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Employers who rely on H-1B visa holders, other temporary workers, or who sponsor green card holders should make sure that their employment practices comply fully with a little-known provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA): Section 1324b. Otherwise, they may find themselves in the crosshairs of the Justice Department, the Labor Department, plaintiffs lawyers, or all three.

A recent court decision and the accompanying $14 million settlement between Facebook and the Justice and Labor Departments involving alleged H-1B visa and green card practices exemplifies these risks.

President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. IRCA was a quintessential congressional compromise. It established employer sanctions for hiring unauthorized immigrants, ushering in todays Form I-9 verification system. It also legalized many immigrants who then were present in the U.S. without authorization.

IRCA also established 8 U.S.C. 1324b. Section 1324b created a new kind of prohibition under the INA: employers cannot discriminate in hiring, firing, or recruitment against protected workers because of their citizenship status. Section 1324b reflects concern for American workers and for work-authorized immigrants in the U.S. It protects U.S. citizens, certain lawful permanent residents, and those granted asylum or refugee status.

Section 1324b also authorizes employers to favor a U.S. citizen over a non-citizen if the two individuals are equally qualified. According to one of IRCAs lead architects in Congress, this exception responded to the concern that Section 1324bs inclusion of citizenship-status discrimination protection for foreignimmigrant workers would have the effect of discriminating against U.S. citizens.

The DOJs Civil Rights Division enforces Section 1324b, including discrimination against U.S. workers in favor of temporary visa holders. DOJ can launch investigations, investigate charges by aggrieved workers, subpoena documents and witnesses, and file individual and class action-style lawsuits against employers.

Section 1324b also authorizes workers to file their own lawsuits, and prevailing plaintiffs can recover their attorneys fees, as well as obtain injunctions, civil penalties, and back pay.

All Section 1324b litigation starts in the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO) and the U.S. courts of appeals review their rulings. OCAHO judges have applied Rule 23 standards to decide whether to certify a private class action.

Hiring temporary visa holders also implicates the Labor Departments enforcement authority. DOLs Wage and Hour Division enforces INA protections for temporary workers. Employers who wish to sponsor a foreign worker for permanent work authorization, such as with a green card, must obtain certification from DOL before the employer can submit an immigrant petition to the Department of Homeland Security.

That process includes a certification that there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified and available to accept the job opportunity and that the employment of the foreign workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers. A false certification can carry criminal penalties under federal false statements statutes.

DOJs late-2021 enforcement actions show that the government is continuing aggressive enforcement of Section 1324b as to temporary visa holders.

For example, in November 2021, DOJ found that a Texas manufacturing company, Igloo Products Corp., set aside positions for workers in the H-2B temporary visa program for nonagricultural jobs.

According to DOJ, the company assumed U.S. workers would not be interested in seasonal production-helper positions and, thus, did not consider their applications. The company will pay civil penalties and make back pay available to U.S. workers discriminated against in favor of H-2B visa holders, change its policies and be subject to monitoring by DOJ.

In October 2021, DOJ and DOL announced a joint settlement of allegations that a social media company, Facebook, (now called Meta Platforms Inc.) used the permanent labor certification program (PERM) to sponsor 2,600 H-1B visa holders for green cards, at the expense of U.S. workers. The settlement requires the company to change its practices and to pay up to $9.5 million to eligible victims of discrimination and another $4.75 million in civil penalties.

The settlement grew out of a June 2021 OCAHO determination that the DOJs lawsuit stated a valid INA claim and that compliance with DOL regulations does not, in and of itself, eliminate the possibility of an employer acting in a discriminatory manner in violation of 1324b. The settlement also resolved DOLs audit of the companys PERM applications.

In August 2021, DOJ resolved claims that between August 2019 and June 2021, an Illinois information technology staffing and recruiting company, Ameritech Global Inc., illegally posted job advertisements that announced its preference to fill positions with non-U.S. citizen workers and then failed to consider U.S. worker applicants, who nevertheless applied to the job vacancies.

DOJ announced it will pursue employers who discourage and refuse to hire eligible job applicants based on their citizenship or immigration status.

The federal governments focus on enforcing protection for U.S. workers illustrates that employers should analyze the requirements of the INAs antidiscrimination provision and their regulatory obligations about temporary or permanent worker programs.

Often, copycat litigation by the private plaintiffs bar follows government enforcement. In 2020, OCAHO recognized the ability of a U.S. citizen plaintiff in a private lawsuit validly to allege a claim of discrimination against an IT company for its and its staffing firms practices in the initial hiring of an H-1B worker.

Similar claims involving advertising or the PERM program concerning U.S. workers, including potential class-action style claims, could be on the horizon.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. or its owners.

Write for Us: Author Guidelines

Eric S. Dreiband is a partner in Jones Days Washington, D.C., office. He served as the general counsel of the EEOC from 2003-2005, assistant attorney general for the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division from 2018-2021, and deputy administrator of the Labor Departments Wage and Hour Division from 2002-2003.

Alexander V. Maugeri is of counsel in Jones Days New York office. He served as deputy assistant attorney general responsible for immigration, employment, and appellate litigation and chief of staff for the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division from 2019-2021.

Kate S. OScannlain is a partner in Jones Days Washington, D.C., office. She served as solicitor of labor, as the highest-ranking woman and third-highest ranking official at the department, from 2018-2021 where she supervised over 500 lawyers and staff nationwide.

The views and opinions set forth herein are the personal views or opinions of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Jones Day.

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Little-Known Part of Immigration and Nationality Act Packs a Punch - Bloomberg Law

U.S. Rep.Veronica Escobar (D-El Paso) grew up with her parents and four brothers in El Pasos Lower Valley. They did not have much money, but they found their way with what theyhad.The congresswomansunwavering dedication to the region shines through in her commitment to keeping young talent in the area, create high-skilled jobs to help retain them, and usher the city into economic growth and prosperity.

CongresswomanEscobargraduated fromWilliam H. Burges High School and thenattendedThe University of Texas at ElPaso,where she received a bachelors degree in British and American Literature. Sheearned a masters degree in literature from New York University(NYU).After she graduated from NYU,she knew shedidnot want to pursue a doctorate in New York, deciding instead she would prefer a school in the University of California system. That plan was not to be, as she had a stopover in El Paso that resulted in Escobar becoming an English lecturer at UTEP and El Paso Community College to save for her doctoral degree.

I thought I was going to be an academic and I was ready to pursue adoctorate;Iwanted to be a professor for the rest of my life.I never imagined my life would take this kind of journey, saidEscobar in asit-downinterview with The Prospector.

In 1993,Escobar recounted thatduring her time as a teacher,she heardthen-Border Patrol ChiefSilvestreReyes(wholater served as Congressman for16thDistrict from1997 to 2013)publicly statethat he wanted to build awall between El Paso and Juarez.This event inspired her tojoinThe Border Rights Coalition,now known as the Border Network for Human Rights,where she became aself-describedhardcore activist.According to thecongresswomanthis is where she found her passion for civic engagement and wanting to help a vulnerable population but also wanting to make sure that our community did not become a xenophobic community.

In 1996,shegot involved withher first political campaign with Jose Luis Sanchez for the 16th Congressional District; the opponent was Silvestre Reyes. After the election,Escobar continued to volunteer at political campaigns for the next decade until she ran for El Paso County Commissioner. She served from 2007 to 2011 and then became El Paso County Judge from 2011 to 2017. Escobar originally ran for Congress in 2018 as a Democrat after former Congressman Beto ORourke (D-El Paso) decided to run for United States Senate.

During the interview, Escobar detailed some key issueson which she is currently working.

MilitaryReform

Escobar is currently on the Committee of Armed Services and Committee on the Judiciary in Congress.She is focused oncreating a safer environment for military individualsacross the nationas she aims to changea toxic cultureembeddedinto many military basesas part of the culture, she said.

I have had service members tell me Im not even going to bother reporting sexualharassmentbecause I see mypeers who report sexualassaultand not getjustice,Escobarsaid.One of the ways thecongresswomanisworking to change the cultureis by changing the way mentorship programs work in the military,making sure they arewell-funded and inclusiverather than dependentupon volunteers.She hopesto see anincreaseindiversityamongleadership andoverall tomakethe militarya safer space forservice members.

Immigration Reform

One of the biggest issuesEscobar is trying to shed a light on in Congress is the border and the process ofattainingasylum.She said shehas broughtroughly20% ofthe members of Congressto El Pasoto tourthe portsof entry, to show themthe perspective of law enforcement, attorneysand human rights activists.Escobarsaid shehas introduced abillin the U.S. Housethat is part of a suite ofbills focused of reforming the immigration system.

The Homeland Security Improvement Act(H.R. 3557)is focused on reforming theU.S.Department of Homeland Security toincreasetransparency, accountability, and community involvement, Escobar said.The bill alsofocuses on asylum seekers and the asylum process.

Under normal circumstances ifyoureanasylumseeker,you are essentially treated as a criminal, you are processed, you can be held in a processing facility for 10 hours for 10 days or,as we saw under the Trump administration,for weeks and then you are transferred to an ICE detention facility, Escobar said.So,we have to make a decision as a country as to whether we are going to criminalize everyone who comes across.I reject that notion;its not just inhumane,its not justunAmerican,its really expensive.

Escobar wishes toput Border Patrol back on the front lines,while also making the asylum process safe and whereasylum seekershave access to child welfare, legal, and adult welfare services.The bill seeksto remodel ports of entry tomake them seem more welcoming,while also making it so asylum seekers can be processed there instead of being moved from port to port, she said.

Forindividuals under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals(DACA), Escobarwantscomprehensive immigration reform,which would open up legal pathways for thoseseeking citizenship..The Build Back Better Act,a billpart of President Joe Bidens Build Back Better Plan,passed the U.S. House in November,and is currently awaiting a vote in the U.S. Senate. The bill, Escobar said, focuses on providing resources for family leave, immigration, and healthcare, as well as addressing climate change. The bill includes help for immigrants with work and travel permits, and relief from deportation for DREAMERS (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors), DACA recipients, farm workers, essential workers, and temporary permitholders, Escobarsaid.

Escobar is on the ballot in the Democratic primary March 1, running for reelection of her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for the 16thCongressionalDistrictof ElPaso.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar discusses military funding, immigration, bipartisanship, and student loans in an interview with The Prospector.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and Editor-In-Chief of The Prospector newspaper, Alberto Silva Fernandez, have a one-on-one interview and discuss topics such as military funding, immigration, bipartisanship, and student loans.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and Editor-In-Chief of The Prospector newspaper, Alberto Silva Fernandez, have a one-on-one interview and discuss topics such as military funding, immigration, bipartisanship, and student loans.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and Editor-In-Chief of The Prospector newspaper, Alberto Silva Fernandez, have a one-on-one interview and discuss topics such as military funding, immigration, bipartisanship, and student loans.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and Editor-In-Chief of The Prospector newspaper, Alberto Silva Fernandez, have a one-on-one interview and discuss topics such as military funding, immigration, bipartisanship, and student loans.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and Editor-In-Chief of The Prospector newspaper, Alberto Silva Fernandez, have a one-on-one interview and discuss topics such as military funding, immigration, bipartisanship, and student loans.

AlbertoSilva Fernandezmay be reached at[emailprotected].

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Escobar aims to improve conditions for military and immigrants - The Prospector

After film stars like Amitabh Bachchan and sports celebrities like Yuvraj Singh launched their digital collectibles,making their way into thetrendingnon-fungible token (NFT) market are memes that will be available to buyers from January 19.

Memes are a type of contentin the form ofa picture, video or a phrase that are often humorous, which a lot of people send to each other on social media.

It is the virality of memes that madeKyle Fernandeslaunch NFT marketplace Meme Club NFT. Fernandes is a computer science engineer whoin 2019along with his friendTaaran Chanana started MemeChat, a platform that allows users to create memes.

NFT as a concept is like it was built for memes.We can link the author of that piece of content and then empower the creator economy and they can createwealth via NFTs, Fernandes, Founder and CEO, MemeChat told Moneycontrol.

So whattype of memes will be offered as digital assets and for how much?

Fernandes gave some examples that will be offered as digital assets including Friday meme NFT, Kamlesh meme NFT and Cat meme NFT. These memeshave been shared around10,000-25,000 times on social media.

We have tied up with creators to offer 50 meme NFTs in the first week of launch. Eventually we want to create a marketplace where all creators are creating content. Creators can create content on MemeChat and then theNFTs will be linked on Meme Club, Fernandes said.

MemeChat has hosted over 20 million memes since its launch.

He added that along with viral memes as NFTs, Meme Club will also let buyersbe a part of the community that decides which memeMemeChat will make viral.

MemeChat, which saw its user basegrow from 1.3 million in March last year to 4 million now, is behind many viral clips includingthe rap called Rasode Mein Kaun Tha by YouTuberYashraj Mukhate, which became a memefest.Fernandes added that MemeChats Instagram pages have a following of over 300 million.

This is why he thinks that memes as NFTs will find strongtraction with buyers. While Meme Club will be offeringNFTs in theprice range of Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000 to start with, Fernandes said that astheyget a better understanding of what people want,the platformwill be launching more NFTs andexpects a rapid increase inprices.

Built by a team of five people including Fernandes, Meme Club was madeat a cost of Rs2-3 lakhandRs 3-4 lakh was invested to roll out perks like merchandise for buyers.

Asked if the launch of an NFT marketplace would help MemeChat attract a larger audience, Fernandes said the platforms user base is growing at a rapid pace with 20,000-25,000 downloads a day. What the NFT marketplace will do for MemeChat is create a strong business model for us, he said.

Fernandes could be right because globally meme NFTs have made millions.

The NFT of the Doge meme with an image ofa Shiba Inu dog, one of the most popular memes, was sold for $3.8 million.Last year, the NFT of the viral video calledCharlie Bit My Finger sold for around $730,644.

Globally, experts say that meme NFTspicked up pace since last year but its origin can be traced back to 2018 whenthe NFT meme known as Homer Pepe,which looks like a blend ofPepe the Frog and Homer Simpson from The Simpsons, an American animated sitcom, was bought for $39,000 and was sold last year for around$312,000.

Read more here:
Memes make their way in Indias NFT space, soon you can buy viral images and videos - Moneycontrol.com

Emoji might not be 66 million years old, but they are pretty much everywhere. Join Ben and Amory as they explore the history of dinosaur emojiin LGBTQ+ communities and their more recent use as an online dog-whistle for anti-trans activists. What happens when one symbol is used for conflicting reasons? And can the dinosaur emoji avoid redefinition or extinction?

Thanks to Dane Grey for this week's artwork. You can find more of their work on InstagramorRedbubble.

Episode producers: Dean Russell and Ben Brock Johnson

Co-hosts: Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson

Web producer: Rachel Carlson

Show producers: Dean Russell, Nora Saks, Kristin Torres and Quincy Walters

Editor: Maureen McMurray

Mixer, sound designer and music creator: Matt Reed

Additional production: Nora Saks, Kristin Torres, Quincy Walters, and Rachel Carlson

Show notes

We love making Endless Thread, and we want to be able to keep making it far into the future. If you want that too, we would deeply appreciate your contribution to our work in any amount. Everyone who makes a monthly donation will get access to exclusive bonus content. Click here for the donation page. Thank you!

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This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben Brock Johnson: All right, so Amory, can you read this incredible piece of literature?

Amory Siverston: We've got a telephone little dude making some kind of expression with his mouth open, but I can't really see what the eyes are doing. Got a sailboat, little whale. And...

Ben: Just just for the record, just for the record, I'm not asking you to literally repeat the emoji. I'm asking you to read this. Because it is an incredible piece of literature.

Amory: Well, the first line of it looks like Moby Dick.

Ben: Hmmm! How would you translate it?

Amory: First line says, got a bad phone call, I got to get on a boat and go see about a whale.

Ben: So this is what you are looking at right now, Amory, is an excerpt of a translation, an emoji translation of the Herman Melville classic Moby Dick or The Whale.

Amory: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben: And it's called Emoji Dick.

Amory: (Laughs.)

Ben: This was admittedly years ago. And the book was translated by people all over the world. And whats interesting here is that they actually translated some of the same words differently in emoji. Like Queequeg or the whale or the sea. And you know what this is like. Like, so do you know the hot and sweaty, red-faced emoji with its tongue out?

Ben: What does that one mean to you?

Amory: That, to me, is it's a it's a hot day and you're cleaning out the garage and you're like, Oh, this sucks, I'm so hot and I hate this so much.

Ben: I'm pretty sure that's not how the kids use it.

Amory: Oh no.

Ben: I think the kids used that emoji as in like this makes me horny.

Amory: What?! It's not the way we did it in my day.

Ben: So I want us to explore this. This specific thing that is happening with this specific set of emoji that's really become this heated debate involving who gets to own the meaning of symbols, specifically the symbols that we all use to make meaning on our phones.

Ben: And the specific emoji that I want to talk about today, Amory, is not the eggplant emoji. Not the hot and bothered emoji, or cleaning out your garage.

But I want to talk about the T. rex and brachiosaurus emoji.

Amory: Im Amory Sivertson.

Ben: Im Ben Brachiosaurus Johnson. And from WBUR, Bostons NPR Station youre listening to Endless Thread.

Amory: 2022 BABY!

Ben: And were gonna start with this one: The saga of those innocent little dinosaur emoji that ended up getting used for something not so innocent.

Amory: And what the tug-of-war over the meaning of these dinos the tiny-armed green tyrannosaurus and their goose-necked sidekick and prey, the blue brachiosaurus or brontosaurus or apatosaurus ... WHAT the meaning of these dinos tells us about how we use symbols.

Ben: So, to understand this dinosaur emoji story, we thought we should start with a little dinosaur knowledge. So, Amory. Join me on this chopper to Isla Nublar?

Amory: (Sings.)

Ben: (Sings).

Amory: When did you first become interested in dinosaurs?

Ben: Was it the Cretaceous or?

Riley Black: I'm 38, so going backwards that would be... (LAUGHS)

Amory: This is Riley Black.

Riley: I'm a science journalist and author. I've written books like Skeleton Keys and The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.

Ben: Riley LOVES her some dinos.

Riley: Big and loud, for whatever reason, was my jam.

Amory: Like when she was five and visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Her first encounter.

Riley: at the time, it was very dark and it was dim, very moody. And just seeing these skeletons that were so much bigger than I was, you know, seeing them in that kind of ghostly light and thinking about what did they look like, what did they sound like, what did they eat? I remember being very struck, standing in the shadow of a brontosaurus skeleton. Like, what did it sound when it breathed that sound of just like life coming out of this animal out of these old bones?

Ben: Now, she digs for fossils professionally. She writes about it and tweets about it. Online, she exists in multiple worlds. And multiple dinosaur communities.

Riley: A lot of it is very professionalized people talking about their new papers and new studies coming out in their latest field expedition. There's also a broader community of dinosaur and paleontology enthusiasts, people who just like to know more, or they were inspired by Jurassic Park, and they want to find out the real stories behind these animals. And the number of paleo-artists on social media right now is astounding...

Amory: If you look through some of this paleo art, it is astounding. Some of these things look real. A feathered sinosauropteryx, which kind of looks like a lemur-duck hybrid and it kinda looks like it was caught on camera.

But within this group of dinosaur artists and enthusiasts or, overlapping with this group theres another subset of people.

Riley: Many people who are queer, whether they are trans or some other form of genderqueer or whatever it is...We love dinosaurs.

Ben: Along with being a dinosaur expert, Riley is, herself, transgender. And according to Riley, there is a whole community of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts online. We had no idea. So we checked it out. Sure enough, theyre there. We found dozens of paleoartists online that identify as queer.

Amory: Type "dinosaur" into the LGBT subreddit. Hundreds of results, with pride dinos, rainbow dinos, dino moms, dino dads, and a LOT of puns. Like, Ally-saurus.

Ben: Trans-ceratops.

Amory: In 2018, the Twitter account for SUE the T. rex one of the worlds most famous dinosaurs, held at the Field Museum in Chicago that account updated SUEs bio to include the dinosaurs pronouns: they/them.

Ben: Whats the connection between people who identify as genderqueer and dinosaurs?

Riley: I am not entirely sure why this is an aspect of social psychology. I think that has not been plumbed as yet.

Ben: Social psychologists, please get plumbing. Because were not sure why either. Dinosaurs have been around for a whilejust like the LGBTQ community.

Amory: And, if you remember your elementary school science class or Jurassic Park youll recall that dinosaurs are all around. Because birds are dinosaurs. And Riley says that fact may be part of the draw for transgender people.

Riley: And I think that aspect of falling into more than one category at once and some of these threads of sort of transformation through time are just naturally appealing to people like me and other people in the trans community.

Ben: This community might not be gigantic. But it is strong and undeniably present. And along with art and expressions of pride, you will definitely see dino emoji.

Ben: Were you using the dinosaur emoji relatively frequently before all of this stuff happened?

Riley: Yeah, I mean, I would use dinosaur emojis for emphasis just to share things I was excited about, especially when paired with other emojis like I have a book that's coming out in April about the extinction of the dinosaurs that occurred 66 million years ago. Whenever I talk about it, I use a little dinosaur emoji, a comet emoji, a plant emoji and a raccoon emoji to kind of tell that story of like the dinosaurs going extinct and plants and mammals coming back afterwards and just having fun like with storytelling.

Amory: But a few months ago, Riley started to see dinosaur emoji that werent so fun.

Riley: I think my initial knee-jerk reaction, um, was just like, Well, you can't have them. Like dinosaurs are ours.

Ben: The T. Rex and brachiosaurus were showing up in the profiles of a different online community. Kind of as a badge. A dog whistle to say to others within that community: Im one of you.

Riley: It really just made zero sense to me whatsoever in terms of like, you know, they could have picked anything else and it might have made a little bit more sense to me.

Amory: Riley refers to the group of co-opters as TERFs, as in T-E-R-F. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, who call themselves gender critical. In other words, anti-trans.

Broadly speaking, TERFs promote the idea that trans women are really menthat, unlike cisgender women, trans women have benefited from being a part of the patriarchy and thus are a threat to cis women. Above all, they say that, unlike sex, gender identity is an ideology and is not grounded in science. Well come back to this.

Ben: You may recall the most famous or infamous person associated with TERF ideology is J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author. Among other things, in 2020, she published a 3700-word essay defending her belief that the term woman as a political and biological class was being eroded by people who refer to trans women as women.

Anyway, TERFs using dinosaur emoji was a problem for Riley.

Riley: To see, you know, our social enemies for lack of a better term taking, you know, these symbols and trying to use it as their dog whistle, it was something where it's just like, Where's this even coming from? This makes zero sense. And also dinosaurs are ours. I hate to speak for the entire trans or genderqueer community but, like, no. Weve already been wondering about them and drawing them and interested.

Amory: No matter who you are, if you see something beloved taken over by someone else, that can be hard. Suddenly, genderqueer fans of dinos everywhere felt under attack as TERFs kept dropping the emoji into their feeds.

Ben: And we know how these things go. Just think of Pepe the frog. Or the Punisher skull. Or the swastika. When outsider groups latch onto a symbol, that symbol is often changed. Irrevocably.

But emoji rex and brachiosaurus? Its more complicated. Because Riley and others refused to let go.

More on that in 66 millionmicroseconds.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

Ben: Its not clear if TERFs knew they were co-opting something beloved to this slice of the genderqueer community. As far as we can tell, dinosaur emoji began showing up in anti-trans Twitter bios around October of last year.

And the catalyst may have been the UKs Parliament which reminds one of Muppets in more ways than one.

David Lammy: Denied their rights in this country under her watch. (Hearrr.)

Lammy: Once enslaved, then colonized, then repatriated. (Hearrr.)

Lammy: When will Black lives matter once again? (Hearrrrr.)

Amory: David Lammy is a liberal MP. Hes also a shadow secretary. His job is to criticize the conservative government. To stir up controversy, in a way. Hes good at it.

Ben: And back in September, Lammy was asked in a meeting about transgender rights. So, he responded calling out his colleagues on the right and in his own party for being anti-trans. He called them dinosaurs. As in, behind the times.

Amory: This was not big news. Except on Twitter, where a little pocket of the internet was blowing up. TERFs were offended by the analogy. And then, they embraced it.

Like one person who goes by the handle @LilyLilyMaynard. She started tweeting videos of her fellow TERFs outside the Labour Partys headquarters.

Ben: Theyre dressed in cheap, inflatable dinosaur costumes, singing off-key about genitals, which, were not going to play for obvious reasons. But if you Google Labour Party Head Office, the main image representing the building is of these dinosaurs. It would be comical if it werent in service of one group rejecting anothers identity.

Jeremy Burge: I feel like the first time we really saw the double meaning of the emoji has to be the eggplant.

Amory: There is one guy you have to call if you want to understand emoji.

Jeremy: They felt like an odd choice to put on the emoji keyboard, so people kind of immediately saw that and said, Thats funny. That now means a penis.

Ben: Say hello to Jeremy Burge.

Jeremy: And I'm the founder and chief emoji officer at Emojipedia.

Ben: What does that mean?

Jeremy: That's a good question, what does it mean? Emojipedia describes every emoji, what it looks like, what it looks like on all platforms. And for me, I oversee a small team of people who do exactly that describe how people use emojis and how they evolve over time.

Amory: We asked Jeremy, how common is this? Emoji double-meanings used like a badge

View post:
The internet's fight over dinosaur emoji | Endless Thread - WBUR

Imagine youre driving a car, and a police officer spots you and pulls you over for speeding. He orders you out of the car. Maybe he wants to place you under arrest. Or maybe he wants to search your car for evidence of a crime. Can the officer do that?

The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Constitution that gives the answer. According to the Fourth Amendment, the people have a right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. This right limits the power of the police to seize and search people, their property, and their homes.

The Fourth Amendment has been debated frequently during the last several years, as police and intelligence agencies in the United States have engaged in a number of controversial activities. The federal government has conducted bulk collection of Americans telephone and Internet connections as part of the War on Terror. Many municipal police forces have engaged in aggressive use of stop and frisk. There have been a number of highly-publicized police-citizen encounters in which the police ended up shooting a civilian. There is also concern about the use of aerial surveillance, whether by piloted aircraft or drones.

The application of the Fourth Amendment to all these activities would have surprised those who drafted it, and not only because they could not imagine the modern technologies like the Internet and drones. They also were not familiar with organized police forces like we have today. Policing in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a responsibility of the citizenry, which participated in night watches. Other than that, there was only a loose collection of sheriffs and constables, who lacked the tools to maintain order as the police do today.

The primary concerns of the generation that ratified the Fourth Amendment were general warrants and writs of assistance. Famous incidents on both sides of the Atlantic gave rise to placing the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution. In Britain, the Crown employed general warrants to go after political enemies, leading to the famous decisions in Wilkes v. Wood (1763) and Entick v. Carrington (1765). General warrants allowed the Crowns messengers to search without any cause to believe someone had committed an offense. In those cases the judges decided that such warrants violated English common law. In the colonies the Crown used the writs of assistancelike general warrants, but often unbounded by time restraintsto search for goods on which taxes had not been paid. James Otis challenged the writs in a Boston court; though he lost, some such as John Adams attribute this legal battle as the spark that led to the Revolution. Both controversies led to the famous notion that a persons home is their castle, not easily invaded by the government.

Today the Fourth Amendment is understood as placing restraints on the government any time it detains (seizes) or searches a person or property. The Fourth Amendment also provides that 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. The idea is that to avoid the evils of general warrants, each search or seizure should be cleared in advance by a judge, and that to get a warrant the government must show probable causea certain level of suspicion of criminal activityto justify the search or seizure.

To the extent that a warrant is required in theory before police can search, there are so many exceptions that in practice warrants rarely are obtained. Police can search automobiles without warrants, they can detain people on the street without them, and they can always search or seize in an emergency without going to a judge.

The way that the Fourth Amendment most commonly is put into practice is in criminal proceedings. The Supreme Court decided in the mid-twentieth century that if the police seize evidence as part of an illegal search, the evidence cannot be admitted into court. This is called the exclusionary rule. It is controversial because in most cases evidence is being tossed out even though it shows the person is guilty and, as a result of the police conduct, they might avoid conviction. The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered, declared Benjamin Cardozo (a famous judge and ultimately Supreme Court justice). But, responded another Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis, If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

One of the difficult questions today is what constitutes a search? If the police standing in Times Square in New York watched a person planting a bomb in plain daylight, we would not think they needed a warrant or any cause. But what about installing closed circuit TV cameras on poles, or flying drones over backyards, or gathering evidence that you have given to a third party such as an Internet provider or a banker?

Another hard question is when a search is acceptable when the government has no suspicion that a person has done something wrong. Lest the answer seem to be never, think of airport security. Surely it is okay for the government to screen people getting on airplanes, yet the idea is as much to deter people from bringing weapons as it is to catch themthere is no cause, probable or otherwise, to think anyone has done anything wrong. This is the same sort of issue with bulk data collection, and possibly with gathering biometric information.

What should be clear by now is that advancing technology and the many threats that face society add up to a brew in which the Fourth Amendment will continue to play a central role.

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Interpretation: The Fourth Amendment | The National ...