And on that topic, Snowden weighted in on Apple’s anti-privacy plan. This was before they “ delayed” it.
Apple’s proposal to make their phones inform on and betray their owners marks the dawn of a dark future, one to be written in the blood of the political opposition of a hundred countries that will exploit this system to the hilt. See, the day after this system goes live, it will no longer matter whether or not Apple ever enables end-to-end encryption, because our iPhones will be reporting their contents before our keys are even used .
Also, like all the cool kids, Snowden is writing occasionally on substack. This was his welcome email for subscribers:
Congratulations: this will go down on your Permanent Record. Welcome to the list, my friend. And if you suspect you were already on it, well… congratulations on moving up in the ranking.
And how pray tell, can politics be left out when the enforcers and perpetrators of social credit are the left who overwhelmingly control our culture? Can you give a reference to a news article about a leftist who has been denied a bank account or a credit card or a gofundme page because of his politics ?
The lab story supports the main argument of the thread about a potential “social rating” system, although in this case it’s not a “system”, but an independent small business owner. I haven’t been watching any news and I don’t know how this story was portrayed / covered by either side, but I did find it a little disturbing. If the story is true, I say it falls under “facts”. Its coverage is politicized, because the reasons are politicized, even though the true underlying reasons are more anti-science.
Come on now – party affiliation and spreaders of misinformation are not protected classes under federal law. Sexual orientation and gender identity are.
“Hi, can you bake our gay wedding cake.”
“Hang on. I’m checking your Facebook page. Looks like you support the Human Rights Campaign. I don’t like the Human Rights Campaign’s political stances. I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone whose political views I disagree with. I’m not baking your cake.”
Is that a loophole for the Jack Phillipses of the US?
Sure, until he gets caught baking a cis wedding cake for another HRC supporter or denying a gay wedding cake for an HRC opponent. Jack must be consistent with his reasons.
Clearly portraying the doctor as the victim. Even though, during a pandemic where doctors haven’t gone home to their families at night due to the potential risk of exposing them, it is a much more rational decision, as opposed to a lab designed to test for covid refusing to test someone for covid.
It’s like the current Texas abortion law protesting - those screaming “My body, my choice!” turn around and cheer the possibility of mandatory vaccination laws, while chastizing people for not getting vaccinated.
But she’s black, and a woman. Those are protected classes. And we are constantly told that any disparate impact on minorities is inherently racist. According to “the left’s” nonstop rabble-rousing, she was denied a covid test due to systemic racism.
Until recently, this was not federal law. It was only when Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts joined with the left on the Supremes to create a protected class for homosexuals out of thin air from the civil rights law. We will have to wait for the next legislating from the bench to see if transgenders are also a protected class.
Edit: IANAL but it seems the Gorsuch decision is only for the workplace. As far as I know the situation for stores serving homosexual customers is not clear. Phillips won his initial case but Tony Kennedy wrote the decision so narrowly that it is basically useless for deciding other cases.
That’s not inconsistent with what I wrote above – as long as the reasons are (1) consistent and (2) not due to someone being a protected class, it’s legal.