My name is Marsha, I'm a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a non-profit based in San Francisco and we work to make sure that individual rights make it into the digital age. I work on our civil liberties team, I do privacy, free speech, security related stuff and over the past several years I've done a lot of work on open government issues and that's what this talk is about today of course. We're going to talk about how to get your FBI file and other information you would like to get from the federal government. So we're going to talk primarily about two laws. The first is the Freedom of Information Act. This is a law that lets anybody ask for records from federal agencies. You can ask for whatever you want. It doesn't just have to be about you. You can ask for records about what the government's been up to in various contexts. It's pretty wide open and there are no requirements about who can ask for records. I mean even if you're not a U.S. citizen you can use this law. And there's a presumption in favor of disclosure which means that the agency has to give you what you've asked for unless there's a really good reason not to get it to you. So what are those reasons? This is basically a list of the reasons why they cannot give you something. And you know I think some of them are pretty straightforward. You know it's classified information. It would compromise a law enforcement investigation. You see I have one down there that says privileged. I know that's kind of vague. Basically what that means is that if the government were in some sort of a civil case with somebody they would be able to withhold it under some litigation privilege. So you know this might be like attorney-client privilege stuff, this kind of thing. You might notice a couple there that are a little bit odd. Like the geological, geophysical information about wells. That's very specific. It's an interesting little post 9-11 development. And there's kind of this catch-all at the very end there. Other laws say it doesn't have to be disclosed. And basically what that means is if Congress at some point makes this decision that a particular type of information shouldn't be released to the public then they can pass a law that says that that can't be released under the FOIA. So just to give you an example, the National Security Agency has a special exemption so that information about its activities and operations wouldn't have to be released under the FOIA. And there are a few dozen laws like that. If you're interested in this kind of stuff I wouldn't discourage you from asking about it just because it might be exempt. Just to give you an example, at EFF a couple of years ago we did a FOIA request seeking information about a wiretapping technology and that should fall squarely into some of these exemptions. And yet we still managed to get several thousand pages about it. So I encourage you not to be completely discouraged by the list of exemptions. You can still get some really good stuff. So the other law that we're going to talk about a little bit is called the Privacy Act. Now this is a law that specifically lets you ask for records about yourself that are maintained by some federal agency in a system of records. And the thing about this law is that it can be used only by American citizens and lawful permanent residents and if you fall outside one of those categories it doesn't mean you can't get information about yourself. You can always use the FOIA to ask for this kind of information too. Remember the FOIA is a broader law. It lets you ask for anything while the Privacy Act is specifically records about you. And you can get the same thing through the FOIA. So if you are asking for records about yourself it's pretty easy to know what you're looking for. What if you are just interested in using the FOIA to ask for stuff that's interesting to you? Like how do you know what to ask for and how to phrase your request? So the best way to do this is to pay attention I would say to the news. If there are interesting things that you're reading about that you find compelling that you want to follow up on you can learn about really interesting stuff just in news reports, press releases, government reports. If you hear about some congressional hearing or somebody talked about this FBI surveillance technology these are all really good fertile grounds for formulating FOIA requests. And how do you know where your request should go? So the government actually is required by a lot to make this fairly easy. The first step for you is to figure out which agency or agencies might have the information that you're looking for. Keep in mind that you're required to ask for stuff that already exists. They don't have to create records in response to your FOIA request. So you have to think about where the documents or other materials that you're interested in, where those things are likely to be, and then check the agency's website for information about how to submit the request. Some agencies will let you do it electronically which is super great and easy. For others you need to send in a letter or you can fax it in. But the agencies are required to have these websites that make this information very easy and available to anybody who wants to send a FOIA request or a Privacy Act request. So how do you write a request? Over the years I have come up with a few things that I think are pretty decent guidelines. First of all, describe what you want as precisely as you can because you don't want a situation where you ask for something very general and they dump thousands of pages on you and you're coming through for the little bit that's interesting to you. So what you want to do is try to be as exact as possible in describing what you want. So for example, if you're really interested in whether the FBI has conducted an investigation within a specific time period about a certain topic, I don't think you would want to request all records related to that investigation. It would be very specific time wise and subject matter wise and that should help you get the stuff that you're actually interested in. Write your request for a lay reader. A lot of people in this room are very, very technical and you are probably, if you're interested in requesting something that has technical subject matter, you're probably going to know far, far, far more about that subject than the people who are actually processing the request. So it's important to write it so that they'll understand what you're looking for. You need to help them help you. My guideline is would my mother understand this if she read it? So yeah, that's a very important thing. You want to write it so that the person who first reads the request is going to know what you're looking for and who at the agency is likely to actually have that stuff and then can route it to that person. If there are news articles that you've read that relate to this topic or kind of gave you the idea for it, go ahead and include that material. The better idea you can give about what you're interested in and what you're looking for, the better for everybody involved. And so if you can provide an agency with some stuff that's going to help them figure out exactly what you're looking for, that's nothing but good. Think about whether you can get what's called expedited processing. So this is a concept that is in the FOIA, not the Privacy Act unfortunately, but the FOIA, that basically says that if you can demonstrate a compelling need for information, then they will move your request to the head of the line and process it first. The way that they define compelling need, well, they define it a couple different ways. One type of compelling need is if you don't get the information, it's likely to result in harm or threaten the life of somebody. It's unlikely you're probably going to be able to make use of that. But there's another one that says that if you are primarily engaged in disseminating information, so like if you're a journalist and there is an urgent need to tell the public about the stuff you're asking about, then that's a good ground for expedited processing. So the concept is basically, is this a breaking news story and are you somebody who has a track record of journalistic activity and you might be breaking it? So there are some interesting questions at this point about exactly what a journalist is. I imagine a lot of you blog and if you are in a position to be able to show that you've written about a certain subject matter and you've submitted a request that's relevant to that or relevant to something else that you're interested in, if you can show the agency that you have this history of basically writing journalistic type stuff, then you might be able to get expedited processing and that's completely awesome because then you can get it processed much faster than you otherwise would be able to. So if you can, ask for reduced fees. So under the FOIA in particular, an agency is allowed to charge you fees for the time they spend searching for the records, reviewing the records and also any costs associated with duplicating the records to give them to you. You can get these things waived in certain instances. So for example, they will not charge you search or review fees if you can show that you're a member of the media or that you're affiliated with an educational or scientific institution and you're not requesting something for commercial use. So think about whether you're able to make that kind of an argument. Are you a student?  Do you blog? If you can basically show that you meet some of these criteria then you may not have to pay any sorts of fees like this. You can also get duplication fees either reduced or completely taken care of. If you can show that disclosure of the information that you are looking for would be in the public interest and you're not requesting it for commercial use. So this is basically making an argument that whatever you have requested would contribute significantly to public understanding of that topic. And so if you can kind of check both of these boxes, you're in a position where you could in theory hopefully get the material you're asking for for free. So what if you're asking about yourself, again the FBI file scenario, you want to request your own FBI file. As I mentioned before you can use either law and in fact just as a Belt and Suspenders approach you might just go ahead and call it a FOIA slash privacy act request. Again it would just be FOIA if you're not a U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident but if you are, you know why not, you can use either law to do it. In order to get information about yourself from an agency you need to provide them some personal information so that they can ensure that they're giving you information about the right person, that is you as opposed to somebody with the same name or what have you. So I talked to some people who would like to request records about themselves but they feel a little antsy about providing personal information to the government. Just be aware that if this is something you want to do you probably will have to provide some information. You'll also have to certify under penalty of perjury that you're not providing false information. So I would discourage you from providing your name and then providing fake information for the rest because you just don't want them to have that information because you do have to promise that you're giving them just accurate stuff and nothing more. Again take a look at the agency website and see what their requirements are. You may actually find that it's very, very simple to submit a FOIA request or a Privacy Act request. They may have some sort of web form to do it in which case it's just the simplest thing there could possibly be and so that's definitely something that's worth doing before you go ahead and write up a request. And so once you submit your request what do you do then? Unfortunately the open government system is kind of broken and they're supposed to actually give you stuff within 20 working days if it's just a normal request but that almost never happens. If you're requesting something about yourself and you know it's a fairly simple thing to process and take care of like for example if they just don't have a file on you or they have a very small one then they may actually be able to meet the deadline but that's really unusual. So once you realize that you're not getting the stuff that you want in a timely manner you have some decisions to make about how you're going to follow up. You can just bug them. Virtually every agency FOIA website has a list of people who are required by law to make themselves available to you and talk to you about your request. So you can develop a fine working relationship with those people and bug them and ask them why they haven't processed your request in the amount of time that they're supposed to. And sometimes this really works. You know FOIA people you know they're working in a very flawed system but for the most part I find them to be really good people who take their jobs very seriously and they want to help you. They don't want to be obstructionist. Another thing you can do is you can sue. If 20 working days passes and nothing happens you are actually in a position to file suit if you want. You can sue where you live. You can sue where the records are located which is often DC. As a default you can always sue in DC. I would tend to recommend if you think about going this route that you pick the place where you live because the DC courts see lots and lots and lots of these cases and they're not all that sympathetic to FOIA requesters since DC is the government's home field. Another possibility is to contact this office. It's called the FOIA ombudsman's office. This is a fairly new thing. I don't actually have much of a sense yet how effective this is but just in the past couple years this office has been established that is intended to help mediate disputes between requesters and agencies.  So keep this in mind as a possibility. Like I said, I'm not quite sure yet how effective this office is but this is something that you can avail yourselves of if you want to. Or you can just wait. The first FOIA request I ever submitted went to the INS which actually doesn't even exist anymore. And I assume this request has been rerouted somewhere but I've never gotten a response and that was like eight years ago. So that kind of thing does happen, unfortunately. And sometimes you wait for like two years and then you get a letter where they say, hey, we've had this request on file for two years and we haven't processed it yet. If you're still interested, let us know within a week and we'll process it. Otherwise we'll just close the file and you're like, what? But so that kind of thing happens. If you're just kind of curious and this is kind of for basic research purposes, there's no harm in waiting. But there are some things you can do to speed it up. So what I just spoke about is what I think is the most likely scenario. But sometimes they do respond on time and eventually they will respond at some point. And they often redact the files or just don't give it to you, right? We talked about the exemptions. So there are these reasons why they might not give you the stuff that you have asked for. So what happens if they finally process your request and they refuse to give you what you want? You have to file an appeal and this is very important. If you really don't care that much, I suppose you could just let it go. But if they respond, you cannot sue them until you file an appeal. So if you really think that you want to pursue the situation, you really want the stuff, you need to take this step. And the appeal letter is basically like this is why you're wrong. And honestly, if you don't have any reasons why they're wrong, it's totally fine to send them a letter that is a formality. Just kind of checks the box that says, look, I think you're wrong. Like one sentence, I hope you'll reconsider your decision. And once you've sent that letter, they again have 20 working days to respond. And if they don't respond or if they say, sorry, we're sticking with our initial decision, then you're perfectly situated to file suit if you want. And we talked a little bit about that before. So there are some really great resources out there that help with filing requests. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has a really wonderful set of state and federal open government guides and also request generators that will basically fill in all the language that you need if you can just give them the gist of what you're looking for. We've only talked today about federal open government laws. But each state and a lot of cities have their own open government laws. And some of them are very different, have their curious little distinctions. And so it's well worth taking a look at what the Reporters Committee has to get a sense of whether you're able to get the stuff you're looking for if you're a certain state law and if you are, how much that would cost. But yeah, that's one of the very best resources I think I've ever seen. We have a FAQ as well. It's kind of geared more towards sort of practical advice. And so if you're kind of wondering how to formulate a request or whether you might be able to ask for expedited processing, that's a great thing to look at. If you're really, really serious about pursuing FOIA requests, the Electronic Privacy Information Center where I used to work publishes a FOIA litigation manual that's about this thick. Comes out every couple years and it goes through how to write a request, the history of the laws, the various exemptions and what the courts have said about them. It's a super useful thing if you anticipate spending a whole lot of time working on open government stuff. And I mentioned before the FOIA Ombudsman's office, this is the Office of Government Information Services. And like I mentioned before, that can be a super, super useful resource. Well, I'm actually not sure if it's a super useful resource, but it is possible that they may be able to help you out if you're really in a struggle with an agency over some sort of FOIA related matter. So that's worth looking at as well if you're sort of in that position. So that's what I have. I assumed we'd probably do a lot of Q&A. I mean, I'd be very curious to hear any particular questions you have about ideas that you're thinking about for FOIA requests or Privacy Act requests or just general questions about the laws. Yes, go ahead. Okay, so your first question was about financial regulation. Is that right, you wanted to know about FOIA with respect to the recent financial downturn and- To be honest, I don't do a lot of requests in that area. So I really can't say how they have turned out or what. There is a FOIA exemption we talked about earlier that exempts from disclosure materials that are basically related to financial investigations. And that exemption actually was in there well before the financial troubles of the last couple of years. I think it's a shame that that happens to be in there because I think we could have learned a whole lot more about the causes of the downturn and what the government has found about it if that exemption weren't there. But unfortunately it is. And I wish I could tell you a little bit more about what FOIA requesters have experienced, trying to get information about that situation. But unfortunately I just don't know. Your second question was about bloggers and access to information. So bloggers and journalists, they don't get preferential treatment in terms of actual access to information. Everybody is on the same playing field in terms of what they can access. But journalists can get special treatment in terms of how quickly the request gets processed. They can ask to have the request moved to the head of the line. And if the agency thinks that that's appropriate, the agency can do that. They can also get preferential treatment for fees. They may be charged less fees than, for example, some company that submits a FOIA request to get information about a competitor and the work that the competitor is doing for the government. But in terms of access to information, journalists don't get any preferential treatment. I want to make that clear. When you submit a FOIA request, you are entitled to the information that anybody else would be. You will get whatever you ask for as long as it's not exempt. And there is nobody who can show that they have a special need for that information so that you can't have it. Or they can have it to the exclusion of you. So I just want to make that clear. I think that's a very important point. And to that end, you never have to justify a FOIA request. You can ask for anything you want and you don't have to explain why you want it or why you should get it. You also mentioned the practical realities of open government laws. This is absolutely true. I mean, I mentioned before that the system is terribly broken. The government has amended the law several times to speed up the processing of these requests to try to penalize agencies that don't comply. The fact of the matter is, when you submit a FOIA request, you have to be really diligent if you want it processed quickly. You have to take steps to make sure that it gets done. You have to take steps to push to have it answered in any sort of a timely manner. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This is why I wanted to tell you about the ombudsman and the possibility of suing. I am an attorney and I have found that often we get the best responses when we file suit because at that point you drag a judge into the whole thing. And an agency has to justify to the judge why they're being so slow. And to simply say, look, we've got a lot of stuff to do, sorry. That just doesn't work with a judge. And the judge has the power to say, you will process this and you'll do it in a week. So I think that the FOIA process works the best when you've got requesters who are very aggressive and do whatever they can to push the system forward because you can't expect that you're going to get the stuff that you want in the 20 working days you're supposed to get it. And this is particularly true with certain agencies. I'll tell you the FBI has a terrible backlog. There are requests that sit there for years. But if you're really good about pushing your cause, I think you can get it done faster. Yes. It totally depends on the amount of stuff. If there are like 50 pages that are responsive to the request, they probably won't charge you for it at all. If it's like 10,000 pages, they may charge you thousands of dollars. I will say that you will have the opportunity, if they charge you a lot of money, you have the opportunity to appeal and basically explain why it should be less or why there shouldn't be anything. And the other thing is one thing you can do is in your request, you can say, I'm willing to pay X amount of dollars in fees, whatever, $20. If it's going to be more than that, let me know. And then if they get back to you and say, hey, look, we're thinking this is going to be like 2,000 pages. We're thinking it's going to be maybe this amount of money, then you can maybe talk to them about sort of narrowing the scope of the request or sort of negotiating some sort of a solution to make it so that you don't have to pay that amount of money. Yes, behind you, yeah. That's a really good question. I think that the agencies keep all the requests on file. I actually recently submitted a FOIA request to see if EFF had an FBI file. And it turned out that all they had on EFF were our FOIA requests. And some of the filings that we had done in some of our lawsuits against the government. But I don't think there's any requirement that they have to keep every FOIA request on file, but I'm sure they do. And if you wanted to, I think a really interesting FOIA strategy could be, I want all of the requests that so and so has submitted, somebody that you're interested in who does FOIA work along the lines you're interested in and say, I want all the documents that are responsive to those requests. Yes. That's still a completely open question. And actually at EFF, we're interested in cases like that, because we think that that's a really good opportunity to do impact litigation and establish some good precedent there. So if you are somebody who's a blogger and you submit a FOIA request and they're like, sorry, you're not a journalist. We're not giving you expedited processing. We're not giving you preferential fee treatment, whatever. Go ahead and let us know, because we're interested in trying to help define that. That also is a good question. I don't know the answer for sure. And it's something that I've speculated with some of my colleagues about before. Like, would it be a good idea to ask for your own FBI file? Or would they then, moving forward, not put certain stuff in it because they know you're the type who would ask about it? And I really don't know. My gut feeling is that probably it doesn't raise any flags, but I don't know that for sure. So sure, no problem. He asked whether you can ask for somebody else's FBI file. Al Capone's, for example. So if it's somebody who's of historical interest like Al Capone and somebody who's dead, like Al Capone, I think it's, yeah, you can ask for it and you will get it. If you're asking about the FBI file of your neighbor because you think that he was an informant in an investigation, they won't give that to you. They won't give it to you because, number one, there are privacy implications to that. And number two, if the person has assisted the law enforcement investigation in the past or continues to do it, it could compromise some investigation. Now, if it's somebody who you know and is interested in getting the information himself or herself, you can do a thing where you can basically get their consent. You can have them sign a waiver or something and get the information that way. How about a public figure? Yeah, public figures, I think, most likely you can get that kind of stuff. It's a little blurry line because what kind of public figure, I mean, like Michael Jackson, I'm sure you can get Michael Jackson's stuff. Like the mayor of your town, certainly a public figure, definitely a political person, but the FBI might decide there are some privacy implications there and might not be as forthcoming. Okay. Oh, I'm so sorry, absolutely. Yep. You request with paper where the records are electronic and charging you excessive fees because of that. Yep. I'm really glad you asked that question. I actually kind of meant to address that in my presentation that I didn't. The question is, what do you do when an agency is giving you documents in paper form when it appears that it's electronic information and they're charging you an arm and a leg because they're giving you this paper and their duplication fees and stuff? So under the FOIA, you can request that information be given to you in electronic form and that's often a very good idea because it keeps down duplication fees. And so if you have any inkling that the stuff that you're looking for is likely to be in a database or whatever, certainly mentioned in your request that you would rather they not print out rings of paper that you'd rather just have it on disk or whatever. And you can ask for it in whatever format you like. If they don't maintain it in that format, they don't have to make something new for you but it certainly would kind of open the door for sort of talking about the best way to do it. I've had situations where I requested stuff and turns out there are databases that are responsive to that but I hadn't even known. Like it wasn't really what I was requesting and they come back and say, hey, can we just give this to you in a spreadsheet that will send you on disk? And it's like, yeah, that's great. And that way, you know, you have the data, it's much more easy to sort through. You don't have to pay the duplication fees. Yep, thanks for asking that question. Yes. So the question is, if an agency says that there are no records responsive to a request, are they stuck with that position later like in litigation for example? So, I mean, I assume you're asking about a situation where they say at first, sorry, there are no records and then later they're like, oh, well, we went back and looked and it turns out there are. Is that right? Yeah, so I think in a situation like that, they probably wouldn't be stuck in that with that representation and actually, that's better for you anyway, right? Because you're getting the stuff that you want, right? Yeah, I've had a lot of situations where they say, so we looked, here's the stuff that we found, then later they come back and they say, actually we looked and there's more stuff and you know, that never seems to bother me because I want that stuff anyway. And so I think that if you're looking for information, you know, I don't think I would make much of an issue of the fact that they find more stuff. Right, I think I need to assign some to you again. Any two requests that are unacknowled in the same personnel file yield different results? Yeah. Because they're processed by different people. Right. What happens with these sorts of requests? They get a different file back? So his question now is, you know, about consistency between, you know, different people and also I would say different agencies processing the same request. You know, these are human beings who are doing this, right, and sometimes people make mistakes and sometimes they're judgment about a certain issue can be different. And so, you know, I've definitely seen situations where I get one document from one agency that has certain redactions and I get the same document from a different agency with, you know, fewer redactions or more redactions. So that definitely happens.   Does that make sense? No. No, there's nothing in the law that says they can't offer it in the future if they don't provide it now. And in fact, a lot of exemptions can be invoked just discretionarily. Is that a word, discretionarily? So, you know, for example, there's this one exemption that says that the government doesn't have to give you deliberative, pre-decisional stuff. So this is like, they're mulling over a decision, should we do this, should we do this? Well, I don't know, I think we should do this. They don't have to give you records about that, you know, that process because, you know, if they did, you know, basically they would sort of stifle their decision-making process and they would feel nervous about exploring possibilities because they would know that that could all be subject to public scrutiny, right? But if they want to give that to you, they can. And one agency might decide to give it to you and another agency might say, no, you know, that's something that's, you know, for us too sensitive, we're not gonna give it away. Anybody else? Yes. Absolutely. And in fact, you have to appeal before you can file suit. So, yes, you can appeal and I would encourage you to do so. I'm sorry, his question was if they don't give you something you asked for, could you appeal? Yes. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. Could you speak up, please? That's a great question. He asked, what if you find information in a file about yourself that's incorrect? So, under the Privacy Act, you, five minutes, okay. Under the Privacy Act, you generally have the right to request that information be corrected. You have the right that information that's maintained about you be accurate and complete. And you can request that they, you know, basically correct anything that you find wrong in the files about you. But there's a caveat here, which is that that law also lets the government exempt certain systems of records from requirements like that. So, for example, if you were on the terrorist watch list, you would never see that file, by the way. But if you were on the terrorist watch list, and there was information about you that was incorrect, if you somehow figured that out, you wouldn't have any right to ask that it be corrected or amended in any way. Because that system of records has been exempted from those requirements. So, this is an increasingly big problem because in the post-911 era, a lot of these sensitive databases that are used to make decisions about people are exempted from that kind of requirement. Yes. The question, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the question is what I recommend having a FOIA request submitted through an attorney? So, I think that that's a personal decision. I mean, if it's something that is really important to you to get just right and you expect to pursue it and it's like an important business thing for you, you might have an attorney do it. But of course, that's going to cost money, that's going to be more expensive. And I think that anybody is perfectly capable of writing a great FOIA request. So, I think that that's up to you. I don't think it requires a whole lot of specialized knowledge. And to the extent that it does require specialized knowledge, you probably have it, because you know what you're interested in. I'm sorry, could you repeat that? So, the question is basically, are there situations, for example, when you're asking for expedited processing where it might be beneficial for the request to come from an attorney, probably so they take it more seriously? Is that what you're thinking? You know, on a common sense level, I would say, yeah. But I also think you can draft a request that is perfectly excellent and get what you want. It may be the case that if it comes from an attorney, it looks a little more official and the agency's like, ooh, we should make sure that we really think about this carefully. But I don't think that it's something that's so important that I would suggest that all of you hire lawyers to do your FOIA requests. Okay, so I'm gonna go to the Q&A room now and I'm happy to talk to any of you about any questions that you have.  EFF has a bunch of presentations today. I encourage you to go to as many as you can. They're gonna be awesome. So, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you.


Computers keep changing the world, but their power and safety is limited by their rigid design. The T2 Tile project works for bigger and safer computing using living systems principles. Follow our progress here on T Tuesday Updates. Happy New Year! This is the 13th episode of T Tuesday Updates, which means there's seven weeks left to the episode 20 goal of having over a hundred of these tiles. The T2 Tiles manufactured and connected together in a grid. There's a lot of reasons to doubt whether we'll actually be able to make that deadline, but I haven't given up yet. I'm determined in these videos to keep it moving as quick as I can and avoid the tendency, the professorial feeling that I have to make extra comments and editorialize on every point and try to just stick to the facts and keep it moving. So here we go. The last week was the special Christmas rant that I let myself, well, because of circumstances, I needed to record the actual video a little bit early and then I just added extra stuff on the left-hand side so I actually tried to get it condensed down and summarize the picture once again from the outside. I think it came out alright. It certainly could have been a lot better. The early returns on the YouTube is that it's, you know, what marketing genius would decide to release something at noon on Christmas. It got a pretty slow start on number of views, but it's gradually getting up to the numbers that are typical for T Tuesday updates, but it's doing great on audience retention. I mean, if you've ever posted YouTube videos, like in the first 10 seconds you lose 50% of your viewers, but the Christmas rant for the actual first time for any of my videos, it actually has an uptick where instead of just steadily going down and bleeding away viewers actually a little ways into it, it rises up, which means people are either skipping to that point or more likely they're actually rewinding and watching spots again, which is very cool. I think it could probably do better. I think it could impact more people if we can get to it. If you have the awesome power of your social networks that you maybe not haven't used yet on the Christmas rant, the Christmas rant could maybe use your help. We'll see how it goes. Also for news from the Propaganda division, HeyNDX partly inspired by the Christmas rant, so it already did do some good, brought up the possibility of doing kind of live stream and having a conversation and discussing this stuff a little bit back and forth rather than just me going blah blah blah like these updates are. We're actually going to try it for an hour or so this coming Saturday at noon mountain time, which is picked so that hopefully everybody from Europe through, I don't know, the states can join in, which again, based on the YouTube demographics such as they are, covers pretty much our viewers. We have a little contingent in the UK and then most of us are in the United States somewhere. I'll be there. Join us if you can. There will be details getting developed as far as actually how to join in. You can always watch the live stream on YouTube, but if you actually want to get your face up in lights and ask questions and I would love to have you there, that's coming up on Saturday. We'll see how that goes. I'm very excited about that. From the manufacturing division, I got a quote back from ETS. I don't think this is news. I'm not sure it's since there's been a couple of weeks without actually focusing on the news. 1120 a board to do the assembly, that to put the surface mount parts on to hand solder the through hole parts, plus whatever it costs them to produce the stencil to squeegee out the solder paste. We'll see that in a minute. That's a little more than it was before, but I think there's just a different breakdown of the setup costs and the ongoing board costs. And I think that's okay. And that puts us on target for having around a hundred and small change, $110, $120 cost to me per tile. And counting time is zero. UNM has been on winter break, so I need to coordinate with them as far as because I'm going to be spending this gift money that I've been saving for all these years on getting parts and making a purchase order for the tiles from ETS. The goal is 150 tiles. So officially it's 133 plus a few for other purposes. I've got shopping carts at Arrow and Mauser that put together about $2,500 worth of parts that I'm waiting to pull the trigger on. We'll see how it goes. That's moving not as fast as it could, not as fast as I want, but it's moving pretty fast compared to how it's been going. All right. I got three more prototype boards that were the first ones for the actual tile board manufactured by Osh Park. And the goal was to, yes, do the reflow instead of trying to hand solder all those little teeny things. The idea is you get a solder stencil, you put it on, you squeegee paste over the whole thing, you bake it in the oven, you put the pieces on, you bake it in the oven. I gave that a try. I was hoping to put it together into a video, but I just didn't have time. So here are just some still pictures so we can look at it. This is the reflow oven in the back. These are just scratch boards that you use to make a little base. So putting down the boards to make room for it, taping them to the counter with this nice cap-on tape, which probably really didn't need for this purpose, but it's nice stuff. And the idea is you want to have a nice level surface so that the exact thickness of a board so that when you squeegee out the paste, the stencil doesn't flex at the edges. And using dead boards, of which everybody who does hardware has plenty, is a well-known way to do it. So here, this is what the stencil came in. The stencil comes from a different company. It's Osh Park for the boards. Osh stencils for the stencils. They're unrelated except they both say Osh. And let's see. So cleaning the stencil with alcohol. And now the big trick is trying to line up those laser cut holes in the stencil with the exact position on the PC board where the corresponding pads are that the solder paste is supposed to go. And these holes get quite small, and that registration is kind of important. So I realized I needed more support, so I put some more boards down. Again, more old boards get to see some previous generations. I mean, we've had more than 10 generations of boards, of which before these updates started, taping it down and so on. And so now basically you tape down the stainless steel stencil in one corner or on one edge, and you use it like a hinge, and then you slide the board under it. So now the idea is every place you can see a hole through there, it should be all gold color and no purple color at all. And that's the part that needs to be pretty critical here. I took a couple of close-ups. I got it pretty good. Pretty good. You don't see any purple. The problem is, you know, the tape could shift a little bit when you're squeezing the solder paste down and so on. So the solder paste, I got nice fresh solder paste. It comes in an injector. They gave me a solder paste spreader. I actually asked for it, but it turned out, and there's the solder paste itself. It comes in a tube. It expires in six months. You need to keep this stuff refrigerated, really.  It's not very good stuff. Part of what you pay the pros for the ETS guys is that they use solder that doesn't have any lead in it, which is even more finicky to work with, and I have my plate full dealing with all the other issues. So the problem is the solder paste spreader, they gave me isn't really wide enough to cover the board that I need to do, so I just use another board. Here I am just checking it out to see whether it'll work.  So here's my one pass, and you can actually, that little square in the middle down here, that's where the hole is in the board for the ethernet port to pop through so it doesn't squeegee cleanly. And then you lift up the hinge and you check to see how well you did. So now there's the board in the middle where all of the gold parts, they're supposed to have surface mount parts put on them are no longer gold because now they're gray because they're solder paste, which is just barely holding up. It's fairly thin stuff. And now the goal is to put all of the surface mount parts in their corresponding positions in the solder paste without ever brushing your hand against any of the things you're not supposed to brush against. So in fact you can see here that there is the gray solder paste and I missed the pads a little bit. You can see a little bit of gold around it, see a little bit of gold around it. And these things, you know, this is a significant error. There's just one thing that's there to help you and that is the solder mask, in this case the purple stuff, acts like solder repellent. And when this thing melts, it actually, like by surface tension will pull the parts into the correct position as long as you're close enough. It's really kind of miraculous when it works. All right, so these are now, I've placed all the parts and I'm sparing you an hour and a half of anxiety of placing each of these things using the vacuum pickup and so forth and saying don't rub your hand on anything and so on. From here it goes into the reflow oven. I actually have some video of that. So here's what it looks like coming out of the oven. And now all of the gray stuff is gone. It's turned into silver because it's actually melted. And we did pretty well. A good solder joint has that nice little ramp up and it's all shiny. This thing could have been shinier, but it's really not bad. And look at these things, all of those pins there, nicely separated, nicely, it's really quite magical. Again, looking good. The switches, the four feet for the switches are pretty good shape. Everything looks really pretty good. And that looks a little bit off, but again, not terrible. R14 did not get pulled into place, but I checked it and it's actually a secure soldering, so that's ineligent, but not an electrical problem and so on. Our light sensor, I made the footprint a little bigger. I'm going to make the footprint a little bigger still because you really want to have a little bit of the pad visible outside the component so that you can see that the solder was picked up nicely. But overall, there we are. And there was, you know, as far as I could tell, things didn't look too bad. I plugged it in. I powered it up. Things looked pretty good. At that point, I was starting to test it harder and I went up to the Linux level working with the packets, sending bits through the wire and the locking code where you can say, I would like to do an event right at the edge here and can I have the lock and neighboring tiles race with each other to see who gets to say, can I have the lock first and the other one has to then back off and say, okay, you can have the lock. And it's possible for them to actually race. But I've got code that's in there to deal with most of it. And mostly it works. And this was the slightly depressing thing that I mentioned three weeks ago, two, three weeks ago, when I was working on the previous tile, the hand-soldered one, that it was mostly working, but I was having some kind of issue in the southeast corner. This was also having an issue in the southeast corner. It seemed like I could send packets in and out of the things through ribbon cables around to the neighbors and it would all work. But when I would try to take a lock between the southeast corner and the northwest corner, the lock wouldn't go. I mean, it would look like it's sort of wood, so this S failed to reset and so forth taken to failed, give to failed and so forth is the hallmark of an attempt to do a lock negotiation with a neighboring tile, in this case, because it's a ribbon cable doing a lock negotiation with yourself didn't work. So I had to break it down and I'd spent quite a bit of time using print K's, which is like print statements, except they're for a kernel code to track what was going on inside it and try to narrow it down. And it really started to seem like one of the signal lines, the please, there's a mother may I, where you request the lock and then there's a grant where you say you can have it. So you assert, you request if you want to go for it, if the other guy says grant, if you have it, if the other guy doesn't, then you have a fight about it and so forth. It really looked like the grant line on the southeast corner was not just going up. It was supposed to go up once when the lock was granted, but the interrupt routine that was supposed to go when the thing caught up was recording it would be triggered multiple times, like dozens of times. And in the end, it was time to pull out the oscilloscope and the oscilloscope I have is one of the software-based ones. It's called a bit scope and the oscilloscope is an incredibly powerful tool and I'm not very good at using it because I'm a software guy, I resist using it. I will do all kinds of stupid things rather than drag out the oscilloscope when in fact, that's the exact right thing to do. So here it is. This red trace is the output grant lock signal which should have gone just from zero to one and in fact, it's going crazy. Like that. So I just started poking around, triggering it, seeing what was going on, getting all kinds of crazy behavior. I gradually put more pins onto the various places so that I could look at different more signals simultaneously. This green thing going up and down here is one of the clocks that they use to exchange packet data with each other and this red line that's going up and down and up and down in a relatively uniform passion is sending packet delimiters. A packet delimiter in this protocol is a zero followed by six ones and another zero which can only occur under normal circumstances as a packet delimiter. So that's all working pretty well. The fact that this clock doesn't look very regular is a topic for another time but it's actually okay. What's not okay is this little glitch right here and I was seeing it always related to a rising edge on the data line. When this thing was going up sometimes the grant line would glitch and since the lock stuff is based on edges, interrupts, this could be part of the source of the extraneous interrupts that were giving me problems with the locking. Long story short, continue to investigate it. Eventually I notice in the upper part of the screen you can actually measure analog voltages. This bottom source where there's the eight different colors, that's digital logic and eventually I said, well let's just look at the digital logic with the analog pin and here's the, so this is the edge going down right here. This is the same edge that we're seeing up here and it doesn't look that bad except it's got little bits of noise in it but then it's like, well one volt per division means that this is one volt, that's two volts, so this signal is like 2.2 volts and that's a problem. It's supposed to be 3.3 volts and that actually led me to figure out what was going on that there was really something, I went back under the microscope and said there's got to be something wrong with the chip, the chip got cooked or whatever it was and eventually, let's see, do I have it here? Oh, I guess I don't. Oh, that's too bad. A closer look under the microscope, two of the pins on the southeast driver chip had been joined by a little blabba solder. I took the blabba solder off, that glitch went away, now the locking is stable on its own and the packet circulation is stable on its own but there are interactions between the locking and the packet signals the clocking of the data which hadn't been tested before because the lock stuff hadn't been, the software for testing the locks hadn't been developed far enough so this is a new problem that the signal lines when the locks go up and down for requesting and giving the lock it interferes with the packet bits being sent around the packets, the packets get dropped, they get detected as failed and dropped but that means higher level stuff has to take over for it and yes, we're saying best effort we're saying the upper levels have to be prepared to handle that but that doesn't mean we just get to have the lower levels be icky and stupid and not even try best effort means best effort so we gotta figure this out I've spent time reading about signal integrity issues and all this stuff I'm gonna do one more rev of the board and I've made a bunch of changes to have the lines cross each other, run in parallel less and cross each other instead and a bunch of other changes to make it I think I'm gonna send it to PCBWay and see if that can set up for the main board run after because at least they can be pretty fast so that's where we're at this is scary if we can't get the locking and the packet transfer stuff working pretty much reliably that's gonna really hurt the performance at the next levels up and again on the one hand we're just trying to draw a line in the sand but on the other hand we'd like it to be a line in the sand that we can have fun with that we can see things moving around on the screen so that's where we're at the next update will be out in a week but there'll be the live stream this coming Saturday before that if you wanna join in it'd be great fun thanks for watching


Just speaking of studs, studs and studs and studs on the show, but let's talk about Joe Burrow. They had their mini camp yesterday, and Joe Burrow stepped to the podium as he always does, sort of understated.  I'm not focused on the headband. I'm focused on his extension, because Jalen got his, Lamar got his, and now it leaves Burrow as next in line. So after a bunch of questions about, yeah, the dodgeball look and all, I mean, it's a good look. It really, we like it. And I think Marjase was talking about how they do like UFC moves together. I'm getting two thumbs up from Marissa on the look. Okay, great. I mean, he could be in our show lineup, just barely, but he could be in our show lineup for today, because there's a standard clearly that has been set by FandallTV. But he was asked about how negotiations are going. He didn't say very much, but he did say that he doesn't want things to play out in the media, which I love. And he gave some insight into what's important in here. Yeah, it's definitely, you know, whenever you have guys on the team that need to be paid, that's always on your mind. You want that to be a focal point, and so we're working to make that happen. Yeah, you gotta have good players. You can't, you see, I mean, it doesn't matter how good your quarterback is, if you don't have good players around him, you're not gonna be a very good team. Do I like that haircut? It reminds me of, you do. It is so fourth grade, it hurts me. It's Sean Hunter. It's Sean Hunter from Boy Meets World. Ooh. Can I see that again? I wasn't listening to Clip, I was watching the hair. Let me see it again. Can I hear Clip again? Do we have it, were you right? Yeah, it's definitely, you know, whenever you have guys on the team that need to be paid, that's always on your mind. You want that to be a focal point, and so we're working to make that happen. Yeah, you gotta have good players. You can't, you see, I mean, it doesn't matter how good your quarterback is, if you don't have good players around him, you're not gonna be a very good team. Okay, listen to what he said, and it remains to be seen exactly how Borough's going to factor those teammates that he's talking about into the said negotiations, whether it's by back loading the deal, if he's actually willing to sacrifice a few dollars. He just reminds me of Tom Brady. He just reminds me of how he talks. Even if he says, he didn't really say anything there, but we're like, every word we're like latching onto, and it's meaningful. And when he's talking about these teammates, these are guys who some of them have been with him for a long time, like the Jamar Chases of the world, and his other teammates like T Higgins, Logan Wilson, other really key members of the core of what makes this team this team, they're all due extension soon. So it has to be encouraging for Bengals fans to hear that Joe's at least considering other key pieces on this team and keeping things sort of in perspective as he is approaching this new deal. And speaking of keeping things in perspective, let's give some love to Joe. It is a mental health awareness month here on the show. Lots of good going on the league, and we would like, I wish we had a longer show or we need to make it more of a point to highlight it, because really a lot of NFL players, teams and owners are doing great stuff, but Burrow, and his dad, Jimmy, who I have a lot of respect for, and I've gotten to know a bit over the past couple of years, they took care of the bill for mental health treatment of 20 families in Cincinnati Children's Hospital. The foundation, his foundation, Joe Burrow Foundation, they were supposed to pay for a few, right? And they literally could not narrow it down, so they decided to take the bill and pick up the tab for everyone or something that we absolutely love to see and support. Maybe we'll have Hamilton on next, maybe, I don't know if Hamilton makes the cut, honestly, with those shirts from his mom. I don't think, Paul Rable, Chandler Parsons with that even tan. Did you hear what the word he said on this set to my face? What is happening on this program? Fresh up a trip from the Bahamas, where they all went bananas, Gronk Parsons, Rable, next.


Welcome back to our lecture series, Math 3130, Modern Geometries for Students at Southern Utah University. As usual, I'll be your professor today, Dr. Andrew Misseldine. In this lecture 21, we're going to talk about the ideas of circles. Now, if you're following along with our textbook, Roads to Geometry by Wallace and Wes, this topic is actually left until section 4.5. In the chapter among Euclidean Geometry. But it turns out, well, there are some results in that section that are specifically about Euclidean Geometry. In our lecture series, I want to introduce these notions right now. Actually, these are notions about circles in neutral geometry, or even better yet, these are notions of circles in congruence geometry. We're just going to use the notions of incidents betweenness and congruence to define and prove these properties about circles. That's going to be the topic of lecture 21 here. First and foremost, what is a circle in a congruence geometry? Remember, a congruence geometry is a geometry that satisfies the four axioms of incidents, the four axioms of betweenness, and the six axioms of congruence. Suppose we have two distinct points in a congruence geometry, call one O, call the other one R. Then we define the circle, which we'll often denote by Greek letters like gamma in this situation. We define the circle centered at the point O and with the radius O, R, to be the set of all points P in the geometry, such that O, P is congruent to O, R. So the circle is a set of points which are a locus. That is, they satisfy some equation. We want all of the points that satisfy the equation, O, P is congruent to O, R, where O and R are considered fixed points and then P is allowed to vary. So that is what we define to be the circle. The circle itself, as we often draw them like this, the circle is the elements right here on this circumference. Now the things inside the circle we can talk about, these are referred to as the interior points of the circle, for which we'll typically denote that as gamma circle there. Common notation for us here to use a little circle here. I should also mention that if we need to specify the center and the radius when we define the circle, we might write something like gamma O comma O, R, something like that. But when the center and the radius are clear from context, we'll just call the circle gamma in that situation. Therefore, gamma circle here is gonna be the interior of the circle. We're looking for all points P such that the segment O, P is less than O, R. And this is the usual meaning of the circle here. We have an O, right? We have some other point R, in which case then we have this radius, it's the segment O, R. The circle is the collection of all points so that the segment O, P is congruent to O, R. In particular, circles are always non-empty because the point R is on the circle. The center of course is not on the circle but it is in the interior of the circle, of course. The interior of the circle can be these points over here. If we wanted to put the circle and its interior together, we would refer to this as a disk, sometimes a ball is what it's called. So this would include the boundary and the interior. Exterior of a circle can be defined similarly. It's gonna be all those points so that the segment O, P is greater than the radial distance of O, R, of course. It's again, it's important to also emphasize here that the interior of a circle is not a subset of the circle because the circle is this curve right here. The stuff in the middle is not part of the circle. That's part of a disk. Important to distinguish between those vocabulary there. And so with this definition now in play here, I wanted to prove one proposition about circles to give us a flavor of how one works with circles in a congruence geometry. And then the other videos in lecture 21 will prove some other results about circles but I wanna prove one right here. So this proposition tells us that if a line intersects a circle, it happens at most at two points. And so that justifies the following type of drawing. If we have a circle, how can we have a line? Well, that line could not intersect the circle whatsoever, so to speak, they are parallel, the circle and the line. Most likely you're gonna get a line that cuts the circle into two different places but you also have the possibility of a tangent line. We'll define all of these properly on the next video here. And we also have the possibility that a tan line touches the circle at just one point. So this proposition is important to explain that there's no other possibility. You can't have a line that's like intersecting the circle in more than two locations. So something like this cannot happen with how lines and circles interact each other in a congruence geometry. So let's begin the proof then. Why does a line intersect a circle at most two points? Well, let's take a circle, gamma, and let's say that the center of the circle is O and its radius is OR. So then consider a line and we're gonna see what can happen here. So for the sake of contradiction, we're gonna suppose that the intersection between the line L and the circle, gamma, is three distinct points. And just as a curious little side note, when we hand write L, because we have to do a kind of cursive so it doesn't look like a one when we write L, but when we write gamma, right, depending on your font size, your L's and your gammas look like the same thing just upside down, that's kind of the intention I'm going for, we're using the same symbol for our generic line and generic circle just throw upside down, right? That's just a fun little thing in my perspective here. I don't know if that's why other people do it, but that's why I do it. But anyways, suppose that a circle intersects our line in three different locations, at least three, because there could be more than three, but there's at least three points of intersection. And so let's suppose we get something like that happening. So again, something weird could be happening like this. I'm not claiming there's other intersections beyond this three, but there's gonna be three points of intersection and because these three points are collinear, A, B, and C, after all, they're all on the line L, which L is illustrated right here on the screen. We can assume without the loss of generality that the point B is between A and C on this line. So we have A right here, we're gonna have C right here, and then B is between them. So something like that is what happens. And then when we introduce the, since we have the circle gamma right here, its center is O. And so each of these points, A, B, and C, are points on a circle. So they're radii, these segments, O, A, O, B, and O, C are all radii, and therefore they're all congruent to each other because they're all congruent to O, R itself. And this actually, believe it or not, forms some triangles. There is the triangle A, B, O, which is this triangle right here. And then there's also the triangle C, B, O, which is this triangle, excuse me, maybe this triangle right here. Now, these triangles we should mention, these are Asosceles triangles. Like if you look at A, O, B, like so, those two segments are congruent to each other. So by the Asosceles triangle theorem, we're gonna get that angle O, A, B is congruent to angle O, B, A. And likewise, when you look at the triangle O, C, B over here, that's also an Asosceles triangle, and therefore the angle O, B, C, which is this angle right here, O, B, C, it will be congruent to the angle O, C, B. I hope I said that right. O, B, C is congruent to O, C, B, which are those angles like so in these funky looking triangles, right? Now, we have, so we have these triangles. This is a common trick you do when you work with circles because all the radii have the same, the same, they're all congruent to each other. You can set up triangles in this situation, which are gonna be Asosceles triangles all the time. Now, since a triangle can have at most one acute, one non-acute angle in it, which means it could be a right angle or it could be an obtuse angle, okay? So be aware of that. That's what we mean by non-acute here. An obtuse angle is one that's larger than a right angle and acute angle is one less than a right angle. This was a consequence of the exterior angle theorem, which we proved previously in congruent geometry. A triangle in congruent geometry can have at most one non-acute angle. I want us to consider the two angles associated to vertex B right here. These angles are, this would be the angle OBA and the angle OBC. These angles are supplementary to each other. So if one of them was acute, like if this one was acute, that would force this one to be obtuse. And of course, on the other hand, if this one was obtuse, this would force that one to be acute clearly. So they can't both be obtuse. What you have here is one is acute, one is obtuse, or they're both right angles. That's a possibility. Now let's suppose that this angle right here was the acute one, which then would tell us this is an obtuse angle, but these two angles are actually congruent to each other. So you'd have two obtuse angles, which is a contradiction. Okay, well, let's go the other direction, right? Maybe this angle is the acute angle, which makes this one the obtuse one, but these triangles also, since they're exhaust, these have these congruent angles, this would be an obtuse angle. Oh, that's a JK there. So they neither can be acute or obtuse. So that means the only possibility is these are both right angles. So let us just put it this way. This is a right angle and this is a right angle. But again, these triangles right here would have to be a double right triangle, double right triangle. That can't happen in congruence geometry. So there's no possibility by the exterior angle theorem for this to happen. And therefore we get the contradiction that we were seeking that a line when it intersects a circle can be at most two points. Now, what we would want to follow up this theorem with is a proposition of the following form. Given three non-colonial points in our congruence geometry, we can form a unique circle that contains all three points. That's a horrible drone circle, but whatever. Something like circle determination, right? In incidence geometry, we have line determination. Two points determine a line. Well, do three points determine a circle? Well, clearly those points would have to be non-colonial. But is it possible that you could take three non-colonial points and always form a circle that holds those three points? That would be a lovely result, wouldn't it? And isn't that what we learned in geometry class? But unfortunately, such a statement of circle determination is not a theorem in congruence geometry. It's not even a theorem of neutral geometry. Like what was neutral geometry again? Neutral geometry is congruence geometry plus the continuity axioms. So you have things like the Archimedean principles, circular continuity, dedicating cuts. Well, these are all things we'll talk about in a future lecture for this series here. But even with continuity, which guarantees the existence of points that otherwise would be difficult to grab, even a neutral geometry's circle determination is not a theorem. And the issue is the following, hyperbolic geometry. In hyperbolic geometry, there do exist collections of three non-colonial points for which no circle contains those three points. Equivalent to this problem is we can't always inscribe a triangle into a circle. There do exist hyperbolic triangles, which cannot be inscribed into circles. This is something we'll explore in the future when we talk about hyperbolic geometry. But for the moment B, in other words, circle determination is independent of the neutral geometry axioms. Furthermore, we'll see later in our lecture series that circle determination is actually equivalent to the Euclidean parallel postulate in neutral geometry. So requiring that any three set of non-colonial points forms a circle is assuming the Euclidean parallel postulate, which is a very interesting thing you might not have expected. But as we're focusing just right now on congruent geometry, we do get that circle determination is not a theorem of congruent geometry. Hyperbolic geometry provides a counter example.


Hello, good afternoon, I'm Peter Sharoschi and I welcome you all at today's discussion in our stories from the front lines live video series on drug reporter. Today we will speak about the situation in a country that was hit really hard by the COVID-19 epidemic, with high rates of infections and death rates, and the tough lockdown regime. This country is Italy. I have two guests here with me today, who will explain how this epidemic affects the lives of people who use drugs and harm reduction services in that country. So let me introduce my guests. First we have Susanna Ronconi, who joined us from Rome. She works for Forum Droga, an organization promoting drug policy reform in Italy. She's also the board member of Itard, the Italian harm reduction network, and also my fellow member of the civil society forum on drugs. Hello Susanna. And my other guest is Pino de Pino, coordinator of harm reduction office in the city of Venice, and also the board member of Itard, the Italian harm reduction network. Buongiorno Pino. Buongiorno. So thank you very much for accepting our invitation. First I would like to ask you, like, how are you guys? How is your life in quarantine in Italy? Do you see the light in the end of the tunnel? I am at home arrest, and this is our fifth week, so it's a long time. But anyway, we resist. We try to be physically separated, but not separating from a social point of view. So we try to maintain our relationship, also even if in a virtual way. And I have to say that sometimes I'm working much harder than before, because of course we are trying to monitor the situation. And we are starting with some research on what is going on. So we are trying to, we are making also some campaign for the rights of the most vulnerable people, you know. So we are busy. What about you Pino? Yes, we are busy too, because most of the harm reduction services and harm reduction professionals in Italy are still working. When we go on the streets, people from all around Italy tells me that we, the street worker are as people who use drug, the only one by the streets on the streets. So this is how you're going. Can you tell us how this lockdown affects their lives? Yeah, sure. There are different situations all around Italy, because there are some cities in which the drug supply is not so easy as before, for example. And also the normal activities of people who use drug to get money are now impossible, if you think about, for example, in a touristic city like the one I live in or Rome or Florence, there are no tourists. So their economy, their income are very, very low. Okay, and we know that the quality of the truck of heroin, especially about, I'm talking especially about heroin is going down every day. Today is worse than yesterday and better than tomorrow, maybe. And that's I suppose is why the tillers are finishing their supplies. Susana, do you have a kind of overview of the whole country? So do you see like how different regions are managing this crisis? Yes, you mean from the point of view of harm reduction intervention? Yes. Yes, I only want to add something about the drug markets because we know that the prices are increasing a lot. So we have problem with quality of drugs and also with prices of drug. So the situation is critical, I think. In regard to harm reduction, you know that in Italy, we have a lot of differences between different regions. So the central north of the country is well covered also in this moment and as Pino says, the great part of the outreach intervention and routine are working now. Sometimes with different opening times and so on, but they do work. We have a lot of problems in the south of Italy because we have a good system only in Naples, but in the southern regions we have nothing at all. And I have to say that we didn't receive any clear guidelines from regions. And I think that our services work thanks to the responsibility of the workers. I have to say that. In the first two weeks of the pandemic, the first reaction was, well, let's close everything because people have no idea what was going on. And we have no guidelines, no non-information and so on. But this was the first moment. Then everything is working. Sometimes, for instance, the dropping centers are not open because of the risk of overcrowding inside. But in this case, the workers can distribute any way syringes, maloxone, so they can guarantee the most important intervention, I think. So I think in general, where harm reduction is stable, we are able to cope with this situation. And I think it's a good challenge for us because it's also a sort of self-evaluation of our system. I also hear some news that now Italian people get pissed off because of this quarantine. A lot of people now break the quarantine and they just want this ended and also that there are some social distress in some cities, that people are kind of revolting. Is that true or is it what you also experience or it's maybe exaggeration? I don't know what you mean, but in my opinion it's a little exaggeration. I live in Torino and I don't see anyone on the street, absolutely, until now. But you know, it's the fifth weeks. So I think that from now on it would be harder, I think. And then we have to say that the pandemic is not the same for everyone, you know. For instance, in my case, I have a house, I have a connection to internet, I have a lot of friends, I can read the book and study and so on. So I think that my life, okay, I can do it. But we have to think of more poor people and vulnerable people and in this case, yes, I'm afraid is too hard for them. And this is the problem. It's a classist pandemic, I think. So Pino, I suppose that because of the stop of flow of tourists, Venice is suffering a lot economically as well and probably our clients lived also from tourists, indirectly at least. So how people are feeling now, like, are they getting distressed and desperate about the situation? I think, well, people who live on the streets, I think, is organizing the time and their economy in another way. Okay, but as you say, this city, the lack of people from abroad is a very big problem for them. Someone told me that two hours asking money in Venice can, they can gain until 20 or 40 euros in two hours. So now this money is, they are missing this money, okay. And also, I think that also because the market changed. And so now, as we had before the crisis, we had a good heroin sale by people from Sub-Saharan Africa who don't live in this town. So now they cannot reach the town. There is low quality heroin, more difficult to find it. But I'm talking about heroin, but yesterday I was reading that the tobacco sellers are saying that CBD, marijuana, doubled the sales in last month. So I think there is a very big problem about getting the drug you want to get, okay. That's a problem for people who are addicts. And but what I want to say is that our system, not only the harm reduction system, but also the treatment system. And I mean the access to substitutes of the opioids is changing anyway. So for example, in cities like mine, where it was very difficult to get methadone or it will have to wait a long time. One week before the first counseling and getting methadone. Now this time is getting very, very short because you and people who ask for treatment are increasing now. Sorry, I want to stress something about OST. Because from one side, I think that we have a good system about that because you know methadone in Italy is guaranteed by the national health system is free of charge. We have 600 administration centers, so it's a well organized part of our system. But anyway, we are learning something from this crisis. One thing is what the Pino was saying, and the other is that they are increasing the number of take home methadone. So in this period, many, many people can have methadone doses for two or three weeks or even more. And this is already included in the methadone protocol, but usually doctors adopt this model in a very restrictive way. While now they are opening, you know, and in this, this is very important both for people who can self-regulate and self-administrate their lives in a more free way. And this is important also for the administration center because they avoid overcrowding and they limited the number of clients going there. So I think this is one of the more optimistic side of the crisis because we are learning something that could work better also in ordinary moments. Yeah, that's a very interesting point what you raised both of you because last time we had a discussion with people from Prague and Bratislava and they also said that maybe this crisis will be also an opportunity, you know, to change some of the outdated rules which were not effective anymore. And maybe we can change some policies for good. What do you experience about, for example, about police and law enforcement, like do they still arrest people for using drugs or do they now tolerate this or what do you see about that? At the beginning of the crisis, there were some news from cities like big cities like Rome or Milan and people who live on the streets, not only people who use drugs and live on the streets were not arrested but there is something like a fee and where there is a fee for living on the streets. What I experienced is that now this is not happening. For example, in Venice we don't have nobody is being chaired for being on the streets during the crisis. And that's also another lesson we are learning. I think for people who live on the street and now city councils and city systems don't know where to put them to let them stay in case of their ill and so on. We are also learning that in this years I think the public in Italy was very angry with the people who live on the streets. And they ask more police, more punishments and so on. And this public and political announcements took us to a situation that now for example there are cities in which there is only one Skelter for people who live on the streets to sleep in. If we for example had two or three Skelters, now we should have a place for them to stay. So this is also another lesson we are learning that public services for people who live on the streets, for people who use drugs and this is also valid for OST. It's not only a human right for people but it could also be a protection for all the community. Imagine now if a group of ten people on the streets one gets the COVID. Now in two days the ten people will get it because of the no and they or if one of them is symptomatic because they told here, where do you put him? Where does he go or she goes? So do we have to let him go to the hospital? Well no and so on. And so the lack of Skelters in cities is one of the problems we are experiencing now. Okay, go ahead Susana if you want to add something. Only that thinking of Torino, the situation in Torino, homeless people are in a very hard situation because the first response was let's close the shelters. It was the first response by the municipality and it was absolute, of course. Now they are trying to organize a more effective system but for instance we realized that one problem is not only to have not shelter enough but also that sometimes we have two big shelters.  And they think that that is interesting and the lesson learned could be let's organize a more human situation where there are not so many people and where the dimension is more familiar. And it is interesting what Pino said that this is useful for the quality of life of homeless people but it's useful also for the whole community. So you see we are learning a lot of things. I don't know if we will be able to change something after the crisis. This is a common question. But we are taking note of everything from this perspective and I think we must be able to give feedback to our municipalities about all that. I also wanted to ask you about one other vulnerable group, which is prisoners. So do you see what is the situation in prisons we saw some dramatic pictures of you know, I can say that prisoner now is the group in the worst situation in a very bad condition in Italy because also in prison of course the first answer to the crisis was to block everything. So they blocked the meeting with family parents and so on. They blocked volunteers so prisoners couldn't meet anyone inside the prison. They blocked the people who in their daily lives and so on. And they didn't give information and they didn't give any alternatives, for instance to different kind of meeting with the families, virtual meeting and so on. And of course the prisoner felt in a trap and feeling like that we had a lot of riots inside prison all over the country and we have now 60,000 of prisoners and this riot involved 15,000 of people. It was a really great number and unfortunately the outcome of this riot was 13 deaths, 13 prisoners died and we are still waiting for to know the cause of the death. We have organized a campaign that is named a campaign for truth and justice because it's not clear what happened. And now think are slowly changing, but only thanks to civil society and thanks to the ombudsman for prisoner rights. So the government make a decree telling that prisoner with minor crimes would have been released and some others will assess to alternative form of sentences and so on. But this process is very low because we think that it's necessary to release about 5,000 people to gain a more safer situation inside prison. And we know that only 4 or 500 people have been already released, you know, and we have already tanks of cases of a positive prisoner inside prison. So the idea is to have an epidemic bomb. And we are waiting for an explosion, you know, so this is, I think that is the worst situation about the pandemic now. We also hear news that it's very hard to access masks and gloves and all this protective equipment in Italy. What about you Pino like do you have access to these things and hand sanitizers and all this, all this stuff. Yeah, my colleagues, fortunately, yes. But I know that some colleagues around Italy did wait for one week before having API. And, and that that's why also as Susanna said before in the first week. The harm reduction services were stopped. No, because at the beginning, there was a debate between rights of people who use drug to access to our harm reduction services and the safety of people who work in harm reduction say services. As Susanna said that the responsibility of people engaged in this job made it possible to have API for everybody and still work now. I don't know if I answered your question but access masks and DPI in Italy is a huge problem. If you think that, for example, in Lombardia, I read a few days ago that in Lombardia, which is the region of Italy with the highest number of contagious people who work doctors and nurses who work in the hospitals didn't get the DPI as soon as possible. So that's, that's why we are buying and receiving the Italian government is buying and receiving masks, masks from abroad, from Saudi Arabia, from China and so on. It's like as we as a system, as a country, we weren't ready for such a crisis. Now we are buying everything at the last moments. In many cities now in Europe, HIV and hepatitis C testing completely stopped because there is a there is a concern that you know it's dangerous to deal with the saliva and blood samples of people. How is that in Italy? Do you do you still provide testing? I don't know. Sincerely, I don't know. Well, I'm, I'm, I don't have information about that, but what I know that in low threshold services, we use it to make a rapid test, you know, and now I think that nobody is doing that. So I think that this is one of the problems we have. Did you, did you discuss whether to test clients of harm reduction programs for Corona virus, like do you have tests maybe to test them if they have initial symptoms so you just send them to the hospital or how We have, we have not the possibility to make the test we have to to send them to the hospital. And we have not yet data about how many people who use drug is infected. I think we will need time to have this kind of data. Okay. Do you have any clients who are already infected or We had one now in our schedule when people come from for example from the shower, we take them the temperature. And now nobody has symptoms. Okay, but we cannot say they are not infected with the virus. Okay, but in Italy, the test is done to people who have symptoms or people who live with people with symptoms. So if you don't have any fever or any You don't get the test. You don't get the test done. Okay. So now we had one one clients not not so many only one in Venice. I was asking because for example in Denmark in Copenhagen they now starting a bus like a mobile service and they will test people on the street for Covid virus. So do you think that would be useful also in Italy, or you don't have any opinion about that. No, I think it would be very useful but I think it's impossible now for us. I think also because we we are very critical towards our Government, because we in general I, we are doing very few tests in our opinion, we have not an effective policy in this in this field, and it is a great debate in our country. And so I think that we have no no possibility to implement such a such a service. And I am very sorry for that, but it is not. It's not possible. So what about the local governments like city and regional level governments do you have any good cooperation with your local governments.  As, as Susanna said before in Italy, harm reduction situation is not the same in all the country and in the same region is not the same. The same in all the cities. So it depends on region and city policies before the crisis, you know, in cities where there was a good policy and harm reduction oriented policies is still go on. I think like Bologna for Italy, where some, there are a lot of they now offer the opportunity to people who live on the street to stay in the skeleton all the day long if they want just to protect them from the from the virus and protect people from the virus as well. But other cities where I think where there is a different policy is still going on and harm reduction is still hard to cooperate with other agencies. I think so. So if you could like sit down with your, I don't know minister or government for five minutes what what would be your questions what would be your demands to the to your government what is what what is what you really need from government. The first thing I think it would be to to say that the the lives of vulnerable the most vulnerable people do matter. And if they matter the the front line of the law threshold services is crucial. It's important. So the first question is, let's make a harm reduction services stable, covered from a financial point of view. And and stable all over the country, not only in some region. And this is the first, the first thing, I think, and we are working on that since many years. And I think that we will, we would make a good use of this crisis. Okay, this is my my opinion. I think that in Italy, there is a lack of multi agency approach to drug drug use phenomenon. And a lot of human issues, which are now treated like public order problems and law enforcement duty, you know, and that's why what I should ask to our government. Oh, and I asked what Susanna said, and also that we need a multi agency approach in this situation of crisis more than ever, because if I could sit with my local government or with my national government. There are a lot of things we know we people who work on the streets and all, of course, people you stroke now know about this problem and the needs of vulnerable people that should be parts of the strategy in a crisis. You know, we are now experiencing a pandemic about an influential more than an influential virus, but this is this virus is getting a lot of problems, you know, enormous use problems to our communities. And as I said before, if we took care about people of vulnerable people, we are caring about our communities, local communities. That's what I should said and we need a multi agency approach we need arm reduction to be guaranteed all in all the country, as Susanna said before in Italy, the north of Italy as the most services in Italy, but as south you go the more south you go, the less harm reduction services you find. No, for example, and also in my region, for example, Venice is the only city who still has another national services there are no harm reduction services all around the cities. No, and, and that's what we need. I think what why is it that in the south part of Italy you don't have harm reduction like is it lack of professionals there or there is no money to start programs or why is it. In general, the south of Italy is more weak with regard to the health, the public health system in general. And so it's not easy to guarantee the high level of services in general and it is also more difficult to make innovation, you know, is a sort of weak and rigid system. I think this is the problem. I want to stress another act because we are a big debate in Italy now just about the public health system, because in this in this crisis, not only in the drug field but in general, we realize that we have a strong public health system is so important. And our system is still an universalistic one. But it's. There are I think 20 we have 20 years of continuous financial cuts to the system and the stronger privatization process. So during this crisis we, we are discussing about that again, because we realize that only public health approach can cope with this kind of pandemic. And as I think in the future, we will have to cope many times, because we we haven't. I think we have understood that this kind of pandemic is not a isolated cases, but this is something that are related to many strategic fields, so climate and so on globalization and so on. So we, we have to think of our national and international system. So I think that we will put the drug issues inside a more general debate that deal with the need of support finance and innovate our public health system I think this is a political issues very very important. I'm very happy that you mentioned this. Yeah, go ahead Pino if you want to add something. And also our criminal criminal justice system I think will be another important debate to do after this crisis because Susanna remember before we have in Italy we have 60,000 people in jail. And most of them are in jail because of our drug law, you know, for the tension of marijuana or the tension of little quantities of any other drug. Yeah, our days are full are empty. We have more people, 11,000 people more than the capacity of our jail system in our jails. And so our criminal criminal justice system is another problem we have to put in the agenda after this one. If we have a lot of allies about the public health system, we should we as arm reduction networks and not only arm reduction networks or I think also about human rights network networks in Italy will will have to build a lot of alliances about this. But now we have an argument more. Thank you and I'm very happy that you mentioned this social dimensions of this crisis because we had a discussion with the correlation European harm reduction network, and we came to the same conclusions that now we have to move beyond the traditional harm reduction advocacy to, you know, address the structural causes of the current crisis and the crisis is before, and we were also discussing new ideas to prevent a bigger humanitarian crisis and one such idea is the basic income. I also wanted to ask you about that, like what, what do you think about this idea to introduce an unconditional basic income during the crisis which the Spain Spanish government I think is now considering. Is there any discussion about this in Italy or what do you what is your personal opinion about this. I agree and there is also here in Italy a campaign for a quarantine income, but in general in Italy we have to improve our welfare system from this perspective because we have a very limited income. To be honest, only for very poor people and for a small part of very poor people. So I think that a basic income is another thing, I think, and we some municipality now have introduced some support to the income of a family during the crisis. But it is an emergency measure, you know, it is better than nothing. But I think that we have to rethink of our global welfare system in this perspective and I think that we are already discussing about that but our government is not very open I think now. Okay. You know, in Italy was, if Italy was the first country hit by this pandemic in Europe and in many cities we are looking at you as kind of our future you know like what will we do in like two or three or four weeks. So now we are we can imagine that we are doing some kind of time travel so we can ask you from the future what do you recommend us who are maybe before those problems you already faced so do you have any like tips or recommendations to other people working in harm reduction in other cities in Europe. I think. Okay. Okay, I think this crisis is good lesson to make our system more flexible. For example, as Susanna said before, we are experiencing that now some scalters are changing their timetable, their hours, no, for example, here, show service is three days a week instead three days a week as before four hours per day and not two hours per day as before so this is the first lesson we have to as people as to be protected, we have to increase our offers. Some other Italian harm reduction projects are changing and completely changing their mission. I think, especially health reach for a project in party settings. Okay, there is no party, no, no, no rave, no party. They are now changing their mission and they are, for example, in Rome, they are thinking about going on the streets and do harm reduction work and to deliver methadone on on the streets or syringes programs. So other one other thing we are experiencing is that we can also use with some with some clients, we can also use online counseling tools. Okay. And so that's what I think I think that as we work on the streets, or we work in contact with the always phenomenon that is changing every month, we can be flexible as well. And something about the situation in general in Italy. And I have to say that locking down has been useful, even it's hard to support to support, but it has been useful and now after five weeks. And how our infection line is decreasing. And we are with now started to see some results. So I think it has been, I think the right choice, but I think that our government make a campaign based on the citizens' respect of the rules and not based enough on the citizens empowerment, responsibility, and so on. In a certain sense, there has been a two millimeter approach to the also to the locking down. And it's a mistake, I think, because it's harder to think that we can govern such a situation in a low and other perspective or in a repressive perspective. But this is a general, a general problem, you know, because if you don't take care of the social relationship, normally, it's difficult to, to have a good cohesion and social relationship during the crisis. So I think it's a very general discourse, I realize, but it's important. For instance, some of us are making the proposal to making of irregular migrants regular in this crisis. I think that Portugal has already done it. And we are discussing now, and it would be obvious, because if you are not included, you cannot be responsible to. And you and the government cannot ask the people who are not included to be responsible. So, of course, it's clear for us, but it's not clear, clear for our politicians. But this is another big level, sorry, of discussion in the future. I think it is also lesson learned from this crisis. We have to take care of inclusion and of social cohesion. This is important. And I think that harm reduction as a sum has a role to play in this direction too. Thank you very much. I think that was really good conclusion of our discussion today. Thank you very much for taking time and being with us today and thank you for those who are watching us online on Facebook. This was the stories from the front lines drug reporters live video session. And please join us next time. Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Our plan is that the next country we will discuss will be South Africa, where there are some also some interesting developments. And we will update you on social media. And don't forget, stay safe and stay informed. Thank you. And I wanted to thank you and press reporter foundation because to make a good information and good communication is very important in this moment. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.