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We keep trying to explain to people that privacy is always about trade-offs, and arguing for privacy laws that protect "privacy" as if it's a constant thing, will run into trouble. Most of that trouble is in the form of locking in big companies, but sometimes, the trouble is in showing you why understanding trade-offs matters so much.France has been among the most vocal critics of "big internet companies" and demanding various regulatory pressures be used to punish them. Last year it fined Google $57 million for breaching privacy laws, and appears to be angling for even larger fines.So it's difficult not to burst out in laughter after finding out that the French government is really, really mad that Google and Apple are protecting people's privacy, when suddenly the French government wants to use those companies to engage in contact tracing. Indeed, it's literally demanding both companies ease their privacy protections to help France track people who might have COVID-19.

"See something, say something" but for the coronavirus. How could it possibly go wrong?Everyone put your hands down. Of course we know how it could go wrong. Opening up the lines to callers never works. The DHS knows this, even if it chooses to ignore this. Years of "see something, say something" did nothing more than fill its data stores with reports from curtain twitchers about things their brown neighbors were doing and do-gooding randos calling in everyone they saw walking around with a camera.The home to the most "every Muslim is a suspect" city in the US should have known better than to open up a snitch line to the public. But officials like Governor Andrew Cuomo have already shown they're unable to fathom the concept of unintended consequences. Cuomo issued a mandate for mask-wearing in public while allowing an anti-mask law to run concurrently, inviting state law enforcement officers to engage in very selective enforcement.Without a doubt, the state has a COVID problem. But doing dumb shit isn't going to fix it. At best, it's just going to tie up city resources.Enter NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio. A city in the deep throes of a pandemic needs solid leadership. This isn't it. This is only something that seems sort of useful until someone gives it a few seconds of thought.On April 18, Mayor De Blasio took decisive action in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus:

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Richard Epstein is a very famous law professor, known for his "libertarian" take on the world. Lots of people who know him insist he's a brilliant legal mind... who seems to think that his brilliance in that area allows him to be brilliant in fields where he has no experience at all. For years, I've followed him being just ridiculously wrong when it comes to internet law and (even more so) on any issue related to copyright or patents, which he views as identical to tangible property. He has long refused to even consider that he might be wrong about that. Still, it was pretty shocking last month to see him jump into the deep end of the debate over the seriousness of COVID-19 by writing a piece claiming that he expected US deaths to top out at 500 tops. This was on March 16th, at which time California and Washington were already shutting down and it was blatantly clear many more people would die. Still what he initially wrote was:

We've noted repeatedly that despite a lot of talk from U.S. leaders and regulators about the "digital divide," the United States doesn't actually know where broadband is available. Historically the FCC has simply trusted major ISPs -- with a vested interest in downplaying coverage and competition gaps -- to tell the truth. The FCC's methodology has also long been flawed, considering an entire area to be connected if just one home in a census tract has service. The results are ugly: the FCC's $350 million broadband availability map all but hallucinates broadband availability and speed (try it yourself).As pressure mounts on the agency to finally improve its broadband mapping, the scope of the problem continues to come into focus. Like this week, when AT&T was forced to acknowledge that the company provided the FCC with inaccurate broadband availability data across 20 states, impacting some 3,600 census blocks:

All the way back in 2014, Twitter sued the DOJ over its National Security Letter reporting restrictions. NSLs are the FBI's weapon of choice in all sorts of investigations. And they almost exclusively come packaged with lifetime bans on discussing them publicly or disclosing the government's request for info to NSL targets.Things changed a little with the passage of the USA Freedom Act and a couple of related court decisions. The DOJ is now required to periodically review NSLs to see if the ongoing silence is justified. The Act also finally provided a way for companies to challenge gag orders, which has resulted in a somewhat steady stream of published NSLs.What's still forbidden is publishing an actual count of NSLs a company has received. Supposedly the security of the nation would be threatened if Twitter said it had received 118 NSLs last year, rather than "0-499." The reforms in the USA Freedom Act didn't change that aspect of NSL reporting and the government still argues any accurate reporting would allow the terrorists to win… or somehow avoid being targeted by an NSL.Twitter argued the publication of an accurate number was protected speech. The government, of course, argued the opposite. The federal judge handling the case ruled that accurate reporting wasn't protected speech back in 2016, but did say Twitter could move forward with its challenge of the classification of this data.Roughly a year later, the court changed its mind. The government's motion to dismiss was denied by the court, which said it needed to come up with better arguments if it wanted to escape Twitter's lawsuit. The court pointed out that denying Twitter the right to accurately report NSLs was a content-based restriction that couldn't be justified by the government's bare bones assertions about national security.Nearly three years later, we're back to where we were four years ago. The court has dismissed Twitter's lawsuit, denying its attempt to escape the "banding" restrictions that limit the transparency it can provide to its users. (via Politico)The decision [PDF] -- which ends nearly six years of litigation -- says the court believes the things the government says about detailed NSL reporting. Since these declarations tend to be delivered in ex parte hearings and/or under seal, we have to believe them, too. Actual numbers are more dangerous than vague numbers.

We've chronicled the many milestones esports has hit on its way to becoming the mainstream cultural occurrence that it is today. From having participants gain notoriety and fame by being featured on mainstream sports publications, to universities handing out esports scholarships, to esports being broadcast on ESPN, to the major IRL sports leagues getting involved. Now, with the world enveloped in the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that has shut down many if not most of the world's traditional sporting leagues, esports is having something of a moment, rocketing in popularity as a result.All of that being said, there has been one lagging indicator in the popularity rise of esports compared with its IRL counterparts: betting. You're not a big boy event until the gamblers get involved. Well, as we've seen with other indicators of esports' popularity, betting on esports is set to rise significantly as well.

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Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. By now we've established that pretty firmly. However, there's something deeply amusing to see that when the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka was temporarily banned from Twitter over what Twitter later claimed was a "systematic mistake," that the embassy then chose to go on a little righteous rant about free speech needing to be honored.The Embassy put out a press release more or less saying the same thing:

The spread of the coronavirus throughout the nation is turning some old laws into new ridiculousness. One of the hardest hit areas in the US is New York, which has nearly 30% of the nation's total cases. This has led to lockdown orders and spread deterrent efforts more severe than seen elsewhere in the country.One of the new mandates handed down by Governor Andrew Cuomo is a mask requirement when in public. The executive order that went into effect a few days ago says this:

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Brian Z. France ran NASCAR for many years, though as a pretty obvious nepotism hire. His grandfather and father ran NASCAR before him. In 2018, France was arrest for driving while intoxicated and criminal possession of a controlled substance, causing him to take an "indefinite leave of absence," that became more permanent once he pleaded guilty to the DWI, and has an agreement that if he completes 100 hours of community service and doesn't get into any more legal trouble, the misdemeanor charges will be reduced to a "non-criminal infraction" later this year. France's time at the head of NASCAR came with some controversy regarding his leadership style -- so it was not that surprising that someone set up a parody Twitter account for him @DrunkBrianF.France apparently didn't take kindly to being parodied, and hired some muckety muck lawyers -- Daniel Cohen, Kiran Mehta, and William Farley, from Troutman Sanders -- to file a blatantly obvious SLAPP suit in Connecticut Superior Court at the end of February, against John L. Steele, who apparently ran the account, going back to February of 2014. The lawsuit is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. It acts as if the concept of parody does not exist. Indeed, it insists that the intent of the @DrunkFBrianF account was to trick people into thinking it was really Brian France tweeting:

A few weeks ago, a new talking point popped up among telecom policy pundits opposed to net neutrality. They began claiming that the only reason the internet hasn't buckled during the pandemic was thanks to the FCC's controversial and unpopular net neutrality repeal. That repeal, you'll recall, not only killed net neutrality, but much of the FCC's ability to hold ISPs accountable for pretty much anything, including outright billing fraud.But to hear various net neutrality opponents tell it, the repeal is the primary reason the US internet hasn't fallen apart during COVID-19 quarantine:

Just when we need our elected representatives to step up and get their collective shit together, they seem to be disintegrating as quickly as possible. I understand a pandemic isn't on the list of "Things I Expected To Deal With During My Tenure," but this is why we give them so much power and the trust that's implicitly packaged with it.Not every decision made or mandate handed down needs to be solid gold. But it needs to be much better than what we're getting, which often seems to have been generated by a "COVID response" dartboard filled with ideas that shouldn't have made it past a cursory room read.Here's the thing about voting: it's important. And it needs to be secure. And, yes, we need to limit voter fraud but that shouldn't be the overriding concern since there's been so little of it observed during the numerous elections we've held in this nation.Sending voters out to gather in groups at polling places may cut down on fraud and (depending on the vote-taking tech) make things a bit more secure than relying on mail-in votes, but you have to factor in the exposure to a deadly virus -- both for voters and those forced to staff these disease vectors of attack.The lawyers speaking for the Texas Attorney General's office have issued one of the most tone deaf responses to worried state residents wondering if it might be OK to vote from home this year, given the spread of the virus. (h/t Sam Levine)The letter [PDF] starts off officially and non-stupidly enough by explaining the letter of the law does not support treating attempts to avoid infection as equivalent to established definitions of disability.

When it comes to derivative works, copyright in America has a long and storied history of stifling new and creative expression in favor of control by some ultimately-creative original author. Frankly, the section of copyright law that gives authors of content control over derivative works never made much sense to me. Or, at least, it appears to be a wholesale contradiction of the idea/expression dichotomy that is also supposed to exist in copyright law. Still, we've seen all kinds of fallout from the derivative works section of the law spill over into the real world, from laughable attempts by musical artists to control short phrases to derivatives building off of the original author's secondary work. The point is that the general consensus among most creators appears to be that derivative works outside of the author's control are the enemy and should be beaten down by any means necessary.The counterexample to that, however, is how the folks behind The Simpsons decided to handle one of the oddest musical acts I've ever come across. Think I'm exaggerating? It's a Ned Flanders homage using a death metal band as a vehicle to deliver "Flanderisms" via lyrics in what the band has termed "Nedal music."

The Austin (TX) police department barely avoided being hit with a DOJ consent decree a little over a decade ago. The sheer number of recommendations makes you wonder where the consent decree bar sits at the DOJ.

Last week we wrote about France's push to force Google to pay legacy news organizations for the high crime of... sending them traffic. That was somewhat expected, as under the EU Copyright Directive, some version of this will show up in every EU country over the next few months (though France's first approach is particularly dumb). Down in Australia, they're not subject to the EU Copyright Directive, but it's not stopping them from taking the same ridiculous approach:

In one of the more surprising Fourth Amendment decisions ever handed down, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled "chalking" tires for parking enforcement was a search and, as such, violated the Constitution. The ruling, handed down last spring, sided with the plaintiff. It found that the use of chalk to mark tires for parking enforcement was an investigative act. The intrusion onto citizens' private property -- their cars -- for investigative reasons (rather than the community caretaking function the government claimed) was impermissible without a warrant, even if the cars were parked on public streets.

Last week, a full page advertisement appeared in the NY Times, that was crowdfunded by nearly 27,000 people (mostly from Taiwan), with the provocative line: "WHO can help? Taiwan." Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen posted a picture to her Facebook page:The story behind the ad and the companion TaiwanCanHelp.US website is quite fascinating in its own right, and is reflective of the impressive digitally-aware political movement that has really grown up in Taiwan over the last decade. If you're unaware, over the last five years or so, Taiwan has been perhaps the most interesting experiment to watch in using technology to build more effective participatory government, pushed forward by a bunch of open source/open government activists who realized that working towards real solutions rather than pure partisan rancor, was a good way forward. And that shows in how this new campaign came about.Much of it was designed in response to the WHO's continued efforts to box Taiwan out of the COVID-19 conversation, even as Taiwan seemed to be one of a very small number of countries which appeared to be dealing with the onslaught of COVID-19 quite well (and this was despite its closeness to China, and many people regularly travelling back and forth between Taiwan and China). The WHO's efforts to ignore Taiwan went really viral in late March when a major news program in Hong Kong, RTHK, interviewing Assistant Director-General at WHO Bruce Aylward, showed Aylward's ridiculously awkward attempts to avoid responding to questions about Taiwan:

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Last summer, alt-right "journalist" and no-scare-quotes buffoon Laura Loomer sued Facebook for uninviting her from its platform. According to her lawyer, the equally-buffoonish Larry Klayman, it was defamatory for Facebook to boot Loomer from the platform by designating her a "dangerous individual."According to Loomer, her removal from Facebook entitles her to 5% of Facebook's net worth: roughly about $3 billion at the time of the suit's filing. Loomer sued in Florida but will now have to continue her lawsuit in California, where Facebook is actually located. And Facebook has fired back in its own filing, pointing out that designating users as "dangerous individuals" and performing other moderation activities is not only protected by Section 230 of the CDA, but by the First Amendment as well.Facebook's motion to dismiss [PDF] says that decisions to label people as "dangerous individuals" is an expression of Facebook's opinion of that person and their posts -- something clearly protected by the First Amendment.

You need only look at its treatment of the telecom industry to understand that the Trump administration doesn't give a flying damn about U.S. monopolies (or the impact those monopolies have on consumers, prices, innovation, or the market). Despite being one of the least competitive (and least popular) industries in America, the administration has taken a hatchet to telecom consumer protections, often using bogus data and fraud to do it. Massive, competition and job-eroding mergers are rubber stamped before the administration even sees the data. Any pretense at meaningful oversight is theater.A new report by the American Antitrust Institute suggests that despite the administration's rhetoric around "big tech," its apathy to monopolies is fairly uniform. Experts have noted for a decade than US antitrust enforcement has grown toothless and frail, and our definitions of monopoly power need updating in the Amazon era. Antitrust enforcement had already waned under the Obama administration, getting severely worse once Trump came to power:

This week, our first and second place winner on the insightful side is PaulT, on our post about the pro-Trump 12-year-old who was told that people calling him a defender of racism and sexual assault is protected speech. One commenter asserted that this means these terms have lost all meaning and can be lobbed at anyone you don't like, and Paul put that notion to bed:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2015, the White House was floating the idea of crypto backdoors while the Senate Intelligence Committee was finally deciding it should maybe keep a real eye on the Intelligence Community, and we learned that the Baltimore Police Department had asked the creators of The Wire to not include details about their cellphone surveillance tools. The lawsuits against the FCC's net neutrality rules were pouring in from the usual suspects while Republicans were rushing to kill the rules and Verizon was claiming that nobody really wants unlimited data. We also got a look at some emails from MPAA boss Chris Dodd, revealing the organization's real feelings about fair use (it's bad!) as well as its feelings about giving money to politicians involved in writing copyright law (it's good!)Ten Years AgoThis week in 2010, Apple was exercising its control over the iPhone ecosystem, a book publisher was trying vainly to exercise control over people ordering books from abroad, and a Japanese newspaper was hoping to exercising control over whether people can link to its website. The TSA admitted that body scanners could save images, the RIAA insisted that musicians can't make money without them, and telcos still maintained that Google was getting a "free ride". This was also the week that an online publication won a Pulitzer for the first time, and the week that the Library of Congress announced it would begin storing tweets.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2005, we took a look at how tricky things were getting in the VoIP space because people were forgetting or ignoring the fact that voice is data. We were pleased to see IBM free up a bunch of patents, but wondered why the New York Times felt that this was so baffling it needed exhaustive explanation. A customer sued Comcast for handing their info over to the RIAA, muni broadband was doing better in some places than people thought, and Google quietly launched its pre-YouTube video offering. Meanwhile, we were shocked-not-shocked to learn things like that people prefer buying cars online and mobile carriers won't make money selling music.

We don't often do book reviews here on Techdirt, but since we've been talking about reading books scanned by the Internet Archive,* this one seemed good to discuss because of how it touches on many of the issues discussed here.Of course, it's not actually a new book. Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, by Jay Williams & Raymond Abrashkin (with illustrations by Ezra Jack Keats), is part of a series of children's novels I read as a kid. I remember liking the books but have no specific memories of any of them, except for this one, which stuck with me for all these years because of a particular point it made. But more on that in a bit.The protagonist in these stories, Danny Dunn, is an eighth grade boy who, with his widowed mother, lives with Professor Bullfinch, an inventor (the mother is his housekeeper). As this particular book highlights, the professor's inventions include a special new kind of computer, which he keeps in his home laboratory. While today it hardly seems remarkable to have a computer in one's house, let alone one that can do everything that this one can, an important thing to remember is that this book was written in 1958, before computers were anywhere nearly as powerful and ubiquitous as they are today. Part of the magic of reading this book is getting a look at that historical snapshot of what the world was like when everything, that we today take for granted, was brand new.As an author's note explains, the story was written with the input of IBM computer engineers, so presumably its description of how the machine would have worked was not entirely fanciful.

We've seen roughly a zillion trademark disputes and cases in the alcohol industries, but perhaps nothing quite like this. Jack Daniels, the famous liquor company, found itself in a prolonged court battle with VIP Products LLC. At issue? Well, VIP makes a doggy chew toy that is a parody of Jack Daniels' famous whiskey bottle and trade dress. See for yourself.So, while the toy isn't exactly similar to the Jack Daniels bottle, it's a clear homage or parody of it. Parody, of course, has space carved out for it by the First Amendment. While trademark law might lead one to see a problem here, it's the fact that even this commercial product is expressive parody that keeps it from being trademark infringement.The Jack Daniels folks didn't agree. The company issued VIP a cease and desist notice, claiming trademark infringement. In response, VIP sued for declaratory judgement that its product was not infringing by asserting First Amendment protections. Jack Daniels then countersued for trademark infringement. While a district court ruled for Jack Daniels, arguing essentially that VIP's dog toy was not an expressive work because it wasn't a book, movie, or song, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th District vacated that ruling and stated that further proceedings would need to determine if Jack Daniels can demonstrate that it can apply the Rogers test for VIP's chew toy.

As if we needed any further evidence that Clearview is a terrible company. The web-scraping, facial recognition provider has been pitching its unproven tech to an assortment of law enforcement agencies, one-percenters, and questionable governments for a little while now. It shows no sign of slowing down either, no matter how many people (including members of Congress) are now aware of its business practices and cheerful exploitation of billions of images found all over the web.Someone grabbed a few internal Clearview documents and shared them with BuzzFeed earlier this year. Maybe they shouldn't have bothered. Clearview likes harvesting data and images as quickly as possible. But it's apparently less concerned with keeping its scraped stash secure from outsiders. As Zack Whittaker reports for TechCrunch, Clearview's internal files have been accessed by a security researcher, giving us yet another reason to distrust Hoan Ton-That's company.

We've been screaming from the rooftops about the need for more transparency regarding COVID-19, and tragically so many governments are going in the opposite direction. The latest is Iraq, where the nation's media regulator revoked Reuters' "license" for three months while also fining the organization ~$21,000 for daring to claim that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was actually higher than the government was reporting. According to the Communications and Media Commission, this violated rules and would "have serious repercussions on societal health and safety."Remember that we've been calling out various places -- including inside the United States -- that are saying that posting "fake news" about COVID-19 should be a criminal offense. This is what happens when you allow that kind of thinking. The arguments made by those who think they're stamping out "disinformation" are identical to those made by Iraq's media regulatory agency to silence accurate reporting.At the very least, it appears that Iraq's President recognizes this is ridiculous and dangerous:

The Supreme Court is being asked to resolve a circuit split on the reach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The CFAA has done a lot of damage to security researchers and others who violate terms of service agreements. The "others" include everyday Americans who have no idea they might be violating federal law when they do things like give fake information to social media companies or use work computers for personal reasons.The CFAA case SCOTUS is being asked to look at involves something a bit more serious than that. It deals with a police officer who took money to search a license plate database for someone who had no legal access to it. Here's a brief description of what triggered the prosecution from the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court.

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Last week we wrote about attempts to repair much-needed ventilators for serious coronavirus cases being stymied by manufacturers' refusal to allow hospital technicians to carry out the necessary work. Trammell Hudson, who describes himself as "a programmer, photographer, frequent hacker and occasional watchmaker", has come up with another approach to supplying ventilators to hospitals. It involves taking the inexpensive and widely-used Constant Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) devices typically used for sleep apnea, and turning them into emergency ventilators suitable for COVID-19 patients. These are known as Bi-level Positive Airway Pressure (BiPAP) machines. BiPAP devices are more sophisticated than CPAP ones: they apply higher pressure when the patient tries to breathe in, and lower pressure when they start to breathe out. In investigating the popular Airsense 10 CPAP device manufactured by ResMed, Hudson made a remarkable discovery:

A few weeks back, the Trump FCC put on a big show about a new "Keep America Connected Pledge." In it, the FCC proudly proclaimed that it had gotten hundreds of ISPs to agree to not disconnect users who couldn't pay for essential broadband service during a pandemic. The problem: the 60 day pledge was entirely voluntary, temporary, and because the FCC just got done obliterating its authority over ISPs at lobbyist behest (as part of its net neutrality repeal), it's largely impossible to actually enforce.Well, guess what:

The GDPR is a mess. Still. After nearly two years of existence, it hasn't done much to improve the privacy of the millions of Europeans it affects. But it has made big tech companies even more dominant and generated a hell of a lot of collateral damage.The privacy law was created by regulators bursting with short-sightedness and good intentions. And, if we're honest, a lot of unmitigated hate towards powerful US tech companies. (Hate, let's continue being honest, many of these companies did little to mitigate.) Transferring the power of privacy back to the people sounds good on paper, but in practice, it results in things like EU regulators violating their own law and, um, trash cans being temporarily removed from post offices because of the personal data they "collected" without permission.The unintended consequences of the broadly-written law have been discussed here at Techdirt with alarming regularity. Clerical mix-ups have resulted in people accessing other people's personal data. The law has reached across the pond to screw with US court dockets and vanish posts from American search engines. GDPR has even made Christmas more of a logistical nightmare than it usually is.Now there's this: in the middle of a pandemic, GDPR is preventing food from being delivered to at-risk Europeans self-isolating to prevent exposure to the deadly coronavirus. (Paywall-free link here.)

For the better part of a decade now, we've been discussing the growth of esports as a cultural thing. This genre of competition has hit milestone after milestone, from organized and broadcasted tournaments, to professional and collegiate teams and leagues, up to and including big boy television broadcasts. More recently we've been discussing how esports has been filling the void in various forms for fans of IRL sports, with versions of sports being played by real-life professional players. Even beyond that, the fact is that a thirst for consuming competitive arrangements has caused an uptick in interest in esports across the board.To put it simply, this is esports' moment. If ever there was going to be a major uptick in both viewership of esports and participation, it would be now, at a time when traditional sports aren't being played, and arenas will remain empty for the forseeable future. Interestingly, the trend towards that uptick has already begun.

When a police officer violates rights, they're put in the awkward position of defending their actions. If qualified immunity isn't immediately awarded to them by far-too-compliant courts, they've got to put in their work in defending the indefensible. That's when taxpayer dollars get spent defending actions that violate the rights of taxpayers.And there are so many examples of bad behavior no one should be defending in court. Here are cops arguing that someone invoking their rights is suspicious behavior. Here's one claiming that driving carefully and obeying all traffic laws is suspicious. Here are two cops claiming there's an expectation of privacy in the room they used to drink alcohol and nap while on the clock. Here are some officers claiming Constitutional rights are time-wasting bullshit.There's just so much of it. It would be darkly comic if it wasn't so tragic and/or frightening. Here's a school resource officer claiming a small amount of missing cash justified the strip search of twenty-two preteen girls. Here's another arguing it's OK to arrest a bunch of middle school students to "prove a point." Oh and it's apparently just good police work to hurl a flashbang grenade in the general direction of a toddler.This is all a lead-in to this gem of a defense, offered by cops hoping to see their small drug bust survive their unconstitutional actions. (via FourthAmendment.com)After running a red light, Joshua West was approached by a police officer after he had already parked his truck in the County Administration Building's parking lot. Officer Williams asked West to get back in his truck and proceeded to ask him questions about the truck's ownership, since it only had dealer tags in the window. West presented the officer with some paperwork -- including his valid license and insurance information. Officer Williams began writing a ticket for the red light violation.At some point during this stop, West dropped a small object on the floor of his truck. The officers weren't sure what it was but they really wanted to take a look. So, without actually having the legal permission to do so (West did not give consent), they began searching the truck. During this search, they found the object West had dropped: a small envelope (one that was -- according to the officers -- "concealed in West's fist") containing a clear plastic bag with methamphetamine in it.They then performed a second search, which turned up even more drugs. West moved to suppress this evidence, arguing the initial search of his truck was unjustified.Here's where it gets ridiculous. The officers claimed the first unlawful search was in fact lawful because it was done for "officer safety." Somehow, this "protective search" for weapons inside the truck allowed the officer to open an envelope and inspect its contents. The appeals court [PDF] agrees with the district court: this is a very stupid thing to assert.

For decades, big and small telecoms alike have abused the FCC Lifeline program, a fund that's supposed to help subsidize telecom connectivity for low income users. Started by Reagan and expanded by Bush Junior, the fairly modest program doles out a measly $9.25 per month subsidy that low-income homes can use to help pay a tiny fraction of their wireless, phone, or broadband bills (enrolled participants have to chose one).On one hand, the program (which you pay into via your telecom bills) genuinely has helped many low income Americans. On the other, the program has routinely been mired in fraud and scandal due to unethical telecom giants, spotty enforcement, and a failure to adequately track how this money is spent.Case in point: the FCC last week announced it would be fining low cost mobile service provider Tracfone a cool $6 million for making up "fictitious" subscribers in order to nab Lifeline money it wasn't owned. Some of the fraud was almost comical in its depth and scope, and should have been fairly easy to spot earlier:

Since time is a concept with increasingly less meaning, you may have forgotten that it’s been only five months, not five years, since the NBA’s dustup with China over Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” tweet.In response to that controversy, a number of business-conscious — to put it generously — major sports figures distanced themselves from Morey’s tweet. Some went so far as to suggest that it wasn’t their concern or responsibility to discuss human rights violations outside their own country.At the time, these responses were clear examples of craven, self-serving statements from people who were more interested in preserving their investments than speaking honestly about human rights in a country in which they have major financial interests.But given the current moment, it’s clear that they weren’t just wrong on the ethics of the situation. Because while there are many unknowns about COVID-19 — like when this nightmare will end — we do know this: China censored information about the outbreak, which helped accelerate its spread. Suddenly the chasm between American citizens and China’s silenced whistleblowers doesn’t seem so wide.The Associated Press reported this week that China’s top leadership became aware that COVID-19 would likely be a pandemic in mid-January — and sat on that information for nearly a week. As early as December, China was censoring keywords about coronavirus on social media. Reporters Without Borders chronicled the impact China’s stranglehold on information had on the pandemic, from threatening doctors trying to warn the public to arresting whistleblowers for “false rumors.” Dr. Li Wenliang, who lost his life to coronavirus, has become a martyr in China, his experience a warning of both the seriousness of this pandemic and the cruelties of the Chinese government’s repression.None of this absolves other governments of their failures to adequately respond to COVID-19. Every official, whether in China or the United States, is responsible for their own actions. But had China not censored vital information about a deadly pandemic and hid what it knew, its people could’ve been better prepared and slowed the spread of COVID-19. According to Zhong Nanshan, “one of China’s most highly regarded epidemiology experts and the leader of the National Health Commission’s task force on the epidemic,” if China had taken appropriate action early on, rather than obfuscate and censor, “the number of sick would have been greatly reduced.”China’s citizens — and people across the globe — would have had more time to respond. Whether that time was or would have been utilized responsibly is another question.Back in October, no one in the NBA could’ve known what awaited the world just a few short months later. But revisiting that debacle now casts into even sharper relief the disgrace of it all.After Morey’s tweet, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr stated: "None of us are perfect and we all have different issues that we have to get to and saying that is my right as an American...The world is a complex place and there's more gray than black and white." Suggesting Morey wasn’t “educated” on the situation, LeBron James warned that, even though we have freedom of speech, we should “be careful” about what we say.And the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan said, “I want to have an opinion in America, there’s a civic duty to engage and do the right thing, but having an opinion on sovereign matters in other countries, it’s for those people to decide,” and concluded that “you have to respect the norms” of China. (Khan’s comments were particularly baffling given that many Chinese people have faced extreme consequences for “having an opinion on sovereign matters.”)Shaquille O’Neal was one of the few to get it right. Shaq stressed the right to free speech, and added: “Whenever you see something wrong going on anywhere in the world, you should have the right to say ‘that’s not right,’ and that’s what [Morey] did.”We should care about Uighur prison camps, forced disappearances, crackdowns in Hong Kong, suppression in Tibet, censorship of women’s rights activists, the Great Firewall, and mass surveillance simply because caring about human suffering is the right thing to do, regardless of its proximity to us.But if basic morality doesn’t persuade us, maybe our current situation will. Censorship in China may seem like a faraway problem, but its effects will be felt globally for a long time to come. If that doesn’t convince us to care, it’s not clear what will.Sarah McLaughlin is Director of Targeted Advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The views expressed here are her own.

Since time is a concept with increasingly less meaning, you may have forgotten that it’s been only five months, not five years, since the NBA’s dustup with China over Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” tweet.In response to that controversy, a number of business-conscious — to put it generously — major sports figures distanced themselves from Morey’s tweet. Some went so far as to suggest that it wasn’t their concern or responsibility to discuss human rights violations outside their own country.At the time, these responses were clear examples of craven, self-serving statements from people who were more interested in preserving their investments than speaking honestly about human rights in a country in which they have major financial interests.But given the current moment, it’s clear that they weren’t just wrong on the ethics of the situation. Because while there are many unknowns about COVID-19 — like when this nightmare will end — we do know this: China censored information about the outbreak, which helped accelerate its spread. Suddenly the chasm between American citizens and China’s silenced whistleblowers doesn’t seem so wide.The Associated Press reported this week that China’s top leadership became aware that COVID-19 would likely be a pandemic in mid-January — and sat on that information for nearly a week. As early as December, China was censoring keywords about coronavirus on social media. Reporters Without Borders chronicled the impact China’s stranglehold on information had on the pandemic, from threatening doctors trying to warn the public to arresting whistleblowers for “false rumors.” Dr. Li Wenliang, who lost his life to coronavirus, has become a martyr in China, his experience a warning of both the seriousness of this pandemic and the cruelties of the Chinese government’s repression.None of this absolves other governments of their failures to adequately respond to COVID-19. Every official, whether in China or the United States, is responsible for their own actions. But had China not censored vital information about a deadly pandemic and hid what it knew, its people could’ve been better prepared and slowed the spread of COVID-19. According to Zhong Nanshan, “one of China’s most highly regarded epidemiology experts and the leader of the National Health Commission’s task force on the epidemic,” if China had taken appropriate action early on, rather than obfuscate and censor, “the number of sick would have been greatly reduced.”China’s citizens — and people across the globe — would have had more time to respond. Whether that time was or would have been utilized responsibly is another question.Back in October, no one in the NBA could’ve known what awaited the world just a few short months later. But revisiting that debacle now casts into even sharper relief the disgrace of it all.After Morey’s tweet, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr stated: "None of us are perfect and we all have different issues that we have to get to and saying that is my right as an American...The world is a complex place and there's more gray than black and white." Suggesting Morey wasn’t “educated” on the situation, LeBron James warned that, even though we have freedom of speech, we should “be careful” about what we say.And the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan said, “I want to have an opinion in America, there’s a civic duty to engage and do the right thing, but having an opinion on sovereign matters in other countries, it’s for those people to decide,” and concluded that “you have to respect the norms” of China. (Khan’s comments were particularly baffling given that many Chinese people have faced extreme consequences for “having an opinion on sovereign matters.”)Shaquille O’Neal was one of the few to get it right. Shaq stressed the right to free speech, and added: “Whenever you see something wrong going on anywhere in the world, you should have the right to say ‘that’s not right,’ and that’s what [Morey] did.”We should care about Uighur prison camps, forced disappearances, crackdowns in Hong Kong, suppression in Tibet, censorship of women’s rights activists, the Great Firewall, and mass surveillance simply because caring about human suffering is the right thing to do, regardless of its proximity to us.But if basic morality doesn’t persuade us, maybe our current situation will. Censorship in China may seem like a faraway problem, but its effects will be felt globally for a long time to come. If that doesn’t convince us to care, it’s not clear what will.Sarah McLaughlin is Director of Targeted Advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The views expressed here are her own.

Every presidential administration seems to make a game of thwarting oversight. The current one is no different. President Trump is setting himself apart from the pack by firing IGs at an alarming pace. Whatever's being done in our name at various government agencies is being done in the dark. Whistleblowers and leakers are being hunted down and persecuted/prosecuted (another favorite presidential sport).What would be considered unlawful obstruction in a criminal investigation is just business as usual at the Executive branch. The latest (but certainly not the last) obstruction was revealed in the investigation of the "JEDI" contract procedure. Amazon really wanted to be a part of American bloodsports, but was beaten out by Microsoft for lucrative Pentagon cloud storage contracts. Amazon sued, alleging it got illegally screwed by the President, claiming his frequent derogatory comments about Amazon and the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post pushed the Pentagon towards selecting Microsoft.An investigation was opened by the Defense Department's Inspector General. And we'll never know what really happened because it appears the administration inserted itself into the investigation. Jacqueline Feldscher has more details at Politico:

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For a group prone to calling others "snowflakes," they sure seem to get their feelings hurt pretty quickly. Fans of President Trump have filed a lot of defamation lawsuits, litigiously angry they've been called things because of things they've done. This includes notable fans of Trump, such as... President Trump himself, as well as his campaign.One of the youngest Trump fans sued Newsweek over a piece covering the 12-year-old boy (who is referred to only as "C.M." in the lawsuit) and his MAGA-related antics. The Newsweek article discussed the minor's pro-Trump videos, made more popular by local coverage in C.M.'s hometown. Here's how C.M. turned from precocious pre-teen to a limited purpose public figure. From the Third Circuit Appeals Court decision [PDF]:

Despite what you might think, the U.S. government doesn't actually know where broadband is really available, which is kind of a problem when you consider the FCC doles out billions annually in subsidies to expand and improve service.Later this month, the Pai FCC is expected to sign off on a new plan (pdf) that would dole out $9 billion in funding to help shore up fifth generation (5G) wireless coverage to rural areas. Consumer groups and academics have long argued, however, that the FCC's broadband availability maps have only a fleeting relationship to reality. That concern was mirrored by the Competitive Carriers Association, a coalition of largely small and mid-sized carriers, which issued a statement warning the FCC that it shouldn't be throwing billions in subsidies around without having an accurate understanding of the problem the agency is trying to fix:

History has shown that important, innovative breakthroughs come from transparency, collaboration, and information sharing. Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic is going to require that -- but tragically it appears that China is going in the opposite direction. The government there is now requiring "extra vetting" by the government before research regarding COVID-19 can be published. Indeed, some preliminary research has already been removed from the internet:

The alcohol trademark wars continue! Now, usually when we talk about trademark disputes in the booze business, those disputes tend to center around creative names and trade dress of specific craft brands. This is most common in the craft beer arena, but it also happens in wine and liquor. While the sudden turn towards corporatism in the craft alcohol industries is more than mildly annoying, it is at least understandable when there is a trademark fight over the more unique aspects of branding.Much more annoying is when trademark disputes arise from one party trying to fight over the more generic terms in the alcohol industry. An example of this comes to us from JaM Cellars, the makers of the JaM brand of wine. Full disclosure: I've consumed roughly a metric ton of JaM wine in my time and really, really love it. What I love less, though, is that JaM decided to sue The Wine Group, makers of Franzia boxed wine, over its newly branded "Bold and Jammy" brand of boxed red wine.

Senator Richard Burr, the head of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee sure seems to be engaged in a bunch of sketchy looking activities. First, there was the revelation from a few weeks back of selling off a bunch of hotel stock after being briefed about COVID-19 (while simultaneously telling the public it was nothing to worry about -- and that the US was "in a better position than any other country to respond," which now looks laughable in retrospect). The latest, as revealed by ProPublica, is that Burr sold his DC townhouse to a lobbyist who has had issues before Barr's committees, in a "private" unlisted sale for what appears to be above market rates.

The nation's phone companies don't really want to be in the residential broadband business. They routinely refuse to upgrade their networks despite millions in taxpayer subsidies, yet often lobby to ensure nobody else can deliver broadband in these neglected footprints either. US telcos have a bizarre disdain for their paying customers, delivering the bare minimum (slow DSL) at the highest rates they can possibly charge without a full-scale consumer revolt. It's not surprising, then, that many telco DSL customers are fleeing to cable broadband monopolies like Comcast, assuming they even have the choice.The poster child for this kind of dysfunction has long been Frontier Communications. Frontier, the third biggest telco in the U.S., has been repeatedly busted in a series of scandals involving substandard service and the misuse of taxpayer money. In States like West Virginia, leaders have buried reports exposing the depth of Frontier's grift, and, until recently, a Frontier executive did double duty as a state representative without anybody in the state thinking that was a conflict of interest. The company has since been under investigations from New York to Minnesota for failing to upgrade or even repair its aging network.This week, Frontier finally filed for bankruptcy, hoping to finally wipe the slate clean after several decades of bungled and ill-advised mergers, massive debt, and operating a business model where snide neglect was the centerpiece. Of course the company's announcement can't acknowledge any of these self-inflicted gunshot wounds, with Frontier insisting it has learned its lesson:

Puerto Rico is a US territory and its citizens have been citizens of the United States since 1917. A little more than one hundred years later, the local government has decided the rights granted to Puerto Ricans by the US Constitution aren't really rights -- not in the middle of a pandemic.The government is already receiving criticism (and at least one lawsuit) for its COVID-related crackdowns, which include quarantine and curfew orders that appear to violate Constitutional rights. Now, the government has added onto its Public Security law to criminalize certain kinds of speech. Here's the Committee to Protect Journalists on the island's "fake news" law. (h/t Sarah McLaughlin)

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This past Saturday was (apparently) "National Pet Day." I have pets and was unaware of this, but I'll survive. Anyway, the US Copyright Office thought that this would be a good day to tweet out this utter nonsense:

If you recall, the biggest downside of the $26 billion Sprint T-Mobile merger was the fact that the deal would dramatically reduce overall competition in the U.S. wireless space. Data from around the globe clearly shows that the elimination of one of just four major competitors results in layoffs and higher prices due to less competition. It's not debatable. Given U.S. consumers already pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world, most objective experts recommended that the deal be blocked.It wasn't. Instead, the Trump FCC rubber stamped the deal before even seeing impact studies. And the DOJ not only ignored the recommendations of its staff, but DOJ "antitrust" boss Makan Delrahim personally helped guide the deal's approval process via personal phone and email accounts. Both agencies, and the vocal chorus of telecom-linked industry allies, all behaved as if all of this was perfectly legitimate and not grotesquely corrupt.At the heart of the DOJ's approval was a flimsy proposal that involved giving Dish Network some T-Mobile spectrum in the hopes that, over even years, they'd be able to build out a replacement fourth carrier. As we noted at the time there was very little chance this plan was ever going to work.One, Dish (and CEO Charlie Ergen) have a long history of empty promises in wireless. He'd been accused (including by T-Mobile previously) of simply hoarding valuable spectrum and stringing along feckless, captured regulators for years with an eye on cashing out once the spectrum's value had appreciated. Two, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are all heavily incentivized to make sure this proposal never got off the ground. Three, the current FCC has yet to stand up to industry on a single issue of substance, would never engage in the kind of nannying required to usher Dish's plan from pipe dream to major network.But with the pandemic, it's not even clear we're going to get to that part of the program. Reports now indicate that the pandemic and quarantine may have scuttled Dish's plans for financing and deployment, even if Ergen hadn't been bluffing. The complaints are largely coming from unsourced Wall Street insiders, but they're certainly right that funding the T-Mobile merger's deus ex machina just got notably more complicated: