The reasons for using encryption are as real and varied as the reasons for keeping your cash in a safe and your front door locked. – J.D. Tuccille
The government needs to be buried in lawsuits before this will stop:
Michigan has agreed to [steal] $80 million [from taxpayers] to settle a lawsuit on behalf of currently and formerly [caged] teens who [were raped or] sexual[ly] assault[ed by screws or prisoners]…while [caged] in adult jails and prisons…The lawsuit, representing more than 500 currently and formerly incarcerated youth…was filed in 2013…
Sex workers reaching out via art:
An art exhibition aimed at destigmatizing sex work open[ed] in Manhattan [last] Tuesday. The Sex Workers’ Pop-Up features artwork across 10 different countries and aims to elevate sex workers’ voices and drive the narrative around how their work is viewed. More than half of the 22 artists have a history with sex work themselves…The pop-up gives viewers the ability to “actually listen to the voices of sex workers and hear what they have to say”…curat[ors were]…led by an advisory committee from groups based in the U.S., Australia, France, Scotland, and South Africa, and supported by the Open Society Foundation…
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#792)
It’s good to see the “sex addiction” myth slowly falling apart:
Sex addiction treatment forces people into a kind of re-education program, which tries to convince them that perfectly normal consensual sexual behavior is the sign of a serious problem…These programs tell supposed sex addicts that they can reprogram themselves through behavioral modifications to become ideal sexual citizens: monogamous, non-porn-using people who rarely masturbate or fantasize about anyone other than their main partners…some of the same centers that treat sex addiction also offer gay conversion therapy…illuminat[ing] the ugly truth behind the sex addiction industry: it’s based on a moralistic judgment on what sexual behaviors are socially acceptable, yet it’s cloaked in a scientific sheen that gives it legitimacy…
Checklist (#972)
…Jana Kuner, customer services manager for [Huntsville, Alabama] airport [is the only person actually named or quoted in what appears to be a “sex trafficking rescue” fantasy borrowed from TV cop glorification shows]….Kuner [claims she]…struck up a conversation [with a nameless] woman [who] shared how excited she was for her daughter who had answered an ad for a modeling job in Phoenix…Kuner has been [indoctrinated in all the usual fantasies, and claims she talked]…the [nameless] young woman…[into letting a complete stranger talk on the phone to] the [nameless] modeling agency…to [threaten to] have [cops come with]…the young woman [to snoop into their business, after which]…the young woman [supposedly] received texts from the agency saying they’d canceled her flights…[Nameless and unquoted] authorities are now [supposedly] certain [via magic that] she was walking into a human trafficking trap and…had already been sold [to some nameless buyer evn though that doesn’t actually happen outside of movies]…
Given that this is pure hearsay with neither names of people or the supposed agency, nor quotes from the supposed victim, one can only conclude that these local news reporters are either gullible idiots or else have a very poor understanding of the meaning of the word “confirmed”.
To Molest and Rape (#986)
Your government calls this “border protection”:
[After] Geraldine Rodriguez Olivares…a [professional] twerk dancer [from Chile] on an international tour…landed in the Dominican Republic on a flight from Puerto Rico…U.S. Customs agents…[took] her to a private room where they forced her to twerk, while…five [pigs] threw dollar bills at her and slapped her butt. She was then stripped naked and [raped]…Rodriguez’s public cries for help sparked an international investigation involving U.S. and Chilean diplomats, prosecutors and immigration officials…
Pyrrhic Victory (#989)
Your last bit of privacy during travel is about to be eliminated:
…The 9/11 commission and language in the Muslim ban directs Customs and Border Protection…to complete “a biometric entry and exit data system as expeditiously as possible” for non-citizens, and they’ve already worked with…SeaTac to buy face-scanning stuff for the gates at the new International Arrivals Facility that’s opening in July…SeaTac is already using biometrics in some capacities…[and] surveillance watchdogs…agree that airports across the country…will eventually expand this face-scanning infrastructure to snap photos of passengers arriving and departing on domestic flights, too…
I Spy (#1011)
Anyone who doubts that politicians are deranged megalomaniacs should be following this:
A cabal of unsavory U.S. senators have introduced a…measure that would pressure tech companies to weaken protections for communications privacy in the guise of a measure aimed at child porn. While the…bill…never mentions the word “encryption,” it makes online companies liable for information exchanged by their users unless they adopt practices approved by the government…[which] means leaving people’s messages open to snoopy officials…In particular, they’ve scrutinized the bill’s reservation of Section 230 protections…to…compan[ies] that [dance to whatever tune]…the [current] Attorney General [feels like playing at the moment]…Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at Stanford Law School [warns] “The AG could single-handedly rewrite the ‘best practices’ to state that any provider that offers end-to-end encryption is categorically excluded”…[like FOSTA, the] EARN IT Act…[would allow ambulance-chasers to file] civil [suits against] companies [that]…offer…end-to-end encryption. They’ll have to weaken or abandon such offerings to escape liability for users’ communications, but without ever explicitly being told to do so…
License to Rape (#1014)
People need to keep suing government actors for every single assault, no matter what the excuse:
Michele Leuthauser was traveling from Las Vegas…Airport last June wearing yoga pants that should have made it quite easy to determine that she was concealing nothing on the lower half of her body. But…TSA…flagged [her] for…a pat-down of her “groin area”…in a private room…the [operative] told Michele to spread her legs far wider than the mat — an order that seems common for TSA screeners about to inflict abuse. She then proceeded to rub her hand on Michele’s vulva, pressing firmly enough to penetrate her labia with her finger through her leggings, and then continuing to rub her vulva until Michele, in shock, finally recoiled and told the screener to stop…Michele [filed suit] after TSA supervisors, local police, and TSA’s Office of the Chief Counsel refused to do anything about this incident…
To Molest and Rape (#1016) 
Another specimen of the garbage the state pays to rape children:
A [retired] New Orleans [cop]…who led the NOPD’s pedophile investigations unit for years before he was unmasked as a child molester himself admitted in federal court…that he abused a boy who had turned to him for protection after the boy was preyed upon by his Boy Scout leader. Stanley Burkhardt’s admission in a Feb. 24 hearing in North Carolina came after years of denying the sex abuse claims leveled against him by Richard Windmann…
