Police use dead man’s fingers to try to unlock his iPhone

The dead have no privacy rights.

Corpses can’t assert privacy rights in courts. But they can unlock their iPhones with fingerprint authentication, and that comes in mighty handy when police need to investigate who killed them or who convinced them to go on a stabbing spree with a butcher’s knife.

Forbes has published a report of what it says is the first known case of police using a dead man’s fingerprints in their efforts to get past the protection of Apple’s Touch ID authentication technology.

Note that a previous case from July 2016 involved police making a cast from a dead man’s prints, but not from his actual fingers. They asked for 3D prints to be made from fingerprints they already had on file from having previously booked him.

The landmark case involving actual dead fingers is that of Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an 18-year-old Somali immigrant who plowed his car into a group of people on the Ohio State University campus, attacked victims with a butcher’s knife, and was shot dead by police in November 2016.

No one–living or dead–has privacy rights to their phones anyway. I mean, you don’t see them mentioned in the 4th Amendment, do you?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If The Founders wanted people to have privacy with respect to phones, they would have mentionedΒ them. “Persons, houses, papers, and effects.” A phone is not a person, a house, nor made of paper. I guess you could make some sort of argument that a phone is an “effect,” but who even knows nowadays what that word meant 200 years ago? The Founders sure couldn’t have meant high-powered pocket computers with large-capacity memory storage because those thingsΒ didn’t exist. QED, bitches.

“Gee, I’m really sorry your career blew up, Ricky.”

Nickelodeon Parts Ways With Producer Dan Schneider

Nickelodeon and prolific TV producer Dan Schneider have opted to end their longtime partnership.

“Following many conversations together about next directions and future opportunities, Nickelodeon and our longtime creative partner Dan Schneider/Schneider’s Bakery have agreed to not extend the current deal,” the Viacom-owned cable network said Monday in a statement. “Since several Schneider’s Bakery projects are wrapping up, both sides agreed that this is a natural time for Nickelodeon and Schneider’s Bakery to pursue other opportunities and projects.”

Of course, that article makes no mention of why their “longtime partnership” is ending…

The Next Big Hollywood Sex Scandal Is Already Breaking…At Nickelodeon

Dan Schneider is a former actor and producer at Nickelodeon. He is responsible for nearly every one of their biggest successes in the last 20 years. Schneider has produced and written the shows that have given us breakout stars like Arianna Grande, Amanda Bynes and Victoria Justice.

Schneider has also been the subject of some very disturbing and consistent rumors for years. One need only search his name on the internet to find pretty damning rumors about him going back years. There are stories of his foot fetishes and how he acts them out on young extras alone in his office. There are stories about his relationships with his underage teenage stars and how they led to spin-off shows for the girls or blacklisting for those who didn’t participate.

Monique: “He can’t keep his slimy testicles off me.”

Lane: “His what?”

Monique: “Testicles.”Β (waves arms)

Lane: “Tentacles. N. T. Big difference.”

The MediaΒ MartyrdomΒ of Lez Guevara Considered as a Downhill Classmate Corpse Toboggan Race

Joan of Arc and the Passion of Emma GonzΓ‘lez

On Saturday, GonzΓ‘lez, who is small and compact, and who wears her dark hair cropped close to her skull, spoke for just a couple of minutes, offering an emotional name-check of the students who had died. Then, lifting her eyes and staring into the distance before her, GonzΓ‘lez stood in silence. Inhaling and exhaling deeplyβ€”the microphone caught the susurration, like waves lapping a shorelineβ€”GonzΓ‘lez’s face was stoic, tragic. Her expression shifted only minutely, but each shiftβ€”her nostrils flaring, or her eyelids batting tightly closedβ€”registered vast emotion. Tears rolled down her cheeks; she did not wipe them away. Mostly, the crowd was silent, too, though waves of cheering supportβ€”β€œGo, Emma!” β€œWe all love you!”—arose momentarily, then faded away. She stood in this articulate silence for more than twice as long as she had spoken, until a timer beeped. Six minutes and twenty seconds were over, she told her audience: the period of time it took Nikolas Cruz to commit the massacre.

In its restraint, its symbolism, and its palpable emotion, GonzΓ‘lez’s silence was a remarkable piece of political expression. Her appearance also offered an uncanny echo of one of the most indelible performances in the history of cinema: that of RenΓ©e Maria Falconetti, who starred in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s classic silent film from 1928, β€œThe Passion of Joan of Arc.” Based upon the transcript of Joan of Arc’s trial, in 1431, Dreyer’s film shows Joan as an otherworldly young womanβ€”she is nineteen, to the best of her limited knowledgeβ€”who, in the face of a barrage of questioning by hostile, older, powerful clerics, is simultaneously self-contained and brimming over with emotion. Falconetti, who never made another movie, gives an extraordinary performance, her face registering at different moments rapture, fear, defiance, and transcendence. Joan’s defense in the face of her inquisitors is largely mute: when she is asked to describe Saint Michaelβ€”who, she blasphemously claims, has appeared to herβ€”she mostly refrains from verbal response, her silence bespeaking holy understanding greater than theirs. In the final phase of her life, when Joan knows that she is to be martyred, Dreyer’s camera lingers on closeups of Falconetti, with her brutally close-cropped hair, her rough garments, and her anguished silence. Her extraordinary image in that sequence could be intercut almost seamlessly with footage from Saturday’s rally.

Hagiography at its finest, folks. Emma will have her own feast day soon.

But if Emma is Joan of Arc, might we also cast the rest of the characters for the Emma/Joan movie mash-up? Because David Hogg is perfect for Gilles de Rais.

Gilles de Montmorency-Laval (French: [dΙ™ ʁɛ]; prob. c. September 1405 – 26 October 1440),[1] Baron de Rais, was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou,[2] a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation and later conviction as a confessed serial killer of children.

…

Gilles’ bodyservant Γ‰tienne Corrillaut, known as Poitou, was an accomplice in many of the crimes and testified that his master stripped the child naked and hung him with ropes from a hook to prevent him from crying out, thenΒ masturbatedΒ upon the child’s belly or thighs. If the victim was a boy he would touch his genitals (particularly testicles) and buttocks. Taking the victim down, Rais comforted the child and assured him he only wanted to play with him. Gilles then either killed the child himself or had the child killed by his cousin Gilles de SillΓ©, Poitou or another bodyservant called Henriet.[30]Β The victims were killed by decapitation, cutting of their throats, dismemberment, or breaking of their necks with a stick. A short, thick, double-edgedΒ swordΒ called aΒ braquemardΒ was kept at hand for the murders.[30]Β Poitou further testified that Rais sometimes abused the victims (whether boys or girls) before wounding them and at other times after the victim had been slashed in the throat or decapitated. According to Poitou, Rais disdained the victim’s sexual organs, and took “infinitely more pleasure in debauching himself in this mannerΒ … than in using their natural orifice, in the normal manner.”[30]

In his own confession, Gilles testified that β€œwhen the said children were dead, he kissed them and those who had the most handsome limbs and heads he held up to admire them, and had their bodies cruelly cut open and took delight at the sight of their inner organs; and very often when the children were dying he sat on their stomachs and took pleasure in seeing them die and laughed”.[31]