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I don't know what kind of warrant system they're running in Pennsylvania, but it doesn't sound like a good one. Either the system is deliberately broken, or the testifying cops were playing fast and loose with the facts. Whatever the case is, the end result is the loss of the evidence obtained with Schrodinger's Warrant, [...]

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For quite some time now, we've pointed out how Jim Jordan has weaponized the government to suppress speech. Quite frequently, he seems to be doing this in coordination with Elon Musk. And yet, somehow, it felt like we were the only ones calling this out. So many in the media seem fine repeating the lie [...]

In February 2024, AT&T bungled a network update causing a massive outagethat it took AT&T twelve hours to fix. DownDetector lit up with 70,000 problem reports. The outage impacted an estimated 125 million wireless devices, blocked an estimated 92 million phone calls by AT&T customers, and prevented an estimated 25,000 attempts to reach 911. A [...]

Well, I'll give the Ninth Circuit this much: at least when the court is wrong, it is wrong fast. It was just a few weeks back that we discussed Molson Coors' appeal for both the rulings and damages over its trademark fight with Stone Brewing. For those not familiar with the history here, here's a [...]

Last April, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a law designed specifically to make it easier for cops to arrest people who film them. While it's generally accepted (without Supreme Court precedent... for some weird reason) by most courts that recording public employees in public while they perform their public duties is protected by the First [...]

Senator Richard Blumenthal is at it again. The long-time Connecticut Senator, who never met an internet regulation he didn't like, is eager to reintroduce his Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) - a bill that would trample all over the First Amendment in a misguided attempt to protect the children." As we've explained countless times, KOSA [...]

Having lost twice in a row, a handful of Missouri state clerks will now be using taxpayers' money to pay a former government employee who had the temerity to recommend a mask mandate during the height of the COVID pandemic. (via Short Circuit) The plaintiff, Tad Mayfield, had been a well-regarded staffer, serving as a [...]

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On Monday, Taylor Lorenz posted a telling story about how Meta has been suppressing access to LGBTQ content across its platforms, labeling it as sensitive content" or sexually explicit." Posts with LGBTQ+ hashtags including #lesbian, #bisexual, #gay, #trans, #queer, #nonbinary, #pansexial, #transwomen, #Tgirl, #Tboy, #Tgirlsarebeautiful, #bisexualpride, #lesbianpride, and dozens of others were hidden for any [...]

For decades now, U.S. wireless carriers have sold consumers unlimited data" plans that actually have all manner of sometimes hidden throttling, caps, download limits, and restrictions. And every few years a regulator comes out with a wrist slap against wireless carriers for misleading consumers, for whatever good it does. Back in 2007, for example, then [...]

Is it too much to ask for cops to be better? When other government employees get the address wrong, it may mean mail delivery delays or incorrect property tax assessments. But when cops get it wrong, people end up dead. If officers are unfamiliar with the area they'll be serving warrants in, it would make [...]

Gravy Analytics, the parent company of Venntel, is like many dodgy data brokers. The company gleans vast troves of sensitive U.S. behavior and location cellphone data, then generally sells access to that data to a long line of folks. Including the U.S. government, which has increasingly turned to buying data broker data as a quick [...]

As Michael McGrady pointed out in his recent guest post for Techdirt, nearly 41 percent of Americans subject to age verification laws targeting porn and, of course, porn consumers. An emboldened pseudo-theocratic wing of the Republican party is taking everything old and unconstitutional and making it new again, presumably in hopes of sliding it past [...]

A lot of people dunked on the amicus brief Donald Trump filed at the Supreme Court in the constitutional challenge of the law effectively banning TikTok. And there is plenty that is dunkable about it, especially in his tone of entitlement. Trump is no sincere defender of the First Amendment and its critical protections for [...]

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When the NY Times declared in September that Mark Zuckerberg is Done With Politics," it was obvious this framing was utter nonsense. It was quite clear that Zuckerberg was in the process of sucking up to Republicans after Republican leaders spent the past decade using him as a punching bag on which they could blame [...]

Now that streaming subscriber growth has slowed, we've noted repeatedly how the streaming TV sector isfalling into all of the bad habits that ultimately doomed traditional cable TV. That has involved chasing pointless growth of growth's sake" megamergers and imposing bottomless price hikes and newannoying restrictions- all while simultaneously cutting corners on product quality in [...]

Well, there are two possibilities here. Either I've been doing this for too long or all cops are, indeed, bastards. Let me explain. When this rolled through my hundreds of feeds recently... DOJ enters agreement with California police department whose officers allegedly exchanged racist messages ... I was sure I knew which California police department [...]

Surveillance of students that continues even after they've left the campus is nothing new. School-issued tech comes preloaded with spyware meant to prevent students from cheating, accessing inappropriate content, or introducing malware of their own into the school tech ecosystem. But it goes beyond that: it also keeps tabs on anything they do while using [...]

Every New Year's Eve, the Chief Justice releases his year-end report, which used to include things like what the court would like to see Congress do. However, Justice Roberts now uses it more as a way to blog post whatever is on his mind. His latest is particularly tone-deaf, which is impressive, given how John [...]

It seems unfathomable that we're even here. The First Amendment is one of our clearer constitutional provisions. Make no law," it says, abridging the freedom of speech." And yet, with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," Congress has done exactly that, effectively banning a platform helping millions of Americans speak. It tells [...]

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I know it's no surprise that the modern MAGA world is incredibly hypocritical. They speak of free speech while making every effort to suppress speech they dislike. But the latest example of this hypocrisy is glaring. Those who screamed to high heaven about debunked claims of the Biden admin censoring" social media are noticeably silent [...]

Last week a corrupt court system bought and paid for by corporations effectively made it illegal for the federal government to protect broadband consumers from widely despised regional telecom monopolies. That, as we wrote at the time, is at the heart of the death of the several decade net neutrality fight. But if you read [...]

They're going to have to change the nickname. For years, cops have referred to drug dogs as probable cause on four legs." But over the last half-decade or so, jurisprudence has been leaning the other way. One of the first rulings to knock this assumption back a bit was the Supreme Court's ruling in Rodriguez, [...]

A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) topass a new state right to repair lawdesigned to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical datato consumers and third-party independent repair shops. [...]

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wants you to believe he's on a noble mission to restore trust in media. His solution? Muzzling his own paper by blocking it from endorsing Kamala Harris in the runup to the election, a decision he defended in a self-serving op-ed claiming that trust in media is at an all-time [...]

Never let a tragedy go unexploited. That's the political rule and it applies to both sides of the partisan divide. Of course, the divide has been Oval Office top heavy for a majority of this century, so we're hearing more from one side than another in most cases. That being said, there's no limit to [...]

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When Elon Musk took over Twitter, one of his primary stated goals was to bring back free speech" to the platform. He was particularly critical of how Twitter had briefly blocked links to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. But now, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist" is doing the very [...]

Back in 2023 Mozilla issued a report indicating that automakers have some of the worst privacy and security standards in all of tech, routinely hoovering up oceans of consumer behavior and phone data then failing to adequately secure it. Senator Ron Wyden has been at the forefront of calls for Congress to shake off corruption [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous comment about the fact that 41% of Americans now live under age verification laws: Such small government" In second place, it's That One Guy with a comment about the hypocrisy of the right: You can set your watch by the consistent [...]

Five Years Ago This week at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, a new study shed light on just how racially biased facial recognition algorithms are, while we looked at how tracking college students everywhere they go on campus had become the new norm. The Minnesota appeals court struck down the state's broadly-written [...]

Bethesda, for any other faults you might find with the company, has built a reputation for itself as a gaming publisher that is not just tolerant of its modding community, but one which embraces that community. While not every attempt at this by Bethesda has been a hit, we've seen the company's embrace of its [...]

It has long been acknowledged by federal courts that firing off a one-finger salute to law enforcement officers is not only not a crime, but protected speech. That means that the appearance of the bird" cannot alone be the basis for stops or arrests. And it certainly doesn't justify force deployment, especially that of the [...]

For the past few years, I've used Cronometer as a nutrition app. It's pretty good for tracking food, exercise, and much more. I appreciate that it has very detailed nutritional data, and even when it doesn't, I'm able to upload nutritional labels with just a quick photograph on my phone. It's a nice app. So [...]

In what will sadly come as no surprise to anyone, an Arizona prosecutor has decided no cops should be punished for partnering up with a different Arizona prosecutor to portray anti-police violence protesters as gang members for the sole purpose of seeking sentencing enhancements. As millions did all over the nation, Phoenix, Arizona residents hit [...]

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The telecom industry(with the help of the recent Trump Supreme Court), has been drooling for months at the prospect that the Trump-stocked courts would soon finally deliver the killing blow to FCC net neutrality protections (read: popular FCC rules designed to prevent telecom monopolies from abusing their market power to screw over customers and competitors). [...]

Like far too many legislators, Arkansas politicians have decided it's time to codify irrational hatred. To do this, they pretended they had a sudden and urgent new obligation to protect the children" harder than they've ever been protected before against the encroachment of alternative viewpoints. Like far too many other states, the Arkansas government piggy-backed [...]

On October 27, 2024, Oklahoma City police officer Joseph Gibson violently assaulted a 71-year-old Vietnamese man while investigating [checks notes] a non-injury traffic accident." The man, Lich Vu, was definitely much smaller than the cop that assaulted him. He was very definitely much older. A discussion about who was at fault occurred, hampered by Vu's [...]

When Apple unveiled its AR/VR Vision Pro headset early last year the product was met with just an absolute ocean of tech press hype. You couldn't spend thirty seconds online without reading about how the expensive ($3,500-$4,600 depending on accessories) headset was going to revolutionize every industry in existence or change absolutely everything. Seriously: everything. [...]

There are no winners here. There are only varying levels of losses. The government sustains the most. As it should. When there needs to be an adult in the room, the government bears that responsibility, no matter how irritating the proverbial child might be. That means the most childish person will learn nothing from this [...]

Elon Musk is once again threatening to sue over speech he dislikes - this time, over factual headlines about a deadly explosion involving a Tesla Cybertruck. But not liking how a story is framed doesn't make it defamatory. For a statement to be defamatory, it must be false, damaging, and published with reckless disregard for [...]

To completely understand computer security, it's vital to step outside the fence and to think outside the box. Computer security is not just about firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, or anti-viruses. It's also about tricking people into doing whatever a hacker wishes. A secure system, network, or infrastructure is also about informed people. The All-in-One Super-Sized [...]

With the exception of ABC News being weird and just throwing cash at Trump for no apparent reason, every libel lawsuit filed by Donald Trump (or his various business holdings) has failed. This is another one for the loss column. And, despite all these losses, Trump will continue filing lawsuits whenever and wherever there's a [...]

Another day, another major privacy scandal we'll likely do nothing about. Health care giant Ascension - which owns 140 hospitals and assisted living facilities - says that a May cyberattack compromised the sensitive data of more than 5.6 million patients. According to a filing with the Maine Attorney General and a December 19th post to [...]

It's a new year, and that means new works are entering the public domain, and that means it's time for the latest installment of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1929! If you've been itching to get started on your entry, now's the time - you've got until the end of the month [...]

As is the tradition on Techdirt, my final post of the year is about optimism and how I continue to be optimistic about innovation and online community, even in the midst of whatever other nonsense may be happening around the globe. This is now my 16th such post. The trend kicked off in 2008 when [...]