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There's a new brand of terrorism on the loose and Washington State Senator Doug Ericksen is the only one who can stop it. (h/t Jeff Pohjola)

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Last week, we wrote about some bizarre DMCA claims made by a guy named "Mike Ferrell" who claimed to represent the Burlington, Massachusetts Police Department, demanding that Google remove a bunch of stories because it violated the copyright the police department held on certain mugshots. We pointed out how crazy this was -- and also questioned whether or not "Ferrell" really represented the police department, because the language used in the takedown was a word salad of nothingness. In case you didn't remember:

Since Admiral Michael Rogers took over for previous NSA boss, General Keith Alexander, a couple of years ago, he's mostly stayed out of the public eye. While Alexander became the face of excessive NSA surveillance exposed by Ed Snowden, Rogers seemed to want to present himself as the face of a cleaned up NSA. On Friday, it was even reported that Rogers was the "top candidate" to take over as Director of National Intelligence from retiring James Clapper. That is, he was in line for a big promotion (though, oddly, another report released at the same time noted that Trump was considering getting rid of the role of "Director of National Intelligence" and moving back to a pre-9/11 setup where the various intelligence agencies have no one coordinating their actions.

There have always been questions about the tax implications of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. A few years ago, the IRS came out with some guidelines, declaring cryptocurrencies to be property, rather than currency, and then taxed more like equity. But late last week, the IRS went to court to basically demand Coinbase turn over all info it has on everyone. Coinbase is one of, if not the, leading online cryptocurrency exchanges and places where many people store their cryptocurrency in an online wallet. It's a company that has bent over backwards to comply with the laws. But, no matter, the IRS basically thinks everyone who uses it is a tax cheat. Here's what the IRS demanded:

Techdirt has written plenty of stories about Vladimir Putin's increasingly harsh clampdown on Internet freedom. But, like China, Russia is still coming up with new ways to tighten its control. One is the legal requirement that the personal data of Russian citizens must be stored on Russian soil. Now, a US company has fallen afoul of that 2015 law:

This week, we all balked at one of the most flagrant (or at least explicit) examples of police abuse we've seen in a while, where a cop literally declared his lack of time for "constitutional bullshit". Our top two comments on the insightful side are both anonymous and both come in response to that story. First, one commenter found the faint, tiny, and kind of shocking silver lining for the victim:

Over the past couple of weeks in our look at 2011, SOPA began to rear its head. This week things really hit full steam, and so for this history post we're going to focus just on what went down in the SOPA fight five years ago.All eyes were on the upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearings, which were stacked 5 to 1 in favor of censoring the internet. Leading up to them, we pointed out how attempts at censorship in the UK demonstrated how SOPA would fail, that Silicon Valley hadn't realized it was in DC's crosshairs, and why all filmmakers should speak out against the bill. Soon, the chorus of voices opposed to SOPA (and its partner PROTECT-IP) began to grow at an astounding pace: Facebook, Twitter, eBay and other big internet companies spoke up, and were joined by over 100 lawyers and law professors and then hackers, the ACLU, consumer rights groups, and human rights groups; venture capitalists explained how it would break the internet, a study showed how it would chill innovation and investment, and the EFF warned about its regulation of VPNs, proxies and other privacy tools; Ron Paul joined the ranks of congressional opposition while SOPA supporter Joe Biden accidentally explained why the bills were un-American; a study showed that the majority of Americans opposed SOPA, and even Canadians were speaking up, fearing collateral damage. And we featured voices ranging from filmmakers and technologists to health care activists explaining the damage SOPA would do.How did the other side respond? First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams twisted himself in verbal knots explaining how SOPA would censor protected speech but somehow not violate the First Amendment; the House Judiciary Committee denied that its hearings were stacked in any way; Viacom made the absurd and hilarious threat that failing to pass SOPA might mean Spongebob Squarepants dies; and the bill's congressional sponsors weakly tried to say it was going to protect the troops. Then the hearings got underway and were largely a SOPA love-fest, though a lot of Representatives expressed serious concerns.Meanwhile, we still had more questions: how would we even guage SOPA's success? Do you really want to give China and other oppressive regimes a blueprint for internet censorship? Following the hearings, even more people spoke up: the EU Parliament warned the US against censorship efforts, Nancy Pelosi called for a better solution, multiple Senators came out against PROTECT-IP, security experts warned against DNS filtering, and the Washington Post's Dominic Basulto wrote an incredulous column about the message SOPA sends to the world. It even started to become a congressional election issue, with challengers calling out the SOPA support of incumbent representatives.And amazingly, as we all now know, the protests had not yet even come close to their peak.

In a big interview with the German media outlet Der Spiegel, President Obama was asked about his interest in pardoning Ed Snowden in response to the big campaign to get him pardoned. Obama's response was that he could not, since Snowden has not been convicted yet:

This is (unfortunately) not a huge surprise, but it appears that a Trump administration is going to be much worse for civil liberties and surveillance. Earlier today, Donald Trump named his choices to head the CIA -- Rep. Mike Pompeo -- and to be the next Attorney General -- Senator Jeff Sessions -- and both have terrible records on surveillance, civil liberties and whistleblowing. They also are problematic in other areas, but in the areas where we cover, it's not looking good.

We've already made it clear that we're quite concerned about how freedom of expression will fare under President Trump. He has a long history of threatening and/or suing those who cover him factually, but in a manner he dislikes. And while he hasn't (as far as I can tell) threatened to sue anyone since the election, he appears to have become somewhat obsessed with the NY Times. Since winning the election he's tweeted at least six times about the NY Times, insisting (incorrectly) that it was losing subscribers and (incorrectly) that it had "apologized" to readers for its Trump coverage. He also claimed (incorrectly) that it had said he hadn't spoken to foreign leaders -- when the actual article just said that his conversations with foreign leaders happened without State Department briefings (which is fairly stunning). Here's what the NY Times said:

Regardless of what one thinks about the apparent result of the 2016 election, it will inevitably present a number of challenges for America and the world. As Mike wrote about last week, they will inevitably touch on many of the tech policy issues often discussed here. The following is a closer look at some of the implications (and opportunities) with respect to several of them, given the unique hallmarks of Trump and his proposed administration.

We've been pointing out that in the rush to claim that Facebook is a media company that must take responsibility for the content that is posted and shared on the site, there's really an implicit call for blocking content that is somehow deemed "bad." People keep acting like Facebook, rather than its users, has the responsibility to edit what is on the site. That's dangerous -- and for yet another example of how, we've now got a German official saying that Facebook has to be classified as a media property and be held criminally liable if it doesn't magically delete "hate speech."

Have you ever used the internet to search for photos of a potential vacation spot? Or perhaps you've Googled some pictures of furniture you wanted to buy? Who hasn't, right?

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Here we are with yet another example of copyright as censorship. This one comes from the Shooting the Messenger blog, which dug up a fascinating story of how the Burlington, Massachusetts Police Department appears to be abusing copyright law to try to censor articles written about people they've arrested. Specifically, a representative from the police department has filed a bunch of DMCA notices with Google, targeting around 30 news stories, claiming the Police Department holds the copyright on the mugshots used in those stories. You can see one of the notices over at the Lumen Database, and you'll quickly notice that it's not like they're targeting fly-by-night websites, but all sorts of big name press outfits, including CBS, the Boston Herald and the Denver Post.The explanation given is pretty silly too in that it's barely comprehensible:

Last week, I was a little unfair to our friends over at Fight for the Future in noting that it was too late for President Obama to "dismantle the NSA" as was suggested in a Time article written by FftF's awesome campaign director Evan Greer. I was focusing on why the President should have limited the NSA much more seriously earlier on (like way earlier...), but some interpreted it to mean that I was suggesting that FftF had only just jumped on the bandwagon to stop mass surveillance. That's clearly not true -- as it's been one of the leading voices in the fight to get the President to scale back mass surveillance since the group took on that issue many years ago.

So we've noted a few times over the years how current FCC boss Tom Wheeler was a bit of a surprise for many of us covering the telecom sector. As a former wireless and cable lobbyist with some unclear policy positions, alarm bells were raised when his appointment to the chairman spot was first announced. But as Wheeler's tenure rolled on, he wound up being arguably one of the most consumer and startup-friendly FCC leaders in the history of the agency (which, given the agency's history as a rubber stamp for large broadband providers, admittedly wasn't a particularly high water mark).

The FBI has, for years now apparently, always wished to be far more than it actually is. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the FBI shifted its focus from law enforcement to "national security." It continues to try to expand this role and believes it should be taking the lead in harvesting foreign informants and protecting the nation against overseas threats -- rather than an agency created solely for that purpose (the Dept. of Homeland Security) or one tasked almost solely with foreign intelligence gathering (the CIA).This isn't a recent development. The FBI has long had CIA-envy, according to documents obtained by Mike Best and published at MuckRock. Long before Sarah Palin was keeping an eye on pesky Russians from the governor's mansion, the FBI wished to do the same. The FBI -- being neither a military force nor a foreign intelligence agency -- thought it should be able to run a covert ops station deep in the coldest part of the Cold War. Added bonus? Screwing the CIA out of prime surveillance real estate.

The California State Bar has finally handed down sanctions [PDF] in a case of prosecutorial misconduct that could have landed a defendant with a life sentence.Last year, a court tossed child molestation charges against a defendant after it came to light prosecutor Robert Murray had altered the transcript of a police interview with the suspect. Murray claimed it was all just a joke. But the "levity" he inserted into the transcript drastically altered the prison sentence the defendant was facing (from 16 years to a possible life sentence), prompting his defense lawyer to push him toward a plea bargain.All it took was two sentences:

Usually, when trademark disputes get silly, the side bringing the silly is some big corporate entity and the side receiving the silly is some small group or individual with little hope of defending itself. I mean, I'm certain this trend isn't because trademark is too often used as a bully-cudgel. That's just an unfortunate coincidence.But the trademark dispute that serves as the subject of this post is slightly different. On one side, we have the large corporate entity that you've come to expect: Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs. But MLSE's target is not some no-money lightweight. Nope, it's this freaking guy.

So much for encryption turning phones into inscrutable blocks of plastic, metal, and glass. The Intercept is reporting that Apple is doing some of law enforcement's work for it, routing call records to users' iCloud storage.

We've already written about how silly and dangerous it is that some people (especially journalists) rushed to blame Facebook for their disappointment that Donald Trump won the election. I've explained why I think the whole "fake news" problem is completely overblown -- but the issue has gotten a new blast of energy from an interesting analysis done by Craig Silverman at BuzzFeed, saying that in the weeks leading up to the election there was more engagement with fake news on Facebook than real news. Here's the key chart that everyone's passing around.That's a pretty scary looking chart. But it's not clear it really supports the argument that fake news was actually an influencing factor. First of all, there are some questions about the methodology here and whether or not BuzzFeed is actually overselling the true story based on the headline (and, yes, there's irony in the idea that a story claiming that fake news is shared more than real news may have a misleading or "fake" title...). Beyond just questions of how you track Facebook "engagement," it's also not always clear if all engagement is the same. Hell, what if many of the comments on a fake news story are versions of "this is fake." That counts as engagement, but undermines the idea that people are interacting with fake news only because they believe it. Even the author of the piece, Silverman, weighed in on Twitter with a bunch of caveats about what the story doesn't actually show (even as many reading it are assuming it does).

If there are two points worth hammering home on matters of free speech, they are that defenders of free speech must be willing to defend speech they don't like and that the solution to bad speech is more good speech. I would argue that Western democracy as a whole can be defined as a political version of the Socratic Method, by which the electorate engages in public debate, constantly questioning the other side, in order to produce the most optimal thoughts. For those that value this method of discourse, it's instantly recognized that it only works if you have opposing views. To that end, it's imperative that we not only allow, but feverishly welcome, different points of view.But this kind of thinking is currently under assault in America, and from both sides. The latest example of this is Twitter's recent decision to carpet-ban an entire slew of accounts linked to the so-called "alt-right" movement.

Despite loudly, and repeatedly, raised concerns from activists and members of Parliament, the UK's Snooper's Charter (a.k.a., Investigatory Powers bill [PDF]) has been passed by both parliamentary houses and only needs the formality of the royal signature to make it official.These are the fantastic new things UK citizens have to look forward to with this expansion of government surveillance power.

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We've talked in the past about the ridiculousness of the online advertising business. Over the last few years, the dollar value of most online ad revenue has declined drastically. Remember how musicians whined that their revenue dropped precipitously due to changes on the internet? I know how they feel -- though rather than lash out and blame the internet or demand legal changes, I'm hoping that we can find a better way -- and part of that is by reaching out publicly for support. Here's the thing, though: while the dollar value on ads has continued to decline, there's still been an explosion in companies filling up the online ad space. We're contacted by between one and five internet ad companies every single day, asking us to put their ads on our site. They often make bold promises, which few can actually live up to. We ignore most of these requests. Many are obviously scammy or fly-by-night. Others use language that immediately turns us off. For example, there's one company that emails basically every week promising to help us "fix" our "ad blocking problem" by forcing people using ad blockers to see ads. I don't even want to bother letting them know that we let users turn off ads themselves if they want.

When Charter pitched its $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, the company promised an absolute ocean of improvements for customers, including better broadband speeds, improved cable boxes and new jobs. After blocking Comcast's own merger attempt of these companies, regulators bought into this promise, approving the merger but banning the cable company from imposing usage caps, charging Netflix steep interconnection fees, or otherwise trampling net neutrality (even if the FCC's rules are gutted by the incoming administration).

Because there doesn't seem to be a politician out there that can interact with Backpages without grandstanding, the attorneys general of two states -- California's Kamala Harris and Texas' Ken Paxton -- combined forces to have company executives arrested on pimping charges.The criminal complaint somehow tried to portray the fees charged by Backpage as profiting from prostitution. While it should have been explicitly clear Backpages was immune from prosecution thanks to Section 230, the two AGs decided to close their eyes, ears, and brains and press forward.It's likely nothing will come of this misguided prosecution -- one that appeared to be instigated almost solely for the press it would generate, rather than for its legal merits. The California court handling the case has pretty much thrown the whole thing out.It's a tentative ruling that doesn't have the full force of a published opinion behind it, but it does give the solid impression that any dreams of being able to prosecute site owners for third-party content will have to be taken to Congress, rather than local courts -- though, the judge has said he'll allow the parties to present more arguments before making a final decision. As it stands now, Section 230 prevents the sort of thing these two AGs are pursuing.From the opinion [PDF]:

Accused hacker Lauri Love is headed to the United States to face prosecution, thanks to an order signed by UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd. The Home Office felt that -- after "all things" were "considered" -- the best place for an Asberger's sufferer with suicidal tendencies is the US prison system, most likely segregated from the general population.

One of the tests for fair use as it pertains to copyright is the impact that the use of a work has upon the original. While this is but one of four tests used, it is arguably the most important when it comes to advising a rights holder on whether or not to move forward with any legal action. After all, regardless of whether the use of the work is indeed fair use, what would be the point of taking action against the use of a work if that original work were not negatively impacted, or if the impact was positive? There would seem to be no point to expending any time or capital in a legal fight in those cases, yet we regularly see such thinking ignored.Such is the case concerning Hugh Atkin, an Australian who produced a parody trailer in the style of A Clockwork Orange for President Elect Trump's campaign, entitled A Trumpwork Orange. He originally put it alongside the original movie's trailer, basically to show how he tried to ape the style for his parody. That version was taken down, however, and now we're left with only this version.

A disabled vet with PTSD accidentally called a suicide prevention hotline when intending to dial the Veterans Crisis Line. Within hours, he was dealing with DC Metro's finest, dispatched to handle an attempted suicide. This brief quote from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals opinion [PDF] -- part of veteran Matthew Corrigan's first conversation with responding officers -- sets the tone for the next several hours of Constitutional violations.

Here's a pretty encouraging story about fighting asset forfeiture and winning. The convoluted laws surrounding marijuana use are being exploited by California cops as revenue streams. A raid of a legal cannabis collective resulted in a whole lot of forfeited assets.

There's nothing those operating on the fringes of science hate more than people questioning their means, methods, and conclusions. To question is to be sued, unfortunately. Ken White has again fired up the Popehat signal in hopes of securing a skeptical blogger some legal assistance in fighting off a clearly bogus defamation suit by a junk scientist offended by the blogger's dismantling of his junk science.

As you may have noticed, a lot of people have opinions on the election that just happened. And, many people are using social media to express those opinions, for good or for bad. Some people are excited, some people are angry. And no matter which side you fall on, you should recognize that expressing opinions on social media is protected (and should be encouraged as part of a healthy political process involving public discussion and debate). Kevin Allred, a lecturer at Rutgers University, is definitely on the side of folks who aren't happy with the results of the election. And, like many, he's been tweeting about his opinions on the matter. Having read through his Twitter feed, it doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary from stuff that I've seen from others. In fact, I'd argue that it actually seems fairly tame.

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Sony recently released the slightly-more powerful Playstation 4 Pro console, a beefier version of its existing PS4 console that brings 4K and HDR functionality to customers with 4K sets. 4K was already proving to be a bit of a headache for early adopters, many of whom didn't realize that in order to get a 4K device to work, every device in the chain (particularly their audio receiver) not only needs to support 4K and the updated HDMI 2.0a standard for HDR (high dynamic range), but HDCP 2.2 -- an updated version of the copy protection standard used to try and lock down video content.

Remember how, right after the Paris bombings, people started blaming encryption for the attacks, despite the fact it was later revealed that most of the planning was done in the open and communication occurred via unencrypted SMS messages? As we noted, it seemed pretty clear that the bombings were an intelligence and law enforcement failure rather than an encryption problem.

We've noted for some time how cable providers over the last few years have added a "broadcast TV" fee to customer bills. Such a fee, which simply takes a part of the cost of programming and buries it below the line, lets cable providers advertise one rate, then hit customers with a higher bill. It's false advertising, but you'd be hard pressed to find a regulator anywhere in North America willing to tackle the problem. When Comcast was criticized for the practice two years ago, the company claimed that burying a sneaky new fee below the line was just the cable company's way of being "transparent" with its customers:

In an election without many net positives for people that care about technology issues, one small glimmer of good news actually came out of Florida last week. As we've been noting, utility companies have been going to some incredibly sleazy lengths to fight back against the rise of solar competition, including the creation of entirely bogus "consumer groups" like Consumers For Smart Solar. Groups like this profess to support solar power, yet have spent the lion's share of their utility funding to hamstring solar efforts in a state that could benefit immeasurably from the transition.

The Argentine government has announced the creation of a new national register of everyone using mobile phones in the country (original in Spanish). An article on Ambito.com says that discussions between the government and telecom companies have been underway for some months, and last week the scheme was finally unveiled. According to the Joint Resolution No. 6 of the Ministries of Security and Communications (original in Spanish), the mobile phone companies will be responsible for developing, operating and managing the system "at their own cost." In practice, this is likely to mean that the extra expenses will be passed on to customers. The personal data must be stored in a "safe, audited and permanent" manner, and yes, the records will be available to the authorities.The justification for the national register is to combat theft: according to a report in La Nación, 5000 mobile phones are stolen every day (original in Spanish.) To put that in context, another article in La Nación (original in Spanish) says that there are around 60 million mobile numbers in use, which seems rather high given that Argentina's total population is 42 million. Clearly, some people have two or more phones.Even one is a problem, for reasons that Edward Snowden and Andrew "bunnie" Huang pointed out earlier this year: a mobile phone is "the perfect tracking device." The new register may indeed help tackle the theft of mobile phones in Argentina. But it will also create a powerful and dangerous new resource that the authorities will surely be unable to resist dipping into for other purposes.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Another decision has been handed down that should further discourage public officials from utilizing private email accounts to conduct public business. Certainly public officials are welcome to use any email account they wish, but they shouldn't expect the use of a non-government account to shield their communications from the public. (And, if that's the case, why bother using a private email account while working for the government? All it really does is give the impression you're trying to hide something.)In this case, a Puyallup, Washington councilman (Steve Vermillion) set up his own personal website and email address to use in conjunction with his state congressional run. He continued to use it after this effort had ended, and frequently received emails from constituents and city employees at the private email address. For the most part, Vermillion handled city business through a city account, but still answered questions and engaged in communications related to public work through his private account.These emails were requested under the state's public records law. Vermillion claimed emails contained in this account were not subject to the law. His legal theory -- backed up by the city itself -- was that any emails contained in this account were his "private papers." The denial of the records request resulted in this lawsuit. A lower court found in favor of the records requester and the city immediately appealed it to the state's Supreme Court. The Supreme Court dumped it back down a level to the Appeals Court, forcing the line-jumping defendants to exhaust their other options first.Unusually (for a public records lawsuit), Vermillion theorized his constitutional rights were violated by the records request. These theories failed to persuade the lower court. From the decision [PDF] (via FourthAmendment.com):

Though the notion of the Facebook "filter bubble" has been around for a while, it's picked up a huge amount of steam following the election of Donald Trump — perhaps just a little too much steam. While Techdirt has long been of the opinion that pointing fingers at Facebook is misguided, there are plenty of people who disagree. This week, we're joined by one such person — long-time media commentator and senior editor at Fortune Mathew Ingram — for a lively debate about just how much of a problem the filter bubble really is, and how you'd go about solving it.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.

I've already argued that the rush to point fingers at Facebook for allowing lots of fake news to get passed around is greatly overhyped by people searching for explanations for last week's election results. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't be looking to do something about fake news on various platforms. On Monday, Google also faced some controversy over fake news, when its top result for people searching for "final election results" pointed to a fake news site with made up numbers. In response, a few hours later, Google announced that it was going to start banning fake news sites from using Google's AdSense ad product. A few hours after that, Facebook announced a similar pledge to stop allowing those sites to make money from Facebook.

Last week I wrote a bit about the ridiculous and misguided backlash against Facebook over the election results. The basis of the claim was that there were a bunch of fake or extremely misleading stories shared on the site by Trump supporters, and some felt that helped swing the election (and, yes, there were also fake stories shared by Clinton supporters -- but apparently sharing fake news was nearly twice as common among Trump supporters than Clinton supporters). I still think this analysis blaming Facebook is wrong. There was confirmation bias, absolutely, but it's not as if a lack of fake news would have changed people's minds. Many were just passing along the fake news because it fit the worldview they already have.

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Throughout the campaign, we noted how Donald Trump's views on the First Amendment and free speech were horrific. While some of his supporters insist that he's wonderful for free speech because he's not "politically correct," in almost every way he's positioned himself as an enemy of free speech and the First Amendment (even the whole "political correctness" thing is misleading, because if you mention certain other words, Trump supporters seem to get just as worked up as the "PC police"). He (along with Clinton) promised to censor the internet and brushed off the free speech concerns about doing so, calling people who bring up free speech in that context to be "foolish people." And, then of course, there is the long list of threats to sue his opponents for their ads, news organizations for their articles and other critics as well. Those are all protected speech. It didn't help matters that his very first post-election tweet complained about protesters exercising their First Amendment right to assemble and protest, and the press for supposedly "inciting" them to protest.

A few weeks back, Ken "Popehat" White lit the famed Popehat Signal to seek pro bono legal help for the creators of a new Kickstarter project called "Oh The Places You'll Boldly Go" -- which was a parody mashup of Dr. Seuss and Star Trek.As White wrote at the time, this seemed like a clear case of a big corporate bully -- Dr. Seuss Enterprises -- bullying a small group of artists having some fun, creating a parody that was almost certainly protected by fair use.