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It's kind of amazing how quickly Donald Trump's lawyers seem to threaten any media outlet for publishing information about him that he doesn't like. The latest target is the NY Times which ran a big story over the weekend with some leaked pages of his 1995 tax returns, suggesting that the guy who repeatedly claims he's great at business, reported personal losses of $916 million. We'll leave the analyzing of the tax returns to those who do that sort of thing (though I will recommend reading this analysis, which suggests that it's likely a key part of the NYT article is wrong concerning Trump's ability to use those losses to avoid taxes for 18 years), but we did want to focus in on something more relevant to what we discuss here at Techdirt. The legal threat that the Trump campaign sent to the Times in response:

While the recording of police activities has been covered here for years, I think we're starting to see what is at least a slight ratcheting down of the drama over the issue. Once almost universally rejected by law enforcement groups, the freedom to record police as they go about their public duty has become more recognized rather than less. That doesn't mean the issue is settled, though, as shown in a recent example in which Arkansas police arrested a state Congressman who had helped push through a state law protecting the rights of citizens to film police.

We've got a double first-place winner this week! In response to the story of movie theater security guards assaulting a woman supposedly for pirating the film, one anonymous commenter won the top spot on both the insightful and funny sides by pointing out the only rational conclusion for the average person:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2011, Occupy Wall Street was in full swing, leading (of course) to video of NYPD cops wantonly pepper-spraying nonviolent protestors. It soon became clear that people were being targeted just for recording the police, despite attempts to justify their actions with explanations that conflicted with the video evidence. Meanwhile, in Illinois, prosecutors were trying to put a guy in jail for 75 years for filming a traffic stop, and seeking 15 years for another guy for the same reason.Amidst all this, in the realm of higher-level questionable police activities, the world was first coming to terms with the existence of Stingray devices.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2006, LimeWire hit back hard against the RIAA with a lawsuit for antitrust and consumer fraud. Meanwhile, the RIAA scored a scary win in its crusade against Morpheus (originally part of the famous Grokster case). The MPAA, most bizarrely of all, got the access to bring "pirated DVD-sniffing dogs" to inspect packages coming into the country (despite there being no way to distinguish pirated DVDs from legitimate ones by smell, and it's not clear why they should have this access to begin with).Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2001, we saw the birth of one of the earliest and stupidest 9/11 conspiracy theories: the idea that Microsoft hid foreknowledge of the attacks in... the Wingdings font. We also saw momentum continue to pick up on new laws that threatened civil liberties and would bury the FBI in more data than it could possibly make real use of. Bruce Schneier wisely pointed out that proposed surveillance efforts wouldn't have stopped the attacks. Others were tracking the cultural fallout, such as nearly-immediate changes to the nature and tone of advertising. And finally, The Onion released its brilliant and now-famous issue focused on the attacks, which stands alongside A Modest Proposal and Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner speech as one of the finest works of satire in history.One-Hundred And Ten Years AgoThe first ever demonstration of a radio remote-controlled apparatus was by Nikola Tesla, but the second and arguably more influential such demo happened on September 25th, 1906 when Leonardo Torres y Quevedo remotely steered a ship out of the port of Bilbao before the king of Spain and an assembled crowd using his Telekino device.

Last chance to get Nerd Harder, Takedown and more! Order by Monday! »Wouldn't it be great if December rolled around and you realized "hey, I've already done half my holiday shopping"? Of course it would — and that's why we held our super-early holiday gear sale in September. But now it's almost at an end, and none of this gear will be coming back until next year!Here's what I suggest: before Monday, think through all the people you'll need to buy gifts for this year, and separate them into groups. For the nerds and geeks, the coders and modders, and anyone whose job involves deadlines and a computer — well, they could surely use a Nerd Harder mug for their desk, or maybe a t-shirt or hoodie. For the musicians and artists and bloggers and most of all YouTube content creators, some Takedown gear ought to ring true and hit the spot. The creative and culturally conscious folks with no love for the big entertainment industries will enjoy declaring that Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants (and anyone who's handy with a spatula might get a kick out of that one too). And apart from any friends you might have who are deeply aware of the legal situation surrounding encryption and/or DRM, our new Math Is Not A Crime gear should suit anyone who knows their way around numbers and is baffled by our math-anxious society.And boom, just like that (assuming your circle of loved ones is sufficiently geeky) you've all but cleared your Christmas plate! Feels good, right? Plus you can always grab yourself a gift or two along the way.The sale ends on Monday! Hurry up and order your gear today! »

Last year, the UK decided to repeal a part of its copyright law that enforced a drastically reduced copyright term for "industrially exploited artistic works" including "works of artistic craftsmanship" — in other words, the industrial design of manufactured objects that are primarily functional, like appliances and furniture. Rather than the full life-plus-seventy term, the copyright on such works was limited to 25 years from the date of manufacturing, making it somewhat closer to the US approach where functional designs can't be copyrighted but can qualify for 15-year design patents. It was a sensible rule (at least far more sensible than giving them full copyright, even if giving them any at all is still questionable) that allowed industrial designs to rapidly enter the public domain and be used by multiple manufacturers for everything from inexpensive reproductions to retro-chic luxuries — or, in the eyes of IP maximalists and the furniture industry, it was a travesty of a rule that cruelly robbed aging designers and flooded the market with cheap knockoffs and brazen cash-grabs.In any case, the rule was repealed and it was repealed retroactively: furniture designs that had already entered the public domain were shoved back under life-plus-seventy copyrights, and the industry was given a grace period to purge their stocks. The repeal officially came into effect in July, and the transitional window will end in January. Then we can watch the lawsuits begin to flow — and they are going to involve a whole lot of wrangling over stupid, highly subjective questions, with lots of flowery protestations about artistry and judges thrust unwittingly into the role of critic, because the question of what exactly this law applies to is one big gray area.Right now we can get a taste of the future. Earlier this month Margaret Briffa, a UK IP lawyer, posted an advisory to industrial designers with old designs that had fallen out of copyright, all about preparing to take advantage of their newly restored rights. Now, Briffa is just doing her job and the post is quite bland and fairly measured, so the purpose of this post isn't to attack her — but it perfectly highlights just how silly and confusing some of these fights are going to be (it also seems to be wrong about the exact kick-in date for the rules, but with all the shifting deadlines and grace periods it's hard to say):

Well, this isn't much of a surprise, but following the ridiculous last minute attempt to block the IANA transition by four state attorneys general (who have absolutely no standing or argument), a judge has flatly denied their request for an injunction meaning that the transition is a go for midnight tonight, barring any really last minute unforeseen methods to block it (or a desperate leapfrog to an appeals court).

Well, this isn't much of a surprise, but following the ridiculous last minute attempt to block the IANA transition by four state attorneys general (who have absolutely no standing or argument), a judge has flatly denied their request for an injunction meaning that the transition is a go for midnight tonight, barring any really last minute unforeseen methods to block it (or a desperate leapfrog to an appeals court).

I'm not sure what this says about government transparency. Maybe it doesn't say anything useful. Maybe it's just the mixed signals we can expect from agencies only willing to make the most minimal transparency efforts. Or maybe it says something about the momentum of even slowly-moving large objects. A bureaucracy has a large turning radius and asking it to suddenly change its ways means you have to lower your expectations as to how "suddenly" should be defined. Whatever it says, it's nothing good.Overclassification is a government-wide problem. Legislation has been passed to fix it. While the government expects the private sector to get right on it when laws are passed, it obviously cuts itself a lot more slack when faced with internal legislative redirection.

We talk about porn filters occasionally here at Techdirt. Usually those discussions revolve around how useless and easily circumvented those filters are, even as the more clueless in government insist that we need more of this non-filtering filtering. This is not one of those stories. Instead, it is the story of one of the most tone-deaf individuals with a penchant for excuse-making I've ever come across.We start with Gizmodo, a website that used to be owned by Gawker Media until a rich guy decided to show America exactly what a rich guy with a lot of money could do and had Gawker shut down, presumably then diving into a pile of gold coins and rubbing hundred dollar bills on his nipples. Gizmodo recently filed an FOIA request to get at documents involving the misuse of computer equipment with the Department of Homeland Security. The site was hoping to see if there were any cases of overreach and abuse of technology by the department. Instead, it uncovered four cases of people watching porn, including one really special case involving a border patrol agent that simply would not stop looking at porn while on the job.

Earlier this week, when I explained how basically all audience metrics are garbage both online and off, I trimmed the specifics on several platforms since knocking them all down in detail would have made that already-hefty post even longer. But, recent revelations about Facebook's long-running inflation of a key video metric call for a deeper look at the world of Facebook video content and why, yet again, nobody has any idea how many people really see something (and this time, advertisers are unhappy):

Curious about what criteria the CIA have for determining if they "can neither confirm nor deny" something? So did Jason Smathers, who back in 2010 filed one of MuckRock's earliest requests for exactly that. Six years later, he still doesn't know.Smathers first filed in October 2010 - to the agency's credit, they only took a mere two months to get back to him.Which was followed by two and a half years of radio silence. A follow-up in June of 2013 was finally responded to with reassurances that the request was still processing ... which apparently served as a reminder to the agency to finally send the rejection letter collecting dust in the corner.Ultimately, the CIA cites no fewer than three separate exemptions, including what appears to be a "Schrödinger's b(5)," all for what should be some basic FOIA processing manuals.How do we know that? Well silver lining/insult to injury, Smathers filed the same request with the NSA, and though they too took three years to process it, they actually delivered.But you know what they say - one agency's basic documentation is another agency's matter of national security. Not to mention a FOIA requester's complete waste of time.Republished from Muckrock.com

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The Intelligence Community is looking to reward whistleblowers for "speaking truth to power." No, seriously. Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News has posted a recent Intel Community announcement [PDF] that looks to fold a whistleblower honor into the community's existing awards program.This is part of the intel community's cautious foray into the harsh sunlight of transparency -- itself a response to a presidential directive that our nation's spies head outside for a bit and expose themselves a bit.The award may as well be called the "Snowden." But the wording makes it explicit Snowden himself will never be eligible to receive the honorific fruits of his whistleblowing.

You may recall that roughly a year ago, a federal judge struck down a New Hampshire law that made "ballot selfies" illegal. The state had essentially updated its laws revolving around limiting the ability to sell votes or influence the public through depicting who a person voted for to include criminalizing anyone that took a picture of their completed ballot and shared it on social media. The state had said that allowing that sort of thing encouraged voter corruption, with the idea that ballot selfies would be used as a form of proof that a bought vote had been completed, or might otherwise be used to influence other members of the public as to how to vote. It was a strange theory, given how unlikely it would be for a corrupted voter to post evidence of his or her corruption on Facebook, not to mention that stating that a person essentially couldn't engage in a form of political speech via a picture was flatly unconstitutional. The federal judge agreed.But, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, New Hampshire appealed this ruling. And so it went before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit... which found the law to be flatly unconstitutional as well.

Back in February the FCC proposed a new plan to bring competition to the cable box. Under the plan, cable providers would need to provide their programming to third party hardware vendors without the need for a CableCARD. The goal? Bring some competition to bear on a stagnant, captive market, resulting in cheaper, more open, and higher quality cable boxes. But because the plan would demolish $21 billion in rental fees while eroding sector control, the cable industry launched one of the most unprecedented lobbying and disinformation efforts I've ever seen in 16 years of covering the sector.

Okay, this is really dumb. What is it about state attorneys general making totally bullshit claims? It seems to happen with fairly consistent frequency. The latest is that four state AGs (from Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada) have filed a lawsuit to stop the IANA transition. If you don't recall, we've written about this a bunch. A bunch of people are up in arms over something they don't seem to understand. The IANA transition is a good thing. It's not the US government handing over the internet to Russia and China as you may have heard. It's the Commerce Department severing an almost entirely symbolic link between it and a very specific internet governance capability concerning top level domains. And it's important to complete the transition because other countries (including Russia and China) keep pointing to this symbolic link as a reason for why they should have more say in internet governance. Getting rid of the link keeps the internet functioning as it has for decades -- and takes away a weapon from Russia and China. More importantly, going back on the transition now actually gives even more ammo to Russia and China, allowing them to point to unilateral actions by the US gov't to block a process that everyone had agreed upon earlier.

Really. What the hell? Does law enforcement just perceive the Fourth Amendment as damage and route around it?

The endless battle against videogame piracy is mostly composed of Pyrrhic victories and self-sabotage. The suckers who actually paid for the software tend to receive most of the abuse while pirates not only avail themselves of hefty discounts, but games uncrippled by mechanisms meant to defeat them.PC gamers who have gotten their hands on a copy of Forza Horizon 3, an open-world racing game, are finding that the game's DRM is turning their high-speed thrill rides into far less entertaining slideshows.

For dozens of years, criminal prosecutions have relied on junk science. Forensic science, properly applied, can actually provide matches that identify suspects. But it's not properly applied. In the hands of the DOJ, forensic evidence examination is a closed loop. Outside scientists have been granted access to the DOJ's DNA work, but everything else -- from fingerprints to hair samples -- has been locked away in the government's database.Still, the DOJ insists its science is solid, something it bases on confirmation bias. The matches determined in its forensic labs are "scientifically certain" because the DOJ's expert witnesses have said so in court. Not only are outside scientists locked out of examining evidence and forensic processes, but defense lawyers are as well.The DOJ has finally decided to dial back its "scientific certainty" a bit by issuing guidance instructing its experts to not make this claim in court. This follows years of bogus matches being presented as sure things by forensic experts in court, leading to an unknown number of false convictions. This step back is a step forward for an agency that is mostly unwilling to admit to any mistakes or wrongdoing.This small change is likely due to a damning report [PDF] issued by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) that asserts that the "scientifically certain" evidence prosecutors rely on is severely flawed.

Have you hit up our super-early holiday gear sale yet? Because you've only got until Monday, and then it's all going away for the rest of the year! Of course, there has been some debate about what exactly our designs mean. Since Teespring lets us superimpose our gear onto a parade of photogenic models, I figure we'll let force them to do the talking, with speech bubbles! So if you're confused, prepare to be enlightened:Nerd Harder is available on T-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers »Takedown is available on T-shirts and hoodies »Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants is available on T-shirts, mugs and stickers »Math Is Not A Crime is available on T-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers »Vote2016() is available on T-shirts, hoodies and stickers »The sale ends on Monday! Hurry up and order your gear today! »

While politics isn't generally a topic we dive into around here, technology policy and issues certainly are. And, since presidential election cycles infect every conceivable topic like a wine stain spreading across your favorite couch, we've talked about the two mainstream candidates quite a bit recently. And I get the complaints from all sides against both candidates, but it's become somewhat breathtaking to watch Donald Trump build a campaign in large part on nonsensical and easily debunked conspiracy theories, such as how the planned internet governance transition will cede control of the web to China and Russia, or that our current sitting President might be a secret communist Muslim clay-person, but maybe not.And, of course, there is the constant claim of victim-hood at the hands of that damned liberal establishment, which now apparently includes Google. Some background for you is in order. Over the summer, a really dumb video went viral after claiming to show that Google was manipulating autocomplete searches to keep any bad press out of the results for searches about Hillary Clinton. Compared with Bing, for instance, Google's autocomplete failed to finish off a search for "Hillary Clinton cr" with "Hillary Clinton crimes", instead completing as "Hillary Clinton Crimea." While your drunk uncle lost his goddamned mind over a conspiracy surely proven, Google chimed in to note that it specifically designed its autocomplete feature to keep disparaging results from anyone's name, not just Hill-Dog's. This was easily shown by putting in "Donald Trump cr", which likewise autocompleted as "Donald Trump Crimea."And that really should have been the end of that. But, because Donald Trump's campaign isn't one to pass on a good chem-trails story, its candidate tried to deflect a general panning of his debate performance by repeating this already disproved accusation.

Journalists and citizens attending this week's Presidential debate at Hofstra Univserity found themselves facing an unexpected surprise when they were informed that WiFi at the event would cost them $200. Worse, perhaps, was that attendees said that the college was going around using this $2,000 WiFi signal detector to identify those using their smartphone as a mobile hotspot, and encouraging them to instead shell out the big bucks for a few hours of Hofstra WiFi:

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A few weeks ago, CNN had a story on how a jury failed to convict Peter Wexler, an unemployed IT worker, who had been arrested and spent nearly a year in jail (without bail) for writing some mean stuff on his blog. He was literally arrested for five blog posts (which came with 20 criminal charges, as they had multiple charges on each post) and was facing up to 15 years in jail for those posts. Ken "Popehat" White blogged briefly about it, noting that it was a huge First Amendment win in a case where the defense team included one of his partners, Caleb Mason (along with lawyer Marri Derby, who was appointed by the court to represent Wexler through the Criminal Justice Act). It's also a case that involved... me. I was an expert witness in the case, brought in to explain to the jury the nature of internet discourse, including how trolls quite frequently say outrageous things to get attention, and how it's (for better or worse) not that uncommon to see people post angry rants on the internet, or to talk about how certain people should die, or to photoshop famous people into weird scenarios.

Last year, Chicago proudly declared that the city would be expanding its 9% amusement tax (traditionally covering book stores, music stores, ball games and other brick and mortar entertainment) to online streaming services and cloud computing. While Chicago was hungrily pursuing the $12 million in additional revenue the expanded tax would provide, it ultimately faced a lawsuit questioning the legality of Chicago's move. The ongoing lawsuit by the Liberty Justice Center claims Chicago violated city rules by not holding a full vote on the changes, and is violating the Internet Freedom Tax Act.

We've noted time and time again that the cable and broadcast industry could compete with cord cutting by lowering prices, it just chooses not to. Even with last quarter seeing the biggest quarterly defection by paying subscribers ever recorded, time and time again you'll see sector sycophants proclaim that cord cutting either doesn't exist, or has been violently over-hyped and isn't worth taking seriously. In fact, most sector executives still believe that the shift away from traditional cable will magically end once Millennials start procreating (protip: it won't).

The idea behind smart meters -- that detailed information about how you consume electricity will allow you to use power more efficiently and thus cut your bills and your home's carbon emissions -- is a good one in theory. And yet smart meters are still not used very widely, even in countries like the UK, where the government has a strategy to install millions of them by 2020. Actually, the likely savings by users are small, but smart meters also promise to allow the electricity industry to lower salary costs by carrying out meter readings remotely, which is one reason why it is so keen on the idea. Another is because smart meters make it is easy to cut off someone's supply if they don't pay their bills.The slow uptake of smart meters seems in part to be due to public concerns about security. People are worried that their smart meter will spy on them, sending back information to electricity companies that might be intercepted and used for targeted burglary when they are away. Similarly, there are fears that if the smart meter control system were compromised, domestic electricity supplies might be at risk on a large scale.One of UK Parliament's most important committees, the one monitoring science and technology, has just published a report into the UK smart meter roll-out, offering recommendations for ways to speed it up. Security is an issue it discusses, and one of the committee's recommendations is as follows:

While the industries that dominate digital products generally aren't great at recognizing the true nature of the threat of piracy to their businesses, it seems to me the video game industry is better at this game than most. Whereas the movie and music industries are dominated by a great deal of fists pounding tables, some game developers have for some time recognized that piracy might actually be an opportunity in wolf's clothing, if they would only try connecting with these potential customers and ingratitate themselves to this wider potential audience. Still, because this idea that should be easily portable to other industries is so rarely entertained by those other industries, it's worth pointing out the ongoing examples of how gaming companies combat piracy by being awesome and human.One such recent example is the story of how PM Studios, makers of Playstation Vita game SUPERBEAT: XONiC, reacted to a discussion on Reddit's r/VitaPiracy/ thread detailing how to pirate the game. The game developer decided to jump into the comments themselves with the following:

In 2012, Cleveland police officers engaged in perhaps the most one-sided "shootout" ever with two suspects at the tail end of an (unauthorized) police chase. By the time it was over, officers had fired 139 bullets into a vehicle they had trapped in a school parking lot. Twenty-three of those hit the driver. Twenty-four hit the passenger. Both vehicle occupants were killed.One officer -- Michael Brelo -- apparently thought he was starring in his own action film. He unloaded 49 rounds in just over 20 seconds while standing on the hood of the stopped vehicle. All told, more than 75 Cleveland PD vehicles joined the chase/shooting. At the end of a yearlong investigation, 63 officers were suspended for their participation. Six officers were charged.The genesis of the horrific debacle was nothing more than a car backfiring. One cop mistook this for a gunshot and all hell broke loose. No weapons were recovered from the vehicle.One of the stranger offshoots of the infamous shootings was a lawsuit filed by several Cleveland police officers who took part in the chase. In their view, they were punished more harshly than African American officers who also participated in the unauthorized pursuit.Their original argument was more than a little depressing.

Everyone in government is talking cyber-this and cyber-that, even though a majority of those talking don't have the technical background to back up their assertions. This leads to dangerous lawmaking. The CFAA, easily one of the most abused computer-related laws, came into being thanks to some skittish legislators who'd seen one too many 80's hacker films. ("WarGames," to be specific.)Faulty analogies have led to other erroneous legislative conclusions -- like the comparison of email to snail mail -- which has led to the government treating any unopened email as "abandoned" and accessible without a warrant.But the problem goes further than the legislative branch. The executive branch hasn't been much better in its grasp of technical issues, and the current slate of presidential candidates guarantees this won't change for at least another four years.The judicial branch has its own issues. On both sides of the bench, there's very little technical knowledge. As more and more prosecutions become reliant on secretive, little-understood technical tools like cell tower spoofers, government-deployed malware, and electronic device searches, unaddressed problems will only multiply as tech deployment ramps up and infusions of fresh blood into the judicial system fail to keep pace.Garrett M. Graff of Politico -- in a piece written for the Washington Post -- discusses how the government prosecutors' lack of tech expertise is resulting in bogus investigations and Constitutional violations.

I've often joked that the FTC and state AGs choose to live in a fantasy world where Section 230 doesn't exist. A new ruling from the Second Circuit has turned my joke on its ear, suggesting that my underlying fears -- of a Section 230-free zone for consumer protection agencies -- may have become our dystopian reality.The OpinionThe case involves weight loss products, including colon cleanses, vended by LeanSpa. To generate more sales, LeanSpa hired LeadClick to act as an affiliate marketing manager. LeadClick coordinated promotion of LeanSpa's products with LeadClick's network of affiliates. Some affiliates promoted the products using fake news sites, with articles styled to look like legitimate news articles and consumer comments/testimonials that were fake. Apparently, all of this added up to big business. LeanSpa paid LeadClick $35-$45 each time a consumer signed up for LeanSpa's "free" trial (which was a negative billing option). LeadClick shared 80-90% of these sign-up fees with affiliates and kept the remainder for itself. In total, LeadClick billed LeanSpa $22M, of which LeanSpa paid only $12M. Still, LeanSpa turned into LeadClick's top customer, constituting 85% of its eAdvertising division's sales.The court summarizes the key facts about LeadClick's role in the fake new sites scheme:

Earlier this month, we noted how Netflix had complained to the FCC about broadband usage caps, quite-correctly noting they're little more than price hikes on uncompetitive markets. Netflix also was quick to highlight how caps can be used anti-competitively against streaming video providers, something the FCC opened the door to when it decided to turn a blind eye to the practice of zero rating (or exempting your own or a paid partners' content from counting against the cap). As such, Netflix urged the FCC to finally crack down on usage caps using its authority under Section 706 of the Telecom Act.

It's the case that will never die. As you may recall, over the summer, Oracle asked Judge William Alsup for yet another trial over Google's copying of some Java APIs in Android, claiming that Google had failed to disclose that Android apps would work on Chromebooks. At a hearing last month it seemed very possible that Alsup would order another trial, but (thankfully!) he has now denied Oracle's request for the same exact reason he denied their first request for another trial at the beginning of the summer. He literally says:

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So, just last week, we wrote about how David Kittos, a refugee from Cyprus now living in the UK, had taken the photograph of a bowl of Skittles that Donald Trump Jr. had used in a tweet about banning refugees. Kittos said he was thinking about taking legal action, but said he wasn't sure he had the patience for it. But, of course, thanks to US copyright law, if you want something to disappear, you don't have to go through a whole litigation process, you can just use the DMCA. And that's exactly what David Kittos did (first noticed by The Washington Post, which may have a paywall).

Earlier this week, basically all of the major record labels filed a lawsuit against YouTube-mp3.org, which as you may have guessed from the URL, helps people get audio downloads from YouTube videos. There have been a number of similar sites over the years, and they tend to disappear relatively quickly. Apparently this one lasted long enough that the major labels decided to sue.

We've been talking about how the latest front in the battle for better broadband competition is the boring old utility pole. As Susan Crawford highlighted last month, getting permission from an ISP that owns a city's utility poles can be a slow, bureaucratic nightmare, since the incumbent ISP has every incentive to stall would-be competitors. As such, Google has been pushing for "one touch make ready" proposals that use an insured, third-party contractor agreed to by all ISPs to move any ISP's gear during fiber installs (often a matter of inches).

Whistleblower protections offered by the federal government are great in theory. In practice, they're a mess. This administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. The proper channels for reporting concerns are designed to deter complaints. Those that do use the proper channels are frequently exposed by those handling the complaints, leading to retaliatory actions that built-in protections don't offer an adequate remedy for.Perhaps the ultimate insult is that the proper channels lead directly to two committees that have -- for the most part -- staunchly defended agencies like the NSA against criticism and any legislative attempts to scale back domestic surveillance programs. The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are the "proper channels," whose offered protections can only be seen as the hollowest of promises, especially after the House Intelligence Committee's lie-packed response to calls for Snowden's pardon.What the federal government offers to whistleblowers is a damned if you do/don't proposition. Bypass the proper channels and brace yourself for prosecution. Stay within the defined lanes and expect nothing to change -- except maybe your security clearance, pay grade, or chances of advancement within the government.

One of the most extraordinary government surveillance projects in the world is being rolled out in Kuwait, and involves creating a mandatory DNA database of all citizens and visitors. An article in New Scientist confirms that the system is now under construction:

It should be quite clear by now that DRM is a fantastic way for video game makers to keep people from playing their games. Not pirates, though. No, those folks can play games with DRM just fine, because DRM doesn't actually keep piracy from being a thing. No, I'm talking about legitimate buyers of games, who in example after example after example suddenly find that the games they bought are unplayable thanks to DRM tools that work about as well as the American political system. And yet DRM still exists for some reason, as game makers look for some kind of holy grail piece of software that will turn every past pirate into a future dollar sign.This search for the perfect DRM continues, as we have just the latest story of DRM gone wrong. This story of the Street Fighter V DRM, though, is a special kind of stupid because it was put in place via a software update release, meaning that a game that worked perfectly one day was bricked the next.

While we still wait to see if Kim Dotcom can be taken against his will from another country into the US for "copyright infringement" claims, apparently the DOJ has also decided that it can work the other way. The Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals has said that people can be deported for copyright infringement. Apparently the law (the Immigration and Nationality Act) says that non-citizens can be deported if they commit crimes "involving moral turpitude" but had never weighed in on whether or not copyright infringement counted. But now they have:

Data breaches that expose passwords are pretty much a fact of life at this point -- and the effects are multiplied by the fact that many, many people reuse passwords no matter how much they know they shouldn't. As such, there's a big push to move to password managers, two-factor authentication, and even biometrics -- because the simple fact is that the password sucks. This week, we're discussing what if anything will succeed in replacing it.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Last chance to get Vote2016() T-shirts, hoodies & stickers! »Did you come out of last night's debate feeling thrilled about your choices for president? No? What a surprise. Though there are fans on both sides declaring victory, most of the thinking/awake public saw what we expected: an intolerable buffoon babbling on one side, and the resultant lack of scrutiny for the hard-to-like career politician making worrying statements on the other. Perhaps nowhere was this clearer than on an issue of importance here at Techdirt: would you prefer Trump's directionless ramblings about "the cyber", or Clinton's coherent but terrifying overtures of war with Russia? Take your pick, America. And when you do, we've got a shirt for you.There's less than a week left to order your Vote2016() gear. The campaign ends on Oct. 3rd so you can get it just in time for election day — and then it's gone for good!And don't forget to check out our new Math Is Not A Crime shirt, and other designs available for the last time this year in our super-early holiday gear sale.

There's just something about adding the word "cyber" to "crime" that brings out the worst in legislators. A host a badly-written laws have been crafted to address everything from cyberbullying to hacking. These tend to be abused first by those in positions of power.Nigeria's government recently enacted a cybercrime law which is, of course, being wielded by thin-skinned government officials to silence critics. The cyberstalking provision is the preferred attack vector, placing those targeted by unhappy government leaders at risk of being hit with a $22,000 fine and three years in prison.

Smile, constituents: this man may become president.

Stop fumbling around your office for open outlets, and grab the $36 Avantree PowerHouse 4 Port Fast USB Charging Station. Avantree provides 4 USB charging sockets and a whopping 4.5A/22.5W output for a super fast charge for all of your devices. It comes with a handy velcro system to manage and hide cables, 2 micro USB charging cables, and is compatible with all iOS and Android devices. It is available in black or white.

Last week, an absolutely mammoth distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack brought down the website of security researcher Brian Krebs. His website, hosted by Akamai pro bono, was pulled offline after it was inundated with 620Gbps of malicious traffic, nearly double the size of the biggest attack Akamai (which tracks such things via their quarterly state of the internet report) has ever recorded. Krebs was ultimately able to get his website back online after Google stepped in to provide DDoS mitigation through its Project Shield service.

A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt ran through the catalog of horrors that make up the EU's new Copyright Directive proposals, pointing out that they would be a general disaster in their current form. Of course, the misery would not be evenly spread: some would suffer more, some less. Indeed, an earlier open letter to the European Commission from a bunch of tech companies (including Techdirt), published on the Don't Wreck the Net site, pointed out one group who wouldn't have too much of a problem with the changes:

Back in 2011, Verizon and AT&T eliminated unlimited wireless data plans, instead pushing users toward share data allotments and overage fees as high as $15 per gigabyte. And while the companies did "grandfather" many of these unlimited users at the time, both companies have made at art form out of harassing or otherwise annoying these customers until they convert to costlier shared plans. And despite the fact that such overage-fee-based plans confuse the living hell out of most customers (who have no idea what a gigabyte is), both companies continue to insist that customers don't actually want unlimited data.