End of Show Mixes: UKPMX - Oh My Bosh - Danny Loos-Secret Agent Paul-Stepford Wives-PlaceBoing- Dave Courbanou - Able Kirby - Jungle Jones - Chris Wilson - Tom Starkweather - Conan Salada - Future Trash
Taking a Knee is like eating a sleeve ... of Oreos
Gag from Alex Loesche
"...Honestly Jon, I think Baltimore is worried. I mean, Woodhead is out eight more weeks, and everyone knows old man Flacco won't get 'em to the promise land. They'll be lucky if they go six and ten. This is the last thing The Ravens need right now!"
The NFL Is Seriously Concerned With Empty Stadiums | The Big Lead
Week 1 of the NFL season had plenty of important stories worth following, but maybe the most entertaining was the mostly empty stadiums in Los Angeles and Santa Clara. Both the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers had sparse crowds for their home openers, and that has not gone unnoticed by the NFL.
Ian Rapoport's report (try and say that fast five times) above shows that the league is clearly worried about the optics of half-filled stadiums. And they should be. It's embarrassing for the league.
This is what the 49ers crowd looked like at the start of the second half in Week 1:
And here's what the Rams crowd looked like in the first quarter:
Here's the thing, the NFL's plans for relocating teams have been hilariously ham-fisted. Moving the 49ers to Santa Clara, 45 minutes from San Francisco was a moronic decision. Levi's Stadium is also positioned so roughly 70 percent of the stadium bakes in the sun with no chance of shade.
Meanwhile, the Rams might actually have decent attendance once they move into their new stadium, but that's a huge gamble. Until then, they'll likely be dealing with sparse crowds at the Coliseum for the next three seasons. It's terrible optics for the NFL to have empty stadiums and absolutely no atmosphere for games.
And we haven't even gotten to the Los Angeles Chargers, who haven't even been able to sellout a 27,000-seat stadium. No one wanted the Chargers in Los Angeles, and it has shown so far. Dean Spanos and his family have consistently claimed they are pleased with ticket sales and ''excited'' about what's happened with the franchise in LA, but look at the following picture for the team's first ever official game in Los Angeles:
That was taken just before publishing this piece. Everything in color there is a ticket on sale for the team's Week 2 matchup with the Miami Dolphins. Many of them are ''re-sale'' tickets that were likely snagged up by brokers when season tickets went on sale. Those brokers will likely aim to sell those seats to opposing fans all season. That graphic is stunning because it comes from just one ticket selling website, and there are several others that each have hundreds of tickets available.
The fact that the Chargers can't find 27,000 fans to fill their tiny soccer stadium home for their opener in a new city would be shocking if you hadn't followed this move from the beginning. But, let's be real: there is zero buzz around the team, fan outreach efforts have been widely mocked and San Diego fans have abandoned the franchise en masse after the way the team's ownership treated its former city. No matter how much lipstick the NFL tries to put on that situation, it's always going to look like a pig.
Empty stadiums are a huge deal to the NFL. Yes, the league makes its money off of TV contracts, but when fans aren't at games it has a detrimental impact on the product. It sends the message that games are boring, uninteresting and that people don't want to have anything to do with them in person. That kind of message hurts the product as a whole.
Not to mention, players don't want to play in empty stadiums, so those franchises will suffer when it comes time to lure free agents. That could lead to some teams being buried at the bottom of the league year after year and creating a cycle that leaves fans even less incentive to show up.
This is a major problem for the NFL. Maybe owners around the league will finally realize that their big, bold stadium and relocation plans should actually have more thought attached to them.
Mark Cuban: Trump should have said nothing about NFL national anthem protests
Billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told CNBC on Monday that President Donald Trump should have said nothing about NFL players protesting the national anthem.
"Why even comment before you know what you're talking about?" the billionaire investor said in an interview on "Squawk on the Street."
Cuban said the NFL has always been involved in politics at some level.
Trump's criticism on Twitter of players who kneel during the national anthem sparked angry protests around the NFL on Sunday.
"Just because you have a Twitter account doesn't mean you have to use it," Cuban said. "Just because you can say something, doesn't mean you should."
When asked whether the president is going to apologize, Cuban said: "The president is not going to apologize. Are you kidding me? The president should read a book."
"If he dishes out, he's got to be able to take it," Cuban added
Cuban supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Cuban has criticized Trump over issues and Trump has blasted Cuban likewise.
On Sunday, Trump called for fans to demonstrate their own form of protest '' by boycotting NFL games unless the league fires players who kneel during the national anthem.
"This is nothing new. We want to listen to the players' feedback," Cuban said. "The only thing that's changed now is the president is getting involved."
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White Athletes Still Standing For The Anthem Are Standing For White Supremacy | HuffPost
The absence of white athletes kneeling for the anthem Sunday was a particularly illustrative moment in white privilege.
See, for white athletes the anthem and American flag do represent freedom, liberty and whatever other amorphous American values one might ascribe these symbols. So, from their view, kneeling would be disrespectful to the privileges a white supremacist nation affords them.
We've all heard the typical argument against kneeling. ''Kneeling during the anthem disrespects the flag and the soldiers who fought for your right to protest and blah blah blah patriotism!''
Now, I'm not going to spend much time with the most obvious counter, but it's worth stating. In the fairytale we Americans tell ourselves where soldiers fight wars for freedom and not imperial conquests, the story says they're fighting for someone's right to protest, not the opposite. So using the troops as a cudgel against protest wholly misunderstands even our own national fairytale.
So, that's obvious enough, but what I'm talking about is this. If white athletes can't fathom kneeling because they feel soldiers fought for their rights and blah blah blah patriotism, it's because they are treated as full citizens and afforded those rights they imagine soldiers fought for. Interpreting their own experience as something more universal, they struggle to understand why anyone should kneel. Indeed, for them, the anthem and American flag represent promises fulfilled.
This is the problem of privilege. It skews our ability to grasp what the world looks like outside our view.
But even in the terms of American values, Kaepernick's point is quite straightforward'--the promises that underlie those values remain unfulfilled for Black Americans.
This isn't a matter of opinion. Statistics reveal disparities along racial lines regarding wealth, education, healthy food, employment, health care, housing, wages, criminal charges/sentences and practically every other imaginable measure of quality of life. This isn't a mistake of history or attributable to individual or cultural traits of the oppressed. These are the results of centuries of systemic white supremacy, plain and simple.
Anyone who professes to care about America's alleged values should be fighting to extend them to those they're deprived. If they aren't full of shit, that is.
And while the protest at the heart of all of this isn't about the anthem or the flag, it is about calling on America to live up to its self-professed values. As long as Black people are killed by cops in the streets or left to wither away in the state's cages without recourse, that anthem and flag represent promises unfulfilled for millions of Americans.
Understand this. White supremacy'--as in the structures of opportunity, the legacy of/ongoing oppression of non-whites, and the asymmetrical hoarding of resources by whites'--is what affords us the privileges that limit our view, making a peaceful act of protest seem offensive in spite of the broader context of what's being protested. And the ignorant result of that privilege was on full display Sunday as white players stood next to their Black teammates.
So let's at least be clear that what those players stood for on Sunday was white supremacy. Full stop.
F-Russia
Twitter, With Accounts Linked to Russia, to Face Congress Over Role in Election - NYTimes.com
SAN FRANCISCO '-- After a weekend when Americans took to social media to debate President Trump's admonishment of N.F.L. players who do not stand for the national anthem, a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the issue with hashtags such as #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee.
As Twitter prepared to brief staff members of the Senate and House intelligence committees on Thursday for their investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, researchers from a public policy group have been following hundreds of accounts to track the continuing Russian operations to influence social media discourse and foment division in the United States.
For three weeks, a harsh spotlight has been trained on Facebook over its disclosure that Russians used fake pages and ads, designed to look like the work of American activists, to spread inflammatory messages during and since the presidential campaign.
But there is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign last year. In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large-scale automated messaging, using ''bot'' accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers.
Twitter has struggled for years to rein in the fake accounts overrunning its platform. Unlike Facebook, the service does not require its users to provide their real name (or at least a facsimile of one) and allows automated accounts '-- arguing that they are a useful tool for tasks such as customer service. Beyond those restrictions, there is also an online black market for services that can allow for the creation of large numbers of Twitter bots, which can be controlled by a single person while still being difficult to distinguish from real accounts.
Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts '-- human users and suspected bots alike '-- they have linked to Russian influence operations. Those were the accounts pushing the opposing messages on the N.F.L. and the national anthem.
Of 80 news stories promoted last week by those accounts, more than 25 percent ''had a primary theme of anti-Americanism,'' the researchers found. About 15 percent were critical of Hillary Clinton, falsely accusing her of funding left-wing antifa '-- short for anti-fascist '-- protesters, tying her to the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and discussing her daughter Chelsea's use of Twitter. Eleven percent focused on wiretapping in the federal investigation into Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, with most of them treated the news as a vindication for President Trump's earlier wiretapping claims.
Interactive Feature | Interested in All Things Tech? The Bits newsletter will keep you updated on the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.
In the face of such public scrutiny, Twitter has said almost nothing about what it knows about Russia's use of its platform. But Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he would like to know exactly what the company has done to find covert Russian activity and what it has discovered so far about fake accounts '-- including their reach and impact.
''I think right now the public is aware of only a subset of a subset of Russian activity online,'' Mr. Schiff said in an interview. He said Facebook long denied that there had been Russian exploitation of its system, before reversing course on Sept. 6.
Mr. Schiff said the tech companies have asked for assistance from American intelligence agencies in trying to find and stop illicit interference from other countries, a request he said he supports.
The House Intelligence Committee announced on Wednesday that it would hold a public hearing on the matter of Russian influence next month, and a Senate aide said Facebook, Twitter and Google have been invited to testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Nov. 1.
This month, The New York Times reported on evidence of Russian operators creating hundreds or thousands of fake Twitter accounts to flood the network with anti-Clinton messages during the campaign. The cybersecurity company FireEye identified what it called ''warlists'' of accounts linked to Russian intelligence that sometimes spewed messages like #WarAgainstDemocrats several times a minute.
Both DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, which spread the leaked emails and documents and were identified as having been created by Russian intelligence, used accounts that Twitter has not suspended, though they have been dormant for months. In some cases, the Russian exploitation of Facebook and Twitter was linked: ''Heart of Texas,'' a Facebook page advocating the secession of Texas that was identified as one of 470 fake profiles and pages linked to Russia, also had a Twitter feed '-- now suspended '-- called @itstimetosecede.
Experts on Russia inside and outside the government say President Vladimir V. Putin had multiple goals in last year's campaign of hacking, leaking and stealth propaganda. He hoped to damage, if not defeat, Mrs. Clinton, whom he blamed for encouraging pro-democracy protests in Russia and neighboring states.
But Mr. Putin also sought to darken the image of the United States, making it a less attractive model for other countries and reducing its international influence, said Mark R. Jacobson, a Georgetown professor and co-author of a new report on Russian influence operations.
Last week, Facebook said it was turning over more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads to Congress. Many of those ads, like the opposing Twitter hashtags on the N.F.L. anthem issue, targeted divisions in American society by simultaneously sending conflicting messages to different users segmented by political and racial characteristics.
''What we see over and over again is that a lot of the messaging isn't about politics, a specific politician, or political parties,'' said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. ''It's about creating societal division, identifying divisive issues and fanning the flames.''
Her group's web ''dashboard'' is called Hamilton 68. It is named for No. 68 of the Federalist Papers, believed to have been written by Alexander Hamilton, which warns of foreign meddling in American elections. The tool does not identify the activity of specific Twitter users but highlights the activity of the 600 accounts that researchers believe are either tied to the Russian government or repeat the themes of its propaganda.
For its part, Twitter has not said much about what it plans to say in the Congressional briefing.
''Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, a cornerstone of all democracies, and will continue to strengthen our platform against bots and other forms of manipulation that violate our Terms of Service,'' Twitter said in a statement.
Twitter has also said it was working to crack down on bots that distribute tweets en masse or that attempt to manipulate the platform's trending topics.
Colin Crowell, Twitter's vice president of public policy, government and philanthropy, said in a blog post in June that the company should not be an arbiter of whether a tweet is truthful or not. Because Twitter is open and real-time, he said the platform is the best antidote to misinformation, when ''journalists, experts and engaged citizens Tweet side-by-side correcting and challenging public discourse in seconds.''
Karen North, a social media professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said the company's defense has some merit.
''Twitter functions more like a broadcast network,'' she said. ''People say things and everyone can hear it. When false information is stated, people can jump on false statements and challenge it.''
Russian operatives used Facebook ads to exploit America's racial and religious divisions - The Washington Post
The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.
The Russian campaign '-- taking advantage of Facebook's ability to send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics '-- also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.
These targeted messages, along with others that have surfaced in recent days, highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another.
The nature and detail of these ads have troubled investigators at Facebook, on Capitol Hill and at the Justice Department, say people familiar with the advertisements, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share matters still under investigation.
[Obama tried to give Zuckerberg a wake-up call over fake news on Facebook]
The House and Senate intelligence committees plan to begin reviewing the Facebook ads in coming weeks as they attempt to untangle the operation and other matters related to Russia's bid to help elect Donald Trump president in 2016.
''Their aim was to sow chaos,'' said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ''In many cases, it was more about voter suppression rather than increasing turnout.''
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, said he hoped the public would be able to review the ad campaign.
''I think the American people should see a representative sample of these ads to see how cynical the Russians were using these ads to sow division within our society,'' he said. Schiff had not yet seen the ads but was briefed on them, he said, including the ones mentioning ''things like Black Lives Matter.''
The ads that Facebook found raise troubling questions for a social networking and advertising platform that reaches 2 billion people each month, and they offer a rare window into how Russian operatives carried out their information operations during an especially tumultuous period in U.S. politics.
[Mark Zuckerberg denies that fake news on Facebook influenced the election]
Investigators at Facebook discovered the Russian ads in recent weeks, the company has said, after months of trying in vain to trace disinformation efforts to Russia. The company said it has identified at least $100,000 in ads purchased through 470 phony Facebook pages and accounts. Facebook said this spending represented a tiny fraction of the political advertising on the platform during the 2016 campaign.
The divisive themes seized on by Russian operatives were similar to those that Trump and his supporters pushed on social media and on right-wing websites during the campaign. U.S. investigators are now trying to figure out whether Russian operators and members of Trump's team coordinated in any way. Critics say Trump, as president, has further inflamed racial and religious divisions, citing his controversial statements after violent clashes in Charlottesville and limits imposed on Muslim immigration.
The previously undisclosed ads suggest that the operatives worked off evolving lists of racial, religious, political and economic themes. They used these to create pages, write posts and craft ads that would appear in users' news feeds '-- with the apparent goal of appealing to one audience and alienating another. In some cases, the pages even advertised events.
''The idea of using Facebook to incite anti-black hatred and anti-Muslim prejudice and fear while provoking extremism is an old tactic. It's not unique to the United States, and it's a global phenomenon,'' said Malkia Cyril, a Black Lives Matter activist in Oakland, Calif., and executive director for the Center for Media Justice. Social media companies ''have a mandate to stand up and take deep responsibility for how their platforms are being abused.''
Facebook declined to comment on the contents of the ads being turned over to congressional investigators and pointed to a Sept. 6 statement by Alex Stamos, the company's chief security officer, who noted that the vast majority of the ads run by the 470 pages and accounts did not specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting or any particular candidate.
''Rather, the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum '-- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights,'' Stamos said at the time.
A Cold War tactic
Moscow's interest in U.S. race relations dates back decades.
In Soviet times, operatives didn't have the option of using the Internet, so they spread their messages by taking out ads in newspapers, posting fliers and organizing meetings.
Much like the online ads discovered by Facebook, messages spread by Soviet-era operatives were meant to look as though they were written by bona fide political activists in the United States, thereby disguising the involvement of an adversarial foreign power.
Russian information operations didn't end with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
After a lull in tensions, Russia's spy agencies became more assertive under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin. In recent years, those services have updated their propaganda protocols to take advantage of new technologies and the proliferation of social media platforms.
''Is it a goal of the Kremlin to encourage discord in American society? The answer to that is yes,'' said Michael A. McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who is now a director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. ''More generally, Putin has an idea that our society is imperfect, that our democracy is not better than his, so to see us in conflict on big social issues is in the Kremlin's interests.''
Clinton Watts, part of a research team that was among the first to warn publicly of the Russian propaganda campaign during the 2016 election, said that identifying and exploiting existing social and cultural divisions are common Russian disinformation tactics dating back to the Cold War.
''We have seen them operating on both sides'' of an issue, said Watts, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former FBI agent.
Microtargeting users
When Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his college dorm room in 2004, no one could have anticipated that the company would become an advertising juggernaut worth almost half a trillion dollars '-- the largest online advertising company in the world after Google. Roughly a third of the world's population now logs in monthly.
As Facebook's user base rapidly expanded, the company wrote the playbook for digital targeting in the smartphone era '-- and for the type of microtargeting that has become critical to modern political campaigns.
The social network invested heavily in building highly sophisticated automated advertising tools that could target specific groups of people who had expressed their preferences and interests on Facebook, from newlyweds who studied at Dartmouth College to hockey enthusiasts living in a particular Zip code in Michigan.
The migration from traditional personal computers to smartphones and tablets helped Facebook gain a major edge: The company pioneered techniques to help advertisers reach the same user on their desktop and mobile devices, helping Facebook grow sevenfold in value since it went public in 2012. Today, advertisers who want to target Facebook users by demographics or interests have tens of thousands of categories to choose from, and they are able to flood users with ads wherever they go on the Internet.
Ads on Facebook have directly appeared in people's news feeds since 2012. If a user ''likes'' a page, administrators of that page can pay for ads and post content that will then appear in that person's news feed.
Since the 2012 presidential election, Facebook has become an essential tool for political campaigns that wish to target potential voters. During the height of election season, political campaigns are among the largest advertisers on Facebook. Facebook has built a large sales staff of account executives, some of whom have backgrounds in politics, who are trained to assist campaigns in spreading their messages, increasing engagement and getting immediate feedback on how they are performing.
The Trump campaign used these tools to great effect, while Clinton's campaign preferred to rely on its own social media experts, according to people familiar with the campaigns.
Aiming at swing voters
Since taking office, Putin has on occasion sought to spotlight racial tensions in the United States as a means of shaping perceptions of American society.
Putin injected himself in 2014 into the race debate after protests broke out in Ferguson, Mo., over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, by a white police officer.
''Do you believe that everything is perfect now from the point of view of democracy in the United States?'' Putin told CBS's ''60 Minutes'' program. ''If everything was perfect, there wouldn't be the problem of Ferguson. There would be no abuse by the police. But our task is to see all these problems and respond properly.''
In addition to the ads described to The Post, Russian operatives used Facebook to promote anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim messages. And Facebook has said that one-quarter of the ads bought by the Russian operatives identified so far targeted a particular geographic area.
[Did Facebook ads traced to a Russian company violate U.S. election law?]
While Facebook has played down the impact of the Russian ads on the election, Dennis Yu, chief technology officer for BlitzMetrics, a digital marketing company that focuses on Facebook ads, said that $100,000 worth of Facebook ads could have been viewed hundreds of millions of times.
According to Yu, ''$100,000 worth of very concentrated posts is very, very powerful. When you have a really hot post, you often get this viral multiplier. So when you buy this one ad impression, you can get an extra 20- to 40-times multiplier because those people comment and share it.''
Momentum is building in Congress and elsewhere in the federal government for a law requiring Facebook and other Web companies to reveal publicly who bought political ads and the amount that was spent on their platforms. Newspapers, television stations and other traditional carriers of campaign messages already disclose such information.
Watts, the Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow, said he has not seen the Facebook ads promised to Congress, but he and his team saw similar tactics playing out on Twitter and other platforms during the campaign.
Watts said such efforts were most likely to have been effective in Midwestern swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, where Democratic primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders had beaten Clinton. Watts said the disinformation pushed by the Russians included messages designed to reinforce the idea that Sanders had been mistreated by the Democratic Party and that his supporters shouldn't bother to vote during the general election in November.
''They were designed around hitting these fracture points, so they could see how they resonate and assess their effectiveness,'' Watts said. ''I call it reconnaissance by social media.''
Dwoskin reported from San Francisco. Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
Leaked Descriptions of Infamous "Russia Ads" Derail Collusion Narrative "They Showed Support for Clinton"
Less than a week after Facebook agreed to turn over to Congressional investigators copies of the 3,000-odd political advertisements that the company said it had inadvertently sold to a Russia-linked group intent on meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the contents of the ads have '' unsurprisingly '' leaked, just as we had expected them to.
Congressional investigators shared the information with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team, which has repeatedly allowed information about its investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign actively colluded with Russian operatives to leak to the press. Once this happened, we knew it was only a matter of time before the ads became part of the public record.
SAnd, shockingly, descriptions of the ads provided to the Washington Post hardly fit the narrative that Democratic lawmakers have spun in recent weeks, claiming the ads '' which didn't advocate on behalf of a specific candidate, but rather hewed to political issues like abortion rights '' were instrumental in securing Trump's victory.
After initially denying the story this spring, Facebook came clean earlier this month, saying its investigators had discovered that the company sold at least $100,000 worth of ads '' and possibly as much as $150,000 '' to Russia-linked group that bought the ads through 470 phony Facebook pages and accounts.WaPo reports that the ads represented issues on both sides of the ideological spectrum, which would suggest that the buyers didn't intend to support a specific candidate, but rather their own unique agenda.
The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African-American rights groups including Black Lives Matter and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.
The Russian campaign '-- taking advantage of Facebook's ability to simultaneously send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics - also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.
Of course, support for Hillary Clinton among minority groups was less enthusiastic than it was for Barack Obama, suggesting that the ads perhaps weren't as effective as some Democratic lawmakers would have voters believe. Despite the innocuous description, WaPo insisted on reporting that the ads were meant to ''sow dischord'' among different voting blocs that supported Clinton. The paper of record also reported that the targeted messages ''highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate US political discourse'''...again without explaining exactly how they accomplished this.
These targeted messages, along with others that have surfaced in recent days, highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another.
Yet, WaPo reports that the ''nature and detail'' of the ads has bothered investigators at Facebook and the Justice Department, as well as those working on behalf of the Congressional committees that are conducting independent investigations. The House and Senate Intelligence committees plan to begin reviewing the Facebook ads in the coming weeks.
Furthermore, the paper ran quotes from Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Adam Schiff, two of the most vocal proponents of the Russia election-hacking conspiracy theory (it is only a theory, after all), describing the ads as part of a sinister effort to undermine the democratic process.
''Their aim was to sow chaos,'' said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ''In many cases, it was more about voter suppression rather than increasing turnout.''
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said he hoped the public would be able to review the ad campaign.
''I think the American people should see a representative sample of these ads to see how cynical the Russian were using these ads to sow division within our society,'' he said, noting that he had not yet seen the ads but had been briefed on them, including the ones mentioning ''things like Black Lives Matter.''
For a story that's supposed to be about the content of political advertisements that are now at the center of a widely followed investigation (much like Don Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer and her entourage in Trump Tower was just a month ago), the WaPo story includes scant details about their contents. For whatever reason, the paper neglected to publish photos of the ads.We imagine that whoever leaked the story probably figured that once readers see the ads and realize they're indistinguishable from the rest of the political ad copy running on Facebook, voters will quickly lose interest.
However, that didn't stop one expert from offering some helpful ''context'' meant to feed the hysteria without saying anything conclusive. As the paper notes, the expert quoted hasn't even seen the ads.
While Facebook has downplayed the impact of the Russian ads on the election, Dennis Yu, chief technology officer for BlitzMetrics, a digital marketing company that focuses on Facebook ads, said that $100,000 worth of Facebook ads could have been viewed hundreds of millions of times.
''$100,000 worth of very concentrated posts is very, very powerful,'' he said. ''When you have a really hot post, you often get this viral multiplier. So when you buy this one ad impression, you can get an extra 20- to 40-times multiplier because those people comment and share it.''
Watts, the Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow, has not seen the Facebook ads promised to Congress, but he and his team saw similar tactics playing out on Twitter and other platforms during the campaign.
With little else to cling to, it appears that investigators '' not to mention Trump's critics - have invested so much in the Facebook interference narrative (not to mention Paul Manafort's dealings with pro-Russian oligarchs), that admitting they were wrong would just be too damaging.Source: Zero Hedge
Caliphate!
Correction re: Denmark
Hey Adam,
Maybe you should correct this on the next show...
Breivik was in Norway...
Also, in Denmark the middle name is most often used if the other family name is very common.
So they call the PM Lars Løkke, not Lars Rasmussen. It was also Anders Fogh, not Anders Rasmussen...
Itm
Paul Peerdeman
EuroLand
Schengen Article 23 border security
Article 23
Temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders
1. Where there is a serious threat to public policy or internal security, a Member State may exceptionally reintroduce border control at its internal borders for a limited period of no more than 30 days or for the foreseeable duration of the serious threat if its duration exceeds the period of 30 days, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 24 or, in urgent cases, with that laid down in Article 25. The scope and duration of the temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders shall not exceed what is strictly necessary to respond to the serious threat.
2. If the serious threat to public policy or internal security persists beyond the period provided for in paragraph 1, the Member State may prolong border control on the same grounds as those referred to in paragraph 1 and, taking into account any new elements, for renewable periods of up to 30 days, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 26.
REGULATION (EC) No 562/2006 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
of 15 March 2006
establishing a Community Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders (Schengen Borders Code)
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Articles 62(1) and (2)(a) thereof,
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission,
Acting in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 251 of the Treaty (1 ),
Whereas:
(1)
The adoption of measures under Article 62(1) of the Treaty with a view to ensuring the absence of any controls on persons crossing internal borders forms part of the Union's objective of establishing an area without internal borders in which the free movement of persons is ensured, as set out in Article 14 of the Treaty.
(2)
In accordance with Article 61 of the Treaty, the creation of an area in which persons may move freely is to be flanked by other measures. The common policy on the crossing of external borders, as provided for by Article 62(2) of the Treaty, is such a measure.
(3)
The adoption of common measures on the crossing of internal borders by persons and border control at external borders should reflect the Schengen acquis incorporated in the European Union framework, and in particular the relevant provisions of the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement of 14 June 1985 between the Governments of the States of the Benelux Economic Union, the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic on the gradual abolition of checks at their common borders (2 ) and the Common Manual (3 ).
(4)
As regards border control at external borders, the establishment of a 'common corpus' of legislation, particularly via consolidation and development of the acquis , is one of the fundamental components of the common policy on the management of the external borders, as defined in the Commission Communication of 7 May 2002'Towards integrated management of the external borders of the Member States of the European Union'. This objective was included in the 'Plan for the management of the external borders of the Member States of the European Union', approved by the Council on 13 June 2002 and endorsed by the Seville European Council on 21 and 22 June 2002 and by the Thessaloniki European Council on 19 and 20 June 2003.
(5)
The definition of common rules on the movement of persons across borders neither calls into question nor affects the rights of free movement enjoyed by Union citizens and members of their families and by third-country nationals and members of their families who, under agreements between the Community and its Member States, on the one hand, and those third countries, on the other hand, enjoy rights of free movement equivalent to those of Union citizens.
(6)
Border control is in the interest not only of the Member State at whose external borders it is carried out but of all Member States which have abolished internal border control. Border control should help to combat illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings and to prevent any threat to the Member States' internal security, public policy, public health and international relations.
(7)
Border checks should be carried out in such a way as to fully respect human dignity. Border control should be carried out in a professional and respectful manner and be proportionate to the objectives pursued.
(8)
Border control comprises not only checks on persons at border crossing points and surveillance between these border crossing points, but also an analysis of the risks for internal security and analysis of the threats that may affect the security of external borders. It is therefore necessary to lay down the conditions, criteria and detailed rules governing checks at border crossing points and surveillance.
(9)
Provision should be made for relaxing checks at external borders in the event of exceptional and unforeseeable circumstances in order to avoid excessive waiting time at borders crossing-points. The systematic stamping of the documents of third-country nationals remains an obligation in the event of border checks being relaxed. Stamping makes it possible to establish, with certainty, the date on which, and where, the border was crossed, without establishing in all cases that all required travel document control measures have been carried out.
(10)
In order to reduce the waiting times of persons enjoying the Community right of free movement, separate lanes, indicated by uniform signs in all Member States, should, where circumstances allow, be provided at border crossing points. Separate lanes should be provided in international airports. Where it is deemed appropriate and if local circumstances so allow, Member States should consider installing separate lanes at sea and land border crossing points.
(11)
Member States should ensure that control procedures at external borders do not constitute a major barrier to trade and social and cultural interchange. To that end, they should deploy appropriate numbers of staff and resources.
(12)
Member States should designate the national service or services responsible for border-control tasks in accordance with their national law. Where more than one service is responsible in the same Member State, there should be close and constant cooperation between them.
(13)
Operational cooperation and assistance between Member States in relation to border control should be managed and coordinated by the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States established by Regulation (EC) No 2007/2004 (4 ).
(14)
This Regulation is without prejudice to checks carried out under general police powers and security checks on persons identical to those carried out for domestic flights, to the possibilities for Member States to carry out exceptional checks on baggage in accordance with Council Regulation (EEC) No 3925/91 of 19 December 1991 concerning the elimination of controls and formalities applicable to the cabin and hold baggage of persons taking an intra-Community flight and the baggage of persons making an intra-Community sea crossing (5 ), and to national law on carrying travel or identity documents or to the requirement that persons notify the authorities of their presence on the territory of the Member State in question.
(15)
Member States should also have the possibility of temporarily reintroducing border control at internal borders in the event of a serious threat to their public policy or internal security. The conditions and procedures for doing so should be laid down, so as to ensure that any such measure is exceptional and that the principle of proportionality is respected. The scope and duration of any temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders should be restricted to the bare minimum needed to respond to that threat.
(16)
In an area where persons may move freely, the reintroduction of border control at internal borders should remain an exception. Border control should not be carried out or formalities imposed solely because such a border is crossed.
(17)
Provision should be made for a procedure enabling the Commission to adapt certain detailed practical rules governing border control. In such cases, the measures needed to implement this Regulation should be taken pursuant to Council Decision 1999/468/EC of 28 June 1999 laying down the procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission (6 ).
(18)
Provision should also be made for a procedure enabling the Member States to notify the Commission of changes to other detailed practical rules governing border control.
(19)
Since the objective of this Regulation, namely the establishment of rules applicable to the movement of persons across borders cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore be better achieved at Community level, the Community may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty. In accordance with the principle of proportionality, as set out in that Article, this Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve that objective.
(20)
This Regulation respects fundamental rights and observes the principles recognised in particular by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. It should be applied in accordance with the Member States' obligations as regards international protection and non-refoulement.
(21)
By way of derogation from Article 299 of the Treaty, the only territories of France and the Netherlands to which this Regulation applies are those in Europe. It does not affect the specific arrangements applied in Ceuta and Melilla, as defined in the Agreement on the Accession of the Kingdom of Spain to the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement of 14 June 1985 (7 ).
(22)
In accordance with Articles 1 and 2 of the Protocol on the Position of Denmark annexed to the Treaty on European Union and to the Treaty establishing the European Community, Denmark is not taking part in the adoption of this Regulation and is not bound by it or subject to its application. Given that this Regulation builds upon the Schengen acquis under the provisions of Title IV of Part Three of the Treaty establishing the European Community, Denmark should, in accordance with Article 5 of the said Protocol, decide within a period of six months after the date of adoption of this Regulation whether it will implement it in its national law or not.
(23)
As regards Iceland and Norway, this Regulation constitutes a development of provisions of the Schengen acquis within the meaning of the Agreement concluded by the Council of the European Union and the Republic of Iceland and the Kingdom of Norway concerning the latters' association with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis (8 ) which fall within the area referred to in Article 1, point A, of Council Decision 1999/437/EC (9 ) on certain arrangements for the application of that Agreement.
(24)
An arrangement has to be made to allow representatives of Iceland and Norway to be associated with the work of committees assisting the Commission in the exercise of its implementing powers. Such an arrangement has been contemplated in the Exchanges of Letters between the Council of the European Union and the Republic of Iceland and the Kingdom of Norway concerning committees which assist the European Commission in the exercise of its executive powers (10 ), annexed to the abovementioned Agreement.
(25)
As regards Switzerland, this Regulation constitutes a development of provisions of the Schengen acquis within the meaning of the Agreement signed between the European Union, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation concerning the association of the Swiss Confederation with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis , which fall within the area referred to in Article 1, point A, of Decision 1999/437/EC read in conjunction with Article 4(1) of Council Decisions 2004/849/EC (11 ) and 2004/860/EC (12 ).
(26)
An arrangement has to be made to allow representatives of Switzerland to be associated with the work of committees assisting the Commission in the exercise of its implementing powers. Such an arrangement has been contemplated in the Exchange of Letters between the Community and Switzerland, annexed to the abovementioned Agreement.
(27)
This Regulation constitutes a development of provisions of the Schengen acquis in which the United Kingdom does not take part, in accordance with Council Decision 2000/365/EC of 29 May 2000 concerning the request of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to take part in some of the provisions of the Schengen acquis (13 ). The United Kingdom is therefore not taking part in its adoption and is not bound by it or subject to its application.
(28)
This Regulation constitutes a development of provisions of the Schengen acquis in which Ireland does not take part, in accordance with Council Decision 2002/192/EC of 28 February 2002 concerning Ireland's request to take part in some of the provisions of the Schengen acquis (14 ). Ireland is therefore not taking part in its adoption and is not bound by it or subject to its application.
(29)
In this Regulation, the first sentence of Article 1, Article 5(4)(a), Title III and the provisions of Title II and the annexes thereto referring to the Schengen Information System (SIS) constitute provisions building on the Schengen acquis or otherwise related to it within the meaning of Article 3(2) of the 2003 Act of Accession,
HAVE ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:
TITLE I
GENERAL PROVISIONS
Article 1
Subject matter and principles
This Regulation provides for the absence of border control of persons crossing the internal borders between the Member States of the European Union.
It establishes rules governing border control of persons crossing the external borders of the Member States of the European Union.
Article 2
Definitions
For the purposes of this Regulation the following definitions shall apply:
1.
'internal borders' means:
(a)
the common land borders, including river and lake borders, of the Member States;
(b)
the airports of the Member States for internal flights;
(c)
sea, river and lake ports of the Member States for regular ferry connections;
2.
'external borders' means the Member States' land borders, including river and lake borders, sea borders and their airports, river ports, sea ports and lake ports, provided that they are not internal borders;
3.
'internal flight' means any flight exclusively to or from the territories of the Member States and not landing in the territory of a third country;
4.
'regular ferry connection' means any ferry connection between the same two or more ports situated in the territory of the Member States, not calling at any ports outside the territory of the Member States and consisting of the transport of passengers and vehicles according to a published timetable;
5.
'persons enjoying the Community right of free movement' means:
(a)
Union citizens within the meaning of Article 17(1) of the Treaty, and third-country nationals who are members of the family of a Union citizen exercising his or her right to free movement to whom Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States (15 ) applies;
(b)
third-country nationals and their family members, whatever their nationality, who, under agreements between the Community and its Member States, on the one hand, and those third countries, on the other hand, enjoy rights of free movement equivalent to those of Union citizens;
6.
'third-country national' means any person who is not a Union citizen within the meaning of Article 17(1) of the Treaty and who is not covered by point 5 of this Article;
7.
'persons for whom an alert has been issued for the purposes of refusing entry' means any third-country national for whom an alert has been issued in the Schengen Information System (SIS) in accordance with and for the purposes laid down in Article 96 of the Schengen Convention;
8.
'border crossing point' means any crossing-point authorised by the competent authorities for the crossing of external borders;
9.
'border control' means the activity carried out at a border, in accordance with and for the purposes of this Regulation, in response exclusively to an intention to cross or the act of crossing that border, regardless of any other consideration, consisting of border checks and border surveillance;
10.
'border checks' means the checks carried out at border crossing points, to ensure that persons, including their means of transport and the objects in their possession, may be authorised to enter the territory of the Member States or authorised to leave it;
11.
'border surveillance' means the surveillance of borders between border crossing points and the surveillance of border crossing points outside the fixed opening hours, in order to prevent persons from circumventing border checks;
12.
'second line check' means a further check which may be carried out in a special location away from the location at which all persons are checked (first line);
13.
'border guard' means any public official assigned, in accordance with national law, to a border crossing point or along the border or the immediate vicinity of that border who carries out, in accordance with this Regulation and national law, border control tasks;
14.
'carrier' means any natural or legal person whose profession it is to provide transport of persons;
15.
'residence permit' means:
(a)
all residence permits issued by the Member States according to the uniform format laid down by Council Regulation (EC) No 1030/2002 of 13 June 2002 laying down a uniform format for residence permits for third-country nationals (16 );
(b)
all other documents issued by a Member State to third-country nationals authorising a stay in, or re-entry into, its territory, with the exception of temporary permits issued pending examination of a first application for a residence permit as referred to in point (a) or an application for asylum;
16.
'cruise ship' means a ship which follows a given itinerary in accordance with a predetermined programme, which includes a programme of tourist activities in the various ports, and which normally neither takes passengers on nor allows passengers to disembark during the voyage;
17.
'pleasure boating' means the use of pleasure boats for sporting or tourism purposes;
18.
'coastal fisheries' means fishing carried out with the aid of vessels which return every day or within 36 hours to a port situated in the territory of a Member State without calling at a port situated in a third country;
19.
'threat to public health' means any disease with epidemic potential as defined by the International Health Regulations of the World Health Organisation and other infectious diseases or contagious parasitic diseases if they are the subject of protection provisions applying to nationals of the Member States.
Article 3
Scope
This Regulation shall apply to any person crossing the internal or external borders of Member States, without prejudice to:
(a)
the rights of persons enjoying the Community right of free movement;
(b)
the rights of refugees and persons requesting international protection, in particular as regards non-refoulement.
TITLE II
EXTERNAL BORDERS
CHAPTER I
Crossing of external borders and conditions for entry
Article 4
Crossing of external borders
1. External borders may be crossed only at border crossing points and during the fixed opening hours. The opening hours shall be clearly indicated at border crossing points which are not open 24 hours a day.
Member States shall notify the list of their border crossing points to the Commission in accordance with Article 34.
2. By way of derogation from paragraph 1, exceptions to the obligation to cross external borders only at border crossing points and during the fixed opening hours may be allowed:
(a)
in connection with pleasure boating or coastal fishing;
(b)
for seamen going ashore to stay in the area of the port where their ships call or in the adjacent municipalities;
(c)
for individuals or groups of persons, where there is a requirement of a special nature, provided that they are in possession of the permits required by national law and that there is no conflict with the interests of public policy and the internal security of the Member States;
(d)
for individuals or groups of persons in the event of an unforeseen emergency situation.
3. Without prejudice to the exceptions provided for in paragraph 2 or to their international protection obligations, Member States shall introduce penalties, in accordance with their national law, for the unauthorised crossing of external borders at places other than border crossing points or at times other than the fixed opening hours. These penalties shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.
Article 5
Entry conditions for third-country nationals
1. For stays not exceeding three months per six-month period, the entry conditions for third-country nationals shall be the following:
(a)
they are in possession of a valid travel document or documents authorising them to cross the border;
(b)
they are in possession of a valid visa, if required pursuant to Council Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 of 15 March 2001 listing the third countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the external borders and those whose nationals are exempt from that requirement (17 ), except where they hold a valid residence permit;
(c)
they justify the purpose and conditions of the intended stay, and they have sufficient means of subsistence, both for the duration of the intended stay and for the return to their country of origin or transit to a third country into which they are certain to be admitted, or are in a position to acquire such means lawfully;
(d)
they are not persons for whom an alert has been issued in the SIS for the purposes of refusing entry;
(e)
they are not considered to be a threat to public policy, internal security, public health or the international relations of any of the Member States, in particular where no alert has been issued in Member States' national data bases for the purposes of refusing entry on the same grounds.
2. A non-exhaustive list of supporting documents which the border guard may request from the third-country national in order to verify the fulfilment of the conditions set out in paragraph 1, point c, is included in Annex I.
3. Means of subsistence shall be assessed in accordance with the duration and the purpose of the stay and by reference to average prices in the Member State(s) concerned for board and lodging in budget accommodation, multiplied by the number of days stayed.
Reference amounts set by the Member States shall be notified to the Commission in accordance with Article 34.
The assessment of sufficient means of subsistence may be based on the cash, travellers' cheques and credit cards in the third-country national's possession. Declarations of sponsorship, where such declarations are provided for by national law and letters of guarantee from hosts, as defined by national law, where the third-country national is staying with a host, may also constitute evidence of sufficient means of subsistence.
4. By way of derogation from paragraph 1:
(a)
third-country nationals who do not fulfil all the conditions laid down in paragraph 1 but hold a residence permit or a re-entry visa issued by one of the Member States or, where required, both documents, shall be authorised to enter the territories of the other Member States for transit purposes so that they may reach the territory of the Member State which issued the residence permit or re-entry visa, unless their names are on the national list of alerts of the Member State whose external borders they are seeking to cross and the alert is accompanied by instructions to refuse entry or transit;
(b)
third-country nationals who fulfil the conditions laid down in paragraph 1, except for that laid down in point (b), and who present themselves at the border may be authorised to enter the territories of the Member States, if a visa is issued at the border in accordance with Council Regulation (EC) No 415/2003 of 27 February 2003 on the issue of visas at the border, including the issue of such visas to seamen in transit (18 ).
Visas issued at the border shall be recorded on a list.
If it is not possible to affix a visa in the document, it shall, exceptionally, be affixed on a separate sheet inserted in the document. In such a case, the uniform format for forms for affixing the visa, laid down by Council Regulation (EC) No 333/2002 of 18 February 2002 on a uniform format for forms for affixing the visa issued by Member States to persons holding travel documents not recognised by the Member State drawing up the form (19 ), shall be used;
(c)
third-country nationals who do not fulfil one or more of the conditions laid down in paragraph 1 may be authorised by a Member State to enter its territory on humanitarian grounds, on grounds of national interest or because of international obligations. Where the third-country national concerned is the subject of an alert as referred to in paragraph 1(d), the Member State authorising him or her to enter its territory shall inform the other Member States accordingly.
CHAPTER II
Control of external borders and refusal of entry
Article 6
Conduct of border checks
1. Border guards shall, in the performance of their duties, fully respect human dignity.
Any measures taken in the performance of their duties shall be proportionate to the objectives pursued by such measures.
2. While carrying out border checks, border guards shall not discriminate against persons on grounds of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.
Article 7
Border checks on persons
1. Cross-border movement at external borders shall be subject to checks by border guards. Checks shall be carried out in accordance with this chapter.
The checks may also cover the means of transport and objects in the possession of the persons crossing the border. The law of the Member State concerned shall apply to any searches which are carried out.
2. All persons shall undergo a minimum check in order to establish their identities on the basis of the production or presentation of their travel documents. Such a minimum check shall consist of a rapid and straightforward verification, where appropriate by using technical devices and by consulting, in the relevant databases, information exclusively on stolen, misappropriated, lost and invalidated documents, of the validity of the document authorising the legitimate holder to cross the border and of the presence of signs of falsification or counterfeiting.
The minimum check referred to in the first subparagraph shall be the rule for persons enjoying the Community right of free movement.
However, on a non-systematic basis, when carrying out minimum checks on persons enjoying the Community right of free movement, border guards may consult national and European databases in order to ensure that such persons do not represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to the internal security, public policy, international relations of the Member States or a threat to the public health.
The consequences of such consultations shall not jeopardise the right of entry of persons enjoying the Community right of free movement into the territory of the Member State concerned as laid down in Directive 2004/38/EC.
3. On entry and exit, third-country nationals shall be subject to thorough checks.
(a)
thorough checks on entry shall comprise verification of the conditions governing entry laid down in Article 5(1) and, where applicable, of documents authorising residence and the pursuit of a professional activity. This shall include a detailed examination covering the following aspects:
(i)
verification that the third-country national is in possession of a document which is valid for crossing the border and which has not expired, and that the document is accompanied, where applicable, by the requisite visa or residence permit;
(ii)
thorough scrutiny of the travel document for signs of falsification or counterfeiting;
(iii)
examination of the entry and exit stamps on the travel document of the third-country national concerned, in order to verify, by comparing the dates of entry and exit, that the person has not already exceeded the maximum duration of authorised stay in the territory of the Member States;
(iv)
verification regarding the point of departure and the destination of the third-country national concerned and the purpose of the intended stay, checking if necessary, the corresponding supporting documents;
(v)
verification that the third-country national concerned has sufficient means of subsistence for the duration and purpose of the intended stay, for his or her return to the country of origin or transit to a third country into which he or she is certain to be admitted, or that he or she is in a position to acquire such means lawfully;
(vi)
verification that the third-country national concerned, his or her means of transport and the objects he or she is transporting are not likely to jeopardise the public policy, internal security, public health or international relations of any of the Member States. Such verification shall include direct consultation of the data and alerts on persons and, where necessary, objects included in the SIS and in national data files and the action to be performed, if any, as a result of an alert;
(b)
thorough checks on exit shall comprise:
(i)
verification that the third-country national is in possession of a document valid for crossing the border;
(ii)
verification of the travel document for signs of falsification or counterfeiting;
(iii)
whenever possible, verification that the third-country national is not considered to be a threat to public policy, internal security or the international relations of any of the Member States;
(c)
In addition to the checks referred to in point (b) thorough checks on exit may also comprise:
(i)
verification that the person is in possession of a valid visa, if required pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 539/2001, except where he or she holds a valid residence permit;
(ii)
verification that the person did not exceed the maximum duration of authorised stay in the territory of the Member States;
(iii)
consultation of alerts on persons and objects included in the SIS and reports in national data files.
4. Where facilities exist and if requested by the third-country national, such thorough checks shall be carried out in a private area.
5. Third-country nationals subject to a thorough second line check shall be given information on the purpose of, and procedure for, such a check.
This information shall be available in all the official languages of the Union and in the language(s) of the country or countries bordering the Member State concerned and shall indicate that the third-country national may request the name or service identification number of the border guards carrying out the thorough second line check, the name of the border crossing point and the date on which the border was crossed.
6. Checks on a person enjoying the Community right on free movement shall be carried out in accordance with Directive 2004/38/EC.
7. Detailed rules governing the information to be registered are laid down in Annex II.
Article 8
Relaxation of border checks
1. Border checks at external borders may be relaxed as a result of exceptional and unforeseen circumstances. Such exceptional and unforeseen circumstances shall be deemed to be those where unforeseeable events lead to traffic of such intensity that the waiting time at the border crossing point becomes excessive, and all resources have been exhausted as regards staff, facilities and organisation.
2. Where border checks are relaxed in accordance with paragraph 1, border checks on entry movements shall in principle take priority over border checks on exit movements.
The decision to relax checks shall be taken by the border guard in command at the border crossing point.
Such relaxation of checks shall be temporary, adapted to the circumstances justifying it and introduced gradually.
3. Even in the event that checks are relaxed, the border guard shall stamp the travel documents of third-country nationals both on entry and exit, in accordance with Article 10.
4. Each Member State shall transmit once a year a report on the application of this Article to the European Parliament and the Commission.
Article 9
Separate lanes and information on signs
1. Member States shall provide separate lanes, in particular at air border crossing points in order to carry out checks on persons, in accordance with Article 7. Such lanes shall be differentiated by means of the signs bearing the indications set out in the Annex III.
Member States may provide separate lanes at their sea and land border crossing points and at borders between Member States not applying Article 20 at their common borders. The signs bearing the indications set out in the Annex III shall be used if Member States provide separate lanes at those borders.
Member States shall ensure that such lanes are clearly signposted, including where the rules relating to the use of the different lanes are waived as provided for in paragraph 4, in order to ensure optimal flow levels of persons crossing the border.
2.
(a)
Persons enjoying the Community right of free movement are entitled to use the lanes indicated by the sign in part A of Annex III. They may also use the lanes indicated by the sign in part B of Annex III.
(b)
All other persons shall use the lanes indicated by the sign in part B of Annex III.
The indications on the signs referred to in points (a) and (b) may be displayed in such language or languages as each Member State considers appropriate.
3. At sea and land border crossing points, Member States may separate vehicle traffic into different lanes for light and heavy vehicles and buses by using signs as shown in Part C of Annex III.
Member States may vary the indications on those signs where appropriate in the light of local circumstances.
4. In the event of a temporary imbalance in traffic flows at a particular border crossing point, the rules relating to the use of the different lanes may be waived by the competent authorities for the time necessary to eliminate such imbalance.
5. The adaptation of existing signs to the provisions of paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 shall be completed by 31 May 2009. Where Member States replace existing signs or put up new ones before that date, they shall comply with the indications provided for in those paragraphs.
Article 10
Stamping of the travel documents of third-country nationals
1. The travel documents of third-country nationals shall be systematically stamped on entry and exit. In particular an entry or exit stamp shall be affixed to:
(a)
the documents, bearing a valid visa, enabling third-country nationals to cross the border;
(b)
the documents enabling third-country nationals to whom a visa is issued at the border by a Member State to cross the border;
(c)
the documents enabling third-country nationals not subject to a visa requirement to cross the border.
2. The travel documents of nationals of third countries who are members of the family of a Union citizen to whom Directive 2004/38/EC applies, but who do not present the residence card provided for in Article 10 of that Directive, shall be stamped on entry or exit.
The travel documents of nationals of third countries who are members of the family of nationals of third countries enjoying the Community right of free movement, but who do not present the residence card provided for in Article 10 of Directive 2004/38/EC, shall be stamped on entry or exit.
3. No entry or exit stamp shall be affixed:
(a)
to the travel documents of Heads of State and dignitaries whose arrival has been officially announced in advance through diplomatic channels;
(b)
to pilots' licences or the certificates of aircraft crew members;
(c)
to the travel documents of seamen who are present within the territory of a Member State only when their ship puts in and in the area of the port of call;
(d)
to the travel documents of crew and passengers of cruise ships who are not subject to border checks in accordance with point 3.2.3 of Annex VI;
(e)
to documents enabling nationals of Andorra, Monaco and San Marino to cross the border.
Exceptionally, at the request of a third-country national, insertion of an entry or exit stamp may be dispensed with if insertion might cause serious difficulties for that person. In that case, entry or exit shall be recorded on a separate sheet indicating the name and passport number. That sheet shall be given to the third-country national.
4. The practical arrangements for stamping are set out in Annex IV.
5. Whenever possible, third-country nationals shall be informed of the border guard's obligation to stamp their travel document on entry and exit, even where checks are relaxed in accordance with Article 8.
6. The Commission shall report to the European Parliament and the Council by the end of 2008 on the operation of the provisions on stamping travel documents.
Article 11
Presumption as regards fulfilment of conditions of duration of stay
1. If the travel document of a third-country national does not bear an entry stamp, the competent national authorities may presume that the holder does not fulfil, or no longer fulfils, the conditions of duration of stay applicable within the Member State concerned.
2. The presumption referred to in paragraph 1 may be rebutted where the third-country national provides, by any means, credible evidence, such as transport tickets or proof of his or her presence outside the territory of the Member States, that he or she has respected the conditions relating to the duration of a short stay.
In such a case:
(a)
where the third-country national is found on the territory of a Member State applying the Schengen acquis in full, the competent authorities shall indicate, in accordance with national law and practice, in his or her travel document the date on which, and the place where, he or she crossed the external border of one of the Member States applying the Schengen acquis in full;
(b)
where the third-country national is found on the territory of a Member State in respect of which the decision contemplated in Article 3(2) of the 2003 Act of Accession has not been taken, the competent authorities shall indicate, in accordance with national law and practice, in his or her travel document the date on which, and the place where, he or she crossed the external border of such a Member State.
In addition to the indications referred to in points (a) and (b), a form as shown in Annex VIII may be given to the third-country national.
Member States shall inform each other and the Commission and the Council General Secretariat of their national practices with regard to the indications referred to in this Article.
3. Should the presumption referred to in paragraph 1 not be rebutted, the third-country national may be expelled by the competent authorities from the territory of the Member States concerned.
Article 12
Border surveillance
1. The main purpose of border surveillance shall be to prevent unauthorised border crossings, to counter cross-border criminality and to take measures against persons who have crossed the border illegally.
2. The border guards shall use stationary or mobile units to carry out border surveillance.
That surveillance shall be carried out in such a way as to prevent and discourage persons from circumventing the checks at border crossing points.
3. Surveillance between border crossing points shall be carried out by border guards whose numbers and methods shall be adapted to existing or foreseen risks and threats. It shall involve frequent and sudden changes to surveillance periods, so that unauthorised border crossings are always at risk of being detected.
4. Surveillance shall be carried out by stationary or mobile units which perform their duties by patrolling or stationing themselves at places known or perceived to be sensitive, the aim of such surveillance being to apprehend individuals crossing the border illegally. Surveillance may also be carried out by technical means, including electronic means.
5. Additional rules governing surveillance may be adopted in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 33(2).
Article 13
Refusal of entry
1. A third-country national who does not fulfil all the entry conditions laid down in Article 5(1) and does not belong to the categories of persons referred to in Article 5(4) shall be refused entry to the territories of the Member States. This shall be without prejudice to the application of special provisions concerning the right of asylum and to international protection or the issue of long-stay visas.
2. Entry may only be refused by a substantiated decision stating the precise reasons for the refusal. The decision shall be taken by an authority empowered by national law. It shall take effect immediately.
The substantiated decision stating the precise reasons for the refusal shall be given by means of a standard form, as set out in Annex V, Part B, filled in by the authority empowered by national law to refuse entry. The completed standard form shall be handed to the third-country national concerned, who shall acknowledge receipt of the decision to refuse entry by means of that form.
3. Persons refused entry shall have the right to appeal. Appeals shall be conducted in accordance with national law. A written indication of contact points able to provide information on representatives competent to act on behalf of the third-country national in accordance with national law shall also be given to the third-country national.
Lodging such an appeal shall not have suspensive effect on a decision to refuse entry.
Without prejudice to any compensation granted in accordance with national law, the third-country national concerned shall, where the appeal concludes that the decision to refuse entry was ill-founded, be entitled to correction of the cancelled entry stamp, and any other cancellations or additions which have been made, by the Member State which refused entry.
4. The border guards shall ensure that a third-country national refused entry does not enter the territory of the Member State concerned.
5. Member States shall collect statistics on the number of persons refused entry, the grounds for refusal, the nationality of the persons refused and the type of border (land, air or sea) at which they were refused entry. Member States shall transmit those statistics once a year to the Commission. The Commission shall publish every two years a compilation of the statistics provided by the Member States.
6. Detailed rules governing refusal of entry are given in Part A of Annex V.
CHAPTER III
Staff and resources for border control and cooperation between Member States
Article 14
Staff and resources for border control
Member States shall deploy appropriate staff and resources in sufficient numbers to carry out border control at the external borders, in accordance with Articles 6 to 13, in such a way as to ensure an efficient, high and uniform level of control at their external borders.
Article 15
Implementation of controls
1. The border control provided for by Articles 6 to 13 shall be carried out by border guards in accordance with the provisions of this Regulation and with national law.
When carrying out that border control, the powers to instigate criminal proceedings conferred on border guards by national law and falling outside the scope of this Regulation shall remain unaffected.
Member States shall ensure that the border guards are specialised and properly trained professionals. Member States shall encourage border guards to learn languages, in particular those necessary for the carrying-out of their tasks.
2. Member States shall notify to the Commission the list of national services responsible for border control under their national law in accordance with Article 34.
3. To control borders effectively, each Member State shall ensure close and constant cooperation between its national services responsible for border control.
Article 16
Cooperation between Member States
1. The Member States shall assist each other and shall maintain close and constant cooperation with a view to the effective implementation of border control, in accordance with Articles 6 to 15. They shall exchange all relevant information.
2. Operational cooperation between Member States in the field of management of external borders shall be coordinated by the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States (hereinafter referred to as the Agency) established by Regulation (EC) No 2007/2004.
3. Without prejudice to the competences of the Agency, Member States may continue operational cooperation with other Member States and/or third countries at external borders, including the exchange of liaison officers, where such cooperation complements the action of the Agency.
Member States shall refrain from any activity which could jeopardise the functioning of the Agency or the attainment of its objectives.
Member States shall report to the Agency on the operational cooperation referred to in the first subparagraph.
4. Member States shall provide for training on the rules for border control and on fundamental rights. In that regard, account shall be taken of the common training standards as established and further developed by the Agency.
Article 17
Joint control
1. Member States which do not apply Article 20 to their common land borders may, up to the date of application of that Article, jointly control those common borders, in which case a person may be stopped only once for the purpose of carrying out entry and exit checks, without prejudice to the individual responsibility of Member States arising from Articles 6 to 13.
To that end, Member States may conclude bilateral arrangements between themselves.
2. Member States shall inform the Commission of any arrangements concluded in accordance with paragraph 1.
CHAPTER IV
Specific rules for border checks
Article 18
Specific rules for the various types of border and the various means of transport used for crossing the external borders
The specific rules set out in Annex VI shall apply to the checks carried out at the various types of border and on the various means of transport used for crossing border crossing points.
Those specific rules may contain derogations from Articles 5 and 7 to 13.
Article 19
Specific rules for checks on certain categories of persons
1. The specific rules set out in Annex VII shall apply to checks on the following categories of persons:
(a)
Heads of State and the members of their delegation(s);
(b)
pilots of aircraft and other crew members;
(d)
holders of diplomatic, official or service passports and members of international organisations;
(e)
cross-border workers;
Those specific rules may contain derogations from Articles 5 and 7 to 13.
2. Member States shall notify to the Commission the model cards issued by their Ministries of Foreign Affairs to accredited members of diplomatic missions and consular representations and members of their families in accordance with Article 34.
TITLE III
INTERNAL BORDERS
CHAPTER I
Abolition of border control at internal borders
Article 20
Crossing internal borders
Internal borders may be crossed at any point without a border check on persons, irrespective of their nationality, being carried out.
Article 21
Checks within the territory
The abolition of border control at internal borders shall not affect:
(a)
the exercise of police powers by the competent authorities of the Member States under national law, insofar as the exercise of those powers does not have an effect equivalent to border checks; that shall also apply in border areas. Within the meaning of the first sentence, the exercise of police powers may not, in particular, be considered equivalent to the exercise of border checks when the police measures:
(i)
do not have border control as an objective,
(ii)
are based on general police information and experience regarding possible threats to public security and aim, in particular, to combat cross-border crime,
(iii)
are devised and executed in a manner clearly distinct from systematic checks on persons at the external borders,
(iv)
are carried out on the basis of spot-checks;
(b)
security checks on persons carried out at ports and airports by the competent authorities under the law of each Member State, by port or airport officials or carriers, provided that such checks are also carried out on persons travelling within a Member State;
(c)
the possibility for a Member State to provide by law for an obligation to hold or carry papers and documents;
(d)
the obligation on third-country nationals to report their presence on the territory of any Member State pursuant to the provisions of Article 22 of the Schengen Convention.
Article 22
Removal of obstacles to traffic at road crossing-points at internal borders
Member States shall remove all obstacles to fluid traffic flow at road crossing-points at internal borders, in particular any speed limits not exclusively based on road-safety considerations.
At the same time, Member States shall be prepared to provide for facilities for checks in the event that internal border controls are reintroduced.
CHAPTER II
Temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders
Article 23
Temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders
1. Where there is a serious threat to public policy or internal security, a Member State may exceptionally reintroduce border control at its internal borders for a limited period of no more than 30 days or for the foreseeable duration of the serious threat if its duration exceeds the period of 30 days, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 24 or, in urgent cases, with that laid down in Article 25. The scope and duration of the temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders shall not exceed what is strictly necessary to respond to the serious threat.
2. If the serious threat to public policy or internal security persists beyond the period provided for in paragraph 1, the Member State may prolong border control on the same grounds as those referred to in paragraph 1 and, taking into account any new elements, for renewable periods of up to 30 days, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 26.
Article 24
Procedure for foreseeable events
1. Where a Member State is planning to reintroduce border control at internal borders under Article 23(1), it shall as soon as possible notify the other Member States and the Commission accordingly, and shall supply the following information as soon as available:
(a)
the reasons for the proposed reintroduction, detailing the events that constitute a serious threat to public policy or internal security;
(b)
the scope of the proposed reintroduction, specifying where border control is to be reintroduced;
(c)
the names of the authorised crossing-points;
(d)
the date and duration of the proposed reintroduction;
(e)
where appropriate, the measures to be taken by the other Member States.
2. Following the notification from the Member State concerned, and with a view to the consultation provided for in paragraph 3, the Commission may issue an opinion without prejudice to Article 64(1) of the Treaty.
3. The information referred to in paragraph 1, as well as the opinion that the Commission may provide in accordance with paragraph 2, shall be the subject of consultations between the Member State planning to reintroduce border control, the other Member States and the Commission, with a view to organising, where appropriate, mutual cooperation between the Member States and to examining the proportionality of the measures to the events giving rise to the reintroduction of border control and the threats to public policy or internal security.
4. The consultation referred to in paragraph 3 shall take place at least fifteen days before the date planned for the reintroduction of border control.
Article 25
Procedure for cases requiring urgent action
1. Where considerations of public policy or internal security in a Member State demand urgent action to be taken, the Member State concerned may exceptionally and immediately reintroduce border control at internal borders.
2. The Member State reintroducing border control at internal borders shall notify the other Member States and the Commission accordingly, without delay, and shall supply the information referred to in Article 24(1) and the reasons that justify the use of this procedure.
Article 26
Procedure for prolonging border control at internal borders
1. Member States may only prolong border control at internal borders under the provisions of Article 23(2) after having notified the other Member States and the Commission.
2. The Member State planning to prolong border control shall supply the other Member States and the Commission with all relevant information on the reasons for prolonging the border control at internal borders. The provisions of Article 24(2) shall apply.
Article 27
Informing the European Parliament
The Member State concerned or, where appropriate, the Council shall inform the European Parliament as soon as possible of the measures taken under Articles 24, 25 and 26. As of the third consecutive prolongation pursuant to Article 26, the Member State concerned shall, if requested, report to the European Parliament on the need for border control at internal borders.
Article 28
Provisions to be applied where border control is reintroduce at internal borders
Where border control at internal borders is reintroduced, the relevant provisions of Title II shall apply mutatis mutandis .
Article 29
Report on the reintroduction of border control at internal borders
The Member State which has reintroduced border control at internal borders under Article 23 shall confirm the date on which that control is lifted and, at the same time or soon afterwards, present a report to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on the reintroduction of border control at internal borders, outlining, in particular, the operation of the checks and the effectiveness of the reintroduction of border control.
Article 30
Informing the public
The decision to reintroduce border control at internal borders shall be taken in a transparent manner and the public informed in full thereof, unless there are overriding security reasons for not doing so.
Article 31
Confidentiality
At the request of the Member State concerned, the other Member States, the European Parliament and the Commission shall respect the confidentiality of information supplied in connection with the reintroduction and prolongation of border control and the report drawn up under Article 29.
TITLE IV
FINAL PROVISIONS
Article 32
Amendments to the Annexes
Annexes III, IV and VIII shall be amended in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 33(2).
Article 33
Committee
1. The Commission shall be assisted by a committee, hereinafter 'the Committee'.
2. Where reference is made to this paragraph, Articles 5 and 7 of Decision 1999/468/EC shall apply, having regard to the provisions of Article 8 thereof and provided that the implementing measures adopted in accordance with this procedure do not modify the essential provisions of this Regulation.
The period laid down in Article 5(6) of Decision 1999/468/EC shall be set at three months.
3. The Committee shall adopt its rules of procedure.
4. Without prejudice to the implementing measures already adopted, the application of the provisions of this Regulation concerning the adoption of technical rules and decisions in accordance with the procedure referred in paragraph 2 shall be suspended four years after the entry into force of this Regulation. On a proposal from the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council may renew the provisions concerned in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 251 of the Treaty and, to that end, shall review them prior to the expiry of the four-year period.
Article 34
Notifications
1. Member States shall notify the Commission of:
(a)
the list of residence permits;
(b)
the list of their border crossing points;
(c)
the reference amounts required for the crossing of their external borders fixed annually by the national authorities;
(d)
the list of national services responsible for border control;
(e)
the specimen of model cards issued by Foreign Ministries.
2. The Commission shall make the information notified in conformity with paragraph 1 available to the Member States and the public through publication in the Official Journal of the European Union , C Series, and by any other appropriate means.
Article 35
Local border traffic
This Regulation shall be without prejudice to Community rules on local border traffic and to existing bilateral agreements on local border traffic.
Article 36
Ceuta and Melilla
The provisions of this Regulation shall not affect the special rules applying to the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, as defined in the Declaration by the Kingdom of Spain on the cities of Ceuta and Melilla in the Final Act to the Agreement on the Accession of the Kingdom of Spain to the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement of 14 June 1985 (20 ).
Article 37
Notification of information by the Member States
By 26 October 2006, the Member States shall notify the Commission of national provisions relating to Article 21(c) and (d), the penalties as referred to in Article 4(3) and the bilateral arrangements concluded in accordance with Article 17(1). Subsequent changes to those provisions shall be notified within five working days.
The information notified by the Member States shall be published in the Official Journal of the European Union , C Series.
Article 38
Report on the application of Title III
The Commission shall submit to the European Parliament and the Council by 13 October 2009 a report on the application of Title III.
The Commission shall pay particular attention to any difficulties arising from the reintroduction of border control at internal borders. Where appropriate, it shall present proposals aimed at resolving such difficulties.
Article 39
Repeals
1. Articles 2 to 8 of the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement of 14 June 1985 shall be repealed with effect from 13 October 2006.
2. The following shall be repealed with effect from the date referred to in paragraph 1:
(a)
the Common Manual, including its annexes;
(b)
the decisions of the Schengen Executive Committee of 26 April 1994 (SCH/Com-ex (94) 1, rev 2), 22 December 1994 (SCH/Com-ex (94)17, rev. 4) and 20 December 1995 (SCH/Com-ex (95) 20, rev. 2);
(c)
Annex 7 to the Common Consular Instructions;
(d)
Council Regulation (EC) No 790/2001 of 24 April 2001 reserving to the Council implementing powers with regard to certain detailed provisions and practical procedures for carrying out border checks and surveillance (21 );
(e)
Council Decision 2004/581/EC of 29 April 2004 determining the minimum indications to be used on signs at external border crossing points (22 );
(f)
Council Decision 2004/574/EC of 29 April 2004 amending the Common Manual (23 );
(g)
Council Regulation (EC) No 2133/2004 of 13 December 2004 on the requirement for the competent authorities of the Member States to stamp systematically the travel documents of third country nationals when they cross the external borders of the Member States and amending the provisions of the Convention implementing the Schengen agreement and the Common Manual to this end (24 ).
3. References to the Articles deleted and instruments repealed shall be construed as references to this Regulation.
Article 40
Entry into force
This Regulation shall enter into force on 13 October 2006. However, Article 34 shall enter into force on the day after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union .
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in the Member States in accordance with the Treaty establishing the European Community.
Done at Strasbourg, 15 March 2006.
For the European Parliament
The President
J. BORRELL FONTELLES
For the Council
The President
H. WINKLER
(1 ) Opinion of the European Parliament of 23 June 2005 (not yet published in the Official Journal) and Council Decision of 21 February 2006.
(2 ) OJ L 239, 22.9.2000, p. 19. Convention as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 1160/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 191, 22.7.2005, p. 18).
(3 ) OJ C 313, 16.12.2002, p. 97. Common Manual as last amended by Council Regulation (EC) No 2133/2004 (OJ L 369, 16.12.2004, p. 5).
(4 ) Council Regulation (EC) No 2007/2004 of 26 October 2004 establishing a European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (OJ L 349, 25.11.2004, p. 1).
(5 ) OJ L 374, 31.12.1991, p. 4. Regulation as amended by Regulation (EC) No 1882/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 284, 31.10.2003, p. 1).
(6 ) OJ L 184, 17.7.1999, p. 23.
(7 ) OJ L 239, 22.9.2000, p. 69.
(8 ) OJ L 176, 10.7.1999, p. 36.
(9 ) OJ L 176, 10.7.1999, p. 31.
(10 ) OJ L 176, 10.7.1999, p. 53.
(11 ) Council Decision 2004/849/EC of 25 October 2004 on the signing, on behalf of the European Union, and on the provisional application of certain provisions of the Agreement between the European Union, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation concerning the Swiss Confederation's association with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis (OJ L 368, 15.12.2004, p. 26).
(12 ) Council Decision 2004/860/EC of 25 October 2004 on the signing, on behalf of the European Community, and on the provisional application of certain provisions of the Agreement between the European Union, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation, concerning the Swiss Confederation's association with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis (OJ L 370, 17.12.2004, p. 78).
(13 ) OJ L 131, 1.6.2000, p. 43.
(14 ) OJ L 64, 7.3.2002, p. 20.
(15 ) OJ L 158, 30.4.2004, p. 77.
(16 ) OJ L 157, 15.6.2002, p. 1.
(17 ) OJ L 81, 21.3.2001, p. 1. Regulation as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 851/2005 (OJ L 141, 4.6.2005, p. 3).
(18 ) OJ L 64, 7.3.2003, p. 1.
(19 ) OJ L 53, 23.2.2002, p. 4.
(20 ) OJ L 239, 22.9.2000, p. 73.
(21 ) OJ L 116, 26.4.2001, p. 5. Regulation amended by Decision 2004/927/EC (OJ L 396, 31.12.2004, p. 45).
(22 ) OJ L 261, 6.8.2004, p. 119.
(23 ) OJ L 261, 6.8.2004, p. 36.
(24 ) OJ L 369, 16.12.2004, p. 5.
ANNEX I
Supporting documents to verify the fulfilment of entry conditions
The documentary evidence referred to in Article 5(2) may include the following:
(a)
for business trips:
(i)
an invitation from a firm or an authority to attend meetings, conferences or events connected with trade, industry or work;
(ii)
other documents which show the existence of trade relations or relations for work purposes;
(iii)
entry tickets for fairs and congresses if attending one;
(b)
for journeys undertaken for the purposes of study or other types of training:
(i)
a certificate of enrolment at a teaching institute for the purposes of attending vocational or theoretical courses in the framework of basic and further training;
(ii)
student cards or certificates for the courses attended;
(c)
for journeys undertaken for the purposes of tourism or for private reasons:
(i)
supporting documents as regards lodging:
'--
an invitation from the host if staying with one,
'--
a supporting document from the establishment providing lodging or any other appropriate document indicating the accommodation envisaged;
(ii)
supporting documents as regards the itinerary:
confirmation of the booking of an organised trip or any other appropriate document indicating the envisaged travel plans;
(iii)
supporting documents as regards return:
a return or round-trip ticket.
(d)
for journeys undertaken for political, scientific, cultural, sports or religious events or other reasons:
invitations, entry tickets, enrolments or programmes stating wherever possible the name of the host organisation and the length of stay or any other appropriate document indicating the purpose of the visit.
ANNEX II
Registration of information
At all border crossing points, all service information and any other particularly important information shall be registered manually or electronically. The information to be registered shall include in particular:
(a)
the names of the border guard responsible locally for border checks and of the other officers in each team;
(b)
relaxation of checks on persons applied in accordance with Article 8;
(c)
the issuing, at the border, of documents in place of passports and of visas;
(d)
persons apprehended and complaints (criminal offences and administrative breaches);
(e)
persons refused entry in accordance with Article 13 (grounds for refusal and nationalities);
(f)
the security codes of entry and exit stamps, the identity of border guards to whom a given stamp is assigned at any given time or shift and the information relating to lost and stolen stamps;
(g)
complaints from persons subject to checks;
(h)
other particularly important police or judicial measures;
(i)
particular occurrences.
ANNEX III
Model signs indicating lanes at border crossing points
PART A
(1 )
PART B
PART C
(1 )
(1 )
(1 )
(1 ) No logo is required for Norway and Iceland.
ANNEX IV
Affixing stamps
1.
The travel documents of third-country nationals shall be systematically stamped on entry and exit, in accordance with Article 10. The specifications of those stamps are laid down in the Schengen Executive Committee Decision SCH/COM-EX (94) 16 rev and SCH/Gem-Handb (93) 15 (CONFIDENTIAL).
2.
The security codes on the stamps shall be changed at regular intervals not exceeding one month.
3.
On the entry and exit of third-country nationals subject to the visa obligation, the stamp will, if possible, be affixed so that it covers the edge of the visa without affecting the legibility of the indications on the visa or the security features of the visa sticker. If several stamps must be affixed (for example in the case of a multiple-entry visa, this shall be done on the page facing the one on which the visa is affixed.
If that page cannot be used, the stamp shall be entered on the following page. The machine readable zone shall not be stamped.
4.
Member States shall designate national contact points responsible for exchanging information on the security codes of the entry and exit stamps used at border crossing points and shall inform the other Member States, the General Secretariat of the Council and the Commission thereof. Those contact points shall have access without delay to information regarding common entry and exit stamps used at the external border of the Member State concerned, and in particular to information on the following:
(a)
the border crossing point to which a given stamp is assigned;
(b)
the identity of the border guard to whom a given stamp is assigned at any given time;
(c)
the security code of a given stamp at any given time.
Any inquiries regarding common entry and exit stamps shall be made through the abovementioned national contact points.
The national contact points shall also forward immediately to the other contact points, the General Secretariat of the Council and the Commission information regarding a change in the contact points as well as lost and stolen stamps.
ANNEX V
PART A
Procedures for refusing entry at the border
1.
When refusing entry, the competent border guard shall:
(a)
fill in the standard form for refusing entry, as shown in Part B. The third-country national concerned shall sign the form and shall be given a copy of the signed form. Where the third-country national refuses to sign, the border guard shall indicate this refusal in the form under the section 'comments';
(b)
affix an entry stamp on the passport, cancelled by a cross in indelible black ink, and write opposite it on the right-hand side, also in indelible ink, the letter(s) corresponding to the reason(s) for refusing entry, the list of which is given on the abovementioned standard form for refusing entry;
(c)
cancel the visa by applying a stamp stating 'CANCELLED' in the cases referred to in paragraph 2. In such a case the optically variable feature of the visa sticker, the security feature 'latent image effect' as well as the term 'visa' shall be destroyed by crossing it out so as to prevent any later misuse. The border guard shall inform his/her central authorities of this decision forthwith;
(d)
record every refusal of entry in a register or on a list stating the identity and nationality of the third-country national concerned, the references of the document authorising the third-country national to cross the border and the reason for, and date of, refusal of entry;
2.
The visa shall be cancelled in the following cases:
(a)
if the holder of the visa is the subject of an alert in the SIS for the purposes of being refused entry unless he or she holds a visa or re-entry visa issued by one of the Member States and wishes to enter for transit purposes in order to reach the territory of the Member State which issued the document;
(b)
if there are serious grounds to believe that the visa was obtained in a fraudulent way.
However, the failure of the third-country national to produce, at the border, one or more of the supporting documents referred to in Article 5(2), shall not automatically lead to a decision to cancel the visa.
3.
If a third-country national who has been refused entry is brought to the border by a carrier, the authority responsible locally shall:
(a)
order the carrier to take charge of the third-country national and transport him or her without delay to the third country from which he or she was brought, to the third country which issued the document authorising him or her to cross the border, or to any other third country where he or she is guaranteed admittance, or to find means of onward transportation in accordance with Article 26 of the Schengen Convention and Council Directive 2001/51/EC of 28 June 2001 supplementing the provisions of Article 26 of the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement of 14 June 1985 (1 );
(b)
pending onward transportation, take appropriate measures, in compliance with national law and having regard to local circumstances, to prevent third-country nationals who have been refused entry from entering illegally.
4.
If there are grounds both for refusing entry to a third-country national and arresting him or her, the border guard shall contact the authorities responsible to decide on the action to be taken in accordance with national law.
PART B
Standard form for refusal of entry at the border
(1 ) OJ L 187, 10.7.2001, p. 45.
ANNEX VI
Specific rules for the various types of border and the various means of transport used for crossing the Member States' external borders
1. Land borders
1.1. Checks on road traffic
1.1.1. To ensure effective checks on persons, while ensuring the safety and smooth flow of road traffic, movements at border crossing points shall be regulated in an appropriate manner. Where necessary, Member States may conclude bilateral agreements to channel and block traffic. They shall inform the Commission thereof pursuant to Article 37.
1.1.2. At land borders, Member States may, where they deem appropriate and if circumstances allow, install or operate separate lanes at certain border crossing points, in accordance with Article 9.
Separate lanes may be dispensed with at any time by the Member States' competent authorities, in exceptional circumstances and where traffic and infrastructure conditions so require.
Member States may cooperate with neighbouring countries with a view to the installation of separate lanes at external border crossing points.
1.1.3. As a general rule, persons travelling in vehicles may remain inside them during checks. However, if circumstances so require, persons may be requested to alight from their vehicles. Thorough checks will be carried out, if local circumstances allow, in areas designated for that purpose. In the interests of staff safety, checks will be carried out, where possible, by two border guards.
1.2. Checks on rail traffic
1.2.1. Checks shall be carried out both on train passengers and on railway staff on trains crossing external borders, including those on goods trains or empty trains. Those checks shall be carried out in either one of the following two ways:
'--
on the platform, in the first station of arrival or departure on the territory of a Member State,
'--
on board the train, during transit.
Member States may conclude bilateral agreements on how to conduct those checks. They shall inform the Commission thereof pursuant to Article 37.
1.2.2. By way of derogation from point 1.2.1 and in order to facilitate rail traffic flows of high-speed passenger trains, the Member States on the itinerary of these trains from third countries may also decide, by common agreement with third countries concerned, to carry out entry checks on persons in trains from third countries in either one of the following ways:
'--
in the stations in a third country where persons board the train,
'--
in the stations where persons disembark within the territory of the Member States,
'--
on board the train during transit between the stations on the territory of the Member States, provided that the persons stay on board the train in the previous station/stations.
1.2.3. With respect to high-speed trains from third countries making several stops in the territory of the Member States, if the rail transport carrier is in a position to board passengers exclusively for the remaining part of the journey within the territory of the Member States, such passengers shall be subject to entry checks either on the train or at the station of destination except where checks have been carried out pursuant to points 1.2.1 or 1.2.2 first indent.
Persons who wish to take the train exclusively for the remaining part of the journey within the territory of the Member States shall receive clear notification prior to the train's departure that they will be subject to entry checks during the journey or at the station of destination.
1.2.4. When travelling in the opposite direction, the persons on board the train shall be subject to exit checks under similar arrangements.
1.2.5. The border guard may order the cavities of carriages to be inspected if necessary with the assistance of the train inspector, to ensure that persons or objects subject to border checks are not concealed in them.
1.2.6. Where there are reasons to believe that persons who have been reported or are suspected of having committed an offence, or third-country nationals intending to enter illegally, are hiding on a train, the border guard, if he or she cannot act in accordance with his national provisions, shall notify the Member States towards or within whose territory the train is moving.
2. Air borders
2.1. Procedures for checks at international airports
2.1.1. The competent authorities of the Member States shall ensure that the airport operator takes the requisite measures to physically separate the flows of passengers on internal flights from the flows of passengers on other flights. Appropriate infrastructures shall be set in place at all international airports to that end.
2.1.2. The place where border checks are carried out shall be determined in accordance with the following procedure:
(a)
passengers on a flight from a third country who board an internal flight shall be subject to an entry check at the airport of arrival of the flight from a third country. Passengers on an internal flight who board a flight for a third country (transfer passengers) shall be subject to an exit check at the airport of departure of the latter flight;
(b)
for flights from or to third countries with no transfer passengers and flights making more than one stop-over at the airports of the Member States where there is no change of aircraft:
(i)
passengers on flights from or to third countries where there is no prior or subsequent transfer within the territory of the Member States shall be subject to an entry check at the airport of entry and an exit check at the airport of exit;
(ii)
passengers on flights from or to third countries with more than one stop-over on the territory of the Member States where there is no change of aircraft (transit passengers), and provided that passengers cannot board the aircraft for the leg situated within the territory of the Member States, shall be subject to an entry check at the airport of arrival and an exit check at the airport of departure;
(iii)
where an airline may, for flights from third countries with more than one stop-over within the territory of the Member States, board passengers only for the remaining leg within that territory, passengers shall be subject to an exit check at the airport of departure and an entry check at the airport of arrival.
Checks on passengers who, during those stop-overs, are already on board the aircraft and have not boarded in the territory of the Member States shall be carried out in accordance with point (b)(ii). The reverse procedure shall apply to that category of flights where the country of destination is a third country.
2.1.3. Border checks will normally not be carried out on the aircraft or at the gate, unless it is justified on the basis of an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration. In order to ensure that, at the airports designated as border crossing points, persons are checked in accordance with the rules set out in Articles 6 to 13, Member States shall ensure that the airport authorities take the requisite measures to channel passenger traffic to facilities reserved for checks.
Member States shall ensure that the airport operator takes the necessary measures to prevent unauthorised persons entering and leaving the reserved areas, for example the transit area. Checks will normally not be carried out in the transit area, unless it is justified on the basis of an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration; in particular checks in this area may be carried out on persons subject to an airport transit visa in order to check that they are in possession of such a visa.
2.1.4. Where, in cases of force majeure or imminent danger or on the instructions of the authorities, an aircraft on a flight from a third country has to land on a landing ground which is not a border crossing point, that aircraft may continue its flight only after authorisation from the border guards and from customs. The same shall apply where an aircraft on a flight from a third country lands without permission. In any event, Articles 6 to 13 shall apply to checks on persons on those aircraft.
2.2. Procedures for checks in aerodromes
2.2.1. It shall be ensured that persons are also checked, in accordance with Articles 6 to 13, in airports which do not hold the status of international airport under the relevant national law (aerodromes) but through which the routing of flights from or to third countries is authorised.
2.2.2. By way of derogation from point 2.1.1 it shall not be necessary to make appropriate arrangements in aerodromes to ensure that inflows of passengers from internal and other flights are physically separated, without prejudice to Regulation (EC) No 2320/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2002 establishing common rules in the field of civil aviation security (1 ). In addition, when the volume of traffic is low, the border guards need not be present at all times, provided that there is a guarantee that the necessary personnel can be deployed in good time.
2.2.3. When the presence of the border guards is not assured at all times in the aerodrome, the manager of the aerodrome shall give adequate notice to the border guards about the arrival and the departure of aircrafts on flights from or to third countries.
2.3. Checks on persons on private flights
2.3.1. In the case of private flights from or to third countries the captain shall transmit to the border guards of the Member State of destination and, where appropriate, of the Member State of first entry, prior to take-off, a general declaration comprising inter alia a flight plan in accordance with Annex 2 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation and information concerning the passengers' identity.
2.3.2. Where private flights coming from a third country and bound for a Member State make stop-overs in the territory of other Member States, the competent authorities of the Member State of entry shall carry out border checks and affix an entry stamp to the general declaration referred to in point 2.3.1.
2.3.3. Where uncertainty exists whether a flight is exclusively coming from, or solely bound for, the territories of the Member States without stop-over on the territory of a third country, the competent authorities shall carry out checks on persons in airports and aerodromes in accordance with points 2.1 to 2.2.
2.3.4. The arrangements for the entry and exit of gliders, micro-light aircraft, helicopters, small-scale aircraft capable of flying short distances only and airships shall be laid down by national law and, where applicable, by bilateral agreements.
3. Sea borders
3.1. General checking procedures on maritime traffic
3.1.1. Checks on ships shall be carried out at the port of arrival or departure, on board ship or in an area set aside for the purpose, located in the immediate vicinity of the vessel. However, in accordance with the agreements reached on the matter, checks may also be carried out during crossings or, upon the ship's arrival or departure, in the territory of a third country.
The purpose of checks is to ensure that both crew and passengers fulfil the conditions laid down in Article 5, without prejudice to Article 19(1)(c).
3.1.2. The ship's captain or, failing that, the individual or corporation who represents the shipowner in all matters relating to the shipowner's duties in fitting out the vessel (shipowner's agent), shall draw up a list, in duplicate, of the crew and of any passengers. At the latest upon arriving in the port he or she shall give the list(s) to the border guards. If, for reasons of force majeure, the list or lists cannot be sent to the border guards, a copy will be sent to the appropriate border post or shipping authority, which shall forward it without delay to the border guards.
3.1.3. One copy of the two lists duly signed by the border guard shall be returned to the ship's captain, who shall produce it on request when in port.
3.1.4. The ship's captain, or failing that, the shipowner's agent shall report to the competent authority promptly any changes to the composition of the crew or the number of passengers.
In addition, the captain shall notify the competent authorities promptly, and if possible even before the ship enters port, of the presence on board of stowaways. Stowaways will, however, remain under the responsibility of the ship's captain.
3.1.5. The ship's captain shall notify the border guards of the ship's departure in due time and in accordance with the rules in force in the port concerned; if he or she is unable to notify them, he or she shall advise the appropriate shipping authority. The second copy of the previously completed and signed list(s) shall be returned to border guards or shipping authorities.
3.2. Specific check procedures for certain types of shipping
Cruise ships
3.2.1. The cruise ship's captain or, failing that, the shipowner's agent shall transmit to the respective border guards the itinerary and the programme of the cruise, at least 24 hours before leaving the port of departure and before the arrival at each port in the territory of the Member States.
3.2.2. If the itinerary of a cruise ship comprises exclusively ports situated in the territory of the Member States, by way of derogation from Articles 4 and 7, no border checks shall be carried out and the cruise ship may dock at ports which are not border crossing points.
Nevertheless, on the basis of an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration, checks may be carried out on the crew and passengers of those ships.
3.2.3. If the itinerary of a cruise ship comprises both ports situated in the territory of the Member States and ports situated in third countries, by way of derogation from Article 7, border checks shall be carried out as follows:
(a)
where the cruise ship comes from a port situated in a third country and calls for the first time at a port situated in the territory of a Member State, crew and passengers shall be subject to entry checks on the basis of the nominal lists of crew and passengers, as referred to in point 3.2.4.
Passengers going ashore shall be subject to entry checks in accordance with Article 7 unless an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration shows that there is no need to carry out such checks;
(b)
where the cruise ship comes from a port situated in a third country and calls again at a port situated in the territory of a Member State, crew and passengers shall be subject to entry checks on the basis of the nominal lists of crew and passengers as referred to in point 3.2.4 to the extent that those lists have been modified since the cruise ship called at the previous port situated in the territory of a Member State.
Passengers going ashore shall be subject to entry checks in accordance with Article 7 unless an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration shows that there is no need to carry out such checks;
(c)
where the cruise ship comes from a port situated in a Member State and calls at such a port, passengers going ashore shall be subject to entry checks in accordance with Article 7 if an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration so requires;
(d)
where a cruise ship departs from a port situated in a Member State to a port in a third country, crew and passengers shall be subject to exit checks on the basis of the nominal lists of crew and passengers.
If an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration so requires, passengers going on board shall be subject to exit checks in accordance with Article 7;
(e)
where a cruise ship departs from a port situated in a Member State to such a port, no exit checks shall be carried out.
Nevertheless, on the basis of an assessment of the risks related to internal security and illegal immigration, checks may be carried out on the crew and passengers of those ships.
3.2.4. The nominal lists of crew and passengers shall include:
(d)
number and type of travel document and, where applicable, visa number.
The cruise ship's captain or, failing that, the shipowner's agent shall transmit to the respective border guards the nominal lists at least 24 hours before the arrival at each port in the territory of the Member States or, where the journey to this port lasts less than 24 hours, immediately after the boarding is completed in the previous port.
The nominal list shall be stamped at the first port of entry into the territory of the Member States and in all cases thereafter if the list is modified. The nominal list shall be taken into account in the assessment of the risks as referred to in point 3.2.3.
Pleasure boating
3.2.5. By way of derogation from Articles 4 and 7, persons on board a pleasure boat coming from or departing to a port situated in a Member State shall not be subject to border checks and may enter a port which is not a border crossing point.
However, according to the assessment of the risks of illegal immigration, and in particular where the coastline of a third country is located in the immediate vicinity of the territory of the Member State concerned, checks on those persons and/or a physical search of the pleasure boat shall be carried out.
3.2.6. By way of derogation from Article 4, a pleasure boat coming from a third country may, exceptionally, enter a port which is not a border crossing point. In that case, the persons on board shall notify the port authorities in order to be authorised to enter that port. The port authorities shall contact the authorities in the nearest port designated as a border crossing point in order to report the vessel's arrival. The declaration regarding passengers shall be made by lodging the list of persons on board with the port authorities. That list shall be made available to the border guards, at the latest upon arrival.
Likewise, if for reasons of force majeure the pleasure boat coming from a third country has to dock in a port other than a border crossing point, the port authorities shall contact the authorities in the nearest port designated as a border crossing point in order to report the vessel's presence.
3.2.7. During those checks, a document containing all the technical characteristics of the vessel and the names of the persons on board shall be handed in. A copy of that document shall be given to the authorities in the ports of entry and departure. As long as the vessel remains in the territorial waters of one of the Member States, a copy of that document shall be included amongst the ship's papers.
Coastal fishing
3.2.8. By way of derogation from Articles 4 and 7, the crews of coastal fisheries vessels which return every day or within 36 hours to the port of registration or to any other port situated in the territory of the Member States without docking in a port situated in the territory of a third country shall not be systematically checked. Nevertheless, the assessment of the risks of illegal immigration, in particular where the coastline of a third country is located in the immediate vicinity of the territory of the Member State concerned, shall be taken into account in order to determine the frequency of the checks to be carried out. According to those risks, checks on persons and/or a physical search of the vessel shall be carried out.
3.2.9. The crews of coastal fisheries vessels not registered in a port situated in the territory of a Member State shall be checked in accordance with the provisions relating to seamen.
The ship's captain shall notify the competent authorities of any alteration to the crew list and of the presence of any passengers.
Ferry connections
3.2.10. Checks shall be carried out on persons on board ferry connections with ports situated in third countries. The following rules shall apply:
(a)
where possible, Member States shall provide separate lanes, in accordance with Article 9;
(b)
checks on foot passengers shall be carried out individually;
(c)
checks on vehicle occupants shall be carried out while they are at the vehicle;
(d)
ferry passengers travelling by coach shall be considered as foot passengers. Those passengers shall alight from the coach for the checks;
(e)
checks on drivers of heavy goods vehicles and any accompanying persons shall be conducted while the occupants are at the vehicle. Those checks will in principle be organised separately from checks on the other passengers;
(f)
to ensure that checks are carried out quickly, there shall be an adequate number of gates;
(g)
so as to detect illegal immigrants in particular, random searches shall be made on the means of transport used by the passengers, and where applicable on the loads and other goods stowed in the means of transport;
(h)
ferry crew members shall be dealt with in the same way as commercial ship crew members.
4. Inland waterways shipping
4.1. 'Inland waterways shipping involving the crossing of an external border' covers the use, for business or pleasure purposes, of all types of boat and floating vessels on rivers, canals and lakes.
4.2. As regards boats used for business purposes, the captain and the persons employed on board who appear on the crew list and members of the families of those persons who live on board shall be regarded as crew members or equivalent.
4.3. The relevant provisions of points 3.1 to 3.2 shall apply mutatis mutandis to checks on inland waterways shipping.
(1 ) OJ L 355, 30.12.2002, p. 1. Regulation as amended by Regulation (EC) No 849/2004 (OJ L 158, 30.4.2004, p. 1).
ANNEX VII
Special rules for certain categories of persons
1. Heads of State
By way of derogation from Article 5 and Articles 7 to 13, Heads of State and the members of their delegation, whose arrival and departure have been officially announced through diplomatic channels to the border guards, may not be subject to border checks.
2. Pilots of aircraft and other crew members
2.1. By way of derogation from Article 5 the holders of a pilot's licence or a crew member certificate as provided for in Annex 9 to the Civil Aviation Convention of 7 December 1944 may, in the course of their duties and on the basis of those documents:
(a)
embark and disembark in the stop-over airport or the airport of arrival situated in the territory of a Member State;
(b)
enter the territory of the municipality of the stop-over airport or the airport of arrival situated in the territory of a Member State;
(c)
go, by any means of transport, to an airport situated in the territory of a Member State in order to embark on an aircraft departing from that same airport.
In all other cases, the requirements provided for by Article 5(1) shall be fulfilled.
2.2. Articles 6 to 13 shall apply to checks on aircraft crew members. Wherever possible, priority will be given to checks on aircraft crews. Specifically, they will be checked either before passengers or at special locations set aside for the purpose. By way of derogation from Article 7, crews known to staff responsible for border controls in the performance of their duties may be subject to random checks only.
3. Seamen
3.1. By way of derogation from Articles 4 and 7, Member States may authorise seamen holding a seafarer's identity document issued in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 19 June 2003 (No 185), the London Convention of 9 April 1965 and the relevant national law, to enter into the territory of the Member States by going ashore to stay in the area of the port where their ships call or in the adjacent municipalities without presenting themselves at a border crossing point, on condition that they appear on the crew list, which has previously been submitted for checking by the competent authorities, of the ship to which they belong.
However, according to the assessment of the risks of internal security and illegal immigration, seamen shall be subject to a check in accordance with Article 7 by the border guards before they go ashore.
If a seaman constitutes a threat to public policy, internal security or public health, he may be refused permission to go ashore.
3.2. Seamen who intend to stay outside the municipalities situated in the vicinity of ports shall comply with the conditions for entry to the territory of the Member States, as laid down in Article 5(1).
4. Holders of diplomatic, official or service passports and members of international organisations
4.1. In view of the special privileges or immunities they enjoy, the holders of diplomatic, official or service passports issued by third countries or their Governments recognised by the Member States, as well as the holders of documents issued by the international organisations listed in point 4.4 who are travelling in the course of their duties, may be given priority over other travellers at border crossing points even though they remain, where applicable, subject to the requirement for a visa.
By way of derogation from Article 5(1)(c), persons holding those documents shall not be required to prove that they have sufficient means of subsistence.
4.2. If a person presenting himself or herself at the external border invokes privileges, immunities and exemptions, the border guard may require him or her to provide evidence of his or her status by producing the appropriate documents, in particular certificates issued by the accrediting State or a diplomatic passport or other means. If he or she has doubts, the border guard may, in case of urgent need, apply direct to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
4.3. Accredited members of diplomatic missions and of consular representations and their families may enter the territory of the Member States on presentation of the card referred to in Article 19(2) and of the document authorising them to cross the border. Moreover, by way of derogation from Article 13 border guards may not refuse the holders of diplomatic, official or service passports entry to the territory of the Member States without first consulting the appropriate national authorities. This shall also apply where an alert has been entered in the SIS for such persons.
4.4. The documents issued by the international organisations for the purposes specified in point 4.1 are in particular the following:
'--
United Nations laissez-passer issued to staff of the United Nations and subordinate agencies under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of Specialised Agencies adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 21 November 1947 in New York,
'--
European Community (EC) laissez-passer ,
'--
European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) laissez-passer ,
'--
legitimacy certificate issued by the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe,
'--
documents issued pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article III of the Agreement between the Parties to the North Atlantic Treaty regarding the Status of their Force (military ID cards accompanied by a travel order, travel warrant, or an individual or collective movement order) as well as documents issued in the framework of the Partnership for Peace.
5. Cross-border workers
5.1. The procedures for checking cross-border workers are governed by the general rules on border control, in particular Articles 7 and 13.
5.2. By way of derogation from Article 7, cross-border workers who are well known to the border guards owing to their frequent crossing of the border at the same border crossing point and who have not been revealed by an initial check to be the subject of an alert in the SIS or in a national data file shall be subject only to random checks to ensure that they hold a valid document authorising them to cross the border and fulfil the necessary entry conditions. Thorough checks shall be carried out on those persons from time to time, without warning and at irregular intervals.
5.3. The provisions of point 5.2 may be extended to other categories of regular cross-border commuters.
6. Minors
6.1. Border guards shall pay particular attention to minors, whether travelling accompanied or unaccompanied. Minors crossing an external border shall be subject to the same checks on entry and exit as adults, as provided for in this Regulation.
6.2. In the case of accompanied minors, the border guard shall check that the persons accompanying minors have parental care over them, especially where minors are accompanied by only one adult and there are serious grounds for suspecting that they may have been unlawfully removed from the custody of the person(s) legally exercising parental care over them. In the latter case, the border guard shall carry out a further investigation in order to detect any inconsistencies or contradictions in the information given.
6.3. In the case of minors travelling unaccompanied, border guards shall ensure, by means of thorough checks on travel documents and supporting documents, that the minors do not leave the territory against the wishes of the person(s) having parental care over them.
ANNEX VIII
European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - State of the Union 2017 - Preserving and strengthening Schengen to improve security and safeguard Europe's freedoms
As announced by President Juncker in his letter of intent on 13 September, the European Commission is today proposing measures to preserve and strengthen the Schengen area. The Commission is proposing to update the Schengen Borders Code to adapt the rules for the reintroduction of temporary internal border controls to the current needs to respond to evolving and persistent serious threats to public policy or internal security. Stronger procedural safeguards are also being introduced to ensure that border controls at internal borders remain an exception - a measure of last resort - and are used only if necessary and proportionate, limiting the impact on free movement. The Commission is also publishing a Communication on the measures already taken to respond to security challenges at the external borders and within the Schengen area, and a Recommendation to Member States on how to better apply, if needed, the current rules on temporary border controls.
First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said: "The Schengen Border Code rules for reintroducing internal border controls were devised in a different time, with different challenges. The exceptional circumstances that we see now, such as the increased terrorist threat, have led us to propose a Schengen Border Code more fit for purpose in this new day and age. Member States should be allowed to act in an exceptional situation when confronted with serious threats to their public policy or internal security. At the same time, they should act only under strict conditions. This is how we secure free movement and promote security within Schengen."
Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos said: "Schengen is one of the major achievements of European integration and we are fully committed to safeguard, preserve and strengthen it. The absence of internal border control constitutes the very essence of Schengen. But in a common area without border controls, security concerns are common too. This is why we must do everything to preserve the careful balance between free movement and mobility on the one hand, and security on the other. And we can only achieve this through a coordinated and united Schengen framework, which should include Romania and Bulgaria too."
Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King said: ''EU Member States should be able to take steps to reinforce their security - in exceptional circumstances, and in a framework that respects the huge importance and benefits of the Schengen zone.''
Over the past years, the Commission has taken a number of steps to increase security within the Schengen area and to enhance the management of its external borders. The Schengen Borders Code has been amended on several previous occasions to ensure that it remains fit for purpose. Member States have used the Schengen rules to introduce temporary controls within the foreseen time limits and conditions, respecting and safeguarding the wider functioning of the Schengen system. The tools in place have served Europe well until now, but faced with new security challenges, the Schengen Borders Code needs to be updated to prolong the time limits for internal border controls, coupled with stronger safeguards. The Commission's proposals today will update the rules, while making sure they are used more effectively and only in exceptional situations as a measure of last resort when necessary and proportionate. The reinforced rules also tighten the duty to cooperate with neighbouring Member States, in particular, to minimise impact on free movement.
In addition, to improve the joint application of the Schengen Borders Code and wider Schengen rules, and echoing the call made by President Juncker in his State of the Union address, the Communication invites the Council now to take the decision fully integrating Bulgaria and Romania into the Schengen area, with Croatia becoming a full member once all the criteria are met.
An improved Schengen Borders Code to face current threats
Whilst the current rules on the temporary reintroduction of internal border controls have proven sufficient in the vast majority of cases, the time limits foreseen in the legislation may not always be sufficient when Member States face evolving serious threats to public order or internal security. The Commission is therefore proposing to adjust the applicable time limits under Articles 25 and 27 of the Schengen Borders Code to up to one year (instead of six months), while at the same time introducing stricter procedural safeguards, including the obligation for Member States to assess if alternative measures could address the identified threat more efficiently and the submission of a detailed risk assessment.
Under today's proposals, Member States will also be able to exceptionally prolong controls if the same threat persists beyond one year and when commensurate exceptional national measures within the territory, such as a state of emergency, have also been taken to address this threat. Such prolongation would require a Recommendation of the Council, which would need to take into account the opinion given by the Commission, and would be strictly limited to 6 month periods with the possibility to prolong no more than three times up to a maximum period of two years.
Pending the adoption of these legislative amendments, the Commission is also issuing guidance today to Member States on the better application of the existing Schengen rules, in the form of a Recommendation. Member States are reminded that the introduction of temporary internal border controls must remain an exceptional measure of last resort, the impact on free movement should be limited and that alternative measures, such as police checks and cross-border cooperation, should be prioritised. Member States must regularly evaluate any temporary controls, inform and cooperate with other concerned Member States, and refrain from any unjustified measures.
Finally, for Member States to confront threats in a united way, standing together in a stronger Schengen area, it is now high time that Bulgaria and Romania become full Schengen members. The Council should take the decision to approve their Schengen accession and lift controls at the internal borders between these two Member States and their EU neighbours. Bulgaria and Romania have demonstrated their capacity to defend the EU's external borders, and should therefore become members of our internal border-free zone.
Background
The Schengen area is the largest free travel area in the world. It allows more than 400 million EU citizens, as well as visitors, to move freely and goods and services to flow unhindered. Schengen is one of the major achievements of European integration which should be safeguarded and preserved.
Since its conception, the Schengen area has been confronted with different types of challenges and threats. The Schengen rules have been ensuring the wider functioning of the Schengen system, allowing it to respond to the challenges. For instance, as a result of secondary movements of irregular migrants and deficiencies in the management of the external borders in Greece, the Commission triggered the Article 29 procedure of the Schengen Borders Code; this provided for the temporary reintroduction of internal border controls for the five most concerned countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden), based on a detailed Schengen Evaluation by the Commission.
For More Information
Q&A: Preserving and strengthening the Schengen area
Communication on preserving and strengthening Schengen
Regulation amending the rules applicable to the temporary reintroduction of border control at internal border
Recommendation on the implementation of the provisions of the Schengen Borders Code on temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders in the Schengen area
Factsheet: The Schengen rules explained '' September 2017
A column of smoke rising from a burning village forms the backdrop to one of the worst humanitarian crises the world is facing'--and a powerful reminder to thousands of people who have fled that all that they had is now gone.
An estimated 400,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh in the past three weeks to escape a surge of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state, home to a Muslim minority for centuries.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, has described the violence as ''textbook ethnic cleansing'' at the hands of the army and local militias, who retaliated against the civilian population following an Rohingya insurgent attack on security forces on August 25, resulting in 71 deaths, at least 59 militants and 12 soldiers.
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Smoke in Myanmar is seen from Bangladesh on September 14, 2017 in Shah Porir Dip, Bangladesh. Around 400,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since late August during the outbreak of violence in the Rakhine state. Allison Joyce/Getty Images
''No one has any hope of return,'' Tejshree Thapa, senior South Asia researcher for the U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Watch, tells Newsweek a few days after she returned from the region.
''The reality on the ground is much much worse than any image can describe. The sheer scale of it is beyond belief,'' she says. ''I've worked with a lot of refugees but I've never seen a group this devastated, this destroyed. It's incredibly bleak.''
The suffering the Rohingya are experiencing in recent weeks isn't new. Myanmar's largest minority, they have been persecuted for decades. They have survived waves of ethnically-motivated violence by the military government, which has progressively deprived them of basic human rights.
The reason for this hatred, according to human rights activists, is simple: nationalism-fuelled racism.
''Rohingyas have been facing genocide for many years,'' human rights activist and president of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, Tun Khin, tells Newsweek.
He explains that the group is an easy target for Myanmar's ultra-nationalists: ''Rohingyas are a different ethnic group, they have a different appearance and religion.''
A Rohingya Muslim woman who fled from ongoing military operations in Myanmars Rakhine state, gets off a boat after crossing over from Myanmar into the Bangladesh side of the border. Onur Coban/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
When Myanmar'--known as Burma at the time'-- became independent from British rule in 1948, the Rohingya were able to participate in the political life of the country, obtaining statehood status for Rakhine in 1974. But a few years later, during 1977 and 1978, a wave of violence against ''illegal immigration'' forced a first mass exodus to Bangladesh.
Many Rohingya returned home a year later, but in 1982 the military regime stripped them of their citizenship rights and ethnic minority status. In 1994, it began refusing to issue birth certificates to babies born of Rohingya parents.
Even two decades later, after the military government finally allowed elections and long-term political prisoner and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi became the country's de facto leader, the Rohingya were excluded from the country's census in 2014.
Rohingya Muslim refugees disembark from a boat on the Bangladeshi side of Naf river in Teknaf on September 13, 2017. Masfiqur Sohan/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The mass exodus of Rohingya to Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries has occurred at least three times in the past 50 years: in 1977-78, in 1991-2 and in 2012 hundreds of thousands fled across the borders. Each time thousands returned to Rakhine when the worst of the violence was over.
In October last year'--when the military carried out a campaign of ''devastating cruelty'' as described by the U.N.'--against the Rohingya following a militant attack against security forces. In April, Aung San Suu Kyi denied reports of ethnic cleansing and promised Rohingya would be safe it they came back to Myanmar.
''The evidence is irrefutable '' the Myanmar security forces are setting northern Rakhine State ablaze in a targeted campaign to push the Rohingya people out of Myanmar. Make no mistake: this is ethnic cleansing,'' said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International's crisis response director, in a statement.
''There is a clear and systematic pattern of abuse here. Security forces surround a village, shoot people fleeing in panic and then torch houses to the ground. In legal terms, these are crimes against humanity'--systematic attacks and forcible deportation of civilians,'' she added.
Recently arrived Rohingya refugees wait to receive aid donations on September 13, 2017 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
Human Rights Watch's Thapa agrees, arguing that what makes this new wave of anti-Rohingya attacks worse than in previous years is how coordinated they are. ''It feels like a programme designed to drive out everyone finally,'' she said.
As Myanmar continues to block access to the Rakhine state, Thepa spoke to some of the refugees she met in Bangladesh to document the violence. One woman from Maungdaw Township said she fled on August 26, leaving her husband and 10-year-old son, after security forces attacked her village and killed her father and many other civilians.
''All had knife wounds or bullet wounds, some had both. My father was among the dead; his neck had been cut open. I was unable to do last rites for [him]''I just fled,'' she said.
Some refugees arrived in Bangladesh on foot, crossing a border where the Myanmar army is said to be laying landmines specifically to target refugees. The government denied these reports, despite numerous claims by non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International.
A Rohingya Muslim woman holds an infant child who died when the boat they were traveling in capsized just before reaching the shore of the Bay of Bengal, in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh on September 13, 2017. Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Others have used boats to cross either the Naf River or the Bay of Bengal into Bangladesh. Some of these vessels have capsized or sunk'--nine women and eleven children lost their lives in one such incident in August. Many more have died since, as demonstrated by a harrowing picture of a weeping mother holding the lifeless body of her five-week-old child.
Now, international pressure on Suu Kyi, who holds the title of State Counsellor, to stop the violence and ensure a safe return for the Rohingya is mounting. A petition on Change.org to strip her of her Nobel Peace Prize has reached almost half a million signatures but the Nobel laureate, who remains popular in the country, has shunned the international community and indicated she did not believe reports of ethnic violence.
She also recently announced she would skip the 72nd U.N. General Assembly session in New York, which opened this week.
Smoke in Myanmar is seen from Bangladesh on September 14, 2017 in Shah Porir Dip, Bangladesh. Around 400,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since late August during the outbreak of violence in the Rakhine state. Allison Joyce/Getty Images
Despite her absence, human rights campaigners hope that the meeting will be able to provide a strong condemnation of Myanmar's violence as well as assistance to the government of Bangladesh to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees.
''We want to live peacefully in our native land. We don't want to be on the strain of other countries,'' Tun, the U.K. based activist, said.
He wants to see the formal recognition of the Rohingya as a minority in Myanmar, the provision of humanitarian aid and the dispatch of U.N. peacekeepers to protect the Rohingya. Tun has also appealed to Suu Kyi, who knows as well as as anyone what it is to be deprived of your rights in Myanmar.
"I want to ask her to please use her liberty to promote ours," he said.
Millennials
Zero racism on TV version of Handmaids tale
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Multiple arrested after fight inside Berkeley's 'empathy tent' | New York Post
So much for empathy. Members of opposing political groups clashed Tuesday inside a so-called ''empathy tent'' on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
At least four people were arrested, police said.
The empathy tent was reportedly in place to offer protesters a calm place to unwind amid the choas around them. But the tent ultimately offered little respite '-- and nearly toppled during clashes between conservative students and leftist activists, the Los Angeles Times reported.
''It's tough, but we do what we can to foster dialogue,'' said Edwin Fulch, who reportedly used the tent for talks about the virtues of meditation and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The protest was led by Joey Gibson, leader of a group called Patriot Prayer. Gibson had called for a rally after student organizers canceled a planned ''Free Speech Week.''
Counterprotesters determined to shut the event down got into shouting matches and scuffles with Gibson and his supporters inside the tent and later in a city park.
Left-wing activist Yvonne Felarca was arrested for battery and resisting arrest, police said. Three men were arrested on charges including possession of body armor, carrying a banned weapon and participating in a riot.
Berkeley's reputation as a liberal bastion has made it a flashpoint for the country's political divisions since the election of President Donald Trump.
Four protests have turned violent on campus and in the surrounding streets in recent months, prompting authorities to tighten security as they struggle to balance free speech rights with preventing violence.
David Marquis, who identified himself as a senior at the school, said he was tired of the protests on campus. Marquis was outside the protest area and described the scene.
''If you look at them, it's ridiculous,'' Marquis told the Los Angeles Times. ''You've got a guy with purple hair with a f'--ing lightsaber talking about Hitler. It's hard for me to take any of this seriously.''
On September 18, the British Channel 4 ran a news segment with the headline, 'Potentially deadly bomb ingredients are 'frequently bought together' on Amazon.' The piece claims that ''users searching for a common chemical compound used in food production are offered the ingredients to produce explosive black powder'' on Amazon's website, and that ''steel ball bearings often used as shrapnel'' are also promoted on the page, in some cases as items that other customers also bought.
The 'common chemical compound' in Channel 4's report is potassium nitrate, an ingredient used in curing meat. If you go to Amazon's page to order a half-kilo bag of the stuff , you'll see the suggested items include sulfur and charcoal, the other two ingredients of gunpowder. (Unlike Channel 4, I am comfortable revealing the secrets of this 1000-year-old technology.)
The implication is clear: home cooks are being radicalized by the site's recommendation algorithm to abandon their corned beef in favor of shrapnel-packed homemade bombs. And more ominously, enough people must be buying these bomb parts on Amazon for the algorithm to have noticed the correlations, and begin making its dark suggestions.
But as a few more minutes of clicking would have shown, the only thing Channel 4 has discovered is a hobbyist community of people who mill their own black powder at home, safely and legally, for use in fireworks, model rockets, antique firearms, or to blow up the occasional stump.
It's legal to make and possess black powder in the United Kingdom. There are limits on how much of the stuff you can have (100 grams), but because black powder is easy to make from cheap ingredients, hard to set off by accident, and not very toxic, it's a popular choice for amateurs. All you need is a device called a ball mill , a rotating drum packed with ball bearings that mixes the powders together and grinds the particles to a uniform size.
And this leads us to the most spectacular assertion in the Channel 4 report, that along with sulfur and charcoal, Amazon's algorithm is recommending detonators, cables, and "steel ball bearings often used as shrapnel in explosive devices."
The ball bearings Amazon is recommending are clearly intended for use in the ball mill. The algorithm is picking up on the fact that people who buy the ingredients for black powder also need to grind it. It's no more shocking than being offered a pepper mill when you buy peppercorns.
The idea that these ball bearings are being sold for shrapnel is a reporter's fantasy. There is no conceivable world in which enough bomb-making equipment is being sold on Amazon to train an algorithm to make this recommendation.
The Channel 4 piece goes on to reveal that people searching for 'another widely available chemical' are being offered the ingredients for thermite, a mixture of metal powders that when ignited ''creates a hazardous reaction used in incendiary bombs and for cutting through steel.''
In this case, the 'widely available chemical' is magnesium ribbon. If you search for this ribbon on Amazon, the site will offer to sell you iron oxide (rust) and aluminum powder, which you can mix together to create a spectacular bit of fireworks called the thermite reaction:
The thermite reaction is performed in every high school chemistry classroom, as a fun reward for students who have had to suffer through a baffling unit on redox reactions. You mix the rust and powdered aluminum in a crucible, light them with the magnesium ribbon, and watch a jet of flame shoot out, leaving behind a small amount of molten iron. The mixed metal powders are hard to ignite (that's why you need the magnesium ribbon), but once you get them going, they burn vigorously.
The main consumer use for thermite, as far as I can tell, is lab demonstrations and recreational chemistry. Importantly, thermite is not an explosive'--it will not detonate.
So Channel 4 has discovered that fireworks enthusiasts and chemistry teachers shop on Amazon.
But by blending these innocent observations into an explosive tale of terrorism, they've guaranteed that their coverage will attract the maxmium amount of attention.
The 'Amazon teaches bomb-making' story has predictably spread all over the Internet:
Missing in these reports is any sense of proportion or realism. In what universe would an innocent person shopping for a bag of elemental sulfur be radicalized into making an improvised gunpowder bomb, complete with shrapnel, by a recommendations engine?
Does Channel 4 think that instructions for making explosives are hard to find online, so that people have to resort to hit-and-miss shopping for chemical elements to learn the secret of gunpowder?
And how much duty of care does Amazon have in making product recommendations? The product page for household ammonia, for example, offers as a recommended item a six-pack of concentrated bleach. Ammonia and bleach react together to create a deadly gas, and you can buy both on Amazon in practically unlimited quantities. Does that mean Amazon is trying to persuade customers to poison people with chloramine?
Finally, just how many people does Channel 4 imagine are buying bombs online? For a recommendations algorithm to be suggesting shrapnel to sulfur shoppers implies that thousands or tens of thousands of people are putting these items together in their shopping cart. So where are all these black powder bombers? And why on earth would an aspiring bomber use an online shopping cart tied to their real identity?
A more responsible report would have clarified that black powder, a low-velocity explosive, is not a favored material for bomb making. Other combinations are just as easy to make, and pack a bigger punch.
The bomb that blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma City, for example, was a mixture of agricultural fertilizer and racing fuel. Terrorists behind the recent London bombings have favored a homemade explosive called TATP that can be easily synthesized from acetone, a ubiquitous industrial solvent.
Those bombers who do use black powder find it easier to just scrape it out of commercially available fireworks, which is how the Boston Marathon bomber obtained the explosives for his device. The only people carefully milling the stuff from scratch, after buying it online in an easily traceable way, are harmless musket owners and rocket nerds who will now face an additional level of hassle.
The shoddiness of this story has not prevented it from spreading like a weed to other media outlets, accumulating errors as it goes.
The New York Times omits the bogus shrapnel claim, but falsely describes thermite as '' two powders that explode when mixed together in the right proportions and then ignited.'' (Thermite does not detonate.)
Vice repeats Channel 4's unsubstantiated claims about 'shrapnel', while also implying that thermite is an explosive: ''c omponents needed to make thermite, used in incendiary bombs, were paired with steel ball bearings (DIY shrapnel).''
The Independent is even more confused , reporting that '' i f users click on Thermite, for example, which is a pyrotechnic composition of metal powder, the website links to two other items.'' It also puts the phrase 'mother of Satan' in the URL, presumably to improve the article's search engine ranking for the unrelated explosive TATP.
Slate repeats Channel 4's assertion that Amazon is nudging ' the customer to buy ball bearings, which can be used as shrapnel in homemade explosives.''
Only the skeptical BBC bothers to consult with outside experts , who correctly note that large numbers of people would have to be buying these items in combination to have any effect on the algorithm.
When I contacted the author of one of these pieces to express my concerns, they explained that the piece had been written on short deadline that morning, and they were already working on an unrelated article. The author cited coverage in other mainstream outlets (including the New York Times) as justification for republishing and not correcting the assertions made in the original Channel 4 report.
The real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism. By forcing reporters to optimize every story for clicks, not giving them time to check or contextualize their reporting, and requiring them to race to publish follow-on articles on every topic, the clickbait economics of online media encourage carelessness and drama. This is particularly true for technical topics outside the reporter's area of expertise.
And reporters have no choice but to chase clicks. Because Google and Facebook have a duopoly on online advertising, the only measure of success in publishing is whether a story goes viral on social media. Authors are evaluated by how individual stories perform online, and face constant pressure to make them more arresting. Highly technical pieces are farmed out to junior freelancers working under strict time limits. Corrections, if they happen at all, are inserted quietly through 'ninja edits' after the fact.
There is no real penalty for making mistakes, but there is enormous pressure to frame stories in whatever way maximizes page views. Once those stories get picked up by rival news outlets, they become ineradicable. The sheer weight of copycat coverage creates the impression of legitimacy. As the old adage has it, a lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is pulling its boots on.
Earlier this year, when the Guardian published an equally ignorant (and far more harmful) scare piece about a popular secure messenger app, it took a group of security experts six months of cajoling and pressure to shame the site into amending its coverage. And the Guardian is a prestige publication, with an independent public editor. Not every story can get such editorial scrutiny on appeal, or attract the sympathetic attention of Teen Vogue.
The very machine learning systems that Channel 4's article purports to expose are eroding online journalism's ability to do its job.
Moral panics like this one are not just harmful to musket owners and model rocket builders. They distract and discredit journalists, making it harder to perform the essential function of serving as a check on the powerful.
The real story of machine learning is not how it promotes home bomb-making, but that it's being deployed at scale with minimal ethical oversight, in the service of a business model that relies entirely on psychological manipulation and mass surveillance. The capacity to manipulate people at scale is being sold to the highest bidder, and has infected every aspect of civic life, including democratic elections and journalism.
Together with climate change, this algorithmic takeover of the public sphere is the biggest news story of the early 21st century. We desperately need journalists to cover it. But as they grow more dependent on online publishing for their professional survival, their capacity to do this kind of reporting will disappear, if it has not disappeared already.
The Trump M5M Cycle
Trump Says He Groped Melania in Public, Ivanka Looks Down on Him, in Newly Released Recordings
Donald Trump thinks Ivanka ''looks down on me,'' concedes he has groped Melania in public, knows his compulsive handwashing ''could be a psychological problem'' and once suggested deploying sleeping gas on planes to deter terrorists, according to a new archive of all the conversations he had on air with The Howard Stern Show.
Those comments, along with various eyebrow-raising but predictable vulgarities, can be found in a new, online archive of Trump's 15 hours of radio banter with the shock jock. In them, he discusses the relative hotness of his wives (and almost every other female celebrity of the moment) and his feelings about his daughter Ivanka, while chortling with Stern's crew as they joked about who was more ''gay'' and whether getting vomited on was more gross than eating food that had been on someone's anus.
In one September 2004 call, Trump and Stern were bantering about how Ivana was dating a ''blue blood'' from Bedminster, New Jersey, and joking about how their kids were more blue-blooded than they were. ''I think my daughter looks down on me,'' Trump admitted. ''She said, 'Oh my God'--'''
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The two then turned to how much money Trump was going to leave his growing brood. (Barron was not yet born.) ''I'm going to give them Trump Online University,'' he said. ''And charity gets a lot.''
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Stern refused to re-air any of his conversations with the Republican nominee. ''I feel Donald Trump did the show in an effort to be entertaining and have fun with us, and I feel like it would be a betrayal to any of our guests if I sat there and played them now where people are attacking him,'' Stern said on his SiriusXM show.
Newsweek exclusively obtained the full audio and transcripts of all 15 hours of Trump talking to Stern, from 1993 to August 25, 2015. Taken together, the Stern interviews are a rich, Freudian case study, a gold mine for anyone trying to understand the president of the United States. The real estate magnate usually called in when he had something to hawk'--a book, a prizefight, his TV show'--but almost always stayed around to banter with Stern, whose preoccupation with sex and unctuous questioning style led the real estate magnate to free-associate on everything from his parents, children and upbringing to money, enemies, politics and, of course, breasts, enhanced or not.
The interviews are collated and searchable in a massive new archive of conversations that also show that Trump and his third wife, now first lady Melania Trump, were more than willing to discuss intimate details of their sex life, even as the Donald tested the water for a presidential run in 1999. An anonymous person earlier this month sent the audio files of 35 full and unique Trump-Stern interviews by Dropbox to the website Factba.se. The site developers had made a public request for Stern-Trump interview audio files on various Stern fan sites and on Reddit earlier this year. The site allowed Newsweek to search the files before making them available to the public for the first time on Monday.
Trump has talked more to Stern than to any other single journalist or media personality, including Joe Scarborough, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Larry King and Don Imus. The voluminous archive contains more than 104,357 words Trump uttered on TheHoward Stern Show'--a number which is, by the site's calculations, 21 percent longer than The Art of the Deal, Trump's first bestseller, which weighed in at 86,575 words.
Most of the conversations happened after Trump started dating Melania, and Stern usually teed off by asking intimate questions about the former model. In a conversation on November 11, 1999, transcribed for the site, Trump called in to hawk an upcoming prizefight at the Taj Mahal casino, then talked about PDA with Melania and how their first night went.
Stern: Have you ever felt her up in public?
Trump: Yeah.
Stern: Yeah. As I know.
Trump: I'm very well behaved, actually, and almost always I'm very down the middle.
Stern: How did you meet this supermodel?
Trump: I met her at a very big party in New York. And she was there along with other supermodels, and I greeted all of them, and I said, that's the one that's the most beautiful.
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Stern: Wow.
Trump: And she is considered beautiful by the other girls. I mean they, she's really considered most beautiful, but she's beyond beauty, she's a very nice person.
Stern: And you got stank on your hangover the first night?
Trump: I didn't do well with her the first time.
Stern: You didn't.
Trump: No, it was not working. The whole thing was not working the first night.
On May 24, 2002, Trump referred to getting ''the right price'' for Melania on a billboard.
Stern: She must be great in the sack. She must have magic.... She must do something.
Trump: Well, I let her do advertising down there because I got her for the right price, Howard [referring to Melania on a New York City billboard ad].
Stern: She must be driving you crazy.
Trump: I really made a good deal. She did go on the billboards, and I got it for the right price.
Stern: And she's not a'--she's not a pain in the ass, like Ivana?
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Trump: No, she's great.
Stern and Trump also discussed Trump's various prenuptial agreements. In May 1993, he notes that even though he gave Ivana $25 million, she violated the prenup, ''spitting all over'' him by writing a roman clef. That provoked Stern to ask Trump about his germ phobia. Trump admitted he washed his hands ''as many times as possible'' per day.
Stern: You realize that's a psychological problem.
Trump: It could be a psychological problem.
Stern: There's no way for you to get... You cannot overpower this problem, you know that... I mean theoretically, you know, because that's obsessive-compulsive, right? Have you ever gone to a psychiatrist to eliminate that problem?
Trump: No. I like it. I like cleanliness. Cleanliness is a nice thing. Not only hands, body, everything.
Stern then asks if Trump makes the models he dates (many of whom they had rated together) take AIDS tests.
Trump: I own 25 percent of Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
Stern: You wear a rubber? There you go, there's something interesting you don't hear every day on TV.
After putting Melania on the phone with Stern once, Trump also explained that he likes women with accents, and Stern reminded him of Ivana's Czech accent.
Trump: She's got [an] accent.
Stern: Well, you know what it is, the accent's cute now, but you better not get married. Because you know what happened, Ivana's accent was cute for a long time.
Trump: Yes, it was amazing, and then one time I woke up that [sic] it was terrible, I couldn't stand it.
On October 10, 2001, discussing ways to prevent another 9/11, Trump had a novel suggestion. ''You have a red button in the plane, and the pilot has a huge problem in the back. He's got two or three terrorists, you know, crazy,'' Trump said. ''He presses a button and sleeping gas comes out, the entire back of the plane goes to sleep.''
Trump usually took the bait whenever Stern tried to get him talking about which celebrities he would ''bang'' or how often he and Melania had sex, but occasionally he deflected him. On May 8, 1993, he noted in the recordings, ''I like Howard, but I have to be crazy to be here.''
But he kept coming back for more.
The interview archive resembles a live stream from the boys' table in a seventh-grade cafeteria. Trump eagerly rated women's bodies, shared details of sex with his wife and roared at scatological jokes.
In a new book released this month called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess Trump from afar. Psychologists Rosemary Sword and Philip Lombardo write that Trump's impulsivity and immaturity are signs of a person exhibiting ''unbridled and extreme present hedonism,'' a syndrome related to arrested emotional development due to childhood trauma.
''Without proper individual assessment we can only make a best guess about whether Trump suffers from arrested emotional development which may or may not be a factor in his extreme present hedonism,'' they write. Yet, based on ''his bullying behavior, his immature remarks about sex, and his childlike need for constant attention, we can speculate that the traumatizing event was when he was sent away to military school at the age of thirteen.''
Trump first expressed interest in running for president in 1988; he ran briefly in 1999 and then considered again in 2011. His last appearance on Stern was August 25, 2015, two months after he had announced his candidacy. That day, Trump declined the DJ's request to rate the hotness of Megyn Kelly. ''Well, you know, in the old days I would not have minded answering that question, but today I'll take a pass,'' he said.
After the ''grab 'em by the pussy'' Entertainment Tonight hot-mic tape release in October of last year, Melania Trump went on CNN and told Anderson Cooper she had warned her husband that Stern was bad for him. ''He was pushed on, and many times I give him an advice, and I didn't agree to do all the tapes on Howard Stern, with Billy Bush,'' she said. ''Because I know those people. They hook him on, they'--they try to get from him some'--some inappropriate and dirty language.''
In April of last year, candidate Trump explained that the Stern conversations were simply good fun. ''I never anticipated running for office or being a politician, so I could have fun with Howard on the radio and everyone would love it. People do love it,'' Trump said. ''I could say whatever I wanted when I was an entrepreneur, a business guy.''
More from Newsweek
Trump Forced Women to Wear 'Very Tiny' Bathing Suits and Higher Heels After Buying Beauty Pageants
Donald Trump had a simple, albeit controversial, plan to boost ratings for the Miss USA pageant he purchased in 2005. "I'm gonna get the bathing suits to be smaller and the heels to be higher," the future president told radio show host Howard Stern that year.
Newsweek exclusively obtained 15 hours of interviews Trump gave The Howard Stern Show from 1993 to 2015, an archive that Factba.se has just added to its growing online database of every statement the president has publicly made in his lifetime. The recordings are peak ''locker room talk'' for Trump and reveal how the media and business mogul grew to prominence'--sometimes by any means necessary.
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Trump told Stern and his cohost, Robin Quivers, he wanted better ratings for the pageant he purchased from ITT Corporation by giving audiences what he thought they wanted most: beautiful and barely dressed women.
Quivers: Now, one of the stipulations in the Miss USA pageant: What kind of suits are we talking about?
Trump: Well, you know, and I got myself into a little bit of a problem, they said, how are you gonna change the pageant because I bought it from ITT, you know the term is ITT, that's now under siege.
Stern: Right.
Trump: I bought it a few months ago from ITT, and so somebody called up from Reader's Digest and they said, what change is he gonna make to bring it up. I said, well, you know, 'cause it gives huge ratings, they've always gotten great ratings. And I said, well, the primary change is, I'm gonna get the bathing suits to be smaller and the heels to be higher.
Stern: Nice.
Trump: And we're gonna bring it in. And a lot of people wanted to see it sort of updated, so we're gonna update it.
Stern: Oh, you are'--there are gonna be smaller bathing suits?
Trump: Very tiny.
Quivers: [With Stern] Whoa.
Trump: And by the time I get it, you know, by the time I have it for a year, forget it.
Stern: Oh, I like that.
Trump: It's a little gradual. [Inaudible]
Stern: It's a way to convince nude pageants.
Quivers: Oh yeah, yeah.
Stern: Let me tell you something: You're on the right track, you know what the people want. They want smaller swimsuits, and I am not kidding you, I will watch the pageant, legs akimbo, nude, with my tissues, I will pleasure myself. And I promise not to finish during your wife's performance, you understand that, out of respect to you. And congratulations on another great acquisition, the Miss USA pageant tonight on CBS tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern.
Trump: It will be a lot of fun, Howard.
Stern: All right. We'll all tune in.
Trump's pageants did become more scantily clad spectacles over the years, with a number of winners stirring controversy that put the owner himself in front-page news stories across the country. Trump allowed Tara Conner, Miss USA 2006, to keep her title after being caught drinking in New York City clubs underage after winning the crown. He was also notably criticized during last year's presidential campaign by Alicia Machado, Miss Universe 1996, who says the New York billionaire forced her to lose weight and stay within a certain body size after winning the competition.
Trump Tax Plan: Here's what his tax reform looks like - CBS News
The Trump administration's proposal for changes to the tax code will reduce the number of individual tax brackets, eliminate most personal deductions and lower corporate tax rates, according to senior administration officials.
With Senate Republicans' last-ditch attempt at health care reform dead , the GOP is pivoting to another policy arena in which it hopes to find more success. But the White House is leaving many of the details to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Senior administration officials told reporters on a conference call Tuesday that the goal is for the tax changes to create a larger "zero" tax bracket, and be "at least as progressive" as the current system, all with the "middle class in mind."
The proposed plan reduces the number of individual tax brackets from the current seven to three, with the lowest bracket jumping from 10 percent to 12 percent, the highest tax bracket falling from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, and the middle bracket coming in at 25 percent. But it's anyone's guess who will pay those rates. The administration is leaving the income limits to accompany those brackets up to the House and Senate tax-writing committees. The administration is also leaving wiggle room for the committees to devise a higher bracket north of the 35 percent rate for the wealthiest individuals and families.
The administration said it was eliminating most individual credits and deductions, and touted the near-doubling the standard deduction from $6,350 as of 2017 to $12,000 for a single person, and from $12,700 as of 2017 to $24,000 for a married couple.
The White House also wants to increase the child tax credit, which now tops out at $1,000, but it is also leaving the details of any increase up to the committees, too. The White House does want to raise income limits for the credit so more families qualify. The administration also intends to add a $500 tax credit for non-minor dependents, such as an older adult parents are caring for or an elderly grandparent who lives with the family.
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CBSN Trump pushes Congress on tax reformPresident Trump is meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers Wednesday as the White House pushes for progress on tax reform. CBS News Radio's ...
The deductions the administration intends to keep are for mortgages and charitable contributions, although the White House is urging the House and Senate committees to incentivize retirement saving. The administration's plan eliminates the deduction for state and local taxes, one of the changes likely to cause the most consternation for those in high-tax states like California, New York and New Jersey.
The plan also repeals the estate tax, sometimes referred to as the inheritance or death tax, a tax levied on property transferred from a deceased person to his or her heirs.
Taxes on businesses will also changes, the administration officials explained.
The new top tax rate for small businesses will be 25 percent.
For corporations, the tax rate would decline to 20 percent '-- slightly higher than the 15 percent Mr. Trump has mentioned, but significantly lower than the current rate of 35 percent. In exchange for the lower rate, the White House wants to eliminate the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax.
For companies with an international footprint, the White House is also proposing a shift from the current worldwide tax system to a territorial system.
Under the current system, companies based in the U.S. are taxed on profits they earn anywhere in the world. Here's an example laid out by the Republican Policy Committee in 2012:
A corporation in the 35 percent tax bracket repatriates $1 million of income earned abroad, it would owe $350,000 in U.S. tax. But it has already paid $200,000 in tax to the country where the income was earned at that country's 20 percent rate. It would owe the U.S. government another 15 percent ($150,000) in order to bring the total tax paid on the $1 million of income to the U.S. 35 percent tax rate.
A territorial system taxes companies only on the profits they earn within the country in which they are based. The administration's plan would allow companies to repatriate their offshore profits back to the U.S. without incurring additional taxes.
To make the transition, the White House is proposing a one-time tax on profits that have accumulated overseas, with two different tax rates applied -- one for liquid assets and one lower rate for illiquid assets. The one-time tax would be payable over several years.
The White House pointed out that the U.S. is one of only six OECD countries which taxes its companies based on a worldwide system, rather than a territorial system.
Mr. Trump announced the rollout of his tax plan Wednesday afternoon in Indiana.
CBS News' Jackie Alemany contributed to this report.
Is Trump's tax proposal driving the bond market selloff? - MarketWatch
A global bond selloff spread from the U.S. to Germany on Wednesday, with analysts and traders pegging the action to new details on President Donald Trump's tax reform.
With further clarity on the exact policies Trump wants to see passed, the recent progress could placate investors who have complained that his legislative proposals have been too vague. If Trump manages to push his tax plan through Congress, it could stoke inflation pressures, eroding demand for Treasurys.
See: Text of tax-reform framework from President Donald Trump and Republicans
Yet the severity of the selling pressure seen mid-week suggested other forces were at work. After all, bond investors have been blas(C) about the progress of tax reform after seeing Trump have trouble pushing its legislation through Congress, even as the Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. It's not clear if the current proposal has a higher chance of passing.
Market participants said the Federal Reserve's recent hawkish stance and investors who are overextended on bets wagering yields would slip lower helped to unwind the bullish outlook for long-ended Treasurys. The 10-year bond yield TMUBMUSD10Y, +1.47% climbed more than 7 basis points, in its largest single-day jump since March. 1, according to WSJ Market Data.
Bond prices move inversely to yields.
The Federal Reserve's most influential members, New York Fed President William Dudley and Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, have justified the central bank's hawkish stance in recent speeches, arguing that inflation would eventually hit its 2% target and that raising rates now would be prudent in the face of tight labor markets, which if left unattended, could drive inflation higher.
''We've got so many central bank speakers in the last two days, no one really sounded dovish. There's tinges of coordinated central bank discussions,'' said Marvin Loh, senior fixed-income strategist at BNY Mellon.
The momentum appears to have shifted in favor of the bond bears. Earlier in September, speculators' net position in 10-year Treasury futures was bullish, meaning the majority of investors were betting on long-dated yields to rise rather than fall. But in a more recent survey of investor positioning by JP Morgan on Sept. 25, the share of fund managers, central bankers and hedge funds holding more long-dated Treasurys compared to the benchmark index's allocation had fallen.
''Investors have been caught offside by the Fed's recent hawkishness despite low inflation,'' said Gene Tannuzzo, senior portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle.
But last week, when the Fed first displayed its hawkish feathers in the policy statement, long-dated yields shrugged. Though most of the members voted for a rate hike in December and the dot-plot forecasts stayed unchanged for 2017 and 2018, only the shorter two-year note yield TMUBMUSD02Y, +0.55% rose sharply. This caused the yield curve, a graph charting maturities against yields, to flatten.
It's why some analysts think the strength of the selloff, reflected by bond-buying in the long end of the curve, was overdone.
''Ultimately, it might just be the yield curve flattened too much, too quickly,'' said Loh.
Investors still feel much of Wednesday's trading was driven by tax reform, if only because expectations for Trump's proposals had fallen so much that any sign of progress would have led to a backlash in Treasurys. Andy Richman, a fund manager for SunTrust Advisory Services, said investors were complacent and had priced out tax reform altogether.
The bear steepening of the yield curve, when longer-dated yields rise much faster than shorter-dated yields thanks to stronger inflation expectations, suggested it was hopes for tax cuts instead of Fed hawkishness driving Wednesday's action, said Eric Stein, co-director of global income at Eaton Vance.
The U.S. Treasurys market has been linked to the ebb and flow of expectations for fiscal reform. Since Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, the downtrend in the benchmark 10-year yield reflected a ''tremendous unwind of optimism around fiscal policy,'' said Tannuzzo.
Trump's approval ratings, a proxy for his legislative priorities getting enacted in Congress, have fallen in line with the slipping 10-year Treasury yield, according to Goldman Sachs' analysts.
See: Why Goldman thinks the so-called Trump trade is still alive in the bond market
For the most part, expectations are close to bottoming out. Even after new details of Trump's proposals were unveiled Wednesday, some analysts said the mid-week selloff would dissipate in the way that the post-election jump in yields unwound over the course of 2017.
''The proposal is simply a more exacting version of Trump's tax reform 'wish list' that has been floated several times. It's always folly to presume that precision implies accuracy and we fear that's what the markets are currently trading,'' wrote Ian Lyngen and Aaron Kohli, interest-rate strategists at BMO Capital Markets.
Nonetheless, a few investors are cautiously optimistic that the so-called reflation trade is back on track. Earlier in the year, Treasury yields had jumped in anticipation that Trump's pro-growth agenda would push growth and inflation higher. Though the White House has had trouble repealing and replacing Obamacare, which has taken up much of Trump's energies, certain aspects of his tax plan might prove palatable to Democrats, said Stein.
''There's a decent shot of passing in some semblance of the current form,'' he said, highlighting that the proposed corporate tax cuts from 35% to 20% would attract less opposition from across the aisle.
Trains Good / Planes Bad (Whoo Hoo!)
Airports around the globe hit by reservations glitch on Thursday
This file photo from Nov. 23, 2016, shows passenger jets stacking up over Reagan National Airport near in Washington. (Photo: J. David Ake, AP)
A reservations systems glitch slowed down thousands of airline customers around the world Thursday morning.
The scope of the disruption was not immediately clear, but '' for now '' it seemed that the snafu had not snowballed into a major meltdown.
The glitch affected check-ins on at least a half-dozen airlines, all of which use a reservation system made by IT firm Amadeus.
FLIGHT TRACKER: Is your flight on time?
Southwest, Air France, Lufthansa, Qantas and China Air were among those affected by the ''network issue'' at Amadeus.
"Amadeus technical teams took immediate action to identify the cause of the issue and restore services as quickly as possible," the IT firm said in a statement to CNN. "That action is ongoing with services gradually being restored."
MORE FLIGHT PROBLEMS: Ryanair axes 18,000 more flights, slammed for 'persistently misleading passengers'
IN PICTURES: 30 cool aviation photos (story continues below)
Still, the glitch had affected some passengers among the affected carriers at airports across the world, including London Heathrow, Seoul Incheon, Frankfurt and Zurich. In the U.S., it had affected some of Southwest's airports, such as Baltimore/Washington, Washington Reagan National and Dallas Love.
Passenger complaints surfaced Thursday morning on social media. One flier complained of long lines at the Air France counters in Paris.
''The booking system is down waiting now for more than 100 minutes,'' a passenger going by the name of Cornelia Altrichter' on Twitter said about her Thursday morning experience at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.
In the U.S., several Southwest passengers took to social media with their own tales of disruptions caused by technical problems.
Southwest acknowledged the problem to USA TODAY's Today in the Sky blog, but said it did not expect the glitch to have a widespread effect on flights.
''Beginning around 4:30 a.m. CT today, our reservations system vendor Amadeus began experiencing outages, impacting Southwest Airlines along with other airlines,'' Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said. ''We have been experiencing widespread, intermittent issues with several of our applications since that time. We are not experiencing any major delays to our operation at this time.''
Back in Europe, London's busy Heathrow Airport was among those where airlines faced sporadic issues.
"A small number of airlines are experiencing problems across the world & we're working closely with them to solve the issue," Heathrow said in a Thursday morning reply to a passenger there.
Bloomberg News added Amadeus "it couldn't comment on the extent of the disruption," but it appeared most airports suffered short-lived disruptions. "Dublin airport said its systems were down for about 12 minutes, while Manchester in northern England reported a 15-minute failure. The knock-on effect on flights could have lasted much longer, based on previous outages," Bloomberg wrote.
But, in what hopefully was a sign of a quick recovery from the glitch, Qantas -- the Australian carrier that was among those affected -- told CNN it was already recovering from the problem.
"Amadeus -- a check in system for passengers -- went down and now has come back up. Check in was resumed quite quickly," Qantas spokesman Stephen Moynihan said to the news network.
IN PICTURES: 30 (more) cool aviation photos
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2k6MI83
Brexit
Theresa May hints at Boeing boycott in Bombardier US tariff row | Politics | The Guardian
A worker inspects a C Series aeroplane wing in the Bombardier factory in Belfast. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne
Theresa May has dropped a strong hint that the government will stop ordering planes from the US aerospace giant Boeing following the decision to slap punitive tariffs on planes part-made in Belfast by the Canadian company Bombardier.
Angered by the threat to 4,000 jobs in one of the poorest parts of the UK, the prime minister said Boeing's action was not the sort of behaviour Britain expected from a long-term partner but was part of a ''creeping protectionism'' around the world.
''What I would say in relation to Boeing,'' she said, ''is of course we have a long-term partnership with Boeing, various aspects of government, and this is not the sort of behaviour we expect from a long-term partner. It undermines that partnership.''
Earlier this week the US Department of Commerce backed Boeing in an action that could lead to 219% tariffs being placed on planes made by Bombardier '' a move that would make them much more expensive in the key US market.
The preliminary decision taken in Washington, while consistent with the protectionist leanings of Donald Trump has cast a shadow over the UK government's attempts to seek a new free trade deal with Washington after Britain leaves the EU.
Expressing disappointment at the decision, May said she was working with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to seek a different outcome. Bombardier employed 4,000 people in Northern Ireland and was ''very important for us'', the prime minister said.
''I want the UK to be a global champion of free trade. Those who believe in it need to stand up and explain the benefits and show how free trade is important in raising living standards,'' she said. ''Those are discussions we need to have because I see protectionism creeping in around the world.''
May identified protectionism as one of the ''failed ideologies'' of the past and said abandoning the free market completely would harm rather than help the poor.
The prime minister was speaking at a conference to mark the 20th anniversary of Bank of England independence.
Mark Carney, the Bank's governor, said Threadneedle Street's freedom to set interest rates since 1997 had helped the economy through the financial and economic crisis of a decade ago and meant the Bank was well placed to address a range of possible developments around Brexit.
Carney warned that there were limits to what the Bank could do to prevent Brexit leading to lower real incomes, but said it had enough flexibility to make departure from the EU a smoother process.
''In exceptional circumstances like today when the economy is facing profound structural change, the monetary policy committee can extend the horizon over which it returns inflation to target from above, in order to balance the effects on jobs and activity.
''After all, even though monetary policy cannot prevent the weaker real income growth likely to accompany the transition to new trading arrangements with the EU, it can influence how this hit to incomes is distributed between job losses and price rises.''
May said Britain was leaving the EU not Europe and was seeking a solution that was good both for Britain and other EU members. The transition deal the government is seeking after the official exit date in March 2019 would be time-limited and some aspects might take less than the two-year period the prime minister is seeking.
The Jones Act
Puerto Rico crisis: What the Jones Act controversy is all about - Sep. 27, 2017
Now critics say it's making it difficult to get critical supplies into Puerto Rico.
The Jones Act, when it was established in 1920, was meant to promote shipping by U.S.-owned and operated vessels.
But it's also had the unintended consequence of making it twice as expensive to ship things from the U.S. mainland to Puerto Rico as it is to ship from any other foreign port in the world, according to Republican Senator John McCain's office.
McCain and Democratic Representative Nydia M. Velzquez, as well as the governor of Puerto Rico and mayor of San Juan, have urged Trump to suspend the Jones Act to get supplies to Puerto Rico faster.
President Trump has not waived the rule, though he said Wednesday that he is "thinking about" it. He noted the shipping industry opposes a waiver.
"We have a lot of shippers and a lot of people that work in the shipping industry that don't want the Jones Act lifted," he told reporters.
Related: More flights leaving San Juan but thousands still stranded
Trump did suspend the law after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which struck Texas and Florida, to allow ships to move gas from the north while refineries and pipelines in the south were shut down.
Seven lawmakers, led by Velzquez, sent a letter Monday to Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke requesting a one year waiver of the Jones Act for Puerto Rico.
A waiver, they said, would speed the delivery of fuel, food, medicines, clothing and building supplies.
In response, the Department of Homeland Security said the Jones Act was waived after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to make up for fuel pipelines that were shut. Puerto Rico is having no problems getting gasoline, diesel fuel and other supplies to the island, Homeland Security said. The problem is getting those supplies off the ships and distributing them on the island.
"We do not lack U.S.-flagged vessel capacity to move commodities to Puerto Rico," Homeland Security said. Cranes powered by generators that are moving at half speed, as well as difficulty moving goods around the island, are the primary problems.
Related: Who owns Puerto Rico's mountain of debt? You do
Critics say the Jones Act costs American jobs by encouraging residents in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Hawaii to buy foreign-made goods that are shipped on foreign flagged vessels, rather than goods made in America.
That's what happens when it comes to gasoline and other fuels, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for Oil Price Information Service.
"Puerto Rico typically gets most of its gas from foreign sources -- Canada and Europe," he said. "Jones Act ships are so expensive that it doesn't make sense to buy gasoline from U.S. refineries." So, Kloza said, a waiver of the Jones act won't bring much more fuel to the island since Puerto Rico gets what it needs from other countries.
But plenty of other things are much more expensive in Puerto Rico because of the Jones Act. Cars, for example, cost about 40% more in Puerto Rico than on U.S. mainland, partly because of the law. It also affects other necessities.
A 2010 study by the University of Puerto Rico found that the Jones Act cost the island $537 million per year. The territory has been in a recession for 11 years and is suffering from a crippling debt crisis.
Still, the American Maritime Partnership, a coalition representing the domestic shipping industry, argues that the act supports national defense needs and ensures a vibrant maritime industry.
CNNMoney (New York) First published September 27, 2017: 4:11 PM ET
HAMS will save the world! Right?
American Red Cross Asks ARRL's Assistance with Puerto Rico Relief Effort
09/24/2017 The American Red Cross (ARC) has asked the ARRL for assistance with relief efforts in Puerto Rico. ARC needs up to 50 radio amateurs who can help record, enter, and submit disaster-survivor information into the ARC Safe and Well system. In the nearly 75-year relationship between ARRL and ARC, this is the first time such a request for assistance on this scale has been made. ARRL now is looking for radio amateurs who can step up and volunteer to help our friends in Puerto Rico.
Requirements
There are very specific requirements and qualifications needed for this deployment.Due to the nature of this deployment you will need to process in as ARC volunteers. This includes passing a background check. The ARC has indicated that it will cover all expenses for transportation, lodging, and feeding while on deployment. ARC will also provide liability coverage for volunteers. The only out-of-pocket expense to the volunteer would be personal items purchased during deployment.ARRL and ARC will require training for volunteers being deployed. ARC will provide general deployment training and advanced training in working in austere environments. ARRL will provide to ARC training on Amateur Radio equipment and modes to be used, reporting guidelines, and operating guidelines.Deployment will be for up to 3 weeks.Qualifications
General class Amateur Radio license or higherFamiliarity with WinLink, HF voice, and VHF simplex communicationsStrong technical skillsAbility to work under difficult conditionsAbility to deploy for up to 3 weeksAbility to work as part of a teamHelpful Skills
Spanish language skillsPrevious experience in disaster responsePrevious or current work as a Red Cross volunteerPrevious experience with shelter operationsIf you feel that you meet these qualifications and would like to be considered for this deployment, please contact ARRL Emergency Preparedness Manager Mike Corey, KI1U (860-594-0222), who will make the introduction of qualified volunteers to ARC.
NA-Tech News
Both right about Twitter origins
Ads don't work so websites are using your electricity to pay the bills | Technology | The Guardian
The Pirate Bay posted in mid-September that code was 'just a test'. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
With the continuing collapse in online advertising revenues, websites are turning to other methods to pay their hosting bills '' including using visitors' computers and phones to mine cryptocurrency.
It's a controversial practice, with some likening it to running malware on visitor's computers, but it is a potentially lucrative endeavour for websites. The downside is that at best it slows down visitors' machines, and at worst it can also drain their batteries or send their electricity bills soaring.
BitTorrent search engine The Pirate Bay, and US video streaming service Showtime, are two sites that were discovered to be sending mining code to users. The former owned up, posting in mid-September that the code was ''just a test'' and that the experiment was being done with a view to removing all adverts from the site.
The latter removed the code on Monday, shortly after a user noticed it and specialist press began reporting. But it has yet to answer questions on why the code was there from the Guardian and other media organisations.
Cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and its successors, are backed by a system of ''miners'', who race to be the first to solve tricky computing problems in exchange for a reward for doing so. The rewards are large '' the bitcoin network, for instance, gives away coins worth $7m to miners every day '' but to be in with a chance, miners need to gather an extraordinarily large amount of computing power.
Not only is it expensive to buy those computers, it also consumes a huge amount of electricity to run them. As a result, the most profitable mining companies often have access to cheap energy, or some other efficiency boost - one firm, based in Iceland, saves money by letting the country's naturally cold climate cool its computers.
Website-based mining short circuits that: the electricity bills are paid by the visitor, but it's the website that gets the reward.
''Gaming and video sites typically are more resource intensive, so it seems to make little sense to run a miner at the same time without having a noted impact,'' says Malwarebytes analyst J(C)r´me Segura. ''Having said that, many people who consume copyrighted content are perhaps less likely to complain about an under-par user experience.
''The question at this point is: how far can publishers push the limits towards a really bad user experience? You may be surprised that for many, this is not really a problem at all and that double dipping is, in fact, a fairly common practice,'' he added.
In the long run, such practices may simply push more users to install adblockers, Segura noted. It's just as easy to block mining as it is to block adverts, using much the same techniques. Segura said: ''There's no question that users are annoyed by a rollout that did not include their opinion, even though many were actually favourable to this alternate solution to online ads.''
Showtime did not respond to a request for comment.
What is programming? Sure, it consists of syntax and the assembly of code, but it is essentially a means to solve problems. To study programming, then, is to study the art of problem solving, and a new book from V. Anton Spraul, Think Like a Programmer, Python Edition, is a guide to sharpening skills in both spheres. more>>
CGI et Al
Obama Foundation Absorbs ''My Brother's Keeper Alliance'' Without IRS Approval >> Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!
Obama Foundation Absorbs ''My Brother's Keeper Alliance'' Without IRS Approval >> Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!Obama Foundation Absorbs ''My Brother's Keeper Alliance'' Without IRS Approval >> Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!
MIC
EXCLUSIVE: Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA
Plato's Cave reimagined for the Hollywood era''--'copyright Derek SwansonnPublished byINSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowdfunded investigative journalism project for people and planet.Support INSURGEto keep digging where others fear to tread.
Tom Secker and Matthew Alford report on their astonishing findings from trawling through thousands of new US military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made''--'not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.This raises new questions not only about the way censorship works in the modern entertainment industry, but also about Hollywood's little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus.When we first looked at the relationship between politics, film and television at the turn of the 21st century, we accepted the consensus opinion that a small office at the Pentagon had, on request, assisted the production of around 200 movies throughout the history of modern media, with minimal input on the scripts.
How ignorant we were.
More appropriately, how misled we had been.
We have recently acquired 4,000 new pages of documents from the Pentagon and CIA through the Freedom of Information Act. For us, these documents were the final nail in the coffin.
These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.
The previous best estimate, in a dry academic book way back in 2005, was that the Pentagon had worked on less than 600 films and an unspecified handful of television shows.
The CIA's role was assumed to be just a dozen or so productions, until very good books by Tricia Jenkins and Simon Willmetts were published in 2016. But even then, they missed or underplayed important cases, including Charlie Wilson's War and Meet the Parents.
Jon Voight in Transformers''--'in this scene, just after American troops have been attacked by a Decepticon robot, Pentagon Hollywood liaison Phil Strub inserted the line 'Bring em home', granting the military a protective, paternalistic quality, when in reality the DOD does quite the opposite.Alongside the massive scale of these operations, our new book National Security Cinema details how US government involvement also includes script rewrites on some of the biggest and most popular films, including James Bond, the Transformers franchise, and movies from the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.
A similar influence is exerted over military-supported TV, which ranges from Hawaii Five-O to America's Got Talent, Oprah and Jay Leno to Cupcake Wars, along with numerous documentaries by PBS, the History Channel and the BBC.
National Security Cinema also reveals how dozens of films and TV shows have been supported and influenced by the CIA, including the James Bond adventure Thunderball, the Tom Clancy thriller Patriot Games and more recent films, including Meet the Parents and Salt.
The CIA even helped to make an episode of Top Chef that was hosted at Langley, featuring then-CIA director Leon Panetta who was shown as having to skip dessert to attend to vital business. Was this scene real, or was it a dramatic statement for the cameras?
James Bond and Domino are rescued via a plane and skyhook that was loaned to the production by CIA front company Intermountain Aviation''--'ThunderballThe Military's Political Censorship of HollywoodWhen a writer or producer approaches the Pentagon and asks for access to military assets to help make their film, they have to submit their script to the entertainment liaison offices for vetting. Ultimately, the man with the final say is Phil Strub, the Department of Defense's (DOD) chief Hollywood liaison.
If there are characters, action or dialogue that the DOD don't approve of then the film-maker has to make changes to accommodate the military's demands. If they refuse then the Pentagon packs up its toys and goes home. To obtain full cooperation the producers have to sign contracts''--'Production Assistance Agreements''--'which lock them into using a military-approved version of the script.
This can lead to arguments when actors and directors ad lib or improvise outside of this approved screenplay.
On set at Edwards Air Force base during the filming of Iron Man, there was an angry confrontation between Strub and director Jon Favreau.
Favreau wanted a military character to say the line, 'People would kill themselves for the opportunities I have', but Strub objected. Favreau argued that the line should remain in the film, and according to Strub:
'He's getting redder and redder in the face and I'm getting just as annoyed. It was pretty awkward and then he said, angrily, ''Well how about they'd walk over hot coals?'' I said ''fine.'' He was so surprised it was that easy.'
In the end, this compromised line did not appear in the finished film.
One of several scenes for Iron Man filmed at Edwards Air Force BaseIt seems that any reference to military suicide''--'even an off-hand remark in a superhero action-comedy adventure''--'is something the DOD's Hollywood office will not allow. It is understandably a sensitive and embarrassing topic for them, when during some periods of the ever-expanding and increasingly futile 'War on Terror', more US servicemen have killed themselves than have died in combat. But why shouldn't a movie about a man who builds his own flying suit of armour not be able to include such jokes?
Another one-line quip that was censored by the DOD came in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.
When Bond is about to HALO jump out of a military transport plane they realise he's going to land in Vietnamese waters. In the original script Bond's CIA sidekick jokes 'You know what will happen. It will be war, and maybe this time we'll win.'
This line was removed at the request of the DOD.
Strangely, Phil Strub denied that there was any support for Tomorrow Never Dies, while the pre-eminent scholar in the field Lawrence Suid only lists the DOD connection under 'Unacknowledged Cooperation'.
But the DOD are credited at the end of the film and we obtained a copy of the Production Assistance Agreement between the producers and the Pentagon.
The DOD-approved version of the HALO scene in Tomorrow Never DiesVietnam is evidently another sore topic for the US military, which also removed a reference to the war from the screenplay for Hulk (2003). While the military are not credited at the end of the film, on IMDB or in the DOD's own database of supported movies, we acquired a dossier from the US Marine Corps detailing their 'radical' changes to the script.
This included making the laboratory where the Hulk is accidentally created into a non-military facility, making the director of the lab an ex-military character, and changing the code name of the military operation to capture the Hulk from 'Ranch Hand' to 'Angry Man'.
'Ranch Hand' is the name of a real military operation that saw the US Air Force dump millions of gallons of pesticides and other poisons onto the Vietnamese countryside, rendering millions of acres of farmland poisoned and infertile.
They also removed dialogue referring to 'all those boys, guinea pigs, dying from radiation, and germ warfare', an apparent reference to covert military experiments on human subjects.
The documents we obtained further reveal that the Pentagon has the power to stop a film from being made by refusing or withdrawing support. Some movies such as Top Gun, Transformers and Act of Valor are so dependent on military cooperation that they couldn't have been made without submitting to this process. Others were not so lucky.
The movie Countermeasures was rejected by the military for several reasons, and consequently never produced. One of the reasons is that the script included references to the Iran-Contra scandal, and as Strub saw it 'There's no need for us to'... remind the public of the Iran-Contra affair.'
Similarly Fields of Fire and Top Gun 2 were never made because they couldn't obtain military support, again due to politically controversial aspects of the scripts.
This 'soft' censorship also affects TV. For example, a planned Louis Theroux documentary on Marine Corps recruit training was rejected, and as a result was never made.
It is impossible to know exactly how widespread this military censorship of entertainment is because many files are still being withheld. The majority of the documents we obtained are diary-like reports from the entertainment liaison offices, which rarely refer to script changes, and never in an explicit, detailed way. However, the documents do reveal that the DOD requires a preview screening of any project they support and sometimes makes changes even after a production has wrapped.
The documents also record the pro-active nature of the military's operations in Hollywood and that they are finding ways to get involved during the earliest stages of development, 'when characters and storylines are most easily shaped to the Army's benefit.'
The DOD's influence on popular culture can be found at all stages of production, granting them the same kind of power as major studio executives.
Agencywood: The CIA and NSA's Influence on Movie ScriptsDespite having far fewer cinematic assets the CIA has also been able to wield considerable influence on some of the projects they have supported (or refused to support).
There is no formal CIA script review process but the Agency's long-serving entertainment liaison officer Chase Brandon was able to insert himself into the early stages of the writing process on several TV and film productions.
The new recruits arrive at CIA training facility The Farm in The RecruitBrandon did this most prominently on the spy thriller The Recruit, where a new agent is put through CIA training at The Farm''--'an obvious vehicle for inducting the audience into that world and giving them a glimpse behind the curtain. The original story treatment and early drafts of the script were written by Brandon, though he is only credited on the film as a technical advisor, covering up his influence on the content.
The Recruit includes lines about the new threats of the post-Soviet world (including that great villainous justification for a $600 billion defense budget, Peru), along with rebuttals of the idea that the CIA failed to prevent 9/11. And it repeats the adage that 'the CIA's failures are known, but its successes are not'. All of this helped to propagate the idea that the Agency is a benevolent, rational actor in a chaotic and dangerous world.
The CIA has also managed to censor scripts, removing or changing sequences that they didn't want the public to see. On Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal 'verbally shared' his script with CIA officers, and they removed a scene where a drunk CIA officer fires an AK-47 into the air from a rooftop in Islamabad, and removed the use of dogs from the torture scenes.
In a very different kind of film, the hugely popular romantic comedy Meet the Parents, Brandon requested that they change a scene where Ben Stiller's character discovers Robert De Niro's (Stiller's father-in-law to be) secret hideaway. In the original script Stiller finds CIA torture manuals on a desk, but Brandon changed that to photos of Robert De Niro with various dignitaries.
Ben Stiller discovers that Robert De Niro is working for the CIA''--'Meet the ParentsIndeed, the CIA's ability to influence movie scripts goes back to their early years. In the 1940s and 50s they managed to prevent any mention of themselves appearing in film and TV until North by Northwest in 1959. This included rejecting requests for production support, meaning that some films were never made, and censoring all references to the CIA in the script for the Bob Hope comedy My Favourite Spy.
The CIA even sabotaged a planned series of documentaries about their predecessor, the OSS, by having assets at CBS develop a rival production to muscle the smaller studio out of the market. Once this was achieved, the Agency pulled the plug on the CBS series too, ensuring that the activities of the OSS remained safe from public scrutiny.
While very little is known about the NSA's activities in the entertainment industry we did find indications that they are adopting similar tactics to the CIA and DOD.
Internal NSA emails show that the producers of Enemy of the State were invited on multiple tours of NSA headquarters. When they used a helicopter to film aerial footage of Fort Meade, the NSA did not prevent them from using it in the movie.
According to a 1998 interview with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, they changed the script at the NSA's request so that the wrongdoings were the actions of one bad apple NSA official, and not the agency in general.
Bruckheimer said:
'I think the NSA people will be pleased. They certainly won't come out as bad as they could have. NSA's not the villain.'
This idea of using cinema to pin the blame for problems on isolated rogue agents or bad apples, thus avoiding any notion of systemic, institutional or criminal responsibility, is right out of the CIA/DOD's playbook.
NSA headquarters at Fort Meade''--'Enemy of the StateIn all, we are looking at a vast, militarised propaganda apparatus operating throughout the screen entertainment industry in the United States.
It is not quite an official censor, since decisions on scripts are made voluntarily by producers, but it represents a major and scarcely acknowledged pressure on the kind of narratives and images we see on the big and small screens.
In societies already eager to use our hard power overseas, the shaping of our popular culture to promote a pro-war mindset must be taken seriously.
Tom Secker and Matthew Alford are co-authors of the new book,National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood.
Secker is a British-based writer who covers the security services, Hollywood and the history of terrorism. He runs theSpyCultureblog which can be supported viaPatreon.com. His work has been covered by The Mirror, The Express, Salon, TechDirt and elsewhere.
Dr Alford is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics, Language and International Studies at the University of Bath. His documentary film based on his research, The Writer with No Hands, was premiered in 2014 at Hot Docs, Toronto and won runner-up at the Ammar Popular Film Festival, Tehran.
2TTH
Paul Horner, Fake News Writer Who Took Credit for Trump Victory, Dies at 38 - The New York Times
That article, which was tweeted out by Mr. Trump's campaign manager, now has a taunting disclaimer at the top that says the story isn't real: ''I personally went to two Donald Trump rallies and I can say with 100% certainty that NONE of the protesters were getting paid,'' the statement says. ''This story I wrote is mocking all of you sheep who think protesters are getting paid.''
His domains, like newsexaminer.net and cnn.com.de, had names conveying a whiff of legitimacy.
On the former, a story surfaced appearing to be an interview with Mr. Horner. He was described as a former Secret Service agent who had written a book to expose ''the real truth'' about Barack Obama. The fake story said that Mr. Horner was ''one-hundred-percent positive that President Obama is not only gay, but a radical Muslim as well.''
It was so widely shared that The Associated Press debunked it last year.
In an interview with The Washington Post in November, Mr. Horner said he was the reason Mr. Trump had been elected. The interview led to a round of media appearances.
''My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time,'' he told The Post. ''I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don't fact-check anything '-- they'll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.''
In 2013, one of his articles stating that President Obama would use his money to open a Muslim culture museum was apparently so convincing that Fox Newsreported on it.
Fox later apologized for the gaffe.
Mr. Horner has been described as a hoaxer and a liar, but in 2014 he told The Washington Post that he was actually aiming to be funny.
''Do you know who Bob Odenkirk is? Saul in 'Breaking Bad'?'' he told the paper. ''He is so funny. He just does the funniest sketch comedy '-- it's really weird, and just ridiculous. I love that kind of humor '... That's what I want to do.''
Continue reading the main story
Real News
FBI seizes over 3,000 penises during raid at morgue employee's home
The Federal Bureau of Investigation suspected 54-year old Dave Murray, an employee of the Harris County Morgue, of being implicated in an organ trafficking network.
Investigating several reports of missing organs and body parts, dozens of agents raided his residence this morning, hoping to find evidence of his involvement in the crimes.
What they found on the site was a lot more disturbing than what they expected, as the FBI spokesman Andy Ramirez described the scene in an interview with WNTV-4.
''There were shelves everywhere, filled with hundreds of glass jars. Each of them contained a penis floating in formalin.'' According to Agent Ramirez, the accused rapidly confessed everything as soon as he was arrested.
''He explained in great detail, how he had been cutting off dead men's genital organs and collecting them for more than ten years.'' It took the FBI more than seven hours to gather all the organs and other pieces of evidence that were found on the site.
A dozen federal agents of the FBI's Evidence Response Team were still identifying, collecting, and packing jars more than six hours after their arrival on the site.
A total of 53 criminal charges have already been filed against Mr. Murray and hundreds more could be filed over the next few days.
An anonymous FBI source told WNTV-4 that the number of charges could reach over 3,000.
Dave Murray will remain in custody for the moment as a psychiatric evaluation has been ordered to determine if he's fit to stand a trial.
If he is considered fit, he should appear in court in October for the beginning of the procedures.
CLIPS & DOCS
VIDEO - Mystery Surrounds Metal Towers Popping Up In Tunnels & Bridges CBS New York
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) '' Mysterious metal towers are popping up at local tunnels, and soon they'll start appearing at bridges, too.
But even people on the MTA board in charge of the towers can't say why they're being used or what's in them, CBS2's Dave Carlin reports.
Jose Lugo said the tall metal towers quickly appeared up after the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel tolls booths came down.
''We don't really know what's the purpose of this,'' he told Carlin.
It's a $100 million MTA project shrouded in secrecy, with 18 of them for tunnels and bridges. So what are they exactly?
The MTA's man in charge of the bridges and tunnels, Cedrick Fulton, dodged Carlin's questions Wednesday.
''I said no comment,'' he said.
Some MTA board members, including New York City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, say they know too little about the towers '' even with half the money already spent and some of the towers already up.
''A lot of the board members felt they didn't have all the details they would have wanted, myself included,'' she said.
Residents suspect there is much more going on in the towers than meets the eye and wonder if they'll ever really know what's going on inside of them.
''I'm going to guess that it's not just a decoration,'' Alyssa Renkas, of the Upper West Side, said.
''It's a bit mind-boggling that the MTA is approving $100 million for what appears to us to be big, decorative pylons,'' says John Kaehny, the leader of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany. ''What we're asking for is transparency from the MTA.''
CBS2 demanded answers from MTA Chairman Joe Lhota.
Carlin: ''Some of your own board members say they don't know the specifics.''
Lhota: ''The base of these new pieces that are going up include whatever fiber optics are necessary for those Homeland Security items.''
In other words, anti-terror technology. Could that one day include facial recognition? We don't know and Lhota won't say.
''I'm not at liberty to discuss that,'' he told Carlin.
So as more of these expensive towers rise, the mystery is tucked away inside them.
Lhota said all necessary Homeland Security technology remains in place at all crossings, even the ones that don't have the new towers yet.
VIDEO - How One Anonymous Twitter Account is Cutting Off Breitbart's Funding
In November 2016, shortly after Trump's victory in the Presidential election, a Twitter account called 'Sleeping Giants' (@slpng_giants) was created. Exactly a week after the election, it sent out its first tweet, alerting a company called Social Finance that they were advertising with the right-wing news site Breitbart. About half an hour later, Social Finance tweeted back, agreeing to halt the advertising.
Fast-forward a month, and the Sleeping Giants account makes a request to its followers: go to the Breitbart site, screenshot one of the advertisements you see, and tweet the screenshot to the company that is advertising. It sounds like an idea that would never work: a group of anonymous cyber-vigilantes, crowdsourcing a means of cutting off the funding to one of the most prominent and powerful news organisations on the internet. But, somehow, it does work. The tweets flood in to the offending companies, and the Sleeping Giant account retweets them to their 120,000 followers. How many companies pull their advertising? Well, according to Sleeping Giants, the exact number is 2,822. Nearly three thousand companies have dropped Breitbart.
But why do these companies advertise with Breitbart to begin with, and why are they willing to drop the advertisements if they've already agreed to host them on Breitbart's site? Well, the answer is that most of the companies don't actually know that they're advertising with Breitbart. The way that advertising online generally works is that companies use services like Google AdSense that have access to advertising space on millions of domains. The adverts are then placed on domains that fit in the target demographic of the advertising company. The only way for companies to avoid specific domains is by using their blacklist, which prevents advertisements going up on sites they don't want to be associated with. Sleeping Giant alerts companies to the fact that they are advertising on Breitbart, and convinces them to add the companies to their blacklist, so that the ad-distributors stop putting their ads on Breitbart's site.
This takes us to Sleeping Giants' real ambition: convince the third parties that supply the advertisements to pull ads from Breitbart entirely. So far, they haven't had much luck. Sleeping Giants have specifically targeted Google AdSense and the Facebook Audience Network, two of the biggest ad-distributors on the web. They haven't yet received a response. In June this year, Sleeping Giants raised over $8,000 from online donors, which they used to put up a billboard near Amazon headquarters, asking them to remove their ads from Breitbart. Again, no response.
Another problem for Sleeping Giants is the fact that the bulk of Breitbart's funding doesn't come from advertisements on the site, but from Bob Mercer, the man who established the 'Make America Number 1' Super PAC, which funded both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, and proclaimed itself to be the 'Defeat Crooked Hillary' Super PAC. Mercer has donated roughly $35 million to political campaigns, and invested $11 million in Breitbart in 2011. Sleeping Giants might be effective in getting companies to pull their advertisements from Breitbart's site, but Mercer is unlikely to let the news site collapse entirely.
Even with these obstacles, Sleeping Giants has been a stunning success and the growth of its Twitter and Facebook following has been exponential. Breitbart isn't relaxed about the impact of the campaign, as shown by their call for a boycott of Kellogg's after Sleeping Giants managed to get the multinational company to pull its advertising on the site. So, this anonymous group might not yet be able to slay Breitbart, but they've dealt them a substantial blow.
VIDEO - Berkeley Antifa turning on eachother. Antifa attacked for BEING WHITE - YouTube
"Think of all the time we spend manually organizing and performing mundane activities, from scheduling meetings to paying the bills," he writes in the foreword of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's new book, "Hit Refresh."
"In the future, an AI agent will know that you are at work and have ten minutes free, and then help you accomplish something that is high on your to-do list."
It won't just boost productivity in the office, either, says Gates: "Innovation will improve many other areas of life too." It could help wipe out polio, for example.
And "digital money is letting low-income users save, borrow, and transfer funds like never before."
Other thought leaders agree with Gates: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says AI is going to make our lives better in the future, and John Giannandrea, senior vice president of engineering at Google, says "machine learning and artificial intelligence is extremely important and will revolutionize many vertical industries."
Gates, while optimistic about the future, doesn't brush aside the hard questions that must be addressed. "With every new technology, there are challenges," he writes. "How do we help people whose jobs are replaced by AI agents and robots? Will users trust their AI agent with all their information? If an agent could advise you on your work style, would you want it to?"
But in general he has a positive outlook: "The world is getting better, and progress is coming faster than ever."
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