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In many ways, Zoom is an incredible success story. A relative unknown before the pandemic, the company's userbase exploded from 10 million pre-pandemic to 300 million users worldwide as of last April. One problem: like so many modern tech companies, its security and privacy practices weren't up to snuff. Researchers found that the company's "end-to-end encryption" didn't actually exist. The company also came under fire for features that let employers track employees' attention levels, and for sharing data with Facebook that wasn't revealed in the company's privacy policies.While the company has taken great strides to improve most of these problems, the company received a bit of a wrist slap by the FTC this week for misleading marketing and "a series of deceptive and unfair practices that undermined the security of its users." A settlement (pdf) and related announcement make it clear that the company repeatedly misled consumers with its marketing, particularly on the issue of end-to-end encryption:

A few weeks ago we had a story about the RIAA getting GitHub to remove YouTube-dl using a bizarre form of copyright takedown. The RIAA claimed that the tool violated rules against circumventing DRM. Over at Freedom of the Press Foundation, Parker Higgins has highlighted how often this tool is used legitimately for journalism purposes, which is important. Under the Betamax standard, tools with substantial non-infringing uses should not run afoul of copyright law. Higgins' writeup is reposted here with permission.The popular free software project “YouTube-dl” was removed from GitHub following a legal notice from the Recording Industry Association of America claiming it violates U.S. copyright law. According to the RIAA, the tool's “clear purpose” includes reproducing and distributing “music videos and sound recordings... without authorization.”In fact, YouTube-dl is a powerful general purpose media tool that allows users to make local copies of media from a very broad range of sites. That versatility has secured it a place in the toolkits of many reporters, newsroom developers, and archivists. For now, the code remains available to download through YouTube-dl's own site, but the disruption of its development hub and the RIAA saber-rattling jeopardizes both the future of the software and the myriad journalistic workflows that depend on it.Numerous reporters told Freedom of the Press Foundation that they rely on YouTube-dl when reporting on extremist or controversial content. &Oslashyvind Bye Skille, a journalist who has used YouTube-dl at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and as a fact checker with Faktisk.no, said, “I have also used it to secure a good quality copy of video content from YouTube, Twitter, etc., in case the content gets taken down when we start reporting on it.” Skille pointed to a specific instance of videos connected to the terrorist murder of a Norwegian woman in Morocco. “Downloading the content does not necessarily mean we will re-publish it, but it is often important to secure it for documentation and further internal investigations.”Justin Ling, a freelance investigative reporter who often covers security and extremism for outlets including Foreign Policy and VICE News, described the scenario of reporting on the rise of conspiracy theories as the relevant posts face removal and bans. YouTube “has been a crucial hub for QAnon organizing and propaganda: I've often used YouTube-dl to store those videos for my own benefit. Good thing, too, as YouTube often, without warning, mass-removes that sort of content, which can be ruinous for those of us using those YouTube accounts to trace the spread of these conspiracies.”In other cases, local copies are necessary to conduct more rigorous analysis than is possible online, and journalists turn to YouTube-dl for the highest quality copy of the video available. John Bolger, a software developer and systems administrator who does freelance and data journalism, recounted the experience of reporting an award-winning investigation as the News Editor of the college paper the Hunter Envoy in 2012. In that story, the Envoy used video evidence to contradict official reports denying a police presence at an on-campus Occupy Wall Street protest.“In order to reach my conclusions about the NYPD’s involvement... I had to watch this video hundreds of times—in slow motion, zoomed in, and looping over critical moments—in order to analyze the video I had to watch and manipulate it in ways that are just not possible” using the web interface. YouTube-dl is one effective method for downloading the video at the maximum possible resolution.Jake, a member of the Chicago-based transparency group Lucy Parsons Labs, uses YouTube-dl to save copies of recorded incidents involving police use of force or abusive behavior. Once copied, the videos can be stored in an archive or modified before publication, such as by blurring the faces of bystanders or victims. “We have sometimes been able to take a closer look at individual frames after downloading with YouTube-dl to identify officers when they are not wearing their badges intentionally or obfuscating them with things to avoid accountability.”One misinformation researcher told Freedom of the Press Foundation about using YouTube-dl to create a baseline for machine learning models developed to do automated real-time fact-checking. “While our production systems are designed to be used on live video streams, it's not feasible to test on live video. YouTube-dl allows us to greatly increase the speed of our research development and allow us to be able to actually test our software on a day-to-day basis, not just when politicians happen to have a speech.”Similarly, a number of reporters described using YouTube-dl for nuts-and-bolts workflows such as transcribing videos they’re covering. Jeremy Gray, a data scientist with The Globe and Mail, described a Slack tool he provides to journalists to allow them to automatically transcribe their own interviews and, until Friday, to transcribe YouTube videos from a URL. “It used YouTube-dl, and now that part is broken.” Another journalist, who works at a “small-ish public media newsroom,” described a common situation where a reporter needs “a recording of a public meeting for a story but is on deadline and doesn’t want the hassle of recording the parts they want it in real time or wants the full file for something like AI transcription.”That same journalist described how YouTube-dl helps address the challenge of incorporating user-generated content on-air. In the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, their newsroom began expansive continuous coverage and sought to include photos and videos that locals had recorded. “We are scrupulous about making sure we get permission (and the person granting it actually owns the copyright), but especially right after an earthquake asking people to send the video to us specifically can be a much bigger ask than just allowing us to use it (if they even have a recording, which they probably don’t for a livestream), so often after getting permission I’d just download it straight from social media to transcode for TV.”That use case is common. Reporters frequently need high-fidelity copies of video or audio tracks for publication or reporting. Ling, the freelance security reporter, said he also uses YouTube-dl to “get the best audio quality” when downloading copies of press conferences or news events “to grab snippets of audio for use in podcasts or radio work.”Finally, numerous reporters described using YouTube-dl to download copies of their own works. Freedom of the Press Foundation has previously worked to help writers preserve portfolio copies of their articles, and to help full news archives stay online when the outlet itself is under threat. YouTube-dl plays an important role in that ecosystem as well.GitHub has not publicly commented on its removal of one of its most popular repositories. Clearly, YouTube-dl in particular and the ability to download and manipulate online videos in general are an important part of the work of journalism and contemporary media literacy. Given the important role that YouTube-dl plays in public interest reporting and archiving, the RIAA’s efforts to have the tool removed represent an extraordinary overreach with the possibility for dramatic unforeseen consequences. We urge RIAA to reconsider its threat, and GitHub to reinstate the account in full.

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A few months back we highlighted the insane lengths the WHO was going to in an effort to silence Taiwan, despite that country's extraordinarily successful efforts to combat COVID-19. Yes, yes, everyone understands the geopolitical mess in that the Chinese government refuses to recognize that Taiwan is an independent country (which everyone who lives in reality knows) and that various organizations and governments have to pretend otherwise to keep the Chinese government happy.But come on. People are dying. Denying the independent existence of Taiwan to continue playing pretend is silly beyond all belief.And yet here we are. The WHO has apparently decided to play by China's rules and refuses to acknowledge Taiwan. And now they've taken it up a notch. Journalist William Yang noticed that when he tried to post any comment on a certain WHO post that included the word "Taiwan" the comment failed.

We've repeatedly made it pretty clear that President Trump's effort to ban TikTok is little more than a performative, xenophobic, idiotic mess. For one, the effort appears more focused on trying to get Trump-allied Oracle a new hosting deal than any serious concern about consumer privacy and security. Two, banning a teen dancing and lip syncing app does jack shit in terms of thwarting China or protecting U.S. consumer privacy, since the U.S. telecom, app, and adtech markets are largely an unaccountable privacy mess making it trivial to obtain this kind of data elsewhere.Further highlighting the performative nature of the proposed ban, TikTok this week effectively stated that Trumpland appears to have forgotten about the proposed ban entirely. TikTok filed a petition this week in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by the Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), pointing out that the deadline for ByteDance to sell off its US assets over national security concerns came and went this week with no action from Trumpland or word on any extension.Apparently the whole TikTok thing fell off the radar as the administration focuses on pretending it didn't lose the election. Whoops:

When cops can't do the brutalization themselves, they send in man's best friend. Best friend to The Man, that is. K-9 "officers" aren't just for illegally extending traffic stops. They're also capable of maiming people for the offense of not being respectful/subdued enough for an officer's liking.A recent investigative report by The Marshall Project shows cops are more than willing to use police dogs to inflict pain on arrestees, even when there's nothing about the situation that demands such a violent response. Just being a suspected criminal is enough to trigger dog handlers, who appear to feel any amount of damage to another human being is justified.

There are a great many interesting arguments we tend to have over both the purpose of copyright law and how effectively its current application aligns with that purpose. Still, we are on fairly solid legal footing when we state that the main thrust of copyright was supposed to be to drive more and better content to the public. Much of the disagreement we tend to have with naysayers revolves around whether ever expanding rights coupled with protectionist attitudes truly results in more and better content for the public. We, to a large extent, say the current copyright bargain is horribly one-sided against the public interest. Detractors say, essentially, "nuh-uh!".But if one were to distill the problems with the current state of copyright to their most basic forms, you would get No One Lives Forever. The classic PC shooter/spy game was released way back in 2000, times of antiquity in the PC gaming space. It was a critically acclaimed hit, mixing Deus Ex style shooter missions, spycraft, and an aesthetic style built on 1960s classic spy films. And, as RockPaperShotgun reminds us, No One Lives Forever celebrated its 20th birthday this November.If you remember the game fondly, or perhaps if you never played it and are curious as to why there's so much love for the game, you might be thinking about going and getting a copy for yourself to play. Well, too bad. You can't.

Summary:Many social media sites include fact checkers in order to either block or at least highlight information that is determined to be false or misleading. However, in some ways, that alone can create a content moderation challenge.Alan Kyle, a privacy and policy analyst, noticed this in late 2019 when he came across a meme picture on Instagram from a meme account called “memealpyro” showing what appeared to be a great white shark leaping majestically out of the ocean. When he spotted the image, it had been blurred, with a notice that it had been deemed to be “false information” after being “reviewed by independent fact checkers.” When he clicked through to unblur the image, next to the image there was a small line of text saying “women are funny.” And beneath that the fact checking flag: “See why fact checkers say this is false.”The implication of someone coming across this image with this fact check is that the fact check is on the statement, leading to the ridiculous/misogynistic conclusion that women are not funny and that an independent fact checking organization had to flag a meme image suggesting otherwise.As Kyle discusses, however, this seemed to be an attempt to rely on fact checkers checking one part of the content, in order to create the misogynistic meme. Others had been using the same image -- which was computer generated and not an actual photo -- and claiming that it was National Geographic’s “Picture of the Year.” This belief was so widespread that National Geographic had to debunk the claim (though it did so by releasing other, quite real, images of sharks to appease those looking for cool shark images).The issue, then, was that fact checkers had been trained to debunk the use of the photo, on the assumption it was being posted with the false claim that it was National Geographic’s “Photo of the Year,” and Instagram’s system didn’t seem to expect that other, different claims might be appended to the same image. When Kyle clicked through to see the explanation, it was only about the “Picture of the Year” claim (which was not made on this image), and (obviously) not on the statement about women.Kyle’s hypothesis is that Instagram’s algorithms were trained to flag the picture as false, and then possibly send the flagged image to a human reviewer -- who may have just missed that the text associated with this image was unrelated to the text for the fact check.Decisions to be made by Instagram:

Recently, Techdirt began a new monetization experiment with Coil. It's a system for making payments on the web, but it's not just another micropayment service layered on top of existing technology — it's part of a broader effort to create an open standard for web monetization based on the Interledger network protocol. This week, we're joined by Coil founder and Interledger co-creator Stefan Thomas to explain how an open protocol for payments could change business models on the web.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a reliable broadband connection is a health and safety necessity. Families need the internet to connect to remote work, virtual classrooms, election information and telehealth care while maintaining social distance.But roughly 60 percent of low-income parents say their students will experience digital obstacles when attending online school this fall — including 40 percent who say they will have to seek out public WiFi because they don’t have a reliable internet connection at home. And students aren’t the only ones who need internet access to learn, work and thrive at home — at all times, but especially now.More than half of all low-income internet users say they are worried about paying their internet and cellphone bills during this crisis. And we know that even before the pandemic, the digital divide disproportionately impacted poorer families and people of color due to high prices and systemic racism (in sectors like credit, banking and housing) that depresses internet adoption too. These are the same communities bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 health and economic crises in all aspects of life.Yet FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his industry-lobbyist friends say U.S.broadband networks are responding well to the pressures of the pandemic, all thanks to Pai’s ideology and radically deregulatory agenda. To support this counter-intuitive notion that everything’s going great, they point to the FCC’s tremendously unpopular decision to toss away its authority over broadband service, scrapping broadband’s common-carrier status under Title II of the Communications Act and all the legal tools and protections that law provides.Their twisted logic suggests that the Obama-era FCC’s decision to properly classify broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II somehow burdened internet providers, leading to stifled broadband deployment and less robust infrastructure. They claim that since Pai got rid of Title II, U.S. internet providers have been motivated to invest more heavily, and consequently have been better able to withstand the stress of increased traffic as COVID-19 has driven more of our daily lives online. And they claim that U.S. networks have fared far better than have European networks, which Pai and friends describe as more heavily regulated.The only trouble with these claims is that they’re plainly false, in every respect.First, there’s scant evidence to suggest that U.S. networks responded materially better than others to the pressures of increased usage at home during the pandemic. A report by Cisco-owned ThousandEyes found that broadband networks across the North American, European and Asian Pacific regions all did fairly well with increased traffic loads, and that North America actually experienced one of the highest spikes in broadband outages as lockdowns and stay-at-home orders swept the region in March.Independent researchers in the United States saw much the same result: a mixed bag at best. Speeds ticked up in some cases, based on tests run by internet users themselves. But more counties and states saw slower median speeds by the end of March, with everyone staying at home, than they had seen at the end of February before the nation started to shut down.On the other hand, even the research touted by the USTelecom lobby suggests that speeds in the United States and the European Union dipped early on in the pandemic, and then recovered on both sides of the Atlantic as carriers added more capacity.But cherry-picking data and blowing their conclusion out of proportion is just one of the many sins committed by Chairman Pai and his industry backers. The bigger sin is when they outright get the performance data and the causes for that performance all wrong, as they do with this FCC’s preposterous claim that the agency’s regulatory choices are the primary drivers of broadband-network investment and performance. That is, Pai and company don’t just blur and misstate the numbers; they take false credit for anything they see as a positive trend and ignore any bad news altogether.As our research at Free Press has shown time and time again, broadband investment and deployment have nothing to do with the fight over Title II. Specifically, there is no evidence to suggest that Title II depressed investment — or that repealing it boosted investment.Let’s look at the facts.When fighting strong open internet rules as a commissioner in 2015, and then repealing them when he became Chairman after Trump won, Pai has always claimed that Title II stifles broadband investment. Yet aggregate capital expenditures actually increased during the two-year period when strong Net Neutrality rules and Title II authority were in place. Since Pai’s Title II repeal, aggregate investment has subsequently declined.Aggregate investment is a bad metric, because it oversimplifies important details about expenditures made by individual firms. However, since Chairman Pai still insists on using incorrect calculations of this metric, it’s worthwhile to set the record straight — and to hold him to the same test he’s tried to use for his predecessors.Plus, we see the same patterns of increased investment under Title II, and decreased investment after its repeal, when we look at the stories of individual firms. In fact, approximately 92 percent of the fiber deployments made since 2017 — for which Chairman Pai is so eager to take credit — were actually planned and announced during the Title II era. The same is overwhelmingly true for high-speed cable deployments made during Pai’s tenure.The reality, as internet providers have repeatedly told their investors, is that other factors (like demand, competition and tax treatment) have a far greater impact on companies’ broadband investments than broadband’s regulatory classification as a Title I or a Title II service has.So Chairman Pai is often taking credit for imaginary deployment gains, or else for expected improvements that he only imagines he caused.If we look past Pai’s happy talk and his lies about broadband-investment impacts, we can see how the loss of Title II authority has actually harmed internet users during the COVID-19 pandemic. If the Trump FCC hadn’t gone ahead with its ill-advised repeal, the Commission would have had many more tools to get and keep people connected, both during and after the crisis.Without the tools needed to mandate continuous, just and reasonable service during an unprecedented economic crisis, the centerpiece of the FCC’s response was its voluntary “Keeping Americans Connected” pledge, which called on internet providers to temporarily suspend their data caps, open Wi-Fi hotspots and stop service disconnections for people who couldn’t pay their bills due to the pandemic.While this pledge was certainly a positive move, it was also toothless, unenforceable and — in the end — temporary. After only two months, Chairman Pai decided that even this inconsistently applied, spotty and voluntary pledge was too burdensome for internet providers.With Title II, we could have faced the pandemic head on by outright prohibiting disconnections instead of meekly asking ISPs not to cut people off. And the FCC could have strengthened and modernized its Lifeline program, built on a strong legal foundation. That program offers low-income families a modest subsidy to make basic communications services more affordable. By scrapping Title II, this FCC jeopardized its legal authority to extend that subsidy to cover broadband services in the long run, and in the short term largely sat on its hands rather than exploring ways to make the program more useful to people who are disconnected or running out of data.The D.C. Circuit court also highlighted this authority pitfall in its remand of portions of Chairman Pai’s Title II repeal order — but just this month, the FCC announced it’s planning to stick to its guns. Pai’s latest proposal said that even if a court decided the agency could not use Lifeline to cover broadband without Title II authority, the FCC’s Republican majority would be fine with that. They’d rather kill Lifeline for broadband at a time when record numbers of people are out of work and struggling to afford their internet bills.In a pandemic, internet connectivity is a life-and-death issue, and it’s one this administration has failed to address. Chairman Pai’s Title II repeal didn’t set the industry up for a strong COVID-19 network response: It just left marginalized people high and dry during a historic crisis without protections from exorbitant broadband prices and corporate abuses.It’s high time we got the facts straight about Title II and started using all the tools at our disposal to bridge this unconscionable divide.Dana Floberg is the policy manager for digital-rights group Free Press.

You've heard of Mark and Patricia McCloskey by now. They are the St. Louis couple who waved guns at various protesters who entered their gated street in the process of marching to the nearby mayor's home, demanding the mayor's resignation. The McCloskeys seem to have quite the reputation as not the greatest of neighbors, and seem to have very strong opinions about their property.The pictures and videos of the couple waving guns around dangerously at protestors got lots of attention, and they were indicted last month -- though Missouri's governor has indicated that he would pardon the couple if convicted. The McCloskeys have leaned into their newfound national fame, and even spoke at the Republican National Convention this past summer.In late September, the couple was confronted by more protestors as they left a printshop. As they went to leave, Mark McCloskey handed one of the protestors what they were apparently picking up at the shop: Christmas cards with one of the famous photos of themselves and pointing their guns at protestors, captioned as "Patty & Mark McCloskey v. The Mob."

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The Ring doorbell/camera has become a fixture of American life, thanks in part to Ring's partnership with law enforcement agencies. In exchange for steering people towards Ring's snitch app, the company has been giving deeply discounted doorbell cameras to police, who then hand them out to homeowners with the implied assumption homeowners will return the favor by handing footage over to cops any time they ask.There are millions of cameras out there and Ring-enabled portals for law enforcement officers to request footage. If warrants seem to be too much trouble, Ring lets police know they can always approach the company with a subpoena to access recordings stored in Ring's cloud.Some enterprising city legislators are narrowing the gap between cops and homeowners' cameras. A trial program is underway in Mississippi that would give police direct access to cameras, as Edward Ongweso Jr. reports for Vice. (h/t FourthAmendment.com]

Remember the Slingbox? It was a piece of hardware by Dish subsidiary Sling Media that let users beam TV content from your home cable box to anywhere else. Sling was public enemy number one among entrenched cable and broadcast industry gatekeepers, because its products (*gasp*) not only made life easier on consumers, but at one point integrated ad-skipping technology. Back in 2013 the broadcast and cable industry was so pissed at Sling, it managed to get a best-of-show CES award retracted by CNET and CBS simply because the industry didn't like the disruptive nature of the company's technologies. Ah, memories.This week, Sling Media announced that all Slingboxes will effectively become useless paperweights in a few years. In a company announcement, it says the technology will no longer work at all as of November 9, 2022:

The EU's new ePrivacy regulation is a strange beast. It's important, designed to complement the EU's GDPR. Where the GDPR is concerned with personal data "at rest" -- how it is stored and processed -- the ePrivacy Regulation can be thought of as dealing with personal data in motion. Despite that importance, it is largely unknown, except to people working in this area. That low profile is particularly strange given the fierce fighting that is taking place over what exactly it should allow or forbid. Businesses naturally want as much freedom as possible to use personal data as they wish, while privacy activists want the new regulation to strengthen the protection already provided by the GDPR.A new draft version of the ePrivacy regulation has appeared from the Presidency of the EU Council, currently held by Germany. It is a nearly illegible mess of deletions and additions, but it contains some welcome improvements from the previous version (pdf), which was released in March 2020. One relates to the protection of the "end-users' terminal equipment" -- a legalistic way of saying the device used by the user. The DataGuidance site summarizes what's new here as follows:

Cuties, the stupid non-controversy against Netflix that simply will not go away. The film, which won awards at international film festivals, centers on a pre-teen and is a coming of age story about a young lady growing up in both a strictly conservative upbringing combined with living in the hyper-sexualized Western culture. While the whole story is about this juxtaposition, Netflix rather stupidly promoted the film using images that focused on the latter. The result was chaos, with large swaths of Puritan-Twitter screaming about boycotting Netflix entirely and one pandering prosecutor in Texas bringing an indictment against Netflix for promotion of lewd visual material depicting a child.With everyone very quickly lighting themselves on fire over an award winning film, Netflix sat back and calmly explained what the film was about and why it had... just kidding, Netflix is now out here issuing DMCA takedowns for those tweeting critiques of its decision to distribute the film.

The federal government is finally coming around to body cameras. While law enforcement agencies around the nation continue to buy body cameras for their officers, federal agencies have been less receptive to these tools of incremental accountability and transparency.First, let's address body cameras. They're not a panacea. They don't turn bad cops into good cops. They're far more useful to prosecutors then they are to criminal defendants or plaintiffs in civil rights lawsuits. They tend to "malfunction" with alarming regularity during confrontations with members of the public. And they can be manipulated to act as corroboration for falsified police reports.That being said, they do offer one thing we haven't seen since the advent of dashcams: another version of events normally only memorialized by exonerative statements and questionable report narratives.Five years ago, the DOJ was throwing federal money at body camera programs. But only for local law enforcement agencies. The feds wanted none of it. A mandate issued by the DOJ said its agencies wouldn't partner with cop shops using the tech, even if the cameras were purchased with federal money. According to the DOJ, it was "looking into the issue," but strongly felt the presence of body cameras would "expose police methods." It said this with a straight face despite "police methods" remaining largely unchanged since the invention of the door ram.Five years later -- and while under the now-temporary thumb of cop cheerleader Bill Barr -- the DOJ has finally decided to join the present (already in progress).

Portland, Oregon recently passed a ban on facial recognition tech. Unlike bans passed elsewhere in the country, this one wasn't fucking around. The ban covered private companies as well as local government agencies. We've yet to see whether or not the courts will allow Portland to tell local businesses how to run their business, but the new ban has posed a novel problem not seen elsewhere. Residents trying to flip the script on law enforcement have discovered the new ban might impede their efforts. Kashmir Hill has the details on the unlikeliest outcome of blanket facial recognition bans.When the city debated the ban, it asked residents for input. One resident had a very unique problem with the proposal.

The government demands a lot of data from its citizens. In exchange for the privilege of operating a car, the government wants to know a lot about you. It then takes this data and locks it up tight, ensuring only the agency demanding the info has access to it.Oh, wait. It does exactly the opposite of that. It shares it with tons of other government agencies that might find that information useful. Then it sells this data to whoever it wants, profiting off information citizens are obligated to give to the government.Late last year, Karl Bode covered the state of California's routine abuse of driver and vehicle data. The state's DMV raked in $50 million selling this data to data brokers like LexisNexis and a host of other private entities, like Experian and an untold number of private investigators.A lawsuit against LexisNexis filed in North Carolina has just paid off for the plaintiffs, as Joseph Cox reports for Vice.

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In September, we noted that officials in the EU were continuing an effort to try to ban end-to-end encryption. Of course, that's not how they put it. They say they just want "lawful access" to encrypted content, not recognizing that any such backdoor effectively obliterates the protections of end-to-end encryption. A new "Draft Council Resolution on Encryption" has come out as the EU Council of Ministers continues to drift dangerously towards this ridiculous position.We've seen documents like this before. It starts out with a preamble insisting that they're not really trying to undermine encryption, even though they absolutely are.

Data continues to indicate that despite ridiculous oodles of hype, U.S. 5G networks aren't much to write home about. According to a recent study by OpenSignal, the U.S. ranked dead last in terms of 5G speeds in a 14-country comparison, largely due to our failure to make mid-band spectrum available for public use. Other reports have repeatedly shown that many initial 5G networks are actually slower than existing 4G networks. Not a great look given the months of DC rhetoric about how the U.S. is in an urgent "race to 5G." In reality, it's less of a race and more of a drunken stumble.While carriers (usually falsely) advertise massive 5G coverage and reality bending improvements at the hands of 5G, consumers' first impression continues to be of the underwhelming variety:

China doesn't have a problem with censorship. By that, I mean the Chinese government sees no problem with its ever-expanding censorship of speech it doesn't like. While China appears to have embraced capitalism, it hasn't embraced the democratic accoutrements that normally accompany a move towards a more free society.The government doesn't like to be criticized, so it has engaged in several efforts to censor speech by people arguing for less censorship and a better government. These efforts have been greeted with some creative responses by citizens, but the government flips the internet kill switch on and off as needed, denying citizens access to something most people around the world consider to be as essential as tap water.As if that weren't enough to keep speech in line, American companies and… um… sportsball concerns have cooperated with censorship efforts to appease the Chinese government with the end goal of accessing China's billion-strong user base.The crackdown on speech is far more pronounced in one region of the country, where the government has targeted certain citizens -- more than one million Uighur Muslims -- with ever-increasing censorship, along with the killings and disappearings China has historically deployed against those on its expansive persona non grata lists.A number of US companies have helped the Chinese government oppress Uighur Muslims. Unsurprisingly, a Chinese company is doing the same thing. TikTok, the social media upstart that has irrationally angered the Trump administration, has admitted its contribution to the government's persecution of its least favored citizens. This includes efforts made by TikTok's moderation teams located in other countries where one would (very hopefully) assume the Chinese government's demands are free to be ignored. Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be the case.

If you can believe it, despite my storied fascination with the intersection of trademark law and alcohol, one battle between two Australian breweries flew under my radar. Sorry, okay? But it is worth writing about now, if only as it demonstrates the length to which some trademark protectionists will go, even when it ultimately causes that protectionist harm.Laneway Brewery in Melbourne sued nearby La Sirene Brewing over its use of the word "Urban" in its "Urban Pale" offering. Laneway has a brew called "Once Bitter" and uses the term "Urban Ale" as its tagline, for which it had a registered trademark.

Late last year, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court reached a truly horrendous decision. Judge Don Willett's scathing takedown of the "rigged game" that is qualified immunity -- delivered in a different opinion -- failed to move the dial in the Fifth Circuit, which found this doctrine could still cover a host of abusive behavior by government employees.Making it easier to arrive at this dismal conclusion was the Supreme Court's qualified immunity related efforts over the years. The nation's top court has continuously tilted the scales in favor of misbehaving government employees, removing any common sense reading of the Constitution in favor of discussions about "clearly established" rights violations. This made it tougher to create precedent as plaintiffs had to show government employees were clearly aware their violations of rights were actually rights violations. The end result was more dismissals and less precedent.Riding this lack of precedent to its illogical conclusion was this decision by the Fifth Circuit, handed down in late December of last year. Here's what the inmate suing prison officials and guards had to deal with:

Someone wants to out-evil Clearview. Now, there are a lot of questionable facial recognition tech vendors but most have decided to cede "most hated" to Clearview. But another startup thinks it should generate as much ill will as possible before securing prominent marketplace status.The unanswered question, I guess, is whether to direct your AI-enabled sociopathy at random individuals or your own coworkers. While Clearview has allowed police officers, private companies, authoritarian regimes, billionaires, and politicians to "run wild" with baseless searches of its 4 billion scraped images, a Silicon Valley company has taken a hands-off approach to internal "testing" of its tech. Joseph Cox has more details for Motherboard.

Nothing that currently exists can compete with fiber. Nothing replicates the future growth fiber networks will deliver, simply because nothing that moves data has the inherent capacity of a fiber wire. It isn’t even close by any technical measurement. However, barely 30 percent of Americans have access to fiber infrastructure, despite the fact that 100 percent of Americans have become dependent on high-speed access during the pandemic.In a few short years, more than one billion fiber-to-the-home gigabit Internet connections will have been deployed in Asia. That fiber infrastructure will be capable of reaching symmetrical ten gigabits, 100 gigabits, and well into the terabit era of broadband access in a cost-effective basis as applications and services continue to evolve and advance. Deployment at a large scale is possible, but the U.S. still lags far behind.Here is how bad our high-speed access market is today: every big American ISP has stopped deploying fiber services at any serious scale. This leaves a vast majority of Americans stuck with inferior cable Internet service. When you factor in the monopoly power held by the ISPs—preventing Americans from switching to better service—it becomes a perfect storm. That storm broke with the pandemic, where we all suddenly found ourselves needing quick and reliable Internet access.Only small private and local public providers are connecting folks to the future, but their efforts are stymied by incumbents and not sufficiently supported. That means most people can’t switch from cable when they opt to throttle uploads or are unable to deliver the speeds they’ve advertised if we all use the Internet at the same time. You still have landlords getting away with keeping fiber competitors out of apartment complexes in exchange for a kick back from companies like Comcast.The remaining Americans who don’t even have access to cable are dependent on obsolete copper lines for communications held by companies like the now-bankrupt Frontier Communications and AT&T. In Frontier’s case, their overreliance on its slow Internet monopoly led to their downfall as they systemically avoided the necessary investments needed to transition to fiber leaving countless rural communities in dire straits. As for AT&T, they are trying to figure out how to cut people off the copper network and just give them cell phones to make more money with a less reliable connection. And the wireless industry spent precious years hyping 5G at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Congress only to now come to admit that 5G everywhere does not happen without dense fiber networks everywhere.Now the good news: this is all fixable. If we change our telecom policies and how we invest in telecom infrastructure, fiber to the home (FTTH) is already economically feasible in a super-majority of communities if the right policies and government efforts are in place. A recent study by the Fiber Broadband Association found that FTTH is commercially feasible up to the 90th percentile of population density. For the remaining 10 percent, the Americans in the most rural of territories, we are seeing successful models led by the public sector such as rural cooperatives on long-term capital investments in FTTH.For example, a rural cooperative in Missouri today can deliver gigabit service at $100 a month at a population density of 2.4 people per square mile. The demand is there but it is being suppressed by the slow Internet monopolists through bans on local governments building fiber and incumbent industry efforts to have the FCC hinder competition. If we break down the barriers that are suppressing the parties most ready to deploy fiber, 21st century infrastructure will come.First, if the large private ISP model has failed (and it has), we need to start exploring our alternatives. One such alternative is simply having the government build the infrastructure and make it open to all comers. This “open access fiber” approach, fiber that is available on a shared infrastructure, is starting to take off. Utah’s “Utopia” network is leading the way, connecting more and more households in the area to an expanding open-access fiber network run by local cities. Residents within Utopia’s service area enjoy 11 private options for gigabit service, compared to whatever the majority of Americans have one or two high-speed services.This type of approach to broadband infrastructure, where the government builds the wires and shares its capacity to broadband providers, holds tremendous promise. In essence, the government builds the roads and allows commerce to follow. One study predicts a structurally separated network deployment could connect rural homes to fiber without subsidies and through long term low-interest financing.Other shared approaches are bearing fruit. In Alabama, the state legislature passed a law clarifying that electric utilities could leverage their easements and private rights-of-way to enable telecommunications services over their fiber assets. In response, Mississippi’s C Spire arranged an exclusivity agreement with Alabama Power in exchange for deploying fiber to the home to communities throughout the state through the utilities network. The exclusivity gave C Spire the confidence that their investments in the utility’s fiber network to make it broadband-ready could be recovered from newly connected customers, while Alabama Power was assured that C Spire would try to attract as many customers as possible to provide a stable and growing revenue base to the electric utility, resulting in lower rates. Joint ventures that leverage interdependent needs for fiber can help make more markets accessible because the demand is already there.Lastly, the only way we are going to get everyone connected to 21st century ready access is the same way we did it with the roads, electricity, and water: the government needs to lead. Internet access needs to be part of its infrastructure policy, especially light of the private sector failing to deliver to all people.Estimates are that nearly $100 billion is needed to deliver 100 percent coverage with FTTH in America, with the majority of that cost being associated with the most rural parts of America. That sounds like a lot, but here is the important thing to know about fiber: once you lay that line, you are done building broadband infrastructure for potentially 70 years or more. To put that in context, the publicly available commercial Internet hasn’t even existed for 70 years. All of the advancements in speed and capacity (that will far exceed satellite, cable, and wireless) will come from inexpensive hardware upgrades, not high cost labor and construction work. This is why countries like China are aggressively building fiber infrastructure at a rate nine times faster than the United States.This reality has prompted Rep. James Clyburn to draft legislation to create an American universal fiber program. It has already passed the House, and now we must force the Senate to understand the breadth of this problem and simplicity of this solution. If we can get an electric line to everyone, we can get a fiber line there too.The bill emphasizes open-access fiber networks that would replicate the success demonstrated by Utah’s local governments. Building these types of networks would shatter the nearly 15-year decline into the giant monopolies or duopolies that most Americans experience when trying to get high-speed Internet access. Instead, you could get Internet access from your local businesses, non-profits, and even your local schools and libraries.The bill will also free up local governments and cooperatives to pursue community broadband. The removal of state laws advocated by the major national ISPs that ban local communities from building their own broadband access network is long overdue. The local public sector has proven to be an essential part of the solution to reach universal fiber as rural cooperatives, small cities, and townships are building fiber networks in areas long ago skipped by the private sector.The bill also fixes a small-seeming, large-impact, and long-standing problem of Internet access in the United States by updating what we mean by broadband. Today’s federal definition of broadband was established in 2015 and stands at 25 megabits per second download and 3 megabits per second upload. This 25/3 standard makes it appear as if there are more broadband options than there truly are, hiding the monopoly. In other words, it is both useless and harmful. To fix this, the bill would establish that communities lacking 25/25 broadband are “unserved” and establish a minimum standard of 100/100 megabits per second for federally funded projects. These higher metrics would avoid wasting money on legacy networks that are unable to deliver relevant speeds and focus on future proof networks that have fiber at their core.We have to fix our Internet, and soon.The pandemic has not resulted in as much of an explosion of Internet usage as it has a bump in usage that is within normal parameters of what was coming—that is, pandemic usage is roughly in sync with projections for Internet usage in around 2022. The future, as they say, is now.If your Internet access is failing you now, you have just been given a sneak peek of what 2022 looks like for your home. Broadband consumption has been on the rise as long as we’ve tracked it, and as the billion gigabit fiber connections are activated globally, the applications and services that use that capacity will come to market. If the United States government, the states, and the local governments do not actively tackle this infrastructure problem soon, we will just be unable to access the latest advancements. Not only that, but our economic competitiveness will decline as China continues to rise and the 21st century technology industries will begin to find their homes where the infrastructure is available. The next Silicon Valley may not be in America if we continue on this trajectory.We will also start to see the creation of a new type of digital divide where Americans live with either 1st class or 2nd class Internet. Fibered networks are getting cheaper to operate yet are delivering larger amounts of data while legacy networks are quickly getting more expensive to maintain. That means low income neighborhoods and rural areas stuck on the legacy 20th century network are going to pay more for less, while high-income users connected to fiber will enjoy the benefits of lower prices. Efforts to subsidize access to the Internet for low income people will become more and more difficult on decaying lines, while free Internet zones will become more normalized in wealthy communities as the costs continue to decline on fiber.None of this is set in stone. We have the market we choose and if we start making the right choices soon, we can solve these problems. But that takes everyone collectively demanding more from our policy makers and the industry and adopting a new approach.Ernesto Falcon is Senior Legislative Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation with a primary focus on intellectual property, open Internet issues, broadband access, and competition policy.

The protesters in Hong Kong have a point: the Chinese government is supposed to stay the fuck out of managing Hong Kong's day-to-day governance for 50 years after its securing of this profitable market sector from the British in 1997. We all love to see colonialism dismantled, but when the recipient is China, caution should be deployed. The Chinese government agreed to not turn Hong Kong into China 1.5 for fifty years.The clock runs out in 2047 but the Chinese government isn't interested in letting the good faith agreement remain in place. It has directly targeted pro-democracy protesters and government critics in Hong Kong, leveraging its "national security" law to create life sentences for people who rightfully think the Chinese government should back off for at least another seven years.Throw enough oppression at people and you'll unearth the percentage of the public that would rather lick boot than support their fellow Hong Kong residents. "See something, say something" works everywhere, even in a free market paradise like Hong Kong. As the BBC reports, the snitch hotline set up by Hong Kong's subservient quote/enquote "public servants" has proven popular with those attempting to ingratiate themselves to their new overlords.

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It appears that the various election polls that predicted Joe Biden would become the 46th President of the United States eventually proved accurate -- the current President's temper tantrum notwithstanding -- but that doesn't mean the polls did a good job. In fact, most people are recognizing that the pollsters were wrong in many, many ways. They predicted a much bigger win for Biden, including multiple states that easily went to Trump. They completely flubbed many down ballot House and Senate races as well. Pollsters are now trying to figure out what went wrong and what these misses mean, coming on the heels of a set of bad predictions in 2016 as well. It's likely there isn't any simple answer, but a variety of factors involved.However, what interests me is the simple fact that it turned out that the major polls were actually widely shared misinformation that spread all over social media, presenting incorrect information about the election -- some of which almost certainly had the likelihood of impacting voting behavior.Now, to be clear, I'm not saying the polls were disinformation deliberately spread with the knowledge that it was false. I'm saying they were misinformation. Information that turned out to be false, but was spread, often widely, by those who believed it or wanted to believe it. And, it was exactly the kind of misinformation that had a decent likelihood of impacting voting behavior.But that leaves open a big question: with so many people (including many in the media and a few legislators) demanding that social media websites "crack down" on "misinformation", especially with regards to an election, the fact that polling that turned out to be misinformation presents something of a challenge. I think most people would say that it would be crazy to say that social media shouldn't allow polling information to be spread (or even to go viral). Yet, with so many people calling for a crackdown on "misinformation" how do you distinguish the two?Some will argue that they only mean the kinds of misinformation that is being spread with ill-intent, though that quickly leaps over to disinformation or requires social media companies to be the arbiters of "intent," which is not an easy task. Others will argue that this is more "well meaning" information, or that it's merely a prediction. But lots of other misinformation could fall into that category as well. Or some might argue that accurately reporting on what the polls say isn't misinformation -- since it's accurate reporting, even if the results don't match the predictions. But, again, the same could be said for other predictive bits of misinformation as well.In short: any of the ways you might seek to distinguish these polls, you can almost certainly apply back to other forms of misinformation.I raise this issue primarily to ask that people think much more carefully about what they're asking for when they demand that social media sites moderate "misinformation." Especially with an incoming Biden administration that has already suggested that one of its policy goals is to target misinformation online. It's one thing to say that, but it's another thing altogether to define misinformation in a manner that doesn't lead to plenty of perfectly legitimate information -- such as these misleading polls -- being targeted as well. At the very least, we should start to distinguish the important differences between misinformation and disinformation.Perhaps, rather than demanding that the first response to misinformation be that it be removed, we should think about more ways to add more context around it instead.

As companies and governments increasingly hoover up our personal data, a common refrain to keep people from worrying is the claim that nothing can go wrong because the data itself is "anonymized" -- or stripped of personal identifiers like social security numbers. But time and time again, studies have shown how this really is cold comfort, given it takes only a little effort to pretty quickly identify a person based on access to other data sets. Yet most companies, many privacy policy folk, and even government officials still like to act as if "anonymizing" your data means something.The latest case in point: new research out of Stanford (first spotted by the German website Mixed), found that it took researchers just five minutes of examining the movement data of VR users to identify them in the real world. The paper says participants using an HTC Vive headset and controllers watched five 20-second clips from a randomized set of 360-degree videos, then answered a set of questions in VR that were tracked in a separate research paper.The movement data (including height, posture, head movement speed and what participants looked at and for how long) was then plugged into three machine learning algorithms, which, from a pool of 511 participants, was able to correctly identify 95% of users accurately "when trained on less than 5 min of tracking data per person." The researchers went on to note that while VR headset makers (like every other company) assures users that "de-identified" or "anonymized" data would protect their identities, that's really not the case:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2015, the UK government released its "Snooper's Charter" surveillance bill after pretending it had backed down on the worst provisions — when in fact the bill mandated backdoors to encryption and aimed to legalize over a decade of illegal mass surveillance. In the US, documents from the DOJ confirmed the extensive powers of Stingray devices, while legislators were moving to turn the agency's "guidance" on the devices into law. The think-tank behind SOPA was now pushing for the US to encourage other countries to block the Pirate Bay, while attacks on Section 230 were still mainly the realm of some law professors. And then the biggest release of the week came on Friday: the full, very bad text of the TPP.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2010, we were surprised to see the DOJ weigh in against gene patents, and the USPTO was not happy about it. The Jammie Thomas trial got its third jury verdict with another huge award of damages that highlighted how the framing of the jury instructions changes everything in such a case. A YouTube star was being threatened by music publishers claiming parody isn't fair use, a reality show was sued for copying an idea, and a pizza shop sued a former employee for "stealing" their recipe — while librarians in Brazil were forcefully speaking out against copyright, calling it a fear-based reaction to open access to knowledge. Also, this is the week that the proposal of a Right To Be Forgotten started making the rounds in Europe.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2005, the FCC okayed the big telco mergers of SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI, while SBC was making demands of Google, and Sprint was launching its mobile broadband network. The movie industry was trying to plug the "analog hole" and Congress appeared to be going through the motions to appease them without much enthusiasm. But the most memorable development of the week was the discovery that Sony's new copy protection on CDs was a dangerous rootkit, and that other malware could piggyback on it, and that the same DRM was on CDs from other companies... all of which forced Sony to scramble to release a "patch" which didn't really fix the problem, and which itself turned out to come with a bunch of highly questionable baggage.

Summary:Google began documenting government requests for content removal in 2009. Periodic transparency reports informed users about demands made by government agencies, breaking requests down by country and targeted service (YouTube, Google search, Blogspot, etc.)In October 2011, the section dealing with US government agency requests included a note indicating Google had refused a questionable demand to take down a YouTube video.

Almost universally, COVID-19 and its associated stay-at-home orders challenged networks with crushes of Internet traffic. Big, medium and small networks; urban, suburban and rural – all experienced a massive shift in use as Americans, locked into a single spot for an indefinite amount of time, depended on the Internet to communicate with friends and families, go to work, learn, get healthcare, and generally ride out the storm.Fixed wireless providers (a.k.a. WISPs) were no exception in serving the public’s needs during the health safety crisis. These generally small, rural companies use primarily unlicensed spectrum to deliver broadband to nearly 7 million residential and business customers throughout America. Not to be confused with mobile wireless technology, WISPs purchase Internet access, run that to a tower or other vertical structure (such as a grain silo or water tower), then shoot that data wirelessly to fixed receiver-antennas on houses and businesses, connecting a robust, two-way broadband connection.Not surprisingly, WISPs have been busy during the crisis, seeing an average change of download traffic at peak of 43%; and upload at peak of 70%. To support this, 83% of WISPs upgraded their networks to better manage the new traffic dynamics. Importantly, no WISP buckled, as users changed their favorite apps from streaming and email to “Zoom” teleconferencing and distance learning. During the pandemic, WISPs were also on the frontlines of keeping their communities connected.Some of this work was recently highlighted by FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks in his inaugural Digital Opportunity Equity Recognition (DOER) program. WISPA members Midco, Starry and Triad Wireless were lauded by the Commissioner for demonstrating “a true commitment to serving communities through acts of substance and consequence, big and small, generosity and selflessness both during the pandemic and prior to the recent events that have changed our nation.”What did they do?Midco worked with the State of North Dakota and local school districts to deliver free Internet service for families to help kids stay “in” school. Starry created a budget $15 a month package, connecting communities across Boston, New York City, Denver, and Los Angeles with 30 Mbps service and no data caps or long-term contracts. And Triad Wireless launched its “Education Everywhere” program, which for $10 per month brought needy families Internet access in communities across Arizona.All told 75% of America’s 2,000 plus WISPs helped out with some sort of free access, Wi-Fi hotspots, community connectivity or other broadband deployments to keep their local communities online and safe during the pandemic.An example of the industry’s other “doers” include companies like Byhalia.net in Bellefontaine, OH, which set up a free Wi-Fi location at their local public school so kids in their rural area with limited or no Internet could get assignments via drive-up Wi-Fi. And, BPS Networks, located in Bernie, MO, which deployed nine free Wi-Fi hotspots for local school districts in SE Missouri, as well as a dedicated high-speed link for the local hospital’s COVID-19 pre-screening tents. Or, Portative Technologies in Corydon, IN, which deployed 10 free hotspots in the area’s parks, fire houses, parking lots and elsewhere in their county.The FCC played an integral part in many of these connectivity efforts, too. More than 100 WISPs applied for and received an innovative, temporary 45 MHz assignment of 5.9 GHz spectrum from the Commission to rapidly boost and promote broadband connectivity. That band was “reserved” for the automotive industry two decades ago, but has gone essentially fallow, seeing little to no use since its inception. Because the spectrum sits adjacent to unlicensed providers in the 5 GHz band, it represented a perfect candidate to quickly increase capacity, alleviating some of “COVID-crunch” on WISP and Wi-Fi networks.To this end, Amplex in Luckey, OH, used its 5.9 GHz spectrum to increase bandwidth by 50% across its suburban and rural network of 8,000 subscribers, greatly improving capacity not only for the equipment using the new spectrum, but also reducing congestion on the existing spectrum. And Nextlink, based in Hudson Oaks, TX, achieved less network interference by utilizing the 5.9 GHz band, allowing over 2,000 of its subscribers to upgrade their speed plans to higher levels than possible before.WISPs’ underlying nimbleness made the effects of C-19 less devastating. But it also hints at something more powerful and lasting at work. While the U.S. economy significantly contracted during the crisis, WISP networks grew. Over 80% of WISPs added customers during the pandemic. Interestingly, however, COVID didn’t create this. Rather, it only accelerated the velocity of growth, which for the past several years has been about 15% annually.How can this happen when other sectors remain flat or experience only meager growth?First, WISPs often serve broadband-neglected communities in the digital divide – areas that have been left behind by legacy providers because they’re deemed too unprofitable to serve. Perhaps tragically, there’s a huge, nearly 20 million strong untapped market there, representing a lot of room to grow.Second, though many WISPs provide fiber connectivity, too, the fixed wireless model can be rolled-out almost overnight and at about 15% of the cost of fiber, quickly providing a cost-effective and evolutionary tool to connect to the Internet where it was absent or deficient.And third, they’re not beholden to a “mother-may-I” regulatory regime, enabling them to innovate without permission, more nimbly extending services to those who need it. It is the exact opposite of monopoly and franchise-driven plays, which work to limit service options, innovation and regulatorily mandated “growth.”For many individuals in the rural and urban digital divide, WISPs are an essential lifeline, built to evolve, expand and scale to meet the needs of the markets they serve. This flexibility and industry “get ‘er done” ethos have allowed WISPs across America to help their communities stay connected and safe during the crisis. And beyond.The WISP model helps more and more Americans thrive in good and in challenging times. Policymakers would do well to promote their broadband deployment model to continue this good and vital work.Claude Aiken is WISPA’s president and CEO. A leader on broadband policy, Aiken joined WISPA in 2018 after nearly a decade at the FCC. While there, he served as a trusted advisor to Chairman Wheeler and Commissioner Clyburn. He held senior leadership positions in the Wireline Bureau and Office of General Counsel, as well key staff attorney roles throughout the FCC.

As we've discussed before, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many educational institutions into remote learning and with it, remote test-taking. One of the issues in all of that is how to ensure students taking exams are doing so without cheating. Some institutions employ humans to watch students over video calls, to ensure they are not doing anything untoward. But many, many others are using software instead that is built to try to catch cheating by algorithmically spotting "clues" of cheating.Proctorio is one of those anti-cheat platforms. The software has been the subject of some fairly intense criticism from students, many of whom allege both that the software seems to have trouble interpreting what darker-skinned students are doing on the screen and that it requires a ton of bandwidth, which many low-income students simply don't have access to. Erik Johnson, who is a student and security researcher, wanted to dig into Proctorio's workings. Given that it's a browser extension, he simply downloaded it and started digging through the readily available code. He then tweeted out his findings, along with links to Pastebin pages where he had shared the code he references in each tweet. Below are some of the tweets that you can reference for yourself.

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The EFF -- representing former California Highway Patrol officer Miguel Guerrero -- has achieved a significant legal victory. The California Appeals Court has given citizens a better shot at demanding law enforcement transparency about intrusive surveillance efforts.It's incredibly difficult to unseal documents the government wants to keep hidden, especially when the government raises arguments about preserving the secrecy of law enforcement tactics and techniques. This case deals with one of the hundreds of wiretaps approved by a single county judge in California. Officer Guerrero was one target of surveillance. The government insisted the application, along with information about what communications were intercepted, must remain secret even though Guerrero was never charged with any crime.

T-Mobile has been forced to pay $200 million because Sprint took taxpayer money it didn't deserve to "service" customers that apparently don't exist.In an announcement this week from the FCC, T-Mobile will pay a $200 million penalty to the U.S. Treasury to resolve an investigation into Sprint, a company T-Mobile acquired (against the recommendations of most antitrust experts) for $26 billion earlier this year. According to the FCC, Sprint was taking taxpayer money to serve 885,000 Lifeline subscribers that apparently didn't exist. The Lifeline program, started under Reagan and expanded by Bush Jr., provides a modest $9.25 subsidy users can use for broadband, phone, or wireless service. It's worth noting Trump's FCC has repeatedly tried to undermine the program.When there are instances of fraud discovered by others, and too obvious to ignore, the FCC sometimes acts. This latest fine, the biggest in FCC history for this sort of inquiry (not that this is saying much for a historically timid agency), was the end result of an investigation started by the Oregon Public Utility Commission. From the FCC:

There is perhaps no sentence that defines the state of policing in America more than this one, which opens up this opinion [PDF] by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals:

Over the summer, we wrote about a very strange lawsuit brought by the Estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle against Netflix and the makers of the forthcoming film Enola Holmes. What made much of this head-scratching is that the vast majority of ACD's Sherlock Holmes works are old enough to have entered the public domain. In the lawsuit, the Estate points out that there are ten Sherlock stories that are not in the public domain, however. And that because the Holmes character in those stories is both more emotional and -- checks notes -- likes dogs, that somehow that makes any depiction of the Holmes character having emotions and liking dogs as somehow copyright infringement. Also, there is a trademark claim for using "Holmes" in the film's title, which is dumb because it's a work of art and the public domain character's name being part of the film's title is of artistic merit.So let's focus on the copyright claim, instead. Or, rather, let's let the filmmaker's motion to dismiss focus on it, so thoroughly did they excoriate the Estate. We'll start with two claims made by the Estate as to protectable elements of the Holmes character: that the later works showed his warming relationship with his sidekick Watson and -- checks notes again in disbelief -- sigh, that he likes dogs. Well, the filmmakers suggest that those are sort of irrelevant since the film doesn't depict Holmes interacting with either Watson or dogs.

Pretextual stops are bread-and-butter for cops. There's plenty of real crime out there waiting to be solved, but that requires time and attention that law enforcement apparently just doesn't have. So, a lot of what passes for "law enforcement" is just officers rolling the dice on vehicle searches, hoping to find something illegal (or at least some cash) to justify the roadside harassment.Here are the depressing facts about the crime solving abilities of law enforcement:

Back in 2015, frustration at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM culminated in a grassroots tech movement dubbed "right to repair." The company's crackdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM (and the company's EULA) prohibited the lion's share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.Of course the problem isn't just restricted to John Deere. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and countless other tech giants eager to monopolize repair have made a habit of suing and bullying independent repair shops and demonizing consumers who simply want to reduce waste and repair devices they own. This, in turn, has resulted in a growing push for right to repair legislation in countless states.The movement scored another big win this week on the news that 74.8% of Massachusetts voters (so far) just approved an expansion to an existing Massachusetts law, resulting in one of the most comprehensive right to repair laws in the nation. The original law was the first in the nation to be passed in 2013. The update dramatically improves the law, requiring that as of 2022, all new telematics-equipped vehicles be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform that allows owners and third-party repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device.More simply, that means users can take their vehicle to any repair shop and have easy, transparent access to vehicle data, without running into obnoxious restrictions or having to visit a more expensive dealership mechanic using proprietary tools. The auto industry, as you might expect, tried really hard to scuttle the law, at one point falsely arguing it would "aid sexual predators" (seriously). Apple, Microsoft and others eager to boost revenues via repair monopolies have also, routinely, tried to falsely portray basic repair rights as somehow nefarious and dangerous.Needless to say, right to repair advocates like iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens were very happy with the law's passage:

A large group of patent holders sent a letter to Congress expressing concern that, since the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Iancu might soon be leaving, recent policies making it harder to challenge bad patents might be reversed. The letter concerns a process created somewhat recently, called inter partes review (IPR), that allows the USPTO to take a second look at the patents they issue based on a public request.This is important because 43% of all issued patents challenged in court are ultimately found to be invalid, albeit at great expense due to the high costs of patent litigation. An IPR, by contrast, offers a far faster and less expensive way to challenge patents than using the courts, with the average IPR costing around $350,000 compared to litigation costs just shy of $1 million when defending against infringement claims brought by an NPE. It is no surprise that many who profit off patents do not like a process that makes it easier to find out if those patents are valid.The letter states that “Director Iancu has clearly changed the dialogue surrounding patents, defined the patent system by the brilliance of inventors, the excitement of invention, and the incredible benefits they bring to our economy and society as a whole.” While a lot of this is true, celebrating the brilliance of inventors and the benefits of patents ignores the very real direct and indirect costs of the current patent system. Patents can issue for inventions that don’t actually work or exist. This was true of Theranos, a company built around patents with technology that didn’t work or exist. Patents can also be used to try to win big paydays on seemingly unrelated products. This happened again with Theranos, whose patents were bought and used against a company making covid-19 tests.Then there are also many, many, silly patents that get issued that usually don’t matter because very few people want the thing the patent describes. It would be weird if these inventors got to dictate patent policy. But here we are, as a large number of the inventors signed to this letter have very silly patents (feel free to find your own favorites):

Law enforcement training is sketchy stuff. We didn't get to where we are today without telling a blend of do-gooders and bullies that it's the public who's wrong and the blue line warriors who are right. The "us vs. them" mindset seems to have accelerated in recent years, urged on by overheated rhetoric about criminals outgunning the cops (despite historically-low crime rates) and the federal government's willingness to tart up local gendarmes with war gear at zero cost.The training tends to tell officers every kill is a good kill -- one that will be rewarded with some pretty awesome sex, if nothing else. It also tells them every person is a latent threat, one that should be responded to with whatever use of force the officer feels necessary. To trainers, the general public is, at best, a nuisance. At worst, it's an anarchic force of unpredictable evil. If the officer wants to make it home every night, it's better safe than sorry.Now, let's turn to the world of journalism. The internet has equalized everything, giving independent journalists the same potential power as long-established journalistic concerns. Anyone can "break" a story, using little more than a social media account and some public records. This shift of power was recently demonstrated by two teens writing for the Manual Redeye, the paper of record for Dupont (KY) Manual High School. The two authors are a combined 30 years of age.Manual students Satchel Wilson and Cooper Walton obtained training documents from the Kentucky State Police via a public records request by attorney David Ward, who is involved in a lawsuit over state troopers' killing of Bradley Grant in 2018. Ward requested information about the training received by one trooper involved in the shooting and received a truly disturbing presentation in return.It opens with some really fucked up bullet points before heading into even darker territory. The first few slides list the presentation's "objectives," which include "list the qualities that make up a good value system during combat and the "warrior's chosen path." It's titled "The Warrior Mindset."By the presentation's fifth slide, the presenter/compiler has decided to start quoting some pretty questionable "leaders," starting with Confederate general Robert E. Lee. It appears under the amazingly wrongheaded title "The Thin Gray Line."As the two teens report, the presentation moves on from a Confederacy figurehead to the Big Bad himself.

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It doesn't pay to anger the man in charge. Trump's DOJ is more vindictive than most, it appears. Documents obtained via a FOIA request by Lawfare shows the FBI is more motivated to hunt down internal critics of this administration than any other it has served previously.Two agents involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server have already been served up for punishment by this administration for their texted anti-Trump sentiments. Their political texts violated FBI internal guidelines -- ones meant to prevent personal feelings from tainting investigations. But to date, the FBI really hasn't done much about this sort of behavior. It took criticism of Trump to force the FBI to finally start dealing with this misconduct.As Scott Anderson and Benjamin Wittes point out, this recent discipline is an anomaly.

As our current Techdirt Greenhouse panel is exploring, COVID-19 has shone a very bright light on the importance of widely available, affordable broadband. Nearly 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever--double FCC estimates. 83 million are stuck under a monopoly. Millions can't afford service thanks to a lack of competition among very powerful, government pampered telecom monopolies, despite untold billions in federal and state subsidies for fiber networks that routinely, consistently, wind up only half deployed.Instead of tackling the corruption that makes state and federal regulatory capture possible, or embracing policies that drive more competition to market (AT&T, Verizon and Comcast don't much like either), the U.S. routinely enjoys just throwing more taxpayer money at the problem in the hopes things somehow, this time, improve. While that's sometimes certainly a helpful path, more often than not the money doled out to industry giants gets misdirected and wasted, in large part because (and pardon me for being redundant), nobody bothers to genuinely hold U.S. telecom incumbents accountable for much of anything, ever.The latest case in point: last March Congress passed the CARES Act, our last (and only) major relief package for those struggling under COVID-19. Included in the bill was $375 million in new funding for various telecommunications related government projects. A chunk of that money ($100 million) was earmarked for additional broadband deployment grants under the RUS’s broadband deployment pilot program, which was originally created in 2018 with $600 million in funding.The problem: restrictions mean that many locations were forced to rush and spend that money before the end of the year, or it gets returned to the federal government. Given the time-intense complexity of getting broadband deployed to rural areas, the obvious reality that COVID isn't going away, and a broken Congress' inability to pass any more public or infrastructure aid during a historic health crisis, that's obviously pissing some people off:

Belatedly realizing its reputation is a burning dumpster floating in a sewage retention pond, Clearview is finally trying to turn things around. Building a database of personal info and photos scraped from public websites, the company turned its product over to anyone who was interested. Private companies, billionaires, dozens of police departments -- all were invited to play with Clearview's toy, which set an untested facial recognition algorithm loose in the billions of images in its database.Clearview likes to claim its tool is helping solve crimes. Police departments referred to in marketing materials and public statements have almost always disagreed with Clearview's self-assessment. Now, Clearview is trying to patch up its relationship with the public by altering its relationship with law enforcement agencies. CEO Hoan Ton-That is promising some sort of reform effort here, but his promises of a better, more trustworthy Clearview are as empty as its database is full.

After many years of fierce resistance to open access, academic publishers have largely embraced -- and extended -- the idea, ensuring that their 35-40% profit margins live on. In the light of this subversion of the original hopes for open access, people have come up with other ways to provide free and frictionless access to knowledge -- most of which is paid for by taxpayers around the world. One is preprints, which are increasingly used by researchers to disseminate their results widely, without needing to worry about payment or gatekeepers. The other is through sites that have taken it upon themselves to offer immediate access to large numbers of academic papers -- so-called "shadow libraries". The most famous of these sites is Sci-Hub, created by Alexandra Elbakyan. At the time of writing, Sci-Hub claims to hold 79 million papers.Even academics with access to publications through their institutional subscriptions often prefer to use Sci-Hub, because it is so much simpler and quicker. In this respect, Sci-Hub stands as a constant reproach to academic publishers, emphasizing that their products aren't very good in terms of serving libraries, which are paying expensive subscriptions for access. Not surprisingly, then, Sci-Hub has become Enemy No. 1 for academic publishers in general, and the leading company Elsevier in particular. The German site Netzpolitik has spotted the latest approach being taken by publishers to tackle this inconvenient and hugely successful rival, and other shadow libraries. At its heart lies the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI), which was founded by Elsevier and other large publishers earlier this year. Netzpolitik explains that the idea is to track and analyze every access to libraries, because "security":

Summary:Between around 2013 and 2015 there was a sudden popularity of so-called “anonymous” social networks. A few had existed before, but suddenly the market was full of them: Whisper, Secret and Yik Yak received the most attention. All of them argued that by allowing people to post content anonymously, they were helping people, allowing them to express their true thoughts rather than repress them. Whisper and Secret both worked by letting people anonymously post short text, which would be shown over an image in the background.In practice, many of the apps filled up with harassment, bullying, hateful content and the like. Whisper, as one of the bigger companies in the space, invested heavily in content moderation from early on, saying that it had set up an outsourced team (via TaskUs in the Philippines) to handle moderation. However, questions of scalability became an issue, and the company also built software to help with content moderation, called “The Arbiter.” In press reports, Whisper employees suggested “The Arbiter” was almost perfect: