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Richard Blumenthal has been attacking internet services he doesn't understand since before he was even a US Senator. It has carried over into his job as a Senator, and was abundantly obvious in his role as a co-sponsor for FOSTA. His hatred of the internet was on clear display during a hearing over FOSTA in which he flat out said that if smaller internet companies couldn't put in place the kind of infrastructure required to comply with FOSTA, that they should go out of business. Blumenthal's latest ridiculous bit of legislation lose your Section 230 protections. And while Blumenthal likes to pretend that the EARN IT Act doesn't target encryption, he also lied about FOSTA and insisted it had no impact on CDA 230 (which it directly amended).But Blumenthal has now taken his ridiculousness up a notch. Following the (legitimately concerning) reports that the suddenly incredibly popular videoconferencing software Zoom was not actually providing end-to-end encrypted video chats (despite its marketing claims), Blumenthal decided to step in and play the hero sending an angry letter to the company, while linking to the Intercept's original story about Zoom's misleading claims about encryption:

In 2017, hackers and security researchers highlighted long-standing vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signalling System 7 in the US), a series of protocols first built in 1975 to help connect phone carriers around the world. While the problem isn't new, a 2016 60 Minutes report brought wider attention to the fact that the flaw can allow a hacker to track user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations. All while the intrusion looks like ordinary carrier to carrier chatter among a sea of other, "privileged peering relationships."Telecom carriers and lobbyists have routinely downplayed the flaw and their multi-year failure to do much about it. In 2018, the CBC noted how Canadian wireless providers Bell and Rogers weren't even willing to talk about the flaw after the news outlet published an investigation showing how (using only a mobile phone number) it was possible to intercept the calls and movements of Quebec NDP MP Matthew Dubé.Now there's another wake up call: a new report by The Guardian indicates that Saudi Arabia has likely been exploiting the flaw for years to track and monitor Saudi Arabian targets when they travel in the United States:

As Karl Bode wrote what feels like a decade ago on March 19, 2020, privacy and encryption will be more important than ever during this pandemic and the future that succeeds it. Plenty of governments have been sacrificing citizens' privacy for better virus tracking and plenty of governments were already throwing shade at encryption well before the pandemic became a pandemic. That includes our government, which has been agitating against encryption for several years now and fighting against our privacy in federal courts for decades.An influx of remote workers makes encryption and privacy even more important, as there's plenty of sensitive company business being done over open networks with minimal protections. The beneficiaries of this new normal are responding quickly to the unexpected demand, but protection of work-at-home employees and their employers seems to have been forgotten.The field is crowded with lots of telecommuting software providers. Standing out is key if you're going to take advantage of the current health crisis. Video conference software developer Zoom, however, is playing fast and loose with terminology in an attempt to scoop up more market share. As Micah Lee and Yael Grauer report for The Intercept, words don't seem to mean what they normally mean when they're being used by Zoom.

Somehow, it's been nearly four years since a tattoo company, Solid Oak Sketches, decided to sue 2K Sports, the studio behind the renowned NBA 2K franchise, claiming that the game's faithful representation of several stars' tattoos was copyright infringement. The company claimed to own the copyright on the design of several players' tattoos, including most famously LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and DeAndre Jordan. The claim in the suit was that 2K's faithful depiction of the players, whom had collectively licensed their likenesses via the NBAPA, somehow violated Solid Oak's IP rights.Put another way, it could be said that by branding the player with Solid Oak's designs, the company seems to think it can control the players' ability to profit off of their own likenesses. That this draws the mind to very uncomfortable historical parallels apparently was of no issue to Solid Oak.Well, while 2K Sports failed to get the court to dismiss the case back in 2018, it has more recently won the case on summary judgement, with the court quite helpfully getting everything right and declaring the depiction of tattoos in video games in this manner to be Fair Use.

We have moved to a radically remote posture, leaving a lot of empty real-estate in corporateoffices and abandoning the final protections of the digital perimeter. For years, we’ve heard thatthe perimeter is dead and there are no borders in cyberspace. We have even had promises ofa new and better style of working without being bound to a physical office and the tyranny andwaste of the commute. However, much like the promise of less travel in a digital age or even thetotal paperless office these work-life aspirations never had a chance to materialize beforeCOVID-19 forced us to disperse and connect over the Internet. This has massive implicationson corporate culture and productivity. More immediately, the surge in use of remote workcapabilities has consequences from a security and privacy perspective that cannot be ignored.For some, working from home isn’t new. This is especially true for those in sales and fieldmarketing across many industries or for knowledge workers, such as federal governmentemployees that are familiar with their telecommuting contract. The day after the “stay home”order is given, the rest of the company suddenly find themselves doing the math on how to stayproductive, whether they are the 20% of largely general and administrative or management staffwho are always in the office for a young tech startup or the 80% of all employees at a big bluechip company. Some already have a laptop that they bring with them everywhere and are usedto bringing home, but for others it’s time to spark up the family computer or get a hastily issuedcompany laptop and try to get it running without an IT technician parked at their elbow to help.Others will grab a tablet or a smartphone, once relegated to mostly personal use, and repurposeit to attend to professional needs. Any way you look at it, the enterprise footprint just grew andradically changed in a 24 hour period.From a security perspective, the basics are critical. This is true whether a company is a maturesecurity shop or not—risk management is the lodestar. It starts with a risk analysis and dialog.You’ll need to first create a master list of security essentials and rank them in order ofsensitivity, likelihood and impact. The reality is that you can do anything, but you can’t doeverything; and ultimately this is a triage game.High on the list are concerns about misinformation, weaponized information and socialengineering. While companies can’t control machines that they don’t own, they have to try to getthe most secure endpoints they can and ensure identity integrity. This means emphasizing whatchannels are appropriate or not for employees and their families for information: news networks,websites and the like. But COVID-19 is our new common watering hole, and malicious actorsare manufacturing phishing attacks, devilish spear-phishing campaigns, rogue applications andmore. Regular, short, routine communications to remind people of the basics, to gain a pulse onthe organization and to provide clear policies are essential.Also at the highest level of concern is securing the connection to the network and back into theenvironment. This requires VPN connections, strong authentication and endpoint preventionand detection controls. In the back office generally and in the security operations centerspecifically, baselines from which anomalies are normally noted for focus will be in flux;everything will look like an anomaly for a while in the brave new remote world.Which brings us to the most difficult of topics: privacy.Did employees bring notes and data home before the office closure? Are they creating IP anddata protected by privacy laws and regulations as they continue to do business? Who is in theimmediate environment physically? These are some of the critical questions. In some cases youmay never know the answers to these questions or you may not have a right to know theanswers but must appreciate others’ living situations and assume some worst case scenarios.There are still more questions. Should cameras be on for conference calls when employeesmight be embarrassed of their personal space being seen by colleagues? Should they useheadsets when a life partner might work for another company or even a competitor or perhaps aroommate might simply overhear sensitive information? Do we encourage them to care for achild when they are crying or do workers feel the need to hide their families? While manycompanies have previously developed “work from home” policies now we are beginning tounderstand what is really needed for remote, working employees. Now is the time to take afresh look at privacy in your work from home policy.Finally, we must understand the adversary is moving into a new normal as well. They may notbe able to immediately exploit all weaknesses or even any given weakness. They too willpursue the lowest hanging fruit while investing in some longer term R&D to develop new attacksspecifically for the home environment. Threat actors may be purchasing tools fromcybercriminals, mining existing botnets to see what IP is on those already-compromisedmachines or targeting home automation, printers and routers after triangulating IP addressesand digital locations for targets. In the weeks ahead, targeting new dimensions of technicaldiversity and innovating to develop new attack vectors will be the name of the game for the badguys.The future is very much a moving target for security and privacy professionals. Here is wherethe ongoing maintenance on an ongoing basis is critical: watching vulnerabilities in the newbattery of enterprise applications for remote productivity, moving to the next order ofvulnerabilities and so on. This might involve extending IT support and patching advice to homeusers on how to secure their home network, how to configure Amazon or Alexa devices or newtools and services for secure note-taking, collaboration, use of newly available standardoperating environment systems and so on. In short, the game of security and privacy will beabout rates of adaptation between asymmetric opponents.The brave new work from home world would be best if it was short lived, but the genie won’t goback in the bottle. While the economy will adapt and move on at some point, it’s too early to tellwhat percentage of current remote workers will continue to work from home permanently in apost COVID-19 world or if we will return to the tyranny of the commute. Regardless, the lastingeffect of innovation on both attack and defense will persist. As has been said, never waste agood crisis: let’s hope that IT, corporate culture, security and privacy all benefit from the currentsituation to make a more productive and humane cyber world when we return to a more normalepidemiological world.Sam Curry is Chief Product and Security Officer at Cybereason.

It's pretty well established that giving the finger to cops is protected expression. Stopping or detaining someone for flipping you off violates their rights and the usual law enforcement excuses for unconstitutional behavior tend to perform poorly when examined by a federal judge.In 2018, a Virginia federal court denied qualified immunity to Officer Rob Coleman for his stop of Brian Clark, who made a gesture that "was crude, but not criminal." Officer Coleman claimed he was "concerned" by Clark's hand gesture and was just doing some community caretaking by pulling over the car Clark was riding in. Literally unbelievably, the officer claimed he viewed the hand gesture as a sign of distress, as only a person "under the influence" of alcohol or drugs (or "suffering from some sort of mental illness") would dare do such a thing.Of course, Coleman never made any inquiries about distress, mental illness, or intoxication during the 20-minute stop. The court denied Coleman's request for qualified immunity, stating it should have been clear stopping someone for throwing the bird would violate both the First and Fourth Amendments.The case went to trial. Somehow the jury managed to find in favor of the cop who had violated two rights with his traffic stop. The jury said Coleman did not lack reasonable suspicion to stop and detain Clark for allegedly giving the officer the one-finger salute.Clark challenged this verdict, asking the court to overturn the inexplicable decision by the jury to go against its own interests by saying it's ok for cops like Coleman to engage in retaliatory stops of people who've offended them.The court agrees with Clark: this is indeed some bullshit. (via The Newspaper)From the decision [PDF]:

Here we go again: content moderation at scale is impossible to do well -- and, as we've discussed, things are especially tricky when it comes to content moderation and political advertising. Now, when you mix into that content moderation to try to stop disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and you run up against... politicians facing blocks in trying to advertise about Trump's leadership failures in response to the pandemic:

A couple of lying cops who couldn't perform a traffic stop without violating the driver's rights have just seen their illegally-obtained evidence tossed and their successful drug bust busted. The Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeal not only finds the officers untrustworthy but also points out there's nothing reasonably suspicious about someone's invocation of their rights.The traffic stop that resulted in the discovery of methamphetamines was clearly pretextual. There's nothing legally wrong with using traffic stops to engage in other investigations, but officers must have the reasonable suspicion to navigate away from the initial purpose of the stop. The Supreme Court's Rodriguez decision removed a lot of the leeway law enforcement officers have exploited for years.This stop began with the accusation that the car's driver, Michael Glen Robinson, was failing to stay in his own lane. Robinson's driving was recorded by the officer's dash cam, along with the entire traffic stop. The court says it's not clear Robinson actually violated the law. From the decision [PDF]:

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Continuing our never-ending series of posts about the impossibility of content moderation at scale, let's take a look at just how impossible it is to handle misinformation in the age of COVID-19. Ben Thompson over at Stratechery has a truly wonderful post highlighting this problem with regards to Twitter's disinformation policies, and how things break down when the "misinformation" is coming form official sources. We noted this, to some extent, the other day when we called out Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo for saying that he was seeking to have anyone who posted false information online about COVID-19 prosecuted. During the press conference, he said to only listen to "your elected officials, or to your appointed officials." But, as we noted, our elected officials and their appointees aren't always right.As Thompson points out, Twitter also took the seemingly reasonable position that in an effort to stop (widespread) COVID-19 misinformation, it would start taking down content that disagreed with official government statements:

Generally speaking, experts believe the U.S. internet should hold up pretty well under the significant new strain created by COVID-19. Italy and China's networks have generally weathered the added load, and most major U.S. ISPs say congestion shouldn't be a problem. Streaming providers have been reducing their overall bandwidth consumption as a precautionary measure, though generally many providers say they've seen greater impact from events like the Superbowl.That's not to say there won't be a few hiccups. A new report by broadband availability tracking firm BroadbandNow indicates that a number of cities are seeing slowdowns under the weight of millions of additional telecommuters and videoconferencing students. That said, most cities aren't seeing any sort of devastating slowdowns as of yet:

The Baltimore Police Department was an enthusiastic early adopter of cell site simulator technology. In 2015, a Baltimore detective admitted the department had deployed its collection of cell tower spoofers 4,300 times since 2007.The best estimate on how many of those 4,300 deployments ever showed up in court documents remains near zero. The Baltimore PD hid its deployments behind pen register orders, ensuring judges and defendants never knew the departments was using cell site simulators to track down suspects.A little bit of information has reached the public domain in recent years, showing the Baltimore PD was more willing to toss cases than expose its use of Stingray devices. Judges were willing to toss cases too, once it was determined these secret deployments violated the Fourth Amendment.There are now three Supreme Court rulings that directly affect Stingray deployments, with the most recent being the Carpenter decision. If the government needs a warrant to obtain historical cell site location info, it stands to reason a warrant should be required to engage in real-time tracking using Stingrays, even if the court did not specifically address this.There's also the Kyllo decision, which found the use of an infrared device to search a house for occupants violated the Fourth Amendment. An intrusion in which the government never actually enters the house is still an intrusion. Cell site simulators force phones inside houses to give up certain identifying information even if officers never approach the residence.Finally, there's the Riley decision that implemented search warrants for cellphones. A Stingray device searches cellphones, even if the search is "limited" to identifying info and location data. (Stingrays can also be used to intercept communications, but there's been no confirmed use of this particular configuration by US law enforcement agencies.)All of these are in play in this recent decision [PDF] by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court does not explicitly find that a Hailstorm deployment by the Baltimore PD in 2014 was unconstitutional. But it does find that the lower court did not do enough fact-finding to determine whether it fell on the wrong side of the Fourth Amendment.The Baltimore PD has pretty much conceded some of these points already.

As some of you may be aware, Florida Atlantic University's sports teams and mascots are the Owls. As some of you may also be aware, the southeast is home to Owl Tutoring, a college tutoring service with a fairly good reputation. Owl Tutoring has existed for over a decade and has even promoted itself by advertising in FAU publications. That's probably why it took the folks at the company by such surprise to suddenly get a C&D letter from FAU's legal team accusing it of committing trademark infringement.

So we've noted a few times now how the FCC's decision to kill net neutrality did a hell of a lot more than just kill "net neutrality." It obliterated much of the FCC's consumer protection authority, making it harder than ever to hold U.S. telecom monopolies accountable for bad behavior like rampant privacy violations, ripping you off with bullshit fees, or refusing to upgrade or repair long-neglected taxpayer subsidized networks. And this was a problem even before America began staring down the barrel of a brutal pandemic while stuck at home telecommuting.Enter American Enterprise Institute's Roslyn Layton, who apparently thought that using COVID-19 as a prop to celebrate the death of U.S. telecom consumer protections was somehow a good idea. In a brutally tone-deaf blog post this week, Layton insisted that the FCC's decision to ignore a bipartisan majority of the public and kiss the ass of U.S. telecom giants was proving to be really helpful during a terrifying crisis:

We know the FBI can't accurately track how many encrypted devices it has in its possession. Two consecutive directors have pushed a "going dark" narrative using an inflated number of uncracked phones. At one point the FBI claimed it had nearly 8,000 phones in its possession, each one presumably full of evidence. When pressed for information by members of Congress, the FBI suddenly realized it had overstated this number by at least 6,000 phones. It discovered its error in May of 2018. It has yet to release an updated number.The FBI can't track seized phones so it should come as no surprise it can't accurately track the guns and ammo in its possession. The DOJ Inspector General has completed its audit [PDF] of the FBI's weapons control system and found that the FBI isn't really controlling its weapons.The FBI claims to have nearly 58,000 firearms in its inventory. This is pretty much the extent of the good news in the IG report:

It's been said many times over that if libraries did not currently exist, there's no way that publishers would allow them to come into existence today. Libraries are, in fact, a lovely and important artifact of a pre-copyright time when we actually valued knowledge sharing, rather than locking up knowledge behind a paywall. Last week, the Internet Archive announced what it's calling a National Emergency Library -- a very useful and sensible offering, as we'll explain below. However, publishers and their various organizations freaked out (leading some authors to freak out as well). The freak out is not intellectually honest or consistent, but we'll get there.As you may or may not know, for a while now, the Internet Archive and many other libraries have been using a system called Controlled Digital Lending, which was put together to enable digital checkouts of books for which there may not be any ebooks available. Basically, the Archive helped a bunch of libraries scan a ton of books, and the libraries lend them out just as if they were lending out regular books. They keep the physical copy on the shelf and will not lend out more copies of the digital book than the physical copies they hold -- basically doing exactly what a library does. There are strong arguments for why this is clearly legal. Scanning a book you own is legal. Lending out books is legal.Of course, when CDL was first announced, publishers (mainly) and The Authors Guild (which, contrary to its name, tends to be a front group for publishers, rather than authors) completely lost their shit and whined about how this was piracy. Remember, the Authors Guild has already tried suing libraries for scanning books and failed miserably. Challenging this effort at lending scans of books would also likely fail.One important thing to note: the scans of books that are part of the CDL effort are not great. They are images of actual book pages, and not anything like ebooks that are designed to be read nicely on a Kindle or whatnot. No one would choose a CDL book over a regular ebook if given the choice, because the experience is not nearly as good.The big news with the National Emergency Library is basically the removal of waitlists for checking out these books. They still have DRM and you still only can access the books for two weeks, but unlike with CDL where there was a 1 to 1 ratio of which books the Internet Archive had a physical copy of and those which it would lend out, the NEL removed that limitation and made it so that more people could access those books at once. The reasoning here is sound: in the midst of this pandemic, most physical libraries are closed, so most people literally cannot get physical books. They are sitting there unlendable. To help deal with that, the Internet Archive removed the waitlists on the books it had scanned. As the Archive explained, it focused heavily on making sure books with no ebook-availability (and educational books) were available:

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Every tragedy should be exploited. That's the theory behind a string of Excolo Law and 1-800-LAW-FIRM lawsuits that seek to hold social media companies responsible for acts of terrorism. So far, not a single court has been willing to ignore Section 230 of the CDA or the First Amendment to give these opportunists any satisfaction. Notwithstanding some very bizarre arguments from one Ninth Circuit judge, it's been a long run of shutouts for lawyers I fucking hope are working on contingency.However you may feel about social media companies' efforts to cut down on "terrorist" content, the reality of the situation is Twitter, Facebook, et al are not directly or indirectly responsible for acts of violence. Moderation at scale is impossible and allowing litigants to target social media companies directly is only going to result in lousier moderation, rather than whatever it is each litigant desires. (See also: numerous lawsuits about "anti-conservative bias.")This lawsuit is a particularly durable loser. Eric Goldman has the details at his blog. How many times do litigants need to be told "No?" Well, I told you once and I told you twice, but you never listen to my advice:

For years, we've been promised repeatedly that new broadband technologies would soon arrive to disrupt the broken, cable broadband versus telco DSL duopoly in the states. And for just as long, these emergent technologies, for a wide variety of reasons, have failed to materialize.In the late 90s and early aughts it was the promise of broadband over powerline (BPL) -- an emerging tech that utilized utility poles and electrical lines to help deliver broadband to underserved regions. But while BPL was widely hyped and repeatedly used to justify rampant deregulation at the time (read: we don't need pesky consumer protections because this new competition will soon arrive to fix everything), the technology wound up being an interference-prone dud. All of the deregulation based on this emerging technology remained intact however, and the U.S. broadband competition problem in many ways got worse.Cable enjoys a massive, growing monopoly over broadband across huge swaths of the U.S. thanks to phone companies that have effectively given up on upgrading or even repairing aging DSL lines across numerous markets. These days, instead of BPL, fifth-generation wireless (5G) is often used as the carrot on a stick panacea to justify industry deregulation, even if (1) such deregulation repeatedly tends to make U.S. telecom problems worse, and (2) 5G isn't going to be universally available, affordable, or as unrestrictive as fixed-line broadband for a laundry list of reasons.Low orbit satellite broadband is also often used to justify endless deregulation of the sector and the steady erosion of U.S. telecom consumer protections. In part because the lower orbit means such connections should have lower latency than traditional, often crappy satellite broadband. But there too the hype, at least so far, has failed to live up to reality. For example OneWeb, one of several operations exploring the space, has been hyped for a few years as a deus ex machina that will soon fix much of what ails U.S. broadband. From a speech by FCC boss Ajit Pai last year, for example:

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained a DOJ report on predictive policing via a FOIA lawsuit. The document dates back to 2014 but it shows the DOJ had concerns about the negative side effects of predicting where crime may occur by using data that details where crime has happened.The report [PDF] contains some limited data from trial runs of predictive policing efforts. One of these tests ran from 2009 to 2012 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Using historic property crime data, along with 911 calls and the number of residents on parole or probation, the analytic software attempted to predict where future crime might occur and where police presence might be increased to prevent crime.The results were inconclusive:

It's clear that digital technology will play a key role in helping to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, whether as a way of disseminating information, telecommuting, or of keeping people entertained during lockdowns. Less welcome is the use of advanced surveillance and tracking techniques to monitor the movements of people to see if they are obeying quarantine restrictions. Another obvious way to apply technology is to manage the key resources being used to tackle it. That's what the UK's National Health Service (NHS) is doing:

Everyone has rights, even the people who often disrespect the rights of others. But those rights can only be violated in certain, specific ways and the two cops, who sued over alleged rights violations, didn't actually have their rights violated.Officers Denis Lawlor and Daniel Varallo once worked for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) in Chicago. They were fired after some of their candid comments about their work ethic and coworkers were inadvertently publicly broadcast on a Illinois State Police channel. These comments were recorded and turned over to the officers' employer, which correctly decided these two officers should find somewhere else to work. (via FourthAmendment.com)Lawlor and Varallo arrived at work and set about doing what they apparently normally did: nothing. This isn't an assumption. It's what they admitted to during the conversation they thought they were having privately. However, the officers' expectation of privacy isn't the same as the Fourth Amendment's expectation of privacy, even if they were safely (or so they thought) ensconced in a "break room with a lock in a secluded area… during the sparsely manned night shift."But first comes the First. The fired cops claimed they were retaliated against unlawfully for their protected speech. The court doesn't think much of this argument, especially since the plaintiffs did all they could to avoid discussing the content of the speech they claimed was protected. From the decision [PDF]:

Yet another reminder that copyright is really, really broken. As you may have seen, there have been a few viral videos making the rounds of people locked down in apartment buildings deciding to hold impromptu music performances from balconies. When the first of these came out, I had joked that it would only be a matter of time until some music collection society called these an unlicensed public performance and demanded royalty payments. Thankfully, that has not happened, though in Spain, a copyright professor did tell a journalist that those singing from the balconies should first get a license (relying on Google translate here...):

Be the surveillance you don't necessarily want to see in the world. That's the plan detailed in this report by Thomas Brewster for Forbes. Dozens of countries are kicking around large-scale privacy violations to track the spread of the coronavirus. A handful of other countries are already doing this, including China, India, and Hong Kong.But if you're willing to give up your own privacy to help government entities track the virus and monitor those who are infected, there's an app for that.

What is it with people who should know better immediately resorting to censorship and gag orders in the face of important information sharing? With more and more reports directly from doctors and nurses about shortages of necessary protective supplies in the midst of a pandemic, there are also disturbing reports of hospital administrators trying to silence them, and threatening retaliation:

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While numerous vendors and tech giants have cooked up lower-cost Android phones with marketing focused on helping the poor, a recent study by advocacy group Privacy International found that the privacy trade offs of these devices are... potent. Not only do they usually come with outdated OS' opening the door to hackers, the phones have locked down user control to such a degree they're unable to remove apps that may also pose security risks. In this way, the researchers argued, we've made privacy a luxury option that's only available to those who can actually afford it.But the poor aren't the only ones harmed by our continually lax treatment of consumer privacy and security. In a new blog post, researchers from Checkpoint Software say that a huge number of kids-oriented Android apps are also privacy and security nightmares. The researchers recently identified a new malware family found in 56 applications that were collectively downloaded some 1 million times globally. Motivated by advertising fraud, the "Tekya" malware imitates the user’s actions in order to click ads and banners from agencies like Google’s AdMob, AppLovin’, Facebook, and Unity, Checkpoint found.Most-malware infected apps compromise the end users' data, credentials, emails, text messages, and geographical location. Twenty four of those apps were aimed at children, the researchers noted:

If you're a public official, your communications and documents are supposed to be accessible by the public. That's not me being an absolutist on open government. That's the law. And yet, here we are, watching an administration that rode into office on chants of "Lock her up!" once again conducting government business off the grid, using the same sort of private email accounts Trump repeatedly declared should have landed Hillary Clinton in the slammer.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has taken note of the latest violation of multiple laws by the Trump Administration and wants to know what the White House is going to do about it.

If you're a public official, your communications and documents are supposed to be accessible by the public. That's not me being an absolutist on open government. That's the law. And yet, here we are, watching an administration that rode into office on chants of "Lock her up!" once again conducting government business off the grid, using the same sort of private email accounts Trump repeatedly declared should have landed Hillary Clinton in the slammer.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has taken note of the latest violation of multiple laws by the Trump Administration and wants to know what the White House is going to do about it.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is virusdetected with some predictions about the future of the unicorn licensing lawsuit that a judge forcefully deferred:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2015, while AT&T was changing its story on Title II classification when it protected AT&T, the first legal challenges to net neutrality rules were filed, and the State of Tennessee was fighting the FCC to be able to block muni-broadband. We got a look at the extremely concerning rules in the leaked corporate sovereignty portion of the TPP agreement, and learned more about how the USTR bullied other countries into extending copyright, while the copyright industry was still pushing for stricter rules in Australia. On the brighter side, copyright troll Perfect 10 was ordered to pay $5.6 million over a bogus lawsuit.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2010, Viacom was using its legal battle with YouTube to brazenly pretend the DMCA requires proactive filtering, while Hollywood was still parroting made up facts about piracy that the AP happily parroted, and one lawyer in a criminal copyright trial was pushing back on casual use of the term "piracy", on the basis that it's prejudicial. We learned that the ACTA agreement was set to cover not just copyright and trademarks, but seven areas of intellectual property, while EU negotiators continued to insist it would move forward and there was nothing to worry about — though reports from the field suggested that negotiations weren't going so well. The full ACTA draft was leaked midway through the week, and it was full of all the troubling stuff we expected and more, raising serious constitutional questions.Fifteen Years AgoIn 2005, there was still an idea floating around that you could cause an explosion by using a mobile phone at the gas pump, which Mythbusters dispelled this week. List spam was on the rise while classic spam was apparently still working, and phishing was looking unnecessary given how easily people would give up personal info. And screensavers were still a thing — and a vector for malware.We were watching the actions of newly-minted MPAA boss Dan Glickman, and his big idea seemed to be just telling people not to tape movies and, bafflingly, to make the movie industry more like the IRS. But at least he had the help of the FBI, which was ramping up its role as Hollywood's private enforcer.

We've written a few times about the White House's unconstitutional retaliation against journalists it did not like, such as Jim Acosta and Brian Karem. PEN America, a key group fighting for free speech rights for journalists and writers, has now been allowed to proceed in its lawsuit against the President over his campaign of retaliation against journalists. PEN America had sued back in 2018, asking for declaratory and injunctive relief (basically the court telling the Trump White House to knock it off) against a variety of forms of retaliation he had done or threatened against the press.Specifically, PEN America had raised five actions that Trump had done or threatened to do in retaliation against the press: barring access to White House briefings, revoking (or threatening to revoke) security clearances of ex-government employees for commentary made to news organizations, threats to revoke broadcast licenses, raising postage rates to attack Amazon in response to Washington Post coverage, and interfering with the AT&T/Time Warner merger over anger about CNN's coverage.The DOJ had argued in response that PEN America had no standing, since Trump had not targeted PEN America. PEN America's response was that Trump had targeted PEN America members, including various news orgs and their employees, such as Jim Acosta. Indeed, when the filing was first made, we pointed out that the "standing" question would be a big hurdle. However, in a bit of a surprise, the court has said that PEN America has enough standing to proceed... at least on two of the issues at play:

When I write about this new lawsuit, filed on behalf of "retired MMA fighter" Nick Catone, against Facebook for removing his account over his anti-vaccine posts, you may expect that it was filed pro se. However, somewhat shockingly, there's an actual lawyer, James Mermigis, who filed this dumpster fire of an awful complaint. Mermigis does not appear to have any experience in internet law, and boy does it show. His various profiles online list his experience in divorce law, real estate law, and personal injury law. His own Twitter feed is basically all just wacky anti-vax nonsense, and, late last year, he was quoted as representing people trying to block a NY law removing a religious exemption for vaccines. We've gone over this many times before, but spewing junk science and angry rants that are literally putting tons of people in danger is no way to go through life, and it's certainly no way to file a lawsuit. Especially not in the midst of a pandemic where a vaccine sure would be nice.But, alas.The filing is bad, and Catone and Mermigis should feel bad about it. It will be quickly dismissed under CDA 230, even though (hilariously) it claims that Facebook's moderation of Catone's account "violates" CDA 230 (which is not a thing, as you cannot "violate" CDA 230). This lawsuit is like a collection of misunderstood tropes about internet law. It starts with this:

Despite its obvious reputational problems, Comcast has actually been stepping up for its workers during the COVID-19 crisis, paying its employees hazard pay, allowing unnecessary personnel to work at home, and closing at least some of its retail locations.Charter Spectrum, the nation's second biggest cable provider, is another story entirely.The company spent much of last week dealing with a backlash among employees who say the company is putting both its employees and local customers at risk. Charter initially refused to let employees who didn't need to be in the company's offices to work from home, despite having the capability. Even in instances where there were positive COVID-19 tests at Charter offices, the company still initially refused to let employees work from home. Only when the press got involved did Charter begin to bend, and even then it's still not letting all non-essential workers work remotely.Charter employees say they're not getting hazard pay or adequate protective gear to do installs in customer homes. Instead, the company apparently thought it would be a good idea to give them a gift card. Not just any gift card, mind you, but a $25 gift card to a restaurant they probably can't visit anyway:

Like large parts of the world right now, I'm stuck at home these days, and figuring out how to work and be a distance learning proctor to children. A week and a half into this forced educational experiment, my kid's kindergarten teacher decided to post a (private) video of her reading a children's book to the students. Why did it take so long before reading time arrived to distance learning? Copyright, of course. She needed to wait for permission from Random House, apparently, and that also meant that in posting the video to the distance learning platform the school is using, she noted in both text, and prior to reading, "with permission from Random House."Now let's think about how silly this is. No one would ever expect that if you walked into a kindergarten classroom that a teacher would first need to (a) get permission to read aloud a book and (b) state before reading that he or she had "permission" from the copyright holder. This is permission culture gone mad. But it's the way things are, especially since copyright holders have spent the past two decades blaming platforms for hosting any "infringing" material. I doubt that the teacher in this case was directly concerned about her own liability (though, she might be), but it very likely had to do with the distance learning platform the school is using requiring her "properly license" anything uploaded. Indeed, when I tweeted about this, a copyright lawyer insisted that this was "better for everyone" to make sure that no one had liability. I question how it's better for teachers, students, or culture in general, however.This is playing out all over the place, thanks to our forced isolation. LeVar Burton tweeted about the trouble he's had doing a live-streamed version of LeVar Burton Reads, because copyright is getting in the way. He's been searching through "short stories in the public domain" because the actual licensing issues are too fucked up:

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We received notification this week that Google has delisted our entire right to be forgotten tag page, based on (of course) a right to be forgotten request under the GDPR in the EU. To be clear, this only applies when someone searches the name in question -- which was not shared with us. I am... perplexed about this. I understand that some people may not want us talking about their ongoing efforts to rewrite history and hide their past. However, you would think that if these articles don't actually talk about their historical scams that are very much a part of the public record, and instead focus on their very current and ongoing abuse of the "right to be forgotten" process, they should be allowed to remain up.The very fact that the tag being delisted when searching for this unnamed individual is the "right to be forgotten" tag shows that whoever this person is, they recognize that they are not trying to cover up the record of, say, an FTC case against them from... oh, let's just say 2003... but rather are now trying to cover up their current effort to abuse the right to be forgotten process.Anyway, in theory (purely in theory, of course) if someone in the EU searched for the name of anyone, it might be helpful to know if the Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection once called him a "spam scammer" who "conned consumers in two ways." But, apparently, in the EU, that sort of information is no longer useful. And you also can't find out that he's been using the right to be forgotten process to further cover his tracks. That seems unfortunate, and entirely against the supposed principle behind the "right to be forgotten." No one is trying to violate anyone's "privacy" here. We're talking about public court records, and an FTC complaint and later settlement on a fairly serious crime that took place not all that long ago. That ain't private information. And, even more to the point, the much more recent efforts by that individual to then hide all the details of this public record.And of course, plenty of our right to be forgotten stories don't mention this particular individual at all -- so it seems pretty silly to then have them all blocked, but this is the future the EU apparently wanted. Just the fact that the tag itself was around "right to be forgotten" probably should have tipped off the Google reviewer that perhaps this was not a legit request, but hey, the EU's gotta EU and I won't goolnick around and complain about whatever decisions the company makes.

By now we've established that while fifth-generation (5G) wireless will result in faster, more resilient networks, the technology has been over-hyped to an almost comical degree. Yes, faster, lower latency networks are a good thing, but 5G is not as paradigm-rattling as most wireless carriers and hardware vendors have led many in the press to believe. 5G is more of a useful evolution than a revolution, but it has become the equivalent of magic pixie dust in tech policy circles, wherein if you simply say "it will lead to faster deployment of 5G!" you'll immediately add gravitas to your otherwise underwhelming K Street policy pitch.The other major problem? Americans already pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world. Now they're being asked to shell out a lot of cash for pricey new handsets with worse battery life, but more expensive data plans. It was already a difficult, pre-pandemic proposition to explain why users happy with 4G speeds need to pay even more.Many carriers appear to have understood this. AT&T includes 5G for free on the company's two most expensive unlimited plans. T-Mobile has been offering 5G for no additional cost (though that could change post Sprint merger) on all of its unlimited plans. Verizon, in contrast, has been eager to charge users an extra $10 per month for 5G. Initially the company backed off this surcharge after some negative early press, but seems intent on imposing these surcharges, it claims, because 5G offers a "differentiated experience":

Clearview's facial recognition app links to a database of 4 billion pictures. And those photos are linked to all the data that got scraped up with them, culled (without permission) from sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn… pretty much anywhere people post photos and personal information.There's no opting-out of this collection either, even as Clearview packages and sells access to this scraped data to law enforcement agencies in the US, as well as government agencies in countries known for their human rights abuses. Fun, fun, fun and all just a click away from exploitation by anyone with an account. That includes demo accounts operated by the super-rich and law enforcement officers told to test drive the software by running searches on friends and family members.How much does Clearview gather on the average person? It's tough to tell. Asking Clearview directly -- at least in most of the US -- will get you nothing. However, California's privacy law (the California Consumer Privacy Act) mandates the disclosure of gathered personal data to requesters. That's what Thomas Smith of OneZero did. And here's what he got back.

The COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world, and in many cases shutting it down, has become so pervasive so as to even dominate the headlines here at Techdirt. To say the outbreak has altered our way of life would be a massive understatement. Social distancing, shutdown states, stuck in our homes, jobs reduced and gone; this whole thing has become a nightmare.And it impacts even areas of our life that we enjoy, but are less important than others, such as sports. Professional and college sports have basically taken an unwanted holiday, shutting down in an effort to partake in killing this virus off. It's been strange for fans like me, who wake up on Saturdays and have to find legit ways to watch sporting events that took place years and years ago as a substitute for live broadcasts. And if you think there aren't a great many people who are starved for live sporting content, you need only look to what is going on in the autoracing world, where it's basically all become eSports now.We'll start with Formula 1 Racing, which pivoted from its canceled live races into using video games as a substitute, using current and former drivers behind the virtual wheels.

Federal judges continue to trip over themselves in their hurry to extend qualified immunity to law enforcement officers. No matter how egregious the violation -- and how simply wrong it appears to reasonable human beings -- cops can usually escape judgment by violating rights in new ways, ensuring there's no precedent that would make them aware they shouldn't do things like destroy someone's house after they've been given permission (and a key!) to enter.This decision [PDF] from the Fifth Circuit (and the Fifth Circuit can be the worst about protecting the government from citizens it has aggrieved, stinging dissents from Judge Willett notwithstanding) involves officers who shot a man holding a knife. Given that judges seem to believe any weapon real or perceived that "threatens" an officer makes ensuing homicides wholly justifiable, this refusal by the court to bless the actions of reasonably-scared cops is more surprising than it should be.The description of the events leading up to the shooting would seem to be laying groundwork for a QI-based dismissal:

One of the hard lessons that I have learned over my years of practice is that, although some lawyers believe that they can increase the in terrorem effect of a complaint or a demand letter by piling on claims, the net effect of adding silly assertions can be to make things worse for your own client and not better. That may be true as well of the demand letter recently sent by David Vance Lucas of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings on behalf of their client, ProctorU.Criticisms and Demand LetterThe saga begins with a faculty association at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which heard about a potential problem with the data-sharing policies of ProctorU, a business that provides internet-based test monitoring services. The group took a look at the ProctorU privacy policies and did not like what they saw – in their view, it provided too little specificity about the limitations on data-sharing, and no protection for the data in the event that ProctorU were to go into bankruptcy or merge, possibly without restrictions on use of the data. And online discussions by students subject to ProctorU monitoring have shared a variety of concerns about the creepy nature of ProctorU’s interventions; the students were plainly worried about the attending possibility of data accumulation. The faculty association voiced its concerns in a letter to the leadership of the University of California at Santa Barbara, urging them to stop using ProctorU and to avoid using “any other private service that either sells or makes students’ data available to third parties.” The letter was discussed in a story in the school’s student newspaper.It is apparently ProctorU’s position that the faculty association’s concerns are overwrought. I have no opinion about that dispute. But instead of simply saying so, ProctorU hired attorney Lucas, who sent a blistering demand letter to the faculty group, accusing it of defamation, of linking to ProctorU’s web site without permission (so what?), of copyright and trademark infringement, of a bad faith violation of the federal anti-cybersquatting law (ACPA), and of willfully interfering with efforts to mitigate civil disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Without quite meeting the faculty criticisms, the letter provided a restatement of the ProctorU privacy policy from a sanitized perspective, and on that basis demanded that the faculty group stop its “misrepresentation and misstatement” of the privacy policies; retract the complaints; and agree never to use ProctorU’s “family of marks and copyrighted materials.” In subsequent correspondence, Lucas has demanded that each member of the faculty group’s board sign a groveling letter in which they would have to take personal responsibility for the group’s criticisms, admit that many of statements for which they would be taking personal responsibility were false, endorse Lucas’ unproven assertions about his client’s privacy practices, and retract both the letter and the request that USCB stop using its services. It is my firm belief that Lucas's letter and followup emails, and especially the demanded retraction letter, had the intended effect of terrifying the faculty group, if only because they know how much it can cost to hire lawyers even when you have done nothing wrong -- until they started hearing that pro bono representation could be a significant possibility.The Federal Law Claims Are Completely BogusMy immediate reaction to this letter was to feel uncertain about whether ProctorU had any valid defamation claims, but my attention was drawn quickly to the contentions about federal intellectual property law, all of which are nonsensical.First, the copyright claims. Lucas argues that by repeating some of the language from the privacy policy in their letter, the faculty group infringed the copyright in the privacy policy. One thing that is decidedly odd about this copyright claim is that, at the same time that Lucas is claiming improper copying, he is claiming that the letter misstated the privacy policy. Either the letter contains exact quotes or it doesn’t. But beyond that, any language taken from the policy is plainly fair use — when you are criticizing a written text, you often have to quote the text being criticized. And beyond that, my search of the copyright database did not identify any copyright registrations by ProctorU. So it would have to register before suing, and failure to register previously would be fatal to any monetary claims besides actual damages. Those would be copyright damages, not damage to reputation. Hard to believe there is any copyright injury here.The demand letter invokes the ACPA but it is hard to see why, other than to give Lucas an excuse to put the phrase "bad faith" into the letter (he mentions that statute’s “bad faith factors,” none of which point in the direction of bad faith so far as I can see), and to threaten statutory damages and attorney fees. But the ACPA could have provided a remedy only if the faculty group had the registered or used a domain name to place its communications online; it does not provide a remedy for mentioning the URL's of some pages within ProctorU’s own web site in the body of a text, or for linking to those pages. Moreover, quite a number of cases under the ACPA and the Lanham Act allow the use of trademarks in domain names for web sites that comment on the trademark holder, including Lamparello v. Falwell, Bosley Medical v. Kremer, and Taubman Company v. WebFeats (a wonderful account of that latter litigation, full of the quirky sense of humor that my client Hank Mishkoff maintained throughout the litigation, can be found at the Taubman Sucks web site). I should note that although the faculty group did not register a domain name for their letter about ProctorU, there are plenty of ProctorU domain names ready for the taking, each of which could be lawfully used for a campaign to criticize that company for hiring David Lucas to send this letter, or indeed for criticizing Lucas or his client's funders.The trademark claims are equally faulty. First of all, under the doctrine of nominative fair use, trademarks can be used to identify the subject of a criticism, and injunctive relief imposed for the use of marks for criticism would run afoul of the First Amendment, as established in such cases as Nissan Motor Co. v. Nissan Computer Co., and CPC International v. Skippy, Inc. Moreover, a number of cases, including Bosley and Taubman, cited above, hold that trademark claims may only be brought over commercial uses of trademarks, thus avoiding unnecessary conflict with the First Amendment. In a case called Radiance Foundation v. NAACP, the Fourth Circuit came awfully close to agreeing with that limitation, but confined itself to holding that the statutory language of the trademark laws must be read as being limited to regulation of uses that could properly be treated as commercial speech.The faculty association's letter was not commercial speech. The letter seems to suggest that the UCSB faculty are worried about facing economic competition from ProctorU for their proctoring services. But apart from the fact that the mere possibility of an economic interest at play does not make speech commercial (for which see Nike, Inc. v. Kasky), the argument reflects a certain air of unreality. All of the college faculty that I know hate proctoring and do not want to spend their time on that task; when possible, they slough off this work on graduate students. They might, at the same time, have genuine concerns about student privacy.Lucas’ bio page at the Bradley Arant web site indicates that “intellectual property” is among his practice areas. My initial assumption was that, being an IP specialist, he must have known how frivolous his trademark and copyright claims are. But as I started reading the IP cases listed on his bio page, it struck me that his IP practice may have been confined to patent law; if so, then his letter only reflects bumbling, not malice.Even the Libel Claims Seem SpuriousAlthough it was the silly intellectual property claims that spurred my interest in this matter, the more I have thought about the libel side of the case, the less potent the claims have seemed to me. On its face, the strongest point in the demand letter is the contention that ProctorU never sells the data that accumulates – and if that were true, and if the faculty letter had accused ProctorU of selling the data, that might well qualify as material falsity. But in fact the letter only complains that ProctorU shares the data with others; the only reference in the faculty letter to “selling” is in the phrase quoted above: after urging that UCSB drop ProctorU, it also urges a more general policy: not to use “this service or any other private service that either sells or makes students' data available to third parties.” There is no charge in the letter that I can see saying that ProctorU sells data.The rest of the libel discussion in the demand letter is a big nothing. Lucas says this in his letter: “Contrary to your misrepresentations, ProctorU does not sell or share any information it collects to any third parties.” But would Lucas make that assertion under oath? After all, just two paragraphs before that, his letter says, “ProctorU only collects, uses and shares student personal information to provide its proctoring services . . . and to ensure the integrity of the tests it proctors.” And one paragraph before the denial, he says, “ProctorU . . . transparently discloses all information that could be collected, used or shared, and specifically identifies the types of third parties with whom it shares student information.” (all the emphasis is added). Now, this admitted sharing may or may not be justified – that is a matter of opinion – but it is simply not false to say that ProctorU shares information with third parties. Not false unless Lucas’s own admissions are erroneous.Without a claim of substantial falsity, ProctorU’s threat to sue for defamation falls apart. Lucas also tosses in the names of two more torts: intentional interference with existing and prospective business relations into his hopper. But without a sustainable claim of falsity, those tort claims cannot survive.ProctorU’s disproportionate response to the faculty group’s criticisms make me wonder just what there is to hide about the company’s data-sharing practices. Lucas’s letter contains a number of broad and conclusory assurances about his client, but no proof. I have to wonder what discovery, or an investigation by state authorities proceeding with enforceable subpoenas, might reveal about just what data gets shared with what third parties, and under what circumstances and with what protections against further dissemination.I have asked Lucas to justify his claims under both state and federal law, and he refused to respond, claiming that I would surely appreciate that he “cannot address issues pertaining to a client with you” unless I told him that I was representing the faculty group. (I have not yet decided about that). No, I do not appreciate that he “cannot” - I took it as a dodge by a lawyer who would rather not explain his misstatements about the law. After all, he sent his demand letter not only to the faculty group but also to counsel for the University of California and for UCSB, as well as to the California Attorney General and to the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, the latter two with the pretense that the faculty’s letter is “directly impacting emergency efforts to mitigate civil disruption across the United States.” Ah, yes, terrorism – maybe he should ask them to invoke the PATRIOT Act against these faculty terrorists. (Some of the respondents to the Popehat Signal on this case raised the question whether this is an unlawful threat of criminal prosecution). But he has showed no compunction about providing his thoughts about the case to lawyers who do not represent the target of his threats.Stop the Bullying of CriticsIn sum, I see little merit to this demand letter, and the nasty character of the demand deserves a forceful response. My efforts to engage Lucas in explaining his claims, and to get him to listen to reason, have failed. So my suggestion to members of the public is that they communicate their views both to ProctorU itself and to Eastside Partners, a venture capital firm that has provided funding for this company. Three of the five members of the ProctorU board appear to work at Eastside Partners. So Eastside Partners could pull the plug on Lucas’s bullying, if it chose to do so.Reposted (with permission) from the Public Citizen Consumer Law & Policy Blog

It seems worth noting a historical milestone today. 67 years ago today, March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk announced the vaccine for polio, and saved millions of lives. And this is notable given the current COVID-19 pandemic we're all living with. However, at a time when we're having to be vigilant for giant pharmaceutical companies sneakily trying to game the system to get extra exclusivity, and patent maximalists pushing for extended patent terms as an "incentive" to come up with a vaccine, it's worth noting the simple fact that he did not patent the vaccine. Indeed, in a TV interview with Edward Murrow, Salk famously said "could you patent the sun?"Right at the beginning of that video you can see the famous exchange:

It's been a year since the RIAA sued Charter Communications, using the same strategy it had used against smaller ISPs Cox and Grande Communications -- that the DMCA actually requires internet access providers to completely kick users off upon the receipt of multiple (unproven) claims of copyright infringement. The RIAA has been plotting out this strategy for the better part of a decade.For years, we've pointed out a number of problems with this, starting (most importantly) with the fact that accusations are not actual proof of infringement. And to kick people off of their sole access to the internet based solely on accusations would represent a real problem. As first noted by TorrentFreak, Charter has finally filed its answer, defenses, and counterclaims to the complaint. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, but a key part: the RIAA and its labels and publishing partners quietly admitted that they were suing over songs they did not hold the rights to. That's kind of a big deal. Indeed, it reminds me of the revelation in the infamous Viacom/YouTube lawsuit that Viacom was suing over songs it had uploaded itself for marketing purposes.From the counterclaims:

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Has no one explained to Donald Trump how the Streisand Effect works yet? His campaign has apparently been sending laughably ridiculous threat letters to various TV stations that have been airing an advertisement put together by a group called Priorities USA, criticizing the President's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The ad highlights Trump's repeated statements playing down the virus and insisting that he had things under control, even as the numbers of infected started to rise exponentially. It's a pretty effective ad. You can see it here.Priorities also posted the ad to Twitter, and according to a Fox News article, the campaign has also asked Twitter to "flag a nearly identical ad... but the social media giant refused."The letter is amazing in three separate, but equally dumb ways. First, it focuses solely on just one of the lines that the ad quotes Trump saying: "this is their new hoax." He did say that -- as the letter from his campaign readily admits. Their complaint is that the statement is out of context, and that what Trump was calling a hoax was actually the politicization of the virus response efforts. As the letter notes, here's the statement in full context, that Trump made on February 28th:

Earlier this month, the biggest U.S. broadband providers announced they'd be dropping usage caps and overage fees during the pandemic in order to provide a little financial relief to home-bound Americans trying to slow the virus' spread. That's good, since telecom CEOs, engineers, and leaked documents have all made it clear caps and overage fees on fixed-line networks are little more than the price gouging of captive customers in uncompetitive U.S. broadband markets, and do absolutely nothing to help manage congestion in the age of intelligent networks that can prioritize or deprioritize entire traffic types on the fly.It's slightly different on wireless where there's limited spectrum, but there too, researchers have noted that caps and usage fees aren't helpful to manage congestion. Not only are they like using a bulldozer to try and fix a watch, they open the door to abuse by companies that have long been eager to abuse such restrictions for anti-competitive gain. AT&T's already doing this by charging you overage fees if you use Netflix, but not if you use AT&T's own streaming services. Facebook has similarly been criticized for trying to use mobile caps and "zero rating" to corner the ad market in developing nations.While many mobile users are now on (not really) "unlimited" data plans, AT&T and Verizon say they'll be giving U.S. residents on limited plans some financial relief by waiving overage fees on limited data plans for at least the next 60 days. This being AT&T and Verizon this of course won't happen automatically, and you'll have to beg the giants manually for some financial leniency. From a Verizon announcement:

Predictive policing efforts continue to expand around the world. Fortunately, so has the criticism. The data witchcraft that expects a bunch of crap data created by biased policing to coalesce into actionable info continues to be touted by those least likely to be negatively affected by it: namely, law enforcement agencies and the government officials that love them.The theory that people should be treated like criminals because someone else did some crimes in the area in the past is pretty specious, but as long as it results in temporary drops in criminal activity, fans of unreasonable suspicion will continue to use these tools that still have no long-term proven track record.It's not just a US problem. It's a problem everywhere. The European Parliament has been asking for feedback on predictive policing efforts, which is more than most agencies in the US are willing to do. The Executive Director of the AI Now Institute, Andrea Nill Sanchez, recently testified during a public hearing on the issue, using the Institute's 2019 report on predictive policing to highlight everything that's wrong with turning law enforcement over to modeling algorithms. (via The Next Web)The point of Sanchez's testimony [PDF] is this: we can't trust the data being fed to these systems. Therefore, we definitely can't trust the predictions being produced by them. Dirty cops create dirty data.

For years and years and years, video games have suffered the brunt of blame for all manner of the world's ills. Real world violence? Video games. Mass shootings? Video games. Soccer team not performing well? Video games! Kids getting into hacking? Bruh, video games! Men not finding women attractive enough to keep the human race going? Video games did that, too!Which makes it kind of fun to now see media outlets suggesting, nay, pushing those impacted one way or the other by the coronavirus outbreak to go jump into those same dastardly video games.