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We've written plenty about Sci-Hub over the years. The service, which was set up to allow free and easy access to academic research that is all-to-often hidden behind insanely expensive paywalls (often, despite being paid for with public funds), is the bane of academic publishers, though the hero to many academics. As we've highlighted, the big publishers keep playing whac-a-mole with the service as they try to take it down around the globe, and each time it just seems to get the site more attention. From the earliest days, it's been clear that Sci-Hub works by getting academics with access to various collections to "donate" their login credentials, so that Sci-Hub can fetch any missing papers not in its collection (if it, and its associated site Libgen, already have it, they make that version available).However, the Washington Post is now claiming that the DOJ has been investigating Sci-Hub founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, who started the site as an academic herself who found it nearly impossible to access the research she needed. But here's the twist, apparently the DOJ is alleging that Elbakyan is somehow tied to Russian intelligence.

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The Russian government has successfully disconnected itself from the world. "Internet sovereignty" is the term the government prefers. That's what the Russian government actually calls the law signed into effect in May.The idea is to isolate the Russian internet from the internet the rest of the world uses. It's not to protect Russia or Russian internet users. It's to force all Russian internet traffic through Roskomnadzor servers, which will allow the government to surveil its citizens' internet use, presumably to facilitate censorship efforts and prosecutions.Lots of experts doubted the plan was feasible. At best, it would subject all Russian internet traffic to government surveillance. At worst, it would cause critical systems to fail. The plan was to pull the plug in April. It didn't happen until December. According to the Russian government, this extreme Balkanization of the internet went off without a hitch.

Another day, another company leaving massive troves of consumer data openly accessible to the internet.One of the darlings of the holiday tech marketing season was Wyze Labs, which provides significantly cheaper ($20) in home internet-enabled cameras compared to competitors like Ring. While both Wirecutter and CNN put Wyze's cheap camera on their holiday must buy shopping lists, the company's customers got more than they bargained for under the tree this Christmas.The folks at Twelve Security discovered that camera information, Wi-Fi network details, email addresses, Alexa tokens, and even biometric data of 2.4 million customers was inadvertently left available to the open internet from December 6 to December 27. Security researcher "Ghost" stated he'd "never encountered a breach of this magnitude," and noted that a significant, major breach had already impacted the same company about six months ago. A second post by the firm notes how the cameras are largely just rebranded Xiaomi cameras from China, funneling much of this collected data back to Alibaba cloud servers.Wyze, which sells the cameras largely through its relationship with Amazon, told the New York Times that an "employee error" was to thank for the massive breach:

We've written a bunch about why AI generated artwork should not (and need not) have any copyright at all. The law says that copyright only applies to human creators. But what about patents? There has been a big debate about this in the patent space over the last year, mainly lead by AI developers who want to be able to secure patents on AI generated ideas. The patent offices in the EU and the US have been exploring the issue, and asking for feedback, while they plot out a strategy, but some AI folks decided to force the matter sooner. Over the summer they announced that they had filed for two patents in the EU for inventions that they claim were "invented" by an AI named DABUS without the assistance of a human inventor.And now, the EU Patent Office has rejected both patents, since they don't have a human inventor.

A 2018 lawsuit [PDF] against Google over location tracking survives, but only just. The lawsuit -- filed after a report showed Google was still collecting location data even after users shut off location services on Android phones -- alleges Google violated California laws and privacy protections by tracking users (including children) after it had been told not to.The lawsuit has been dismissed [PDF], but the court is giving the plaintiffs a chance to amend the lawsuit and suggesting there are issues the court alone can't decide. (via FourthAmendment.com)The plaintiffs allege they were led to believe Google would no longer collect and store location data when "Location History" was shut off. They cite Google's own support page, which (formerly) stated "With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored." The court says this language could have misled users, no matter what Google's Privacy Policies and Terms of Services actually said about location data.

If you hadn't noticed yet, the internet of things is a security and privacy shit show. Millions of poorly-secured internet-connected devices are now being sold annually, introducing massive new attack vectors and vulnerabilities into home and business networks nationwide. Thanks to IOT companies and evangelists that prioritize gee-whizzery and profits over privacy and security, your refrigerator can now leak your gmail credentials, your kids' Barbie doll can now be used as a surveillance tool, and your "smart" tea kettle can now open your wireless network to attack.Security analysts like Bruce Schneier have been warning for a while that the check is about to come due for this mammoth dumpster fire, potentially resulting in human fatalities at scale -- especially if these flaws are allowed to impact integral infrastructure systems. But Schneier has also done a good job noting how nobody in the production or consumer cycle has any incentive to take responsibility for what's happening:

Dozens of companies are offering off-the-shelf DNA tests that promise to do everything from settling paternity claims to letting you know what horrible disease is going to end your life. Other companies simply offer you a chance to connect with the roots and outer branches of your family tree by matching your DNA to the thousands of other people in their databases.What's not in the marketing pitches are the side effects of tying DNA markers to personally-identifiable info. Some companies are allowing law enforcement agencies to access entire databases with a single warrant. One company (Family Tree) has basically granted the FBI carte blanche access to its entire database.Then there's the private sector. Insurance companies and employers may be using DNA tests to deny coverage or raise rates on existing coverage if markers for genetic diseases are found. Nothing's more personal than your DNA. When it's tied to you with a bunch of third-party records, it can cause problems.That's the general message of a letter sent to US military members by the Department of Defense. Yahoo News obtained a copy of the DoD's letter [PDF], which warns troops away from using consumer DNA products because of the risks they pose.What the Pentagon has to say about DNA kits applies to everyone, not just members of the military.

The NY Times recently published quite a story, sharing videos and text messages of various Navy SEALs who had reported to officials their concerns with Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher. Gallagher was then put on trial for war crimes and mostly acquitted last summer. The one charge he was convicted for resulted in a demotion and a confinement sentence, but President Trump stepped in and reversed that decision, leading to some turmoil within the military, as many leaders were not at all happy about what former Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer (who was fired over all of this) called "shocking and unprecedented interference." Other long term military officials also found the decision shocking.The NY Times report shows Navy investigators interviewing a number of Navy SEALs whom Gallagher commanded, revealing some of their concerns about Gallagher, with quite a few striking quotes. For example:

Revenge porn laws generally aren't built to last. When crafting these laws, legislators tend to lose sight of the Constitution. Everyone agrees revenge porn is bad, but simply being in agreement isn't enough when rights are on the line.Minnesota passed a revenge porn law in 2016. The law barely made it three years before being found unconstitutional by a state court. As usual, the legislature's inability (or refusal) to narrowly craft a speech restriction has come back to haunt it. KARE 11 reports the state Court of Appeals has undone the Constitutional damage caused by the state's poorly-written law.

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It feels like pretty much every day there's some sort of new "techlash" story, about how awful social media is, about how it's dragging down democracy, destroying lives, and that we'd all be better off without it. We've been arguing for quite some time now that while there are real issues of concern about social media, most of the narrative is exaggerated to downright misleading. So it's actually surprising, but nice, to see the NY Times (which has been among the most vocal cheerleaders of the "internet is bad" narrative) have an excellent opinion piece by Sarah Jackson outlining how Twitter, in particular, has "made us better."Jackson has recently co-authored a book, #HashtagActivism that details what a wonder Twitter has been for traditionally marginalized groups. It has allowed them to communicate, to organize, and to bring their messages into the mainstream.

We've long noted that T-Mobile's brand reputation as a feisty consumer-friendly disruptor is only really skin deep. While the T-Mobile of 2012 or so certainly added some much needed competition to the wireless sector (killing ETFs, eliminating long-term contracts, and eroding international roaming costs), more recently the company has started to look a lot like the bigger competitors (AT&T, Verizon) it pretends to be superior to. From mocking groups like the EFF to opposing net neutrality, the company isn't all that different from the companies its brash CEO John Legere likes to make fun of.Case in point: during the ongoing multi-state AG lawsuit attempting to stop the merger, documents were released showing that one of T-Mobile's master plans was to first buy Sprint then merge with Comcast. Yes that Comcast; one of the least liked companies on the planet, frequently mocked by Legere as a clear example of industry dysfunction. The presentation, assembled at the request of T-Mobile board member Thorsten Langheim in December 2015, highlights how T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom was eager to use T-Mobile to exploit the poorly regulated and marginally competitive US telecom market:

Gaming Like It's 1924: The Newly Public Domain Game JamHappy New Years, everyone. Last year, for the very first time in two decades, the US actually allowed some works to enter the public domain. This represented the end of an era in which copyright maximalist lobbyists had been able to regularly extend copyright terms each year to prevent any new works from entering the public domain. However, the backlash to such practices had become so vocal, and the evidence for why such term extensions were necessary had become so non-existent, that they didn't even make any serious attempt to extend them again, leading works from 1923 to actually enter the public domain. Well, now it's 2020, and works from 1924 have entered the public domain.Last year to celebrate, we held our very first public domain game jam, asking people to create both analog and digital games utilizing newly public domain works. It was a great success with over 30 entries, including some really amazing winners.This year, we're doing it again, with the Gaming Like It's 1924 public domain game jam. The rules are basically the same as last year. For the entire month of January, you can submit your digital or analog games (specific rules are at the link) based on some of the newly public domain works from 1924. If you're looking for ideas on what works are there, Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has an excellent list and LifeHacker has called out some highlights as well.Once again, we're offering up prizes (with even more choices this year) in a variety of categories: best analog game, best digital game, best adaptation of a 1924 work, best remixing of multiple sources, best "deep cut," and best visuals. We also have a wonderful and diverse judging panel, that is a mix of gaming and copyright experts (and a few who qualify as both!).You certainly don't need to follow the path of those who won last year, but if you want, you should check out last year's winners (and all the other submissions as well) to get some ideas. The contest is open for the entire month of January, with judging in early February. We hope you'll consider entering and help demonstrate the value of a robust public domain, and the ability to build on those earlier creative works.

It's that time again. Ever since 2008, my final post of the year has been a reflection of some sort -- not necessarily on stories from the past year, but usually somewhat of an echo of what inspired me to write the original post in 2008. People had highlighted two seemingly contradictory things about me: that I was perpetually optimistic and happy about the state of innovation and future possibilities, but also that I seemed to focus so much attention and energy (some misleadingly have called it "anger") at efforts to impede, hold back, or simply block important and useful innovations. As I've said repeatedly, these two things are not in conflict. It is entirely possible to be optimistic about innovation, while frustrated at those who seek to prevent it, for whatever reasons. If you'd like to look over the stories from the past, they're all listed here:

For the better part of two decades, the cable industry has fought tooth and nail to prevent having to sell cable channels individually (a la carte). Historically, the cable industry's defense of this opposition is that letting consumers buy individual channels would do two things: kill off niche channels, and raise rates on consumers. Granted you're supposed to ignore that both things have been happening anyway. Despite streaming competition, cable rates continue to skyrocket, and cable operators themselves have been dumping less watched channels from their lineups anyway in a bid to shore up tightened margins.The streaming sector's impact on these issues remains a work in progress. And state or federal efforts to force cable providers to sell channels individually haven't gone particularly well.Case in point: back in September, Comcast sued the state of Maine for trying to force the company to sell users individual cable channels (LD 832). Comcast lawyers insisted that the new law violated the company's First Amendment rights, and told news outlets the law would "suppress competition and result in higher consumer prices and less program diversity." Historically, "this violates our company's First Amendment rights" is an argument telecom lawyers throw against the wall in every case in a bid to try and see if it sticks.In this case, it appears to be working. Comcast's argument was twofold: the law violated Comcast's editorial decision making right to require consumers to take bundles of programming, and violates the First Amendment's prohibition on speaker-based regulations -- since the law applies to incumbent cable providers but not other pay TV providers. It's that latter argument that appears to have swayed U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Torresen's decision to impose a preliminary injunction preventing the bill from taking effect. She appeared to be less swayed by Comcast's phony concern that such laws would raise cable TV prices:

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The latest benefit of an education at an institute of higher learning? Becoming inured to round-the-clock surveillance.A few months ago, the University of Alabama started penalizing students for leaving home games too early. Coach Nick Saban was apparently angered by students' refusal to stick around to the end of blowouts. Working with FanMaker, the university instituted a point system that rewarded faithful fans for sitting through entire games by awarding them points that placed them closer to the top of the list for tickets to actually meaningful games.This mini-surveillance app tracked students' location during the game. Going outside the range of the stadium's network before the game was over docked points from the students' totals, dropping them down the list of ticket buyers.This surveillance was weird and ultra-specific and motivated by perhaps the most powerful football coach in the nation. Other schools are experimenting with more pervasive tracking, this time tied to class attendance, as the Washington Post reports.

Swatting isn't going away. Neither are SWAT teams. And the amped-up, guns-out tactics these teams use all but ensure a violent end for targets of bogus 911 calls."Swatting" is a cheap and efficient way to terrorize anyone you want terrorized, whether it's a gamer, journalist, online critic, celebrity, activist, or just someone's whose personal info has ended up on the wrong website. Why hire a hitman to take out your enemy when cops are willing to do it for free?The downside is limited. Even if caught, "swatting" perpetrators are charged with a grab bag of crimes that combined rarely add up to the attempted murder a swatting actually is. The rare exception is serial swatter Tyler Barriss, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for making the bogus 911 call that ended in the death of Andrew Finch at the hands of the Wichita, Kansas police department.There isn't much being done to deter future swattings -- at least not in terms of additional training or policy changes at law enforcement agencies. It's almost impossible to tell if a 911 call is legit until officers are on the scene, but it does seem these situations could be approached with a little more caution and little less reliance on immediate lethal force deployment.There are some other efforts being made to limit future tragedies resulting from swatting attempts, as Olivia Solon and Brandy Zadrozny report for NBC. Changes are being made to 911 services in a few US cities that have already shown some positive results.

It's well known that the UK doesn't have nearly as strong press protections as the US does, but it was still somewhat shocking to discover that the Metropolitan Police in London had opened an investigation into journalists who reported on the Snowden documents back in 2013. The Metropolitan Police had refused to confirm or deny such an investigation before finally acknowledging it in 2015.However, Ryan Gallagher now reveals that the Met Police have declared the investigation "inactive" for the time being:

Technically, the head of the DOJ's antitrust division, Makan Delrahim, is supposed to enforce antitrust law and derail harmful monopolies when they arise. But that's certainly not what's happening with the DOJ review of T-Mobile's $26 billion merger with Sprint, which antitrust experts (and even the DOJ's own economists) have repeatedly warned will indisputably reduce competition, raise rates, and result in thousands of layoffs as duplicative positions are eliminated.As state AGs continue their lawsuit to stop the merger, details were revealed last week in court showing that Delrahim did everything in his power to help shovel the deal through the merger approval process, including providing T-Mobile tips (via both personal and business accounts) on which officials they should focus their lobbying attention on in order to get the deal across the finish line:

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The development and deployment of facial recognition tech continues steadily, but the algorithms involved don't seem to be getting much better at recognizing faces. Recognizing faces is pretty much the only thing it's expected to do and it can't seem to get the job done well enough to entrust with it things like determining whether or not a person is going to be detained or arrested.That critical failure hasn't slowed down deployment by government agencies. There are a handful of facial recognition tech bans in place around the nation, but for the most part, questions about the tech are being ignored in favor of the potential benefits touted by government contractors.Last year, members of Congress started demanding answers from Amazon after its "Rekogition" tech said 28 lawmakers were criminals. Amazon's response was: you're using the software wrong. That didn't really answer the questions raised by this experiment -- especially questions about the tech's disproportionate selection of minorities as potential perps.This has been a problem with facial recognition tech for years now. Biases introduced into the system by developers become amplified when the systems attempt to match faces to stored photos. A recent study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that multiple facial recognition programs all suffer from the same issue: an inordinate number of false positives targeting people of color.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter summing up the motivation behind FOSTA 2.0:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2014, NSA mega-defender Mike Rigers took a moment on his way out of congress to attack Obama for not launching a pre-emptive cyberwar with North Korea, while a retired official launched a bizarre lawsuit against Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras "on behalf of the American people". We were also unsurprised to learn that a CIA-appointed panel determined there was nothing wrong with the CIA spying on the Senate.Meanwhile, Sony was still lashing out against people sharing the documents leaked in the big hack, first demanding a Twitter user remove posts then stepping it up and threatening to sue Twitter itself. While this was going on, more digging through the documents confirmed that the MPAA's $80-million settlement with Hotfile was about appearances, not money.Ten Years AgoA brief world tour of this week in 2009: China was raising the Great Firewall even higher with claims about fighting piracy, the Australian Domain authority was shutting down sites critical of internet filters, Argentina was extending its copyright terms, a Hungarian copyright maximalist called those who oppose anti-circumvention laws "hate-driven" and "Maoist", Italian courts were continuing to attack YouTube at every opportunity, the Vancouver Olympics in Canada was making even-more-insane-than-usual intellectual property demands, and the Vatican created a special new copyright-like right on everything related to the Pope. On the more positive side, Chile rejected an attempt to force ISPs to filter and block copyrighted works, and at least one Lord in the UK was fighting to include something good in the Digital Economy Bill.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2004, the recording industry was getting creatively evil in attempting to freeze money donated to the Red Cross because it came from the company that operated Kazaa. The CEO of India's eBay affiliate was arrested because people sold pornographic material on the site, ComScore was trying to invent a new category of "researchware" to avoid its tools being called spyware, the Washington Post bought Slate, and some courts that installed WiFi networks were suddenly shocked by the fact that people were using them. Blockbuster was continuing to try to prop itself up, following its recent elimination of late fees with a big price drop for its subscription service. And at a time when it was popular to panic about kids using "text speak" and forgetting how to write properly, one study showed that they are perfectly capable of doing both.

Late last week, Cloudflare put up a fascinating and thoughtful blog post discussing (among other things) a change to its warrant canary list. As you hopefully know, a warrant canary is when a service provider makes a proactive statement about something it has supposedly never done. The idea is that if that statement disappears at a later date, one might reasonably infer that the company had been forced to do the thing it claimed it had not ever done -- and, additionally, that it had possibly been gagged from saying so. There are (somewhat reasonable) criticisms of warrant canaries, and to date, they're probably more well known for false alarms than any actual report of gagged pressured malfeasance.Still, Cloudflare's public (so, not gagged) decision to delete a line from its warrant canary is interesting and worth thinking about. The original warrant canary from Cloudflare stated that the company hadn't done any of the following:

Buying and selling marijuana is legal in the state of Washington. There are several limits placed on these acts, but it's pretty much the equivalent of alcohol. You have to be 21, can only buy a certain amount at a time, and can't smoke it in public or drive under the influence.What's apparently illegal is playfully announcing your pot business sells pot using nothing but Christmas lights. (via Reason)In 2017, Hashtag Cannabis in Redmond, Washington hung up some Christmas lights on the store that spelled out "P-O-T." Here's a really terrible photo of the contested display, taken from the county court's ruling on Hashtag's pot sign:Ho ho ho now I have a gravity bong.The local authorities -- the Washington Liquor and Cannabis board -- were not amused. The Board cited the store for violating restrictions on signage, claiming the string of Christmas lights exceeded the allowable size of 1,600 square inches by 2,300 square inches. It also said the sign was not "affixed" to the "permanent structure," which seems a little weird because lights have to be affixed to something and in this case it was the business' building. The Board also took issue with the word "POT" because it wasn't part of Hashtag Cannabis' business name.Two years later, Hashtag Cannabis has struck a blow for the little guy with Christmas lights, a weed business, and maybe a little too much time on his hands. The ruling [PDF] says the state's regulations run afoul of state free speech protections, as well as the US Constitution.The state argued its ban on POT in Christmas light form was crucial to the government's "substantial interest" in "curtailing minor children's interest in and exposure to the marijuana trade." Inarguably, this is a legitimate interest. However, the laws governing this speech aren't all that legitimate.

For a decade we've talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills -- a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate -- then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then brag repeatedly about how they haven't raised rates yet this year, when that's almost never actually the case.Despite this gamesmanship occurring for the better part of two decades, nobody ever seems particularly interested in doing much about it. The government tends to see this as little more than creative marketing, and when efforts to rein in this bad behavior (which is really false advertising) do pop up, they tend to go nowhere, given this industry's immense lobbying power.But something quietly shifted just before the holidays. After a longstanding campaign by Consumer Reports, The Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 passed the House and the Senate last week buried inside a giant appropriations bill that now awaits President Trump’s signature.The bill bans ISPs from charging you extra to rent hardware you already own (something ISPs like Frontier have been doing without penalty for a few years). It also forces cable TV providers to send an itemized list of any fees and other surcharges to new customers within 24 hours of signing up for service, and allows users shocked by the higher price to cancel service without penalty.The bill's not perfect. Because of the act itself it largely only applies to cable TV, not broadband service where the problem is just as bad. And cable TV providers can still falsely advertise a lower rate, thanks to what appears to be some last minute lobbying magic on the part of the cable TV sector:

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The world's second-largest jailer of journalists -- Recep Erdogan's Turkish government -- has just been pushed back against ever so slightly by the country's Constitutional Court. The government's long-running ban of Wikipedia has been overturned, the Associated Press reports.

Another case of nonexistent "customer confusion" is being litigated. Tofurky, the maker of several vegetable-based products, sued the state of Arkansas over its bogus [squints at Legiscan in disbelief] "Act To Require Truth In Labeling Of Agricultural Products That Are Edible By Humans" law.The law, written at the behest of meat and dairy lobbyists, claims customers are "confused" by non-meat products that use meat-like words in their product descriptions. A law similar to this passed in Mississippi was recently found unconstitutional by a federal court, resulting in legislators rewriting the law to make it less, um, unlawful.The Arkansas law has an added bonus not found elsewhere: wording targeting the use of phrase "cauliflower rice." Why? Because Arkansas is home to the nation's largest rice industry.Not that any consumers were actually confused. If they had been, they would have approached lawmakers. Instead, the entities approaching legislators were entrenched interests claiming shoppers were too stupid to figure out veggie burgers don't contain meat.That law is now on death's door, having been savaged by a federal judge calling bullshit on the state's willingness to violate the First Amendment to make certain industries happy. (via AgWeek)The ruling [PDF] blocks the state from enforcing the law while the rest of the particulars are sorted out, but it seems clear there's no way the state can salvage this terrible legislation. Tofurky pointed out the law contains no exceptions for makers of plant-based meat alternatives, meaning the company has almost zero chance of ever complying fully with the law, even if it retools its packaging (at an estimated cost of $1,000,000) and does everything it can to keep Arkansas consumers from viewing ads targeting shoppers in states not saddled with idiotic laws.The state argued that Tofurky's use of words like "sausage," "kielbasa," "burger," and "ham" confuse consumers despite Tofurky also using words like "white quinoa," "all vegan," "plant-based," and a big "V" to distinguish its vegetarian and vegan products from the meats they emulate. The court says this argument is ridiculous.

The Maccabeats, as I have just discovered, is an Orthodox Jewish a capella group that specializes in Jewish-themed parodies of hit songs (pretty much all a cappella groups seem to do a bunch of parodies). Their latest video, for this year's Chanukkah, was a parody of both Billie Eilish's Bad Guy (here: "Pan Fry") and Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road." It's pretty entertaining. Anyway, on Tuesday, they got a takedown notice from YouTube, saying that the video is no longer allowed to be shown for copyright violations:

Some sanity has finally prevailed in Austria, where libel laws are anything but sane. Earlier this year, a guest of the Ferienhof Gerlos hotel in Austria was sued by the hotel after posting reviews that mentioned the unexpected presence of a photo of a man in a Nazi uniform by the front entrance.The guest -- referred to in court documents only as "Thomas K" -- said a few things the hotel didn't like in his reviews. This:

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Back in March, NY Times reporter Nellie Bowles had quite a story, announcing that When Uber and Airbnb Go Public, San Francisco Will Drown In Millionaires. Nearly all of the article was quotes from various third party service providers -- real estate, financial planners, party planners -- excitedly planning to cash in, but the overall tone of the article was basically one big "Man, San Francisco is sure going to be totally overrun by obnoxious insanely rich tech bros." When that article came out, I think I heard about it from just about everyone I knew. People both here in the Bay Area and elsewhere were all commenting on it -- in many cases worried what it would do to where we all live.And, basically none of it happened. So rather than explore why NY Times reporter Nellie Bowles got it wrong, she's just written a new article about the same types of folks as the last article, complaining that they can't find all the "zillionaires" they expected. Maybe because that's not how any of this works and the original article was feeding a nonsense narrative? But that's not covered. There's no mention of the earlier article at all. There's no exploration of why the predictions didn't come true. Just scores of quotes from people disappointed that the throngs of stupid rich tech bros spending silly money didn't actually appear.This seems like the kind of thing that the NY Times would know better than to do. Both stories are making grand claims, where data could and should exist, but supporting them solely with a few limited anecdotes. There are good times to use anecdotes as a narrative tool in reporting, but considering how frequently I heard from people who honestly believed that tech IPOs were going to completely change San Francisco over the past few months -- which didn't even remotely happen -- it seems like the NY Times owes readers a bit more self-reflection on why it ran the original story, why it framed it the way it did, and why its predictions that were written as if they were set in stone never actually happened.This is the kind of thing that the NY Times used to have a "public editor" to handle, but the NY Times decided a few yeas back that it no longer needed such a position. Each and every day we learn more about why that was a mistake.

Another stupid, pointless effort to turn protectors and servants into professional victims is being mounted in Alabama. Cops can barely be bothered to educate themselves on the laws they're enforcing, but they're usually all over the ones that allow them to turn things they don't like into criminal activity.It's (yet another) "blue lives matter" law being foisted upon citizens by legislators who are altogether too certain they're in the right. Here's the backer of the proposed law that would turn cops into a protected group making a claim that's proven false before the end of the article at PoliceOne.

Last week, Karl wrote up a fascinating post about a NY Times effort to use a dataset that a whistleblower at a data broker firm gave them to track the whereabouts of President Trump, by spotting the location data of what appears to be a Secret Service agent detailed to the President. Karl included two quotes from two different Senators in the article, and I found both of them amusing, as they both basically took the story and responded with their own "hobby horse" solution to the problem, even though neither one of them seemed to accurately understand or describe it:

I usually don't jump in on things like these until a few more facts are in. As much as law enforcement complains about people "rushing to judgment" before every conceivable fact has been examined, here at Techdirt we prefer to be right, rather than first. Hey, we care about our reputation and we know our readers expect better of us.That being said, there are a lot of tells in this story that suggest this is going to get a whole lot worse for the law enforcement agencies involved in this nearly-deadly raid. Not "worse before it gets better." Oh my no. The only way it gets "better" is if these officers and agencies have access to a time machine and can undo every fucked up thing they did here.Here's a brief summary of what happened, as reported by the Associated Press:

We recently wrote about how Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal are preparing for FOSTA 2.0, this time focused on child porn -- which is now being renamed as "Child Sexual Abuse Material" or "CSAM." As part of that story, we highlighted that these two Senators and some of their colleagues had begun grandstanding against tech companies in response to a misleading NY Times article that seemed to blame internet companies for the rising number of reports to NCMEC of CSAM found on the internet, when that should be seen as more evidence of how much the companies are doing to try to stop CSAM.Of course, working with NCMEC and other such organizations takes a lot of effort. Being able to scan for shared hashes of CSAM isn't something that every internet site can do. It's mostly just done by the larger companies. But last week Cloudflare (one of the companies that Senators are demanding "answers" from), did something quite fascinating: it enabled all Cloudlfare users, no matter what level of service, to start using Cloudflare CSAM scanning tools for free, even allowing them to set their own rules and preferences (something that might become very, very important if the Graham/Blumenthal bill becomes the law.I highly recommend reading the entire article, because it's quite a clear, interesting, and easy to read article about how fuzzy hashing works (including pictures of dogs and bicycles). As the Cloudflare post notes, those who use such fuzzy hashing tools have intentionally kept at least some of the details secret -- because being too public about it would allow those who are producing and distributing CSAM to make changes that "dodge" the various tools and filters, which would obviously be a problem. However, that also results in two potential issues: (1) a lack of transparency in how these filtering systems really operate and (2) an inability for all but the largest players to make use of these tools -- which would be disastrous for smaller companies if they were required to make use of such things.And that's where Cloudflare's move is quite interesting. In providing the tool for free to all of its users, it keeps the proprietary nature of the tool secret, but it's also letting them set the thresholds.

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There's a whistleblower talking about TSA stuff, but it's not the sort of whistleblowing you're probably accustomed to. Frustrated by the internal routing of his complaints, the TSA's highest-ranking official in [checks notes] Kansas has brought his complaints to CNN.We all know the TSA has done almost nothing to make traveling safer over the course of its existence, but what the TSA's Jay Brainard has observed shows the actors in our nationwide security theater are tiring of their roles.

Former MEP Julia Reda, who lead the fight to block the problematic parts of the EU Copyright Directive (and who came very close to succeeding against huge odds, but eventually lost) has published a really important piece for the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard about why the new Copyright Directive should terrify every American who recognizes the importance of an open internet. First off, these laws mostly target American companies -- many of which may just choose to follow the new EU rules globally.

Back in the fall, we noted that, even if we thought it was silly, under existing law, it seemed highly likely that the DOJ would win its lawsuit against the publisher for Ed Snowden's memoir, Permanent Record. As I noted at the time, the government and the intelligence community in particular take the issue of "pre-publication review" incredibly seriously. Basically, if you take a job in the intel community, you sign a lifelong contract that says if you ever publish a book about anything regarding the intelligence community, you have to submit it for pre-publication review. Officially, this is to avoid classified information showing up in a book. Unofficially, it also gives the US government a sneak peek at all these books, and sometimes (it appears) allows them to hide stuff they'd rather not be public.As I noted when the lawsuit was filed, there is another ongoing lawsuit challenging pre-publication review requirements on 1st Amendment grounds -- but given the state of the law today, it seemed pretty clear that Snowden would lose this case. And, that's exactly what's happened. Judge Liam O'Grady (who seems to end up with all sorts of high profile cases) easily ruled in favor of the government last week. In short, the court says: an unambiguous contract is an unambiguous contract.

The eternal flame that is Ring's dumpster fire of an existence continues to burn. In the past few months, the market leader in home surveillance products has partnered with over 600 law enforcement agencies to:

Back in October, we wrote about the disastrous results (even if there were good intentions behind it) of a California law, AB5, that sought to "protect" so-called "gig" workers by forcing companies to hire them as employees, rather than freelancers/contractors. Supporters of the bill, including its vocal author Lorena Gonazlez, argued that it was necessary to protect these workers from exploitative companies and that it was clarifying what the courts had already decided. However, a big part of the problem was the framing of the bill, which more or less assumed that no one could possibly want to be a freelancer or contractor, that everyone must want to be an employee. That's not true. Nowhere was this more clear than in the world of freelance journalism, where many freelancers like the flexibility that comes with the role, and the ability to write for many different publications. Gonzalez's bill, which goes into effect on January 1st, put a ridiculously low yearly "cap" on articles that a freelancer could contribute to a single news site at 35. Any more than that, and the person would need to be reclassified as an employee. Even Gonzalez flat out admitted that the 35 cap was "a little bit arbitrary." Lots of freelancers contribute way more than 35 articles per year (some do more than that in a month), and they rightly saw that this would likely destroy the ability to be a freelance journalist in California.Gonzales didn't make things any better by initially attacking some of those who pointed out these problems, even retweeting a tweet calling journalist Yashar Ali "a selfish piece of shit" for pointing out the problems with the bill. And, of course, as the law is about to go into effect, the impact is being felt. The biggest one was Vox-owned sports site SBNation, which has long allowed for sports fans to write about their favorite teams and get paid for it as freelancers. However, last week, Vox announced it could no longer have California freelancers writing for the site. It was going to hire a much smaller number of full time staff, but hundreds of freelance contributors could only continue to contribute for free:

Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court inexplicably allowed an anonymous police officer to continue suing activist DeRay McKesson for the injuries he sustained when someone (not DeRay McKesson) threw a chunk of concrete at him during a protest in New Orleans.Never mind the First Amendment, said the court. What about the duty of care McKesson somehow inherited when he chose to organize a protest? Since the protest deliberately broke the law by blocking traffic, the court decided McKesson was at least indirectly responsible for any violence resulting from the inevitable clash between protesters and law enforcement.

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Just as some in Congress are finally realizing that perhaps all of the moralizing around the need for FOSTA missed the fact that it actually put more people at risk, Senators Richard Blumenthal (an original sponsor of what became FOSTA) and Lindsey Graham are preparing for FOSTA 2.0 instead. This is coming a few months after Graham's big grandstanding "but think of the children online" hearing that was basically a few hours of clueless moral panic about things that insecure adults were absolutely positive the kids were getting up to on their phones.The latest reporting on the planned "let's break Section 230 a bit more" bill from Graham and Blumenthal is that they'll create a new FOSTA-like exemption from Section 230 protections for any internet company found to have hosted "child sex abuse material" (the industry's new favorite acronym: CSAM). From what I've heard in talking to people on the Hill, a "commission" would be formed that would set forth "best practices" for preventing CSAM on their platforms, and if an internet company wanted to "earn" its CDA 230 protections, it would need to show that it complied with the commission's recommendations. Also, "certifying" that you comply, but not actually complying, could lead to criminal charges.Of course, what this misses is that basically all major internet companies already have systems in place to deal with this stuff -- mostly in working with NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. But, Congress loves nothing better than an issue it doesn't understand but can grandstand over. A few months back, the NY Times ran a highly misleading article about CSAM, using the data around all of the vast amount of reporting that internet platforms did to NCMEC about the CSAM they found and dealt with... and using that to suggest the platforms themselves were to blame for the issue.Child sexual abuse is a very real and very serious issue. But, as with "sex trafficking" and FOSTA last year, blaming the tech companies for it seems really misguided. That NY Times article did exactly that -- using the numbers reported to NCMEC as evidence that the problem was growing (rather than as evidence that tech companies were doing a better job finding, blocking and reporting this stuff). Indeed, if you actually read down into the details, what the article is really demonstrating is the failure of the federal government and the Justice Department in tackling the very real criminal issues related to CSAM.But what good Senator can grandstand about their own failures to fund the DOJ's efforts, when it's much more fun and headline-grabbing to send letters to 36 major internet companies demanding to know what they do to stop CSAM, which is now being used as the basis for this new law.Again, these Senators could be funding the DOJ to tackle the problem. They could be helping NCMEC better deal with its own issues. But, instead, they're going to attack the group of companies who have been overwhelmingly proactive in helping to fight CSAM. And, in the process, they're going to end up poking another bunch of holes in Section 230, which (if FOSTA is any evidence) is likely to have the exact opposite impact of what the Senators insist will actually happen.

For the better part of the decade, ISPs like Comcast and Spectrum have been desperately trying to carve out a niche in the home security and automation space. But despite their best efforts those projects haven't gone particularly well, to the point where big ISPs try to hide how many subscribers have signed up for such service in earnings reports. Historically, users already feel they pay their cable TV and broadband provider too much money, and only a few folks feel it's worth paying them even more for home security and automation products they can find elsewhere, usually for less.Customers received a good reminder last week of why it's not worth buying home security and automation services and products from their ISP. Charter Spectrum, the nation's second biggest cable provider, has announced it's shuttering its home security services as of February:

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side That One Guy responding to various portions of the letter from members of Congress telling a private organization not to comment on copyright law: