Are you buying these fake organic eggs and milk?

When it comes to organic food, it’s buyer beware. Fake organics abound these days, be it organic eggs laid by hens cooped up in gigantic factory farms, organic beef and milk from cows raised under anything but humane, pastured conditions, or hydroponic vegetables grown under artificial lighting in conventional coconut waste or ground up plastic, fertilized with a liquid slurry of conventionally grown (and hence pesticide-laden) processed soybeans 

Indeed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) organic label has become increasingly watered down over the years. With the inclusion of hydroponics in the organic standards, it’s at risk of becoming altogether moot. 

On one side of this fight you have family-scale, soil-based organic farmers whose focus is producing nutrient-dense food while simultaneously improving soil health. On the other you have corporate, industrial-scale hydroponic growers whose produce is actually lower in nutrients1 and does nothing to improve soil conditions on farms. 

Organic Versus Hydroponic

According to section 7 CFR 205.2052,3 of USDA organic regulations, an organic grower’s crop rotation plan must maintain or improve soil organic matter. The main legal argument against the inclusion of hydroponics in the USDA’s organic standards is that since hydroponics do not involve the use of soil at all, it cannot qualify for organic certification in the first place.

Despite such clear-cut definitions of what constitutes organic farming, a large number of hydroponic operators were still quietly granted organic certification4,5,6 under the lead of Miles McEvoy, former deputy administrator of the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP).7 In 2010, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) had voted “no” on allowing hydroponics as the organic rules clearly did not support their inclusion.

McEvoy, who disagreed with the panel’s decision, allowed hydroponic growers to apply for certification anyway. On November 1, the NOSB voted on whether these hydroponic growers would be allowed to remain part of the organic program, and despite passionate opposition by soil-based farmers and organic pioneers, the board chose to reverse their previous position, and not to stand in the way of granting organic certification to hydroponic growers. 

The NOSB, now stacked with agribusiness-affiliated representatives, also decided to allow aquaponics, where fish and plants are raised together in a synergistic cycle, despite the fact that there are no organic standards for this type of production. However, the NOSB voted to bar aeroponics from organic certification. Aeroponics involves neither soil nor nutrient-rich water, relying on moist air to nourish the plants’ roots instead. The fallout from this November 1 vote has been nothing if not dramatic.

Co-author of Organic Standards Says Organic Certification of Hydroponics Is Illegal
Jim Riddle, steering committee chair of the Organic Farmers Association (OFA),8 who in the early ’90s co-wrote the Organic Trade Association’s organic standards, had this to say about hydroponics being allowed to be certified organic:

“The labeling of hydroponic products as ‘organic’ is illegal. The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), in section 6513(b)(1), states, ‘An organic plan shall contain provisions to foster soil fertility…’ Further, OFPA 6513(g) states, ‘An organic plan shall not include any production or handling practices that are inconsistent with this chapter.’ Soilless production systems are inconsistent with OFPA.

They do not comply with numerous sections of the NOP Final Rule, as enumerated in the Crops Subcommittee’s recommendation. There is one relevant rule provision that the Committee overlooked. Section 205.601(j)(6) allows the use of micronutrients, with the following annotation, ‘Soil deficiency must be documented by testing.’

This does not mean that micronutrients may be used if soil is deficient from the system. No, it links soil to the allowance for the use of micronutrients. The OFPA and rule sections mentioned above, and in the Committee’s recommendation, use the words ‘shall’ and ‘must,’ not ‘should’ or ‘may.’ These are mandatory provisions, and they cannot be ignored.

In addition, soilless, hydroponic systems do not comply with the NOSB Principles of Organic Production and Handling, the first sentence of which reads, ‘Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity.’

In the wake of the NOSB’s decision to certify hydroponics as organic, many organic pioneers have threatened to abandon USDA organic certification altogether. Another alternative brought forth by Mark Kastel, cofounder and codirector of the Cornucopia Institute,9 is to develop an alternative label to distinguish between soil- and nonsoil-based organics.

Authentic Organics Are Being Squeezed Out by ‘Fauxganics’

The Cornucopia Institute is actively researching filing a lawsuit to reverse the USDA’s “illegal” certification of hydroponic/soilless growing. In the meantime, the final arbiter of what is and is not acceptable as organic is you. If you refuse to buy organic foods raised in factory farms or grown without soil, true organics may still be salvageable. The Cornucopia Institute is also collecting proxy letters 10 to be formally presented to corporate officers at national grocery chains.

This includes John Mackey at Whole Foods Markets, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and W. Craig Jelinek at Costco, just to name a few of the retailers that sell fake organics, thereby promoting the elimination of real, authentic organic foods, grown and raised with animal, human and environmental health equally in mind.

The proxy letter calls on these companies to use store signage that informs consumers about the differences between true organics and conventional food produced with hydroponic (sometimes also referred to as container growing), aeroponic and aquaponics technology.

Considering the fact that organic certified hydroponic produce is far less expensive to grow, and hence demands a lower retail price, hydroponically grown vegetables are rapidly taking over the organic produce market — even though they don’t even qualify as organic in the first place.

Are You Paying a Premium for Fake Organic Milk and Eggs?

The proxy letter also urges the listed grocers to “adopt a sourcing policy to only market organic milk and dairy products from brands that procure their raw milk from farmers that treat their cows respectfully and at a scale where it is conceivable they can meet the spirit and letter of the organic law that requires maximizing grazing and pasture consumption.”

At present Target, Costco and Walmart source their storebrand organic milk from Aurora Dairy, which had been found to willfully violate 14 tenets of the organic standards. For starters, evidence gathered by Cornucopia and The Washington Post suggests Aurora confines most of its cattle most of the time, even though organic standards call for cattle being free to roam on pasture. Not surprisingly, testing of the fatty acid profile of Aurora Dairy milk revealed it matched conventional, not organic milk.11

While the appeal to retailing CEOs is gaining traction, protect your family by consulting Cornucopia’s organic dairy scorecard, separating organic high-integrity dairy brands from what they call the “factory farm imposters.” Lastly, the proxy letter calls for the creation of a corporate plan to switch suppliers for private label eggs to producers that allow chickens outdoor access as required by federal organic laws. Eggland’s Best, for example, is to organic eggs what Aurora is to organic dairy.

One of its gigantic factory farms houses an estimated 180,000 to 200,000 birds per barn, or more than three hens per square foot of floor space, and these birds never set foot outdoors.12 This despite the fact that organic standards require organic livestock to have ample access to the outdoors and to engage in natural behavior, and are supposed to get both direct sunlight and fresh air.

The Cornucopia Institute’s “Scrambled Eggs” report and organic egg scorecard, which took six years to produce, ranks 136 egg producers according to 28 organic criteria.

Retailers Aid and Abet Organic Fraud
You can sign the Cornucopia proxy letter to grocery chain leaders below, and I would encourage you to do so, as no further progress on these issues can be made through the USDA or the NOSB. It’s become quite clear that the USDA is dancing to the tune of agribusiness lobbyists, not organic farmers and consumers.

As noted by the Cornucopia Institute in a recent stakeholder letter, “It’s time to draw a line in the sand. On the front lines, the businesses that have the ability to say no to organic fraud are the natural/specialty foods and grocery retailers. Many are willing co-conspirators in the corporate sellout of true meaning of organics.”

It seems market pressure — “hitting them where it hurts,” meaning their financial bottom line — is the only way to incentivize these retailers to help clean up the organic industry and its standards rather than merely profiting from organic fraud. Any company that decides to honor these consumer demands stands to gain a significant market advantage. As noted by the Cornucopia Institute:13

“Top retailers like Whole Foods Markets, Costco, Target, Safeway, Walmart, and Kroger must be convinced to provide choices in their grocery aisles for authentic, nutrient-dense organic food grown in rich, carefully stewarded soil. If the nutrients are not in our soil, they are not in our food, and they are not in our families!

Factory farm meat, dairy and egg production, and fruits and vegetables grown without soil rich in humus result in inferior flavor and nutrition … Corporate agribusinesses and factory farms are watering down the meaning of organics. They could not operate without retail representation. They are squeezing out ethical, family-scale farmers and their marketing partners. Real organic farmers, and their loyal customers, are being cheated.”

Why Your Pills Don’t Work for Depression

Depression is a terrible daily reality for many people—over 13% of the entire American population takes antidepressants, at last count. This figure is 65% higher than 15 years ago, and it continues to grow annually.[1]

 

Despite the skyrocketing prevalence of prescription antidepressants, there still isn’t much evidence that they actually work. In fact, the deeper one digs into the “chemical imbalance theory” of depression—the theory that depression is caused by low levels of serotonin in the brain—the more it looks like a fabrication invented by pharmaceutical companies to create a profit stream.

Let’s take a look at the whole story, and you can decide for yourself. 

By the 1960’s, it was becoming fashionable to view mental disorders like any other medical condition, namely as a physiological imbalance that could be corrected using pharmacological means. It is, after all, a convenient way to think about psychiatric medicine, and one which lacks the complexity and ambiguity of psychoanalysis and other more holistic approaches to mental healthcare.

The problem is that this urge for convenience was never backed up by hard data in the first place. Even in 1965, after examining the evidence for “the catecholamine hypothesis of affective disorders,” The American Journal of Psychiatry reported that “the findings are inconclusive.”[2]

These lukewarm results didn’t stop the pharmaceutical industry from rushing in to meet psychiatrists’ desire for convenience, though. Before long, the chemical imbalance theory of depression became dogma.

 

This is particularly disturbing given that the antidepressants of the 1960s and 1970s were notoriously dangerous and side-effect-ridden. Clearly, the desire for an easy-to-understand mechanism underlying depression was so great that it overshadowed the concern for both rationality and safety.

When Prozac was brought to market in the late 1980s, the chemical myth of depression was further crystallized. Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac, heavily promoted its product’s ability to correct chemical imbalances in the brain.

Psychology Today reports that “there was, of course, no demonstrable evidence that depressed patients had any imbalance,” and that Eli Lilly’s campaign was a giant marketing gimmick.[3]

Ronald W. Pies, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at the State University of New York and Tufts University School of Medicine, goes so far as to state that “in truth, the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.”[4]

Why, then, has this discredited chemical imbalance hypothesis been perpetuated?

The answer is simple: depression is still a massive (and growing) problem, and those suffering from it are often desperate for a solution. Psychiatrists want nothing more than to provide fast and effective relief for their patients, and so they continue pushing the latest and greatest antidepressants, hoping that the next one down the pipe will be better than the last.

But there is a better way to treat depression. It may not be simpler, but if adopted wholeheartedly, it’s far more effective.

The real way to relieve depression

Here’s the story that pharmaceutical companies are not talking about: antidepressants have repeatedly been shown to be no more effective than placebo, they’re linked to a variety of side effects and health conditions, and they actually increase the chances of becoming depressed again in the future.[5]

On the other hand, a growing body of evidence is revealing that there are plenty of tools and practices that do effectively combat depression, without any of the side effects and risks of prescription antidepressants. Here’s a list that should give a sense of the spectrum of options available to you.

Talking therapy. Studies have shown that good old-fashioned therapy is just as effective at relieving depression compared to antidepressants, and that it actually prevents relapses.[6]

Exercise. Research shows that exercise dramatically aids those suffering from depression, and that just one hour of rigorous activity per week can decrease the likelihood of depression by 44%.

Balanced Brain Chemistry.  Take spirulina. Spirulina is a full spectrum protein source, which is very important in the balancing of brain chemistry. The absence of protein blocks such as amino acids in the diet can cause a number of problems in your health system. For example: The absence of amino acid tryptophan in the diet will lead to a deficiency in serotonin. Serotonin is essential for generating emotions as well as a “stress-defence shield” which enhances your happiness. A deficiency in serotonin will cause depression, chronic stomach problems and neurological disorders and loss of appetite. 

Natural antidepressants. We’ve written a lot in past articles about plants and natural substances that work wonders for depression. Here’s a few prominent ones: turmeric, ashwagandha, thyme, lavender, cinnamon, rosemary, and saffron.

Cold water therapy. This practice might be a bit harder to stomach, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it! Studies have shown that just 2-3 minutes per day in 68 degree Fahrenheit water (come on, that isn’t even that cold) improved mood and relieved the symptoms of depression better than leading pharmaceutical antidepressants.[8]

The most important thing to remember when undertaking any depression treatment protocol is that you’re in control, and that you don’t just have an uncontrollable brain defect (researchers worry that the chemical imbalance theory of depression makes patients feel like their illness is beyond their control).

Your lifestyle choices can and do have a profound effect on your mental health—and by choosing some of the tools and practices above, you can overcome depression in no time.

Chinese universities add HIV test kits to vending machines to tackle virus' rise in taboo sex culture: Along with chips, instant noodles and soft drinks, students in a growing number of Chinese universities now have the option of also grabbing an HIV test kit to go from their campus vending machine.

Along with chips, instant noodles and soft drinks, students in a growing number of Chinese universities now have the option of also grabbing an HIV test kit to go from their campus vending machine. 

Three Shanghai universities have installed machines to offer the self-test kits this month as a part of a pilot project to promote early detection and treatment of HIV/AIDS in a culture where the virus is stigmatised.

The annual number of newly diagnosed HIV cases among teenagers aged 15 to 19 increased more than 150 per cent in China over the past decade.

As a part of the project, universities are selling the kits for a significantly discounted 30 yuan ($6.20), compared with 298 yuan ($61.20) on e-commerce site Taobao. 

A major drawcard of the system — in a country where HIV and homosexuality are still taboo subjects — is that students can do the test anonymously by dropping off their urine sample in the vending machine's return box for testing.

Students can check their results online after three to five working days by entering the serial number on the kit. During the trial period, the $6.20 is then reimbursed after receiving their result.

However, the Chinese Association of STD and HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control warned in a statement on their website that the test was only a "preliminary screening" and could provide a "false-positive result".

"If the test result is positive, it should be reviewed promptly," it said.

Universities started offering the self-test kits in 2016 to curb the rising HIV infection rate among students, and the program has since been rolled out to Chinese provinces including Heilongjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangxi as well as in the capital Beijing last year.

HIV and homosexuality remain taboo subjects in China 

Zhongdan Chen, a technical officer from the World Health Organisation's China office, said the annual rates of new HIV diagnoses among people aged between 15 and 19 years old in China had almost tripled between 2008 and 2017.

"Two critical reasons include weak implementation of national policies to provide sexual education in schools and communities, and limited focus on adolescents and youth-specific interventions as part of the national HIV efforts," Dr Chen said.

"Many of these students don't want to visit traditional testing sites such as hospitals and clinics due to fear of discrimination," he added.

At of the end of 2017, about 758,000 people were reported to be living with HIV in China, Dr Chen says, but added that an estimated 30 per cent of people living with HIV did not know their HIV status. 

"Due to stigma and discrimination, among other reasons, uptake of the available HIV testing, prevention and treatment tools and services among key populations has remained far from adequate," he said.

"Innovations in tools and service delivery approaches are urgently needed to make these services available, accessible, acceptable and of adequate quality, especially for high risk populations."

He said some other countries, including US, UK, France and Kenya were also scaling up HIV self-testing by enabling access to and regulating HIV test kits through websites, pharmacies, workplaces, and community-based organisations.

A vending machine for HIV tests was installed at a gay sauna in Britain's southern city of Brighton last year in an attempt to fight the epidemic.

The machine distributes free finger prick self-test kits that also allow the users to collect and check the results anonymously.

Vending machines could be explored in Australia: AFAO

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations chief executive Darryl O'Donnell said it was incredibly important that the testing be convenient, particularly for those who needed to test regularly.  

"Vending machines are certainly an interesting and novel approach, and it's something that we could definitely explore in Australia, but the task is to make sure that we've got the right test that could be dispensed in that way."

People in Australia could order a HIV self-test online, he added, but it wasn't something that was widely known and adopted — and sometimes those tests could be expensive.

Mr O'Donnell also noted there were no approved urine tests for HIV in Australia, and testing was still done by blood samples.

"One of the most important things we can do to better respond to HIV is to increase the rate of HIV testing," Mr O'Donnell said.

"There's been a lot of effort over recent years to make HIV testing more convenient; we've seen the introduction of rapid HIV tests that allow people to obtain a result in about 20 minutes, and there are a lot of services that are now opening up that are community-based or peer-led HIV testing services, particularly for those who need to test regularly."

Judge: Transgender People A Protected Class, And The Military Can’t Enact Trump Ban

A federal judge late Friday barred the federal government from implementing President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender members of the military, finding that the ban had to be subject to a careful court review before implementation because of the history of discrimination against transgender individuals.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman of the Western District of Washington ruled that transgender people were a protected class and that the injunctions against the implementation of the ban that had been issued in December should remain in place. She wrote that there was a “long and well-recognized” history of discrimination and systemic oppression against transgender people, that discrimination against transgender people was clearly “unrelated to their ability to perform and contribute to society,” that transgender people have immutable characteristics and that they lacked relative political power.

“Transgender people have long been forced to live in silence, or to come out and face the threat of overwhelming discrimination,” Pechman wrote.

“The Court also rules that, because transgender people have long been subjected to systemic oppression and forced to live in silence, they are a protected class. Therefore, any attempt to exclude them from military service will be looked at with the highest level of care, and will be subject to the Court’s ‘strict scrutiny.’ This means that before Defendants can implement the Ban, they must show that it was sincerely motivated by compelling interests, rather than by prejudice or stereotype, and that it is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests,” Pechman wrote.

While Trump had tweeted that he consulted generals and military experts about the ban, Pechman wrote that the government had “failed to identify even one General or military expert he consulted, despite having been ordered to do so repeatedly.”

Noting that Pentagon officials were surprised by the announcement and that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis got a heads up only one day beforehand, the judge wrote that she “is led to conclude that the Ban was devised by the President, and the President alone.”

Sharon McGowan, a former top official in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who now works as director of strategy for Lambda Legal, wrote that Pechman “cut through the nonsense,” recognizing that the plan announced by the military was just a dressed-up version of Trump’s original ban.

Sharon_McGowan@SharonMcGowanDC

Judge Pechman cut through the nonsense and realized that there was no “new ban” - just the same ole ban w/ some new packaging. Trans discrimination triggers strict scrutiny. Full stop. DOJ gets one last chance to defend policy but make no mistake - this ban is going DOWN! https://twitter.com/lambdalegal/status/984968531082129409 …

7:23 AM - Apr 14, 2018

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Read Pechman’s ruling below.

Goldman Sachs Asks ‘Is Curing Patients A Sustainable Business Model?’

 Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is reportedly asking some very cold questions about the healthcare industry and whether it’s a good business move to cure diseases.

In an April 10 financial report titled “The Genome Revolution,” company analysts allegedly posed the question “is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The report broke down the pros and cons of new gene therapy treatments being worked on by biotech companies. Turning the search for medical remedies into a numbers game, analyst Salveen Richter called potential “one shot cures” a bad business decision that will hurt a company’s bottom line.

“While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow,” Richter said, via Yahoo Finance.

Goldman researchers pointed to pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, which developed a treatment for hepatitis C, as an example of the financial impact treating diseases can have on profits. “In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients,” the memo argued.

Gilead Sciences’ 90 percent cure rate of hepatitis C will reportedly send its sales plunging from $12.5 billion in 2015 to less than $4 billion this year. The Goldman Sachs report allegedly suggests that biotech firms move to developing treatments for conditions with larger patient pools such as spinal muscular atrophy and hemophilia. 

Facebook Reportedly Wants to Use AI to Predict Your 'Future Behavior'—So Advertisers Can Change It

Among the unanswered questions at Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearings this week, the CEO was a bit stumped when asked if he would be willing to change Facebook’s business model in order to protect users’ privacy. Facebook’s data collection has received a lot of attention from a security perspective, but a new report illustrates why we should be just as concerned about how it uses that data to influence our behavior.

The Intercept has obtained what it claims is a recent document that describes a new service being offered to Facebook’s advertising clients. Going beyond micro-targeting ads based on what it knows about your past and present, the social media company is now reportedly offering to use its artificial intelligence to predict what you will do in the future—and giving clients the opportunity to intervene through a barrage of influence. From the report:

One slide in the document touts Facebook’s ability to “predict future behavior,” allowing companies to target people on the basis of decisions they haven’t even made yet. This would, potentially, give third parties the opportunity to alter a consumer’s anticipated course. Here, Facebook explains how it can comb through its entire user base of over 2 billion individuals and produce millions of people who are “at risk” of jumping ship from one brand to a competitor. These individuals could then be targeted aggressively with advertising that could pre-empt and change their decision entirely — something Facebook calls “improved marketing efficiency.” This isn’t Facebook showing you Chevy ads because you’ve been reading about Ford all week — old hat in the online marketing world — rather Facebook using facts of your life to predict that in the near future, you’re going to get sick of your car. Facebook’s name for this service: “loyalty prediction.”

Facebook is reportedly using its FBLearner Flow technology to drive this new initiative. The tool was first introduced in 2016 as Facebook’s next step in machine learning and in since then it’s been discussed as a way to improve people’s experience on the platform rather than a way to improve marketing. Any time Zuckerberg was asked for a solution to a tough problem by a member of Congress this week, his response was some variation on “better AI will solve it.” Well, the company calls FBLearner Flow the “backbone” of its AI initiative and it introduces plenty of problems of its own.

For years, advertising has relied on a few core principles and a handful of tools. There are essentially two kinds of businesses: those that recognize a problem and offer a solution, and those that have a solution and want to introduce a problem that people didn’t really have before. Advertising is useful for both, but it’s essential for the latter. It’s well-understood that ad execs prey on people’s insecurities and concoct unnecessary desires to shape their behavior. And for a long time, that business was conducted through gut feelings, limited market research, and a little dash of Freud. The era of Big Data changes that.

Someone might lie or withhold the truth from a marketing survey, but they spill their guts inside their private “place for friends.” Online users betray their true instincts as they travel around the web tracked by cookies and walk around the real world bugged by the GPS in their phones. Now we have facial recognition, ubiquitous cameras, microphones, and fingerprint scanners to worry about. Even so, the billions of data points about billions of people couldn’t be effectively parsed by humans, so we have machines go through it, categorize it and analyze it.

If you keep up with the marketing or tech business, you probably think you understand that. Check out tech Twitter to see people smugly explaining that we’ve known everything bad about Facebook since forever. But just because knowledge is around doesn’t mean that everyone understands it, or has received it, or has been convinced to accept it as true. The Intercept is detailing further developments about a tool that would, of course, be used for marketing purposes but has barely been discussed in that light.

It’s worth hammering home just how consequential it is that an algorithm is slowly being trained to be extremely good at making behavioral predictions, extremely good at monitoring how those predictions play out, and extremely good at adjusting based on its failures and successes. When that same system is trained to modify your behavior through advertising, it’s going to learn how to do it well. It’s equally troubling that Facebook will have a monetary incentive to make its predictions come true. Frank Pasquale, a scholar at Yale’s Information Society Project, pointed out to The Intercept that it’s entirely possible that AI predictions will become “self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Say that Facebook tells a client that its system predicts 10,000 people will stop buying name-brand detergent this year. It goes to all of the name-brand detergent advertisers, tells them its prediction, and they all decide not to run Facebook ads. Over the course of a year, Facebook has an incentive to make that prediction come true by tilting what you see in a way that might persuade you not to buy name-brand detergent. Pasquale notes that this is akin to a machine learning “protection racket.”

One of the common lines of questioning that Zuckerberg received from Congress this week was whether or not it provides all of the data it possesses on a user through its “downloading your info” tool. Zuckerberg was evasive and took advantage of his inquisitors’ lack of technical knowledge—always saying that’s his “understanding” or hedging with “your” data. He was asked directly: “If I download my Facebook information, is there other information accessible to you within Facebook that I wouldn’t see on that document, such as browsing history or other inferences that Facebook has drawn from users for advertising purposes?” His response was “Congressman, I believe that all of your information is in that—that file.” He can get away with that answer because Facebook doesn’t consider its inferences regarding your data as belonging to you. It would be crazy interesting to find out what Facebook thinks we’re going to do in the future, but that would ruin the whole gambit because you’d have it in the back of your mind when making those decisions.

By its own admission, Facebook is unable to adequately address many of the negative consequences of its scale. “The reality of a lot of this is that when you are building something like Facebook that is unprecedented in the world, there are going to be things that you mess up,” Zuckerberg told reporters in a conference call last week. Things it has “messed up” include aiding foreign actors in a propaganda campaign to interfere in the 2016 US election and being a conduit for ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. If you follow the news, you know that there many, many more examples. It’s not hard to imagine things going terribly wrong when Facebook fulfills its dream of deploying its own mini-version of the internet in regions of the world that don’t have it, and then proceeds to nudge people in whatever direction the highest bidder demands.

Facebook did not respond to The Intercept’s questions regarding whether or not these predictive behavior tools are currently offered to clients working on political campaigns or healthcare. We’ve also requested an answer to that question and will update this post if and when we receive a reply. 

But Facebook isn’t the only company to worry about, everyone is working on machine learning in one way or another. For now, AI systems will be clumsy, but likely superior to old-fashioned market research. When machine learning really comes into its own, it could hold tremendous power over our dumb monkey brains. It will be like the difference between a musket and a rocket launcher. We should really consider whether we to continue in this direction, largely oblivious thanks to corporate secrecy.

Update: Facebook provided this almost completely unrelated response to our inquiry: “Facebook, just like many other ad platforms, uses machine learning to show the right ad to the right person. We don’t claim to know what people think or feel, nor do we share an individual’s personal information with advertisers.”

Key Evidence Disappeared From Police Custody During Investigation Into Russian Whistleblower's Death, Court Hears

Vital evidence disappeared from police custody during their investigation into the death of Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichnyy, a court has heard.

When Perepilichnyy died, authorities scoured his computer and discovered that he had been receiving threats. They also found a bank statement showing a mysterious payment worth half a billion dollars from an unknown company called “Precious Metal”. But that and much of the other evidence from a forensic imaging of his computer “went missing” from both police evidence disks and a server run by regional counterterrorism authorities, the head of Surrey police, Ian Pollard, testified at a coroner’s inquest on Friday.

The revelation raises further questions about how UK authorities have handled the 2012 death of Perepilichnyy, who collapsed while jogging near his home in Surrey. This is the second time that police have admitted to losing key evidence — a toxicologist also threw away most of Perepilichnyy's stomach contents, limiting the ability of scientists to figure out whether or not he had been poisoned.

Police also failed to interview Perepilichnyy’s secret lover, who dined with him on his final night alive, until BuzzFeed News tracked her down last year, and repeatedly stonewalledFrench detectives as they investigated his mysterious trip to Paris right before he died.

Police have long insisted Perepilichnyy died of natural causes, and the Home Office has invoked national security powers to withhold evidence from the inquest. But last summer, BuzzFeed News revealed that the British government was suppressing explosive intelligence provided by US spy agencies indicating that Perepilichnyy was assassinated on the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Coroner Nicholas Hilliard QC told today’s hearing that he had made “enquiries” about that intelligence, but did not give further details.

Pollard admitted in court today that if his police force had been aware of everything that is now known about Perepilichnyy “from the get-go,” then they would “have suspicions” about his death and would have conducted further investigation.

The government is now reviewing Perepilichnyy’s death and 13 other suspected assassinations exposed by BuzzFeed News that authorities had previously ignored. Hilliard told the court that he had learned from the Home Office that the review will conclude by the end of April — around six weeks after it was originally announced.

The police investigation into Perepilichnyy’s death has come under further scrutiny during the coroner’s inquest this week. Elmira Medynska, the secret lover called to testify at the inquest only after BuzzFeed News tracked her down, told the court on Wednesday that Perepilichnyy was “very stressed” as they dined together on the night before his death and that he demanded that he sit facing the restaurant’s customers. He ate something “bad” and then spent an hour vomiting back at the hotel, she testified.

An independent expert from Kew Gardens told an earlier hearing of Perepilichnyy’s inquest that she had found a substance with the same atomic weight as the plant toxin gelsemium in the dead man’s stomach. However, the same expert told the inquest on Tuesday that further tests could not definitively identify that substance as gelsemium or any other plant toxin, and its origins could not be identified after the police toxicologist threw away most of the contents of Perepilichnyy’s stomach.

A number of different scientists have testified at the inquiry that they could not identify any sign of poison in any of the tests they ran on Perepilichnyy’s available remains. One pathologist testified that, almost six years after his death and with his stomach contents thrown away, the tests they were able to run were “very detailed” but “not exhaustive”.

It was too late for scientists to test for nerve agents, long known to be in the Kremlin’s arsenal but now under close scrutiny after the March poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal. However, a toxicologist testified that based on Perepilichnyy’s symptoms, it was “possible but unlikely” that he had been poisoned with a nerve agent.

Pollard, the head of Surrey Police, discovered that the computer material had disappeared last June, after the evidence was requested for the inquest, he testified on Friday. Police had been given two disks supposedly containing forensic imaging of Perepilichnyy’s laptop, but they realised those images were not on the disks.

Pollard then learned that the material had been on a server belonging to the South East Counter Terrorism Unit, the government’s regional counterterrorism authority. But when he accessed the server, the evidence was no longer there, either, due to “system failures”. “Unfortunately, they didn’t back that up,” Pollard said.

The material has never been recovered. It had included the bank statement containing the mysterious half-billion-dollar payment from an unknown company, Precious Metal. The payment was made in May 2011, around the same time that Perepilichnyy had been trying to reach a deal with Swiss prosecutors as he provided them with evidence of a massive Kremlin-linked fraud.

In other testimony, a Russian translator working for the police who examined Perepilichnyy’s computer said she found threatening Skype messages warning him he faced prison and telling him if he wanted a “safe, free life” he would need to pay 300,000 rubles (around £6,000 at the time) the next day.

As she examined the computer, the translator, Ekaterina Clarke-O’Connell, remembered seeing huge amounts of money flowing through his bank accounts. She told the court she had the impression that something was “not right” in Perepilchnyy’s life.

The inquest has now finished hearing oral testimony. The coroner, Nicholas Hilliard QC, is expected to give his opinion by the end of May.