But soon after the app—seen as a direct threat to Twitter, which recently became X— was released, users on Twitter began posting screenshots of Threads’ privacy policy published on Apple’s App store. Some pointed out the app’s terms of service give Meta permission to collect a trove of data, including information on user’s health, financial information, location, search history.

Data privacy experts say that, though this level of data collection is not unique to Threads, users do risk handing over even more personal information to a company that already knows a lot about account holders. And as Meta looks towards turning Threads into a decentralized service, which would allow users to view Threads content across other apps and theoretically give them more control over their data, experts warn that the move could expand the company’s reach across the internet.

Meta’s deputy chief privacy officer, Rob Sherman has said that privacy policy on the App Store isn’t fully representative of the platform’s actual policy and said that users can “choose to share different kinds of data,” in a post on Threads on July 10. 

“In general, Threads collects [the same data that] Facebook and Instagram do, which is much more information than is necessary for the app to function and much more information than is collected on Twitter or many of the other Twitter alternatives,” Calli Schroeder, Global Privacy Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center told TIME in an email.

A review by TIME of Threads and X’s policies on Apple’s App Store shows that X collects much of the same information—such as browsing and purchase history—as Threads, though X’s privacy policy does not include the “sensitive information,” financial information, or health and fitness categories that Threads does. Threads’ privacy policy does not specify what information is considered sensitive.

Threads users require an Instagram account to sign up, which means many may already have the same data collected about them. Despite this, privacy experts still say users should be cautious about signing up for Threads.

“This information will most likely be used to create a more hyper-personalized and targeted experience on the app, shared with and sold to advertisers, or added to the already massive troves of personal data Meta has collected on individuals via its other platforms and outside sources,” says Schroeder. A Meta spokesperson told TIME over the phone that the company provides a number of controls for people to manage how their data is used for ads, such as ad preferences, and the “Why Am I Seeing This?” feature, which provides context about why users are being shown specific ads. 

Here’s what to know about Threads’ data collection policy and plans for decentralization. 

What data can apps access?

According to its listing on the Apple App Store, Threads can collect information about a user’s health, finance, contacts, search history, location, and other sensitive information via their digital activity. 

In his post on Threads, Meta’s Sherman said that users should consult Meta’s own privacy policies to best understand the data the app collects. “The labels are similar to the rest of our apps, including Instagram, in that our social apps receive whatever info (including the categories of data listed in the App Store) you share in the app. People can choose to share different kinds of data,” he said. “Meta’s privacy policy, and the Threads supplementary privacy policy, are the best resources to understand how Threads uses and collects data.”

Experts say that much of the information users agree to let the app collect is already available to companies—especially if they already use Meta’s other services like Facebook or Instagram. 

“Quite frankly, in terms of collection, this is par for the course for everybody,” says Jim Waldo, a professor at Harvard University whose research focuses on privacy.

Even so, Nazanin Andalibi, assistant professor of information at the University of Michigan, says that users concerned about privacy should still proceed with caution, and be wary of “going further into the Meta ecosystem” by signing up for a new app like Threads. 

People use different platforms differently, Andalibi says—for example, you might use Facebook to keep up with family, Instagram for friends, and Threads for work. While they might seem like separate worlds, the information you give to each app all goes back to the same company. 

“Now Meta knows who all your friends are and and who your family’s friends are and it can build social graphs around that to give it a lot of information,” adds Waldo. “If you use more and more of Meta’s apps, they get a fuller picture of your activity.”

Threads’ release in the E.U. is on hold amid regulatory uncertainty. The E.U.’s Digital Markets Act, passed last year, prevents large companies like Meta from sharing user data across multiple platforms. “We would have liked to offer Threads in the EU at the same time as other markets, and the app does meet GDPR requirements today,” Sherman wrote in a Thread, “But building this offering against the backdrop of other regulatory requirements that have not yet been clarified would potentially take a lot longer, and in the face of this uncertainty, we prioritized offering this new product to as many people as possible.”

Meta has come under fire for its handling of data privacy in the past. In May, the company was fined a record $1.3 billion for data privacy violations in the E.U. The company said it had been “singled out” and that it used the same legal mechanisms as thousands of other companies in the E.U. In the U.S. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed an expansion of its 2020  consent order against Meta over its alleged misrepresentation of how much access app developers had to users’ private data. (Twitter recently protested its own FTC consent order around data practices, saying that the watchdog had made “unceasing demands.”)

In 2018, Facebook, which has since rebranded as Meta, disclosed that it had exposed the data of 87 million users of its Facebook platform to third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting group with ties to Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. A year later, the company agreed to pay a record $5 billion penalty to the FTC, one of the largest regulatory penalties ever imposed by the U.S. government on a company. 

What do companies do with data?

Why does Threads want to know things like health and fitness or financial information? The answer has to do with advertising—the company’s bread and butter. Advertising revenue accounted for 97% of Meta’s overall revenue in 2022. 

Data collection allows the app to create a finely-tuned profile of users that could be shared with third-party services, many of which use the information to create hyper-targeted ads, Andalibi says. “All of these different insights or information about people separately can be very sensitive and consequential in certain contexts,” she says.“Imagine targeted advertising in the context of infertility, or someone with an eating disorder seeing ads about weight loss.” (Meta says it made updates to its privacy policy in 2022 that give users more control over the ads they see.)

Threads does not currently support ads, but a Meta source told Axios that it would introduce ads once its “user base reaches a critical mass”. 

Andalibi says there is no need for companies to access and store the data it does. Andalibi points to apps like Signal, which use encryption services to ensure user data is protected. “These are decisions that technology companies make—what data they collect, how they collect it, what they use it for, who they share it with, how long they keep it for,” she says. “It’s not an inevitable choice.”

Plans for decentralization 

Meta has shared that Threads would “soon” be compatible with ActivityPub, a user-centric software  that would give users the option to run their own servers, rather than just relying on Meta’s, known as decentralization. This tool could allow social media users to cross-post and interact with other platforms in what’s known as the “fediverse,” a group of social networks including Mastodon that allow users to communicate across platforms. This should give social media users control of their content, audience and data across platforms.   

“Our vision is that people using compatible apps will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a new era of diverse and interconnected networks. If you have a public profile on Threads, this means your posts would be accessible from other apps, allowing you to reach new people with no added effort,” the company said in an announcement. 

In theory, this could give users further control over their data, as they’d be able to access Threads without downloading Meta’s platform. But what that means for the data the app is already collecting, and data on other platforms remains to be seen. (Meta told TIME that Thread’s supplementary privacy policy includes additional disclosures around how data is shared with third parties, to reflect the plan for Threads to eventually be interoperable with other apps.) The disclosures say that, even if users interact with Threads through a third-party service, Meta can still collect information about the third-party account and profile. 

“It’s not clear what’s going to happen to all of the data that was collected from profiles before that point,” Andalibi says. Schroeder notes that Meta could end up tracking Threads interactions across servers, widening its reach. “In a way, this could just expand Meta’s reach and ability to see everything people do across the internet,” Schroeder says.

Musk took a different approach earlier this year when he began an effort to start charging for access to Twitter’s application programming interface (API), which lets third-party developers and researchers access Twitter data.

What options do users in search of stricter privacy protocols have? One of the biggest things users can do is simply stay off the app, a move Schroeder says could help put pressure on the company to make decentralization a priority.

“My guess is that Meta will have little incentive to follow through on their decentralization promise if they get mass early buy-in for Threads,” says Schroeder.  “Users may be able to push for decentralization if they refuse to sign up until Threads can be used outside current Meta platforms.”

Source: Times

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“With regard to the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act that were the core agenda (in the Yoon-Biden summit), (Yoon) has not protected our industry and companies at all,” said Lee Jae-myung, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party, at a party meeting.

Lee said Yoon’s performance at the meeting ended up in a humiliating situation of generously spreading “global hogang” diplomacy. Hogang, a buzzword in Korean, refers to a customer who is easy to deceive.

Lee also criticized Yoon for his improper positions on the Ukraine crisis and the Taiwan question.

On Thursday, the national youth committee and the national university student committee of the party held a rally in front of South Korea’s National Assembly Proceeding Hall to condemn the government’s diplomatic policy for escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Lee also participated in the event.

A joint statement released after the Yoon-Biden talks has caused concerns and criticism in South Korea, with the public opinion saying that the Yoon government is leading the country to “the center of a new Cold War.”

The post S. Korean President’s Foreign Policy Toward U.S. Criticized as Humiliating appeared first on Policy Print.

To build a multipolar world, Russia will focus on eliminating the U.S. dominance in world affairs and create conditions to counter any “neo-colonial and hegemonic ambitions,” the document said.

Russia called the United States “the main inspirer, organizer and executor of the aggressive anti-Russian policy of the collective West, the source of the major risks to the security of Russia, international peace and balanced, equitable and progressive development of mankind.”

Russia voiced its readiness to maintain strategic parity and peaceful coexistence with the United States and to establish a balance of interests between the two countries.

But the prospects for such relations depend on the U.S. readiness to abandon its policy of forceful domination and revise its anti-Russian course in favor of interactions with Russia, the document said.

As for the normalization of Russia-Europe ties, the concept criticized the strategic policy of the United States to “draw and deepen dividing lines in Europe to undermine the competitiveness of the economies of Russia and European states, limit the sovereignty of European states, and ensure the U.S. global dominance.”

The Foreign Policy Concept was approved by Putin in a decree signed on Friday to replace the 2016 version. The document came into force immediately.

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Covering hundreds of pages on how other governments have “jailed, tortured, or even killed” political opponents, human rights defenders, and journalists, the report kept silent on the thousands of Americans who have lost their lives due to mass shootings, police brutality, and racism discrimination, said the journal.

“America’s historical trajectory shows that it has always viewed human rights as a tool for hegemony and uses it selectively as an excuse to label countries as human rights violators. Under the pretext of defending human rights, the U.S. invaded Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, but all of these war-torn countries suffered the murder of innocent civilians and catastrophic infrastructure destruction,” it noted.

“Sadly, the U.S. does not uphold the common international standards or guarantee human rights from a fair and impartial standpoint when promoting human rights diplomacy and managing human rights matters. It always exercises double or even multiple standards,” it said.

“Critics argue that the annual report has nothing to do with human rights but is a tool to malign rivals and coerce other countries,” it added.

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China will send warships to a multilateral naval exercise hosted this month by Indonesia, which has also invited countries such as North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States, amid rising tension in the Asia-Pacific region.  The drills come as China and the United States ramp up military diplomacy in the region, staging more frequent war games with allies and partners around Taiwan, the busy waterway of the South China Sea, and the west Pacific.  China’s navy will send its destroyer Zhanjiang and frigate Xuchang, both equipped with guided missiles, to the 2023 Multilateral Naval Exercise Komodo (MNEK), the defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday

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The excise policy – 2021-22 came under the scanner after Delhi LG Vinai Kumar Saxena recommended a CBI probe into the alleged irregularities in its implementation. Former Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia has already been arrested by CBI in this case.

he top foreign policy aide to Turkish presidential challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has told Newsweek he is hopeful that a new Turkish parliament will approve Sweden’s delayed accession to NATO before alliance members meet for their next summit this summer—if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan loses next month’s election.

Ünal Çeviköz told Newsweek that the six-party opposition bloc, which is headed by long-time Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kılıçdaroğlu, is “optimistic” on Sweden’s proposed accession, which has been stuck in limbo for several months amid heated disputes between Stockholm and Erdogan.

Kılıçdaroğlu is running slightly ahead of Erdogan in public opinion polls ahead of the May 14 election, raising the possibility that the latter’s 20 years in power might soon come to an end.

Kılıçdaroğlu has said he plans to revitalize Turkish relations with NATO allies and European Union partners which have suffered under Erdogan, who critics say has increasingly turned to authoritarianism tinged by Islamist populism to retain power.

“I hope it will be realized before the NATO summit in Vilnius, but it might fall a little bit short,” Çeviköz said of Sweden’s proposed accession to the alliance.

“It simply depends upon the post-electoral period, the functioning of the parliament, the formation of the new government.”

Swedish Saga

Any new government and new parliament are expected to be in place by mid-June, around a month before the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital. With Finland already having joined in April, NATO members are hopeful that the July 11-12 meeting will serve as a formal celebration of the alliance’s expansion to 32 members, including Sweden.

Turkey is still refusing to approve Sweden’s bid, and is demanding Stockholm crack down on the activities of Kurdish political and militant groups operating within its territory. Sweden has long been a center for exiled Kurdish activists, and a fundraising hub for Kurdish groups fighting in Syria and elsewhere.

Some of those groups are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long guerrilla campaign in Turkey. The U.S. and EU both list the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Sweden has already passed new legislation to clamp down on militant organizations. It also lifted a 2019 arms embargo on Turkey put in place after Ankara’s incursion into Syria targeting the Syrian Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), a militia that is linked to the PKK and forms the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which has fought alongside American troops against Islamic State militants.

But this was not enough for Erdogan, who also demanded extradition of Kurdish terror suspects and those accused of links to the failed 2016 Turkish coup, which Ankara blames on U.S.-based preacher Fethullah Gülen. More than 300,000 people have been arrested in Turkey since 2016 for suspected ties with Gülen.

The standoff has toxified public opinion in both countries. Turks were especially outraged in January when a far-right Danish activist burned a Koran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

Sweden is now waiting for further anti-terror legislation to come into force on June 1. A Turkish government source told the Daily Sabah this week that the bill would not guarantee an end to Ankara’s opposition.

Çeviköz, though, told Newsweek that a new government led by Kılıçdaroğlu would look kindly at the new law.

“We are reassured by Swedish counterparts that the introduction of that new law will, in a way, appease the expectations of Turkey as far as Sweden’s combat against terrorism is concerned,” he said.

“This law will enable Sweden to pay tribute to the sensitivities of Turkey as far as the PKK terrorist issues are concerned. Once this happens, it will be a process which will remove all the basic hurdles in front of Swedish membership in NATO. And it will allow the next government to look in a better and an optimistic manner on their membership of NATO.”

The Russia Problem

Çeviköz said that a Kılıçdaroğlu-led government will generally look to build foreign “trust and confidence” in Turkey, which under Erdogan has often been a source of intra-NATO tensions and disputes with the EU.

He said a new government would continue Turkish efforts to mediate between Ukraine and Russia in the ongoing war, and maintain Ankara’s role in overseeing the Black Sea grain export deal.

“To find an overall development for peace between Russia and Ukraine, it’s a matter of European security architecture and it is not only Turkey,” Çeviköz said.

Though a NATO member, Turkey has somewhat straddled the growing gulf between Moscow and its EU-NATO adversaries. Turkey is heavily dependent on Russian energy—state-owned Gazprom provided some 45 percent of all Turkish domestic gas demand in 2021—and Russia is, in the words of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, “one of the most important trade partners.”

Amid the Western sanctions offensive on Moscow, Turkey has seen its trade with Russia increase by 87 percent.

Though he said a new government would not mirror EU sanctions against Russia, Çeviköz did say that a Kılıçdaroğlu-led administration would adopt more intense scrutiny of Turkish firms accused of helping Russia bypass the measures and source dual-use goods.

“We are also trying to take the necessary measures not to allow this to happen,” he said. “We will be certainly looking at it more carefully.”

Çeviköz said an opposition-led Turkey would look to “to diversify and to diminish the dependence on a certain source” when it comes to energy.

Still, Çeviköz said Turkey will not be off-limits to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “If a presidential visit is considered from either party to the other, then we will certainly be looking at it,” he said.

The recent International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Putin, he added, is not relevant to Turkey as the country is not a party to the agreement. “There is not anything to be discussed on that level,” he said.

‘Trust’ in Turkey

Çeviköz said the combined opposition is “quite confident” of success in the looming elections. But what if Erdogan wins again? “We don’t consider this as a possibility,” Çeviköz replied.

“The paradigm, not only in Turkey, but overall in the world is the confrontation between democratic forces and authoritarianism,” he said. “Turkey is going to prove that the authoritarian tendencies could be defeated by a democratic and free elections […] Democracy will prevail. And if it doesn’t, then it will be a dark hole in the region.”

A Kılıçdaroğlu-led administration, Çeviköz said, will be looking to make peace with those so often rankled by Erdogan’s foreign policy over the past two decades, starting with historic rival Greece. Athens and Ankara have been involved in multiple territorial disputes in the eastern Mediterranean, with huge reserves of undersea oil and natural gas at stake.

Turkish and Greek vessels have clashed at sea, and Erdogan even warned in December that Turkish missiles can reach Athens.

“One of the priorities will be certainly in relations between Turkey and Greece,” Çeviköz said, suggesting a recent thaw in ties following the February earthquake that devastated parts of eastern Turkey and northern Syria gives some hope for improved bilateral ties. “I think there is a very optimistic opportunity there,” he said.

Long-term, Çeviköz said the Turkish opposition also has an eye on renewed EU accession talks, which have been frozen since 2018 amid democratic backsliding under Erdogan.

“It is a very long-term process,” Çeviköz said of Ankara’s EU ambitions. “First, we have to create the trust and confidence of Turkey, with the international community […] Once this happens, certainly further developments and progress will follow.”

Turkey under Kılıçdaroğlu will also be looking to revive ties with neighboring Syria, whose dictatorial leader Bashar al-Assad has—with extensive Russian and Iranian help—all but won the brutal civil war against a variety of domestic and foreign-backed rebel groups.

Turkey occupies a swath of northern Syria it says is required to protect the southern Turkish border, but Çeviköz said an opposition administration would be willing to re-evaluate its military presence there if there is a détente with Damascus. The return of some four million Syrian refugees now living in Turkey is a top priority across party lines.

“It is the intention of the next government to incentivize the voluntary return of Syrians,” Çeviköz said. “Dialogue is absolutely necessary between Ankara and Damascus.”

The EU and U.S. are still cold on Assad, refusing to re-establish ties after more than a decade of trying to oust the dictator. “I don’t think that it’s going to damage the Turkish relations with the U.S.” Çeviköz said of a potential thaw between Ankara and Damascus.

“If we can achieve that kind of reassurance and confidence between the two countries, certainly, there will be a time when there will not be a necessity for reassuring Turkey’s security by presence of Turkish armed forces in the Syrian territory,” he added.

Source: The HIndu

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“On his (CM) first day in office, I met him personally and I discussed with him with regards to the issue of the reservation policy and the roster system,” Lyngdoh told reporters.

“I have placed before him this very sensitive issue which needs to be discussed in detail for the interest of the people of all communities in the state and the approach has to be in a very harmonious and peaceful manner,” he added.

When asked, Lyngdoh said, “First, the right platform is with the chief minister. That is the right platform. So, we have aired our concerns about this issue and the chief minister has responded very positively that we will look into this issue.”

Asked on the stand of the UDP on whether the roster should be implemented with prospective or retrospective effect, the UDP leader however said, “I would like to tell you here this is a very sensitive issue. One can’t just say I like this I like that; we are here for the interest of the people of our state. With responsibility and accountability, we have to ensure whatever issues that we take up, it has to be in a very matured manner.”

He reiterated that the issue is very sensitive and delicate and need a very detailed discussion with the stakeholders in the government and said, “There we will place our points and give our suggestions accordingly.”

Lyngdoh also refused to comment on the VPP’s demand for reviewing of the state reservation policy and said, “I am not concerned about the points raised by other political parties, I am concerned about our own political party.”

When pointed out that the UDP had also made it clear the need to review of the reservation policy in its election manifesto, the party president however said, “That is what I am saying, so we will be reviewing in what sense? In the right platform. That is where we have to understand.”

Lyngdoh also expressed that he does not know who brought up the need to have a special session on the issue and said that the issue needs to be discussed first at the right platform then they will see from there.

Source: Hub Network

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In many ways, Washington DC is still grappling with the hangover from the Capitol attack of January 6, 2021. Like any good hangover, it’s long-lasting and tends to come back to hit you when you least expect it. Like for instance on January 8 of this year, two days after the low-profile commemoration of the second anniversary of the assault on Washington DC by die-hard Trump supporters, when images came in from Brasilia showing thousands of supporters of another former president, Jair Bolsonaro – as resistant to defeat like Donald Trump – storming Brazil’s democratic institutions.

In the DC courts, however, nobody needs their memory jogged. All proceedings in the “the most important investigation that the Justice Department has ever entered into,” in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s words, end up in the District of Columbia District Court. According to court records, 940 people have been prosecuted for their actions that day, when a mob stormed Congress after attending a Trump rally near the White House. Encouraged by Trump, who was still president, the insurgents attempted to halt what until then had been a little-known element of the democratic process: the certification of Joe Biden’s legitimate victory at the polls.

Two high-profile trials recently coincided at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse. On the fourth floor, five members of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group whose members feel united – besides the fact of being male – by their admiration for Trump, were being tried. This group drew growing attention in 2020 during the protests that followed the murder by a police officer of the African-American George Floyd.

Two floors up, the jury listened to the first witness, a congressional employee, in the case against Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who became a January 6 icon by photographing himself with his feet up on the desk of the then-speaker of the House of Representatives, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi, to whom he left a note that said: “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch” (although his defense claims that he used the slang variant biatch). He has been charged with several counts, including committing and attempting to commit an act to obstruct, impede and interfere with an officer, propertytheft and breaking into a restricted building with a dangerous weapon. Specifically, a 950,000 volt stun gun (available on Amazon for about $100).

The Proud Boys are facing a much more serious crime: seditious conspiracy, a charge not used lightly in the United States, but for which Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was found guilty in November. He could face up to 60 years in prison, but his case is exceptional: the average prison sentence at trials so far has been 60 days.

Rhodes met on January 5 in a parking lot with his counterpart at the head of the Proud Boys, the Cuban-American Enrique Tarrio. Both are surely the most prominent figures in the assault on the Capitol, even though Tarrio was not physically there. He followed the attack on television from a Baltimore hotel because the police had barred him from setting foot in Washington that day, following an arrest in the city in December for burning a church’s anti-racist Black Lives Matter banner.

Tarrio listened with apparent detachment on Wednesday morning, exchanging quips and half-smiles with another one of the defendants, Ethan Nordean, as the judge admitted as evidence video footage of Trump instructing the Proud Boys during an election debate. “Back off and stand by,” he told them. Once the adrenaline rush of the attack on the Capitol subsided, Nordean wrote on his social media: “F— you trump you left us on [t]he battle field bloody and alone.”

Other individuals on trial included Zachary Rehl, Joe Biggs – who tweeted “this is war” after learning of the legitimate concession of election victory to Joe Biden – and Nic Pezzola, who is remembered for images repeated a million times, showing him breaking one of the windows of the Capitol with a shield taken from a policeman. Pezzola was the first person in the crowd to breach Congress.

The prosecution, as in previous cases, is trying to prove that this was not a spontaneous riot, as the defense claims, but an operation planned and led most particularly by Tarrio and his team, and which directly targeted the heart of American democracy. The case also seeks to prove the crypto-fascist gang’s ties to Trump. Those links, which the defendants deny, take up an entire chapter of the 814-page report released just before Christmas by the bipartisan congressional committee that investigated January 6 and its political implications for 18 months. In it, its members conclude that the Proud Boys led the attack, penetrated the Capitol and took hundreds of people inside with them.

It is this anonymous mass of followers that now makes up most of the arrests still taking place throughout the country (and which will continue, warn the authorities). There are so far nearly 1,000 defendants facing charges that range from misdemeanors to felonies, such as entering a restricted federal building or grounds, property destruction or causing serious bodily injury to an officer (the day ended with 140 police officers injured, and four committed suicide in the days that followed). Then there is also the crime of seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era charge used against Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, leaders of the far-right Oath Keepers group. As for the defendants themselves, they run the gamut of ages and professions: there is an ex-policeman (Thomas Webster, sentenced to 10 years in prison), an air conditioner technician (Kyle Young, seven years), a nurse, a company CEO, four models (including John Strand, who is facing up to 24 years), a Boy Scout leader, actors (Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman and an Olympic medalist.

There is even a complete family, the Munns: the parents and the three children participated in the events. The former received sentences of 14 days; the latter were released on probation. All five belong to something that could be called the January 6 middle class. A good number of them probably didn’t count on committing any crime when they went to the Trump rally. And many have blamed the lies of the former president about election fraud for the mess in which they now find themselves. Others, like Barnett, claim to be victims of “political persecution.”

The squatter in Pelosi’s office, like other defendants, has set up a web page to defend his innocence, and he is accepting donations to cover his legal expenses. He is also raising funds ($22,794 so far) through a conservative affiliation crowdfunding platform called GiveSendGo, which, according to calculations by The Washington Post, It has raised more than $3.7 million dollars for the Jan Sixers, as those arrested and prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol like to call themselves.

There is also a Telegram account that provides links to each of these financing channels, and its administrators always start and end the day in the same way. At night, they lead a collective prayer in memory of the prisoners through a live chat. In the morning, they start the day by sharing a list of the trials that are scheduled in Washington in the following hours. Last Friday, the list added 24 ongoing processes. Two days earlier, a federal court worker defined January 6, 2021 as “the longest day of American democracy”, in a conversation with EL PAÍS. A day that, more than two years later, is still consuming most of the time of officials at the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington.

Source : El Pais

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