Posts Tagged ‘California’
California “Right to Know” Act Would Reveal What Companies Have Your Personal Data
Friday, 05 April 2013 16:00
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It’s time that Americans had data rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains an initiative being introduced by Los Angeles-area Democratic representative Bonnie Lowenthal with support from the EFF and ACLU:

Let’s face it: most of us have no idea how companies are gathering and sharing our personal data. A new proposal in California, supported by a diverse coalition (including EFF, the ACLU of Northern California, civil liberties groups, domestic violence advocates, consumer protection groups, sexual health, and women’s rights groups) is fighting to bring transparency and access to the seedy underbelly of digital data exchanges.

(Read more…)

The Right to Know Act (AB 1291) would require a company to give users access to the personal data the company has stored on them—as well as a list of all the other companies with whom that original company has shared the users’ personal data—when a user requests it.

Lots of people around the world already enjoy these rights. This law mimics the rights of data access already available to users in Europe, which means that most of the big tech companies should already have systems in place to facilitate user access.

This law is about transparency and access, not new restrictions on data sharing. It helps consumers, regulators, policymakers, and the world at large shine a light onto the largely hidden, highly lucrative world of the personal data economy.

It would cover California residents and would apply to both offline and online companies. If you live in California, click here to support this bill.

 
How A Man Was Sentenced To Life In Prison For Stealing A Pair Of Socks
Wednesday, 03 April 2013 12:00
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Via Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi on crime and punishment under California’s Three Strikes law:

Suddenly, a pair of socks caught his eye. He grabbed them and slipped them into a shopping bag. “No, they were ordinary white socks,” he says, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Didn’t even have any stripes. (Read more…)”

Wilkerson never made it out of the store. At the exit, he was, shall we say, over­enthusiastically apprehended by two security officers. Thanks to a brand-new, get-tough-on-crime state law, Wilkerson would soon be sentenced to life in prison for stealing a pair of plain white tube socks worth $2.50. Because Wilkerson had two prior convictions, both dating back to 1981, the shoplifting charge counted as a third strike against him. He was sentenced to 25 years to life, meaning that his first chance for a parole hearing would be in 25 years.

Wilkerson is unlucky, but he’s hardly alone. Despite the passage in late 2012 of a new state ballot initiative that prevents California from ever again giving out life sentences to anyone whose “third strike” is not a serious crime, thousands of people – the overwhelming majority of them poor and nonwhite – remain imprisoned for a variety of offenses so absurd that any list of the unluckiest offenders reads like a macabre joke, a surrealistic comedy routine.

Have you heard the one about the guy who got life for stealing a slice of pizza? Or the guy who went away forever for lifting a pair of baby shoes? Or the one who got 50 to life for helping himself to five children’s videotapes from Kmart? How about the guy who got life for possessing 0.14 grams of meth? That last offender was a criminal mastermind by Three Strikes standards, as many others have been sentenced to life for holding even smaller amounts of drugs, including one poor sap who got the max for 0.09 grams of black-tar heroin.

 
American wine maker whose chardonnay defeated France dies at 86
Monday, 18 March 2013 13:20
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Jim Barrett, the American vintner whose chardonnay famously defeated the might of France in 1976 and helped put California’s Napa Valley on the map, has died at the age of 86.

Barrett’s 1973 Chateau Montelana Chardonnay won the prestigious “Judgment of Paris,” a one-time blind tasting by nine French experts organized by British wine merchant Steven Spurrier, sending shockwaves through the wine industry.

The wine defeated several famed French white Burgundies, which had been thought untouchable. (Read more…) Another California wine won in the category of red wines.

When asked about the victory, according to a memorial page on his winery’s website, Barrett replied: “Not bad for kids from the sticks.”

The contest was the subject of a 2008 film entitled “Bottle Shock.”

Barrett, who died Thursday, was born in 1926 in Chicago to Irish immigrants. The family later moved to Los Angeles, where he became a real-estate lawyer.

He was able to acquire the Montelana property in northern California in 1972, just one year before the date of his winning chardonnay.

On the 30th anniversary of the contest, in 2006, American and French wine makers again clashed in a competition called “Revenge,” but California wines once again won the top prize from the blind tasting.

Barrett’s son Bo, who has run the Chateau Montelana Winery since 1982, confirmed his father’s death to the New York Times on Friday.

When asked by the Times what his father would most like to be remembered for, he replied: “I would say, that the crazy dream worked.”