Dec 21

Today’s News 21st December 2018

  • The Future Is Now: AI For Evil Vs AI For Good

    Authored by Brian Wallace via Hackernoon.com,

    The explosive growth in artificial intelligence capabilities is thanks to the ingenuity of human beings. Building machines to take over positions in service industries from construction to retail is a big step for technology and an even bigger step for mankind. But while some of us fear for our jobs, AI in the wrong hands may have more nefarious intentions, even putting lives at stake.

    In business settings, AI augmentation reduces the mundane and repetitive tasks we do on a daily basis, helping to free up our valuable creative energies. By 2021, this will generate almost $3 trillion for businesses and account for 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity. As a force for good, we look to AI to help us be safer, learn smarter, and work more efficiently — but not everyone has good motivations for AI. From authoritarian governments, to propaganda, to fueling social divides, AI is only as good as our intentions.

    Though we may fear the results and capabilities of AI, the driving force behind the technology is mankind. When these machines are slated for evil, we only have ourselves to blame. Take a look at this infographic for more on the growth of AI and its potential for both good and evil.

  • Continued American Occupation Of The Middle East Does Not Suppress Terrorism, It Causes It

    Authored by Craig Murray,

    Even the neo-con warmongers’ house journal The Guardian, furious at Trump’s attempts to pull US troops out of Syria, in producing a map to illustrate its point, could only produce one single, uncertain, very short pen stroke to describe the minute strip of territory it claims ISIS still control on the Iraqi border.

    Of course, the Guardian produces the argument that continued US military presence is necessary to ensure that ISIS does not spring back to life in Syria. The fallacy of that argument can be easily demonstrated. In Afghanistan, the USA has managed to drag out the long process of humiliating defeat in war even further than it did in Vietnam. It is plain as a pikestaff that the presence of US occupation troops is itself the best recruiting sergeant for resistance. In Sikunder Burnes I trace how the battle lines of tribal alliances there today are precisely the same ones the British faced in 1841. We just attach labels like Taliban to hide the fact that invaders face national resistance.

    The secret to ending the strength of ISIS in Syria is not the continued presence of American troops. It is for America’s ever closer allies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to cut off the major artery of money and arms, which we should never forget in origin and for a long time had a strong US component. The US/Saudi/Israeli alliance against Iran is the most important geo-political factor in the region today. It is high time this alliance stopped both funding ISIS and pretending to fight it; schizophrenia is not a foreign policy stance.

    There has been no significant Shia Islamic terrorist or other threat against the West in recent years. 9/11 was carried out by Saudi Sunni militants. Al Qaida, ISIS, Al Nusra, Boko Haram, these are all Sunni groups, and all Saudi sponsored. It is a matter of lunacy that the West has adopted the posture that it is Iran – which has sponsored not one attack on the West in recent memory – which is the threat in the Middle East.

    The origin of this stance appears to lie in the fact that the Shia group Hezbollah proved to have the only military force among Israel’s neighbours capable of halting an Israeli invasion. After the disastrous invasion of Iraq resulted in an Iran friendly regime in Baghdad, the US decided for balance of power reasons to back Saudi regional power plays, only for Saudi Arabia to fall into the hands of the psychopathic warmonger Mohammed Bin Salman who escalated an already flawed policy to breaking point.

    The chaos of this incoherent and counterproductive strategy is, peculiarly enough, what the neocons actually want. Perpetual war and destabilisation in the Middle East is their goal. One of the findings I had not expected to discover in writing Sikunder Burnes was that the British had been deliberately exploiting and exacerbating the Shia/Sunni divide as early as 1836 to the Imperial purpose. Today, by keeping Arab populations poor and politically divided, the neo-cons believe that they enhance the security of Israel, and they certainly do facilitate the access of western companies to the oil and gas of the region, as we see in destabilised Iraq and Libya.

    The Clintons and Blair were the apotheosis of the capture of the mainstream “left” political parties by this neo-con Imperialist agenda in the Middle East. Sanders, Trump and Corbyn were the first politicians with any chance of power for many decades who did not pay lip-service to the neo-con agenda. Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for Cold War politics has been neutralised from any possible action on his part by the ludicrous lie that Russia hacked his election.

    Furthermore his greed has led to deals with Saudi Arabia which have largely undercut his declared preference for non-interventionism. And now in Syria, the very hint that Trump may not be fully committed to the pursuit of perpetual war has the entire neo-con establishment, political media and NGO, screaming in unison, both sides of the Atlantic.

    I have written before that Trump may be a rotten President for Americans, but at least he has not initiated a major war; and I am quite sure Hillary would have done by now. For a non-American, the choice between Hillary and Trump ended up in balancing on one side of the scale the evil of millions more killed and maimed in the Middle East and the launching of a full on, unreserved new Cold War, against on the other side of the scale poorer Americans having very bad healthcare and social provision and America adopting racist immigration policies. I do hope that the neo-con barrage today arguing for more American troops in the Middle East, will help people remember just how very unattractive also is the Hillary side of the equation.

    It is also very helpful in revealing the startling unanimity of our bought and paid for political, media and NGO class here in the UK.

  • "A Correction Is Happening Now": Sonoma County Housing Market Plunges In November 

    We have been documenting the US housing market — particularly in hot cities like Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Miami, and Las Vegas — appears to be headed for the most significant slowdown in many years.

    Across the country, existing home sales have peaked, reflecting declining affordability, greater price reductions, and deteriorating housing sentiment. This could be the beginning of a turning point, where housing prices across the country have not just plateaued, but could soon experience a noticeable drop. 

    About two and a half hours north of San Francisco, another slowdown is festering in Sonoma County’s residential real estate market; sales and home prices have tumbled in November while the number of homes available for buyers jumped, said The Press Democrat.

    In November, the county’s median housing price crashed to $615,000, a decline of more than 9% from the record peak of $700,000 in June, compiled by Rick Laws of Compass real estate brokerage.

    In the last three months, the number of homes sold declined to its lowest level in eight years; it is almost like the entire real market paused. Moreover, the inventory of homes for sale at the end of November exploded, from 515 to 909, a 77% increase from a year earlier.

    Lori Sacco, a managing broker at Vanguard Properties, blames the November year-over-year inventory spike, not on the weakening of the real estate market, but rather the October 2017 Northern California wildfires that burned thousands of homes.

    Sacco said, “a correction is happening now, relative to the bump we had due to the fires.”

    “Though the market appears to be trending toward a greater balance between buyers and sellers…The North Bay wildfires are likely to affect the local market and economy for years to come. The November correction is on top of the normal seasonal decline that takes place leading into the winter months and during the holidays,” she said.

    The rapid slowdown in sales and prices is the most evident throughout the Bay Area, but mainly in the North Bay and Sonoma County, due to the October 2017 wildfires, which destroyed 5,334 homes. 

    Selma Hepp, vice president and chief economist at Compass, said “months after the fires, home sales declined 11% the North Bay, compared to the previous year. But home sales jumped 15% in November 2017, when many buyers responded to a sort of post-fire panic or “knee jerk” reaction.” 

    According to Hepp’s report, “year-over-year home sales in the Bay Area saw declines in November, December and January last winter, sales in the North Bay remained elevated during that period. That sales boost, however, ended in March, when North Bay sales activity began to slow, mirroring the decline across the entire Bay Area.”

    By 3Q 2018, Sonoma County posted the most significant year-over-year decline of all Bay Area counties, at 26%, according to Hepp’s analysis. 

    Sacco also said higher-end luxury homes in the $2 to $3 million range are not selling, as it appears that market has seized up.

    No one knows how far and how fast real estate markets could plummet into 2020. Turning points take time to materialize, however, it seems like people could start panicking, as early as 2019.

  • Amazon Goes Full Orwellian

    Authored by Sarah Cowgill via Liberty Nation,

    Bezos poised to become knower of all things, with strategic moves to collect info on individuals inside and out…

    “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it,” came a warning from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, that is rapidly, wickedly, becoming prophecy with new Amazon eye-in-the-sky technology and a dark and disturbing twist. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is poking that eye with a sharp stick.

    And Jeff Bezos is not feeling the love.

    In what appears to be Bezos’s latest strategic move in the quest to replace God as knower of all things is a hybrid monster of facial recognition software and a doorbell camera widget manufactured by Ring, a company that Amazon bought earlier this year.

    In a gross assault on the right to privacy, a patent filed months ago essentially describes a product that captures information on people who as much as walk past a doorbell, sending real-time information to police databases.  It also will allow customers the ability to upload to law enforcement photos of anyone they deem might be a sketchy individual.

    What does a non-sketchy, normal person wear when ringing a doorbell?

    Jacob Snow, a technology and civil liberties attorney for the ACLU, is fired up and fighting:

    “It’s rare for patent applications to lay out, in such nightmarish detail, the world a company wants to bring about.  Amazon is dreaming of a dangerous future … ”

    Or perhaps Bezos dreams of ruling the world.

    Biometrics Bastardization

    But attaining an unlimited collection of facial snapshots is just the beginning. A deeper dive into the patent application reveals that Amazon is prepping to expand its unlimited munitions stash of photos with other biometrics.  And what it plans to extract from unsuspecting folks will horrify freedom-loving Americans.

    Amazon plans to advance data collection that will include fingerprint scans, skin-texture analysis, DNA information to rival that of Ancestry.com, palm-vein analysis, hand geometry, iris recognition, odor/scent recognition, voice recognition, and if you have a hitch in the giddy-up, it will be able to track that as well.

    An authoritarian surveillance police state in the making?

    But let’s talk about Rekognition, another program Amazon sold to law enforcement agencies and pitched to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  It’s fatally flawed against people of color.  A test found the program misidentified 28 lawmakers as police suspects, including six members of the Congressional Black Caucus.  Oops, discriminatory, much?

    On top of concerns by activists, community leaders, and politicians, 450 of Amazon’s employees signed a letter of protest to Bezos to “demand that we stop” sales of the controversial software immediately, and one brave soul published, anonymously, a heartfelt call to arms in an editorial on Medium:

    “Amazon talks a lot about values of leadership. If we want to lead, we need to choose between people and profits. We can sell dangerous surveillance systems to police, or we can stand up for what’s right. We can’t do both.”

    Absolute Surveillance

    As critics fear Amazon is pushing for a world policed and governed through automation, Bezos software continues to rack up sales, potentially removing human judgment from the law enforcement tool kit.

    Members of Congress, employees, and civil rights organizations all have requested answers from Bezos, and they have been met with only the chirps of crickets.  Amazon refuses to talk.  But Teresa Carlson, vice president of the worldwide public sector of Amazon Web Services, is on record stating that Amazon “unwaveringly” supports law enforcement and the U.S. government defense and intelligence services.  That may tell us all we really need to know.

    As soothing words from 1984 tell us, “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

    America, Big Brother has your six.  Look out.

  • Did #MeToo Cause The Death Of Company Holiday Parties?

    In many U.S. offices, employers and employees are getting ready to celebrate the end of a long work year by throwing a holiday party. Some party animals may be disappointed to hear that 2018 will see the fewest planned holiday parties in nearly a decade. As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, a new poll conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. has found that 65 percent of companies will hold a holiday party this year, the lowest number since 2009 when it was 62 percent. That of course came amid a backdrop of the recession and tighter budgets.

    Infographic: Is #MeToo Causing Companies To Ditch Holiday Parties? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Nearly a decade later, the economy is thriving and the money is flowing. If the country’s economic situation has nothing to do with companies ditching holiday parties, then what’s going on?

    According to the survey, concerns about potential liability following the #MeToo movement could be having an impact while increases in remote working might be making holiday party gatherings difficult to organize in some cases. Concerns about bad behavior at Christmas parties is well-founded and the occasion is often blamed for workers releasing pent-up stress accumulated throughout the year, over-indulgence in alcohol, a willingness to make feelings about co-workers known and in some cases, sexual harassment.

    The research made the point that the impact of #MeToo has been overwhelmingly positive in U.S. workplaces and spurred companies to introduce important policies to protect staff. Even though it found that 40 percent of companies took no action to address the issue and do not intend doing so prior to the party, others have managed to make progress and address their staff. 27.3 percent said they briefed staff on the issue and that precautions are being taken to ensure revellers are mindful of avoiding any impropriety. 24.2 percent said that even though they did not take any precautions in advance of the holiday party, the issue of #MeToo was addressed at some point over the past year.

  • Twitter Suddenly Locks @WikiLeaks And Multiple WikiLeaks Staff Accounts

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

    WikiLeaks staff are unable to access or post from the organization’s primary Twitter account or other accounts used by its staff and legal team, according to WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.

    “These accounts are locked @wikileaks @assangedefence @wltaskforce @assangelegal and cannot be accessed,” Hrafnsson recently tweeted.

    “They also seem to have been shadow banned. Should we be worried in these critical times?”

    “To clarify, these accounts cannot be accessed and new tweets posted,” Hrafnsson added.

    “Attempts to get this fixed through normal methods, when tech error have happened, have not worked. No replies to DM´s addressed to people who should be worried that accounts with 6 mill followers are frozen.”

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    The primary WikiLeaks Twitter account has 5.4 million followers and for years has been the primary means by which the organization has made public announcements, going so far as to say it is the only account authorized to make statements on behalf of WikiLeaks. The Assange Defence account, which is run by the legal campaign to free its founder Julian Assange from arbitrary detention and persecution, has 747,000 followers. The WikiLeaks Task Force account, which has been used to correct disinformation and combat corporate media smears about WikiLeaks, has 142,000 followers. The @AssangeLegal account, the account of justice4assange editor Hanna Jonasson, has 12,000 followers. All four of these accounts have per Hrafnsson been locked to prevent the use of those platforms and shadow banned.

    Now, Twitter has claimed that it does not engage in shadow banning as a practice, but its denial took the form of redefining shadow banning to mean “deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster,” while acknowledging that in order to find a blacklisted account’s content “you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile,” which is what most people mean when they talk about shadow banning on Twitter. When asked about shadow banning, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey let loose an nonsensical word salad somewhere along the lines of “Well I think the statements behind the statement and the question behind the question is the me behind the me and the you behind the you and it’s a blibba blabba zim zam hey look over there.”

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    It is worth noting here that Dorsey has an established record of lying to Twitter users about the social media outlet’s censorship practices. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was asked point-blank if Twitter was obstructing the #DNCLeaks from trending, a hashtag people were using to build awareness of the DNC emails which had just been published by WikiLeaks, and Dorsey flatly denied it. More than a year later, we learnedfrom a prepared testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism by Twitter’s acting general counsel Sean J. Edgett that this was completely false and Twitter had indeed been doing exactly that to protect the interests of US political structures by sheltering the public from information allegedly gathered by Russian hackers.

    And indeed, @wikileaks, @assangedefence, @wltaskforce, and @assangelegal are as of this writing so aggressively shadow banned that an advanced search for tweets by those accounts turns up not one single post by any of them.

    Even if Twitter does end up restoring access to all or some of these accounts, the fact that the site would shut them down at all is deeply disturbing.

    A massive Silicon Valley giant’s willingness to operate as an extension of the national security state to an even limited extent does not say good things about the future of free information access.

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    So in answer to Hrafnsson’s question “Should we be worried in these critical times?”, I think the answer is yes. Twitter has already actively helped shrink WikiLeaks’ voice and facilitated fake accounts and disinformation by refusing to verify the account of Julian Assange back when he had unrestricted internet access, and it appears to now be censoring the entire organization. At a time when the Trump administration is known to be pursuing Assange’s arrest, at a time when the now-Secretary of State has waged a war on WikiLeaks, at a time when narrative control has become a primary focus of the ruling power establishment as the US and its allies hurtle toward a military confrontation with Russia and/or China, yes, we should be worried. Very worried indeed.

    *  *  *

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  • Kroger Starts Replacing Humans With A Robot Grocery Delivery Fleet

    Nuro and The Kroger Co. announced Tuesday that a fleet of unmanned autonomous vehicles would begin delivering groceries to the general public, effectively eliminating the last mile human delivery drivers.

    Since August, both companies have thoroughly tested the grocery delivery service with an autonomous Prius fleet, accompanied by drivers and sometimes chaser vehicles during the pilot trial. In the last four months, robot cars delivered more than 1,000 orders to customers across the Phoenix metropolitan area at its Fry’s Food Stores for $5.95 with no minimum order requirement for same-day or next-day deliveries, said Reuters.

    With Tuesday’s announcement, the fleet has expanded to include Nuro’s custom, low-speed, zero-emission, self-driving vehicle, known as the R1.

    The R1 is engineered for short neighborhood trips and for the exclusive purpose of transporting and delivering goods.

    “Nuro envisions a world without errands, where everything is on demand and can be delivered affordably,” said Dave Ferguson, Nuro’s president and co-founder. “Operating a delivery service using our custom unmanned vehicles is an important first step toward that goal.”

    “Kroger customers are looking for new, convenient ways to feed their families and purchase the products they need quickly through services like pickup and delivery,” said Yael Cosset, Kroger’s chief digital officer.

    “Our autonomous delivery pilot with Nuro over the past few months continues to prove the benefit of the flexible and reliable technology. Through this exciting and innovative partnership, we are delivering a great customer experience and advancing Kroger’s commitment to redefine the grocery experience by creating an ecosystem that offers our customers anything, anytime, and anywhere,” Cosset added. 

    Phenoix will not be the only metropolitan area that has self-driving vehicles delivering groceries, Kroger plans a much broader rollout in the coming years. 

    Walmart and Amazon have also invested in their last mile delivery operations.

    For example, Walmart, Ford and delivery service Postmates said last month they would work together to deliver groceries to Walmart customers and focus on the implementation of autonomous vehicles. 

    This could be the beginning of the self-driving industry. This new technology will revolutionize the economy, but at the same time, lead to an incredible amount of job loss for the transportation industry into the 2020s. 

    To gain more color on automation in the workplace and how millions are expected to lose their jobs, here is Karen Harris, Managing Director of Bain & Company’s Macro Trends Group, discusses the impact of demographics and automation on employment in the years ahead.

  • The Professions With Highest (And Lowest) Suicide Rates

    Submitted by Priceonomics

    From 1999 to 2016, the suicide rate in the United States increased by a troubling 30%. What’s more, there is a clear gender divide in the prevalence of suicide in the United States-men commit suicide at more than three times a higher rate than women.

    The CDC recently released a report showing the suicide rates of various professions in 2015. Given that job and money trouble ranks among the leading causes of suicide, along with Priceonomics customer RegisteredNursing.org, we thought we’d dive deeper into the data and calculate which professions have the highest and lowest suicide rates and how it varies by gender.

    We found that the profession with the highest suicide rate is Construction and Extraction, with 52.1 deaths by suicide per 100,000 professionals, a rate that is over 200% higher than the average profession. By a large margin, the profession with the lowest suicide rate is Education, Training, and Library with a suicide rate of 5.3 per 100,000 workers, nearly 10 times lower than that of construction/extraction professionals.

    Additionally, in this data set, the suicide rate for males is 26.0 per 100,000 professionals compared to 7.1 for women. In fact, for all professions we looked at, men had a higher suicide rate.

    ***

    Before diving into the results, it is worth spending a moment on describing the CDC data we use for calculations. While the report from the CDC was recently released in November of 2018, the most recent time period it covers is 2015. And is just from 22 states.

    Perhaps most important to note is that the CDC provides suicide data at the highest level of “major occupational group.” This splits the entire US workforce into just 22 occupations. As a result, many different sub-occupations are lumped together in just one occupation (for example, nursing, doctors, and dentists are all in one occupation).

    Across this data set of 22 occupations in 22 states, the suicide rate in 2015 was 16.9 deaths per 100,000 people, an increase of 10% from 2012.

    The next chart shows the suicide rate in 2015, split by major occupation group. While 16.9 is the average suicide rate, the rate varies substantially by occupation.

    The occupation with the highest suicide rate is Construction and Extraction with 52.1 deaths per 100,000 people, nearly 40% higher than the occupation with the second highest suicide rate. The occupation with the lowest suicide rate is Education, Training and Library with a 5.3 suicide rate compared to 16.9 for the national average.

    Health care practitioners and health care support professions see 11 to 12.5 rate per 100,000; this includes nursing professionals.

    Do lower paying jobs tend to have higher suicide rates? We next juxtaposed BLS salary data by occupation group with the CDC suicide rates.

    In general, there is a small trend that higher paying jobs tend to have lower suicide rates, but the data is too noisy to make a conclusion. Additionally, some of the occupations with the highest suicide rates have salaries comparable to ones with much lower suicide rates. However, none of the highest paying occupations are also ones with high suicide rates, hinting there might be the relationship between pay and suicide rates worth exploring with more data.

    The last time the CDC published this suicide rate by profession data was from 2012. How have things changed between then and 2015?The next chart rankings occupations by their increase (or decrease) in suicide rates during this year period:

    Given that overall suicide rates increased 10% between 2012 and 2015, it’s not surprising that most of these occupations have had an increase in suicide rates. Nevertheless, a number of occupation have had increases in suicide rates far in excess of the national average; Food Preparation and Serving has seen an increase of nearly 50% and Arts Design, Entertainment, Sports and Media almost 40%.

    Any analysis of suicide rates without discussing gender differences will be remiss in overlooking an important point: male dominated industries will have higher suicide rates because men have higher suicide rates than women. The following chart shows suicide rate by gender in 2015 across all occupations.

    Men across all occupations have a suicide rate of 26.0 per 100,000 people, three times more than females. So are occupations with high suicide rates just an indication that there are a high percentage of men in that labor pool? Not exactly.

    If we break down the suicide rate for each occupation by gender, we notice that even for the same occupation men have a substantially higher suicide rate than women.

    For every single major occupation, men have substantially higher suicide rate than women. Not only that, but for most occupations, men commit suicide at a rate 3-5 times higher than women do. So yes, male dominated industries will have higher suicide rates than more balanced ones, but there is still variation in suicide rates by industry that is not explained by gender mix.

    Because of impact of gender, let’s conclude by looking at which professions have the highest suicide rates for men and then also for women.

    Because men make up most suicides, it’s not surprising that the list of professions with the highest suicide rates for men is similar to the overall list for both genders combined. In fact, the top 5 professions with the highest suicide rates for men is nearly identical to the top 5 professions with the highest suicide rates overall (though in a slightly different order).

    For women, the professions with the highest suicide rates is substantially different from the men, but in large part because the CDC did not publish the female rates for a number of professions with high suicide rates like Construction and Extraction due to low sample size in women. The following chart shows suicide rates by occupation for women, excludes those occupations:

    The occupation with the highest suicide rate among females is Art, Design, Entertainment, Sports and Media (this occupation ranked second among men). The occupation that ranked second among women (Protective Services) also ranked highly among men. For women, the industries of Education, Training, Library, as well as Management have the lowest suicide rates (these two professions also have low rates among men). Of note, Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance has low suicide rate among women, but it is 5 times higher for men.

    ***

    In America, suicide is a rising problem, especially among men. For most professions we looked at, males commit suicide at rate 3-5 times higher than for women. While the national average is 16.9 deaths by suicide per 100,000 people, some professions have suicide rates almost three times higher than that for men. Even among a single gender, there is a huge variance among suicide rates. Higher paying jobs tend to have lower suicide rates, but low pay doesn’t completely explain suicide rates since some professions have about the same compensation but vastly different rates of suicide.

    As death rates in America soar from the mental health issues, stress and anxiety, and the Opioid crisis, it’s important not to overlook suicide is rising in America and it’s an issue that we would be remiss not to address.

  • Former Baltimore Top Cop Pleads Guilty To Tax Fraud 

    Former Baltimore Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa has pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday that “he willfully neglected to file income tax returns and falsely claimed deductions to slash the amount he owed to the Internal Revenue Service,” said The Baltimore Sun.

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    De Sousa, 54, resigned as the city’s top cop in May, after failing to file his federal taxes for 2013, 2014 and 2015. He faces up to three years in jail and a $300,000 fine when he is sentenced in late March 2019.

    “You do agree you’re guilty of these three offenses?” U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake asked him on Tuesday. 

    “Yes, your honor,” De Sousa said.

    He joined the Baltimore Police Department in 1998, and in January 1999, submitted a W-4 to the city of Baltimore incorrectly claiming nine adjustments for state and federal taxes. This “substantially reduced” the amount of taxes withheld from his salary, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.

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    In addition, when he filed his state and federal income taxes for 2008 through 2012, he claimed deductions he was not eligible for. This included “unreimbursed employee expenses when he had no such expenses, mortgage interest deductions and deductions for local property taxes when he did not have a mortgage or own any real property, and business losses when he did not operate any businesses,” according to the state’s attorney’s office.

    De Sousa’s long history of alleged tax fraud continued through 2011, 2012, and 2014, when he neglected to file tax returns or pay any penalties or interest for filing late. During those years, he did file fraudulent claims for unreimbursed employee expenses and charitable donations, according to the state’s attorney’s office.

    Under his plea agreement, De Sousa must pay the federal government and the state of Maryland a total of $60,645.

    Before his deceitful tax scheme was uncovered, De Sousa was named the Baltimore top cop in January after Mayor Catherine Pugh fired his predecessor, Kevin Davis. He served less than four months before stepping down on May 15. Gary Tuggle has served as interim commissioner since.

    In a May 2018 statement released via Twitter, De Sousa took responsibility for tax fraud:

    “I fully admit to failing to file my personal Federal and State taxes for 2013, 2014 and 2015. I did file my 2016 taxes and received an extension for my 2017 taxes. I have been working to satisfy the filing requirements and, to that end, have been working with a registered tax advisor.

    To be clear, I have paid Federal, state and local taxes regularly through the salary withholding process.

    While there is no excuse for my failure to fulfil my obligations as a citizen and public official, my only explanation is that I failed to sufficiently prioritize my personal affairs. Naturally, this is a source of embarrassment for me and I deeply regret any embarrassment it has caused the Police Department and the City of Baltimore. I accept full responsibility for this mistake and am committed to resolving this situation as quickly as possible.”

    De Sousa’s case has added to the instability in the Baltimore Police Department. The department has had four commissioners since the 2015 Baltimore Riots. The city is drowning in homicides with a homicide rate that is the highest in the country, according to recent FBI data.

    In November, Mayor Catherine Pugh named Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald as a possible candidate to become the city’s next top cop. The city council is expected to vote in early 2019 on his nomination.

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