Techdirt

Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, it was Olympic time — which also means, time to be frustrated with NBC's exclusive coverage. One journalist who was highly critical of the network ended up getting his Twitter account suspended, then eventually reinstated, with the end result (of course) of a massive Streisand Effect. Meanwhile, a leaked document revealed the unsurprising fact that the IFPI had no plans to share any money it got from The Pirate Bay with musicians, the MPAA was hosting movie screenings to get cozy with congress, and for some reason Homeland Security was getting in on the YouTube takedown game.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, as had been the case for many years and still is to this day, e-voting machines were found to have terrible security. That particular report came from California, but was quickly followed up by a similar one from Florida, and then a source-code review that also uncovered numerous vulnerabilities. And yet election officials, as always, defended the machines — perhaps because of so many of the officials used to work at the companies that make them?Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, people were digging deeper into the many horrors of the bill that would make it legal for Hollywood to hack your computer in its crusade against piracy. Not that this was the only bad internet bill being considered — Congress was also looking into making even more stringent anti-circumvention laws than those in the DMCA. The same DMCA that, the very same week, was being used by HP to threaten security researchers who revealed a vulnerability in their software (though they later backed down). Amidst all this, we were glad to see some attempts to wake academics up to the dangers of the DMCA.

Jeff Sessions and the DOJ are back to threatening leakers again. It seems counterproductive, considering each new threat of leak investigations does little to stem the steady flow of leaks. But the new DOJ boss seems ready to go further than his predecessors.Having already expressed an interest in taking care of Obama's unfinished business by going after Wikileaks, Sessions now appears to be headed towards threatening journalism and the First Amendment itself. This would be a new direction for the Justice Department. A 2013 report by the DOJ stated it was unwilling to consider the punishment of journalists during leak investigations, except as a last resort.

For years, the companies that hoover up your internet browsing and other data have proclaimed that you don't really have anything to worry about, because the data collected on you is "anonymized." In other words, because the data collected about you is assigned a random number and not your name, you should be entirely comfortable with everything from your car to your smart toaster hoovering up your daily habits and selling them to the highest bidder. But studies have repeatedly shown that it only takes a few additional contextual clues to flesh out individual identities. So in an era of cellular location, GPS, and even smart electricity data collection, it doesn't take much work to build a pretty reliable profile on who you are and what you've been up to.The latest case in point: German journalist Svea Eckert and data scientist Andreas Dewes recently descended upon Defcon to once again make this point, releasing a new report highlighting how "anonymous" browsing data is anything but. The duo found it relatively trivial to obtain clickstream browsing data from numerous companies simply by posing as a fake marketing company, replete with a website filled with “many nice pictures and some marketing buzzwords." Ironically, some of this data was gleaned from companies that profess to offer you additional layers of privacy, including “safe surfing” tool Web of Trust.It didn't take long before the pair was able to obtain a database containing more than 3 billion URLs from roughly three million German internet users, spread across roughly 9 million different websites. However easy obtaining the "private" and "anonymous" browsing data was, using this data to quickly and easily identify individual users was even easier:

The last time we checked in with 80's rock band Def Leppard, the band was busy "forging" its own songs as a way to release its own back catalog without having its label cash in off of it. So bad was the relationship with Universal Music, apparently, that re-recording all of that music was the better option compared with having to deal with the label. So, one might wonder how the band views illicit music downloads then, amidst its anger at its label for not paying them properly.Well, it turns out that Def Leppard thinks music piracy is making them a killing in concert revenue.

So, yesterday, we wrote a quick post about recently-famous malware research Marcus Hutchins (famous for accidentally stopping the WannaCry attack) being detained by the FBI as he left Defcon. An hour or so later, we updated it with the details of the indictment which had been released. That had my quick response, which noted that the "evidence" didn't seem very strong. It just claims (without anything else) that Hutchins wrote the Kronos malware, and most of the indictment and most of the activity focuses on a second defendant (whose name is redacted) who apparently was out selling the malware. I was planning to write up a more thorough look at the indictment and its problems today, but last night, Orin Kerr beat me to it, and he (famed lawyer, law professor and former assistant US attorney) has a bit more expertise in the subject, so let's work off of his analysis.The crux of the indictment is that Hutchins and the unnamed "co-conspirator" worked together to create and sell malware, leading Kerr to ask the fairly obvious question:

Earlier this week, we wrote about a dangerous bill to punch a giant hole in Section 230 of the CDA. We spent a lot of time in that post detailing how problematic the bill is and how it would actually be counterproductive to the stated goal of stopping human trafficking. But, beyond just being counterproductive to the stated goal, the bill would likely create fairly massive negative consequences for tons of internet companies. If anyone used any part of that company's products and services for trafficking, it would open up companies not just to liability, but to costly legal action, even if they're eventually vindicated.And I wanted to dig into one example: Airbnb. As we've discussed in the past, Airbnb relies heavily on CDA 230, because otherwise, any time anything went wrong with an Airbnb hosted place, Airbnb would face potentially crippling lawsuits. And I'm thinking about Airbnb specifically, because of a recent ruling that Eric Goldman pointed out, in which Airbnb's largest competitor VRBO was saved by CDA 230. You can go over to Eric's blog to read the details, but the really short version is that someone booked a "luxury resort" via VRBO for a ridiculous sum of money, and the rental units never happened. The victims targeted VRBO with the lawsuit, but the court has none of it.

Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units and verify the transfer of funds. The most famous is Bitcoin, but there are other cryptocurrencies emerging that present outstanding investment opportunities for the savvy. In the $15 Beginner's Guide to Cryptocurrency Investing, you'll learn the instructor's system for investing in altcoins, and how to turn the money in your hand into extremely valuable digital currency.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

I recognize that not everyone agrees that the jury verdict against Gawker in the case brought by Hulk Hogan was a disaster for the First Amendment. I disagree. As we explained, even if you dislike Gawker and believe that it was a terrible smut rag that deserved to go out of business, the lawsuit presented a clear blueprint via which the famous and wealthy could attempt to silence any publication -- even those doing legitimate reporting. We, somewhat obviously, are feeling the rather direct effects of that ourselves, given that we're facing a lawsuit filed by the same lawyer who represented Hogan.But, here's yet another example of the chilling effects created by the Hogan verdict directly. You may have heard, recently, about a fairly astounding story, reported by famed music reporter Jim DeRogatis, that the singer R. Kelly was "holding women against their will in a 'cult.'". The story is quite incredible and detailed. It was published in Buzzfeed which, despite its reputation for viral videos and top 10 gif lists, has been publishing some amazing reporting over the past few years.But the story of why it was in Buzzfeed, and how the Hulk Hogan verdict almost kept the story from being revealed at all is important, and highlights the chilling effects of the Hogan verdict, and how it is likely stifling other important stories about the rich and famous from being published. DeRogatis, beyond his many years of excellent reporting about music and the music world, has tangled with R. Kelly before. You may be familiar with some older controversies involving Kelly... and most of those were also broken by DeRogatis, starting way back in 2000, when he broke the story of R. Kelly having sex with teenaged girls. DeRogatis was also deeply involved in the criminal trial of Kelly a decade ago (in which Kelly was eventually found "not guilty.")You can read the details of DeRogatis' latest story at Buzzfeed, but that's not the part that really interests us at Techdirt. Instead, it's the fact that multiple publications wouldn't publish this latest story -- often pointing to the Hulk Hogan verdict as the reason why. DeRogatis discussed the background to the story with Josh Levin at Slate, which includes this tidbit:

You might recall that when John Oliver did his latest piece on net neutrality, the FCC's comment system ground to a halt under the load of viewers pissed to realize that the FCC is trying to kill popular consumer protections protecting them from buffoonery by the likes of Comcast. But the FCC then did something odd: it claimed that a DDOS attack, not HBO's hit show, resulted in the website's issues. A statement issued by the FCC proclaimed that extensive "analysis" by the FCC had led the agency to conclude that it had suffered the attack at roughly the same time Oliver's program had ended:

Surveillance using CCTV cameras is old hat these days, even for locations outside the world's CCTV capital, London. But there's an important step-change taking place in the sector, as operators move from simply observing and recording, to analyzing video feeds automatically using facial recognition software. Techdirt has written about this area a few times, but these examples have all been fairly small-scale and exploratory. News from Georgia -- the one in the Caucasus, not the State -- shows that things are moving fast in this field:

On July 25, 2017, the Patent Office issued a patent to HP on reminder messages. Someone needs to remind the Patent Office to look at the real world before issuing patents.United States Patent No. 9,715,680 (the '680 patent) is titled "Reminder messages." While the patent application does suggest some minor tweaks to standard automated reminders, none of these supposed additions deserve patent protection.Claim 1 of the patent states (comments in brackets):

Twitter has gotten a lot of flack over the years for how it responds to threats and abuse online -- much of it deserved. The company insists that it's gotten much better about this, and now responds much more quickly to inappropriate threats or abuse online. But doing so is often difficult and bound to lead to some really bad decisions. Like one that just happened. Ken White's Popehat account has been temporarily suspended from Twitter. Why? Because he posted a threat he had received from someone else on Twitter to Twitter. Update: after this story started getting some attention, Twitter reversed the suspension and publicly apologized, saying that it was an error.If you're a regular Techdirt reader, I'm sure you're familiar with Ken "Popehat" White, the blogging lawyer who covers a lot of the same stuff we do, mainly in the free speech realm. Ken has also, a few times, represented us in response to silly legal threats we've received. If you're a Twitter user, you may also be aware that Ken is a prolific and masterful user of Twitter often commenting on the news of the day. He also uses Twitter to do some law 'splaining and to call out bullies and trolls. He's pretty good at it. One such recent bully was a Texas lawyer named Jason L. Van Dyke. We actually wrote about Jason a few years ago when he tried to sue the Tor Project, because some revenge porn site used Tor. We didn't hear much about him until a few months ago. It seems that, somehow, Van Dyke was offered a job as an assistant district attorney in Victoria County. For unclear reasons, that job offer was pulled. Van Dyke was not happy. He proceeds to sue the DA for pulling the job offer.In the midst of all this, another Twitter user, Asher Langton -- who has an uncanny ability to sniff out people online who are not exactly what they claim to be -- pointing out that it certainly looked like there were very strong similarities between Van Dyke and someone claiming to be a lawyer trolling for business on the white supremacist site Stormfront. There's a fair amount of back and forth between Langton and Van Dyke and then a direct threat from Van Dyke to knock out Langton's teeth. At one point there was this bizarre drama in which Van Dyke gave Langton 24 hours to promise to stop talking about him or promising to come to Langton and punch out his teeth.24 hours passed and nothing happened.Anyway... around this point, Ken White steps in and writes up quite the post about Jason L. Van Dyke. It's a good, well researched, thorough and detailed post as you might expect. In response, Van Dyke trains his anger on Ken, and starts tweeting shit about Ken and making similar threats to those he made to Langton (though a bunch of those tweets now appear to have been deleted).There were other tweets that certainly appeared to imply potential violence against Ken including a meme involving a bullet, that Van Dyke posted to Ken's Facebook thread about one of his posts:Ken then posts a second story about being sent a truly pathetic "glitterbomb" by someone claiming to be a supporter of Van Dyke's... and then goes on to expose someone who commented about Van Dyke on the earlier post, making Van Dyke out to be some sort of bad ass (or, as Ken puts it "a badass [as] might be imagined by a lonely 14-year-old.") Ken tracks down some evidence suggesting that the comment came from Van Dyke himself or someone working with him (though, very likely Van Dyke himself).Following that post, Van Dyke sent Ken this email:If you can't read that, it says:

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes is at it again. After years of unwavering support for NSA surveillance programs -- a one-man booster club operating from inside an oversight committee -- Nunes is now starting to find things he doesn't like about NSA surveillance.It escalated a few months ago when he was "shocked" to learn NSA surveillance grabs communications between world governments and may have been used to listen in on short-lived National Security Advisor Mike Flynn's conversations with Russian officials.Nunes' hypocrisy continued when he demanded answers about surveillance activities under Executive Order 12333 -- again in relation to possible surveillance of public officials he liked and supported. Nunes should already have known most of the answers to these questions. After all, he heads a surveillance oversight committee. But he didn't because he's spent most of his tenure with the oversight committee arguing there should be less oversight of Section 702/Executive Order 12333 surveillance programs.Nunes still won't let it go. He's fired off yet another letter demanding answers about surveillance, this time to new Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. This time, he's looking to pin surveillance of Trump appointees on the outgoing president -- as if nothing of the sort continues today.

Update: He's been indicted for his alleged role in creating a different malware, Kronos. More below.As you may recall, earlier this year, when the WannaCry ransomware was spreading like wildfire, it was accidentally stopped by a security researcher in the UK who was (mostly) known only by the pseudonym MalwareTech. He wrote about the whole experience after having tweeted about it earlier. Basically he spotted the domain that WannaCry was pinging and saw that it wasn't registered -- so he registered it, if just to track the spread of the malware. But, that process actually stopped WannaCry from spreading due to the way the ransomware was designed. The story of someone accidentally stopping a massive malware breakout was a good one and it was widely covered by the press. MalwareTech got lots of good press out of it... and as a thank you, at least one UK publication doxxed him and revealed his name, his age, some of his social media photos and even what he liked to eat. That wasn't very nice. Still, now it's known that Marcus Hutchens is MalwareTech, and people should be thanking him.Anyway, like many security folks and hackers, MalwareTech made his way to Defcon and Black Hat this year... and got his second big "thank you." According to Motherboard, US authorities have detained him in an undisclosed location.At the time of writing it is not clear what charges, if any, Hutchins may face. According to the now public indictment, Hutchins is accused of developing the Kronos malware that was a trojan that targeted banks. There's a second defendant, whose name and information is redacted (suggesting he hasn't been arrested just yet...) who then went out and appears to have promoted Kronos and tried to sell it.So the specific charge includes:

A South Carolina psychiatrist in engaged in what might be one of the all-time great windmill tilts. It's a libel lawsuit predicated on a single one-star review -- a review that contains nothing else but the solitary star.

The $36 Ultimate Productivity Bundle is designed to help you maximize your impact. Over the 8 courses you'll learn better time management, organizational skills, speed reading and more. You'll also learn how to find your life's purpose, how to master public speaking, how to efficiently run your life, and how to develop good habits. Top it all off with 27 simple and surprising lessons about finding your purpose and creating that perfect vision to work towards.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

A Seattle man has found a surefire way to clean up negative search engine results: get arrested for threatening (and apparently executing) a denial-of-service attack against a legal web site for refusing to take down an unflattering link.

It's stunning how often trademarks that never should have been granted get granted -- leading to all sorts of bad outcomes. One area that sees far too many bad trademarks involves trademarking geographic areas, with the holder of the mark often then trying to lock out local businesses from using the name of the locations in which they reside. If ever there were a trademark type that everyone ought to agree should be rejected, it's one based purely on geography.Entirely too many of these slip through. For example, one Canadian man managed to get a trademark on the name of the county in which he resides, with the stated aim not of using it in commerce, but rather protecting that name's reputation.

It seems as though a Baltimore police officer forgot about one key feature of his bodycam: the fact that it saves the previous 30 seconds of video recorded before the camera is activated. Most bodycams record and dump constantly. The moment it's activated, the 30 seconds preceding the activation become part of the recording.What was apparently inadvertently captured by the camera was the officer planting drugs in a can and hiding them in an alley. All three officers then retreat to the sidewalk outside the alley before heading back in to "discover" the drug stash.If it wasn't for the fortuitous discovery (in the legal sense) of the video, the officer might have gotten away with it.

You write about enough trademark disputes and you come across some real whoppers. And, man, have I seen some doozies. Still, I never stop being suprised by how silly these things can get. Today's example of this revolves around the Chamber of Commerce for Whiting, Indiana sending out trademark threat letters to the Edwardsville Hometown Committee in Pennsylvania over the latter's 'Edwardsville Pierogi Festival.

The police department of the largest city in the US often tops the list of public records villains. According to FOIA requesters, the NYPD manages to out-stonewall notoriously recalcitrant entities like the NSA, FBI, and CIA. Not far behind the NYPD, however, is the entire state of Massachusetts.This state has the worst public records laws in the nation, with 19 pages of exemptions -- almost one-third of its 60-page public records statute. Various state entities have done things like withhold documents on a 63-year-old murder case, citing the "ongoing" nature of an investigation with zero leads and several dead suspects. Officials have also claimed the state's SWAT teams are private entities, out of the reach of public records requests. The state's lawyers have previously argued the state laws -- as crippled as they are -- hand over too much power to constituents.But possibly nothing beats the Massachusetts state police. Investigative Reporters and Editors handed the agency its "Golden Padlock" award in 2015 for being the most secretive agency in the nation. The agency does far more than stonewall requesters. It sets up astronomical paywalls between requesters and their records.

Because someone had to, a former DOJ prosecutor has stepped up to defend the grand reopening of federal civil asset forfeiture abuse. George J. Terwilliger III has been given space at the Wall Street Journal to tell everyone why they're wrong about civil forfeiture. (Non-paywalled version here.)As part of the new president's "law and order" focus, Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened up the federal outlet for forfeiture, allowing state and local law enforcement agencies to route around local restrictions by asking for federal "adoption" of their forfeitures. This reversed the policy put in place by Sessions' predecessor, which limited adoptions and forced local agencies to adhere to local rules.Terwilliger, who has cut more than one federal forfeiture check, claims there's nothing wrong with civil asset forfeiture. And if there is, the solution isn't less of it.

The unmasking rules House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes has been (somewhat disingenuously) complaining about have been around for a few years now. Normally, US persons' identities are minimized before government officials can view intel gathered by the NSA. But in cases where it might be necessary to provide context, the White House can ask for the identities to be unmasked.This has turned into a mini-firestorm on Capitol Hill, with Nunes striking most of the matches. The problem is Nunes should be aware of these rules, as he's in charge of the intelligence oversight committee. He apparently doesn't, or at least wasn't aware how many people can actually ask for US persons to be unmasked.The loosening of these restrictions traces back to Obama's second term, as John Solomon of The Hill points out.

You may recall that several months ago, we discussed Donald de la Haye, kicker for UCF and a very good YouTube personality to boot. After racking up thousands of subscribers and millions of views at his YouTube channel, where de la Haye discusses all manner of things, including his football career, the NCAA came a-calling. The organization first informed him that he would have to shutter his channel completely, arguing that the advertising revenue it generated violated NCAA rules, which are designed to make sure that all student athlete activity that generates revenue does so only in the direction of the NCAA. Then, after the backlash, the NCAA reportedly offered to let de la Haye keep his YouTube channel, but only if he agreed to essentially never reference who he is or what one of his primary life activities is: football. It was a deal devoid of sense, as his football playing career is among the primary motivators for people to check his channel out to begin with. It's also a strange stance coming from an organization purportedly in the business of supporting student athletes as they become full-fledged adults, limiting his creative expression over a concern of YouTube revenue from his own fans.Because of that, de la Haye refused the deal. As a result, the NCAA has announced that de la Haye is no longer eligible for the upcoming football season.

Windscribe VPN is a VPN desktop application and browser extension that work together to protect your online privacy, unblock websites, and remove ads and trackers that follow you across the websites you visit every day. We have some price drops on the 3 subscription lengths of access with unlimited data available for an unlimited number of devices: $29 $22.49 for 3 years, $40 for 5 years, and $79 $49 for lifetime access. Windscribe does not keep logs, and you can read their privacy policy for more information.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

So we fully expected the ongoing to lawsuit filed by coal boss Bob Murray against comedian John Oliver to lead to some truly captivating moments (it already has!), but the West Virginia chapter of the ACLU has leapt into the case with wild abandon and made sure that people were paying attention. If you somehow missed it, Oliver did a segment on coal jobs a month and a half ago, with a particular focus on the head of Murray Energy, a character named Bob Murray. Part of the reason for the focus on Murray was that Murray's lawyers threatened to sue Oliver... and then followed through on the threat with an actual lawsuit that was even sillier than we expected. Last we'd written about it, the two sides were wrangling over Murray demanding a gag order on Oliver, while Oliver tried to remove the case to federal court, rather than state court. As we predicted, Murray's lawyers have now been trying to move the case back to state court and papers have been flying back and forth about both that and Murray Energy's renewed desire for a gag order (the original had been filed in state court, and then again in the federal court). We didn't think any of those filings were interesting enough to write about yet.But, have no fear, in what had been turning out to be a surprisingly mundane affair so far, the ACLU of West Virginia has decided to leap in and give it about the level of respect that the case deserves -- and, yes, as about a dozen people have told me, the ACLU quotes me (yes, me) in its filing. The ACLU has asked the court if it can file an amicus brief, specifically against the gag order Murray is seeking and in favor of dismissing the case and slapping Murray's lawyers with Rule 11 sanctions for bad legal behavior. It's... a bit uncommon for anyone to file amicus briefs at the district court level. It's not unheard of, but not particularly common. And... it also seems a bit early in the process for any amicus to get involved, but the ACLU of West Virginia seems to feel "why the hell not?"And, frankly, "why the hell not?" appears to be the motivating factor in many of the decisions made by Jamie Lynn Crofts of the ACLU of West Virginia. Indeed, Jamie -- who, with this filing has quickly climbed up many rungs on my "favorite 1st Amendment lawyers" list -- appears to be channeling her inner John Oliver in much of the filing, as it appears to treat the filing in about the same manner with which Oliver approaches the subjects he satirizes on his show: it's detailed, thorough, hilarious and razer sharp as it slices and dices its subject. Just take a gander at the table of contents on the proposed amicus brief here (or check out the full filing).If you somehow can't see that... well, gosh, figure out some way to see it. It starts out normally enough with the typically expected first few sections, but then we hit section II.B. which is titled: "The Ridiculous Case at Hand." At that point, my head tilts bit to the side, thinking "that's not quite what I'm used to seeing, even if I agree...". And then it's Section III where Crofts goes all in. Oh, hell, in case a few of you can't see it above, I'll just repeat it here in text because, goodness, it's too wonderful not to:

We fully expected the ongoing to lawsuit filed by coal boss Bob Murray against comedian John Oliver to lead to some truly captivating moments (it already has!), but the West Virginia chapter of the ACLU has leapt into the case with wild abandon and made sure that people were paying attention. If you somehow missed it, Oliver did a segment on coal jobs a month and a half ago, with a particular focus on the head of Murray Energy, a character named Bob Murray. Part of the reason for the focus on Murray was that Murray's lawyers threatened to sue Oliver... and then followed through on the threat with an actual lawsuit that was even sillier than we expected. Last we'd written about it, the two sides were wrangling over Murray demanding a gag order on Oliver, while Oliver tried to move the case to federal court from state court. As we predicted, Murray's lawyers have now been trying to move the case back to state court and papers have been flying back and forth about both that and Murray Energy's renewed desire for a gag order (the original had been filed in state court, and then again in the federal court). We didn't think any of those filings were interesting enough to write about yet.But, have no fear, in what had been turning out to be a surprisingly mundane affair so far, the ACLU of West Virginia has decided to leap in and give it about the level of respect that the case deserves -- and, yes, as about a dozen people have told me, the ACLU quotes me (yes, me) in their filing. The ACLU has asked the court if it can file an amicus brief, specifically against the gag order Murray is seeking and in favor of dismissing the case and slapping Murray's lawyers with Rule 11 sanctions for bad legal behavior. It's... a bit uncommon for anyone to file amicus briefs at the district court level. It's not unheard of, but not particularly common. And... it also seems a bit early in the process for any amicus to get involved, but the ACLU of West Virginia seems to feel "why the hell not?"And, frankly, "why the hell not?" appears to be the motivating factor in many of the decisions made by Jamie Lynn Crofts of the ACLU of West Virginia. Indeed, Jamie -- who, with this filing has quickly climbed up many rungs on my "favorite 1st Amendment lawyers" list -- appears to be channeling her inner John Oliver in much of the filing, as it appears to treat the filing in about the same manner with which Oliver approaches the subjects he satirizes on his show: it's detailed, thorough, hilarious and razor sharp as it slices and dices its subject. Just take a gander at the table of contents on the proposed amicus brief here (or check out the full filing).If you somehow can't see that... well, gosh, figure out some way to see it. It starts out normally enough with the typically expected first few sections, but then we hit section II.B. which is titled: "The Ridiculous Case at Hand." At that point, my head tilts bit to the side, thinking "that's not quite what I'm used to seeing, even if I agree...". And then it's Section III where Crofts goes all in. Oh, hell, in case a few of you can't see it above, I'll just repeat it here in text because, goodness, it's too wonderful not to:

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd, perhaps now most famously known for not knowing the "necessary hashtags," is back to beating up on encryption because it (no citation provided) helps terrorists get away with terrorism. Her op-ed piece for The Telegraph begins as so many pleas to undermine encryption do: with the horrors perpetrated by terrorists. Only now, the parade of horrors tends to sound something like a "CSI: Cyber" exposition outtake.

Late last week, President Trump gave a chilling speech to law enforcement officers in Long Island. Trump has made it clear he holds law enforcement officers in higher regard than the people they serve. In one of his first directives, he flatly stated that disliking police officers is "wrong."

In recent years, the Internet news from China has been pretty depressing, as Xi Jinping tightens his control over every aspect of the online world. But the Chinese are a resourceful people, with thousands of years of experience of circumventing imperial oppression. For example, one of the many taboo subjects today is the "June 4th incident", better known in the West as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. A New York Times article published in 2011 explains how people in China managed to refer to this forbidden date online:

A second appeals court has handed down a ruling on the constitutionality of the Network Investigative Technique (NIT) deployed by the FBI during its Playpen child porn investigation. The Tenth Circuit Appeals Court overturned the suppression of evidence granted by the lower court, ruling that the FBI's NIT warrant was invalid but that the agent's "good faith" reliance on the warrant prevented exclusion of the evidence.Multiple courts have found the NIT warrant invalid. The warrant was obtained in Virginia but the search the FBI's malware performed accessed computers all over the world. Prior to the recent Rule 41 changes, warrant execution was limited to the jurisdiction it was obtained in. The Appeals Court worked around the jurisdictional limit by reasoning the NIT was sent from Virginia and returned info gathered in the same jurisdiction. It just kind of glossed over the part where computers located all over the nation were briefly infected by the NIT to obtain the information needed to pursue suspects.The Eighth Circuit Appeals Court decision [PDF] finds more problems with the NIT warrant and execution than the Tenth Circuit did. The consolidated appeal, however, ultimately finds in favor of the government, overturning two lower court suppression orders.First, the good news. The appeals court finds the FBI does indeed need warrants to perform these searches, even if IP addresses aren't necessarily protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Smartphones have been one of the most world-changing innovations of our time — and for a long time, smartphone design was a hotbed of innovation. But more recently that innovation seems to have stagnated. So where does this technology go next? That's the subject of this weeks episode, in which we try to figure out whether smartphone innovation is still happening.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

It's no secret that there are a bunch of folks in the Senate who really, really, really dislike the fact that the site Backpage has been abused by some users for sex trafficking. They should be happy that through a lot of public pressure, Backpage has shut down its adult section.For reasons that are not entirely clear, many people seem to blame Section 230 of the CDA for the fact that sex traffickers have used Backpage.com. This is... weird and doesn't make much sense. After all, Section 230 doesn't apply to federal crimes around sex trafficking. So, if the platform itself is violating the law, the DOJ has the power and every right to go after the platform. Furthermore, as we've noted time and time again, these platforms have actually been tremendously helpful in allowing law enforcement to track down those responsible for trafficking and to help victims of trafficking. Still, because of this misplaced focus on CDA 230, earlier today, a bunch of Senators released a counterproductive and dangerous bill that would blow a massive hole through CDA 230, and it's clearly written 100% to focus on Backpage. Nearly all of the quotes about the bill from the Senate co-sponsors mention Backpage.And that's... odd. Because just two years ago, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, another anti-trafficking bill that had provisions that were similarly designed solely to target Backpage. So why aren't those actually being used if Backpage is such a problem (and, again, the DOJ could easily go after Backpage for violating trafficking laws if it actually did so). It's especially odd that none of the supporters of this new bill even mention the fact that they passed a similar "kill Backpage" bill just two years ago and no one's tried to use it.And even worse, the approach in this new bill, dubbed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, will be massively counterproductive to the goal of stopping sex trafficking. While the bill's supporters claim it is "narrowly focused," it is anything but that. It opens up a giant hole in CDA 230 -- the law that protects internet platforms from being blamed for the actions of their users -- saying that if federal sex trafficking violations (which, again, are already NOT covered by CDA 230) are involved, state Attorneys General and private individuals can now sue platforms -- especially if the platforms have "knowledge" of how they're being used for trafficking.Law professor Eric Goldman has a thorough description of the problems with the bill.

Last week, I (like probably many of you) saw the news that the famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) fact checking website "Snopes" was crowdfunding on GoFundMe, saying that it needed to raise money as soon as possible, because "a vendor" refused to recognize that Snopes had terminated a contract and was holding the site "hostage."

The Premium PC Power Bundle contains 10 apps designed to make your Windows systems safer and more productive. The $29 bundle includes NetSpot Pro to help help you optimize your WiFi connections, Glasswire Pro to let you monitor your network and protect up to 3 computers with its firewall, 7 Speed Reading EX 2017 to up your reading efficiency and comprehension, PaintShop Pro X9 to make it easier than ever to complete creative photo and design projects, and much more.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Techdirt has been covering the story of Sci-Hub, which provides unrestricted access to a massive (unauthorized) database of academic papers, for a while now. As several posts have emphasized, the decision by the publishing giant Elsevier to pursue the site through the courts is a classic example of the Streisand Effect: it has simply served to spread the word about a hitherto obscure service. There's a new paper exploring this and other aspects of Sci-Hub, currently available as a PeerJ preprint. Here's what one of the authors says in a related Science interview about the impact of lawsuits on Sci-Hub:

UPDATE: Not until after the post went live did I finally hear back from Chaturbate about its bogus DMCA notices. Chaturbate's support claims these notices were performed by an imposter. I'm not ready to take the company at its word, as there are hundreds of DMCA notices to be dug through before anything can be determined further. It does appear some DMCA notices were more finely-targeted (claims sites "stilled content" [?!]) but all of these were issued in a five-day span, suggested a concerted effort by Chaturbate that appears to have misfired, at least initially.Portmanteau words are great. It's a highly-efficient way to forcibly join two (possibly unrelated) actions and create a brand new activity. Add to this a decently-fast internet connection and you have Chaturbate, a service that puts people together to do things to themselves separately.Granted, much of this could be done with other services, including the portmaneau'ed ChatRoulette, but targeted markets are more profitable than floating from chat to chat hoping to escape the "turbate" part of this internet concoction. Chatting is fun. So is masturbation. But not many people enjoy being masturbated at, especially when they're looking to just chat a little. Chaturbate, however, gives people what they want, in as many varieties as they want it.Good for Chaturbate and its users. Like any other webcam service, Chaturbate wants to keep people from finding the same stuff for free. So it performs its own free, in-house DMCA takedown service. Good news for its clientele, especially those providing the entertainment… or it would be, if it were done with any competence.Unfortunately for Chaturbate and its users, this is being done as badly as inhumanly possible. Over the course of two days in July, Chaturbate carpet-bombed Google with DMCA notices -- many of them likely duplicates. Almost nothing has been removed. It may be there are a few illicit streams/recordings somewhere in the stack of webpages, but it's going to take some time to sort them out because of all the garbage added by Chaturbate's takedown efforts.In addition to targeting its own site in its takedown requests...Chaturbate has also targeted:

Portmanteau words are great. It's a highly-efficient way to forcibly join two (possibly unrelated) actions and create a brand new activity. Add to this a decently-fast internet connection and you have Chaturbate, a service that puts people together to do things to themselves separately.Granted, much of this could be done with other services, including the portmaneau'ed ChatRoulette, but targeted markets are more profitable than floating from chat to chat hoping to escape the "turbate" part of this internet concoction. Chatting is fun. So is masturbation. But not many people enjoy being masturbated at, especially when they're looking to just chat a little. Chaturbate, however, gives people what they want, in as many varieties as they want it.Good for Chaturbate and its users. Like any other webcam service, Chaturbate wants to keep people from finding the same stuff for free. So it performs its own free, in-house DMCA takedown service. Good news for its clientele, especially those providing the entertainment… or it would be, if it were done with any competence.Unfortunately for Chaturbate and its users, this is being done as badly as inhumanly possible. Over the course of two days in July, Chaturbate carpet-bombed Google with DMCA notices -- many of them likely duplicates. Almost nothing has been removed. It may be there are a few illicit streams/recordings somewhere in the stack of webpages, but it's going to take some time to sort them out because of all the garbage added by Chaturbate's takedown efforts.In addition to targeting its own site in its takedown requests...Chaturbate has also targeted:

So we've talked for years about how overlong terms of service contracts that nobody reads are used to eliminate your rights in numerous ways. That includes stripping away your legal rights and forcing you to engage in binding arbitration, which results in the company-employed arbitrator ruling in their employer's favor a vast majority of the time. In fact Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, recently cited these overlong and misleading contracts as one of the biggest threats to the health and utility of his invention.Every so often we'll see a company conduct an experiment to demonstrate the stupidity of long-normalized behavior, like the company in 2010 that got users to sign off on selling their soul. Taking a cue out of that playbook, UK WiFi hotspot operator Purple recently did something similar, burying a provision in their terms of service requiring that customers engage in 1,000 hours of menial labor if they wanted to access the internet.Purple currently provides hotspot connectivity to Legoland, Outback Steakhouse and Pizza Express, and stated in a blog post that they provided patrons with a wonderful array of possibilities in terms of how to pay down their community service time, including: Cleansing local parks of animal waste Providing hugs to stray cats and dogs Manually relieving sewer blockages Cleaning portable lavatories at local festivals and events Painting snail shells to brighten up their existence Scraping chewing gum off the streetsThe company says it ultimately found that over 22,000 users blindly signed off on the requirement during the two week period during which the experiment was conducted. It should go without saying that they won't be enforcing the rules, but wanted to simply get a little free press while highlighting the stupidity of overlong TOS. Impressively, they note that during the two-week trial, just one user actually noticed what he was signing off on:

We recently discussed how Major League Baseball had asked for an extension with the USPTO so its legal staff could decide whether it wanted to oppose a trademark application for eSport organization Overwatch League's new logo. The request was more than a little head-scratching for a variety of reasons. As we pointed out in that post, the two logos aren't particularly similar and certainty don't appear to give ground to any confusion among the public about any affiliation between the leagues.Different color schemes, different fonts, and clearly identified names of the league on each logo didn't give MLB much ammo for a trademark opposition. Add to that the plethora of sporting league logos done in a similar style that actually do use the same color scheme, yet don't face aggression from MLB, and it raises the eyebrow as to why MLB's lawyers wanted to even go so far as to ask for an extension over any of this.Well, it seems that either MLB's lawyers are Techdirt readers or they simply came to their senses (I choose to believe it's the former), because the time to file an opposition has come and gone with no action taken on MLB's side.

The last few years have seen a boon in consumer and small-business-friendly policies coming out of Canada's telecom regulator the CRTC. Under outgoing agency head Jean-Pierre Blais, the agency bumped the definition of broadband to 50 Mbps, required that phones must now be sold unlocked in Canada, shored up the country's net neutrality rules, and took aim at the anti-competitive use of usage caps and overage fees. Not everything Blais did was a success (like their attempt to force cable TV providers to offer cheaper plans, then failing to follow through) but by and large the CRTC has been an improvement over years past.But Canadian consumers are worried that's coming to an end with Justin Trudeau's decision to appoint telecom executive and lobbyist Ian Scott to head the agency. Scott has spent years working at and lobbying for several Canadian telecom incumbents, his velocity through the regulatory revolving door at several times leading to complaints over conflicts of interest.Scott's appointment have many Canadian consumer advocates worried that after several years of aiding consumers, Canada is eager to follow their neighbors to the south down the regulatory capture rabbit hole:

The Supreme Court has yet to examine the issue of historical cell site location info(CSLI). It finally picked a case from the Sixth Circuit to review, years after the warrantless gathering of historic CSLI became a thing. So far, there's not a single court in the nation that's found historic CSLI to have an expectation of privacy. The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court briefly did, before reversing its own decision. The original decision had problems with the amount of CSLI gathered: 221 days worth. Upon further review, the court sided with the government and its Third Party Doctrine arguments.This federal court decision from the Southern District of New York name-checks the pending SCOTUS review, but falls in line with every other decision in the federal court system. The defendant sought to suppress historic CSLI obtained without a warrant, arguing the collection of location data by cell companies is not the same thing as "voluntarily" turning these records over to a third party. (via Courthouse News Service)From the decision [PDF]:

The question is still unsettled here in the United States: is refusing to turn over your password protected by the Fifth Amendment? The argument hasn't found many judicial supporters but at least there's a Constitutional basis for claiming the relinquishment of passwords is possibly self-incriminating. Over in Australia, the rights aren't so clearly defined. But the picture is getting clearer, thanks to legislators seeking to make it a criminal offense to withhold passwords. (h/t Asher Wolf)

When asset forfeiture is pitched to Americans, law enforcement agencies roll up to press conferences with shiny, new seized vehicles and large stacks of cash. This public preening is meant to assure everyone that forfeiture kills drug cartels and cripples large criminal organizations. But the day-to-day reality is much different. Pathetic, even. Here's Eric Boehm of Reason on Utah's yearly forfeiture roundup:

The $29 Interactive Web Developer Bootcamp covers full-stack web development using modern tools like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails. This training is as robust as it gets, combining HD training videos with a curated list of online resources for perfecting your craft and becoming an advanced developer. You'll start by building a blogging platform, learn common syntax for web languages like HTML5 and CSS3, and ultimately build a complete end-to-end project using everything you've learned.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

A federal judge has ruled public officials can't ban the public from interacting with official social media accounts, something that obviously has implications for the recently-filed suit by Twitter users blocked by the president's account.Brian Davison filed a pro se lawsuit against Phyllis Randall, the Chair of the Loudon County Board of Supervisors, after she banned him from her Facebook page and deleted his critical comments. The decision wasn't an easy one for the court, as Venkat Balasubramani points out. The court had to take into account several determining factors before arriving at its First Amendment violation conclusion.

We've noted for some time that Russia has been engaged in a slow but steady assault on privacy tools like VPNs. As with most countries that have an adversarial relationship with the truth, the entire effort has been couched as necessary to protect national security and cultural morality, though the real agenda is to help prop up the country's domestic surveillance efforts and Putin's ham-fisted internet filters. This push accelerated with a new surveillance bill last year that not only mandated new encryption backdoors, but also imposed harsh new data-retention requirements on ISPs and VPN providers.But that was only the opening salvo in Russia's assault on citizen privacy. The country has since accelerated efforts to ban anonymity on messaging apps, while simultaneously pushing new legislation that would make operating as a VPN provider in Russia all but impossible. The legislation, which would require that ISPs ban the use of VPNs sailed through the Russian Parliament:

The ACLU is headed to the Second Circuit Appeals Court, hoping to force the DOJ to be more... realistic about the government's drone strike operations in Pakistan. It's an FOIA lawsuit, with the ACLU seeking drone documents and being told -- in so many black bars -- that this publicly-acknowledged program is too secret to disclose.The ACLU goes into this battle fighting blind:

This week, we wrote about the Albuquerque prosecutor who was extremely unhappy about respecting the accused's right to a speedy trial, leading one anonymous commenter (going by Yes, I know I'm commenting anonymously) to win most insightful comment of the week by cringing at the way he used a key phrase:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we started out by reporting on something that happened late on the previous Friday: the feds admitted that they violated the fourth amendment with their surveillance programs. We noted how Congress had lost all perspective with its moves to prosecute journalists as if they were spies, and that it was worrying how the Senate Intelligence Committee seemed more interested in stopping whistleblowers than figuring out why they blew the whistle. Meanwhile, the ACLU lost a fight to get the courts to recognize common sense and agree that widely published leaked documents should no longer be treated as classified.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, the RIAA was continuing its push to get radio stations to pay up for playing music by finding people to claim that radio play makes people buy less music. Meanwhile, a disturbingly RIAA-friendly change snuck into the Higher Education Reauthorization Act, potentially cutting funding from schools that don't filter P2P traffic (but was thankfully pulled soon after). The UK government, amidst various forms of copyright insanity, at least realized that extending copyright durations on 50-year-old songs was pointless. And the EFF kicked off a now-famous legal battle when it sued Universal Music for issuing a YouTube takedown over a clip of a little kid dancing to music.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, we saw one of the most insane attempts to prop up Hollywood of them all: a bill that would exempt them from hacking laws in their expeditions to find pirates was introduced in Congress. Meanwhile, the huge uncertainty caused by recent changes to royalty rates was threatening the future of webcasters, leading to a bill being introduced to save them. And a silly Texas company that had turned itself into a JPEG patent troll got some serious pushback from the ISO standards body.