WJI's daily reads for Nov. 8, 2021

The Intercept: U.S. Treasury is buying private app data to target and investigate people.

Two contracts obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and shared with The Intercept by Tech Inquiry, a research and advocacy group, show that over the past four months, the Treasury acquired two powerful new data feeds from Babel Street: one for its sanctions enforcement branch, and one for the Internal Revenue Service. Both feeds enable government use of sensitive data collected by private corporations not subject to due process restrictions. Critics were particularly alarmed that the Treasury acquired access to location and other data harvested from smartphone apps; users are often unaware of how widely apps share such information.

AP: Private prison didn't want to raise detainee work wages, so it cut sanitation services instead.

“It got really gross — nobody cleaned anything,” Ivan Sanchez, a 34-year-old detainee from Jalisco, Mexico, said in a phone interview from the jail. “We pick up after ourselves, but nobody sweeps or mops. The guards were saying it wasn’t their job to clean the toilets. ... It caused a lot of animosity between the detainees and the officers because of that.”

Further, they said, not being able to work makes it harder for detainees to buy extra food at the center’s commissary, supplementing what they consider to be inadequate meals provided by GEO.

Click On Detroit: Suspension upheld for doctor who approved 22,000 medical marijuana certificates in a year.

Above the Law: Judge, in joke order, bans Elf on the Shelf.

AP: Feds seek 44-month sentence in first Jan. 6 riot case that involved violence.

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