Aug 9, 2016
Jermane Bond (@JermaneBond) is a Senior
Fellow at the National Collaborative for Health Equity where he
leads efforts to address the determinants of health for boys and
men of color. His research interests include men’s preconception
health and reproductive life planning, paternal involvement in
pregnancy outcomes and racial and ethnic disparities in infant
mortality. With funding from the Office of Minority Health in the
Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Bond formed the
Commission on Paternal Involvement in Pregnancy Outcomes, (a
transdisciplinary working group of social scientist and public
health professionals) to raise awareness for the importance of
paternal involvement in pregnancy and family health by reframing
debates, informing research, policy and practice to support greater
involvement of expectant fathers in pregnancy. Dr. Bond is a member
of the American Public Health Association, the American College of
Epidemiology and serves on several editorial boards, including the
Maternal and Child Health Journal and the American Journal of
Public Health. He received a B.A. from Morehouse College, and a
Ph.D. from Howard University.
In this episode, we discussed:
- Health disparities within the black community.
- Specific health disparities affecting black men.
- How health technology can play a vital role in creating better
outcomes for black men.
Resources:
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This Week's News
The Federal Trade Commission plans to crack down on
celebrity product endorsements on social media. The agency
thinks the endorsements aren’t transparent enough because they
often don’t contain an explicit statement that the endorsement is
actually a paid advertisement. So this will affect celebrities like
DJ Khaled who promotes Ciroc vodka on Snapchat and other
celebrities who earn revenue from sponsorships in exchange for
giving products their stamp of approval.
The FTC has brought lawsuits against several companies
that secure product endorsements from celebrities.
But marketing executives think this is an overreach, saying
the these celebrity influencers recognize the trust their audiences
place in them and would never violate that rapport by endorsing
products they don’t actually believe in.
Experts are advising celebrity endorsers to know include
hashtags in their sponsored posts, with #ad being
the preferred indicator, although these hashtags often
get jumbled up with a bunch of other hashtags.
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The U.S. is concerned that voting machines will be
hacked on election day. Remember that crazy 2000
election that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court?
Well, picture that scenario—except no one even knows where to
start counting—since the entire system was hacked.
The problem is that with more than 9,000 voting districts in
the U.S., it’s quite a task to monitor all those. So the Obama
administration is considering whether to designate voting machines
as “critical infrastructure”.
So if you’re in or around a court house, you may want
to watch what you say—even if you’re talking to your own lawyer.
Apparently, the FBI placed bugs in and around the San Mateo
County courthouse while they were investigating an
alleged foreclosed homes bid-rigging scheme. The FBI started
out sending under-cover agents with wires, but apparently the
agents fell out of favor with the suspects who began sharing less
information with the undercover agents. So the FBI decided to try
and capture the suspects’ conversations at the courthouse. But they
went ahead and captured EVERYONE’S conversations—including people
discussing their sex lives.
In any case, US District Judge Charles Breyer issued an order
last week suppressing over 200 hours of audio recordings because he
found the suspects had a legit expectation of privacy and so the
surveillance tactic violated the Fourth Amendment. But
technically, the FBI can keep placing bugs outside
courthouses, since another federal judge in San Mateo issued the
exact opposite ruling in another case—saying the suspects didn’t
adequately protect their own privacy.
Privacy Shield went into effect last week.
That’s the privacy deal worked out between the U.S. and European
Union after lawyer and PhD student Max Schrems — who is Austrian —
successfully challenged Facebook’s privacy protection practices.
Schrems filed 22 complaints against Facebook in Ireland, which
ultimately led the EU to strike down the so called Safe
Harbor—which for 16 years had governed transatlantic data exchanges
between European citizens and servers in the United States. After
the Safe Harbor was struck down, tech companies had to make
individual agreements, which proved cumbersome, while the U.S. and
E.U negotiated an alternative arrangement that would protect
Europeans’ private data from the prying eyes of the National
Security Agency. The result is the Privacy Shield. But
28-year-old Schrems thinks Privacy Shield still isn’t good
enough.
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In a
letter to Congress,
the U.S. Copyright Office weighed
in on the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed rules to
open up set-top boxes to competition. The goal is to allow
consumers to choose which set-top box they access content from,
instead of being stuck with the box that they lease from their
cable provider for an average of $231 per year. The U.S.
Copyright Office wrote that the FCC’s proposed rules would give
rise to widespread copyright infringement.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Mitch Stolz argues that
the Copyright Office’s legal analysis is full of holes, mainly
because it fails to account for the fact that copyright
law doesn’t confer any rights with respect to how the
technology that consumers use to access the actual, copyrighted
material, is designed.
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The Justice Department has decided it will not update
the consent decrees performing rights organizations ASCAP and
BMI entered into back in 1941. Those agreements set the
standard for how media outlets would pay royalties. But, of course,
the Internet wasn’t around then, and ASCAP and BMI had sought to
have the consent decrees updated for the digital age.
The Department of Justice declined and actually are adding a
rule requiring ASCAP and BMI to get clearance from all of the
artists who contributed to a song, and pay each of them their share
of royalties. This is known as 100% licensing.
ASCAP and BMI, of course, were not happy with the decision,
arguing that it would lead to musicians being paid less for their
works.
Finally, a former technician a the FBI has pled guilty
to charges that he spied for the Chinese government,
providing sensitive intelligence to Chinese officials, in exchange
for travel reimbursements, cash and even prostitutes. Kun Shan
Chun, a Chinese-born naturalized U.S. citizen faces 10 years in
prison.