Weekly Writers Round-Up: Life-Saving Deregulation, Criminal Justice Reform, and Privacy through Blockchain

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Learn more about how the Writing Fellows Program can help boost your writing career!

Removing regulatory barriers has helped hospitals save lives during the pandemic by Charlie Katebi (Spring 2017) in the Washington Examiner
As the coronavirus began to spread throughout the country, hospitals have been repeatedly overwhelmed by waves of infected patients who need immediate access to medical care. In response, governors and legislators took groundbreaking steps to waive government barriers that prevent hospitals from increasing the number of beds and adding additional services to care for these patients.

Now, there’s new evidence that shows these decisive actions saved lives…

Why support for criminal justice reform isn’t the same as being anti-police by Brad Polumbo (Summer 2018) in USA Today
Anti-police sentiment is on the rise in America. Calls to “defund the police” now grace the pages of the New York Times and are increasingly taken seriously in the media. At the local level, cities such as Seattle are cutting their police departments’ funding and firing hundreds of officers en masse. One can’t scroll through social media for long without coming across the hashtag #ACAB — “All Cops Are Bastards” — plastered across left-wing profiles and pages.

A growing faction on the left is making its disdain for law enforcement clear. But while many Americans may fall into a reflexively pro-police stance in the face of this hostility, they should still support reasonable criminal justice reform proposals…

Blockchain, Self-Sovereign Identity, And The Future Of Data Privacy by Sean Stein Smith (Summer 2020) in Forbes
Data privacy and portability are critically important, and blockchain has an integral role to play in the development of new ways to manage and share personal information.

Credentials and other identifying information play a role in virtually every interaction that individuals have with each other and various institutions. Drivers licenses, professional certifications, tax and property records, health information, and innumerable other representations of digital identity form the backbone of the modern economy. This information is, in turn, verified, monitored, and secured by trusted third party intermediaries that may either be governmental in nature, or associated with the private sector…