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Daily Archives: August 14, 2023

Trump and allies face 41 charges in Georgia

  • 19 defendants – Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeff Clark, Jenna Ellis, Ray Smith, Robert Cheeley, Michael Roman, David Shafer, Shawn Still, Stephen Lee, Harrison Floyd, Trevian Kutti, Sidney Powell, Cathleen Latham, Scott Hall, and Misty Hampton.
  • 41 counts [Trump faces 13 counts] – 22 Related to forgery or false documents and statements; 8 counts related to soliciting or impersonating public officers; 3 counts related to influencing witnesses; 3 counts related to election fraud or defrauding the state; 3 counts related to computer tampering; 1 count related to racketeering; 1 count related to perjury. Read the 97 page indictment here.
  • The New York Times – With Racketeering Charges, Georgia Prosecutor Aims to ‘Tell the Whole Story’. Prosecutors have found racketeering laws to be powerful tools in targeting not only foot soldiers in a criminal enterprise, but also high-level decision makers…One power of RICO is that it often allows a prosecutor to tell a sweeping story — not only laying out a set of criminal acts, but identifying a group of people working toward a common goal, as part of an “enterprise,” to engage in patterns of illegal activities. Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is using a RICO indictment to tie together elements of a broad conspiracy that she describes as stretching far outside of her Atlanta-area jurisdiction into a number of other swing states, a legal move made possible by the racketeering statute. Her investigation also reached into rural parts of Georgia — notably Coffee County, where Trump allies got access to voting machines in January 2021 in search of evidence that the election had been rigged.
  • See also The New York Times ongoing coverage of the Georgia case
  • Washington Post – Trump charged in Georgia 2020 election probe, his fourth indictment.
  • NPR – “Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute allows prosecutors to pursue criminal enterprises, and it was based on — and is broader than — the federal RICO law.”
  • HuffPo – Georgia Prosecutor Gives Trump Until Aug. 25 To ‘Voluntarily Surrender’. In a brief news conference, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she would seek a trial in the next six months.

From the indictment – “Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”

Internet Archive Responds to Recording Industry Lawsuit Targeting Obsolete Media

Internet Archives Blogs: “Late Friday, some of the world’s largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old. As a non-profit… Continue Reading

Without accurate data, the physical workplace won’t survive

CNBC: “After three years of haphazard plans for getting workers back at their desks, the return-to-office movement has entered a phase of remorse. A whopping 80% of bosses regret their initial return-to-office decisions and say they would have approached their plans differently if they had a better understanding of employees’ office attendance, their usage of… Continue Reading

City maps show how much hotter it is from neighborhood to neighborhood

The Verge: “A new analysis ranks 44 major cities that altogether are home to a quarter of the country’s population. More than half of the population in these cities live in census tracks that can feel at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than surrounding areas, according to the analysis published yesterday by the nonprofit Climate… Continue Reading

An Iowa school district is using AI to ban books

“It certainly didn’t take long for AI’s other shoe to drop, what with the emergent technology already being perverted to commit confidence scams and generate spam content. We can now add censorship to that list as the Globe Gazette reports the school board of Mason City, Iowa has begun leveraging AI technology to cultivate lists… Continue Reading

Now you can find and follow friends on Substack

Substack Blog: “Today, we’re making it much easier to find and follow your friends on Substack, helping you explore the network and be discovered by new readers. Since we launched Notes in April, following has been one of the most requested features from writers and readers. Following helps writers grow their audience via the Substack… Continue Reading

Copyright Fair Use Regulatory Approaches in AI Content Generation

Tech Policy News – Ariel Soiffer is a partner and Aric Jain is an associate at the law firm WilmerHale. “Midjourney, a platform to generate images from natural language descriptions, is an example of generative AI tools that are raising new questions around copyright and fair use, The impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has… Continue Reading

Climate & Conflict

Climate & Conflict: The interplay between climate and conflict has received increasing attention from researchers and policymakers over the last two decades. There is significant overlap between countries most affected by climate change and those most at risk of violent conflict. Evidence for adverse effects of climate factors on conflict exists predominantly for internal conflict.… Continue Reading