per mo per adult / Solution to POVERTY = CASH in the hands of Parents and Teachers !!! YANG = YES !!! TRICKLE UP

Annika_green ​@American Patriot 1776?Yang?! You want the taxation called VALUE ADDED TAX???

no halo ​President Trump should read that deal again because democrats and republicans agree to it,there has to be a catch,and you can't trust crooked career politicians!

Why are you so Angry? ​No more alms.

L Yachty ​Majority vote TRUMP obviously

OurSavageGaming ​MAGA 2020 🦅🦅🦅

JESUS CHRIST ​OLD FOLKS WANTING MORE CONTROL PRETTY SOON WE WILL BE WALKING LIKE SOLDIERS

Alan Johnson ​All of them are thieves! If they are talking they are Lying! Drain the swamp!

AnabelleLee100 ​Universal Health Exploitation does not fix Costs. Caps on Medical Charges ONLY Way to Fix Healthcare.

Joey Big Things Poppin ​So Taxation on the American people is a crime

Nothing ​democrats hate all human rights. they are anti free speech, privacy, self defence, due process. I cant think of 1 human right democrats support

Danny Hemphill ​yang is a con man commie

Borng Jak ​ខ្ញុំ

KritterKracker ​Freedom from Congress' Bad Debt

Dawn Gray ​MY Indep VOTE goes to TRUMP2020 #IndependentsForTrump

David Hensley ​and the police force is a arm of corporate America that listens to those who make the laws they are the arm that inforces them

Fake News ​DEBT CEILING MATTERS. PASSING IT IS A GOOD THING

abc def ​deport the whole yang family,enemies of the state

Kodiak ​suddenly Durbin cares about the troops.

_______________________________________________________

OPINION:  Great, great news to hear.  The Senate is doing an outstanding job.  

Lets give them applaus👏

[glenngaylord]

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE CINEMA - My Review of WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (4 1/2 Stars)

There’s no other way of putting this.  Morgan Neville, who won an Academy Award for his fantastic documentary, 20 FEET FROM STARDOM, has outdone himself with one of the best, most emotionally fulfilling, resonant films of our time.  Tracing the career of Fred Rogers, the creator and star of the popular, decades-long running children’s program, “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”, WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? exudes as much generosity and kindness as the man himself.

Confession time.  I never cared for the program.  I found Rogers’ personality passively unctuous and the pacing of his show deadly dull.  Give me the acid trip that was “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” any day over this.  I also always assumed Rogers’ was a closeted gay man, same with Pee Wee for that matter, so things always felt a little off to me in a somewhat creepy way.

Years later when Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick would disingenuously go on about his wife Dixie while whispering in his high-pitched voice, I couldn’t help but think of Fred Rogers.  It would almost literally take an Act of Congress to turn me around on Mr. Rogers.  And yet, here we are, with a remarkable film, hitting this world at just the right time, convincing me that this man was nothing less than a national treasure.  

How we treat each other has shifted dramatically since the days his show debuted in the late 1960s.  Civility seems to have disappeared as we bury our faces in our phones and yell at each other on Facebook.  Sure, we’ve also made great steps towards diversity and experiencing other cultures, but there’s not a whole lot of evidence that our social skills are improving.  When you see the President of the United States spouting racist, sexist, homophobic remarks, or mocking the #METOO movement, or threatening to commit violent acts against those who oppose him, you know we’ve come a long way from changing into a cardigan and espousing love, kindness, and good listening skills.  

This, however, is exactly what Fred Rogers stood for, this man who was a lifelong Republican and an ordained Presbyterian Minister who exemplified the best values of them whereas both seemed to have been overrun by true monsters.  This documentary does a great job of showing what a radical badass he was, from the topics he discussed on his show such as the evils of segregation and separatism.  His puppet creations even got in on his aesthetic by highlighting the folly of building a wall around a country.  Incredible prescience!  That slow pace I despised as a child even had its purpose.  Fred found great value in the spaces between words, attentiveness, and the peacefulness in a slowed down world. I think so many of us are craving this right now more than ever, and Rogers led it by glorious example.  

Footage of him almost single-handedly saving the Public Broadcasting System, which then President Nixon wanted to gut to pay for the Vietnam War, floored me.  His unwavering dedication to those delicate years of childhood development probably helped stave off the an even bigger wave of bratty bullies we now hear about daily.  

It’s quite unnerving to hear conservative pundits trying to blame Rogers for influencing generations of entitle brats, when his entire mission was based on kindness.  It would be so easy to point those fingers at the truly awful people in the world, like Fred Phelps and his despicable gang, but if we’re to learn anything from this film, it’s learning how to fight for your beliefs while still maintaining love for your neighbors.  Sounds hokey, but it’s possibly the only way we may ever get ourselves out of this mess.  

But enough soapboxing, let’s talk about the film itself.  I wish it had delved more into Rogers’ upbringing and personal life.  It’s a bit of a puff piece in that regard, but my guess is that he was such a Modern Day Jesus that absolutely nobody had anything bad to say about the man.  You certainly feel the love from his delightful wife and sons as well as his many colleagues.  Most touching of all is how he handled his friendship with François Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons.  Openly gay in real life, he portrayed black Officer Clemmons, who at the height of the Civil Rights Movement gets invited by Rogers to share a dip in a little swimming pool.  At the time, this was truly groundbreaking stuff.  Clemmons also discussed being openly gay, with Rogers wanting to hide this lest they lose their sponsors.  Despite this understandable misstep, Rogers proved to be a loving friend to people of all stripes.  His treatment of a children with disabilities moved me to tears, as did almost every single act of kindness in this film.

Everything I felt about this man got turned around by what I saw here.  Even my suspicions that he was gay get discussed when Tom Snyder, a major talk show host in the 1970s asked Fred if he was gay.  He actually asks him if he’s “square”, if he’s straight.  It’s an odd moment which doesn’t get a response out of Fred.  Part of me thinks he still may have been gay, or maybe he was the classic effeminate heterosexual.  It doesn’t matter.  WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR celebrates what the man was about rather than delve into extraneous details.  It feels gloriously well-rounded and has one of the loveliest endings I’ve ever seen, one which honors his aesthetic in the most perfect of ways, and once again, reduced me to tears.  Bring plenty of tissues and an open heart which wants to be filled.  Do not miss this absolutely great documentary.  

[leftpress]

Hit the Road, Barack: Some Farewell Reflections

JANUARY 13, 2017 | PAUL STREET SUBMITTED BY @sataniccapitalist

The lying neoliberal imperialist Barack Obama’s nationally televised Farewell Address from Chicago last Tuesday was a fitting monument to the deceptive, fake-progressive oratory he wielded so elegantly in becoming a national phenomenon and a U.S. President. As usual, his oratory was plagued by a deep disconnect between his words and his deeds.

“When Ordinary People Get Involved”

“Now this,” Obama said, speaking of Chicago, “is where I learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved, and they get engaged, and they come together to demand it.”

Nice words. But as president, Obama moved to crush the Occupy Movement in the fall and winter of 2011 (more on this below). He did nothing as president for card check union authorization — the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA,), which he campaigned on and which would have re-legalized serious union organizing in this country. He kicked EFCA to the curb from day one, along with single-payer health insurance (long supported by most Americans) or even a small health insurance public option. He failed fail to offer one iota of support for the great pro-public worker Wisconsin Rebellion of early 2011.

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Is that what the arch-authoritarian, super-secretive, and global-corporatist Trans-Pacific Partnership (which Obama spent much of his second term trying to get through Congress) was about: ordinary people getting engaged and coming together to demand change? Sort of like when the nation’s top thirteen bankers – super-opulent capitalists atop the reckless financial institutions that had just pushed the national and global economy over the cliff – came to the White House in March 2009 and Obama calmed them down, saying (I paraphrase) “hey you’ve got a public relations problem.  I’m the only one between you and the pitchforks and, guess what, I’m here to help.”  Like that, Mr. President? (The taxpayer bailout of the finance capitalist parasites would continue and expand, with nothing for the rest of us.)

Ordinary folks coming together to demand change from the bottom up? Like Obama’s Tuesday White House meetings where he has designated targets for his drone assassination, rightly described by Noam Chomsky as “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”? Where he has acted as global-war-on/of-terror judge, jury, and executioner, in brazen defiance of technically irrelevant national and international law? Or like when he decided to offer Republicans even bigger cuts to Social Security and Medicare than the GOP asked for during the deb-ceiling crisis of summer 2011?

“A Hallmark of Our Democracy”

“In 10 days,” Obama intoned in his well-worn clipped baritone, “the world will witness a hallmark of our democracy. The peaceful transfer of power from one freely-elected President to the next. I committed to President-Elect Trump that my administration would ensure the smoothest possible transition, just as President Bush did for me…. Because it’s up to all of us to make sure our government can help us meet the many challenges we still face.”

But what “democracy” was Obama talking about? It is well known and established that the United States’ political order is an abject corporate and financial plutocracy – an oligarchy of and for Wealthy Few. You don’t have to be a supposedly wild-eyed leftist radical me to think this. Just ask the establishment liberal political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern). Over the past three plus decades, these leading academic researchers have determined, the U.S. political system has functioned as “an oligarchy,” where wealthy elites and their corporations “rule.” Examining data from more than 1,800 different policy initiatives in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Gilens and Page found that wealthy and well-connected elites consistently steer the direction of the country, regardless of and against the will of the U.S. majority and irrespective of which major party holds the White House and/or Congress,  “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” Gilens and Page write, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”.

As Gilens explained to the liberal online journal Talking Points Memo two years ago, “ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States.”

Such is the harsh reality of “really existing capitalist democracy” in the U.S., what Noam Chomsky has called “RECD, pronounced as ‘wrecked.’”

And why should Trump enjoy a smooth transition? Obama’s neoliberal legacy Donald Trump is a thin- skinned megalomaniac and an arch-sexist racist and eco-cidal quasi or real fascist.  What serious progressive or (small d) democratic would wish a monster like that a smooth transition? Serious progressives should call for mass civil disobedience.

Work with arch-capitalist and deeply reactionary ruling class honey badger super-predators and arch-kleptocratic oligarchs and sociopaths like Trump, Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Rex Tillerson (who admittedly may not get confirmed), and Betsy deVos to “make sure our government can help us meet the many challenges we still face.”? That’s like telling someone to sit down for a nice vegetarian meal and chat with Hannibal Lecter. (Though, I must say, much the same can be said for the various ruling class swamp creatures Obama assembled in his White House – and the creepy animals in George W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s administrations and the previous ones.)

“The Wealthy Are Paying a Fair Share”

“The good news,” Obama told his adoring Chicago farewell crowd, “is that today the economy is growing again.”  Growing, yes, in such incredibly unequal ways that the top tenth of the upper One Percent now has as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.  An incredible 95 percent of the nation’s income growth went to the top 1 percent during Obama’s first term (we’re still waiting for likely comparable data on his second one). A recent study shows that 94 percent of the jobs created under Obama have been part-time, contract, and/or temporary positions (“McJobs”). This is not stable or desirable growth.  It is growth that is predicated on and deepens savage New Gilded Age disparities and prepares the ground for future financial meltdowns.  It is also growth that contributes to ever more imminent environmental catastrophe.

“The wealthy,” Obama claimed last Tuesday night “are paying a fair share of taxes.” Yes, he actually said that.  Quick, someone go tell Bernie Sanders that Obama actually said that.

“Health care costs,” Obama exulted. “are rising at the slowest rate in 50 years.”  I doubt that but even if true, that’s some cheap-ass change to trumpet. Premiums are through the roof and it is driving folks crazy.  The nation desperately needs single-payer or at least some kind of a public option instead of that Republican health insurance bill Obama went with in 2009.

Against “Stark Inequality”

“But, for all the real progress that we’ve made,” Obama the fake populist said three nights ago, , “we know it’s not enough. Our economy doesn’t work as well or grow as fast when a few prosper at the expense of a growing middle class, and ladders for folks who want to get into the middle class. (APPLAUSE)…stark inequality is also corrosive to our democratic idea. While the top 1 percent has amassed a bigger share of wealth and income, too many of our families in inner cities and in rural counties have been left behind…The laid off factory worker, the waitress or health care worker who’s just barely getting by and struggling to pay the bills. Convinced that the game is fixed against them.”

Well, alright and goddamn, now the president was talking!  Except, hold up: isn’t Barack The Empire’s New Clothes Obama the ultimate poster child of how the neoliberal game is fixed across the two state-capitalist U.S. political organizations? With Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and an angry, “pitchfork”-wielding populace at the gates, an actually progressive President Obama could have rallied the populace to push back against the nation’s concentrated wealth and power structures by moving ahead aggressively with a number of policies: a stimulus with major public works jobs programs; a real (single-payer) health insurance reform; the serious disciplining and even break-up or nationalization of the leading financial institutions; massive federal housing assistance and mortgage relief; and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have re-legalized union organizing in the U.S.

No such policy initiatives issued from the new White House. Obama and his Citigroup and Goldman Sachs-appointed team opted instead to pick up the ball from Dubya in giving the U.S. populace what William Greider memorably called “a blunt lesson about power, who has it and who doesn’t.” Americans “watched Washington rush to rescue the very financial interests that caused the catastrophe. They learned,” Greider wrote, “that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it. ‘Where’s my bailout,’ became the rueful punch line at lunch counters and construction sites nationwide. Then to deepen the insult, people watched as establishment forces re-launched their campaign for ‘entitlement reform’ – a euphemism for whacking Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid.”

Americans also watched as Obama passed a health insurance reform (the so-called Affordable Care Act) that only the big insurance and drug companies could love, kicking the popular alternative (single payer “Medicare for All”) to the curb while rushing to pass a program drafted by the Republican Heritage Foundation and first carried out in Massachusetts by the arch 1 Percenter Mitt Romney. As the retired and veteran Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren notes in his indispensable book The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (2016), “In 2008, Barack Obama the change agent ran against the legacy of George W. Bush. But when he assumed office his policies in the areas of national security and financial regulation were strikingly similar. Even the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans vilify with uncontrollable rage, is hardly different in outline from Bush’s Medicare [legislation] (both expand medical coverage by subsidizing corporate interests).”

Lofgren is critical of Obama’s liberal defenders who blame all his failures on Republican obstruction. “They forget” Lofgren rightly notes, “that during his first two years in office, he had a Democratic majority in Congress.”

In the summer of 2011, Obama offered the Republicans bigger cuts in Social Security and Medicare than they asked for as part of his “Grand Bargain” put forward amidst the elite-manufactured debt-ceiling crisis. It was after this point that hundreds of thousands of mostly younger Americans had received enough of Greider’s “blunt lesson” to join the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which sought progressive change through direct action and social movement-building rather than corporate-captive electoral politics. We will never know how far Occupy might have gone. It was shut down by a federally coordinated campaign of repression that joined the Obama administration and hundreds of mostly Democratic city governments in the infiltration, surveillance, smearing, takedown and eviction of the short-lived movement – this even as the Democrats stole some of Occupy’s rhetoric for use against Romney and the Republicans in 2012.

After his re-election, Obama spoke to some of his rich friends at an event called The Wall Street Journal CEO Council. “When you go to other countries, the political divisions are so much more stark and wider. Here in America, the difference between Democrats and Republicans – we’re fighting inside the 40-yard lines…People call me a socialist sometimes. But no, you’ve got to meet real socialists. (Laughter.) I’m talking about lowering the corporate tax rate. My health care reform is based on the private marketplace.”

It was a “touching ruling class moment” (Danny Klatch).

The rightward policy drift got worse until Obama was a full-on lame-duck and could make some more progressive sounding noises with knowledge that nothing he claimed to be for (like an increase in the federal minimum wage) was in danger of being passed. By Lofgren’s insider account in The Deep State:

“For six years running, Obama sought bipartisan compromise with the deluded persistence of Captain Ahab, despite abundant evidence that the GOP was in no mood for it…After frittering away those six years when he had at least one house of Congress in Democratic hands, Obama emerged from the 2014 midterm debacle with an epiphany: now was the time to display the populist president that is supporters thought they had elected in 2008…There was only one problem: how was a lame duck president going to get this agenda through the most numerically dominant Republican Congress since 1929? That absurd dilemma sums up the reality of his presidency…Obama may be, like Napoleon III, a sphinx without a riddle: merely an ambitious politician who tested well with focus groups, and who arrived at just the right moment, promising hope and change as a pretext to administer an entrenched system without any conviction.”

The only part of Lofgren’s passage I might take some issue with is the phrase “without any conviction.” Obama brought a fair amount of capitalist, imperialist, neoliberal, and even subtly white-supremacist conviction to his privilege-serving role. Read his deeply conservative and American Exceptionalist, Ronald Reagan-praising 2006 campaign book The Audacity of Hope or any of the speeches Obama gave to elite business and foreign policy groups during his years as a U.S. senator and presidential candidate (I covered all that material at length in my widely ignored June 2008 book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics) Candidate Obama bent over backwards to distance himself from “angry” Black calls for racial justice and equality, preening as a “post-racial” leader ready and willing to blame poor Blacks for their position at the bottom of American society (this too is covered at length in my 2008 book. See the third chapter, titled “How Black is Obama? Color, Class, Generation and the Perverse Racial Politics of the Post-Civil Rights Era”). And recall that Obama spent no small part of his last years in office trying to pass secretive, undemocratic, and global-corporatist Trans Pacific Partnership.

“We Can’t Be Complacent”

“We can argue about how to best achieve these [egalitarian ] goals,” Obama said last Tuesday in his “home town” Honolulu…I mean Chicago. “But we can’t be complacent about the goals themselves.”

Well, Obama was complacent about the Wisconsin rebellion and Black Lives Matter and the Fight for Fifteen.  He was very complacent about the fact that median household Black net worth fell to one thirteenth that of white media household net worth under his watch.  I don’t remember him mentioning that. Racial inequality did not spark of a lot of attention from Obama’s presidency.

But he sure wasn’t complacent when it came to crushing Occupy…..or about cracking down on whistle-blowers or about drone-bombing families and wedding parties in the Muslim world…or. wrecking Libya…or provoking Russia…or antagonizing China….or pushing for the TPP.  No complacency there. No sir.

“Our Founders” and Their Love for “Democracy”

“Our founders,” Obama said last Tuesday, “argued, they quarreled, and eventually they compromised. They expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity.”

Obama has been mouthing this revisionist American History as long as I’ve covered him, which is too long. One thing he leaves out there is that democracy was the ultimate nightmare of “our founders,” whose chief agents were wealthy aristo-republican slave-owners and merchant capitalists who feared and hated the property-less and property-poor majority and who would hitch their young republic’s economic development on the systematic torture of millions of Black chattel slaves. The last thing they wanted to see break out in the young republic was popular sovereignty.

Drawn from the elite propertied segments of late British colonial North America, most of the delegates to the U.S. Constitutional Convention shared their compatriot John Jay’s view that “the people who own the country ought to govern it.” As the celebrated U.S. historian Richard Hofstader noted in his classic text The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (1948): “in their minds, liberty was not linked not to democracy but to property.” Democracy was a dangerous concept to them, conferring “unchecked rule by the masses,” which was “sure to bring arbitrary redistribution of property, destroying the very essence of liberty.” (In Hofstader’s account, the New England clergyman Jeremy Belknap captured the fundamental idea behind the Founders’ curious notion of what they liked to call popular government. “Let it stand as a principle,” Belknap wrote to an associate, “that government originates from the people, but let the people be taught…that they are unable to govern themselves.”)

Hofstader’s take on the Founders was born out in historian Jennifer Nedelsky’s comprehensively researched volume Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism (1990). For all but one of the U.S. Constitution’s framers (James Wilson), Nedelsky noted, protection of “property” (meaning the people who owned large amounts of it) was “the main object of government.” The non-affluent, non-propertied and slightly propertied popular majority was for the framers “a problem to be contained.”

And let us note yet again (this is an old problem I’ve written about more than once) the sick irony of the technically Black Obama calling slave-owners “our Founders.”  As the prolific historian Gerald Horne shows in his book The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (New York, 2014), the Founders’ decision to break off from England emerged largely out of the calculation than that Black chattel slave system on which North American fortunes depended could not survive except through secession from the British Empire.  The colonists’ triumph over London helped slavery expand in subsequent years. The color line between white and black was drawn with harsher lines than ever before in the “land of liberty.” “There is a disjuncture between the supposed progressive and avant-guard import of 1776,” Horne notes, “and the worsening of conditions of Africans and the indigenous that followed upon the triumph of the rebels.” The white North American settlers’ (“our Founders’”) counter-revolution was a great slavery success.

“Our Constitution,” Obama pronounced last Tuesday, “is a remarkable, beautiful gift.”  That was a nice gem in the wake of how the Constitution’s explicitly anti-democratic Electoral College has just and for the second time in this century granted the U.S. presidency to a right-wing Republican who lost the majority presidential vote (and Trump lost by close to three million votes). The Electoral College was inserted into the Constitution to, among other things, buttress the power of the slave-owner class.

You Win, Obama…Now Get Out

Sadly, the nation’s absurdly ancient Constitution, is (consistent with its drafters’ big property-centered world view and the contempt for those without property) more of an authoritarian straightjacket than a democratic gift. I’d love to go into more detail on that, but I’m done (a good introduction is Daniel Lazarre’s book Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy (Harvest Books, 1997). Twelve years of covering Obama’s noxious fake-progressive bullshit (I started with the deeply reactionary Democratic Convention Keynote Address that launched in the Obama phenomenon in the summer of 2004) has worn me out. So here’s a final personal message to the president: I’ve never been able to keep up with your Orwellian duplicities. You and your speech-writers have always been prolific masters of progressive-posing double-speak. You win. Now please get the fuck out of here.

I have no love for the noxious right-wing quasi-fascist about to set up disastrous shop in the executive branch, but it is with great relief that I will watch Obama take his final helicopter flight off the White House lawn.  I just can’t keep up with Obama’s bullshit anymore. And so I say and sing, in the immortal words of Ray Charles: “Hit the road, J[Bar]ack and don’t you come back no more, no more.  Hit the road, Barack, and don’t you come back no more.”

Postscript

I’m looking forward to not having to catch Hell on “the left” for telling the truth about what a state-capitalist and imperialist low-life the President of the United States is. Eight more days and I’m free again to cuss out the president without looking over my shoulder for liberals and even some leftists wagging their fingers at me.

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When one sets out to compile a list like the Top Ten Libertarian Rock Bands, one is faced with a few challenges:

Rock purists will object and say, “Hey, they’re not libertarian!” because most rock purists balk at libertarian ideas.

Libertarian purists will object and say, “Hey, they’re not libertarian!” because they refuse to touch with a ten-foot pole anything that could remotely violate the non-aggression principle.

There simply aren’t many outspoken libertarians in mainstream rock today.

My response is that sometimes people are libertarian by accident.  Wasn’t rock n’ roll born in an anti-establishment, anti-authority environment?  Even many leftist rock bands (i.e., nearly all rock bands) produce a lot of individual songs that could be libertarian-sympathetic, whether they are anti-war or anti-authority.

With that said, these are the top 10 libertarian rock bands, in no particular order.

1. Rush

The classic case of a libertarian band is Rush, whose influence and popularity is hard to overstate.  Rush are prog-rock royalty.  It’s hard to believe that their immense, progressive sound and musical virtuosity is produced by a mere three men.

Not only has Rush’s 40 year career made them a highly venerated rock band in general, but the main lyricist and octopus drummer, Neil Peart, was often inspired by the great classical liberal novelist, philosopher, and left-wing punching bag Ayn Rand.  That fact is apparent on several Rush songs such as The Trees (an allegory of smaller trees complaining about larger trees simply for being larger and hogging all the light), A Farewell to Kings (fairly self-explanatory), 2112 (an epic story of a dystopian future of absolute rule), Anthem (the same title as a Rand novella), and the hit Tom Sawyer (paints a picture of a rugged, Randian individualist).

2. Muse

The British-born Muse is one of the freshest, most popular art rock bands making music today.  They share several things with Rush: the same band member count, a mono-syllabic quadruple character name, as well as an affinity for “progressive” song-writing.  In addition, Muse adds a healthy dose of piano, synthesizer, pop-style melodies, and Black Sabbath-esque metal/hard rock guitar riffs.

Muse lyrics tend to be highly skeptical and critical of the established powers.  Lead singer Matthew Bellamy likes Henry George (a sort of Marxist on land-ownership, but libertarian on everything else) and “left-libertarianism”.

Looking at their music catalog, a non-aggression principle fan could find plenty with which to identify.  The 2006 album “Black Holes and Revelations” opens with a not-so-subtle attack on a political figure entitled Take a Bow.  Others like Exo-Politics, Assassin, and Knights of Cydonia have subversive/individual liberty themes.

The political rebellion increases on subsequent albums the Resistance and the 2nd Law (see the Uprising, Resistance, and Supremacy).

When we finally come to the album Drones in 2015, the civil disobedience is at fever pitch.  The album’s theme “drones” applies not only to the controversial unmanned aircraft used by the US military, but also to the idea that the average citizen or soldier could become an unthinking shell, doing whatever they’re told.  See songs like Reapers and Psycho.

3. The Kinks

You may be thinking, The Kinks?  The “You Really Got Me” band from the 60s?  That’s right, the Kinks.  It’s a little known fact that “You Really Got Me” is a subtle ode to overzealous police arrests.  While that is actually not true at all, there is a lot more to the Kinks than their biggest hit.

Much of the Kinks’ catalog is in fact dedicated to decrying the initiation of force, the welfare state, clandestine spying, or other big government woes.  There is perhaps no better example of this than “20th Century Man” on the 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies. Front-man and songwriter Ray Davies sings:

I was born in a welfare state fueled by bureaucracy

Controlled by civil servants and people dressed in grey

Got no privacy, got no liberty

‘Cause the 20th century people took it all away from me

And this was 1971.  Oh Ray, if you could see us now.  Actually, he can.  He is still living and still making music.  Hm, funny.  Anyway, there are some other libertarian gems on Muswell Hillbillies such as Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues, where Ray’s paranoia causes him to worry greatly – about things that are kinda true; and Here Come the People In Grey, a tribute to intrusive government workers.

Some other standout tracks from the Kinks on this subject would be:

Brainwashed, sung to a retired World War I vet who has grown dependent on and trusting of the powers that be

Some Mother’s Son, a beautiful, tragic ballad about men dying in war

Live Life, an exhortation to keep cool and do your own thing in spite of political upheaval and media sensationalism

Got To Be Free, an expression of longing to, well, be free

4. BackWordz

Though BackWordz is the newest band on this list, they are probably also the most outspoken and plainly libertarian.  Their mission is a sort of libertarian evangelization through the vehicle of Linkin Park-esque metal drenched in hip hop.  They are no joke, as their debut album “Veracity” charted at number 2 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart.  This is remarkable for a couple reasons. The first is the fact they are an independent artist with no major label backing.  Another reason is that they are not the typical anger-infused, chest-beating hard rock band – as a sampling of their song titles shows:

Individualism, railing against collectivism and affirming the right of secession

Self-Ownership, criticizing the idea that the State can save us

Praxeology, a term developed by libertarian super-hero Ludwig von Mises, is the study of human action – has any rock band ever had Ludwig von Mises as the subject of a song?

Statism says: “I’m on a life mission to abolish all the government”

Democracy Sucks, the title says it all

One of the most radical bands to come out in a while, I look forward to seeing where BackWordz goes.  They have potential to hugely expand their audience with their high-quality production and song-writing.  Let the songs get a listener’s blood pumping first and once the lyrics start the sink in, perhaps some minds can be changed.

5. Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper is the father (not mother) of shock rock.  As his band was developing in the late 60s, Alice says:

…it was quite obvious that rock was full of idols and heroes, but there were no villains. I couldn’t find a villain in the bunch. I thought, ‘If nobody wants to play Captain Hook, I do!’

Not only did Alice Cooper cause parents with conservative values heartburn about his affinity for rebellion, horror film lore, and a creepy stage show, he might well also cause statists alarm.

He has an anti-political streak and says

I hate politics with a passion…I know people incorporate politics into rock n’ roll – and I think that the antithesis of rock n’ roll is politics. That would be like me singing the Dow Jones report.

He elsewhere says:

“If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we’re morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.”

(Note: it’s a separate question whether or not the Washington Journal contains good ideas.)  Not only does he want his music free of politics, but he has several gems that outright attack and lampoon politicians and the whole process.  His latest album “Paranormal” especially has some politically skeptical tracks, something any libertarian could appreciate.  Some standout songs would be:

Elected, about a pompous spotlight-phile running for office

Rats, could be how the elites and rulers see the populace

Lock Me Up, a taunt to those who don’t like what Alice has to say: “You can take my head and cut it off but you ain’t gonna change my mind”

Freedom, an anti-authority anthem for freedom of expression

Private Public Breakdown, about a politician who has lost his grip of reality (soooo, all politicians; Alice possibly has Donald Trump in mind)

6. The Interrupters

Remember the late 90s?  The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were skanking all over the radio, welfare reform had been achieved, and the President of the US declared that the era of big government was over.  Congress actually passed a “balanced” budget. The correlation between ska/punk and smaller government is undeniable.  Now, that connection has reemerged in the form of the female-fronted punk band, the Interrupters.

There is a very real chance that the Interrupters have a Ron Paul sticker somewhere on their gear, because their front woman, Aimee Allen, actually wrote Ron Paul���s presidential campaign song.  As you’d expect from someone with such good taste in candidates, many of the Interrupters songs center on the ideas of liberty.

Not only are the lyrics libertarian-friendly, but the songs are just plain good songs.  Chuck Berry style guitar leads overlay no-frills punk rock songwriting with rich vocal harmonies.  The melodies and progressions are so catchy, the only way your foot won’t be tapping along is if it is tied down by some oppressive police state.  Some of my favorites are:

Liberty, a pretty straightforward lament about the rights we are losing

Babylon, uses biblical imagery, encouraging listeners to “rebel against the kings of Babylon” – even mentions money-printing to the delight of Austrians everywhere

Can’t Be Trusted, celebrating the reasons for us not to trust the authorities

Take Back the Power, a pretty transparent message

Outrage, about the tendency of people nowadays to be constantly outraged about something, anything

7. Megadeth

One of the “Big Four” in thrash metal, Megadeth are heavy metal titans who have been head-banging since 1983.  Heavy metal is a genre whose imagery is rife with libertarian sympathies: oppressive tyrants, bloody warfare, rebellion against the ruling powers, and on and on.  Megadeth takes the prize for anti-state themes in their songs, in spite of frontman and former Rick Santorum endorser Dave Mustaine being politically nonsensical sometimes. (They also take the prize for “Band Name Most Likely Created By A Middle Schooler.”)  If we can look past the Santorum misstep, Dave comes sort of close to embracing libertarianism: “I probably [am] a lot more along the lines of what a Libertarian is”.

The title track of “Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?” is a metal classic, and although it comes short of chucking the whole state apparatus, it raises some pertinent questions:

What do you mean I couldn’t be the president of the United States of America?  Tell me something.  It’s still “We the people” RIGHT?

Holy Wars decries wars of religion in which “brother kills brother.”  Symphony of Destruction chillingly warns of giving a dictator absolute control:

Take a mortal man, put him in control.  Watch him become a god, watch peoples’ heads-a-roll.

Dave and co. have really nailed it, though, on their most recent Grammy-winning album, Dystopia.  Track after track describe a tyrannical government coupled with a decaying society.  In addition, it’s right up there with Megadeth’s best albums.  The title track is about what you’d think, and includes the line “What you don’t know, the legend goes, can’t hurt you.  If you only want to live and die in a cage.”  Perhaps my favorite is The Emperor, a snarling punk outcry against the man in charge, pointing out what should be obvious (no clothes).

8. NOFX

Finding a punk band that appreciates private property is tough.  There are many who are great on criticizing the U.S. war machine (Anti-Flag, Bad Religion) or presidents with the last name Bush (Green Day).  These are noble things to be sure.  Sadly, there just are not any major punk bands that haven’t drunk the socialist Kool Aid (red Kool Aid, presumably).  NOFX is not too different in that respect.  However, they are right on several key issues: foreign policy (see We March To The Beat Of Indifferent Drum), freedom of expression (see Separation of Church and Skate), and freedom of speech (see Freedumb).  What sets NOFX over the top is their tribute to actual real libertarianism, The Plan.  In it they sing:

Call us libertarian, cause we do as we please Don’t need fear, or force, or farce to know morality Morals aren’t a substance you can shove in someone’s ear They’re basically a byproduct of, a mind thinking clear

Having come up in the 90s, it’s also refreshing that they don’t appear to buy into today’s identity politics.  Their songs are littered with rude, locker room humor, and they poke fun at all sorts of different demographics.  While this may cause some to take offense, at least NOFX do not advocate locking people in prison just for speaking.  Indeed, if the Social Justice Warriors ever take over (Lord, please no), expect to see NOFX albums at the top of the burn pile.

9. Thrice

Thrice has wandered the back alleys between the “metalcore”, “post-hardcore”, and “indie rock” sub-genres since 1998, and still going strong at the time of this writing. In a Thrice song, you can’t be sure if you might hear screaming, beautiful singing, acoustic guitar, keyboards, or face melting metal licks.  Themes of personal brokenness, relational challenges, theology, social evils, and distrust of the status quo fill lyricist/frontman Dustin Kensrue’s lyrics.  Kensrue doesn’t seem to embrace a particular political ideology, but admits “I would align with a fair amount of Libertarian stuff at times.”

You may be able to guess this from songs like “Blood on the Sand“, a condemnation of the US wars in the Middle East or “Under a Killing Moon“, a song about totalitarian leadership in search of “witches to burn.”  “Doublespeak” examines the tendency of people to not want to know the truth about “who pulls the strings.”  “Black Honey” shows the folly and futility of wars in the Middle East, comparing the US government to someone slapping a swarm of bees and wondering why they get stung.  “The Earth Will Shake” is an awesome, skull-pounding chain-gang spiritual about prisoners longing for freedom – and if the earthquake doesn’t topple the prison walls, this song will.

10. Bob Dylan

It would probably be folly to label Bob Dylan “libertarian,” as he is generally impossible to label. Dylan has unquestionably shaped popular music since the 60s.  A few years after he started playing folk, he exchanged his acoustic guitar for an electric guitar and started accompanying his beautiful, poetic, cryptic lyrics with rock music.  Outrage from many of his folk fans followed.  However, having heard this new sound, it occurred to the Beatles and every other rock band at the time that their songs didn’t have to all be about puppy love.  Dylan has taken so many forked roads in his career that no one (and perhaps not even he) can guess where he will go next.

Maybe it’s that whole “I do what I want” attitude that contributes to the streaks of liberty found in many of his songs.  Though his protest songs from the 60s are usually associated with the left, which was doing most of the protesting, libertarians can still latch on to:

Masters of War, a bleak condemnation of war profiteers

With God on Our Side, exposes the inconsistency of how cultures justify war, and who we choose for enemies and allies

Blowin’ in the Wind, his classic, hit song that asks questions like “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” and “How many deaths will it take ’til he knows that too many people have died?”

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, a lament about how people often want to “stone you” for minding your own business and doing your own thing

Man of Peace, a scathing blast at politicians and people in power: “Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.”

I Shall Be Released, a beautiful folk/gospel ballad of a prisoner looking forward in hope to his freedom

Honorable Mentions

It’s a good thing that not all of the contenders would fit in a group of 10 – we need more libertarian artists!  So here are some honorable mentions:

LEAH, an independent artist who plays fantasy/celtic influenced metal.  She has a few songs that hint at her own personal beliefs, which are libertarian.

Tatiana Moroz is a singer/songwriter with a beautiful voice who worked with the Ron Paul presidential campaigns and is active in the cryptocurrency community.

Jordan Page is a singer/songwriter who campaigned with Ron Paul.  A hard rock sound and solid, liberty-themed lyrics.

Anti-Flag is a politically radical punk band – great on anti-war and government oppression themes, but not so great on private property.  Check out “Die For Your Government” or “911 For Peace.”

Incubus is a massively popular alternative rock band who rose to fame in the 90s.  Song themes include hubris in political leaders and thinking for yourself.

Thrash metal is back, and Havok brings the liberty message along with copious amounts of hair banging around.  Give a listen to “Give Me Liberty…Or Give Me Death.”

My ego is not so great that I would dream of being near the top 10, but if you’d like to check out my own libertarian music, my song “Send In The Tanks” could be a good start.

[sheminecrafts]

Facebook’s latest ‘transparency’ tool doesn’t offer much — so we went digging

Just under a month ago Facebook switched on global availability of a tool which affords users a glimpse into the murky world of tracking that its business relies upon to profile users of the wider web for ad targeting purposes.

Facebook is not going boldly into transparent daylight — but rather offering what privacy rights advocacy group Privacy International has dubbed “a tiny sticking plaster on a much wider problem”.

The problem it’s referring to is the lack of active and informed consent for mass surveillance of Internet users via background tracking technologies embedded into apps and websites, including as people browse outside Facebook’s own content garden.

The dominant social platform is also only offering this feature in the wake of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, when Mark Zuckerberg faced awkward questions in Congress about the extent of Facebook’s general web tracking. Since then policymakers around the world have dialled up scrutiny of how its business operates — and realized there’s a troubling lack of transparency in and around adtech generally and Facebook specifically. 

Facebook’s tracking pixels and social plugins — aka the share/like buttons that pepper the mainstream web — have created a vast tracking infrastructure which silently informs the tech giant of Internet users’ activity, even when a person hasn’t interacted with any Facebook-branded buttons.

Facebook claims this is just ‘how the web works’. And other tech giants are similarly engaged in tracking Internet users (notably Google). But as a platform with 2.2BN+ users Facebook has got a march on the lion’s share of rivals when it comes to harvesting people’s data and building out a global database of person profiles.

It’s also positioned as a dominant player in an adtech ecosystem which means it’s the one being fed with intel by data brokers and publishers who deploy tracking tech to try to survive in such a skewed system.

Meanwhile the opacity of online tracking means the average Internet user is none the wiser that Facebook can be following what they’re browsing all over the Internet. Questions of consent loom very large indeed.

Facebook is also able to track people’s usage of third party apps if a person chooses a Facebook login option which the company encourages developers to implement in their apps — again the carrot being to be able to offer a lower friction choice vs requiring users create yet another login credential.

The price for this ‘convenience’ is data and user privacy as the Facebook login gives the tech giant a window into third part app usage.

The company has also used a VPN app it bought and badged as a security tool to glean data on third party app usage — though it’s recently stepped back from the Onavo app after a public backlash (though that did not stop it running a similar tracking program targeted at teens).

Background tracking is how Facebook’s creepy ads function (it prefers to call such behaviorally targeted ads ‘relevant’) — and how they have functioned for years

Yet it’s only in recent months that it’s offered users a glimpse into this network of online informers — by providing limited information about the entities that are passing tracking data to Facebook, as well as some limited controls.

From ‘Clear History’ to “Off-Facebook Activity”

Originally briefed in May 2018, at the crux of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as a ‘Clear History’ option this has since been renamed ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ — a label so bloodless and devoid of ‘call to action’ that the average Facebook user, should they stumble upon it buried deep in unlovely settings menus, would more likely move along than feel moved to carry out a privacy purge.

(For the record you can access the setting here — but you do need to be logged into Facebook to do so.)

The other problem is that Facebook’s tool doesn’t actually let you purge your browsing history, it just delinks it from being associated with your Facebook ID. There is no option to actually clear your browsing history via its button. Another reason for the name switch. So, no, Facebook hasn’t built a clear history ‘button’.

“While we welcome the effort to offer more transparency to users by showing the companies from which Facebook is receiving personal data, the tool offers little way for users to take any action,” said Privacy International this week, criticizing Facebook for “not telling you everything”.

As the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So a little transparency implies — well — anything but clarity. And Privacy International sums up the Off-Facebook Activity tool with an apt oxymoron — describing it as “a new window to the opacity”.

“This tool illustrates just how impossible it is for users to prevent external data from being shared with Facebook,” it writes, warning with emphasis: “Without meaningful information about what data is collected and shared, and what are the ways for the user to opt-out from such collection, Off-Facebook activity is just another incomplete glimpse into Facebook’s opaque practices when it comes to tracking users and consolidating their profiles.”

It points out, for instance, that the information provided here is limited to a “simple name” — thereby preventing the user from “exercising their right to seek more information about how this data was collected”, which EU users at least are entitled to.

“As users we are entitled to know the name/contact details of companies that claim to have interacted with us. If the only thing we see, for example, is the random name of an artist we’ve never heard before (true story), how are we supposed to know whether it is their record label, agent, marketing company or even them personally targeting us with ads?” it adds.

Another criticism is Facebook is only providing limited information about each data transfer — with Privacy International noting some events are marked “under a cryptic CUSTOM” label; and that Facebook provides “no information regarding how the data was collected by the advertiser (Facebook SDK, tracking pixel, like button…) and on what device, leaving users in the dark regarding the circumstances under which this data collection took place”.

“Does Facebook really display everything they process/store about those events in the log/export?” queries privacy researcher Wolfie Christl, who tracks the adtech industry’s tracking techniques. “They have to, because otherwise they don’t fulfil their SAR [Subject Access Request] obligations [under EU law].”

Christl notes Facebook makes users jump through an additional “download” hoop in order to view data on tracked events — and even then, as Privacy International points out, it gives up only a limited view of what has actually been tracked…

And it's just ridiculous.

FB doesn't show me the list of visits they recorded from a certain website in their web interface, no! I have to 'download my information', which takes a long time.

And then, I'm sure this is not all data they record when tracking a VIEW_CONTENT event: pic.twitter.com/qBO87Zp5YH

— Wolfie Christl (@WolfieChristl) January 29, 2020

“For example, why doesn’t Facebook list the specific sites/URLs visited? Do they infer data from the domains e.g. categories? If yes, why is this not in the logs?” Christl asks.

We reached out to Facebook with a number of questions, including why it doesn’t provide more detail by default. It responded with this statement attributed to spokesperson:

We offer a variety of tools to help people access their Facebook information, and we’ve designed these tools to comply with relevant laws, including GDPR. We disagree with this [Privacy International] article’s claims and would welcome the chance to discuss them with Privacy International.

Facebook also said it’s continuing to develop which information it surfaces through the Off-Facebook Activity tool — and said it welcomes feedback on this.

We also asked it about the legal bases it uses to process people’s information that’s been obtained via its tracking pixels and social plug-ins. It did not provide a response to those questions.

Six names, many questions…

When the company launched the Off-Facebook Activity tool a snap poll of available TechCrunch colleagues showed very diverse results for our respective tallies (which also may not show the most recent activity, per other Facebook caveats) — ranging from one colleague who had an eye-watering 1,117 entities (likely down to doing a lot of app testing); to several with several/a few hundred apiece; to a couple in the middle tens.

In my case I had just six. But from my point of view — as an EU citizen with a suite of rights related to privacy and data protection; and as someone who aims to practice good online privacy hygiene, including having a very locked down approach to using Facebook (never using its mobile app for instance) — it was still six too many. I wanted to find out how these entities had circumvented my attempts not to be tracked.

And in the case of the first one in the list who on earth it was…

Turns out cloudfront is an Amazon Web Services Content Delivery Network subdomain. But I had to go searching online myself to figure out that the owner of that particular domain is (now) a company called Nativo.

Facebook’s list provided only very bare bones information. I also clicked to delink the first entity, since it immediately looked so weird, and found that by doing that Facebook wiped all the entries — which meant I was unable to retain access to what little additional info it had provided about the respective data transfers.

Undeterred I set out to contact each of the six companies directly with questions — asking what data of mine they had transferred to Facebook and what legal basis they thought they had for processing my information.

(On a practical level six names looked like a sample size I could at least try to follow up manually — but remember I was the TechCrunch exception; imagine trying to request data from 1,117 companies, or 450 or even 57, which were the lengths of lists of some of my colleagues.)

This process took about a month and a lot of back and forth/chasing up. It likely only yielded as much info as it did because I was asking as a journalist; an average Internet user may have had a tougher time getting attention on their questions — though, under EU law, citizens have a right to request a copy of personal data held on them.

Eventually, I was able to obtain confirmation that tracking pixels and Facebook share buttons had been involved in my data being passed to Facebook in certain instances. Even so I remain in the dark on many things. Such as exactly what personal data Facebook received.

In one case I was told by a listed company that it doesn’t know itself what data was shared — only Facebook knows because it’s implemented the company’s “proprietary code”. (Insert your own ‘WTAF’ there.)

The legal side of these transfers also remains highly opaque. From my point of view I would not intentionally consent to any of this tracking — but in some instances the entities involved claim that (my) consent was (somehow) obtained (or implied).

In other cases they said they are relying on a legal basis in EU law that’s referred to as ‘legitimate interests’. However this requires a balancing test to be carried out to ensure a business use does not have a disproportionate impact on individual rights.

I wasn’t able to ascertain whether such tests had ever been carried out.

Meanwhile, since Facebook is also making use of the tracking information from its pixels and social plug ins (and seemingly more granular use, since some entities claimed they only get aggregate not individual data), Christl suggests it’s unlikely such a balancing test would be easy to pass for that tiny little ‘platform giant’ reason.

Notably he points out Facebook’s Business Tool terms state that it makes use of so called “event data” to “personalize features and content and to improve and secure the Facebook products” — including for “ads and recommendations”; for R&D purposes; and “to maintain the integrity of and to improve the Facebook Company Products”.

In a section of its legal terms covering the use of its pixels and SDKs Facebook also puts the onus on the entities implementing its tracking technologies to gain consent from users prior to doing so in relevant jurisdictions that “require informed consent” for tracking cookies and similar — giving the example of the EU.

“You must ensure, in a verifiable manner, that an end user provides the necessary consent before you use Facebook Business Tools to enable us to store and access cookies or other information on the end user’s device,” Facebook writes, pointing users of its tools to its Cookie Consent Guide for Sites and Apps for “suggestions on implementing consent mechanisms”.

Christl flags the contradiction between Facebook claiming users of its tracking tech needing to gain prior consent vs claims I was given by some of these entities that they don’t because they’re relying on ‘legitimate interests’.

“Using LI as a legal basis is even controversial if you use a data analytics company that reliably processes personal data strictly on behalf of you,” he argues. “I guess, industry lawyers try to argue for a broader applicability of LI, but in the case of FB business tools I don’t believe that the balancing test (a businesses legitimate interests vs. the impact on the rights and freedoms of data subjects) will work in favor of LI.”

Those entities relying on legitimate interests as a legal base for tracking would still need to offer a mechanism where users can object to the processing — and I couldn’t immediately see such a mechanism in the cases in question.

One thing is crystal clear: Facebook itself does not provide a mechanism for users to object to its processing of tracking data nor opt out of targeted ads. That remains a long-standing complaint against its business in the EU which data protection regulators are still investigating.

One more thing: Non-Facebook users continue to have no way of learning what data of theirs is being tracked and transferred to Facebook. Only Facebook users have access to the Off-Facebook Activity tool, for example. Non-users can’t even access a list.

Facebook has defended its practice of tracking non-users around the Internet as necessary for unspecified ‘security purposes’. It’s an inherently disproportionate argument of course. The practice also remains under legal challenge in the EU.

Tracking the trackers

SimpleReach (aka d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net)

What is it? A California-based analytics platform (now owned by Nativo) used by publishers and content marketers to measure how well their content/native ads performs on social media. The product began life in the early noughties as a simple tool for publishers to recommend similar content at the bottom of articles before the startup pivoted — aiming to become ‘the PageRank of social’ — offering analytics tools for publishers to track engagement around content in real-time across the social web (plugging into platform APIs). It also built statistical models to predict which pieces of content will be the most social and where, generating a proprietary per article score. SimpleReach was acquired by Nativo last year to complement analytics tools the latter already offered for tracking content on the publisher/brand’s own site.

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? Given it’s a b2b product it does not have a visible consumer brand of its own. And, to my knowledge, I have never visited its own website prior to investigating why it appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list. Clearly, though, I must have visited a site (or sites) that are using its tracking/analytics tools. Of course an Internet user has no obvious way to know this — unless they’re actively using tools to monitor which trackers are tracking them.

In a further quirk, neither the SimpleReach (nor Nativo) brand names appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list. Rather a domain name was listed — d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net — which looked at first glance weird/alarming.

I found this is owned by SimpleReach by using a tracker analytics service.

Once I knew the name I was able to connect the entry to Nativo — via news reports of the acquisition — which led me to an entity I could direct questions to.  

What happened when you asked them about this? There was a bit of back and forth and then they sent a detailed response to my questions in which they claim they do not share any data with Facebook — “or perform ‘off site activity’ as described on Facebook’s activity tool”.

They also suggested that their domain had appeared as a result of their tracking code being implemented on a website I had visited which had also implemented Facebook’s own trackers.

“Our technology allows our Data Controllers to insert other tracking pixels or tags, using us as a tag manager that delivers code to the page. It is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook pixel to an article you visited using our technology. This could lead Facebook to attribute this pixel to our domain, though our domain was merely a ‘carrier’ of the code,” they told me.

In terms of the data they collect, they said this: “The only Personal Data that is collected by the SimpleReach Analytics tag is your IP Address and a randomly generated id.  Both of these values are processed, anonymized, and aggregated in the SimpleReach platform and not made available to anyone other than our sub-processors that are bound to process such data only on our behalf. Such values are permanently deleted from our system after 3 months. These values are used to give our customers a general idea of the number of users that visited the articles tracked.”

So, again, they suggested the reason why their domain appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list is a combination of Nativo/SimpleReach’s tracking technologies being implemented on a site where Facebook’s retargeting pixel is also embedded — which then resulted in data about my online activity being shared with Facebook (which Facebook then attributes as coming from SimpleReach’s domain).

Commenting on this, Christl agreed it sounds as if publishers “somehow attach Facebook pixel events to SimpleReach’s cloudfront domain”.

“SimpleReach probably doesn’t get data from this. But the question is 1) is SimpleReach perhaps actually responsible (if it happens in the context of their domain); 2) The Off-Facebook activity is a mess (if it contains events related to domains whose owners are not web or app publishers).”

Nativo offered to determine whether they hold any personal information associated with the unique identifier they have assigned to my browser if I could send them this ID. However I was unable to locate such an ID (see below).

In terms of legal base to process my information the company told me: “We have the right to process data in accordance with provisions set forth in the various Data Processor agreements we have in place with Data Controllers.”

Nativo also suggested that the Offsite Activity in question might have predated its purchase of the SimpleReach technology — which occurred on March 20, 2019 — saying any activity prior to this would mean my query would need to be addressed directly with SimpleReach, Inc. which Nativo did not acquire. (However in this case the activity registered on the list was dated later than that.)

Here’s what they said on all that in full:

Thank you for submitting your data access request.  We understand that you are a resident of the European Union and are submitting this request pursuant to Article 15(1) of the GDPR.  Article 15(1) requires “data controllers” to respond to individuals’ requests for information about the processing of their personal data.  Although Article 15(1) does not apply to Nativo because we are not a data controller with respect to your data, we have provided information below that will help us in determining the appropriate Data Controllers, which you can contact directly.

First, for details about our role in processing personal data in connection with our SimpleReach product, please see the SimpleReach Privacy Policy.  As the policy explains in more detail, we provide marketing analytics services to other businesses – our customers.  To take advantage of our services, our customers install our technology on their websites, which enables us to collect certain information regarding individuals’ visits to our customers’ websites. We analyze the personal information that we obtain only at the direction of our customer, and only on that customer’s behalf.

SimpleReach is an analytics tracker tool (Similar to Google Analytics) implemented by our customers to inform them of the performance of their content published around the web.  “d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net” is the domain name of the servers that collect these metrics.  We do not share data with Facebook or perform “off site activity” as described on Facebook’s activity tool.  Our technology allows our Data Controllers to insert other tracking pixels or tags, using us as a tag manager that delivers code to the page.  It is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook pixel to an article you visited using our technology.  This could lead Facebook to attribute this pixel to our domain, though our domain was merely a “carrier” of the code.

The SimpleReach tool is implemented on articles posted by our customers and partners of our customers.  It is possible you visited a URL that has contained our tracking code.  It is also possible that the Offsite Activity you are referencing is activity by SimpleReach, Inc. before Nativo purchased the SimpleReach technology. Nativo, Inc. purchased certain technology from SimpleReach, Inc. on March 20, 2019, but we did not purchase the SimpleReach, Inc. entity itself, which remains a separate entity unaffiliated with Nativo, Inc. Accordingly, any activity that occurred before March 20, 2019 pre-dates Nativo’s use of the SimpleReach technology and should be addressed directly with SimpleReach, Inc. If, for example, TechCrunch was a publisher partner of SimpleReach, Inc. and had SimpleReach tracking code implemented on TechCrunch articles or across the TechCrunch website prior to March 20, 2019, any resulting data collection would have been conducted by SimpleReach, Inc., not by Nativo, Inc.

As mentioned above, our tracking script collects and sends information to our servers based on the articles it is implemented on. The only Personal Data that is collected by the SimpleReach Analytics tag is your IP Address and a randomly generated id.  Both of these values are processed, anonymized, and aggregated in the SimpleReach platform and not made available to anyone other than our sub-processors that are bound to process such data only on our behalf. Such values are permanently deleted from our system after 3 months.  These values are used to give our customers a general idea of the number of users that visited the articles tracked.

We do not, nor have we ever, shared ANY information with Facebook with regards to the information we collect from the SimpleReach Analytics tag, be it Personal Data or otherwise. However, as mentioned above, it is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook retargeting pixel to an article you visited using our technology. If that is the case, we would not have received any information collected from such pixel or have knowledge of whether, and to what extent, the customer shared information with Facebook. Without more information, we are unable to determine the specific customer (if any) on behalf of which we may have processed your personal information. However, if you send us the unique identifier we have assigned to your browser… we can determine whether we have any personal information associated with such browser on behalf of a customer controller, and, if we have, we can forward your request on to the controller to respond directly to your request.

As a Data Processor we have the right to process data in accordance with provisions set forth in the various Data Processor agreements we have in place with Data Controllers.  This type of agreement is designed to protect Data Subjects and ensure that Data Processors are held to the same standards that both the GDPR and the Data Controller have put forth.  This is the same type of agreement used by all other analytics tracking tools (as well as many other types of tools) such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Chartbeat, and many others.

I also asked Nativo to confirm whether Insider.com (see below) is a customer of Nativo/SimpleReach.

The company told me it could not disclose this “due to confidentiality restrictions” and would only reveal the identity of customers if “required by applicable law”.

Again, it said that if I provided the “unique identifier” assigned to my browser it would be “happy to pull a list of personal information the SimpleReach/Nativo systems currently have stored for your unique identifier (if any), including the appropriate Data Controllers”. (“If we have any personal data collected from you on behalf of Insider.com, it would come up in the list of DataControllers,” it suggested.)

I checked multiple browsers that I use on multiple devices but was unable to locate an ID attached to a SimpleReach cookie. So I also asked whether this might appear attached to any other cookie.

Their response:

Because our data is either pseudonymized or anonymized, and we do not record of any other pieces of Personal Data about you, it will not be possible for us to locate this data without the cookie value.  The SimpleReach user cookie is, and has always been, in the “__srui” cookie under the “.simplereach.com” domain or any of its sub-domains. If you are unable to locate a SimpleReach user cookie by this name on your browser, it may be because you are using a different device or because you have cleared your cookies (in which case we would no longer have the ability to map any personal data we have previously collected from you to your browser or device). We do have other cookies (under the domains postrelease.com, admin.nativo.com, and cloud.nativo.com) but those cookies would not be related to the appearance of SimpleReach in the list of Off Site Activity on your Facebook account, per your original inquiry.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? There appeared to be a correlation between this domain and a publisher, Insider.com, which also appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list — as both logged events bear the same date; plus Insider.com is a publisher so would fall into the right customer category for using Nativo’s tool.

Given those correlations I was able to guess Insider.com is a customer of Nativo. (I confirmed this when I spoke to Insider.com) — so Facebook’s tool is able to leak relational inferences related to the tracking industry by surfacing/mapping business connections that might not have been otherwise evident.

Insider.com

What is it? A New York based business media company which owns brands such as Business Insider and Markets Insider

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I imagine I clicked on a technology article that appeared in my Facebook News Feed or elsewhere but when I was logged into Facebook

What happened when you asked them about this? After about a week of radio silence an employee in Insider’com’s legal department got in touch to say they could discuss the issue on background.

This person told me the information in the Off-Facebook Activity tool came from the Facebook share button which is embedded on all articles it runs on its media websites. They confirmed that the share button can share data with Facebook regardless of whether the site visitor interacts with the button or not.

In my case I certainly would not have interacted with the Facebook share button. Nonetheless data was passed, simply by merit of loading the article page itself.

Insider.com said the Facebook share button widget is integrated into its sites using a standard set-up that Facebook intends publishers to use. If the share button is clicked information related to that action would be shared with Facebook and would also be received by Insider.com (though, in this scenario, it said it doesn’t get any personalized information — but rather gets aggregate data).

Facebook can also automatically collect other information when a user visits a webpage which incorporates its social plug-ins.

Asked whether Insider.com knows what information Facebook receives via this passive route the company told me it does not — noting the plug-in runs proprietary Facebook code. 

Asked how it’s collecting consent from users for their data to be shared passively with Facebook, Insider.com said its Privacy Policy stipulates users consent to sharing their information with Facebook and other social media sites. It also said it uses the legal ground known as legitimate interests to provide functionality and derive analytics on articles.

In the active case (of a user clicking to share an article) Insider.com said it interprets the user’s action as consent.

Insider.com confirmed it uses SimpleReach/Nativo analytics tools, meaning site visitor data is also being passed to Nativo when a user lands on an article. It said consent for this data-sharing is included within its consent management platform (it uses a CMP made by Forcepoint) which asks site visitors to specify their cookie choices.

Here site visitors can choose for their data not to be shared for analytics purposes (which Insider.com said would prevent data being passed).

I usually apply all cookie consent opt outs, where available, so I’m a little surprised Nativo/SimpleReach was passed my data from an Insider.com webpage. Either I failed to click the opt out one time or failed to respond to the cookie notice and data was passed by default.

It’s also possible I did opt out but data was passed anyway — as there has been research which has found a proportion of cookie notifications ignore choices and pass data anyway (unintentionally or otherwise).

Follow up questions I sent to Insider.com after we talked:

1) Can you confirm whether Insider has performed a legitimate interests assessment? 2) Does Insider have a site mechanism where users can object to the passive data transfer to Facebook from the share buttons?

Insider.com did not respond to my additional questions.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? That Insider.com is a customer of Nativo/SimpleReach.

Rei.com

What is it? A California-based ecommerce website selling outdoor gear

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I don’t recall ever visiting their site prior to looking into why it appeared in the list so I’m really not sure

What happened when you asked them about this? After saying it would investigate it followed up with a statement, rather than detailed responses to my questions, in which it claims it does not hold any personal data associated with — presumably — my TechCrunch email, since it did not ask me what data to check against.

It also appeared to be claiming that it uses Facebook tracking pixels/tags on its website, without explicitly saying as much, writing that: “Facebook may collect information about your interactions with our websites and mobile apps and reflect that information to you through their Off-Facebook Activity tool.”

It claims it has no access to this information — which it says is “pseudonymous to us” but suggested that if I have a Facebook account Facebook could link any browsing on Rei’s site to my Facebook’s identity and therefore track my activity.

The company also pointed me to a Facebook Help Center post where the company names some of the activities that might have resulted in Rei’s website sending activity data on me to Facebook (which it could then link to my Facebook ID) — although Facebook’s list is not exhaustive (included are: “viewing content”, “searching for an item”, “adding an item to a shopping cart” and “making a donation” among other activities the company tracks by having its code embedded on third parties’ sites).

Here’s Rei’s statement in full:

Thank you for your patience as we looked into your questions.  We have checked our systems and determined that REI does not maintain any personal data associated with you based on the information you provided.  Note, however, that Facebook may collect information about your interactions with our websites and mobile apps and reflect that information to you through their Off-Facebook Activity tool. The information that Facebook collects in this manner is pseudonymous to us — meaning we cannot identify you using the information and we do not maintain the information in a manner that is linked to your name or other identifying information. However, if you have a Facebook account, Facebook may be able to match this activity to your Facebook account via a unique identifier unavailable to REI. (Funnily enough, while researching this I found TechCrunch in MY list of Off-Facebook activity!)

For a complete list of activities that could have resulted in REI sharing pseudonymous information about you with Facebook, this Facebook Help Center article may be useful.  For a detailed description of the ways in which we may collect and share customer information, the purposes for which we may process your data, and rights available to EEA residents, please refer to our Privacy Policy.  For information about how REI uses cookies, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

As a follow up question I asked Rei to tell me which Facebook tools it uses, pointing out that: “Given that, just because you aren’t (as I understand it) directly using my data yourself that does not mean you are not responsible for my data being transferred to Facebook.”

The company did not respond to that point.

I also previously asked Rei.com to confirm whether it has any data sharing arrangements with the publisher of Rock & Ice magazine (see below). And, if so, to confirm the processes involved in data being shared. Again, I got no response to that.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? Given that Rei.com appeared alongside Rock & Ice on the list — both displaying the same date and just one activity apiece — I surmised they have some kind of data-sharing arrangement. They are also both outdoors brands so there would be obvious commercial ‘synergies’ to underpin such an arrangement.

That said, neither would confirm a business relationship to me. But Facebook’s list heavily implies there is some background data-sharing going on

Rock & Ice magazine 

What is it? A climbing magazine produced by a California-based publisher, Big Stone Publishing

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I imagine I clicked on a link to a climbing-related article in my Facebook feed or else visited Rock & Ice’s website while I was logged into Facebook in the same browser session

What happened when you asked them about this? After ignoring my initial email query I subsequently received a brief response from the publisher after I followed up — which read:

The Rock and Ice website is opt in, where you have to agree to terms of use to access the website. I don’t know what private data you are saying Rock and Ice shared, so I can’t speak to that. The site terms are here. As stated in the terms you can opt out.

Following up, I asked about the provision in the Rock & Ice website’s cookie notice which states: “By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookies” — asking whether it’s passing data without waiting for the user to signal their consent.

(Relevant: In October Europe’s top court issued a ruling that active consent is necessary for tracking cookies, so you can’t drop cookies prior to a user giving consent for you to do so.)

The publisher responded:

You have to opt in and agree to the terms to use the website. You may opt out of cookies, which is covered in the terms. If you do not want the benefits of these advertising cookies, you may be able to opt-out by visiting: https://ift.tt/1QBAo4U.

If you don’t want any cookies, you can find extensions such as Ghostery or the browser itself to stop and refuse cookies. By doing so though some websites might not work properly.

I followed up again to point out that I’m not asking about the options to opt in or opt out but, rather, the behavior of the website if the visitor does not provide a consent response yet continues browsing — asking for confirmation Rock & Ice’s site interprets this state as consent and therefore sends data.

The publisher stopped responding at that point.

Earlier I had asked it to confirm whether its website shares visitor data with Rei.com? (As noted above, the two appeared with the same date on the list which suggests data may be being passed between them.) I did not get a respond to that question either.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? That the magazine appears to have a data-sharing arrangement with outdoor retailer Rei.com, given how the pair appeared at the same point in my list. However neither would confirm this when I asked

MatterHackers

What is it? A California-based retailer focused on 3D printing and digital manufacturing

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I honestly have no idea. I have never to my knowledge visited their site prior to investigating why they should appear on my Off Site Activity list.

I remain pretty interested to know how/why they managed to track me. I can only surmise I clicked on some technology-related content in my Facebook feed, either intentionally or by accident.

What happened when you asked them about this? They first asked me for confirmation that they were on my list. After I had sent a screenshot, they followed up to say they would investigate. I pushed again after hearing nothing for several weeks. At this point they asked for additional information from the Off-Facebook Activity tool — namely more granular metrics, such as a time and date per event and some label information — to help with tracking down this particular data-exchange.

I had previously provided them with the date (as it appears in the screenshot) but it’s possible to download additional an additional level of information about data transfers which includes per event time/date-stamps and labels/tags, such as “VIEW_CONTENT” .

However, as noted above, I had previously selected and deleted one item off of my Off-Facebook Activity list, after which Facebook’s platform had immediately erased all entries and associated metrics. There was no obvious way I could recover access to that information.

“Without this information I would speculate that you viewed an article or product on our site — we publish a lot of ‘How To’ content related to 3D printing and other digital manufacturing technologies — this information could have then been captured by Facebook via Adroll for ad retargeting purposes,” a MatterHackers spokesman told me. “Operationally, we have no other data sharing mechanism with Facebook.”

Subsequently, the company confirmed it implements Facebook’s tracking pixel on every page of its website.

Of the pixel Facebook writes that it enables website owners to track “conversions” (i.e. website actions); create custom audiences which segment site visitors by criteria that Facebook can identify and match across its user-base, allowing for the site owner to target ads via Facebook’s platform at non-customers with a similar profile/criteria to existing customers that are browsing its site; and for creating dynamic ads where a template ad gets populated with product content based on tracking data for that particular visitor.

Regarding the legal base for the data sharing, MatterHackers had this to say: “MatterHackers is not an EU entity, nor do we conduct business in the EU and so have not undertaken GDPR compliance measures. CCPA [California’s Consumer Privacy Act] will likely apply to our business as of 2021 and we have begun the process of ensuring that our website will be in compliance with those regulations as of January 1st.”

I pointed out that GDPR is extraterritorial in scope — and can apply to non-EU based entities, such as if they’re monitoring individuals in the EU (as in this case).

Also likely relevant: A ruling last year by Europe’s top court found sites that embed third party plug-ins such as Facebook’s like button are jointly responsible for the initial data processing — and must either obtain informed consent from site visitors prior to data being transferred to Facebook, or be able to demonstrate a legitimate interest legal basis for processing this data.

Nonetheless it’s still not clear what legal base the company is relying on for implementing the tracking pixel and passing data on EU Facebook users.

When asked about this MatterHacker COO, Kevin Pope, told me:

While we appreciate the sentiment of GDPR, in this case the EU lacks the legal standing to pursue an enforcement action. I’m sure you can appreciate the potential negative consequences if any arbitrary country (or jurisdiction) were able to enforce legal penalties against any website simply for having visitors from that country. Techcrunch would have been fined to oblivion many times over by China or even Thailand (for covering the King in a negative light). In this way, the attempted overreach of the GDPR’s language sets a dangerous precedent.

To provide a little more detail – MatterHackers, at the time of your visit, wouldn’t have known that you were from the EU until we cross-referenced your session with  Facebook, who does know. At that point you would have been filtered from any advertising by us. MatterHackers makes money when our (U.S.) customers buy 3D printers or materials and then succeed at using them (hence the how-to articles), we don’t make any money selling advertising or data.

Given that Facebook does legally exist in the EU and does have direct revenues from EU advertisers, it’s entirely appropriate that Facebook should comply with EU regulations. As a global solution, I believe more privacy settings options should be available to its users. However, given Facebook’s business model, I wouldn’t expect anything other than continued deflection (note the careful wording on their tool) and avoidance from them on this issue.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity List? I found out that an ecommerce company I had never heard of had been tracking me

Wallapop

What is it? A Barcelona-based peer-to-peer marketplace app that lets people list secondhand stuff for sale and/or to search for things to buy in their proximity. Users can meet in person to carry out a transaction paying in cash or there can be an option to pay via the platform and have an item posted

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? This was the only digital activity that appeared in the list that was something I could explain — figuring out I must have used a Facebook sign-in option when using the Wallapop app to buy/sell. I wouldn’t normally use Facebook sign-in but for trust-based marketplaces there may be user benefits to leveraging network effects.

What happened when you asked them about this? After my query was booted around a bit a PR company that works with Wallapop responded asking to talk through what information I was trying to ascertain.

After we chatted they sent this response — attributed to sources from Wallapop:

Same as it happens with other apps, wallapop can appear on our users’ Facebook Off Site Activity page if they have interacted in any way with the platform while they were logged in their Facebook accounts. Some interaction examples include logging in via Facebook, visiting our website or having both apps opened and logged.

As other apps do, wallapop only shares activity events with Facebook to optimize users’ ad experience. This includes if a user is registered in wallapop, if they have uploaded an item or if they have started a conversation. Under no circumstance wallapop shares with Facebook our users’ personal data (including sex, name, email address or telephone number).

At wallapop, we are thoroughly committed with the security of our community and we do a safe treatment of the data they choose to share with us, in compliance with EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Under no circumstance these data are shared with third parties without explicit authorization.

I followed up to ask for further details about these “activity events” — asking whether, for instance, Wallapop shares messaging content with Facebook as well as letting the social network know which items a user is chatting about.

“Under no circumstance the content of our users’ messages is shared with Facebook,” the spokesperson told me. “What is shared is limited to the fact that a conversation has been initiated with another user in relation to a specific item, this is, activity events. Under no circumstance we would share our users’ personal information either.”

Of course the point is Facebook is able to link all app activity with the user ID it already has — so every piece of activity data being shared is personal data.

I also asked what legal base Wallapop relies on to share activity data with Facebook. They said the legal basis is “explicit consent given by users” at the point of signing up to use the app.

“Wallapop collects explicit consent from our users and at any time they can exercise their rights to their data, which include the modification of consent given in the first place,” they said.

“Users give their explicit consent by clicking in the corresponding box when they register in the app, where they also get the chance to opt out and not do it. If later on they want to change the consent they gave in first instance, they also have that option through the app. All the information is clearly available on our Privacy Policy, which is GDPR compliant.”

“At wallapop we take our community’s privacy and security very seriously and we follow recommendations from the Spanish Data Protection Agency,” it added

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? Not much more than I would have already guessed — i.e. that using a Facebook sign-in option in a third party app grants the social media giant a high degree of visibility into your activity within another service.

In this case the Wallapop app registered the most activity events of all six of the listed apps, displaying 13 vs only one apiece for the others — so it gave a bit of a suggestive glimpse into the volume of third party app data that can be passed if you opt to open a Facebook login wormhole into a separate service.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/32sp091 via IFTTT

[endenogatai]

Facebook’s latest ‘transparency’ tool doesn’t offer much — so we went digging

Just under a month ago Facebook switched on global availability of a tool which affords users a glimpse into the murky world of tracking that its business relies upon to profile users of the wider web for ad targeting purposes.

Facebook is not going boldly into transparent daylight — but rather offering what privacy rights advocacy group Privacy International has dubbed “a tiny sticking plaster on a much wider problem”.

The problem it’s referring to is the lack of active and informed consent for mass surveillance of Internet users via background tracking technologies embedded into apps and websites, including as people browse outside Facebook’s own content garden.

The dominant social platform is also only offering this feature in the wake of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, when Mark Zuckerberg faced awkward questions in Congress about the extent of Facebook’s general web tracking. Since then policymakers around the world have dialled up scrutiny of how its business operates — and realized there’s a troubling lack of transparency in and around adtech generally and Facebook specifically. 

Facebook’s tracking pixels and social plugins — aka the share/like buttons that pepper the mainstream web — have created a vast tracking infrastructure which silently informs the tech giant of Internet users’ activity, even when a person hasn’t interacted with any Facebook-branded buttons.

Facebook claims this is just ‘how the web works’. And other tech giants are similarly engaged in tracking Internet users (notably Google). But as a platform with 2.2BN+ users Facebook has got a march on the lion’s share of rivals when it comes to harvesting people’s data and building out a global database of person profiles.

It’s also positioned as a dominant player in an adtech ecosystem which means it’s the one being fed with intel by data brokers and publishers who deploy tracking tech to try to survive in such a skewed system.

Meanwhile the opacity of online tracking means the average Internet user is none the wiser that Facebook can be following what they’re browsing all over the Internet. Questions of consent loom very large indeed.

Facebook is also able to track people’s usage of third party apps if a person chooses a Facebook login option which the company encourages developers to implement in their apps — again the carrot being to be able to offer a lower friction choice vs requiring users create yet another login credential.

The price for this ‘convenience’ is data and user privacy as the Facebook login gives the tech giant a window into third part app usage.

The company has also used a VPN app it bought and badged as a security tool to glean data on third party app usage — though it’s recently stepped back from the Onavo app after a public backlash (though that did not stop it running a similar tracking program targeted at teens).

Background tracking is how Facebook’s creepy ads function (it prefers to call such behaviorally targeted ads ‘relevant’) — and how they have functioned for years

Yet it’s only in recent months that it’s offered users a glimpse into this network of online informers — by providing limited information about the entities that are passing tracking data to Facebook, as well as some limited controls.

From ‘Clear History’ to “Off-Facebook Activity”

Originally briefed in May 2018, at the crux of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as a ‘Clear History’ option this has since been renamed ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ — a label so bloodless and devoid of ‘call to action’ that the average Facebook user, should they stumble upon it buried deep in unlovely settings menus, would more likely move along than feel moved to carry out a privacy purge.

(For the record you can access the setting here — but you do need to be logged into Facebook to do so.)

The other problem is that Facebook’s tool doesn’t actually let you purge your browsing history, it just delinks it from being associated with your Facebook ID. There is no option to actually clear your browsing history via its button. Another reason for the name switch. So, no, Facebook hasn’t built a clear history ‘button’.

“While we welcome the effort to offer more transparency to users by showing the companies from which Facebook is receiving personal data, the tool offers little way for users to take any action,” said Privacy International this week, criticizing Facebook for “not telling you everything”.

As the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So a little transparency implies — well — anything but clarity. And Privacy International sums up the Off-Facebook Activity tool with an apt oxymoron — describing it as “a new window to the opacity”.

“This tool illustrates just how impossible it is for users to prevent external data from being shared with Facebook,” it writes, warning with emphasis: “Without meaningful information about what data is collected and shared, and what are the ways for the user to opt-out from such collection, Off-Facebook activity is just another incomplete glimpse into Facebook’s opaque practices when it comes to tracking users and consolidating their profiles.”

It points out, for instance, that the information provided here is limited to a “simple name” — thereby preventing the user from “exercising their right to seek more information about how this data was collected”, which EU users at least are entitled to.

“As users we are entitled to know the name/contact details of companies that claim to have interacted with us. If the only thing we see, for example, is the random name of an artist we’ve never heard before (true story), how are we supposed to know whether it is their record label, agent, marketing company or even them personally targeting us with ads?” it adds.

Another criticism is Facebook is only providing limited information about each data transfer — with Privacy International noting some events are marked “under a cryptic CUSTOM” label; and that Facebook provides “no information regarding how the data was collected by the advertiser (Facebook SDK, tracking pixel, like button…) and on what device, leaving users in the dark regarding the circumstances under which this data collection took place”.

“Does Facebook really display everything they process/store about those events in the log/export?” queries privacy researcher Wolfie Christl, who tracks the adtech industry’s tracking techniques. “They have to, because otherwise they don’t fulfil their SAR [Subject Access Request] obligations [under EU law].”

Christl notes Facebook makes users jump through an additional “download” hoop in order to view data on tracked events — and even then, as Privacy International points out, it gives up only a limited view of what has actually been tracked…

And it's just ridiculous.

FB doesn't show me the list of visits they recorded from a certain website in their web interface, no! I have to 'download my information', which takes a long time.

And then, I'm sure this is not all data they record when tracking a VIEW_CONTENT event: pic.twitter.com/qBO87Zp5YH

— Wolfie Christl (@WolfieChristl) January 29, 2020

“For example, why doesn’t Facebook list the specific sites/URLs visited? Do they infer data from the domains e.g. categories? If yes, why is this not in the logs?” Christl asks.

We reached out to Facebook with a number of questions, including why it doesn’t provide more detail by default. It responded with this statement attributed to spokesperson:

We offer a variety of tools to help people access their Facebook information, and we’ve designed these tools to comply with relevant laws, including GDPR. We disagree with this [Privacy International] article’s claims and would welcome the chance to discuss them with Privacy International.

Facebook also said it’s continuing to develop which information it surfaces through the Off-Facebook Activity tool — and said it welcomes feedback on this.

We also asked it about the legal bases it uses to process people’s information that’s been obtained via its tracking pixels and social plug-ins. It did not provide a response to those questions.

Six names, many questions…

When the company launched the Off-Facebook Activity tool a snap poll of available TechCrunch colleagues showed very diverse results for our respective tallies (which also may not show the most recent activity, per other Facebook caveats) — ranging from one colleague who had an eye-watering 1,117 entities (likely down to doing a lot of app testing); to several with several/a few hundred apiece; to a couple in the middle tens.

In my case I had just six. But from my point of view — as an EU citizen with a suite of rights related to privacy and data protection; and as someone who aims to practice good online privacy hygiene, including having a very locked down approach to using Facebook (never using its mobile app for instance) — it was still six too many. I wanted to find out how these entities had circumvented my attempts not to be tracked.

And in the case of the first one in the list who on earth it was…

Turns out cloudfront is an Amazon Web Services Content Delivery Network subdomain. But I had to go searching online myself to figure out that the owner of that particular domain is (now) a company called Nativo.

Facebook’s list provided only very bare bones information. I also clicked to delink the first entity, since it immediately looked so weird, and found that by doing that Facebook wiped all the entries — which meant I was unable to retain access to what little additional info it had provided about the respective data transfers.

Undeterred I set out to contact each of the six companies directly with questions — asking what data of mine they had transferred to Facebook and what legal basis they thought they had for processing my information.

(On a practical level six names looked like a sample size I could at least try to follow up manually — but remember I was the TechCrunch exception; imagine trying to request data from 1,117 companies, or 450 or even 57, which were the lengths of lists of some of my colleagues.)

This process took about a month and a lot of back and forth/chasing up. It likely only yielded as much info as it did because I was asking as a journalist; an average Internet user may have had a tougher time getting attention on their questions — though, under EU law, citizens have a right to request a copy of personal data held on them.

Eventually, I was able to obtain confirmation that tracking pixels and Facebook share buttons had been involved in my data being passed to Facebook in certain instances. Even so I remain in the dark on many things. Such as exactly what personal data Facebook received.

In one case I was told by a listed company that it doesn’t know itself what data was shared — only Facebook knows because it’s implemented the company’s “proprietary code”. (Insert your own ‘WTAF’ there.)

The legal side of these transfers also remains highly opaque. From my point of view I would not intentionally consent to any of this tracking — but in some instances the entities involved claim that (my) consent was (somehow) obtained (or implied).

In other cases they said they are relying on a legal basis in EU law that’s referred to as ‘legitimate interests’. However this requires a balancing test to be carried out to ensure a business use does not have a disproportionate impact on individual rights.

I wasn’t able to ascertain whether such tests had ever been carried out.

Meanwhile, since Facebook is also making use of the tracking information from its pixels and social plug ins (and seemingly more granular use, since some entities claimed they only get aggregate not individual data), Christl suggests it’s unlikely such a balancing test would be easy to pass for that tiny little ‘platform giant’ reason.

Notably he points out Facebook’s Business Tool terms state that it makes use of so called “event data” to “personalize features and content and to improve and secure the Facebook products” — including for “ads and recommendations”; for R&D purposes; and “to maintain the integrity of and to improve the Facebook Company Products”.

In a section of its legal terms covering the use of its pixels and SDKs Facebook also puts the onus on the entities implementing its tracking technologies to gain consent from users prior to doing so in relevant jurisdictions that “require informed consent” for tracking cookies and similar — giving the example of the EU.

“You must ensure, in a verifiable manner, that an end user provides the necessary consent before you use Facebook Business Tools to enable us to store and access cookies or other information on the end user’s device,” Facebook writes, pointing users of its tools to its Cookie Consent Guide for Sites and Apps for “suggestions on implementing consent mechanisms”.

Christl flags the contradiction between Facebook claiming users of its tracking tech needing to gain prior consent vs claims I was given by some of these entities that they don’t because they’re relying on ‘legitimate interests’.

“Using LI as a legal basis is even controversial if you use a data analytics company that reliably processes personal data strictly on behalf of you,” he argues. “I guess, industry lawyers try to argue for a broader applicability of LI, but in the case of FB business tools I don’t believe that the balancing test (a businesses legitimate interests vs. the impact on the rights and freedoms of data subjects) will work in favor of LI.”

Those entities relying on legitimate interests as a legal base for tracking would still need to offer a mechanism where users can object to the processing — and I couldn’t immediately see such a mechanism in the cases in question.

One thing is crystal clear: Facebook itself does not provide a mechanism for users to object to its processing of tracking data nor opt out of targeted ads. That remains a long-standing complaint against its business in the EU which data protection regulators are still investigating.

One more thing: Non-Facebook users continue to have no way of learning what data of theirs is being tracked and transferred to Facebook. Only Facebook users have access to the Off-Facebook Activity tool, for example. Non-users can’t even access a list.

Facebook has defended its practice of tracking non-users around the Internet as necessary for unspecified ‘security purposes’. It’s an inherently disproportionate argument of course. The practice also remains under legal challenge in the EU.

Tracking the trackers

SimpleReach (aka d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net)

What is it? A California-based analytics platform (now owned by Nativo) used by publishers and content marketers to measure how well their content/native ads performs on social media. The product began life in the early noughties as a simple tool for publishers to recommend similar content at the bottom of articles before the startup pivoted — aiming to become ‘the PageRank of social’ — offering analytics tools for publishers to track engagement around content in real-time across the social web (plugging into platform APIs). It also built statistical models to predict which pieces of content will be the most social and where, generating a proprietary per article score. SimpleReach was acquired by Nativo last year to complement analytics tools the latter already offered for tracking content on the publisher/brand’s own site.

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? Given it’s a b2b product it does not have a visible consumer brand of its own. And, to my knowledge, I have never visited its own website prior to investigating why it appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list. Clearly, though, I must have visited a site (or sites) that are using its tracking/analytics tools. Of course an Internet user has no obvious way to know this — unless they’re actively using tools to monitor which trackers are tracking them.

In a further quirk, neither the SimpleReach (nor Nativo) brand names appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list. Rather a domain name was listed — d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net — which looked at first glance weird/alarming.

I found this is owned by SimpleReach by using a tracker analytics service.

Once I knew the name I was able to connect the entry to Nativo — via news reports of the acquisition — which led me to an entity I could direct questions to.  

What happened when you asked them about this? There was a bit of back and forth and then they sent a detailed response to my questions in which they claim they do not share any data with Facebook — “or perform ‘off site activity’ as described on Facebook’s activity tool”.

They also suggested that their domain had appeared as a result of their tracking code being implemented on a website I had visited which had also implemented Facebook’s own trackers.

“Our technology allows our Data Controllers to insert other tracking pixels or tags, using us as a tag manager that delivers code to the page. It is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook pixel to an article you visited using our technology. This could lead Facebook to attribute this pixel to our domain, though our domain was merely a ‘carrier’ of the code,” they told me.

In terms of the data they collect, they said this: “The only Personal Data that is collected by the SimpleReach Analytics tag is your IP Address and a randomly generated id.  Both of these values are processed, anonymized, and aggregated in the SimpleReach platform and not made available to anyone other than our sub-processors that are bound to process such data only on our behalf. Such values are permanently deleted from our system after 3 months. These values are used to give our customers a general idea of the number of users that visited the articles tracked.”

So, again, they suggested the reason why their domain appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list is a combination of Nativo/SimpleReach’s tracking technologies being implemented on a site where Facebook’s retargeting pixel is also embedded — which then resulted in data about my online activity being shared with Facebook (which Facebook then attributes as coming from SimpleReach’s domain).

Commenting on this, Christl agreed it sounds as if publishers “somehow attach Facebook pixel events to SimpleReach’s cloudfront domain”.

“SimpleReach probably doesn’t get data from this. But the question is 1) is SimpleReach perhaps actually responsible (if it happens in the context of their domain); 2) The Off-Facebook activity is a mess (if it contains events related to domains whose owners are not web or app publishers).”

Nativo offered to determine whether they hold any personal information associated with the unique identifier they have assigned to my browser if I could send them this ID. However I was unable to locate such an ID (see below).

In terms of legal base to process my information the company told me: “We have the right to process data in accordance with provisions set forth in the various Data Processor agreements we have in place with Data Controllers.”

Nativo also suggested that the Offsite Activity in question might have predated its purchase of the SimpleReach technology — which occurred on March 20, 2019 — saying any activity prior to this would mean my query would need to be addressed directly with SimpleReach, Inc. which Nativo did not acquire. (However in this case the activity registered on the list was dated later than that.)

Here’s what they said on all that in full:

Thank you for submitting your data access request.  We understand that you are a resident of the European Union and are submitting this request pursuant to Article 15(1) of the GDPR.  Article 15(1) requires “data controllers” to respond to individuals’ requests for information about the processing of their personal data.  Although Article 15(1) does not apply to Nativo because we are not a data controller with respect to your data, we have provided information below that will help us in determining the appropriate Data Controllers, which you can contact directly.

First, for details about our role in processing personal data in connection with our SimpleReach product, please see the SimpleReach Privacy Policy.  As the policy explains in more detail, we provide marketing analytics services to other businesses – our customers.  To take advantage of our services, our customers install our technology on their websites, which enables us to collect certain information regarding individuals’ visits to our customers’ websites. We analyze the personal information that we obtain only at the direction of our customer, and only on that customer’s behalf.

SimpleReach is an analytics tracker tool (Similar to Google Analytics) implemented by our customers to inform them of the performance of their content published around the web.  “d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net” is the domain name of the servers that collect these metrics.  We do not share data with Facebook or perform “off site activity” as described on Facebook’s activity tool.  Our technology allows our Data Controllers to insert other tracking pixels or tags, using us as a tag manager that delivers code to the page.  It is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook pixel to an article you visited using our technology.  This could lead Facebook to attribute this pixel to our domain, though our domain was merely a “carrier” of the code.

The SimpleReach tool is implemented on articles posted by our customers and partners of our customers.  It is possible you visited a URL that has contained our tracking code.  It is also possible that the Offsite Activity you are referencing is activity by SimpleReach, Inc. before Nativo purchased the SimpleReach technology. Nativo, Inc. purchased certain technology from SimpleReach, Inc. on March 20, 2019, but we did not purchase the SimpleReach, Inc. entity itself, which remains a separate entity unaffiliated with Nativo, Inc. Accordingly, any activity that occurred before March 20, 2019 pre-dates Nativo’s use of the SimpleReach technology and should be addressed directly with SimpleReach, Inc. If, for example, TechCrunch was a publisher partner of SimpleReach, Inc. and had SimpleReach tracking code implemented on TechCrunch articles or across the TechCrunch website prior to March 20, 2019, any resulting data collection would have been conducted by SimpleReach, Inc., not by Nativo, Inc.

As mentioned above, our tracking script collects and sends information to our servers based on the articles it is implemented on. The only Personal Data that is collected by the SimpleReach Analytics tag is your IP Address and a randomly generated id.  Both of these values are processed, anonymized, and aggregated in the SimpleReach platform and not made available to anyone other than our sub-processors that are bound to process such data only on our behalf. Such values are permanently deleted from our system after 3 months.  These values are used to give our customers a general idea of the number of users that visited the articles tracked.

We do not, nor have we ever, shared ANY information with Facebook with regards to the information we collect from the SimpleReach Analytics tag, be it Personal Data or otherwise. However, as mentioned above, it is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook retargeting pixel to an article you visited using our technology. If that is the case, we would not have received any information collected from such pixel or have knowledge of whether, and to what extent, the customer shared information with Facebook. Without more information, we are unable to determine the specific customer (if any) on behalf of which we may have processed your personal information. However, if you send us the unique identifier we have assigned to your browser… we can determine whether we have any personal information associated with such browser on behalf of a customer controller, and, if we have, we can forward your request on to the controller to respond directly to your request.

As a Data Processor we have the right to process data in accordance with provisions set forth in the various Data Processor agreements we have in place with Data Controllers.  This type of agreement is designed to protect Data Subjects and ensure that Data Processors are held to the same standards that both the GDPR and the Data Controller have put forth.  This is the same type of agreement used by all other analytics tracking tools (as well as many other types of tools) such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Chartbeat, and many others.

I also asked Nativo to confirm whether Insider.com (see below) is a customer of Nativo/SimpleReach.

The company told me it could not disclose this “due to confidentiality restrictions” and would only reveal the identity of customers if “required by applicable law”.

Again, it said that if I provided the “unique identifier” assigned to my browser it would be “happy to pull a list of personal information the SimpleReach/Nativo systems currently have stored for your unique identifier (if any), including the appropriate Data Controllers”. (“If we have any personal data collected from you on behalf of Insider.com, it would come up in the list of DataControllers,” it suggested.)

I checked multiple browsers that I use on multiple devices but was unable to locate an ID attached to a SimpleReach cookie. So I also asked whether this might appear attached to any other cookie.

Their response:

Because our data is either pseudonymized or anonymized, and we do not record of any other pieces of Personal Data about you, it will not be possible for us to locate this data without the cookie value.  The SimpleReach user cookie is, and has always been, in the “__srui” cookie under the “.simplereach.com” domain or any of its sub-domains. If you are unable to locate a SimpleReach user cookie by this name on your browser, it may be because you are using a different device or because you have cleared your cookies (in which case we would no longer have the ability to map any personal data we have previously collected from you to your browser or device). We do have other cookies (under the domains postrelease.com, admin.nativo.com, and cloud.nativo.com) but those cookies would not be related to the appearance of SimpleReach in the list of Off Site Activity on your Facebook account, per your original inquiry.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? There appeared to be a correlation between this domain and a publisher, Insider.com, which also appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list — as both logged events bear the same date; plus Insider.com is a publisher so would fall into the right customer category for using Nativo’s tool.

Given those correlations I was able to guess Insider.com is a customer of Nativo. (I confirmed this when I spoke to Insider.com) — so Facebook’s tool is able to leak relational inferences related to the tracking industry by surfacing/mapping business connections that might not have been otherwise evident.

Insider.com

What is it? A New York based business media company which owns brands such as Business Insider and Markets Insider

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I imagine I clicked on a technology article that appeared in my Facebook News Feed or elsewhere but when I was logged into Facebook

What happened when you asked them about this? After about a week of radio silence an employee in Insider’com’s legal department got in touch to say they could discuss the issue on background.

This person told me the information in the Off-Facebook Activity tool came from the Facebook share button which is embedded on all articles it runs on its media websites. They confirmed that the share button can share data with Facebook regardless of whether the site visitor interacts with the button or not.

In my case I certainly would not have interacted with the Facebook share button. Nonetheless data was passed, simply by merit of loading the article page itself.

Insider.com said the Facebook share button widget is integrated into its sites using a standard set-up that Facebook intends publishers to use. If the share button is clicked information related to that action would be shared with Facebook and would also be received by Insider.com (though, in this scenario, it said it doesn’t get any personalized information — but rather gets aggregate data).

Facebook can also automatically collect other information when a user visits a webpage which incorporates its social plug-ins.

Asked whether Insider.com knows what information Facebook receives via this passive route the company told me it does not — noting the plug-in runs proprietary Facebook code. 

Asked how it’s collecting consent from users for their data to be shared passively with Facebook, Insider.com said its Privacy Policy stipulates users consent to sharing their information with Facebook and other social media sites. It also said it uses the legal ground known as legitimate interests to provide functionality and derive analytics on articles.

In the active case (of a user clicking to share an article) Insider.com said it interprets the user’s action as consent.

Insider.com confirmed it uses SimpleReach/Nativo analytics tools, meaning site visitor data is also being passed to Nativo when a user lands on an article. It said consent for this data-sharing is included within its consent management platform (it uses a CMP made by Forcepoint) which asks site visitors to specify their cookie choices.

Here site visitors can choose for their data not to be shared for analytics purposes (which Insider.com said would prevent data being passed).

I usually apply all cookie consent opt outs, where available, so I’m a little surprised Nativo/SimpleReach was passed my data from an Insider.com webpage. Either I failed to click the opt out one time or failed to respond to the cookie notice and data was passed by default.

It’s also possible I did opt out but data was passed anyway — as there has been research which has found a proportion of cookie notifications ignore choices and pass data anyway (unintentionally or otherwise).

Follow up questions I sent to Insider.com after we talked:

1) Can you confirm whether Insider has performed a legitimate interests assessment? 2) Does Insider have a site mechanism where users can object to the passive data transfer to Facebook from the share buttons?

Insider.com did not respond to my additional questions.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? That Insider.com is a customer of Nativo/SimpleReach.

Rei.com

What is it? A California-based ecommerce website selling outdoor gear

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I don’t recall ever visiting their site prior to looking into why it appeared in the list so I’m really not sure

What happened when you asked them about this? After saying it would investigate it followed up with a statement, rather than detailed responses to my questions, in which it claims it does not hold any personal data associated with — presumably — my TechCrunch email, since it did not ask me what data to check against.

It also appeared to be claiming that it uses Facebook tracking pixels/tags on its website, without explicitly saying as much, writing that: “Facebook may collect information about your interactions with our websites and mobile apps and reflect that information to you through their Off-Facebook Activity tool.”

It claims it has no access to this information — which it says is “pseudonymous to us” but suggested that if I have a Facebook account Facebook could link any browsing on Rei’s site to my Facebook’s identity and therefore track my activity.

The company also pointed me to a Facebook Help Center post where the company names some of the activities that might have resulted in Rei’s website sending activity data on me to Facebook (which it could then link to my Facebook ID) — although Facebook’s list is not exhaustive (included are: “viewing content”, “searching for an item”, “adding an item to a shopping cart” and “making a donation” among other activities the company tracks by having its code embedded on third parties’ sites).

Here’s Rei’s statement in full:

Thank you for your patience as we looked into your questions.  We have checked our systems and determined that REI does not maintain any personal data associated with you based on the information you provided.  Note, however, that Facebook may collect information about your interactions with our websites and mobile apps and reflect that information to you through their Off-Facebook Activity tool. The information that Facebook collects in this manner is pseudonymous to us — meaning we cannot identify you using the information and we do not maintain the information in a manner that is linked to your name or other identifying information. However, if you have a Facebook account, Facebook may be able to match this activity to your Facebook account via a unique identifier unavailable to REI. (Funnily enough, while researching this I found TechCrunch in MY list of Off-Facebook activity!)

For a complete list of activities that could have resulted in REI sharing pseudonymous information about you with Facebook, this Facebook Help Center article may be useful.  For a detailed description of the ways in which we may collect and share customer information, the purposes for which we may process your data, and rights available to EEA residents, please refer to our Privacy Policy.  For information about how REI uses cookies, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

As a follow up question I asked Rei to tell me which Facebook tools it uses, pointing out that: “Given that, just because you aren’t (as I understand it) directly using my data yourself that does not mean you are not responsible for my data being transferred to Facebook.”

The company did not respond to that point.

I also previously asked Rei.com to confirm whether it has any data sharing arrangements with the publisher of Rock & Ice magazine (see below). And, if so, to confirm the processes involved in data being shared. Again, I got no response to that.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? Given that Rei.com appeared alongside Rock & Ice on the list — both displaying the same date and just one activity apiece — I surmised they have some kind of data-sharing arrangement. They are also both outdoors brands so there would be obvious commercial ‘synergies’ to underpin such an arrangement.

That said, neither would confirm a business relationship to me. But Facebook’s list heavily implies there is some background data-sharing going on

Rock & Ice magazine 

What is it? A climbing magazine produced by a California-based publisher, Big Stone Publishing

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I imagine I clicked on a link to a climbing-related article in my Facebook feed or else visited Rock & Ice’s website while I was logged into Facebook in the same browser session

What happened when you asked them about this? After ignoring my initial email query I subsequently received a brief response from the publisher after I followed up — which read:

The Rock and Ice website is opt in, where you have to agree to terms of use to access the website. I don’t know what private data you are saying Rock and Ice shared, so I can’t speak to that. The site terms are here. As stated in the terms you can opt out.

Following up, I asked about the provision in the Rock & Ice website’s cookie notice which states: “By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookies” — asking whether it’s passing data without waiting for the user to signal their consent.

(Relevant: In October Europe’s top court issued a ruling that active consent is necessary for tracking cookies, so you can’t drop cookies prior to a user giving consent for you to do so.)

The publisher responded:

You have to opt in and agree to the terms to use the website. You may opt out of cookies, which is covered in the terms. If you do not want the benefits of these advertising cookies, you may be able to opt-out by visiting: https://ift.tt/1QBAo4U.

If you don’t want any cookies, you can find extensions such as Ghostery or the browser itself to stop and refuse cookies. By doing so though some websites might not work properly.

I followed up again to point out that I’m not asking about the options to opt in or opt out but, rather, the behavior of the website if the visitor does not provide a consent response yet continues browsing — asking for confirmation Rock & Ice’s site interprets this state as consent and therefore sends data.

The publisher stopped responding at that point.

Earlier I had asked it to confirm whether its website shares visitor data with Rei.com? (As noted above, the two appeared with the same date on the list which suggests data may be being passed between them.) I did not get a respond to that question either.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? That the magazine appears to have a data-sharing arrangement with outdoor retailer Rei.com, given how the pair appeared at the same point in my list. However neither would confirm this when I asked

MatterHackers

What is it? A California-based retailer focused on 3D printing and digital manufacturing

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I honestly have no idea. I have never to my knowledge visited their site prior to investigating why they should appear on my Off Site Activity list.

I remain pretty interested to know how/why they managed to track me. I can only surmise I clicked on some technology-related content in my Facebook feed, either intentionally or by accident.

What happened when you asked them about this? They first asked me for confirmation that they were on my list. After I had sent a screenshot, they followed up to say they would investigate. I pushed again after hearing nothing for several weeks. At this point they asked for additional information from the Off-Facebook Activity tool — namely more granular metrics, such as a time and date per event and some label information — to help with tracking down this particular data-exchange.

I had previously provided them with the date (as it appears in the screenshot) but it’s possible to download additional an additional level of information about data transfers which includes per event time/date-stamps and labels/tags, such as “VIEW_CONTENT” .

However, as noted above, I had previously selected and deleted one item off of my Off-Facebook Activity list, after which Facebook’s platform had immediately erased all entries and associated metrics. There was no obvious way I could recover access to that information.

“Without this information I would speculate that you viewed an article or product on our site — we publish a lot of ‘How To’ content related to 3D printing and other digital manufacturing technologies — this information could have then been captured by Facebook via Adroll for ad retargeting purposes,” a MatterHackers spokesman told me. “Operationally, we have no other data sharing mechanism with Facebook.”

Subsequently, the company confirmed it implements Facebook’s tracking pixel on every page of its website.

Of the pixel Facebook writes that it enables website owners to track “conversions” (i.e. website actions); create custom audiences which segment site visitors by criteria that Facebook can identify and match across its user-base, allowing for the site owner to target ads via Facebook’s platform at non-customers with a similar profile/criteria to existing customers that are browsing its site; and for creating dynamic ads where a template ad gets populated with product content based on tracking data for that particular visitor.

Regarding the legal base for the data sharing, MatterHackers had this to say: “MatterHackers is not an EU entity, nor do we conduct business in the EU and so have not undertaken GDPR compliance measures. CCPA [California’s Consumer Privacy Act] will likely apply to our business as of 2021 and we have begun the process of ensuring that our website will be in compliance with those regulations as of January 1st.”

I pointed out that GDPR is extraterritorial in scope — and can apply to non-EU based entities, such as if they’re monitoring individuals in the EU (as in this case).

Also likely relevant: A ruling last year by Europe’s top court found sites that embed third party plug-ins such as Facebook’s like button are jointly responsible for the initial data processing — and must either obtain informed consent from site visitors prior to data being transferred to Facebook, or be able to demonstrate a legitimate interest legal basis for processing this data.

Nonetheless it’s still not clear what legal base the company is relying on for implementing the tracking pixel and passing data on EU Facebook users.

When asked about this MatterHacker COO, Kevin Pope, told me:

While we appreciate the sentiment of GDPR, in this case the EU lacks the legal standing to pursue an enforcement action. I’m sure you can appreciate the potential negative consequences if any arbitrary country (or jurisdiction) were able to enforce legal penalties against any website simply for having visitors from that country. Techcrunch would have been fined to oblivion many times over by China or even Thailand (for covering the King in a negative light). In this way, the attempted overreach of the GDPR’s language sets a dangerous precedent.

To provide a little more detail – MatterHackers, at the time of your visit, wouldn’t have known that you were from the EU until we cross-referenced your session with  Facebook, who does know. At that point you would have been filtered from any advertising by us. MatterHackers makes money when our (U.S.) customers buy 3D printers or materials and then succeed at using them (hence the how-to articles), we don’t make any money selling advertising or data.

Given that Facebook does legally exist in the EU and does have direct revenues from EU advertisers, it’s entirely appropriate that Facebook should comply with EU regulations. As a global solution, I believe more privacy settings options should be available to its users. However, given Facebook’s business model, I wouldn’t expect anything other than continued deflection (note the careful wording on their tool) and avoidance from them on this issue.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity List? I found out that an ecommerce company I had never heard of had been tracking me

Wallapop

What is it? A Barcelona-based peer-to-peer marketplace app that lets people list secondhand stuff for sale and/or to search for things to buy in their proximity. Users can meet in person to carry out a transaction paying in cash or there can be an option to pay via the platform and have an item posted

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? This was the only digital activity that appeared in the list that was something I could explain — figuring out I must have used a Facebook sign-in option when using the Wallapop app to buy/sell. I wouldn’t normally use Facebook sign-in but for trust-based marketplaces there may be user benefits to leveraging network effects.

What happened when you asked them about this? After my query was booted around a bit a PR company that works with Wallapop responded asking to talk through what information I was trying to ascertain.

After we chatted they sent this response — attributed to sources from Wallapop:

Same as it happens with other apps, wallapop can appear on our users’ Facebook Off Site Activity page if they have interacted in any way with the platform while they were logged in their Facebook accounts. Some interaction examples include logging in via Facebook, visiting our website or having both apps opened and logged.

As other apps do, wallapop only shares activity events with Facebook to optimize users’ ad experience. This includes if a user is registered in wallapop, if they have uploaded an item or if they have started a conversation. Under no circumstance wallapop shares with Facebook our users’ personal data (including sex, name, email address or telephone number).

At wallapop, we are thoroughly committed with the security of our community and we do a safe treatment of the data they choose to share with us, in compliance with EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Under no circumstance these data are shared with third parties without explicit authorization.

I followed up to ask for further details about these “activity events” — asking whether, for instance, Wallapop shares messaging content with Facebook as well as letting the social network know which items a user is chatting about.

“Under no circumstance the content of our users’ messages is shared with Facebook,” the spokesperson told me. “What is shared is limited to the fact that a conversation has been initiated with another user in relation to a specific item, this is, activity events. Under no circumstance we would share our users’ personal information either.”

Of course the point is Facebook is able to link all app activity with the user ID it already has — so every piece of activity data being shared is personal data.

I also asked what legal base Wallapop relies on to share activity data with Facebook. They said the legal basis is “explicit consent given by users” at the point of signing up to use the app.

“Wallapop collects explicit consent from our users and at any time they can exercise their rights to their data, which include the modification of consent given in the first place,” they said.

“Users give their explicit consent by clicking in the corresponding box when they register in the app, where they also get the chance to opt out and not do it. If later on they want to change the consent they gave in first instance, they also have that option through the app. All the information is clearly available on our Privacy Policy, which is GDPR compliant.”

“At wallapop we take our community’s privacy and security very seriously and we follow recommendations from the Spanish Data Protection Agency,” it added

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? Not much more than I would have already guessed — i.e. that using a Facebook sign-in option in a third party app grants the social media giant a high degree of visibility into your activity within another service.

In this case the Wallapop app registered the most activity events of all six of the listed apps, displaying 13 vs only one apiece for the others — so it gave a bit of a suggestive glimpse into the volume of third party app data that can be passed if you opt to open a Facebook login wormhole into a separate service.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/32sp091 via IFTTT

[technicalsolutions88]

Just under a month ago Facebook switched on global availability of a tool which affords users a glimpse into the murky world of tracking that its business relies upon to profile users of the wider web for ad targeting purposes.

Facebook is not going boldly into transparent daylight — but rather offering what privacy rights advocacy group Privacy International has dubbed “a tiny sticking plaster on a much wider problem”.

The problem it’s referring to is the lack of active and informed consent for mass surveillance of Internet users via background tracking technologies embedded into apps and websites, including as people browse outside Facebook’s own content garden.

The dominant social platform is also only offering this feature in the wake of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, when Mark Zuckerberg faced awkward questions in Congress about the extent of Facebook’s general web tracking. Since then policymakers around the world have dialled up scrutiny of how its business operates — and realized there’s a troubling lack of transparency in and around adtech generally and Facebook specifically. 

Facebook’s tracking pixels and social plugins — aka the share/like buttons that pepper the mainstream web — have created a vast tracking infrastructure which silently informs the tech giant of Internet users’ activity, even when a person hasn’t interacted with any Facebook-branded buttons.

Facebook claims this is just ‘how the web works’. And other tech giants are similarly engaged in tracking Internet users (notably Google). But as a platform with 2.2BN+ users Facebook has got a march on the lion’s share of rivals when it comes to harvesting people’s data and building out a global database of person profiles.

It’s also positioned as a dominant player in an adtech ecosystem which means it’s the one being fed with intel by data brokers and publishers who deploy tracking tech to try to survive in such a skewed system.

Meanwhile the opacity of online tracking means the average Internet user is none the wiser that Facebook can be following what they’re browsing all over the Internet. Questions of consent loom very large indeed.

Facebook is also able to track people’s usage of third party apps if a person chooses a Facebook login option which the company encourages developers to implement in their apps — again the carrot being to be able to offer a lower friction choice vs requiring users create yet another login credential.

The price for this ‘convenience’ is data and user privacy as the Facebook login gives the tech giant a window into third part app usage.

The company has also used a VPN app it bought and badged as a security tool to glean data on third party app usage — though it’s recently stepped back from the Onavo app after a public backlash (though that did not stop it running a similar tracking program targeted at teens).

Background tracking is how Facebook’s creepy ads function (it prefers to call such behaviorally targeted ads ‘relevant’) — and how they have functioned for years

Yet it’s only in recent months that it’s offered users a glimpse into this network of online informers — by providing limited information about the entities that are passing tracking data to Facebook, as well as some limited controls.

From ‘Clear History’ to “Off-Facebook Activity”

Originally briefed in May 2018, at the crux of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as a ‘Clear History’ option this has since been renamed ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ — a label so bloodless and devoid of ‘call to action’ that the average Facebook user, should they stumble upon it buried deep in unlovely settings menus, would more likely move along than feel moved to carry out a privacy purge.

(For the record you can access the setting here — but you do need to be logged into Facebook to do so.)

The other problem is that Facebook’s tool doesn’t actually let you purge your browsing history, it just delinks it from being associated with your Facebook ID. There is no option to actually clear your browsing history via its button. Another reason for the name switch. So, no, Facebook hasn’t built a clear history ‘button’.

“While we welcome the effort to offer more transparency to users by showing the companies from which Facebook is receiving personal data, the tool offers little way for users to take any action,” said Privacy International this week, criticizing Facebook for “not telling you everything”.

As the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So a little transparency implies — well — anything but clarity. And Privacy International sums up the Off-Facebook Activity tool with an apt oxymoron — describing it as “a new window to the opacity”.

“This tool illustrates just how impossible it is for users to prevent external data from being shared with Facebook,” it writes, warning with emphasis: “Without meaningful information about what data is collected and shared, and what are the ways for the user to opt-out from such collection, Off-Facebook activity is just another incomplete glimpse into Facebook’s opaque practices when it comes to tracking users and consolidating their profiles.”

It points out, for instance, that the information provided here is limited to a “simple name” — thereby preventing the user from “exercising their right to seek more information about how this data was collected”, which EU users at least are entitled to.

“As users we are entitled to know the name/contact details of companies that claim to have interacted with us. If the only thing we see, for example, is the random name of an artist we’ve never heard before (true story), how are we supposed to know whether it is their record label, agent, marketing company or even them personally targeting us with ads?” it adds.

Another criticism is Facebook is only providing limited information about each data transfer — with Privacy International noting some events are marked “under a cryptic CUSTOM” label; and that Facebook provides “no information regarding how the data was collected by the advertiser (Facebook SDK, tracking pixel, like button…) and on what device, leaving users in the dark regarding the circumstances under which this data collection took place”.

“Does Facebook really display everything they process/store about those events in the log/export?” queries privacy researcher Wolfie Christl, who tracks the adtech industry’s tracking techniques. “They have to, because otherwise they don’t fulfil their SAR [Subject Access Request] obligations [under EU law].”

Christl notes Facebook makes users jump through an additional “download” hoop in order to view data on tracked events — and even then, as Privacy International points out, it gives up only a limited view of what has actually been tracked…

And it's just ridiculous.

FB doesn't show me the list of visits they recorded from a certain website in their web interface, no! I have to 'download my information', which takes a long time.

And then, I'm sure this is not all data they record when tracking a VIEW_CONTENT event: pic.twitter.com/qBO87Zp5YH

— Wolfie Christl (@WolfieChristl) January 29, 2020

“For example, why doesn’t Facebook list the specific sites/URLs visited? Do they infer data from the domains e.g. categories? If yes, why is this not in the logs?” Christl asks.

We reached out to Facebook with a number of questions, including why it doesn’t provide more detail by default. It responded with this statement attributed to spokesperson:

We offer a variety of tools to help people access their Facebook information, and we’ve designed these tools to comply with relevant laws, including GDPR. We disagree with this [Privacy International] article’s claims and would welcome the chance to discuss them with Privacy International.

Facebook also said it’s continuing to develop which information it surfaces through the Off-Facebook Activity tool — and said it welcomes feedback on this.

We also asked it about the legal bases it uses to process people’s information that’s been obtained via its tracking pixels and social plug-ins. It did not provide a response to those questions.

Six names, many questions…

When the company launched the Off-Facebook Activity tool a snap poll of available TechCrunch colleagues showed very diverse results for our respective tallies (which also may not show the most recent activity, per other Facebook caveats) — ranging from one colleague who had an eye-watering 1,117 entities (likely down to doing a lot of app testing); to several with several/a few hundred apiece; to a couple in the middle tens.

In my case I had just six. But from my point of view — as an EU citizen with a suite of rights related to privacy and data protection; and as someone who aims to practice good online privacy hygiene, including having a very locked down approach to using Facebook (never using its mobile app for instance) — it was still six too many. I wanted to find out how these entities had circumvented my attempts not to be tracked.

And in the case of the first one in the list who on earth it was…

Turns out cloudfront is an Amazon Web Services Content Delivery Network subdomain. But I had to go searching online myself to figure out that the owner of that particular domain is (now) a company called Nativo.

Facebook’s list provided only very bare bones information. I also clicked to delink the first entity, since it immediately looked so weird, and found that by doing that Facebook wiped all the entries — which meant I was unable to retain access to what little additional info it had provided about the respective data transfers.

Undeterred I set out to contact each of the six companies directly with questions — asking what data of mine they had transferred to Facebook and what legal basis they thought they had for processing my information.

(On a practical level six names looked like a sample size I could at least try to follow up manually — but remember I was the TechCrunch exception; imagine trying to request data from 1,117 companies, or 450 or even 57, which were the lengths of lists of some of my colleagues.)

This process took about a month and a lot of back and forth/chasing up. It likely only yielded as much info as it did because I was asking as a journalist; an average Internet user may have had a tougher time getting attention on their questions — though, under EU law, citizens have a right to request a copy of personal data held on them.

Eventually, I was able to obtain confirmation that tracking pixels and Facebook share buttons had been involved in my data being passed to Facebook in certain instances. Even so I remain in the dark on many things. Such as exactly what personal data Facebook received.

In one case I was told by a listed company that it doesn’t know itself what data was shared — only Facebook knows because it’s implemented the company’s “proprietary code”. (Insert your own ‘WTAF’ there.)

The legal side of these transfers also remains highly opaque. From my point of view I would not intentionally consent to any of this tracking — but in some instances the entities involved claim that (my) consent was (somehow) obtained (or implied).

In other cases they said they are relying on a legal basis in EU law that’s referred to as ‘legitimate interests’. However this requires a balancing test to be carried out to ensure a business use does not have a disproportionate impact on individual rights.

I wasn’t able to ascertain whether such tests had ever been carried out.

Meanwhile, since Facebook is also making use of the tracking information from its pixels and social plug ins (and seemingly more granular use, since some entities claimed they only get aggregate not individual data), Christl suggests it’s unlikely such a balancing test would be easy to pass for that tiny little ‘platform giant’ reason.

Notably he points out Facebook’s Business Tool terms state that it makes use of so called “event data” to “personalize features and content and to improve and secure the Facebook products” — including for “ads and recommendations”; for R&D purposes; and “to maintain the integrity of and to improve the Facebook Company Products”.

In a section of its legal terms covering the use of its pixels and SDKs Facebook also puts the onus on the entities implementing its tracking technologies to gain consent from users prior to doing so in relevant jurisdictions that “require informed consent” for tracking cookies and similar — giving the example of the EU.

“You must ensure, in a verifiable manner, that an end user provides the necessary consent before you use Facebook Business Tools to enable us to store and access cookies or other information on the end user’s device,” Facebook writes, pointing users of its tools to its Cookie Consent Guide for Sites and Apps for “suggestions on implementing consent mechanisms”.

Christl flags the contradiction between Facebook claiming users of its tracking tech needing to gain prior consent vs claims I was given by some of these entities that they don’t because they’re relying on ‘legitimate interests’.

“Using LI as a legal basis is even controversial if you use a data analytics company that reliably processes personal data strictly on behalf of you,” he argues. “I guess, industry lawyers try to argue for a broader applicability of LI, but in the case of FB business tools I don’t believe that the balancing test (a businesses legitimate interests vs. the impact on the rights and freedoms of data subjects) will work in favor of LI.”

Those entities relying on legitimate interests as a legal base for tracking would still need to offer a mechanism where users can object to the processing — and I couldn’t immediately see such a mechanism in the cases in question.

One thing is crystal clear: Facebook itself does not provide a mechanism for users to object to its processing of tracking data nor opt out of targeted ads. That remains a long-standing complaint against its business in the EU which data protection regulators are still investigating.

One more thing: Non-Facebook users continue to have no way of learning what data of theirs is being tracked and transferred to Facebook. Only Facebook users have access to the Off-Facebook Activity tool, for example. Non-users can’t even access a list.

Facebook has defended its practice of tracking non-users around the Internet as necessary for unspecified ‘security purposes’. It’s an inherently disproportionate argument of course. The practice also remains under legal challenge in the EU.

Tracking the trackers

SimpleReach (aka d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net)

What is it? A California-based analytics platform (now owned by Nativo) used by publishers and content marketers to measure how well their content/native ads performs on social media. The product began life in the early noughties as a simple tool for publishers to recommend similar content at the bottom of articles before the startup pivoted — aiming to become ‘the PageRank of social’ — offering analytics tools for publishers to track engagement around content in real-time across the social web (plugging into platform APIs). It also built statistical models to predict which pieces of content will be the most social and where, generating a proprietary per article score. SimpleReach was acquired by Nativo last year to complement analytics tools the latter already offered for tracking content on the publisher/brand’s own site.

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? Given it’s a b2b product it does not have a visible consumer brand of its own. And, to my knowledge, I have never visited its own website prior to investigating why it appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list. Clearly, though, I must have visited a site (or sites) that are using its tracking/analytics tools. Of course an Internet user has no obvious way to know this — unless they’re actively using tools to monitor which trackers are tracking them.

In a further quirk, neither the SimpleReach (nor Nativo) brand names appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list. Rather a domain name was listed — d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net — which looked at first glance weird/alarming.

I found this is owned by SimpleReach by using a tracker analytics service.

Once I knew the name I was able to connect the entry to Nativo — via news reports of the acquisition — which led me to an entity I could direct questions to.  

What happened when you asked them about this? There was a bit of back and forth and then they sent a detailed response to my questions in which they claim they do not share any data with Facebook — “or perform ‘off site activity’ as described on Facebook’s activity tool”.

They also suggested that their domain had appeared as a result of their tracking code being implemented on a website I had visited which had also implemented Facebook’s own trackers.

“Our technology allows our Data Controllers to insert other tracking pixels or tags, using us as a tag manager that delivers code to the page. It is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook pixel to an article you visited using our technology. This could lead Facebook to attribute this pixel to our domain, though our domain was merely a ‘carrier’ of the code,” they told me.

In terms of the data they collect, they said this: “The only Personal Data that is collected by the SimpleReach Analytics tag is your IP Address and a randomly generated id.  Both of these values are processed, anonymized, and aggregated in the SimpleReach platform and not made available to anyone other than our sub-processors that are bound to process such data only on our behalf. Such values are permanently deleted from our system after 3 months. These values are used to give our customers a general idea of the number of users that visited the articles tracked.”

So, again, they suggested the reason why their domain appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list is a combination of Nativo/SimpleReach’s tracking technologies being implemented on a site where Facebook’s retargeting pixel is also embedded — which then resulted in data about my online activity being shared with Facebook (which Facebook then attributes as coming from SimpleReach’s domain).

Commenting on this, Christl agreed it sounds as if publishers “somehow attach Facebook pixel events to SimpleReach’s cloudfront domain”.

“SimpleReach probably doesn’t get data from this. But the question is 1) is SimpleReach perhaps actually responsible (if it happens in the context of their domain); 2) The Off-Facebook activity is a mess (if it contains events related to domains whose owners are not web or app publishers).”

Nativo offered to determine whether they hold any personal information associated with the unique identifier they have assigned to my browser if I could send them this ID. However I was unable to locate such an ID (see below).

In terms of legal base to process my information the company told me: “We have the right to process data in accordance with provisions set forth in the various Data Processor agreements we have in place with Data Controllers.”

Nativo also suggested that the Offsite Activity in question might have predated its purchase of the SimpleReach technology — which occurred on March 20, 2019 — saying any activity prior to this would mean my query would need to be addressed directly with SimpleReach, Inc. which Nativo did not acquire. (However in this case the activity registered on the list was dated later than that.)

Here’s what they said on all that in full:

Thank you for submitting your data access request.  We understand that you are a resident of the European Union and are submitting this request pursuant to Article 15(1) of the GDPR.  Article 15(1) requires “data controllers” to respond to individuals’ requests for information about the processing of their personal data.  Although Article 15(1) does not apply to Nativo because we are not a data controller with respect to your data, we have provided information below that will help us in determining the appropriate Data Controllers, which you can contact directly.

First, for details about our role in processing personal data in connection with our SimpleReach product, please see the SimpleReach Privacy Policy.  As the policy explains in more detail, we provide marketing analytics services to other businesses – our customers.  To take advantage of our services, our customers install our technology on their websites, which enables us to collect certain information regarding individuals’ visits to our customers’ websites. We analyze the personal information that we obtain only at the direction of our customer, and only on that customer’s behalf.

SimpleReach is an analytics tracker tool (Similar to Google Analytics) implemented by our customers to inform them of the performance of their content published around the web.  “d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net” is the domain name of the servers that collect these metrics.  We do not share data with Facebook or perform “off site activity” as described on Facebook’s activity tool.  Our technology allows our Data Controllers to insert other tracking pixels or tags, using us as a tag manager that delivers code to the page.  It is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook pixel to an article you visited using our technology.  This could lead Facebook to attribute this pixel to our domain, though our domain was merely a “carrier” of the code.

The SimpleReach tool is implemented on articles posted by our customers and partners of our customers.  It is possible you visited a URL that has contained our tracking code.  It is also possible that the Offsite Activity you are referencing is activity by SimpleReach, Inc. before Nativo purchased the SimpleReach technology. Nativo, Inc. purchased certain technology from SimpleReach, Inc. on March 20, 2019, but we did not purchase the SimpleReach, Inc. entity itself, which remains a separate entity unaffiliated with Nativo, Inc. Accordingly, any activity that occurred before March 20, 2019 pre-dates Nativo’s use of the SimpleReach technology and should be addressed directly with SimpleReach, Inc. If, for example, TechCrunch was a publisher partner of SimpleReach, Inc. and had SimpleReach tracking code implemented on TechCrunch articles or across the TechCrunch website prior to March 20, 2019, any resulting data collection would have been conducted by SimpleReach, Inc., not by Nativo, Inc.

As mentioned above, our tracking script collects and sends information to our servers based on the articles it is implemented on. The only Personal Data that is collected by the SimpleReach Analytics tag is your IP Address and a randomly generated id.  Both of these values are processed, anonymized, and aggregated in the SimpleReach platform and not made available to anyone other than our sub-processors that are bound to process such data only on our behalf. Such values are permanently deleted from our system after 3 months.  These values are used to give our customers a general idea of the number of users that visited the articles tracked.

We do not, nor have we ever, shared ANY information with Facebook with regards to the information we collect from the SimpleReach Analytics tag, be it Personal Data or otherwise. However, as mentioned above, it is possible that one of our customers added a Facebook retargeting pixel to an article you visited using our technology. If that is the case, we would not have received any information collected from such pixel or have knowledge of whether, and to what extent, the customer shared information with Facebook. Without more information, we are unable to determine the specific customer (if any) on behalf of which we may have processed your personal information. However, if you send us the unique identifier we have assigned to your browser… we can determine whether we have any personal information associated with such browser on behalf of a customer controller, and, if we have, we can forward your request on to the controller to respond directly to your request.

As a Data Processor we have the right to process data in accordance with provisions set forth in the various Data Processor agreements we have in place with Data Controllers.  This type of agreement is designed to protect Data Subjects and ensure that Data Processors are held to the same standards that both the GDPR and the Data Controller have put forth.  This is the same type of agreement used by all other analytics tracking tools (as well as many other types of tools) such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Chartbeat, and many others.

I also asked Nativo to confirm whether Insider.com (see below) is a customer of Nativo/SimpleReach.

The company told me it could not disclose this “due to confidentiality restrictions” and would only reveal the identity of customers if “required by applicable law”.

Again, it said that if I provided the “unique identifier” assigned to my browser it would be “happy to pull a list of personal information the SimpleReach/Nativo systems currently have stored for your unique identifier (if any), including the appropriate Data Controllers”. (“If we have any personal data collected from you on behalf of Insider.com, it would come up in the list of DataControllers,” it suggested.)

I checked multiple browsers that I use on multiple devices but was unable to locate an ID attached to a SimpleReach cookie. So I also asked whether this might appear attached to any other cookie.

Their response:

Because our data is either pseudonymized or anonymized, and we do not record of any other pieces of Personal Data about you, it will not be possible for us to locate this data without the cookie value.  The SimpleReach user cookie is, and has always been, in the “__srui” cookie under the “.simplereach.com” domain or any of its sub-domains. If you are unable to locate a SimpleReach user cookie by this name on your browser, it may be because you are using a different device or because you have cleared your cookies (in which case we would no longer have the ability to map any personal data we have previously collected from you to your browser or device). We do have other cookies (under the domains postrelease.com, admin.nativo.com, and cloud.nativo.com) but those cookies would not be related to the appearance of SimpleReach in the list of Off Site Activity on your Facebook account, per your original inquiry.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? There appeared to be a correlation between this domain and a publisher, Insider.com, which also appeared in my Off-Facebook Activity list — as both logged events bear the same date; plus Insider.com is a publisher so would fall into the right customer category for using Nativo’s tool.

Given those correlations I was able to guess Insider.com is a customer of Nativo. (I confirmed this when I spoke to Insider.com) — so Facebook’s tool is able to leak relational inferences related to the tracking industry by surfacing/mapping business connections that might not have been otherwise evident.

Insider.com

What is it? A New York based business media company which owns brands such as Business Insider and Markets Insider

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I imagine I clicked on a technology article that appeared in my Facebook News Feed or elsewhere but when I was logged into Facebook

What happened when you asked them about this? After about a week of radio silence an employee in Insider’com’s legal department got in touch to say they could discuss the issue on background.

This person told me the information in the Off-Facebook Activity tool came from the Facebook share button which is embedded on all articles it runs on its media websites. They confirmed that the share button can share data with Facebook regardless of whether the site visitor interacts with the button or not.

In my case I certainly would not have interacted with the Facebook share button. Nonetheless data was passed, simply by merit of loading the article page itself.

Insider.com said the Facebook share button widget is integrated into its sites using a standard set-up that Facebook intends publishers to use. If the share button is clicked information related to that action would be shared with Facebook and would also be received by Insider.com (though, in this scenario, it said it doesn’t get any personalized information — but rather gets aggregate data).

Facebook can also automatically collect other information when a user visits a webpage which incorporates its social plug-ins.

Asked whether Insider.com knows what information Facebook receives via this passive route the company told me it does not — noting the plug-in runs proprietary Facebook code. 

Asked how it’s collecting consent from users for their data to be shared passively with Facebook, Insider.com said its Privacy Policy stipulates users consent to sharing their information with Facebook and other social media sites. It also said it uses the legal ground known as legitimate interests to provide functionality and derive analytics on articles.

In the active case (of a user clicking to share an article) Insider.com said it interprets the user’s action as consent.

Insider.com confirmed it uses SimpleReach/Nativo analytics tools, meaning site visitor data is also being passed to Nativo when a user lands on an article. It said consent for this data-sharing is included within its consent management platform (it uses a CMP made by Forcepoint) which asks site visitors to specify their cookie choices.

Here site visitors can choose for their data not to be shared for analytics purposes (which Insider.com said would prevent data being passed).

I usually apply all cookie consent opt outs, where available, so I’m a little surprised Nativo/SimpleReach was passed my data from an Insider.com webpage. Either I failed to click the opt out one time or failed to respond to the cookie notice and data was passed by default.

It’s also possible I did opt out but data was passed anyway — as there has been research which has found a proportion of cookie notifications ignore choices and pass data anyway (unintentionally or otherwise).

Follow up questions I sent to Insider.com after we talked:

1) Can you confirm whether Insider has performed a legitimate interests assessment? 2) Does Insider have a site mechanism where users can object to the passive data transfer to Facebook from the share buttons?

Insider.com did not respond to my additional questions.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? That Insider.com is a customer of Nativo/SimpleReach.

Rei.com

What is it? A California-based ecommerce website selling outdoor gear

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I don’t recall ever visiting their site prior to looking into why it appeared in the list so I’m really not sure

What happened when you asked them about this? After saying it would investigate it followed up with a statement, rather than detailed responses to my questions, in which it claims it does not hold any personal data associated with — presumably — my TechCrunch email, since it did not ask me what data to check against.

It also appeared to be claiming that it uses Facebook tracking pixels/tags on its website, without explicitly saying as much, writing that: “Facebook may collect information about your interactions with our websites and mobile apps and reflect that information to you through their Off-Facebook Activity tool.”

It claims it has no access to this information — which it says is “pseudonymous to us” but suggested that if I have a Facebook account Facebook could link any browsing on Rei’s site to my Facebook’s identity and therefore track my activity.

The company also pointed me to a Facebook Help Center post where the company names some of the activities that might have resulted in Rei’s website sending activity data on me to Facebook (which it could then link to my Facebook ID) — although Facebook’s list is not exhaustive (included are: “viewing content”, “searching for an item”, “adding an item to a shopping cart” and “making a donation” among other activities the company tracks by having its code embedded on third parties’ sites).

Here’s Rei’s statement in full:

Thank you for your patience as we looked into your questions.  We have checked our systems and determined that REI does not maintain any personal data associated with you based on the information you provided.  Note, however, that Facebook may collect information about your interactions with our websites and mobile apps and reflect that information to you through their Off-Facebook Activity tool. The information that Facebook collects in this manner is pseudonymous to us — meaning we cannot identify you using the information and we do not maintain the information in a manner that is linked to your name or other identifying information. However, if you have a Facebook account, Facebook may be able to match this activity to your Facebook account via a unique identifier unavailable to REI. (Funnily enough, while researching this I found TechCrunch in MY list of Off-Facebook activity!)

For a complete list of activities that could have resulted in REI sharing pseudonymous information about you with Facebook, this Facebook Help Center article may be useful.  For a detailed description of the ways in which we may collect and share customer information, the purposes for which we may process your data, and rights available to EEA residents, please refer to our Privacy Policy.  For information about how REI uses cookies, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

As a follow up question I asked Rei to tell me which Facebook tools it uses, pointing out that: “Given that, just because you aren’t (as I understand it) directly using my data yourself that does not mean you are not responsible for my data being transferred to Facebook.”

The company did not respond to that point.

I also previously asked Rei.com to confirm whether it has any data sharing arrangements with the publisher of Rock & Ice magazine (see below). And, if so, to confirm the processes involved in data being shared. Again, I got no response to that.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? Given that Rei.com appeared alongside Rock & Ice on the list — both displaying the same date and just one activity apiece — I surmised they have some kind of data-sharing arrangement. They are also both outdoors brands so there would be obvious commercial ‘synergies’ to underpin such an arrangement.

That said, neither would confirm a business relationship to me. But Facebook’s list heavily implies there is some background data-sharing going on

Rock & Ice magazine 

What is it? A climbing magazine produced by a California-based publisher, Big Stone Publishing

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I imagine I clicked on a link to a climbing-related article in my Facebook feed or else visited Rock & Ice’s website while I was logged into Facebook in the same browser session

What happened when you asked them about this? After ignoring my initial email query I subsequently received a brief response from the publisher after I followed up — which read:

The Rock and Ice website is opt in, where you have to agree to terms of use to access the website. I don’t know what private data you are saying Rock and Ice shared, so I can’t speak to that. The site terms are here. As stated in the terms you can opt out.

Following up, I asked about the provision in the Rock & Ice website’s cookie notice which states: “By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookies” — asking whether it’s passing data without waiting for the user to signal their consent.

(Relevant: In October Europe’s top court issued a ruling that active consent is necessary for tracking cookies, so you can’t drop cookies prior to a user giving consent for you to do so.)

The publisher responded:

You have to opt in and agree to the terms to use the website. You may opt out of cookies, which is covered in the terms. If you do not want the benefits of these advertising cookies, you may be able to opt-out by visiting: https://ift.tt/1QBAo4U.

If you don’t want any cookies, you can find extensions such as Ghostery or the browser itself to stop and refuse cookies. By doing so though some websites might not work properly.

I followed up again to point out that I’m not asking about the options to opt in or opt out but, rather, the behavior of the website if the visitor does not provide a consent response yet continues browsing — asking for confirmation Rock & Ice’s site interprets this state as consent and therefore sends data.

The publisher stopped responding at that point.

Earlier I had asked it to confirm whether its website shares visitor data with Rei.com? (As noted above, the two appeared with the same date on the list which suggests data may be being passed between them.) I did not get a respond to that question either.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? That the magazine appears to have a data-sharing arrangement with outdoor retailer Rei.com, given how the pair appeared at the same point in my list. However neither would confirm this when I asked

MatterHackers

What is it? A California-based retailer focused on 3D printing and digital manufacturing

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? I honestly have no idea. I have never to my knowledge visited their site prior to investigating why they should appear on my Off Site Activity list.

I remain pretty interested to know how/why they managed to track me. I can only surmise I clicked on some technology-related content in my Facebook feed, either intentionally or by accident.

What happened when you asked them about this? They first asked me for confirmation that they were on my list. After I had sent a screenshot, they followed up to say they would investigate. I pushed again after hearing nothing for several weeks. At this point they asked for additional information from the Off-Facebook Activity tool — namely more granular metrics, such as a time and date per event and some label information — to help with tracking down this particular data-exchange.

I had previously provided them with the date (as it appears in the screenshot) but it’s possible to download additional an additional level of information about data transfers which includes per event time/date-stamps and labels/tags, such as “VIEW_CONTENT” .

However, as noted above, I had previously selected and deleted one item off of my Off-Facebook Activity list, after which Facebook’s platform had immediately erased all entries and associated metrics. There was no obvious way I could recover access to that information.

“Without this information I would speculate that you viewed an article or product on our site — we publish a lot of ‘How To’ content related to 3D printing and other digital manufacturing technologies — this information could have then been captured by Facebook via Adroll for ad retargeting purposes,” a MatterHackers spokesman told me. “Operationally, we have no other data sharing mechanism with Facebook.”

Subsequently, the company confirmed it implements Facebook’s tracking pixel on every page of its website.

Of the pixel Facebook writes that it enables website owners to track “conversions” (i.e. website actions); create custom audiences which segment site visitors by criteria that Facebook can identify and match across its user-base, allowing for the site owner to target ads via Facebook’s platform at non-customers with a similar profile/criteria to existing customers that are browsing its site; and for creating dynamic ads where a template ad gets populated with product content based on tracking data for that particular visitor.

Regarding the legal base for the data sharing, MatterHackers had this to say: “MatterHackers is not an EU entity, nor do we conduct business in the EU and so have not undertaken GDPR compliance measures. CCPA [California’s Consumer Privacy Act] will likely apply to our business as of 2021 and we have begun the process of ensuring that our website will be in compliance with those regulations as of January 1st.”

I pointed out that GDPR is extraterritorial in scope — and can apply to non-EU based entities, such as if they’re monitoring individuals in the EU (as in this case).

Also likely relevant: A ruling last year by Europe’s top court found sites that embed third party plug-ins such as Facebook’s like button are jointly responsible for the initial data processing — and must either obtain informed consent from site visitors prior to data being transferred to Facebook, or be able to demonstrate a legitimate interest legal basis for processing this data.

Nonetheless it’s still not clear what legal base the company is relying on for implementing the tracking pixel and passing data on EU Facebook users.

When asked about this MatterHacker COO, Kevin Pope, told me:

While we appreciate the sentiment of GDPR, in this case the EU lacks the legal standing to pursue an enforcement action. I’m sure you can appreciate the potential negative consequences if any arbitrary country (or jurisdiction) were able to enforce legal penalties against any website simply for having visitors from that country. Techcrunch would have been fined to oblivion many times over by China or even Thailand (for covering the King in a negative light). In this way, the attempted overreach of the GDPR’s language sets a dangerous precedent.

To provide a little more detail – MatterHackers, at the time of your visit, wouldn’t have known that you were from the EU until we cross-referenced your session with  Facebook, who does know. At that point you would have been filtered from any advertising by us. MatterHackers makes money when our (U.S.) customers buy 3D printers or materials and then succeed at using them (hence the how-to articles), we don’t make any money selling advertising or data.

Given that Facebook does legally exist in the EU and does have direct revenues from EU advertisers, it’s entirely appropriate that Facebook should comply with EU regulations. As a global solution, I believe more privacy settings options should be available to its users. However, given Facebook’s business model, I wouldn’t expect anything other than continued deflection (note the careful wording on their tool) and avoidance from them on this issue.

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity List? I found out that an ecommerce company I had never heard of had been tracking me

Wallapop

What is it? A Barcelona-based peer-to-peer marketplace app that lets people list secondhand stuff for sale and/or to search for things to buy in their proximity. Users can meet in person to carry out a transaction paying in cash or there can be an option to pay via the platform and have an item posted

Why did it appear in your Off-Facebook Activity list? This was the only digital activity that appeared in the list that was something I could explain — figuring out I must have used a Facebook sign-in option when using the Wallapop app to buy/sell. I wouldn’t normally use Facebook sign-in but for trust-based marketplaces there may be user benefits to leveraging network effects.

What happened when you asked them about this? After my query was booted around a bit a PR company that works with Wallapop responded asking to talk through what information I was trying to ascertain.

After we chatted they sent this response — attributed to sources from Wallapop:

Same as it happens with other apps, wallapop can appear on our users’ Facebook Off Site Activity page if they have interacted in any way with the platform while they were logged in their Facebook accounts. Some interaction examples include logging in via Facebook, visiting our website or having both apps opened and logged.

As other apps do, wallapop only shares activity events with Facebook to optimize users’ ad experience. This includes if a user is registered in wallapop, if they have uploaded an item or if they have started a conversation. Under no circumstance wallapop shares with Facebook our users’ personal data (including sex, name, email address or telephone number).

At wallapop, we are thoroughly committed with the security of our community and we do a safe treatment of the data they choose to share with us, in compliance with EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Under no circumstance these data are shared with third parties without explicit authorization.

I followed up to ask for further details about these “activity events” — asking whether, for instance, Wallapop shares messaging content with Facebook as well as letting the social network know which items a user is chatting about.

“Under no circumstance the content of our users’ messages is shared with Facebook,” the spokesperson told me. “What is shared is limited to the fact that a conversation has been initiated with another user in relation to a specific item, this is, activity events. Under no circumstance we would share our users’ personal information either.”

Of course the point is Facebook is able to link all app activity with the user ID it already has — so every piece of activity data being shared is personal data.

I also asked what legal base Wallapop relies on to share activity data with Facebook. They said the legal basis is “explicit consent given by users” at the point of signing up to use the app.

“Wallapop collects explicit consent from our users and at any time they can exercise their rights to their data, which include the modification of consent given in the first place,” they said.

“Users give their explicit consent by clicking in the corresponding box when they register in the app, where they also get the chance to opt out and not do it. If later on they want to change the consent they gave in first instance, they also have that option through the app. All the information is clearly available on our Privacy Policy, which is GDPR compliant.”

“At wallapop we take our community’s privacy and security very seriously and we follow recommendations from the Spanish Data Protection Agency,” it added

What did you learn from their inclusion in the Off-Facebook Activity list? Not much more than I would have already guessed — i.e. that using a Facebook sign-in option in a third party app grants the social media giant a high degree of visibility into your activity within another service.

In this case the Wallapop app registered the most activity events of all six of the listed apps, displaying 13 vs only one apiece for the others — so it gave a bit of a suggestive glimpse into the volume of third party app data that can be passed if you opt to open a Facebook login wormhole into a separate service.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/32sp091 Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

Starr Chamber: The Sequel

President Trump reaches deep into the perv barrel for his defense team.

Maureen Dowd

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

Jan. 18, 2020

1038

Ken Starr in January 1999, during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

Ken Starr in January 1999, during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.Credit...David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

Can a woman be president of the United States?

Hell, yes.

I’ve covered the men who run the world my whole life. And there have been a lot of screw-ups, from Vietnam to Watergate to Afghanistan to Iraq to pushing the economy off a cliff. There has also been plenty of creepy behavior, culminating in the news that Donald Trump, Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz have joined together in a pervy, hypocritical cabal to argue that Trump did not smirch the Constitution.

So please, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, stop whingeing about sexism and just show how you could wield power like a boss. Ibid: Nancy Pelosi.

When Steve Bannon called Pelosi a “total assassin,” according to the hot new book “A Very Stable Genius,” by Washington Post writers Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, he meant it as the highest compliment. You won’t find Pelosi keening about gender; she’s too busy taking care of business.

Hillary Clinton did not lose because she was a woman. She faced sexism, of course, just as Barack Obama faced racism. She lost because she ran an entitled, joyless, nose-in-the air campaign and because she didn’t emulate her husband’s ethos of campaign ’til the last dog dies and the last bowling alley closes, and always make it about the voters. She lost because she and her campaign manager, Robby Mook, didn’t listen to Bill Clinton, the world’s leading expert on the white, male, rural vote, when he warned them that there was trouble and offered to help out.

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Donald Trump operates from the id, which is fitting because he represents a last-gasp primal scream from working-class Americans threatened by the changes transforming the country. Women are now a majority of the work force and whites are heading toward a minority status. Hollywood cannot cling to its benighted — and self-defeating — desire to stay a white male club forever, despite the fact that women have always made up half the audience.

Trump’s ascent does not make it harder for women to ascend — just the opposite. Look at the throng of women who were outraged enough about Trump to march and run and get elected in 2018.

Once a woman electrifies Democrats the way J.F.K., Bill Clinton and Obama did — and the way Trump does his base — she will win.

Trump is once more doing his part to energize women voters. On Friday, we learned that the president will get help from Starr and Dershowitz for the impeachment trial in the Senate.

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The Starr chamber was a shameful period of American history, with the prissy Puritan independent counsel hounding and virtually jailing Monica Lewinsky and producing hundreds of pages of panting, bodice-ripping prose that read more like bad erotica than a federal report, rife with lurid passages about breasts, stains and genitalia. Like the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale and other Pharisaic Holy Rollers before him, the prosecutor who read the Bible and sang hymns when he jogged became fixated on sex in an unhealthy, warped way.

Even Trump was appalled. “Starr’s a freak,” the bloviating builder told me back in 1999. “I bet he’s got something in his closet.” In other interviews, he called Starr “a lunatic,” “a disaster” and “off his rocker,” and expressed sympathy for Hillary having to stand by her man when he was “being lambasted by this crazy Ken Starr, who is a total wacko.”

Starr, who once clutched his pearls over Bill Clinton’s sexual high jinks, is now going to bat for President “Access Hollywood.” After playing an avenging Javert about foreplay in the Oval, Starr will now do his utmost to prove that a real abuse of power undermining Congress and American foreign policy is piffle.

In 2007, he defended Jeffrey Epstein. By 2016, Starr was being ousted as president of Baptist Baylor University for failing to protect women and looking the other way when football players were accused and sometimes convicted of sexual assaults. In other words, he’s a complete partisan hack who doesn’t give a damn about sexual assault.

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And then there’s Dershowitz, whose past clients have included such sterling fellows as Epstein, Claus von Bülow, O.J. Simpson and Harvey Weinstein. How did he miss Ted Bundy? Still, Dershowitz has put himself on the side of an impressive pantheon of villainy in the realm of violence against girls and women.

Virginia Giuffre, Prince Andrew’s accuser, has also claimed that she was offered as a teenager to Dershowitz for sex — a contention that Dershowitz has denied in a countersuit.

On Fox News, Dershowitz has made the case that it is Pelosi who put herself above the law by delaying the delivery of the articles of impeachment. Good luck with that one.

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan government watchdog, a few days ago deemed that Trump’s slimy Ukraine gambit violated a law. Yet Dershowitz will somehow argue that it doesn’t represent high crimes and misdemeanors.

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He tweeted that he’s nonpartisan because he opposed Bill’s impeachment and voted for Hillary, even as he joined up with Bill’s persecutor. Dershowitz said that he is participating “to defend the integrity of the Constitution.”

That assertion may fly in Foxworld. But in the real world, it’s ridiculous. You can bet that Trump and his buddies will continue to turn out the women’s vote.

[wetrumpfeed]

Afternoon MAGAthread: YOUR WEEKLY PRESIDENTIAL RECAP!

HAPPPPY SATURDAY DEPLORABLES!!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend so far! This is u/Ivaginaryfriend and I'm here to deliver everything spicy & dank from the past week! If you happened to miss any past recaps you can catch those here!

Sunday, May 5th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

I am pleased to inform all of those that believe in a strong, fair and sound Immigration Policy that Mark Morgan will be joining the Trump Administration as the head of our hard working men and women of ICE. Mark is a true believer and American Patriot. He will do a great job!

The Kentucky Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough & tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby - not even close!

For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA of 25% on 50 Billion Dollars of High Tech, and 10% on 200 Billion Dollars of other goods. These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results. The 10% will go up to 25% on Friday. 325 Billions Dollars.... ... ....of additional goods sent to us by China remain untaxed, but will be shortly, at a rate of 25%. The Tariffs paid to the USA have had little impact on product cost, mostly borne by China. The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!

After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents - all culminating in a more than 400 page Report showing NO COLLUSION - why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller....... ... ....to testify. Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!

“The Report sounded an awful lot as being Comeyesque, in other words, I’m not going to charge this person (there wasn’t even close to being a crime), but I’m going to criticize him on the way out the door. That’s unfortunate because it’s stepping outside of the role.” Robert Ray

“This is not Congressional Oversight, this is bullying.” Jason Riley, The Wall Street Journal

Pending the confirmation of Mark Morgan as our Nation’s new ICE Director, Matt Albence will serve in the role of Acting Director. Matt is tough and dedicated and has my full support to deploy ICE to the maximum extent of the law! #MAGA

Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens.... ... ....To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace - it can happen!

Despite the tremendous success that I have had as President, including perhaps the greatest ECONOMY and most successful first two years of any President in history, they have stolen two years of my (our) Presidency (Collusion Delusion) that we will never be able to get back..... ... .....The Witch Hunt is over but we will never forget. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Urban Dictionary is a treasure trove

Well that poll is backfiring. Let’s keep it up pedes!!

YouTube bans Tommy Robinson for talking about Muslim gangs sexually exploiting white girls, but I can go to YouTube and watch Muslims rapping about sexually exploiting white girls, and it was played by the BBC.

Just going to leave this handy chart here.

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Is it acceptable for the attorney general to say this?

When Democrats Are In Power...

Happy Cinco De Mayo Pedes!

Trump for 2020

Who would TRADE creepy non-human ZUCK for TOM? I hate reptilians.

Monday, May 6th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Three Nominations Sent to the Senate

President Trump Welcomes Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini of the Slovak Republic to the White House

President Trump Presents the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the U.S. Military Academy Football Team

President Trump Presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tiger Woods

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

“Democrat Texas Congressman Al Green says impeachment is the only thing that can prevent President Trump from re-election in 2020.” @OANN In other words, Dems can’t win the election fairly. You can’t impeach a president for creating the best economy in our country’s history..... ... Also, there are “No High Crimes & Misdemeanors,” No Collusion, No Conspiracy, No Obstruction. ALL THE CRIMES ARE ON THE OTHER SIDE, and that’s what the Dems should be looking at, but they won’t. Nevertheless, the tables are turning!

The United States has been losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade. With China we lose 500 Billion Dollars. Sorry, we’re not going to be doing that anymore!

Scott Walker is 100% correct when he says that the Republicans must WAKE UP to the Democrats State by State power grab. They play very dirty, actually, like never before. Don’t allow them to get away with what they are doing!

Just spoke to Prime Minister Abe of Japan concerning North Korea and Trade. Very good conversation!

Congratulations @ArmyWP_Football!

Today, it was my true honor to present the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy—for the second year in a row, to the @ArmyWP_Football Black Knights. Congratulations once again on your historic victories, and keep on making us proud!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Finally, some support for POTUS!

imagine if the parties were swapped

Pres. Trump Pardons Army Lt. Michael Behanna, Convicted Of Murdering Al-Qaeda Detainee

This 👇🏻

TRUMP: I WILL NEVER FORGIVE OBAMA FOR WHAT HE DID TO OUR MILITARY... AND MANY OTHER THINGS THAT I WILL TELL YOU ABOUT IN THE FUTURE 😁

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Is it just me, or are things getting crazier out there?

Today on “They Asked, So I Answered”:

He’s still standing on the graves of his classmates for his own self serving purposes

Free Speech Cafe (No Conservatives Allowed)

I was asleep in 2016; this time I'm signing up for the meme war.

Tuesday, May 7th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Personnel to Key Administration Posts

First Lady Melania Trump's Be Best Anniversary Celebration

Vice President Pence Delivers Remarks at the 49th Annual Washington Conference on the Americas

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Democrats in Congress must vote to close the terrible loopholes at the Southern Border. If not, harsh measures will have to be taken!

(Retweeting The White House) On the one year anniversary of @FLOTUS' initiative, Be Best, take a look back at some of the highlights! #BeBest

Congratulations @TigerWoods - you are truly one of a kind!

'Forgotten Man' Story: Under Trump, Red Counties Economically Thrive http://bit.ly/2VKPFNq via @BreitbartNews

He wants to impeach because they can’t win election. Sad!

I am pleased to inform you that THE BIG FIREWORKS, after many years of not having any, are coming back to beautiful Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Great work @GovKristiNoem and @SecBernhardt! #MAGA

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

CNN Contributor: ‘When a Woman Is Pregnant, That Is Not a Human Being inside of Her’

Steele's stunning pre-FISA confession: Informant needed to air Trump dirt before election 🤬

Over 35.4k upvotes and climbing on r/all. Good job pedes!

TWITTER Bans Account that Tracks and Reports on Epidemic of Violence Against Trump Supporters

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

This is serious

Looking forward to warmer weather. How about you?

Some people just can’t comprehend this

Careful lads, he's high on truth.

Wednesday, May 8th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Individual to a Key Administration Post

Proclamation on Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States

Executive Order on Imposing Sanctions with Respect to the Iron, Steel, Aluminum, and Copper Sectors of Iran

Vice President Pence Visits Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Louisiana

President Trump Departs the White House in Marine One

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

McConnell Backs Trump: Mueller Report Is 'Case Closed' | Breitbart http://bit.ly/2VNaqIl via @BreitbartNews

The reason for the China pullback & attempted renegotiation of the Trade Deal is the sincere HOPE that they will be able to “negotiate” with Joe Biden or one of the very weak Democrats, and thereby continue to ripoff the United States (($500 Billion a year)) for years to come.... ... ...Guess what, that’s not going to happen! China has just informed us that they (Vice-Premier) are now coming to the U.S. to make a deal. We’ll see, but I am very happy with over $100 Billion a year in Tariffs filling U.S. coffers...great for U.S., not good for China!

“The real “Obstruction of Justice” is what the Democrats are trying to do to this Attorney General.” Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). @MariaBartiromo

“Shouldn’t 2015 and 2016 be revealed, how Intelligence Agencies, FBI, tried to sabotage a particular campaign - never been done before?” @SteveForbesCEO @MariaBartiromo

Big Court win at our Southern Border! We are getting there - and Wall is being built!

“Everyone wants to know who needs to be accountable, because it took up two years of our lives talking about this Russian involvement. It proved No Collusion, & people want to trace it back to see how this all happened?” @ainsleyearhardt @foxandfriends TREASONOUS HOAX!

“This British Spy, Christopher Steele, tried so hard to get this (the Fake Dossier) out before the Election. Why?” @kilmeade @foxandfriends

“CASE CLOSED!” @SenateMajLDR

Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases. Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered “tax shelter,” ...... ... ....you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes....almost all real estate developers did - and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!

GREAT NEWS FOR OHIO! Just spoke to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, who informed me that, subject to a UAW agreement etc., GM will be selling their beautiful Lordstown Plant to Workhorse, where they plan to build Electric Trucks. GM will also be spending $700,000,000 in Ohio... ... ....in 3 separate locations, creating another 450 jobs. I have been working nicely with GM to get this done. Thank you to Mary B, your GREAT Governor, and Senator Rob Portman. With all the car companies coming back, and much more, THE USA IS BOOMING!

Republicans shouldn’t vote for H.R. 312, a special interest casino Bill, backed by Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren. It is unfair and doesn’t treat Native Americans equally! 14,996 replies 18,369 retweets 69,053 likes

Our Nation grieves at the unspeakable violence that took a precious young life and badly injured others in Colorado. God be with the families and thank you to the First Responders for bravely intervening. We are in close contact with Law Enforcement.

Thank you @NewtGingrich & @FoxandFriends!

Getting ready to leave for one of my favorite places, the Florida Panhandle, where we’ve given, and are giving, billions of $$$ for the devastation caused by Hurricane Michael. Even though the Dems are totally in our way (they don’t want money to go there) we’re getting it done!

“The reality is, with the Tariffs, the economy has grown more rapidly in the United States and much more slowly in China.” Peter Morici, Former Chief Economist, USITC

Big announcement today: Drug companies have to come clean about their prices in TV ads. Historic transparency for American patients is here. If drug companies are ashamed of those prices—lower them!

Just landed in Panama City Beach, Florida for a rally beginning at 8:00 P.M. Eastern. Will be live on @FoxNews! #MAGA @tuckercarlson @seanhannity

Big crowds in Panama City Beach, Florida. See everyone in 30 minutes! @FoxNews @TuckerCarlson @SeanHannity

Beautiful evening in Panama City Beach, Florida. Thank you! #MAGA

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

After a great rally in Panama City Beach, Florida - I am returning to Washington, D.C. with @SenRickScott and Senator @MarcoRubio, discussing the terrible abuses by Maduro. America stands with the GREAT PEOPLE of Venezuela for however long it takes!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

This young patriot bravely sacrificed his life to tackle a deranged school shooter yesterday. He stopped the gunfire, saving lives. Kendrick Castillo is a hero. You won’t see this on redacted because WE are the side that honors selflessness

BREAKING: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Warned UK PM Theresa May that if she allows Huawei Technologies into Britain's 5G, "U.S. will not share America’s national security secrets in a network we don’t have confidence in and is controlled by China"

FBI opened obstruction case against Trump before Mueller was appointed, court files show

Two young men, who did what was right. No matter what it took.

PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:

Watch Party: President Donald J. Trump MAGA Rally Panama City Beach, FL 5/8/19

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Word of the day: "Baizuo"

Backfired

OMFG DED 😂😂😂😂💀💀💀💀

Yes

Line for the Trump rally in Panama City Beach. Three and a half hours before the rally begins

Thursday, May 9th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Proclamation on Military Spouse Day, 2019

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint Individual to a Key Administration Post

President Trump Delivers Remarks on Ending Surprise Medical Billing

President Trump Welcomes the 2018 World Series Champions The Boston Red Sox to the White House

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Testifies About the Border Crisis

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Great news today: My Administration just secured a historic donation of HIV prevention drugs from Gilead to help expand access to PrEP for the uninsured and those at risk. Will help us achieve our goal of ending the HIV epidemic in America!

Today, it was my honor to welcome the 2018 World Series Champion Boston @RedSox to the @WhiteHouse!

House Republicans should not vote for the BAD DEMOCRAT Disaster Supplemental Bill which hurts our States, Farmers & Border Security. Up for vote tomorrow. We want to do much better than this. All sides keep working and send a good BILL for immediate signing!

(Retweeting VP Mike Pence) Great to be at R&J Johnson Farms in Glyndon, Minnesota today! Since the earliest days of our administration, @POTUS has promised to keep fighting for our farmers - & that’s exactly what we’ve done!

(Retweeting The White House) President @realDonaldTrump hosted the 2018 World Series Champions, the Boston @RedSox, at the White House!

James Comey is a disgrace to the FBI & will go down as the worst Director in its long and once proud history. He brought the FBI down, almost all Republicans & Democrats thought he should be FIRED, but the FBI will regain greatness because of the great men & women who work there!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

BREAKING: Hillary Clinton’s campaign accepted large and illegal donation from the sex slave cult NXIVM

THE HILL: FBI's Steele story (completely) falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA

President Trump and his admin distributing AIDs preventing medicine to hundreds of thousands of people - why do I feel like Democrats will still find something to bitch about?

Senate Panel Approves Trump Nominee Jeffrey Rosen as Deputy AG

Trump to Nominate Patrick Shanahan as Defense Secretary

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Yup.

One important takeaway from Google unpersoning us

Another nugget of gold from twitter:

Rosenstein's last day at DOJ is tomorrow. I got him a card. Who wants to sign it?

Got 'Em 👌

Friday, May 10th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Trump and The First Lady Participate in the Celebration of Military Mothers

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

We have lost 500 Billion Dollars a year, for many years, on Crazy Trade with China. NO MORE!

V.P. Mike Pence will be interviewed on @foxandfriends at 7:30 A.M. Enjoy!

Talks with China continue in a very congenial manner - there is absolutely no need to rush - as Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products. These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.... ... ....The process has begun to place additional Tariffs at 25% on the remaining 325 Billion Dollars. The U.S. only sells China approximately 100 Billion Dollars of goods & products, a very big imbalance. With the over 100 Billion Dollars in Tariffs that we take in, we will buy..... ... ....agricultural products from our Great Farmers, in larger amounts than China ever did, and ship it to poor & starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance. In the meantime we will continue to negotiate with China in the hopes that they do not again try to redo deal!

Tariffs will bring in FAR MORE wealth to our Country than even a phenomenal deal of the traditional kind. Also, much easier & quicker to do. Our Farmers will do better, faster, and starving nations can now be helped. Waivers on some products will be granted, or go to new source!

Tariffs will make our Country MUCH STRONGER, not weaker. Just sit back and watch! In the meantime, China should not renegotiate deals with the U.S. at the last minute. This is not the Obama Administration, or the Administration of Sleepy Joe, who let China get away with “murder!”

The average 401(k) balance has SOARED since the bottom of the market - 466%. Wow!

....If we bought 15 Billion Dollars of Agriculture from our Farmers, far more than China buys now, we would have more than 85 Billion Dollars left over for new Infrastructure, Healthcare, or anything else. China would greatly slow down, and we would automatically speed up!

Build your products in the United States and there are NO TARIFFS!

Your all time favorite President got tired of waiting for China to help out and start buying from our FARMERS, the greatest anywhere in the World!

Great Consumer Price Index just out. Really good, very low inflation! We have a great chance to “really rock!” Good numbers all around.

Looks to me like it’s going to be SleepyCreepy Joe over Crazy Bernie. Everyone else is fading fast!

“We have been engaged in an unfair relationship with China for a long time. They have reneged on the commitments they made to the WTO, particularly around intellectual property.” Carly Fiorina @MariaBartiromo

Great Republican vote today on Disaster Relief Bill. We will now work out a bipartisan solution that gets relief for our great States and Farmers. Thank you to all. Get me a Bill that I can quickly sign!

Over the course of the past two days, the United States and China have held candid and constructive conversations on the status of the trade relationship between both countries. The relationship between President Xi and myself remains a very strong one, and conversations.... ... ....into the future will continue. In the meantime, the United States has imposed Tariffs on China, which may or may not be removed depending on what happens with respect to future negotiations!

Military spouses share an admirable legacy of unwavering devotion to their loved ones in uniform and to the cause of freedom. On Military Spouse Day, we honor our Nation’s military spouses and express our deep appreciation for all that they do!

Build your products in the United States and there are NO TARIFFS!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

He did it..Name change

This is the funniest damn thing I’ve read today! The left is so triggered over this!

Giuliani will travel to Ukraine, saying country's probes may be 'very, very helpful' for Trump

Biden goes crazy. Backs health care for illegal immigrants, says 'we have an obligation' to provide it

JUDICIAL WATCH: New Records Reveal Obama White House Paranoid, Tracking FOIA Request For Hillary Clinton Emails

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

"SSSHHHH....just keep playing..."

HA

Babylon Bee with the spice 🌶️����️🌶️

Lock. Him. Up.

Movie posters we really want to see..

Saturday, May 11th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Such an easy way to avoid Tariffs? Make or produce your goods and products in the good old USA. It’s very simple!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Another false #metoo, but this time it ends in death.

President Trump: It would be 'appropriate' for me to talk to DOJ about investigating Biden

Comey: It’s ‘Totally Normal’ To Plant People Near Political Campaigns

Red Sox fans hanged a "Trump 2020" banner over Fenway Park tonight

Trump’s ‘Uplifting’ Letter To Cancer Patient Meets With Hateful Response From Libtards On Twitter

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

It's Now A Neck and Neck Race

The Ultimate Red-Pilling

OVER TARGET! Dems and fake news are shitting themselves over Guliani going to the Ukraine. They're calling for investigation into Guliani, and ignoring the the Ukrainian investigation into Bidens. Even Fox cut off Guliani when he tried talking about Biden. Guliani connecting Steele with Ukraine now.

Just spit out my coffee from laughing so hard.

WEEEEW LAD!

Without further ado, some tunes to get you jamming through all this winning:

Feels

My Song

Promises

American Girl

You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth

MAGA ON PATRIOTS!

submitted by /u/Ivaginaryfriend [link] [comments]

[robgrayofficial]

HAPPPPY SATURDAY DEPLORABLES!!I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend so far! This is u/Ivaginaryfriend and I'm here to deliver everything spicy & dank from the past week! If you happened to miss any past recaps you can catch those here!Sunday, May 5th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:I am pleased to inform all of those that believe in a strong, fair and sound Immigration Policy that Mark Morgan will be joining the Trump Administration as the head of our hard working men and women of ICE. Mark is a true believer and American Patriot. He will do a great job!The Kentucky Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough & tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby - not even close!For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA of 25% on 50 Billion Dollars of High Tech, and 10% on 200 Billion Dollars of other goods. These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results. The 10% will go up to 25% on Friday. 325 Billions Dollars.... ... ....of additional goods sent to us by China remain untaxed, but will be shortly, at a rate of 25%. The Tariffs paid to the USA have had little impact on product cost, mostly borne by China. The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents - all culminating in a more than 400 page Report showing NO COLLUSION - why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller....... ... ....to testify. Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!“The Report sounded an awful lot as being Comeyesque, in other words, I’m not going to charge this person (there wasn’t even close to being a crime), but I’m going to criticize him on the way out the door. That’s unfortunate because it’s stepping outside of the role.” Robert Ray“This is not Congressional Oversight, this is bullying.” Jason Riley, The Wall Street JournalPending the confirmation of Mark Morgan as our Nation’s new ICE Director, Matt Albence will serve in the role of Acting Director. Matt is tough and dedicated and has my full support to deploy ICE to the maximum extent of the law! #MAGAOnce again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens.... ... ....To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace - it can happen!Despite the tremendous success that I have had as President, including perhaps the greatest ECONOMY and most successful first two years of any President in history, they have stolen two years of my (our) Presidency (Collusion Delusion) that we will never be able to get back..... ... .....The Witch Hunt is over but we will never forget. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Urban Dictionary is a treasure troveWell that poll is backfiring. Let’s keep it up pedes!!YouTube bans Tommy Robinson for talking about Muslim gangs sexually exploiting white girls, but I can go to YouTube and watch Muslims rapping about sexually exploiting white girls, and it was played by the BBC.Just going to leave this handy chart here.🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Is it acceptable for the attorney general to say this?When Democrats Are In Power...Happy Cinco De Mayo Pedes!Trump for 2020Who would TRADE creepy non-human ZUCK for TOM? I hate reptilians.Monday, May 6th:TODAY'S ACTION:Three Nominations Sent to the SenatePresident Trump Welcomes Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini of the Slovak Republic to the White HousePresident Trump Presents the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the U.S. Military Academy Football TeamPresident Trump Presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tiger Woods🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:“Democrat Texas Congressman Al Green says impeachment is the only thing that can prevent President Trump from re-election in 2020.” @OANN In other words, Dems can’t win the election fairly. You can’t impeach a president for creating the best economy in our country’s history..... ... Also, there are “No High Crimes & Misdemeanors,” No Collusion, No Conspiracy, No Obstruction. ALL THE CRIMES ARE ON THE OTHER SIDE, and that’s what the Dems should be looking at, but they won’t. Nevertheless, the tables are turning!The United States has been losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade. With China we lose 500 Billion Dollars. Sorry, we’re not going to be doing that anymore!Scott Walker is 100% correct when he says that the Republicans must WAKE UP to the Democrats State by State power grab. They play very dirty, actually, like never before. Don’t allow them to get away with what they are doing!Just spoke to Prime Minister Abe of Japan concerning North Korea and Trade. Very good conversation!Congratulations @ArmyWP_Football!Today, it was my true honor to present the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy—for the second year in a row, to the @ArmyWP_Football Black Knights. Congratulations once again on your historic victories, and keep on making us proud!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Finally, some support for POTUS!imagine if the parties were swappedPres. Trump Pardons Army Lt. Michael Behanna, Convicted Of Murdering Al-Qaeda DetaineeThis 👇🏻TRUMP: I WILL NEVER FORGIVE OBAMA FOR WHAT HE DID TO OUR MILITARY... AND MANY OTHER THINGS THAT I WILL TELL YOU ABOUT IN THE FUTURE 😁🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Is it just me, or are things getting crazier out there?Today on “They Asked, So I Answered”:He’s still standing on the graves of his classmates for his own self serving purposesFree Speech Cafe (No Conservatives Allowed)I was asleep in 2016; this time I'm signing up for the meme war.Tuesday, May 7th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Personnel to Key Administration PostsFirst Lady Melania Trump's Be Best Anniversary CelebrationVice President Pence Delivers Remarks at the 49th Annual Washington Conference on the Americas🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Democrats in Congress must vote to close the terrible loopholes at the Southern Border. If not, harsh measures will have to be taken!(Retweeting The White House) On the one year anniversary of @FLOTUS' initiative, Be Best, take a look back at some of the highlights! #BeBestCongratulations @TigerWoods - you are truly one of a kind!'Forgotten Man' Story: Under Trump, Red Counties Economically Thrive http://bit.ly/2VKPFNq via @BreitbartNewsHe wants to impeach because they can’t win election. Sad!I am pleased to inform you that THE BIG FIREWORKS, after many years of not having any, are coming back to beautiful Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Great work @GovKristiNoem and @SecBernhardt! #MAGASIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:CNN Contributor: ‘When a Woman Is Pregnant, That Is Not a Human Being inside of Her’Steele's stunning pre-FISA confession: Informant needed to air Trump dirt before election 🤬Over 35.4k upvotes and climbing on r/all. Good job pedes!TWITTER Bans Account that Tracks and Reports on Epidemic of Violence Against Trump Supporters🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:This is seriousLooking forward to warmer weather. How about you?Some people just can’t comprehend thisCareful lads, he's high on truth.Wednesday, May 8th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Individual to a Key Administration PostProclamation on Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United StatesExecutive Order on Imposing Sanctions with Respect to the Iron, Steel, Aluminum, and Copper Sectors of IranVice President Pence Visits Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in LouisianaPresident Trump Departs the White House in Marine One🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:McConnell Backs Trump: Mueller Report Is 'Case Closed' | Breitbart http://bit.ly/2VNaqIl via @BreitbartNewsThe reason for the China pullback & attempted renegotiation of the Trade Deal is the sincere HOPE that they will be able to “negotiate” with Joe Biden or one of the very weak Democrats, and thereby continue to ripoff the United States (($500 Billion a year)) for years to come.... ... ...Guess what, that’s not going to happen! China has just informed us that they (Vice-Premier) are now coming to the U.S. to make a deal. We’ll see, but I am very happy with over $100 Billion a year in Tariffs filling U.S. coffers...great for U.S., not good for China!“The real “Obstruction of Justice” is what the Democrats are trying to do to this Attorney General.” Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). @MariaBartiromo“Shouldn’t 2015 and 2016 be revealed, how Intelligence Agencies, FBI, tried to sabotage a particular campaign - never been done before?” @SteveForbesCEO @MariaBartiromoBig Court win at our Southern Border! We are getting there - and Wall is being built!“Everyone wants to know who needs to be accountable, because it took up two years of our lives talking about this Russian involvement. It proved No Collusion, & people want to trace it back to see how this all happened?” @ainsleyearhardt @foxandfriends TREASONOUS HOAX!“This British Spy, Christopher Steele, tried so hard to get this (the Fake Dossier) out before the Election. Why?” @kilmeade @foxandfriends“CASE CLOSED!” @SenateMajLDRReal estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases. Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered “tax shelter,” ...... ... ....you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes....almost all real estate developers did - and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!GREAT NEWS FOR OHIO! Just spoke to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, who informed me that, subject to a UAW agreement etc., GM will be selling their beautiful Lordstown Plant to Workhorse, where they plan to build Electric Trucks. GM will also be spending $700,000,000 in Ohio... ... ....in 3 separate locations, creating another 450 jobs. I have been working nicely with GM to get this done. Thank you to Mary B, your GREAT Governor, and Senator Rob Portman. With all the car companies coming back, and much more, THE USA IS BOOMING!Republicans shouldn’t vote for H.R. 312, a special interest casino Bill, backed by Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren. It is unfair and doesn’t treat Native Americans equally! 14,996 replies 18,369 retweets 69,053 likesOur Nation grieves at the unspeakable violence that took a precious young life and badly injured others in Colorado. God be with the families and thank you to the First Responders for bravely intervening. We are in close contact with Law Enforcement.Thank you @NewtGingrich & @FoxandFriends!Getting ready to leave for one of my favorite places, the Florida Panhandle, where we’ve given, and are giving, billions of $$$ for the devastation caused by Hurricane Michael. Even though the Dems are totally in our way (they don’t want money to go there) we’re getting it done!“The reality is, with the Tariffs, the economy has grown more rapidly in the United States and much more slowly in China.” Peter Morici, Former Chief Economist, USITCBig announcement today: Drug companies have to come clean about their prices in TV ads. Historic transparency for American patients is here. If drug companies are ashamed of those prices—lower them!Just landed in Panama City Beach, Florida for a rally beginning at 8:00 P.M. Eastern. Will be live on @FoxNews! #MAGA @tuckercarlson @seanhannityBig crowds in Panama City Beach, Florida. See everyone in 30 minutes! @FoxNews @TuckerCarlson @SeanHannityBeautiful evening in Panama City Beach, Florida. Thank you! #MAGAMAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!After a great rally in Panama City Beach, Florida - I am returning to Washington, D.C. with @SenRickScott and Senator @MarcoRubio, discussing the terrible abuses by Maduro. America stands with the GREAT PEOPLE of Venezuela for however long it takes!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:This young patriot bravely sacrificed his life to tackle a deranged school shooter yesterday. He stopped the gunfire, saving lives. Kendrick Castillo is a hero. You won’t see this on redacted because WE are the side that honors selflessnessBREAKING: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Warned UK PM Theresa May that if she allows Huawei Technologies into Britain's 5G, "U.S. will not share America’s national security secrets in a network we don’t have confidence in and is controlled by China"FBI opened obstruction case against Trump before Mueller was appointed, court files showTwo young men, who did what was right. No matter what it took.PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Watch Party: President Donald J. Trump MAGA Rally Panama City Beach, FL 5/8/19🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Word of the day: "Baizuo"BackfiredOMFG DED 😂😂😂😂💀💀💀💀YesLine for the Trump rally in Panama City Beach. Three and a half hours before the rally beginsThursday, May 9th:TODAY'S ACTION:Proclamation on Military Spouse Day, 2019President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint Individual to a Key Administration PostPresident Trump Delivers Remarks on Ending Surprise Medical BillingPresident Trump Welcomes the 2018 World Series Champions The Boston Red Sox to the White HouseU.S. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Testifies About the Border Crisis🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Great news today: My Administration just secured a historic donation of HIV prevention drugs from Gilead to help expand access to PrEP for the uninsured and those at risk. Will help us achieve our goal of ending the HIV epidemic in America!Today, it was my honor to welcome the 2018 World Series Champion Boston @RedSox to the @WhiteHouse!House Republicans should not vote for the BAD DEMOCRAT Disaster Supplemental Bill which hurts our States, Farmers & Border Security. Up for vote tomorrow. We want to do much better than this. All sides keep working and send a good BILL for immediate signing!(Retweeting VP Mike Pence) Great to be at R&J Johnson Farms in Glyndon, Minnesota today! Since the earliest days of our administration, @POTUS has promised to keep fighting for our farmers - & that’s exactly what we’ve done!(Retweeting The White House) President @realDonaldTrump hosted the 2018 World Series Champions, the Boston @RedSox, at the White House!James Comey is a disgrace to the FBI & will go down as the worst Director in its long and once proud history. He brought the FBI down, almost all Republicans & Democrats thought he should be FIRED, but the FBI will regain greatness because of the great men & women who work there!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:BREAKING: Hillary Clinton’s campaign accepted large and illegal donation from the sex slave cult NXIVMTHE HILL: FBI's Steele story (completely) falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISAPresident Trump and his admin distributing AIDs preventing medicine to hundreds of thousands of people - why do I feel like Democrats will still find something to bitch about?Senate Panel Approves Trump Nominee Jeffrey Rosen as Deputy AGTrump to Nominate Patrick Shanahan as Defense Secretary🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Yup.One important takeaway from Google unpersoning usAnother nugget of gold from twitter:Rosenstein's last day at DOJ is tomorrow. I got him a card. Who wants to sign it?Got 'Em 👌Friday, May 10th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump and The First Lady Participate in the Celebration of Military Mothers🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:We have lost 500 Billion Dollars a year, for many years, on Crazy Trade with China. NO MORE!V.P. Mike Pence will be interviewed on @foxandfriends at 7:30 A.M. Enjoy!Talks with China continue in a very congenial manner - there is absolutely no need to rush - as Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products. These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.... ... ....The process has begun to place additional Tariffs at 25% on the remaining 325 Billion Dollars. The U.S. only sells China approximately 100 Billion Dollars of goods & products, a very big imbalance. With the over 100 Billion Dollars in Tariffs that we take in, we will buy..... ... ....agricultural products from our Great Farmers, in larger amounts than China ever did, and ship it to poor & starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance. In the meantime we will continue to negotiate with China in the hopes that they do not again try to redo deal!Tariffs will bring in FAR MORE wealth to our Country than even a phenomenal deal of the traditional kind. Also, much easier & quicker to do. Our Farmers will do better, faster, and starving nations can now be helped. Waivers on some products will be granted, or go to new source!Tariffs will make our Country MUCH STRONGER, not weaker. Just sit back and watch! In the meantime, China should not renegotiate deals with the U.S. at the last minute. This is not the Obama Administration, or the Administration of Sleepy Joe, who let China get away with “murder!”The average 401(k) balance has SOARED since the bottom of the market - 466%. Wow!....If we bought 15 Billion Dollars of Agriculture from our Farmers, far more than China buys now, we would have more than 85 Billion Dollars left over for new Infrastructure, Healthcare, or anything else. China would greatly slow down, and we would automatically speed up!Build your products in the United States and there are NO TARIFFS!Your all time favorite President got tired of waiting for China to help out and start buying from our FARMERS, the greatest anywhere in the World!Great Consumer Price Index just out. Really good, very low inflation! We have a great chance to “really rock!” Good numbers all around.Looks to me like it’s going to be SleepyCreepy Joe over Crazy Bernie. Everyone else is fading fast!“We have been engaged in an unfair relationship with China for a long time. They have reneged on the commitments they made to the WTO, particularly around intellectual property.” Carly Fiorina @MariaBartiromoGreat Republican vote today on Disaster Relief Bill. We will now work out a bipartisan solution that gets relief for our great States and Farmers. Thank you to all. Get me a Bill that I can quickly sign!Over the course of the past two days, the United States and China have held candid and constructive conversations on the status of the trade relationship between both countries. The relationship between President Xi and myself remains a very strong one, and conversations.... ... ....into the future will continue. In the meantime, the United States has imposed Tariffs on China, which may or may not be removed depending on what happens with respect to future negotiations!Military spouses share an admirable legacy of unwavering devotion to their loved ones in uniform and to the cause of freedom. On Military Spouse Day, we honor our Nation’s military spouses and express our deep appreciation for all that they do!Build your products in the United States and there are NO TARIFFS!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:He did it..Name changeThis is the funniest damn thing I’ve read today! The left is so triggered over this!Giuliani will travel to Ukraine, saying country's probes may be 'very, very helpful' for TrumpBiden goes crazy. Backs health care for illegal immigrants, says 'we have an obligation' to provide itJUDICIAL WATCH: New Records Reveal Obama White House Paranoid, Tracking FOIA Request For Hillary Clinton Emails🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:"SSSHHHH....just keep playing..."HABabylon Bee with the spice 🌶️🌶️🌶️Lock. Him. Up.Movie posters we really want to see..Saturday, May 11th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Such an easy way to avoid Tariffs? Make or produce your goods and products in the good old USA. It’s very simple!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Another false #metoo, but this time it ends in death.President Trump: It would be 'appropriate' for me to talk to DOJ about investigating BidenComey: It’s ‘Totally Normal’ To Plant People Near Political CampaignsRed Sox fans hanged a "Trump 2020" banner over Fenway Park tonightTrump’s ‘Uplifting’ Letter To Cancer Patient Meets With Hateful Response From Libtards On Twitter🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:It's Now A Neck and Neck RaceThe Ultimate Red-PillingOVER TARGET! Dems and fake news are shitting themselves over Guliani going to the Ukraine. They're calling for investigation into Guliani, and ignoring the the Ukrainian investigation into Bidens. Even Fox cut off Guliani when he tried talking about Biden. Guliani connecting Steele with Ukraine now.Just spit out my coffee from laughing so hard.WEEEEW LAD!Without further ado, some tunes to get you jamming through all this winning:FeelsMy SongPromisesAmerican GirlYou Took the Words Right Out of My MouthMAGA ON PATRIOTS! #robgray

[raisingsupergirl]

A House in History

It's important to have an appreciation for the past—to know where the people and things around us have come from. With technology and society changing so quickly these days, it's tempting to focus on keeping up with those changes. But in doing so, we miss out on so much of the richness of life that makes those new things relevant. And there's been one really cool thing in my life for the past seven years that I appreciate more with every passing day.

They say that a house is just a house. That it's the people and events inside that make it a home. But I can tell you from experience that the spirit of a house contributes to the home just as much as anything. No, I'm not talking about some supernatural, hippie mumbo-jumbo. You're entitled to your opinion, but I believe that a sheet of drywall will never talk, no matter how many conversations it's "heard." However, the history of those sheets of drywall, the unique and esthetic ways in which they fit together, and the greater whole of which they play a part are capable of telling a story all on their own. And a house that's well over a century old is sure to tell quite a tale, indeed.

1882. The year Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Oh, wait, no. That was 1492. But 1882 is the year my house was built. Seriously. Can you believe that? Since then, it's gained a bathroom and a laundry room, but the rest of the walls have been standing for over 130 years. To put things into perspective, they were put up without insulation, electrical wiring, or even plumbing within them. In fact, the pocket doors going from my living room to my dining room no longer open all the way because some forward-thinking resident saw fit to run some bathroom pipes down though the wall behind them, presumably to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water.

At some point, another owner dug out the cellar and put in a little concrete, but it's still way creepy down there. At least at first glance. But on closer inspection, one can appreciate the huge, hand-hewn support beams that have held up the entire house since the year Jesse James was killed, who, consequently robbed a bank about 30 miles away just nine years before that. 

In fact, 1882 was fairly exciting all around. Aside from Jesse James, other deaths that year included Morgan Earp (And that dirty cowboy, Johnny Ringo), Charles Darwin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Conversely, Franklin D. Roosevelt and James Joyce were born into the world, so I guess it wasn't all bad. Especially when you consider this list of other cool things that happened that year:

2/2—Knights of Columbus established

3/16—Red Cross established

3/22—Congress outlaws polygamy

5/6—Chinese Exclusion Act, which was the first limitation on US immigration

5/20—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France form triple-alliance (lasting until WWI in 1914)

6/6—Electric iron patented

8/7—Escalation of the Hatfield/McCoy feud, eventually killing over 100 people

9/4—Birth of the Electrical Age. Edison’s 1st commercial power plant went live, lighting the 1st district, a 1-square mile of lower Manhattan’s Pearl Street Station.

9/5—First Labor Day parade in NYC

10/6-7—First World Series: Cincinnati Red Stockings and Chicago White Stockings

12/22—First string of Christmas lights created by Thomas Edison

Okay, so maybe not everything on the list was cool, but Christmas lights? C'mon. Those things changed the world. And all of that happened the same year my house was built. And since then, so much more has happened. Which is why it's easy for me to have such respect for my home-sweet-home. Even if the winter chill comes straight through the hand-blown glass windows. Even if the stove and refrigerator break constantly (both of which I'm convinced were original with the house). Even if it's highly likely that people have died within my house's walls (okay, hopefully not actually within the walls. That would be way creepier). Because, you know what? It's also highly likely that people have been born here, too. Generations of people have grown together, laughed, loved, cried, cuddled, and run downstairs on Christmas mornings, and now my family is a part of that legacy. And I'm deeply grateful for that.

As I said last week, people have different preferences. Some dream of flashy mansions with all the latest technology. Some prefer cookie-cutter houses with just enough room for a bed. Me? I like a home with character—with a spirit. Because life isn't about the things we have. It's about the story we tell, and that life is just a little more exciting when the things we have come with stories of their own.