Welcome back to Drinks Made Easy, because cocktails don't have to be difficult. Today we're taking a look at a great coffee cocktail, the Snowstorm Cafe, which is perfect for when it starts getting a bit cold outside, especially here in LA, which can get pretty darn frigid. To build the Snowstorm Cafe, you'll start with half an ounce of cognac, or brandy if you don't have any cognac on hand, half an ounce of liquor 43, and one ounce of frangelico. To that, you'll add about 5 ounces of strong brewed coffee, based on how strong you like your coffee. If you're more of an espresso person, you could do this in a smaller glass, and just do about 3 ounces of espresso, which is pretty strong, but use as much as you like. And then to this, we're going to add a nice layer of fresh whipping cream. Now, in a shaker tin, you're just going to add three parts heavy whipping cream to one part simple syrup. Take that with one piece of ice, basically until it is dissolved, and you will have proper whipping cream. Just make sure you don't overly shake it until the point where it gets super-duper lumpy, because you still use it, but then it's not really going to, you're going to have to really kind of just dollop it out. Then we're just going to garnish with one chocolate-covered espresso bean. And easy as that, you have the Snowstorm Cafe. This is delightful and a bit sweeter than your standard Irish coffee, with the hazelnut from the Frangelico, and the spices from the Liquor 43. If you like an Irish coffee, you're going to love this. Try it out, let us know what you think, and cheers from Drinks Made Easy.


But as we age, our immune system starts to decline. That's why when you hear infectious disease advisories, they often list those at greatest risk, include infants, the immunocompromised, and the elderly. Because the elderly are, to some extent, immunocompromised. Recently, researchers in Belfast reported an investigation into the possibility that inadequate diet may be a contributing factor to immunological aging. Does immune the AND fruit and vegetable intake can be low in the elderly? So they wondered if there might be a connection. So they rounded up 83 volunteers between 65 and 95 years of age and randomized them into the control group, following their pitiful two or fewer servings of fruits and vegetables a day diet, versus the experimental group that were told to consume at least five. They did this for a month before they were due for their pneumonia vaccine. The experimental group didn't quite hit five daily servings, but at least they did better than control group. Here's what happened when they were given pneumavacs. Here's the immune response in the control group. They were injected with pneumonia-bacteria vaccine. Their immune systems should have gone crazy making antibodies to fight off the perceived invader, and they tried their best. But this is the group that was on almost five servings of fruits and veggies every day for the prior four weeks. Influenza and pneumonia constitute the seventh leading cause of death for our elderly. It's never too late to start eating healthier.


Five things narcissists do at the end of a relationship. The narcissist will suddenly change towards the end of the relationship. They will attack and criticize you suddenly. They will turn against you. They will do things you never thought they would do, which is why I decided to create this video so that you can prepare for it. So here are five things narcissists do at the end of a relationship. One, smear campaign. The smear campaign doesn't always begin at the end of the relationship. Sometimes the narcissist will plant seeds long before the relationship ends, but they will do it in a way as though they're trying to help you to make people think that they're concerned about you. Then when the relationship is over, people will already assume the reason why because they've already planted these seeds about you and they do that because they already know the relationship is going to end. They know you're not going to tolerate their behavior forever. They know that at some point you're going to get fed up because they've seen it before where people get tired of them. So they know it's only a matter of time until you stop wanting to deal with them and when the relationship gets to that point, they will be ready for it because they've already planted the seeds. They've already made people believe certain things about you because they've got to have everyone on their side. They believe that more people means more power. So they've got to have everyone at the disposal because they have a black-white mentality where there are only winners and losers and they want to win. So they've got to have these people available for them to use so that they can play the victim and gain their sympathy by telling them that you did something to them. They will give people a reason to turn against you so that they can isolate you and make you feel like you're alone. Stealing at the end of the relationship, the narcissist will steal from you. They will take money out of your account. They will steal your possessions because it comes back to their black- white mentality where they believe that there are winners and losers and if they have all of the money, then they are winning. Three, they will blame you for everything. They will say that everything is your fault. You were the reason why it ended. You spent all the money. You didn't give them enough attention and that is why things went wrong. It's never them. They don't take accountability for anything that they do so it has to be you because they don't want to deal with the consequences of their actions. Four, love bombing. They will try to save the relationship. They will try to come back by bringing back the side of them that you want to see.  They will try to charm you again. They will try to regain their control over you. They will do the things that you wanted them to do in the beginning or they will tell you that things will be different but they're not doing it because they care about you or because they want to improve the relationship. They're just doing it because they realize that they benefit more by being with you and that's all they really care about. What is more profitable for them and if they believe that they can benefit more by being with you then they will try to stay. Five, they will become very demanding. They will demand a lot of your time and attention.   They think the world owes them a living. They believe that they are entitled to well-being and a comfortable life without having to work for it because in their minds they are the best thing since sliced bread and you're made to see it as a privilege just to be around them. Thank you for watching. If you found this video helpful please give it a thumbs up. Share your thoughts in the comment section. Hit the subscribe button to receive notifications. If you would like to support the channel you could donate at paypal.ini.ac.surviver. You can book a one-on-one with me on my website. It's NAVSA5 at the Cudder UK. Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.


I have selected an urgent question to begin business with today, and so, as a consequence, decision time will be at 5.15, later this afternoon. We move to the urgent question. Colin Smyth. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that hundreds of drivers were stranded overnight on the M74. Minister, Hunza Yousaf. First, I repeat on record my apology to any driver who was stranded last night in hours of queuing, particularly on the M74. That would have been a deeply unpleasant experience, certainly not one that I would have liked to have been in. I imagine that nobody here across this chamber would let me first put on record my apology for that. In terms of context of the wider trunk road network, it is worth pointing out that the majority of the trunk road network, of course, despite extremely challenging weather, was moving. Clearly, though, we had issues on the M74, as the member highlights, at 6 p.m., seven HDVs on the M74 skidded and came to a halt southbound, blocking all three lanes and closing the road. Over 15 gritters and two fast tracks were resourced and brought to junction nine at southbound on the M74, and deployed salt treatments and pre-treatments undertaken at that time. Lane 3 of the road was opened around 8 p.m., enabling traffic to slowly blast the blockage, traffic followed in gritters and convoys. However, of course, the weather persisted, snowfall continued to be challenging. We saw a number of HDVs continue to lose control and continue to lose traction. At 9 p.m., a further four HDVs involved in incidents at 2 a.m. in the morning on the M74. Preparations were put in place. Appropriate travel warnings were issued. 162 gritters were patrolling last night. However, localised issues, often relating, as I have said, to HDVs losing traction persisted. Looking ahead, we now have the Met Office who have confirmed an amber warning for the south and south west of Scotland for this evening. I have just come off the phone with Police Scotland, who, correspondingly, advised that it will be upgrading its travel warning from stage 3 to stage 4. That in practice means that all travel should be avoided on those parts of the trunk road that are affected by the amber warning, namely south and south west of Scotland for the duration of the amber warning. More information on that will be released shortly. I conclude by thanking drivers for their patience. I also thank Police Scotland, the emergency services, Mountain Rescue, the gritters, transport Scotland staff and others who worked tirelessly throughout the night to help us to recover the situation as best as we could. Our focus now is on the challenging weather ahead and on ensuring that we can keep Scotland moving. I thank the minister for that answer. I also echo his thanks to our emergency services, winter service workers and the volunteers of the Moffat Mountain Rescue team for their heroic efforts last evening, trying to keep the M74 open and supporting those drivers who were stranded. In December, the minister said in response to a parliamentary question that the winter service capability has never been higher. Is the minister absolutely confident that everything possible was done and all resources needed were deployed on the M74 to try to keep the motorway open or to prevent traffic access in the stretch of the road? That was blocked. A stretch that I have to say is well known for being badly affected during adverse weather. Given the amber warning that is now in place that the minister mentions, what specific lessons have been learned to ensure that we do not have a repeat of stranded drivers on the motorway this evening? I thank Colin Smith for the tone of his question and for absolutely making the point that for every weather event that we have, we must learn the lessons of that. However, I would say that what we face is extremely challenging weather that we actually have not seen in Scotland for a number of years in the sense of the widespread nature of that snow, the persistence of it and even some of the depth of that snow. Like I said in my previous answer, yes, preparations were made. 162 gritters, which you can see from our live gritter track, were deployed last night. On the amber warning and looking ahead, what I would say is that we will certainly do everything in our power to co-ordinate with our partners, Police Scotland primarily but, of course, with local authorities and others to ensure that we have the resources and strategic locations. However, we are facing, on top of the amber warning, wider yellow warnings in terms of snow and ice across the country. We are going to be tested undoubtedly to our limit. That is why I believe that Police Scotland has taken the decision that it has to raise its travel advice warning from a stage 3 to a stage 4. We will also be appealing to drivers to heed the warning, which is to avoid all travel on those parts of the trunk road network that is affected by the amber warning. We will also be asking drivers in other parts of the country that are travelling to check the traffic Scotland website, plan their journey ahead and, importantly, drive to the conditions. The minister will know that the adverse weather, of course, also impacts on roads maintained by our local authorities. They are often used as alternatives to motorways when they are closed. This week, council after council from the north of Scotland to the south have reported that they have already overspent their winter maintenance budgets for this year. Can the minister tell us what assessment has been made by the Scottish Government of the effect of cuts to councils on the level of winter maintenance budgets? Does the minister accept that those cuts will impact on the extent to which our councils can keep Scotland moving and the public safe on our roads and pavements during the current adverse weather? Can I say to the member that, again, we have to look at that in the context of each winter that passes by. In some winters, local authorities might have underspent their winter budget, because they might have had a milder winter. Clearly, this one is a challenging winter. Therefore, it has been overspent. What I have said this morning in answer to questions that have been asked by the media on this specific question is that my door is clearly open. In fact, we are proactively contacting COSLA to speak to those local authorities that have particularly faced the effects of a challenging winter thus far. I will continue dialogue with them to see where we can assist to give some reassurance to the member. Let me say that we have plenty of salt on stock and in order. We have more salt in stock now than we used in the entire last winter. There are resources there that can be deployed and shared, whether that is through mutual aid or other mechanisms. I will not go into discussions on the financial settlement for local authorities for the 2018-19 budget. I am sure that that will come up in debate later this afternoon. However, when it comes to the conversation with local authorities, we will work closely with them. They know that my door is open and that we will be proactively contacting COSLA. I noted this morning that a Dumfries truck driver who was caught up in the snow drift on the M74 called BBC Radio Scotland to praise the emergency services and the snowplows that he saw and said that they were working flat out to address the situation and help motorists. Can the Scottish Government set out what discussions with officials and stakeholders took place once the Met Office issued an amber warning for snow and ice across Scotland and what preparations were put in place to best address those weather warnings? That is an important point. Clearly, at the end of last week, we knew from the Met Office that we were embedded in a control centre at Queensfury that we would be getting severely challenging weather this week. Therefore, of course, we had the multi-agency response team set up, as well as Scottish Government resilience calls that took place, which brings in all stakeholders involved in tackling the extremely challenging weather, including local authorities. The member is absolutely right to highlight the efforts of those involved in winter resilience. The gritters are a good example. They work on Christmas day or New Year's day, if needed. They were absolutely flat out. 162 out last night, working all hours of the day, I received messages from Transport Scotland officials at 1 in the morning, 4 in the morning, 6 in the morning, working overnight in the early hours of the morning. Clearly, lessons should be learned. None of us want to see the scenes that we saw last night repeated elsewhere. Therefore, I believe that Police Scotland has taken the step that they have to upgrade their travel advice warning. I put on record my thanks to local emergency services and the mountain rescue team. Given that local police had advised against all but essential travel, can the minister say if any consideration was given to putting an advance closure or HGV restrictions in place on the M74 as conditions deteriorated yesterday? Of course, all options would have been considered. The difficulty with road closures—for example, the AMBA warning that we are facing this evening—we are talking about a number of trunk roads that could be affected by the M74, the M77 and the M75. To close those entire trunk roads, the police have told me this afternoon that they would require huge amounts of resource. Of course, all that they would end up doing, in some respects, is diverting that traffic on to local roads, which could increase police resource. To answer the question directly, of course, all options would have absolutely been considered. However, I go back to my response to Colin Smyth, which was that, of course, every weather event that we have—we should learn the lessons of that—would be folly for me to say that we should not learn lessons. Of course, we should learn lessons from that very unpleasant experience that people would have had on the M74 last night. However, we have to strike a balance here. I am not saying that road closures will not happen. The police have said that that is always an option. They will look at tonight that there might be very localised road closures. However, they are very aware that, if they do that, they may well shift the pressure on to local roads, which may want to be avoided. However, it remains an option. However, the clear advice from Police Scotland, which we are releasing more information on, is that this has now been upgraded to stage 4 warning, which means that all travel should be avoided on those areas of the trunk road network that are affected by the AMBA warning, and indeed for the duration of the AMBA warning. Mike Rumbles Aberdeenshire Council has spent its winter maintenance budget and has also said that it will spend all of its winter reserve funds. Does the minister not see that, in these conditions, it would be helpful if he could speak to his colleague the finance minister to see if funds could be made available in the coming budget that we are about to debate in this Parliament to assist our councils that are in need that have spent their winter maintenance funds when they keep our traffic and people moving? My understanding is, from speaking to my officials, that we have not necessarily had a proactive approach from any local authority in terms of the winter budgets. However, as I was saying in my earlier answer, some winters, of course, will underspend some of the lower spend. I completely understand whether local authorities may well have been stretched. This winter, it is for them, of course, to decide how to use the budgets, but my door will be open to conversation. I have instructed already officials to proactively contact COSLA to have those discussions. Of course, there are mechanisms in place for emergency situations. The member will be aware of the bellwine scheme and so on and so forth that had been used previously for flooding. However, it will have that conversation with local authorities. As I say, I will keep a very open mind to that. There is plenty of salt on stock, so resources can be shared if any local authority is feeling like it is needing more salt on stock and does not have the financial resource to procure that. I apologise to those members who could not get in if you have any urgent constituency issues. I am sure that you could raise them tomorrow if there are opportunities.


Alrighty, so we have a construction update out of Great Adventure, Six Flags Great Adventure for Jersey Devil coming in 2020. So this is a coaster that's kind of moved along in construction rapidly, a lot more rapidly than I was expecting. So a lot of the footers or footings are done for Jersey Devil already. They still have a lot more to go, but for a Six Flags coaster, this is going pretty well. This is going actually a lot better than I was even expecting. So maybe they'll have an early summer opening compared to West Coast Racers, which looks like it's gonna have a mid-December opening. But nonetheless, so the footings for the transfer track, the turnaround after the mid-course brake run, the dive loop, airtime hill, the drop out of the mid-course brake run, and those footers or footings are completely done, and they're working on digging for lift hill footers, the drop, final brake run, and the 180 degree stall, and the first major turnaround. So those footings are being dug out currently, and the ones I listed before are actually poured and complete. There is no sign of track being made, shipped, transferred, held anywhere in the area, but nonetheless, I expect track to be being made by RMC, and it's probably either being held off-site or it hasn't shipped yet, and enthusiasts just haven't been able to spot it quite yet because with footings, kind of like, if I were to take a guess on when footings could be done, I would say sometime January, mid-January, all the footings to the coaster could be done, and that's like absolute latest with how they're working. The footings could be completely done by the beginning of January, to be honest, but nonetheless, it's looking awesome. I recognize a lot of stuff from the Yukon Striker construction updates so I can tell where footings are gonna go, where electrical is going, and all that stuff. So this is truly exciting for all you great adventure fans. Right there, there's a lot of rebar cages for more cages for the concrete for the footings, but nonetheless, not too much else is going on, no signs of theming or extra elements or buildings being built in the area yet, but again, this is really good news for Six Flags Construction Projects because Six Flags does have the reputation of having construction projects a little bit delayed or starting a lot later, and this is, yes, it started later than what Cedar Fair would typically start, but it is moving along very nicely for a Six Flags Park, and also if you want pretty rapid or overuse of rapid, if you want pretty constant construction updates, go follow Six Flags Great Adventure on Instagram. They do a lot of updates and they've been keeping everyone really up to date on Jersey Devil, I have to commend them on that. It's been truly awesome, and I'm sure Inside Great Adventure, Eastern, who's on our team, will have some pretty exciting stuff coming up as well, so that's truly exciting, so we look forward to that, and hopefully you guys enjoyed this construction update.  Thanks so much for watching, guys. Don't forget to hit that like button, subscribe if you haven't, and share this video for others to enjoy. Have a good one, guys, bye.


I'd like now to introduce our first keynote speaker, John Edwards, and John was appointed as a Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand in February 2014 after a more than 20-year career practising law. John has degrees in law and also public policy from Victoria University of Wellington and has advised and represented a wide range of clients from the public and private sector. In addition to a practice specialty in the law of information and privacy law, he held warrants as a district inspector for mental health and as a district inspector for intellectual disability services and has provided legal services to the Kingdom of Tonga. In October 2014, John was elected as the chair of the Executive Committee of the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. Thanks, Alex. Thanks, Gihan. Kia ora tatu. Namihi kia koutou e tene wa. I want to acknowledge the tangata whenua of this place as I welcome our international guests as well as the many representatives of privacy in civil society, in academia and in business from New Zealand. I'm not actually talking about security and privacy. Well, it will come up, of course, but in this environment I thought with so many different jurisdictions and cultural and legal traditions represented it might be useful to question some of the assumptions about the topic of privacy and how it is perceived in different countries. When we come here together representing many different countries, languages, cultural and legal traditions to talk about privacy, how can we be sure that we share a common understanding of the concept? Are we talking about the same thing? Or do we each have a slightly different concept in mind when we use the term? I have to admit that sometimes when I'm in an international forum I wonder if there aren't quite a range of different understandings. If you look at legal writing, I think we can agree that the most general definition is freedom from interference or intrusion or as articulated by Warren and Brandeis the right to be let alone. But privacy means different things to different people, to different cultures, to different communities. At the same time, we live in an increasingly connected global world in which it is often said information or data knows no borders. And information originating from an apparently simple domestic transaction might pass through three or more countries. So there's a tension and arriving at a common definition or meaning of the concept of privacy is one of the challenges privacy regulators and the international privacy community face. And the reason a Hollywood film Arrival, the actor Amy Adams, who I'm reliably informed is no relation to the Minister of Justice of the same name who has more than a passing interest in privacy, plays a linguist who is recruited by the US government to communicate with newly arrived extraterrestrial visitors. The main conflict in the film comes from humans trying to learn the alien's language. The aliens, for example, talk about a weapon. Debate rages in the film about whether they mean a weapon or a tool. Both terms are quite similar, but the slight differences in meaning bring dramatically different consequences. Tool, as a word, builds trust and the word weapon instigates fear and mistrust. When we debate the term privacy we are also trying to find common ground between different cultures definition of ostensibly the same thing. In a world with human languages numbering between six and seven thousand the word privacy can mean different things. These meanings are often nuanced and shaped by culture, society and history. In our early human history privacy was a lesser priority in conditions of subsistence existence. Living in small rural communities most humans had little concept of privacy until fairly recently. Sex, breastfeeding, domestic quarrels, toileting and bathing were usually performed in front of other members of the small communities that were the cradle of mankind. The anthropologist Jared Diamond observed that because hunter gatherer children sleep with their parents either in the same bed or in the same hut there is no privacy. Children see their parents having sex. In one tribal society parents took no special precautions to prevent their children from watching them having sex.  So there's a basic sense of privacy at least. In the 1951 book, Patents of Sexual Behaviour the American researchers Cleland Ford and Frank Beech studied the sexual behaviour of 191 cultures and found that the preference for privacy was instinctive. In nine of 12 societies where homes have separate bedrooms people preferred to have sex indoors. In those cultures without homes with separate rooms sex is more often preferred outdoors. Often the desire for privacy was overridden by the need to survive. The anthropologist Jean Briggs found herself being ostracised by her native North American Utku host family after daring to explore the wilderness alone for a day. She made the observation how forlorn I would be in the wilderness if they forsook me far, far better to suffer loss of privacy. The concept of individual privacy is usually associated with Western culture and as you can see it was a concept foreign to some cultures until recent times. There's also the subtle distinction between privacy and secrecy. Ontologically the word privacy has been described as an example of an untranslatable lexeme with many languages. There is simply no specific word for it. In Russian the word for solitude, secrecy and private life combine to capture the essence of what we in this room might mean by the term privacy. Other languages adopt privacy as a lone word. Privasi in Bahasa Indonesia or la privacy in Italian. In Mandarin Chinese privacy means secrecy, solitude and seclusion all or each of these things. Meanwhile in Islamic cultures the notion of privacy has no conceptual autonomy in legal literature rather it has to do with a cluster of attitudes and norms. A famous line in the Quran says do not enter houses other than your own unless you have asked permission and greeted the inhabitants. The Quran also includes a general injunction against prying and spying on people. In New Zealand Western concepts of privacy especially legal concepts are centred on the individual. Western intellectual ideas have for many centuries developed along the lines of the rights of the individual. However many indigenous peoples including New Zealand Maori have a different focus that is more likely to emphasise the good of the collective, the rights of the collective as to analogy to the European aspects of European concepts of privacy with its several overlapping shades of meaning including sacred, prohibited or unclean. New Zealand Maori legal academic Kylie Quince described Tapu as a status that exists when a person, place or thing is placed under restriction or dedicated for a particular purpose. She says in a legal sense this relates to the inviolability of the human person to be free from physical assault and interference. A related concept is that of Mana which Kylie Quince describes as my reputation and my self-esteem both how others think of me and how I think of myself. Mana and Tapu combine in many settings to produce ideas and reactions which closely parallel European responses to privacy invasions. In a Law Commission review of this Countries Privacy Act the reviewers observed that in the states drive to collect health information if Maori are confident that their information will be used in a way that is empowering or mana enhancing they will be more willing to agree to the collection and use of that information. But if Maori believe that information will be used in a way that is derogatory to Maori and which diminishes Mana they will be reluctant to share information. So we have similar concepts which in the west might be assigned to the individual being claimed as a right accorded to a collective whether that be whanau hapu or a broader ethnic group. Robert C. Post of the Yale Law School wrote in 2001 that privacy is a value so complex so entangled in competing and contradictory dimensions so engorged with various and distinct meanings that I sometimes despair whether it can be usefully addressed at all. People are different and our ideas of privacy are shaped by culture, religion, language, history and architecture. Through the ages there has been no single unifying concept of privacy but that is changing. These different perspectives that existed have slowed the establishment of a set of internationally accepted principles on privacy. The constitutions of many countries do not explicitly mention privacy in an individual's right to privacy. In Indonesia for example the constitution does not explicitly mention privacy however article 28G protects the right to dignity and to feel secure. Concepts that are often related to the right to privacy in national constitutions of other countries. In Kenya the constitution specifically protects the right to privacy. It states every person has the right to privacy which includes the right not to have their person, home or property searched, their position seized information relating to their family or private affairs are necessarily required or revealed or the privacy of their communications infringed. But according to Privacy International civil society groups in Kenya report it is difficult to work on privacy and surveillance in that country as the issue is not widely deemed important by society in general. This is in part because the increased number of security threats has enabled a strong national security discourse to overshadow concerns about individuals' privacy. Privacy International notes that privacy is often subsumed by other human rights issues. So societal values on privacy change in a temporal basis depending on the domestic circumstances and the needs of the population and individuals. I suggest a universal acceptance of a singular definition of privacy is not going to happen because it would be impossible to get agreement at an instrumental level. How do we get the United States, China, the Republic of Korea and Ghana, for example, to agree upon a universal set of privacy expectations? More importantly, should we even try? Is it important that we all agree? We disagree or have different practices in so many other areas of our cultural or legal practice. Why should we, in privacy, do we need a global standard? Is it possible to abstract what are described as privacy values to a level that receives acceptance across the entire global community? Well, there I think we may have some promise. One of the abstractions is data protection, which I see as a subset of a wider group of privacy values but which is a term often used interchangeably with privacy which can add to the confusion. For example, we see an increasing diversity of countries in the Asia-Pacific region in Africa adopting data protection laws, but the underlying values and cultural traditions on which these laws are based may represent quite divergent approaches to the concept of privacy in those communities from that which informs the similar-looking laws in countries in Western Europe or North America, which themselves begin from quite different points when it comes to recording the respective rights and obligations on data processes or generators and data subjects. So if we in Asia-Pacific or in Africa think that elsewhere there is an agreed set of privacy values, then we are misinformed because at every international forum I've attended in the last two years we've seen a raging debate across the Atlantic between the European approach and the American approach to privacy which begins from different precepts and different values and primacies of different rights such as freedom of expression being a fundamental human right versus the right to privacy being described in Europe as a fundamental and inalienable human right. There's a view among some technologists as well as some governments that accommodating privacy concerns and safeguards is a curb on technological innovation or on the aspiration of building more efficient cities and safer societies. Reflecting that transatlantic discourse that I mentioned the sort of the insult that's cast from the United States across to Europe is Google could never have happened in Germany and variations on that theme. But if we look away from that relationship which dominates much of the international discourse on privacy and perhaps look a bit closer to home China's government is exploring plans for a social credit system which utilizes big data to hold citizens to account for their financial decisions. To do so the government is enlisting some of the country's best known companies. According to the Wall Street Journal Alibaba's Alipay payment system is one of eight companies based on the requirements around China's social credit scoring system. Alipay will compile scores based on a user's smartphone brand and what they buy online before offering users perks for high scores. The information helps the government monitor and reward citizens with higher credit scores. The scores will not only be based on a user's lending and spending numbers but also on what the money is spent on. If friends have a poor lending reputation this reflects badly on the person just as prolonged playing of video games one report explained. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and therefore scores well. China's government says it wants to roll out the social credit score programme nationwide by 2020 and if that sounds like science fiction to you I suggest that you subscribe to Netflix and check out Black Mirror and you'll see that fiction has only narrowly preceded this reality. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom the British financial regulator FCA has warned that insurance companies could use available data to identify customers who shop around and those who do not and could differentiate pricing accordingly. The warning comes as the availability of more personal information on social media and devices such as telematics boxes that monitor driving habits mean the insurance industry is moving towards quotes on observed behaviour of individuals rather than grouped assessments of risk factors. One telematics provider Octo launched an app this year that shared customers' driving data with insurers so they could bid for custom. It claimed that the safest drivers would get the lowest premiums. Imagine that model rolled out to social insurance or health insurance or accident insurance if you have the misfortune to be in an industry that has low safety standards you could find yourself perversely being rewarded with the highest possible premiums. Also this year the British insurer Admiral announced that it planned to use Facebook's status updates and likes to help establish which customers were safe drivers and therefore entitled to a discount. Privacy advocates called the proposal intrusive and it was blocked by Facebook hours before it was due to launch not because any breach of legal norms but because of the creep factor the yuck factor the cultural norms and expectations. I think that the security debate is in the background of all of this so I do need to address it Alex. Due to Edward Snowden one of the hottest privacy debates of recent times has been about the relationship between security and intelligence agencies and the community how those agencies derive their legitimacy and how that legitimacy can be harmed or enhanced. So how does society engage in the conversation with government and big business when it lacks the information necessary to make a fully informed choice about the balances and trade-offs? Can accountability mechanisms keep pace with change and not get left behind and rendered obsolete? I want to take a slightly different tack from one you might expect the Privacy Commissioner to take in discussing the Snowden revelations. A lot of people both within and outside the countries directly implicated in the material Snowden leaked simply didn't care or they expected the governments to be doing exactly what was reported. In some countries there is a very high level of comfort for agents of the state having access to whatever information they need to keep people safe and to stop terrorists. We saw outrage and shock from some NGOs and we saw righteous indignation from some countries which within a few months of the NSA-GCHQ interception activities being revealed were exposed themselves as being involved in exactly the same kind of activity. So we do see I won't say double, I would say multiplicities of standards in this area. The fact that those revelations from Snowden coincided with an explosion in the data ecosystem has led to a complex and interrelated series of responses that do not necessarily as a whole demonstrate a consistency of values and imperatives. In April 2015 the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to appoint a special rapporteur on the right to privacy. The resolution directed the special rapporteur amongst other responsibilities to report on alleged violations of the right to privacy, including in connection with the challenges arising from new technologies. Those developments are reactive responses to perceived abuses. At the same time governments are trying to capture for their populations the benefits of the digital economy. A consensus seems to have developed that increasing participation in the digital economy is a good thing. That there are enormous quantifiable benefits to be had from investing in online infrastructure to deliver a range of social and economic services. A precondition to that engagement to the realisation of the benefits of technology is that the users must have trust in the system and that without that trust that personal information will be kept and transmitted safely and securely those benefits will not be realised. When privacy is a prerequisite for governments and businesses benefiting from technology the value proposition for agreeing on some common and consistent approaches to privacy or data protection call it what you will, becomes evident. We saw this at the OECD ministerial in June in Cancun. It was entitled The Digital Economy, Innovation, Growth and Social Prosperity. Paragraph 5 of the ministerial declaration recorded ministers commitment to promote digital security risk management and the protection of privacy at the highest level of leadership to strengthen trust and develop to this effect collaborative strategies that recognise these issues as critical for economic and social prosperity. Support implementation of coherent digital security and privacy risk management practices with particular attention to the freedom of expression and the needs of small and medium enterprises and individuals foster research and innovation and promote a general policy of accountability and transparency. So there's a whole lot packed into that statement about the preconditions for the benefits of digital economies being enjoyed by the broadest possible population. If we abstract privacy to a level of trust in personal information management practices then it doesn't really matter whether one country regards privacy as a fundamental human right and another finds that concept so vague as to be unmanageable. It avoids a primacy of right for example setting freedom of expression against individual privacy. If you ask the question what is required to maintain trust in our management of personal information you can move past prescriptive rules and absolutism and address the underlying question of how competing needs from personal data can be accommodated within a single framework. Returning to the security and intelligence element for example few if any people would deny the legitimacy of the state to act to protect its population most of us would regard it as a duty one of the most fundamental duties of the state to its people. We entrust agencies with powers in order to allow them to do so we expect that trust to be respected. The fact that in certain prescribed circumstances an agency of the state will need to access and use personal information other than for the purpose it was provided should surprise no one. If we can agree on a set of principles governing how that access should be granted and have some transparency to ensure that those principles are respected we should be able to meet these perhaps on these apparently competing needs. There is as yet no internationally agreed standard for the conduct of intelligence and security activities. In my view efforts should be made to develop and articulate some if that sounds like naive folly then let me remind you that even the conduct of war is subject to legally enforceable agreements which has always struck me as the biggest absurdity of the rule of law that you can kill somebody with this weapon but not with that one. The need for this conversation was starkly demonstrated to me when I was at an international a recent international intelligence oversight forum in book arrest the first of its sort I was struck by the lack of agreement on the meanings of basic terms which is a prerequisite for having any kind of conversation about acceptable conduct. The same activity for example a requirement of telecommunications companies to retain content and or metadata for a certain period was described by some observers as mass surveillance a term strenuously rejected by many others the same observers might regard mass surveillance a warehousing of communications data accessible by search terms which had to be individually approved by an overseeing judge the architects and administrators of that scheme argued that it was entirely consistent with international norms requiring lawful and proportionate access to private communications but until we have an international conversation about the parameters of that legitimate activity the elements required to maintain trust such as independent oversight transparency reporting a sound basis in the rule of law we are destined to continue the cycle of criticising the activities of some countries while maintaining a blind spot in respect of our own Governments have three broad options on how they choose to regulate privacy and data protection and many shades in between the first is an environment where governments and organisations can do anything with personal information there are no safeguards and no rules except for what can be negotiated as a private contract the individual is basically powerless to influence or even to know the information which organisations hold about them and government has few if any privacy statues that protect personal information this is the most permissive of models at the other end of the spectrum is a quite prescriptive model under which clear legal authority is required to make use of personal information beyond that which has been expressly consented by the data subject so at the polls we have do whatever you want unless it is expressly restricted at the other end only act in accordance with the expressly authorising legal framework in the middle there is a mixed model of market forces and government intervention this regulatory approach introduces friction into the process by which organisations collect store and disclose personal information individuals also have access to information about them and have measures of redress if their personal information is being used unlawfully this regulatory model puts the onus on an affected individual to enforce their rights and creates litigation risk for an agency that decides they can do whatever it wants with personal data this is the approach we have adopted in New Zealand a law based on the OECD privacy principles that are flexible enough to foster economic growth and technological innovation while also giving individuals the right to exert some level of control over their personal information in May this year the World Bank issued a world development report called digital dividends that highlighted, among other things the need for consistent and reliable data protection regulation as a key factor in reducing inefficiencies and promoting consumer confidence in the online world the World Bank, as you might expect is no cheerleader for privacy or data protection and didn't express a preference about what the correct model might be however it did note that inconsistent approaches add friction and inefficiency into international trade and could be an impediment to realising and releasing what they call the digital dividend it would be overly simplistic and I think plain wrong to think that the actions of security and intelligence agencies are the drivers of the international conversation on data privacy we are seeing an international trend in consumer demand for privacy protective products whether in hardware like the iPhone or in software such as encrypted such as encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp or temporary media like Snapchat the international technology and market research company Foresters declared that 2015 would be the year privacy and security became competitive differentiators we saw that happen and saw the trend continue in 2016 we have seen Apple, Facebook and Microsoft in the courts to stand up for their customers' rights to privacy we have seen Google and Facebook and many others subject to the high profile regulatory attention of European data protection regulators so rather than framing privacy regulation as a drag perhaps we can reframe it as a response to consumer demand it is another trick of language to return to the theme to establish false dichotomies we have all heard the false argument that you can have privacy or security but not both similarly it is in the interests of some to argue that strong privacy regulation is incompatible with innovation in my view there is no trade off to be made between innovation enterprise and privacy and security practices when designed into new technologies become a selling point and improve the whole network ensure that access to network systems content communications and metadata by agents of the state is undertaken only in accordance with lawful authority and only when that access is necessary and proportionate I do believe that privacy is a fundamental human right but like many other rights it is not absolute just as I cannot exercise my right to freedom of expression in this room to shout fire nor can I exercise my right to privacy to prevent the detection of a trade in child pornography access to communications by law enforcement, security or intelligence agencies should be according to consistent legal standards regardless of the jurisdiction nor does privacy only mean secrecy notice and consent or a number of other limited and culturally specific manifestations of individual autonomy new concepts are emerging within the family of privacy related rights which don't fit with a limited linguistic construction of the term think of the concept of data portability the right to receive your data in a machine readable format so you can take it to another provider of the service that originally collected it from you that's not about stopping the flow of data it's about reinforcing and affirming the individuals against the organisation which is profiting from that data I was quite surprised at a conference last year to meet the general council for LinkedIn so quite a senior executive who said when she met me oh yes I saw your tweet and the tweet she was referring to was one which I can't remember the details but after the acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft was announced I tweeted 26 billion is amount was how much the purchase price was divided by 335 million active daily users equals your data is worth $633 and of course she said it was wildly inaccurate but but the data is the business model and increasingly we have to try and correct information and power asymmetry so back to data portability just as number portability has proved crucial in promoting competition in the mobile phone sector so is data portability an important concept in promoting consumers rights and facilitating the ease of access to and exit from telecommunications online and other services data portability is part of a European general data protection regulation due to come into effect in 2018 and will need to be provided for beyond Europe it's a concept that we're looking at closely here I'll draw to a close but despite the difficulties in reaching a universal understanding about the nature of privacy a common understanding of the elements of privacy is emerging in New Zealand and in many other countries our laws reflect this need to be able to protect and control information about ourselves and our need to withdraw physically or mentally from society or to exercise some autonomy over our information or at least be informed about it privacy as defined by this common understanding is important to ensure that we feel secure if we are unable to control who knows information about us we will feel insecure at least in part because the boundaries of our relationships become uncertain we started with language what we need is a deep discussion about what we mean when we talk internationally about concepts like privacy and data protection about trust we need to understand not only what we have in common in these understandings but also to make a greater effort to question our assumptions about how other jurisdictions and cultures approach these questions and values and if we see difference to make a genuine effort to understand that difference rather than to assert a cultural and legal superiority this is the ideal forum for that conversation and it is my great pleasure to welcome you and to open up that discussion I get Alex to thank you we have about five minutes I don't know if you're prepared to take questions or not it's not normal after a keynote to have questions but if you're happy to people have a couple of quick questions for John feel free to I suspect rigorous cross examination from such an informed and deep thinking audience yes one of the I think you're exactly right from the point you made I completely agree with and one of the frustrating things that I've been thinking about is the law's sort of tendency to over-alive certain concepts to the exclusion of lots of other ones and the one that I'm thinking about right now is the notion of control which you mentioned at the close of your speech I wonder if you've thought about ways in which we can improve the notion of control because it seems like a lot of what we have now with a lot of our data protection regimes is we over-invest it that we say control is sort of everything and that's the way that we enable people to sort of set privacy preferences for themselves but we ask so much of them I wonder if you've thought about a way to sort of balance that and I particularly like your notion of trust as also a sort of way to think about making privacy issues it's a really good question because what we've seen is some crypto control or pseudo control you know the European concept of notice and consent is folly and you know the consent and notice as a prerequisite for entering into a commercial transaction simply means that somebody is forced to click a button saying I consent I have read this and we all know it simply doesn't happen so that is a false sense of control what I think I need to do as a regulator and I'm increasingly seeing that I need to engage on a multi-stakeholder level with industry, with NGOs with academia I'm just a small office of funded $5 million a year most of which is taken up in overheads a little ability to influence the whole of the economy but you know if we can together explore the value proposition of privacy by design for example as an organisation like Apple has realised you know that they are building these things in to ensure that controllers is real and effective and easily accessible by individuals data portability is one small example of that but having more granular kind of and easily accessible controls in privacy policies for example asking people to take the time to do you realise that this location service is on all the time whether you use the app or not really make that decision you know I see Uber recently changed terms and conditions of its app to to make a binary option that the location controls date on all the time there's not quite a lot of pressure coming on them and they have responded in the past to pressures around privacy to say no you should make it give us an option to only have the app on while we are using it so I do think that consumer demand some is regulated driven and despite some of the shortcomings of the US approach I do think that the fair information practice approach Alex mentioned fair trading act here there's scope there for enforcing some of these things to say listen you've got a 60 page terms and conditions which you're saying authorises you to do whatever you want now strictly as a matter of law that may comply with the privacy act we haven't looked at it but is that a fair information practice is it a misleading practice so I think there's lots of scope to lead by good example and to have regulation and to build consumer demand for better levels of control very long winded answer I'm sorry what we have time for one more question comment comment I saw last year season 3 episode 1 as well there's the citation for it and the thing I thought about when I saw that episode that you mentioned was the question are people or citizens giving away privacy faster than we can pull it back and what do you think about New Zealand as a solution for reaching out to your citizens in relation to privacy education are people giving away privacy faster than we can get it back well I think we have to as much as possible provide people with a means to pull it back you know you offer your consent to a service without necessarily knowing how the environment is going to change in the future I don't accept the assertion that many in the tech world make that you know once it's out there it's out there for good and you can't ever get it back and we all know what the strides and defect is and so on but in fact we've seen assertions to the contrary we've seen Europe say you can have a right to be forgotten and we can't erase history but we can break a link and we provide an instrumental way of exactly doing as you say of pulling back some of that privacy I do think people you know we all want to enjoy the benefits of new technology and sometimes we don't think too deeply about the consequences of that but that doesn't stop us from recognizing that and and taking steps to restore that privacy I entered into this without fully understanding so I reserve my right to back out your question on education is an important one we do have an obligation to educate people but I really I really resile from a tendency to to tell people that they shouldn't go on social media or they shouldn't do this it's not for me to say increase your social score in the episode that you're talking about don't do that it's dangerous people are going to do it but we should just make sure that they have good information and if they've made a mistake that there should be ways of backing out of that that they should be able to exit that service and delete their account and leave no trace I think that's really important or if they want to take it to a different service to be able to do that


Okay, good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Senate Education. It's Friday April 16th at 1 9 p.m We are going to start our work today by hearing from the State Board of Education or on the State Board of Education and from the Agency of Education senators will recall that we asked Secretary French and Mr. Carroll to have a conversation. There have been some requests around some language changes that the State Board is requesting and we thought good for the Agency and the State Board to have a conversation and then come back to us today with their agreements to see if we might move some language forward this year. We would likely attach any possible language changes to what is also likely to go back to the House in their H-101 which would also be the work that we worked on yesterday diversifying the State Board as well as a few other things that I'm considering sending back to them. We'll then hear the appropriations request from the State Colleges and that really will largely complete our work for the day. I do want to recognize and thank everybody for your work on S-114 yesterday afternoon. I think we're in a good place with regard to the Senate's position. The House is aware of the Senate's position and the bill is in their hands if you will and we will see what they end up sending back and as is always the case we have other options, other vehicles, other things that we can do to hopefully get to a good place. With that, Secretary of French, Mr. Carroll, thanks for joining us today. If you don't mind, I think we'll start with Mr. Carroll. If you want to reframe for us what you came in to talk to us about early on and we became sidetracked with other work around some of the requests for the State Board and then we'd like to hear from you, Secretary of French, on where you're at at this point. So floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I'm John Carroll, Chair of the State Board. Secretary of French and I did indeed have a good conversation at your direction and request and reached an easy consensus on some fundamental language that addresses what some of us believe is a long-standing need to clarify the limits of the State Board's authority. You've heard from me before about this and I know some of you share this concern that in the past language in statute had been able to be used as a justification for the State Board frankly exceeding its authorities and presuming to take upon itself almost a kind of legislative authority and it was a simple matter of some pieces of language that had come to be back in 2012 back when there was such a kind of a tectonic shift in the relationship between the State Board and the Agency of Education and so in some ways this is simply corrective language that is really fundamental to clarifying and frankly limiting the authority of the State Board to make it very very very clear that any rulemaking by the State Board must be within the bounds of legislative intent and language. You would think that would be self-evident but the language had been had sort of crept in that obscured that clarity. The language that Secretary French and I have concurred on is taken from the legislation the bill drafted by Senate Education last year which was a much more comprehensive piece of legislation when it was 58 pages and it had several very ambitious goals all of which I think the Secretary and I still support in principle largely goals to clarify the roles of the Board to shift Board administrative duties from the Board to the Agency where they more appropriately belong and to allocate responsibility for rulemaking. Those latter parts are still in discussion but there's clear consensus between the Agency and the Board that this original core language limiting the authority of the State Board to rulemaking only that complies with or is within the ambit of legislation by the General Assembly. That's what is before you. You mentioned Senator Campion that it may go by way of S-101 and of course there had been talk about it being made part of H-122 the Boards and Commissions Bill but frankly we are agnostic about how what vehicle is employed for adopting these changes and I'm just delighted that Secretary French and I really see eye to eye on these changes. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Carroll. I believe but I may be wrong things are moving I believe H-122 is indeed in the House still I don't think they've sent that to us yet and what they have sent to us though is H-101 their literacy bill which I plan to do a strike all of which was the plan all along since the House incorporated some of their H-101 into S-114 and we plan on sending a few things back to them if you will this being one of them so appreciate the two of you getting to a spot this year and I suspect that there will be further conversations going forward so that some additional work might be addressed next January but in the meantime it looks like we have some a direction for Secretary French if you would. Yeah good afternoon Dan French Secretary of Education I don't have much more to add to chair Carroll's remarks other than to say I think you know it was fairly easy for us to come together on this you know drawing that line around what is foundational or fundamental I think is the word John used and I would agree there's still you know quite a bit of work to do but to have this foundational or fundamental language established would be useful to direct that that work and it does sort of get at some of the tensions that for my view remain unresolved as a result of Act 98 2012 so again happy to provide that language hopefully you find it useful to your work but it was fairly easy for us to come together on this great we'll likely have Mr. Demeray sort of take us through your language next but in the meantime any questions for Mr. Carroll or Secretary French centerline please I'm looking at the memo that came from Mr. Carroll and Secretary French and is that is that the proposal that we're okay yep yep all right yeah it looks pretty I'm not using that word it doesn't have as much complexity as it did earlier yes praise the lord other questions uh Secretary French and Mr. Carroll anybody else that you think we should hear from on this this seems like an agreement between that again the agency and the state board anybody else it comes to mind that might have conflict or concern Secretary French I don't I don't think so I think again this this fundamental sort of logic I think was always perhaps intended and that was more emphatically stated so I don't I don't think there's much here for anyone to really to disagree with or or see a way to embellish and I welcome centerline's observation of getting to simplicity on any any complex issue and I think we've tried to bring it to that place where this at least foundational piece is well established and that again will serve us well I think to do the the more complex work that's still in front of us right Mr. Demeray yes hello how are you how are you thanks uh Jim Day as you know sent uh some language I'm wondering if you might just take us through that a little bit um in the memo and just raise any concerns or or just walk us through exactly what it does sure yep so um the records are Jim Demeray let's console I'm looking at a memo from um Chair Carroll to you to to your committee um the April 16th of this year um it's proposed new revision to uh talk 16 section 164 which deals with the state board powers and duties um and what this does is um um well read through it says the same word shall there's a strike out which is the certain language is evaluate education policy proposals including timely evaluation of policies presented by the governor and the secretary that's it you can take it out so it says same word shall engage local school board members and the broader education community um and then the stroke language um this that says and establish an advanced education policy of the state of Vermont so getting away from policy uh really here is the thing that the goal so it reads down the board shall engage local school board members and the broader education community and consistent with the provisions of this tile its own rules and rules adopted by the secretary established and regularly update a long-term strategic vision for the delivery of educational services in Vermont advice the general assembly the governor and the secretary of education on high priority educational policies and issues as they arise and act in accordance with less than mandates including the adoption of rules and excuse personal assignments so I mean the language to say getting out of the policy area getting into more strategic vision areas and interface with the public um and then it goes on to revise some of the powers and duties so number four which reads currently renew a comma on agency budget prepared by the secretary for the governor that's being struck and then so the reason seven which deals with room making now we read adopt rules to carry out the powers and duties of the board as directed by the general assembly within the limits of list of intent um so those changes and from a new standpoint I see no issue with them and shimmery is is each 122 is that in the house right now is that there a bill that they're working on or is that I'm not following that bill um I can try finding the stats of it for you that's right I see it at the top of the testimony secretary French may know where that's uh where that lies at this point which part Mr. Chair you said AOE testimony H 122 the role of the state board yeah that's uh I think the chair carol's point that's how uh when we were tasked to sort of come together on this last week that was the vehicle and the trajectory that we were responding to uh last year's bill yeah well I'm not sure about that S 166 was last year's bill um but we were um and I agree wholeheartedly with chair carol we're agnostic as to the vehicle uh for this um we were just responding to a request last week and it was 122 that prompted us to come all come together on this last week great so S 122 um is the government operations bill um right it was they support these convictions and it has been passed by the house that's right so this is indeed language that uh I appreciate the the tickler it it is something that is in government operations right now senate government operations I don't believe she has voted it out but she may have so we can either attach it to the H 122 through government operations in the senate or we can we have our vehicle ourselves so but either way it looks like we're we're in good shape any other questions for our witnesses uh senator lions please just a quick question on number five is repealed is what is number five what was it what did it used to be that has to be repealed for a while okay that's what I was wondering okay so that a new repeal great okay


This study aimed to evaluate possible causal associations between gut microbiota and psoriasis using two-sample Mendelian randomization, MR, with published large-scale GWAS summary data sets. The results showed that Bacteroidates, Prevotella 9, Bacteroidia, Bacteroidales, Ruminococcusiacea UCG002, Pasterella CE, Blascia, Methanobrevibacter, and Eubacterium Physicotina group are nominal risk or protective factors for psoriasis and orthopathic psoriasis PSA. After false discovery rate correction, E. Physicotina group remains a risk factor for psoriasis. These findings offer promising therapeutic targets for psoriasis clinical management. This article was authored by Chen Yangzong, GNU, Manune Mao, and others.