The Best and Worst States For Online Privacy
Lawsuit Says ICE Officer Raped Honduran Woman for 7 Years ; Racial Bias in Healthcare Algorithms ; and More Picks
Criminal Misconduct by US Border Officers Has Hit a 5-Year High (Chris)
From Quartz: “[There were] 268 CBP employees arrested in fiscal 2018 … That’s an arrest rate of about 0.5% of the overall CBP force, which numbers more than 60,000. While the percentage seems small, it is about five times that of other US law enforcement agencies.”
An ICE Officer Raped a Honduran Woman for 7 Years, Lawsuit Says (Chris)
The author writes, “A Honduran woman says an ICE officer raped her for seven years, sometimes as often as four times a week, and threatened to deport her if she told anyone what was happening. Over the course of the alleged abuse, she says she also got pregnant three times. The officer … recruited the woman as an informant after discovering she was undocumented. Now, the woman has sued ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the former ICE officer, Wilfredo Rodriguez, and wants $10 million in damages.”
Climate Change May See 1 in 4 US Steel Bridges Collapse by 2040 (Mili)
From New Scientist: “[Expansion joints] allow sections of a bridge to swell and shrink in warmer weather without weakening the structure. [Researchers at Colorado State University] focused on what would happen when joints that are clogged with dirt and debris are exposed to the higher temperatures expected in the years ahead as the climate warms. … This clogging prevents sections from being able to safely expand and strains parts of the bridge that weren’t designed to withstand the resulting load.”
A Biased Algorithm Is Delaying Healthcare for Black People in the US (Gerry)
The author writes, “Black people in the US may be missing out on healthcare because a widely used algorithm is racially biased. The proportion of black people referred for extra care would more than double if the bias were removed, according to new research. Algorithms are fast becoming a key part of healthcare. Such technologies are used to screen somewhere between 100 and 200 million people in the US, says Ziad Obermeyer at the University of California, Berkeley.”
Can Trump Shoot Someone and Get Away With It? Yes, Says His Lawyer (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “Judge Denny Chin confronted Trump attorney William S. Consovoy over whether he thought local authorities could go after Trump if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue. ‘Nothing could be done? That’s your position?’ Chin asked. ‘That’s correct. Yes,’ Consovoy answered, saying that the president would have to be impeached first.”
