Mediaboss Marketing

By Gabriel Kuman

The social marketing of important preventative health messages through visual graphics can have significant negative impacts on peoples lives given their low literacy skills and their strong allegiance to religion and Christian beliefs.This article tells the story of how ordinary Papua New Guineans perceive the disease and interpret it with their own cultural and religious contexts and the various preventative health messages that have been delivered to them.The current outbreak of the viral disease Covid-19, which started in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 sent shockwaves across the world, infecting millions of people and so far killing more than 400,000 globally.Misinformation, questions and misconceptions about the disease abound, leading to fear, anxiety, confusion, panic and stigmatisation.This is further exacerbated by both social and mainstream media coverage regarding the trajectory of the virus and how to mitigate it.The governments efforts to stop movement, both domestic and international, and close down schools and universities and other statutory bodies and systems have further fuelled the publics panic and anxiety.Social distancing strategies such as quarantine, keeping 12 metres away from other people, washing hands with sanitiser, and avoiding social gatherings are completely new and unfamiliar experiences for the people of Papua New Guinea.Messages about these non-pharmaceutical interventions have been delivered in various forms, such as by radio, television, visual posters and graphics.Most people have little or no access to radio or TV news but have been exposed to visual graphics hanging in front of big supermarkets, stores, bus stops and other public places.These messages have caused not only fear and panic but have had significant implications in relation to core social and cultural values.Family and community values such as social bonds, love, care and social support which have been strong for centuries have been replaced with suspicion, blame and rejection.For instance, a family from Simbu Province who lived in Sisiak Settlement in the Madang Province for many years decided to return to Simbu in March during the one week grace period before the lockdown of the Highlands Highway became effective.When they arrived in Simbu, no one was willing to take them into their house. They were seen as carriers of the virus and rejected.Their immediate families refused to welcome them home and provide food and accommodation. They felt unwelcomed and strange in their own land.In another scenario, an East New Britain woman who tested positive to Covid-19 complained that she and her family had been stigmatised by the community, and negative media reports.Indeed, she complained of media sensationalism and threatened to sue the mainstream media companies for defamation based on human rights abuse.These experiences demonstrate how preventative health messages about Covid-19 are received, understood and interpreted through peoples own social contexts and realities. Misconceptions about disease transmission could put people at risk and make them vulnerable.Similar experiences were seen among Papua New Guineans when the first cases of the HIV/AIDS epidemic were detected in 1987.As Dundon and Wilde recorded, most people blamed the outsiders as carriers of HIV without considering their own social and cultural factors that facilitated the viral transmission.While public health prevention and promotion messages are important to mitigate the spread of a disease of such magnitude as Covid-19, it is also imperative to consider the potential negative implications they may have.The visual representations of the disease as cartoon-like creatures with horns popping out of their heads, sharp long teeth and flame-like tongues sticking out of their mouths are reminiscent of religious images of Satan and the Devil.While commenting on the graphic shown in the featured image, one woman in her mid-50s said: Ol konkon ino save lotu so Satan kam blo kilim ol i dai (The Chinese are not Christians so Satan comes to kill them). As Aletia Dundas has written, most Christians in PNG view major disasters and disease epidemics as divine punishments for sinful behaviours.Religious fanatics and so-called street preachers have taken advantage of the situation, preaching in towns, streets, and villages about Covid-19 as a sign of the end times, last days or second coming of Christ something that most Pacific Christian leaders have cautioned against as dangerous, as alluded to in Dundas article.Still, others, as reported by Monica Minnegal and Peter Dwyer, believe falsely that God is protecting PNG from Covid-19.While this may sound as indoctrination and is incongruent to established medical explanations, it is consistent with and in some cases confirms peoples religious beliefs and explanations.The rapid growth of religious fundamentalism in PNG poses great risks to both the current and future public health emergencies.Health promotion and prevention messages are vital to influencing peoples behaviour on important health issues like Covid-19. However, how these messages are planned, prepared and delivered may not be culturally appropriate.The mismatch between important public health messages regarding issues such as viral transmission, social distancing and quarantining and the actual visual graphics of frightening images could prevent the transmission of the intended messages to the people.Public health social marketing products regarding very serious health issues like Covid-19 should take into account peoples sociocultural and religious beliefs and backgrounds. Preachers also need to be careful not to undermine scientific understanding.This article appeared first on Devpolicy Blog (devpolicy.org), from the Development Policy Centre at The Australian National University. It is part of the #Covid-19 and the Pacific series.

Gabriel Kuman is a lecturer at the Divine Word University in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, with the Department of Public Health Leadership and Training.

Caption: Artwork on the roadside in Madang in PNG as part of the Madang provincial authoritys health communication strategy during Covid-19 (Photo credit: Professor Fr Philip Gibbs)

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Covid-19 messages and PNG sociocultural beliefs - POST-COURIER

NEW YORK, June 25, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- KDDI America, a subsidiary of KDDI Corporation, a Fortune Global 500 company with three datacenters in the U.S., announced it has partnered with Infobip, a global cloud communications company that provides messaging solutions for advanced customer engagement, identity authentication and security. As the demands for digital customer experiences expand, KDDI Americas strategy is to enable digital transformation through cloud-based omnichannel communications solutions for enterprise-wide customers.

Omnichannel messaging is creating more mobile-centric engagement opportunities for businesses, and KDDI America/Infobip will serve as the hub of this experience. KDDI America now offers its enterprise business customers a leading SaaS API-based advanced messaging offering that can be fully customized to help businesses reach their customers with marketing through a litany of multimedia messaging channels.

According to Ovums Mobile Messaging Traffic and Revenue Forecast: 2017-221, global revenues from A2P will exceed revenues from person-to-person (P2P) SMS by 2022, totaling $43 billion. Furthermore, it is estimated there will be approximately 3.5 trillion A2P messages delivered by 2023, a 40% growth rate from 2.5 trillion delivered in 20192. The GSMA estimates the market for RCS will be worth $74 billion by the end of 20213.

KDDI America and Infobip are working together to define, develop and deliver experience-driven, media-centric messaging solutions that expedite digital transformation and increase overall customer engagement levels not seen before between brands and their customers, said Masatoshi Nobuhara, KDDI Americas CEO and President. KDDI has a legacy of collocation, cloud deployment, peer connectivity, system integration, IOT, and applications that will enable this customer-centric experience through Infobips platform.

KDDI Americahas evolved into a company that provides Networks, Data Centers, System Integration, IOT, Cloud, as well as managed service solutions across industries. KDDI Americas core differentiator in the industry is in this global rich IP network leveraging IoT, cloud and colocation datacenter technology that gives business customers an all-in-one messaging solution combined with Infobips global distribution and partnership with leading wireless carriers, messaging apps, banks, social networks, tech companies, and social media networks.

This partnership not only presents us with a tremendous opportunity to expand our client base in the U.S., it also represents two international brands coming together to help organizations overcome the complexity of consumer communications, grow their business,and enhance customer experience and engagement, said Yuri Fiaschi, VP of Global Sales at Infobip. We are thrilled to be working with KDDI America as our first channel partner here in the U.S. to help companies deliver the right message at the right time across the right channel, wherever that customer may be.

KDDI Americas suite of product offerings will transform the way businesses communicate with customers. These products will be centered around Conversations, a digital contact center platform that allows businesses to manage all customer interactions and data from critical areas such as marketing, loyalty and CRM, all through a single-point dashboard. Business customers will also be able to leverage a cloud-based customer engagement platform to create personalized communications to deliver messages in the right moment and over the right channel. Additional channel offerings will include SMS and number lookups, chat apps, live chat, mobile app messaging, email, and voice solutions.

For more information please visit http://www.KDDIAmessaging.com.

About KDDI AmericaKDDI America, headquartered in New York, is the North American division of KDDI Group, a Fortune Global 500 company and leading provider of international IT and communications services with locations throughout the world. KDDI America is a one-stop solutions provider, from the supply of a single cable to comprehensive office, data centers, and factory configurations. KDDI has offices throughout the North and South Americas.

About Infobip

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected customer experiences across all stages of the customer journey at scale, with easy and contextualized interactions over customers preferred channels. Accessed through a single platform, Infobips omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication, security, and contact center solutions help clients and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications, grow their business, and increase loyalty all in a fast, secure and reliable way. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to include 65+ offices on six continents offering natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and 'things' in 190+ countries connected to over 800 telecom networks. The company serves and partners with leading mobile operators, messaging apps, banks, social networks, tech companies, and aggregators.

Appendix:

1: https://www.omdia.com/resources/product-content/ovum-forecasts-of-sms 2: https://www.juniperresearch.com/document-library/white-papers/rcs-business-messaging-will-disrupt-messaging 3: https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/digest/2019-will-see-rcs-transform-digital-marketing/

Media Contacts:John SternalMerit Mile for KDDI America954-592-1201jsternal@meritmile.com

Janine SavaresePeppercomm for Infobipjsavarese@peppercomm.com

Originally posted here:
KDDI America Has Selected Infobip As Its Cloud Communications Platform for The Delivery of Advanced Business Messaging Services - GlobeNewswire

In courts across the country, EFF has been arguing that the police cannot constitutionally require you to unlock your phone or give them your password, and today the Indiana Supreme Court issued a strong opinion agreeing with us. In the case, Seo v. State, the court found that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination protected a woman against unlocking her phone because complying with the order was a form of testimony under the Fifth Amendment. Indiana joins Pennsylvania, which ruled strongly in favor of the Fifth Amendment privilege in a compelled decryption case last year. Meanwhile, state supreme courts in New Jersey and Oregon are also considering this issue.

In Seo, the defendant reported to law enforcement outside of Indianapolis that she had been the victim of a rape and allowed a detective to examine her iPhone for evidence. But the state never filed charges against Seos alleged rapist, identified as D.S. Instead, the detective suspected that Seo was harassing D.S. with spoofed calls and texts, and she was ultimately arrested and charged with felony stalking.The state not only sought a search warrant to go through Seos phone, but a court order to force her to unlock it.Seo refused, invoking her Fifth Amendment rights. The trial court held her in contempt, but an intermediate appeals court reversed.

In an amicus brief on behalf of EFF and ACLU and at oral argument in the Indiana Supreme Court, we explained that the compelled recollection and use of passwords to encrypted devices should be viewed as a modern form of testimonial communications, which are protected by the Fifth Amendment privilege. Although some courts have struggled with the concept of testimony in the context of compelled decryption, a 1957 U.S. Supreme Court case defines it as anything that requires a person to disclose the contents of his own mind. Its also clear that nonverbal acts can be testimonial, such as being forced to respond truthfully to police questioning with a nod or headshake, or toproduce a gunthat police believe was used in a crime. And in a 1990 case, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a motorist suspected of drunk driving couldnt be forced to tell police the date of his sixth birthday, even though officers clearly knew the answer and were simply trying to obtain evidence of his intoxication.

The Indiana Supreme Court agreed, writing that unlocking a phone communicates a breadth of factual information, since it allows the government to infer that the suspect knows the password to the device and thus possessed the files on the phone. This gives the State information it did not previously knowprecisely what the privilege against self-incrimination is designed to prevent.

In addition to the question of testimony, however, courts in compelled decryption cases have struggled with Fisher v. United States, a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case that introduced the concept of a foregone conclusion. Fisher involved a subpoena for an individuals tax documents, where the government could demonstrate that it already knew all of the information it would otherwise learn from a response to the subpoena. In other words, it was a foregone conclusion that the specific documents the government sought existed, were authentic, and belonged to the individual. Although the Supreme Court has never again relied on this foregone conclusion rationale, the government has built it into a full-blowndoctrine.State and federal prosecutors have invoked it in nearly every forced decryption case to date. InSeo, the State argued that all thatcompelling the defendant to unlock her phone would reveal is that she knows her own passcode, which would be a foregone conclusion once it has proven that the phone belongs to her.

In our amicus brief, we argued that this would be a dangerous rule for the Indiana Supreme Court to adopt. If all the government has to do to get you to unlock your phone is to show you know the password, it would have immense leverage to do so in any case where it encounters encryption. The Fifth Amendment is intended to avoid putting people to a cruel trilemma: self-incriminate, lie about knowing the password, or risk being held in contempt for refusing to cooperate. Instead, its clear fromFisherand later Supreme Court cases that the foregone conclusion rationale is very narrow. The Court has applied it in Fisher, a case involving business records, and only where the testimonial communication at issue was the act of providing specified documents. The Court has made clear there is no foregone conclusion exception where a person is required to use the contents of their mind, even inresponding to a more open-ended document subpoena. So there should be no exception to the Fifth Amendment when the government compels disclosure or use of a passcode to unlock and decrypt a digital device.

In its opinion, the Indiana Supreme Court largely agreed. It rejected the states argument that it could invoke the foregone conclusion rationale if it could show that the defendant knew her password. Instead, it held that the state was fishing for incriminating evidence without any knowledge of what was on her phone, and that forcing her to unlock her phone under these circumstances would sound the death knell for a constitutional protection against compelled self-incrimination in the digital age.

Although that resolved the case, the court also included a lengthy discussion of why the foregone conclusion rationale should probably never apply to compelled decryption cases. It noted that smartphones contain far more private information than a personal diary or an individual tax return ever could, a fact that has led the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the application of pre-digital caselaw to government searches of phones. The Indiana court wrote that applying Fishers foregone conclusion rationale would mean expanding a decades-old and narrowly defined legal exception to dynamically developing technology that was in its infancy just a decade ago. Finally, the court noted that police have many tools to investigate users of encrypted devices without compromising users constitutional rights. In light of these tools, compelling a user to unlock a phone would tip the scales too far in the States favor, resulting in a seismic erosion of the Fifth Amendments privilege against self-incrimination.

Were gratified by the ruling, and were watching for courts in New Jersey, Oregon and elsewhere to continue the trend of protecting against compelled decryption.

Excerpt from:
Victory: Indiana Supreme Court Rules that Police Can't Force Smartphone User to Unlock Her Phone - EFF

In 2015, an armed shoplifter fleeing the police broke into the Lech familys home in Greenwood Village, Colorado. The shoplifter, who chose the Lechs house at random, refused to come out and opened fire on the cops outside. In response, local police used explosives, high-caliber ammunition and a battering ram mounted on a tank-like vehicle to force his apprehension.

The Lechs home was essentially destroyed by the police response, which raises a critical legal question: Who pays for damage inflicted on private property as a result of a law enforcement action? Is it the responsibility of the police who intentionally caused the damage while playing with military equipment, or the innocent victim whose home is left in shambles?

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering that question in Lech v. City of Greenwood Village, a case brought by the Institute for Justice, in which PLF filed an amicus brief. How the court rules will have significant legal implications, both in terms of clarifying property rights law and restoring a sense of accountability to law enforcement agencies that have grown increasingly aggressive in their tactics.

The damage to the Lechs property was estimated at $450,000. Yet the Greenwood Village Police Department offered the family a paltry $5,000 to help with temporary living expenses. The family sued, arguing they were entitled to Just Compensation under the Fifth Amendment for the intentional destruction of their house. The Tenth Circuit, however, held no compensation was due because the home was destroyed pursuant to the police power rather than the power of eminent domain. That decision was wrong.

To be sure, the Just Compensation Clause is more commonly understood to apply in the context of eminent domain, or regulatory takings, where the government takes private property for public use. This situationin which police destroyed the property while performing their dutiesis different. But in both circumstances, the property owner is left with private property he can no longer use.

Why didnt property insurance cover the Lechs loss? Because homeowners policies typically carry an exclusion for damages caused pursuant to government orders, which caused the destruction to the Lech home. Or perhaps the criminal should be held liable, but of course, he did not decide to drive the tank into the Lech home the police made the strategic decision to deploy military-style tactics and weapons against a residential home.

The use of such tactics and equipment has increased in recent years, as a result of federal grant programs that have placed powerful military-grade equipment into the hands of local police departments. In one recent three year period alone, the Pentagon sent $727 million of gear to local and state law enforcement authorities, including UH-60 Blackhawk and UH-1 Huey helicopters, M-16 assault rifles, and grenade launchers.

In response, those departments have likewise changed their tactics, as scholars like Radley Balko have explained. That is, once they have the military-grade equipment, they put it to work in ordinary law enforcement activity, even when less aggressive methods may be just as, or more, effective. Law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on so-called dynamic-entry, using SWAT teams, battering rams, assault rifles, armored personnel carriers and flash-bang grenades, ostensibly to protect the public.

It appears then, right or wrong, the deployment of military-grade equipment and tactics to enforce local laws is here to stay, as is the property and personal damage they cause. Thus, the Supreme Court needs to educate law enforcement about the Fifth Amendment. Innocent victims of the militarized approach to law enforcement will continue to suffer losses unless this Court confirms that intentional government action that occupies and destroys private property for a public use triggers the Just Compensation Clause.

And keep in mind that the Lechs are, in fact, innocent victims in this casethey did nothing wrong. However, even if they had been suspected of criminal offenses, the same protections for their property and rights would have applied, as even criminal suspects are presumed innocent, according to the Constitution. Theres simply no justification for the level of destruction that law enforcement routinely unleashes against private property owners, which is why the Supreme Court needs to clarify accountability in these cases.

There is no police power exception to the Fifth Amendment. The justices should grant the Lech case for review and recognize that the Fifth Amendment requires law enforcement to pay full compensation for all losses incurred when it destroys property while exercising its police powers.

The question here is not whether this government conduct is legitimate; the question is who should pay for the damages. And the Fifth Amendment answers that question: the government should, because the police, like the rest of us, are not above the law.

Daniel Woislaw is an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, which litigates nationwide to achieve court victories enforcing the Constitutions guarantee of individual liberty.

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Supreme Court must remind law enforcement that not even the police are above the law - Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF)

The following court proceedings occurred Monday, June, 22, in Newburyport District Court. People arraigned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law:

Connor R. Lewis, 27, address unknown, Amesbury, was arraigned on five counts of violating an abuse prevention order. Lewis was ordered held on $1,000 cash bail and ordered to return to court July 24. Should Lewis post bail, he must stay at least 50 yards away and have no contact with his alleged victim, must not possess firearms and must abide by all restraining orders. Lewis turned himself in to authorities after Amesbury police issued an arrest warrant.

Kasimer J. Alexander, 35, 12 Baker Road, Salisbury, and Thomas Dastous, 37, 125 Rabbit Road, Salisbury, saw assault and battery charges dismissed after they exercised their Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate themselves. Both men were before Judge Peter Doyle as part of a bench trial. They were arraigned Dec. 24, after being charged by Salisbury police.

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COURT LOG: June 25, 2020 - The Daily News of Newburyport