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I'm not sure why any nation with at least a passing respect for civil liberties would continue treating Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a world leader worth discussing ideas with. Erdogan rolled into the United States with his entourage of thugs and thought he could have critics beaten and unfriendly journalists tossed from press conferences. He continually petitions other countries to punish their own citizens for insulting him.Back at home, Erdogan is jailing journalists by the hundreds, claiming they're terrorists. A failed coup set off the latest wave of censorial thuggery, with Erdogan bolstering his terrorist claims by pointing to criminal acts like… robbing ATMs. A massive backlog of "insulting the president" cases sit in the country's court system -- a system that's certainly aware it's not supposed to act as a check against executive power.And yet, world leaders continue to act as though Erdogan is an equal, rather than an overachieving street thug with an amazingly fragile ego. UK Prime Minister Theresa May, hoping to strike a trade deal with Turkey, invited Erdogan to not only discuss a possible deal, but speak publicly.May tried to keep Erdogan from being Erdogan…

You may recall that way back in early 2015, we discussed the absurd story of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority suing Jersey Boardwalk Pizza for trademark infringement. At issue was that the pizza joint's owners, both from New Jersey, had crafted a clever logo that mimicked the logo for the Garden State Parkway, except it altered all the words to be the parlor's name and the food it served. It was a clear homage. Nobody denied it. That didn't change the fact, however, that the NJ Turnpike Authority is both not in the business of selling pizza, nor is it in the business of being in Florida. As such, there was zero potential for customer confusion, and the court dismissed the case.You would have thought that would be the end of this story. But, no, the NJTPA decided to go the trademark office and try to have the pizza parlor's trademark invalidated. Why in the hell it bothered doing so is anyone's guess. Regardless, it didn't work out well for the Garden State.

It's kind of incredible how frequently we see people who seem to think that the fact that social media platforms are so bad at moderating the content on those platforms is because they just don't care or don't try hard enough. While it is true that these platforms can absolutely do a much better job (which we believe often involves providing the end user more tools themselves), it's still amazing at how many people think that deciding what content "belongs" and what content doesn't belong is somehow easy. Earlier this month, in Washington DC there was the Content Moderation at Scale "COMO" conference. It was a one day event in which a bunch of companies revealed (sometimes for the first time) how they go about handling questions around content moderation. It was a followup to a similar event at Santa Clara University held back in February (for which we published a bunch of the papers that came out of the event).For the DC event, we teamed up with the Center for Democracy and Technology to produce a live game for everyone at the event to play -- turning them all into a trust & safety team, tasked with responding to "reported" content on a fictional social media platform. Emma Llanso from CDT and I ran the hour-long session, which included discussions of why people chose their decisions. The video of our session has now been posted which helpfully edits out the "thinking/discuss amongst yourselves" part of the process:Obviously, many of the examples we chose were designed to be challenging (many based on real situations). But the process was useful and instructive. With each question there were four potential actions that the "trust & safety" team could take and on every single example at least one person chose each option. In other words, even when there was a pretty strong agreement on the course of action to take, there was still at least some disagreement.Now, imagine (1) having to do that at scale, with hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of pieces of "flagged" content showing up, (2) having to do it when you're not someone who is so interested in content moderation that you spent an entire day at a content moderation summit, and (3) having to do it quickly where there are trade-offs and consequences to each choice -- including possible legal liability -- and no matter which option you make, someone (or perhaps lots of someones) are going to get very upset.Again, this is not to say that internet platforms shouldn't strive to do better -- they should. But one of the great things about attending both of these events is that it demonstrated how each internet platform is experimenting in very, very different ways on how to tackle these problems. Google and Facebook are trying to throw a combination of lots and lots of people plus artificial intelligence at the problem. Wikipedia and Reddit are trying to leverage their own communities to deal with these issues. Smaller platforms are taking different approaches. Some are much more proactive, others are reactive. And out of all that experimentation, even if mistakes are being made, we're finally starting to get some ideas on things that work for this community or that community (and remember, not all communities work the same way).As I mentioned at the event, we're looking to do a lot more with this concept of getting people to understand the deeper questions involved in the tradeoffs around moderating content. Setting it up as something of a game made it both fun and educational and we'd love some feedback as we look to do more with this concept.

It appears the concept of "extreme vetting" at our borders has been backburnered. The Washington Post is reporting ICE has scrapped plans to acquire software capable of strip-mining immigrants' social media accounts and converting this info into a RATE MY DANGEROUSNESS number. However, it does not appear the concept is being done away with entirely.

If you've been following how much the record labels stumbled around the internet for the past couple of decades, then you know the basics here. But time has a way of erasing some of the nuances of history, and I find it incredible to watch the RIAA and the record labels these days walking around proudly acting as if they were the ones who "saved" the music industry by embracing streaming services that now make up the bulk of the recording industry's revenues. Indeed, as we've pointed out for years, the recording industry has a very long history of overvaluing the music and undervaluing the services that people want. They've spent so long insisting that the music is the sole source of the value of what they produce, that they always downplay (or entirely erase) the rest of the equation: getting the music to fans in a manner that is convenient, reasonable, and non-burdensome. Instead, they always focus on killing the golden goose -- insisting that any successful music tech service pay them more and more until they're squeezed dry.Over at Motherboard, Ernie Smith, has a good history of how the recording industry screwed up streaming in the early days (unfortunately he does what most people do and refers to what's really the "recording industry" as the "music industry" -- and also simplifies the history to be just one round of mistakes, rather than many, many mistakes leaving a graveyard of dead tech companies in its wake -- but the overall article is still excellent). It's a very instructive piece in detailing exactly how the record label bosses were so focused on making sure that they had control and limits, that they didn't care at all about providing a service that people actually wanted. Much of it focuses on the two idiotic music label-approved streaming services that the industry tried to launch MusicNet and PressPlay (which we dubbed MusicNot and PressPause way back in 2001). Smith details how both services were built entirely focused on "how do we protect our revenue stream" rather than "how do we serve the customer." Thus, you had lots of DRM and lots of stupid limits:

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The government is still trying to land a conviction from its mass arrest of participants in last year's Inauguration Day protests in Washington, DC. So far, it has nothing to show for its efforts but a far-too-casual disregard for civil liberties.The prosecutions began with the government's breathtaking demand for the personal info of all 1 million+ visitors to the Disrupt J20 website. From there, things did not improve. The government's prosecutors accused protest participants of "hiding behind the First Amendment" while attempting to strip away First Amendment protections. One of those charged by the government with rioting was journalist Alexi Wood, who had filmed the protests and had the footage to show he wasn't a participant in violent or destructive acts.The government compounded its unconstitutional behavior in court when its lawyer (Jennifer Kerkhoff) tried to downplay the significance of a foundational part of our justice system -- that the accusers must prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" the accused committed a crime.

By now you've probably been informed that the next-generation of wireless broadband technology is going to revolutionize everything. Much like they did with 3G and 4G, wireless carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have repeatedly hyped the fifth-generation (5G) wireless standard, insisting that the technology will somehow usher forth a "societal transformation" that's going to have a magical, cascading impact on every sector in technology, from the internet of (broken) things to the smart cities and self-driving car technologies of tomorrow.The idea that we're in a "race to 5G" with other nations has been a cornerstone of the Trump administration's factually-dubious protectionism aimed at blacklisting Chinese hardware vendors. And hoping to pander to this sentiment, both T-Mobile and Sprint have played up this rhetoric in public statements as they seek approval of their job and competition killing megamerger:

The UK government's continuing efforts to save the country's children from the evils of internet porn are increasingly ridiculous. Filtering efforts applied by ISPs have managed to seal off access to plenty of non-porn sites while still remaining insanely easy to circumvent. The government -- with a straight face -- suggested there was nothing not normal about internet customers turning over personal information to ISPs in exchange for the permission to view porn. It's as if building a database of the nation's porn aficionados was the government's original intent.Since nothing about this was working about the way the porn filter's architects (one of whom was arrested on child porn charges) imagined, the UK government decided the same non-functioning tech could be put to work filtering out "terrorist content." Bad ideas have repeatedly been supplanted by worse ones, and now it appears UK citizens may be able to opt out of ISP porn-related data harvesting by [squints at press report] buying a porn license from their local newsjobber.

It's not always true that in the lamest trademark disputes it's universally a big company trying to push around a much smaller company, but that does happen an awful, awful lot. For some reason, it seems that the moment a company or brand gets big enough, it suddenly transitions into a trademark bully looking to stamp out even the most benign competition.That certainly seems to be the case with Tommy Gun's Original Barbershop chain firing off a C&D to the owner of Tommy's Barber Shop, claiming that the shaggy public will be super-confused as to exactly who is cutting their hair in Nova Scotia.

A federal judge has allowed the ACLU, EFF, and the several plaintiffs they represent to continue their Fourth Amendment lawsuit against DHS, ICE, and CBP. The plaintiffs are challenging the Constitutionality of border device searches -- something that has skyrocketed in recent years. As it stands now, these agencies believe nothing stronger than reasonable suspicion is needed to perform highly-intrusive searches. In many cases, not even suspicion is needed, thanks to the "border search" exception to the Fourth Amendment courts have carved out for the government.Policies for agencies performing border device searches are pretty much identical. All allow searches and seizures of devices without individualized suspicion. This warrantless, suspicionless search may also result in the device being confiscated for weeks or months while a forensic search is undertaken -- again, supposedly without violating travelers' rights. CBP's policy was altered this year, requiring forensic searches and the mirroring of devices to at least reach the level of reasonable suspicion. Better than ICE's policy, but still nothing approaching a warrant.The government sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, claiming the plaintiffs had no standing to assert violations, much less seek injunctive relief on the theory they would likely be subjected to intrusive device searches the next time they traveled.The court disagrees with all the government's arguments. The government claimed the number of device searches -- although steadily increasing -- is still a small percentage of the overall whole. The court points out it doesn't really matter what the percentage is. It's whether or not CBP and ICE perform these searches routinely. From the decision [PDF]:

The "fake news" law erected in Malaysia was put in place to do one thing: allow the government to increase its control of journalists. Top-level corruption needed to be buried, and a "fake news" law seemed like a handy way to do it. The law made one thing clear: the government alone would decide what news was fake. The most likely target appeared to be reporting about the mysterious appearance of $700 million in Prime Minister Najib Razak's personal bank account.The law claimed its first victim shortly after being enacted. A Danish citizen visiting Malaysia was arrested and charged after he posted a YouTube video allegedly misrepresenting the time it took for emergency services to respond to the shooting of a Hamas engineering expert. The man will now spend a month in jail after being unable to pay the $2,500 fine handed down by the court.It once looked like the law might be headed for a swift derailment. Mahathir Mohamad promised he would abolish the law entirely if elected Prime Minister. The BBC reports only part of the previous sentence has come to pass.

Any review of our ongoing coverage of Comcast will leave you with the impression that the mega-company is almost perfectly terrible at customer service, seems only interested in growing as large as possible as quickly as possible while tamping down anything resembling the potential for competition in its market, and has done everything in its power to kill net neutrality on top of it all. While many might believe that Comcast is getting killed by the same cord-cutting epoch causing so many others in the entertainment space to reach for the Tums, we recently noted that the cable company is actually still raking in money hand over fist. This is done, at least in part, by the company's subtle strategy of simply upping what they charge customers for internet services.It's also apparently done in part by charging Comcast customers with installation fees for locations already tuned up on Comcast service.

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Last week on NPR's Fresh Air, I first heard about the publication of the book Barracoon, which sounds fascinating -- as is the backstory behind the book. The book was actually written in 1931, based on interviews anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston did with then 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis, then the last known living person to have been brought to America from Africa on a slave ship. In the Fresh Air piece, Maureen Corrigan described the decades long delay in publishing the book this way:

While people remain exclusively fixated on the telecom industry's attacks on net neutrality, the reality is companies like Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon are busy trying to eliminate nearly all federal and state oversight of their businesses. And while deregulation has its uses in healthy markets as part of an effort to protect innovation, you may have noticed that the telecom market isn't particularly healthy. As such, the end result of eliminating most meaningful regulatory oversight without organic market pressure in place is only likely to make existing problems worse.This battle is getting particularly heated on the state level. After the Trump administration dismantled net neutrality and consumer privacy protections, states began flexing their muscle and attempting to pass their own privacy and net neutrality rules. ISP lobbyists, in turn, tried to head those efforts off at the pass by lobbying the FCC to include (legally untested) language in its net neutrality repeal "pre-empting" states from being able to protect broadband consumers in the wake of federal apathy.And in the wake of the net neutrality repeal, companies like Charter (Spectrum) are trying to claim that states have no legal authority to hold them accountable for failed promises, slow speeds, or much of anything else.For example, Charter is already trying to use the FCC net neutrality language to wiggle out of a lawsuit accusing it of failing to deliver advertised speeds. And the New York Public Service Commission also recently stated it found that Charter has been effectively lying to regulators about meeting conditions affixed to its $89 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. As part of the deal, Charter was supposed to deploy broadband to a set number of additional homes and businesses, but regulators found (pdf) several instances where Charter actively misled regulators.Last week Charter replied to these allegations by again claiming that states have no authority over them. As part of that effort the company is already citing the FCC's pre-emption language buried in its net neutrality repeal:

The FBI's growing number of uncracked phones remains a mystery. The agency claims it has nearly 8,000 phones in its possession which it can't get into, despite multiple vendors offering services that can allegedly crack any iPhone and countless Android devices.The push for mandated backdoors and/or weakened encryption continues, with successive FBI heads (James Comey, Chris Wray) declaring public safety is being threatened by the agency's locked phone stockpile. This push seems doubly insincere given a recent Inspector General's report, which revealed agency officials slow-walked the search for a third-party solution to unlock a phone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter.Legislators have taken notice of the FBI's disingenuous push for a legislative mandate. Back in April, a group of lawmakers sent a letter to the FBI asking what it was actually doing to access the contents of its growing collection of locked phones and why it insisted there were no other options when it was apparent vendors were offering phone-cracking solutions.The EFF has questions as well. It has sent a FOIA request [PDF] to the FBI and DOJ asking for details on the FBI's locked phone stash.

We've spent many years talking about the issue of intermediary liability on the internet. While the term is one that nearly everyone agrees sounds boring as anything, it's incredibly important in protecting your rights to express yourself online. The key issue is who is liable for speech that is posted online. The common sense reaction should be that "the speaker" is responsible for any speech they make online. However, for reasons I still don't full comprehend, many, many, many people would prefer that the site hosting the speech should be liable. In many cases, this might not seem to matter. But it can actually matter quite a bit for absolutely everyone. While most speech is perfectly legal, there remain some exceptions (including copyright, defamation, true threats and more).And while some people think that those exceptions are narrow enough that pinning liability on websites shouldn't be a big deal, that's not true in practice. Because if you say that the website (the intermediary or platform) is liable for the speech, then merely making an accusation of illegality in the speech has a high likelihood of censorship of protected speech. That's because most platforms will take down speech that is reported in an attempt to avoid potentially crippling legal liability. Indeed, in many cases, platforms are then pressured (either by law or threat of laws or legal action) to pre-filter or moderate certain content just to avoid even the possibility of legal liability.And because of that, lots of perfectly legitimate, protected speech gets blocked and censored. Much of this is abusive. Because once you've supplied a tool that allows someone to flag certain content for censorship, that tool gets used, even if the content doesn't really qualify, and the internet platform is heavily incentivized to remove that content to avoid liability.That's why this matters so much. That's why we're so concerned at attempts to chip away at intermediary liability protections in the US, such as the immunity clause under CDA 230 or the safe harbor clause under the DMCA 512. But the US is, of course, just one country of hundreds. And lots of other countries have their own (frequently changing) laws on intermediary liability. For years Stanford's Center for Internet and Society has hosted a World Intermediary Liability Map, and that map has just been updated. This is an incredibly thorough and useful tool in understanding how these laws play out in other countries, how they differ and even the impact of how they work.With the updated version, you can also drill down on topic pages around specific types of liability regimes, such as looking at how the Right to be Forgotten has been spreading around the globe, or look at how intermediary liability is handled around the globe for copyright or look at the monitoring obligations imposed by various laws.For those of us who continue to believe that proper intermediary liability laws are key to a functioning internet and freedom of expression online, this is a fantastic tool -- only slightly marred by the fact that so many of the developments concerning intermediary liability (including here in the US) have been around successful attempts at chipping away from those principles, leading inevitably to greater censorship.

Today the Senate voted 52 to 47 to reverse the FCC's attack on net neutrality, setting up a tougher showdown in the House.As noted previously, net neutrality advocates managed to convince Congress to try and use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse the FCC's misleadingly-named "Restoring Internet Freedom Order."That order, approved by a 3-2 FCC vote last December, not only kills net neutrality (as of June 11), but eliminates much of the FCC's authority to police monopoly ISPs. Since many still don't seem to understand this, it's worth reiterating that the attack on net neutrality is just one part of a much broader plan to severely hamstring FTC, FCC, and state oversight of giant broadband monopolies that face little to no organic market competition.Today's hearing before the Senate included all of the favorite hits culled from a decade of net neutrality debates, including ISP-loyal lawmakers like John Thune repeating the entirely false claim that net neutrality rules somehow devastated sector investment (SEC filings, earnings reports, and countless CEO statements disprove this). Claims that U.S. net neutrality rules were "heavy handed government regulation of the internet" were also frequently repeated (that's also not true, and the U.S. rules are arguably modest by international standards).Net neutrality activists had been trying to secure additional Senate votes for months, something made arguably difficult by ISP lobbyist success at stupidly framing net neutrality as a partisan issue, despite widespread bipartisan support. But activists managed to get three key Republicans to join their ranks: Maine Senator Susan Collins, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, and Louisiana Senator John Kennedy. Kennedy's yes vote was a notable surprise, given he'd been supporting ISP efforts to pass a bogus net neutrality law with an eye toward pre-empting tougher state or federal rules.But at the last moment he came along for the ride, his justification being notably amusing:

It's apparently time for a legislative update to The War on Cops. Apropos of nothing, legislators from both sides of Congress have flung some more "cops are more equal than others" legislation into the ring. Senators Orrin Hatch and Heidi Heitkamp have joined their House counterparts in attempting to make any crime against a police officers a hate crime. From Hatch's press release:

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So, we're now less than a week away from the close of our Kickstarter campaign for our version of the CIA's recently declassified training card game, which we've dubbed: CIA: Collect It All.We've been working hard on our version of the game, filling in redacted cards, testing and tweaking certain variations and playtesting, playtesting, playtesting. The game is quite a bit of fun -- which is not something I'm used to saying about something the CIA initially created. The campaign ends next Tuesday, and we don't currently have any plans to print the game after we do this one big run, so if you're on the fence about it, now would be a good time to lean towards supporting it.Since a bunch of people have had questions about the game, we thought it would be good to go on Reddit and do an AMA about the game. The three of us who have been working on the game -- myself and Leigh Beadon from Techdirt, and Randy Lubin from Diegetic Games -- will all be hanging out on Reddit doing the AMA starting at about 10am PT / 1pm ET today. I'll update this post with the link once it's live, but you should just be able to hit up the /r/IAmA/ subreddit and find it. That'll be the best place to have a discussion about the game, gameplay, design choices and the like (though we'll also answer questions here or on Kickstarter). So stop by and ask some questions and find out what it feels like to play the CIA's own card game. Update: Here's the link to the AMA.

While the rate of cord cutting is expected to double for Comcast this year, the phenomenon isn't having as dire an impact on the company's bottom line as you might expect. That's thanks to Comcast's growing monopoly over broadband in countless markets where the nation's phone companies are simply refusing to upgrade their networks at any real scale. That lack of competition lets the company not only jack up the standalone price of broadband (starting at $75 in many markets), but it allows the company to implement punitive and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees to drive up your bill should you embrace streaming alternatives.Speaking at a telecom conference in New York this week, Comcast cable CEO Dave Watson very quietly acknowledged the fact that when a customer cuts the cord, the fact that Comcast doesn't have to pay content licensing costs for that user -- combined with the fact that they simply drive up the cost of broadband for that user -- means that the company comes out ahead anyway:

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), passed in 1998, governs the sort of data that can be collected from children under the age of 13. That's why kids have to age themselves prematurely to create accounts on some social media networks. It's a law kids under the age of 13 subvert every day, but it's in place to protect kids from online services and restricts information collected by apps and online services that cater to children.Unfortunately, there are a lot of app developers ignoring this law. A recently-published research paper shows a host of violations and questionable practices that smartphone/tablet app developers are engaged in. Serge Egelman, one of the paper's co-authors, notes that thousands of apps are violating this law every day. In just one example, an advertising SDK (software development kit) made by ironSource is harvesting personal data from 466 child-directed apps.It's not as though this is a simple oversight. In an earlier blog post detailing COPPA violations, Egelman points out Android developers must take a series of affirmative steps to market apps directed at children. There's a long list of stipulations that must be met before Google will allow apps to become part of its Designed For Families program.Apps using ironSource's SDK are being marketed to kids, making the presence of a targeted advertising tool not merely questionable, but possibly illegal. As Egelman's blog post notes, it certainly violates ironSource's own terms of service. This is taken from its privacy policy, as archived late last year.

Website blocking is now all the rage across much of the world. The way such website censorship happens is, however, as varied as the countries in which the censoring occurs. While some nations enact laws for internet filtering on all sorts of grounds -- be it porn, extremist content, or political dissent --, other countries have ISPs that proactively do this kind of filtering for their host countries. In many cases, this results in "parental filters" designed to keep harmful content from finding the eyeballs of children. In reality, when Comcast tried this here in America, it managed to block TorrentFreak for some reason.But nobody does collateral site-blocking damage like UK ISPs. The stories about "for the children" and "but...terrorists!" ISP website filtering are legion, but recent reports put any focus by ISPs on the well-being of children in heavy doubt, given the amount of purely innocent children's content that is getting blocked by ISP filters.

Going back many years now we've written about the company Personal Audio, which built itself up as a patent troll for digital audio. Back in 2011, it won a patent lawsuit against Apple over patents on playlists. In 2013, as podcasting was starting to take off, Personal Audio decided that one of its other patents actually covered podcasting as well and sued some top podcasters while threatening many others. EFF stepped in to use the valuable inter partes review process to seek to invalidate the patent, which worked. Though, in the process the company sought to intimidate EFF donors.While all of this was happening, the company also realized that podcasters don't make any money, and figured out how to dump its lawsuits against individual podcasters... while still going after large companies like CBS.After the Patent Office's appeals board (PTAB) invalidated the patent, Personal Audio went to court to overturn the ruling. Last year, an appeals court rejected that attempt, noting that the PTAB was correct in invalidating the patent. Personal Audio still kept fighting, and asked the Supreme Court to hear it's appeal.Thankfully, on Monday, the Supreme Court denied that request, meaning that Personal Audio's podcasting patent is finally, truly and completely, dead.Still, the fact that this process took about five years and a ton of time in court should demonstrate just what a drag bogus patents can be on the economy and innovation. It also shows just how valuable a bogus patent can be for the trolls that hold them. Even after Personal Audio realized that all the podcasters it was trying to shakedown had little money to hand out, it still fought to the bitter end in trying to keep the patent alive, knowing that it could successfully get larger media companies to pay up. So this is a victory, but also a demonstration of just how broken the patent system is. Personal Audio did nothing to help podcasts become a thing. It did nothing to help podcasts move forward or become popular. Its only contribution to the podcast world was to wreak havoc on a bunch of podcasters, scaring many of them and costing them a ton of money in legal fees. That's all a dead weight loss to the economy, that could have gone into making more and better content.

The FBI continues its push for a solution to its "going dark" problem. Joined by the DOJ, agency head Christopher Wray has suggested the only way forward is a legislative or judicial fix, gesturing vaguely to the thousands of locked phones the FBI has gathered. It's a disingenuous push, considering the tools available to the agency to crack locked devices and obtain the apparently juicy evidence hidden inside.The FBI hasn't been honest in its efforts or its portrayal of the problem. Questions put to the FBI about its internal efforts to crack locked devices are still unanswered. The only "new" development isn't all that new: Ray Ozzie's "key escrow" proposal may tweak a few details but it's not that far removed in intent from the Clipper Chip that kicked off the first Crypto War. It's nothing more than another way to make device security worse, with the only beneficiary being the government.The FBI's disingenuousness has not gone unnoticed. Efforts have been made over the last half-decade to push legislators towards mandating government access, but no one has been willing to give the FBI what it wants if it means making encryption less useful. A new bill [PDF], introduced by Zoe Lofgren, Thomas Massie, Ted Poe, Jerry Nadler, Ted Lieu, and Matt Gaetz would codify this resistance to government-mandated backdoors.

No matter what you might think of the various legal fights involving Stormy Daniels, her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is making quite a name for himself over the past couple of months -- partly for his legal strategy, partly for breaking news about Michael Cohen and Donald Trump, and partly for constantly appearing on TV at what appears to be every possible opportunity. Even if you happen to support his dogged focus on calling out Cohen and Trump, it is worth noting that Avenatti seems to fall into the camp of a few other lawyers in filing and threatening completely bogus defamation threats trying to silence people. Last month, there was some news when Daniels, represented by Avenatti, sued Donald Trump for defamation over a tweet of Trump's.I could probably write 90,000 words just to give you a basic background of how we got here, but assuming you follow at least some of the news around this, the short version is that Daniels claimed on 60 Minutes that a few years back she was threatened in a parking lot by a man who told her to leave Trump alone. There was some dispute about the veracity of this claim, and Daniels eventually had a sketch artist draw what the guy looked like, leading Trump to then tweet: "A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!" Daniels sued over this tweet, calling it defamatory.As First Amendment lawyer Ken "Popehat" White notes, this is a "very weak" case, and there are a whole bunch of reasons why Trump is likely to get it dismissed -- including that previous courts have ruled that Trump's tweets can't be taken literally, and a fairly strong argument that Trump's tweets are opinions based on disclosed facts, rather than false factual statements themselves (not to mention the high bar needed to show that Trump's tweets involved knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth -- while Trump may, in general, have a reckless disregard for the truth, that's not going to meet the legal standard for a defamation case). First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza went, shall we say, a bit further in suggesting that Avenatti's lawsuit was a bad idea. You can read that entire link on why the lawsuit may backfire on Daniels/Avenatti, or it can be summed up in the following tweet from Randazza:If you can't read that, it's Randazza responding to Avenatti's tweet about the filing of the lawsuit with the following (*cough*) professional assessment:

Thickness of skin appears to be inversely proportional to the amount of power one has. This has been shown again and again. It often makes high-powered "victims" appears as though the only reason they entered public service was to punish the public for its lack of respect. The lesson never learned is that abuse of power never results in a respect net gain.Because this lesson is seemingly impossible to learn, we get things like this. The West Yorkshire Police proudly announced the smallest of drug busts on its Facebook page.

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The FBI's throwback to its Martin Luther King Jr.-watching heyday has reached the first stop on its way to its eventual nadir. Deciding backlash against violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers had resulted in too many frightening African Americans organizing, the agency decided to place "Black Identity Extremists" under surveillance, claiming this made-up group would "likely" engage in violence against police officers.So far, the agency has yet to secure a prosecution under this theory of extreme blackness. But it has managed to severely disrupt the life of at least one black male.

While U.S. net neutrality protections technically end on June 11, efforts to restore the rules continue. On Wednesday the Senate is now formally scheduled to hold a vote to try and use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse the FCC repeal. The CRA can reverse a regulatory action with a majority vote in the House and Senate; it's what the GOP and Trump administration used to kill popular broadband privacy rules before they could take effect last year.In a Statement, Senator Ed Markey called the May 16 vote the "most important vote for the internet in the history of the Senate":

At the beginning of the year, the DOJ and DHS teamed up to release a report (very) narrowly crafted to support President Trump's claims about inherently-dangerous immigrants. Known as the "terrorist entry" report, it skewed data and omitted all mentions of domestic terrorism to paint a distressing picture of foreign individuals wreaking havoc on US soil.The omission of domestic terrorism was by design. The Executive Order predicating the report [PDF] specifically called only for numbers on "foreign nationals in the US who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses." That's because those numbers would look pretty unimpressive stacked up against terrorist acts perpetrated by US citizens, as was pointed out by Lawfare's vetting of the report.

Here's a fun thing I never thought I'd find myself saying: the world should take a cue and be more like beer drinkers. Specifically, that is, when it comes to how the beer drinking community reacts to trademark law. Any review of this site's coverage of trademark law as it pertains to the alcohol and beer industries will show that there is a burgeoning problem in this industry, where explosive growth in craft brewing has resulted in a likewise explosive growth in trademark disputes. What's somewhat unique in the industry, however, is the sense of community both between brewers and drinkers and, more importantly, between brewers themselves. This bond has muted what would otherwise be disastrous intellectual property squabbles.And part of that is indeed fueled by the consumers themselves. An example of this can be found in a New Zealand brewer's attempt to trademark a common term in the industry, only to have the public outcry force it to pull back its application.

The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court has handed down a decision [PDF] suggesting the Fourth Amendment might still provide some minimal protection at our nation's borders. Most rights are considered to be waived -- especially those affecting privacy -- thanks to a prevailing national security interest that is seldom challenged by courts. Two years ago, a California federal court looked at the Supreme Court's Riley decision (which instituted a warrant requirement for cellphone searches) and decided that simply didn't apply within 100 miles of US borders.This precedential decision doesn't cut the government quite as much slack. While it recognizes border security is a national priority, it's not as quick to give federal agencies a free pass on Fourth Amendment exceptions. The underlying facts make it a less-than-ideal challenge, but even so, the court finds enough to work with in the Riley decision to suggest not all border searches should be suspicionless.Hamza Kolsuz, the appellant, had been caught twice exiting the country with firearms parts in his luggage. Those incidents occurred in 2012 and 2013. The parts were seized both times, with federal agents explaining licensing requirements but choosing not to arrest Kolsuz for violating federal law.In 2016, the same thing happened again. Agents searched his luggage and found firearms parts. One agent then performed a cursory examination of the phone Kolsuz was carrying. This search the court has zero issues with. It's easily covered by the border search exception.

While the world over is dealing with the scourge that is copyright trolling, it is true to say that this virus has not spread everywhere equally. One of the hardest hit countries has been Denmark, where a few copyright trolling practices have caused an insane amount of headaches for the public, and chum within the court systems. It all got bad enough to turn rivals into bedfellows, with two major ISPs, Telenor and Telia, teaming up to push the legal fight to unmask their respective customers back on the copyright trolls. The duo's initial efforts at convincing the legal system that the privacy rights of its customers trumped the rights of copyright trolls to extract settlement cash from them went poorly, with the District Court finding for the copyright trolls.But the fight for customer privacy didn't stop there and the companies appealed the case up to Denmark's higher courts, which decided for the ISPs and consumer privacy.

Good lord. Somehow recent overseas efforts to regulate fake news, hate speech, etc. haven't managed to persuade US government officials to think two or three times before introducing the same sort of legislation. Whatever hasn't been turned into blatant vehicles for government censorship has produced a steady stream of embarrassing collateral damage.In the United States, the First Amendment protects a wide variety of unpopular speech, but that isn't stopping California legislators from trying to govern their way through the "fake news" problem. Eric Goldman reports an effort has been started to put the state in the business of directly regulating online speech.The bill has been heavily edited since its introduction in February. At that point, the Cali legislature wanted to compel social media services to inform users what steps it was taking to protect them from "fake news" as defined by the California government, if and when the government ever gets around to defining exactly what it thinks "fake news" is.

For years now we've noted how a company by the name of Securus has managed to obtain a pretty cozy, government-supported monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services. Like any monopoly, this prison monopoly has pretty traditionally resulted in not only sky high rates upwards of $14 per minute for phone calls, but comically poor service as well. It's something advocates (like outgoing FCC staffer Mignon Clyburn) have been trying to rectify for years, only to have Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai completely deflate those efforts last year.But Securus' monopoly -- and the government pampering and cronyism that helped create it -- has other additional costs as well. Interstate inmate calling service (ICS) companies effectively buy their privileged positions from local governments, who then expect some favors in return. For example, Securus was recently accused of routinely spying on privileged inmate attorney communications, information that was only revealed after Securus was hacked in late 2015. Given the generalized apathy for prison inmates and their families ("Iff'n ya don't like high prices, don't go to prison son!") reform on this front has been glacial at best.Meanwhile, the problems caused by these government-sanctioned monopolies continue to pile up. A recent court case has also exposed how some law enforcement officials also make routine use of a Securus service that helps track people’s cellphones without court orders. While the service is marketed to government as a way for law enforcement to track fleeing drug treatment or even Alzheimer's patients, zero oversight means it's routinely abused. In this case, the law enforcement official used the Securus service to not only track members of the general public, but Judges and other law enforcement officials as well:

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Good news for motorists: law enforcement is using something just as unreliable as $2 field drug tests to justify arrests and searches. Field drug tests have been known to declare donut crumbs meth and drywall dust cocaine. Yet they're still in use, thanks to their low price point. A costlier apparatus, used to determine blood alcohol levels during sobriety tests, appears to be just as broken as cheap drug tests.Alcotest, made by German medical tech company Draeger, is used by a large number of US law enforcement agencies. Challenges to test results led to Draeger turning code over to defense attorneys, who soon discovered a lot of variables affected breath tests -- many of which weren't addressed by the device's software or default settings used by officers. Zack Whittaker at ZDNet has the full report:

For many months in the discussion over FOSTA/SESTA, some of us tried to explain how problematic the bills were. Much of the focus of those discussions were about the negative impact it would have on free speech on the internet, as the way the bill was drafted would encourage greater censorship and more speech-chilling lawsuits. But as we heard from more and more people, we also realized just how incredibly damaging the bill was going to be to those it was ostensibly designed to protect. Beyond the fact that it was passed based on completely fictional claims about the size of the problem, those who actually were victims of sex trafficking began explaining -- in fairly stark terms -- how SESTA/FOSTA would put them in greater danger and almost certainly lead to deaths.While supporters of the bill seem to insist that because the bill puts legal liability on platforms that are used for sex trafficking that it will magically make sex trafficking disappear, the reality is more complex. While we can argue about Backpage's complicity in what happened on its platform, for years it was used as a tool to protect sex workers, giving them more control over their lives and who they worked with. As we've pointed in the past, a recent study found that Craigslist, back when it had its "erotic services" section, appeared to decrease female homicide rates by an astounding 17.4%. Backpage picked up the slack when Craigslist was bullied into closing that section, but now it's gone too.And stories are already coming in about the damage done. A recent episode of the Reply All podcast all about SESTA/FOSTA had some scary stats at the end, noting that there are already many stories of sex workers who have gone missing or been killed since the bill became law.Motherboard has a story with much more details, noting that the passing of SESTA/FOSTA has emboldened pimps to take advantage of more victims of sex trafficking. As many sex workers had explained, Backpage actually allowed them to have more control themselves, and helped them get away from pimps. But without Backpage?

Georgia legislators chose to deal with blowback from from some election security gaffes (and the mysterious wiping of servers containing evidence sought in a lawsuit) by introducing a godawful "cybersecurity" bill that would have criminalized security research. The bill passed by the state Senate criminalized password sharing and "unauthorized" access, even if there was no malicious intent.This legislation ran into opposition from everyone but its crafters.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is John Snape with an unorthodox suggestion about the police:

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Astro-turfing and fake reviews continue to be plagues upon the online marketplace, creating a wave of distrust with the public when it comes to properly assessing any business via online means. It's impossible to know how big or small a problem this is, which only adds to the distrust in the public, forcing them to assume the worst. All that being said, Valve has actually been pretty good about policing reviews on its gaming platform, Steam, and also making a big public stink about instances in which it has had to take action against developers for trying to game the review system. Studios have had their games pulled from the store entirely, such as when Digital Homicide and Insel Games each had their respective titles pulled. Given that Valve made sure the volume was turned up when it took such actions, one would think that game studios ought to have gotten the message by now.And, yet, not all of them have. Acram Digital, a developer that makes digital versions of board games, just had all of its titles disappeared by Steam when it was discovered that an Acram employee was creating fake Steam accounts and posting fake positive reviews. As it did so, Valve released the following statement.

Another case of asset forfeiture is the subject of a federal lawsuit. Like many others, the plaintiff has obtained the assistance of the Institute for Justice in battling the government for the return of seized assets. In this case, a US citizen saw $41,000 of hers disappear into the government's custody when she attempted to take it to her hometown in Nigeria to start a medical clinic.After detaining her for hours at the airport, the CBP decided it could keep the money Anthonie Nwaorie lawfully earned.

With copyright trolling a business model in full force across the world, we've noted that there has finally started to be some pushback against these tactics. In Europe, both courts and ISPs have begun wising up to the notion that IP addresses are an incomplete and faulty piece of "evidence" at best, with both government and industry also finally beginning to question just where user privacy should fit into all of this. In America, unfortunately, copyright trolls have all too often been able to unmask customers through ISPs based on court orders pretty much at will. Strike 3 Holdings is one such troll, with the company being partially responsible for a number of piracy lawsuits shooting out of the gate in 2018 at record speed.And, yet, it appears that there might finally be some pushback coming to the US too, as two judges in Minnesota have now refused to order ISPs to give up customer information to Strike 3.

I trust that readers of this site young and old will be familiar with Dr. Dre. The wildly famous rapper has made hit records, produced some of the biggest names in hip hop, been a mogul in the music hardware space with his headphone line, and performed countless pelvic exams on women throughout the American northeast.Wait, that last part can't be right. Surely I was legitimately confused by the existence of Dr. Drai, an OB/GYN in Pennsylvania who dared attempt to get a trademark on his name for his doctor-ly practice. It seems that Dr. Dre has been locked in a trademark opposition with Dr. Drai going on three years, arguing that the absurd example of faked confusion above is actually likely to happen for real.

As you've probably seen, AT&T was recently exposed for paying $600,000 into a shady shell LLC operated by President Trump's "fixer" Michael Cohen. Initially, AT&T tried to claim that the company had simply hired Cohen for "insight" into President Trump. Given AT&T could easily gain said insight into Trump from any number of its lawyers, lobbyists, and above-board consultants (not to mention the ocean of politicians and regulators in its back pocket), the idea they'd pay a dubious NYC "fixer" for such insight never really carried much weight.It seems fairly obvious at this point that AT&T was probably paying Cohen for additional access to the President. A leaked document provided to the Washington Post makes it clear that AT&T hoped to gain some advantage in its business before the FCC (net neutrality, privacy, protectionism, protecting its monopoly power), and its efforts to gain regulatory approval for the company's $86 billion Time Warner merger:

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