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Starting on January 1, the country of Kazakhstan has formally declared war on privacy, encryption, and a secure Internet. A new law takes effect in the new year that will require all citizens of the country to install a national, government-mandated security certificate allowing the interception of all encrypted citizen communications. In short, the country has decided that it would be a downright nifty idea to break HTTPS and SSL, essentially launching a "man in the middle" attack on every resident of the country.

Apparently bored by the traditional route of collection agencies and courtesy, one Canadian cable operator recently decided to try something different: it started posting the names and account balances of customers with overdue accounts on Facebook. After complaining that it "always get excuses from everybody," Senga Services in Fort Simpson, Canada started posting the notices to all manner of local community Facebook pages. Not content with that, at least one of the company's representatives thought it was a good idea to lecture locals on fiscal responsibility and living "within one's means":Not too surprisingly, locals weren't too impressed with the cable operator's new bedside manner:

The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has been fighting much-needed updates to the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) for a few years now, claiming that treating old email like new email would somehow strip it of its power to investigate and punish wrongdoing. For no discernible reason, legislators decided to treat electronic mail like physical mail, designating unopened emails over six months old "abandoned" and accessible by almost anyone using nothing more than a subpoena.

Last week Techdirt wrote about a curious case involving the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Gollum. In passing, Mike mentioned that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had just made an important ruling involving one of Turkey's many bans on YouTube. Here's what the ECHR found (pdf):

Diamond is a fascinating material. We haven't quite perfected how to make diamonds, so they're still rare -- and somewhat valuable, depending on the eye of the beholder. One aspect of diamond that everyone learns in school is that it is really, really hard. However, the title of "hardest" material might have to be awarded to other exotic substances.

Earlier this year, the state of New Mexico passed one of the most solid pieces of asset forfeiture reform legislation in the country. All it asked for was what most people would consider to be common sense: if the government is going to seize assets, the least it could do in return is tie the seizure to a conviction.

Earlier this year, we wrote about the crazy, but troubling, case against former NY Police Department officers Gilberto Valle, who has been dubbed "the cannibal cop" for fantasizing about kidnapping, raping, killing and eating around 100 women. A key question in the case: where is the line between fantasizing and... planning out a crime. But, the case drew even more interest from us because after the court basically tossed out all the charges as "thought crimes" that aren't actually illegal, it kept in place the CFAA charge, claiming that Valle violated the anti-hacking law by using the police deatabase to look up information on one of the women he was fantasizing about. Now, that's creepy and disturbing and an abuse of his position in the NYPD... but that does not make it a CFAA violation. It's the nuttiness of this case, and the remaining CFAA charge that resulted in reporter Sarah Jeong referring to the CFAA as "the law that sticks" when all else fails.

Lots of people have reasonable concerns about platforms like Facebook which not only provide an avenue for free expression -- but which also have the power to suddenly decide it won't allow certain forms of expression. Admittedly, there's always a line to be drawn somewhere. People are happy that Facebook tries to keep out spam and scams, but it's still worrying when it seems to want to filter out perfectly legitimate news stories. On Sunday, Nadim Kobeissi tweeted that Facebook wouldn't allow the sharing of a BBC article on the latest political polling in France.

Last week, we spoke with Daphne Keller of Stanford's Center For Internet And Society about the collision between privacy and free speech in the EU. Much of this discussion involves the question of "intermediary liability" — how and when service providers are held liable for the actions of their users. This week, Daphne is back for a broader look at intermediary liability, and why it's one of the most important questions for the future of the internet. 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.

Google's executive chairperson Eric Schmidt has an opinion piece in the NY Times, in which he advocates partly for an internet that is more widely available and enabling greater freedom of expression... but also one where there are "spell-checker" like tools to identify bad stuff online like harassment and ISIS videos:

The NSA's bulk phone metadata collection may no longer technically be a "collection" (the NSA now has to seek responsive metadata from telcos using targeted court orders), but that doesn't mean the agency isn't still seeking ways to keep the "dragnet" in "dragnet surveillance."

Backing up your important information to the cloud can get expensive. For a limited time, Zoolz Cold Storage is offering 1 TB of storage for $39. Zoolz is part of the Amazon Web Services partner network and has tooled their storage and backup as an easier to use solution akin to Amazon Glacier. You and one other user will have access to a personal backup system to keep your files safe, and you'll have access to those files on any device.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the head of the House Homeland Security Committee has now given a speech in which he announced plans to introduce legislation that will create a committee to undermine encryption in the tech industry:

Yesterday, we wrote about Hillary Clinton's absolutely terrible plan for undermining both encryption and free speech on the internet as a way to "deal" with ISIS. I left out the worst quote of all that she stated in the process, mockingly:

AT&T was just about to offer all manner of amazing, innovative services, but then net neutrality happened. At least that's the gist of a speech recently given by AT&T Senior VP Bob Quinn at the Phoenix Center's Annual US Telecoms Symposium. According to Quinn, net neutrality has created enough "legal uncertainty" that it caused the telco to shelve a "bunch of stuff." Quinn also proclaimed that the FCC's rules has the telco stuck in a sort of regulatory quagmire, where fifteen AT&T lawyers have to sit around debating what is and what isn't allowed by the nation's net neutrality protections:

Back in October, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which has nothing to with cybersecurity at all, and is almost entirely a surveillance bill in disguise. Want to know the proof: many of the most vocal supporters of CISA, who talked up how important "cybersecurity" is these days are the very same people now looking to undermine encryption.

Spy Culture has done it again. It has obtained over 1,600 pages of reports from the Marine Corps' entertainment liaison office -- a satisfying follow-up to the 1,300 pages it snagged from the Army's office.

We've discussed carbon dioxide before, and there are plenty of other places that talk about the doom and gloom of what happens when CO2 levels increase in the atmosphere. But there are also a bunch of people figuring out ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and monitor what effects anthropogenic carbon dioxide actually has on our planet. Check out a few of these projects that could help keep carbon dioxide emissions in check.

As you Techdirt readers know, we regularly publish posts on the weekends taking a sweet look back at what was going on on our pages in past years. The powers that be around this joint never let me get my hands on that post, probably either because I'd simply fill up the space with my own comments from the early days of Dark Helmet's existence, or because I dedicate my weekends to getting really, impressively drunk and scaring my neighbors. But a quick trip down memory lane brings up a thing tech companies used to do some years back that we used to have some fun with: appointing artists and celebrities as Chief Creative Officer, Chief Creative Director, Chief Creativity-Gasm Producer or some such nonsense. There was a rash of these announcements in 2010 and 2011, tapering off before it appeared like the world generally acknowledged that all of this was a giant waste of time and money, roughly around 2014. Sort of, oddly, like RadioShack, which found itself making some wildly bad financial decisions around 2011 or so before falling into disrepair and bankruptcy in late 2014 and early 2015.

Now that the NSA's bulk phone metadata collection has actually ceased to exist (in this particular form, anyway…), low-level panic has begun to set in. With the NSA no longer able to obtain and storephone records in bulk, some legislators are now concerned telcos will use their control of these records to thwart the intelligence agency.

Over the weekend, the AP's Ted Bridis released a stupid, fearmongering article that disingenously tied the San Bernardino attacks to the expiration of the NSA's Section 215 bulk phone metadata program.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has always been a friend of the intelligence community, but he's using the attack in San Bernadino to ramp up the anti-encryption insanity to new levels, practically begging President Obama to tell him what law he wants to ban encryption, and McConnell will help make sure Congress delivers. McConnell's statement was laying out what he thought President Obama should do in response to ISIS, and includes this ridiculous line:

As you may have noticed, the attacks in San Bernadino last week quickly became seen through the lens of what political point certain people wanted to make. The Democratic party quickly attempted to push for a bizarre type of gun control, barring people on the "no fly list" from buying guns. It's one of those things that sounds good if you have no real knowledge about what's going on. But it's still being pushed because it sounds like a sensible thing at first glance: why, if someone is a potential terrorist threat, they think, they probably shouldn't be able to buy guns. Hell, here's how President Obama himself put it last night in his big speech about terrorism (and gun control) in the wake of the attacks:

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There have been a lot of stupid net neutrality claims over the years. Net neutrality will somehow prevent ISPs from investing in networks is a common one. So are the claims that net neutrality will result in internet brown outs, trample ISPs' First Amendment rights, result in a return to the Fairness Doctrine, or that it's essentially "Obamacare for the internet." Underpinning most of these arguments is the grand daddy of them all: the intentionally-divisive claim that net neutrality is a partisan issue to begin with.

A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Hillary Clinton had, unfortunately, joined in with other clueless politicians to call for "Silicon Valley" to "develop solutions" to the "concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals" on "encryption." Anyone who's followed the "debate" over encryption over the past year knows that asking Silicon Valley to "develop solutions" is James Comey's codewords for "create a backdoor for encryption" -- no matter how many times experts in encryption have explained to him that such a solution makes everyone less safe. After we and a few others wrote about Clinton's unfortunate and dangerous decision to throw her lot in with those who wish to backdoor encryption, one of her main tech advisers, Alec Ross, went a little ballistic, insisting she did not say what she clearly did say.

More bad news for French citizens. Not only were they recently attacked by terrorists, but now their government is using these attacks against them to strip away civil liberties and shift more power to police and intelligence agencies.

As you probably know, last night President Obama gave a big address from the Oval Office about what he plans to do about ISIS, along with dealing with the threat of lone wolf and other attacks at home. Buried deep within (in fact, I missed it the first time through) was a nod towards the idea of pushing Silicon Valley to magically undermine encryption. Here's the entirety of what he said on the subject:

Some of the biggest reactions this week came in response to the story of an L.A. council member who proposed a staggeringly invasive use of license plate data to tell car owners they had visited areas "known for prostitution". Our first place winner for insightful was the second comment on that post, from an anonymous commenter who turned the tables:

Five Years Ago There were a couple major points of discussion this week in 2010. The first was the latest Wikileaks document release, which stirred ire from the president who was "considering" legal action as the DOJ tried to figure out how it could twist US law to charge Julian Assange. In the mean time, the government was putting the pressure on others to censor the site, convincing Amazon to refuse to host Wikileaks (though some pointed out Amazon seemed fine with not censoring pedophilia), telling students not to mention the site online if they wanted government jobs, and even blocking access to the site in the Library of Congress in an act of impressive denial. Of course, some were smart enough to see that this sort of freak-out was exactly the reaction Assange hoped to provoke, and that Wikileaks was not only inevitable but also critical to democracy. Even a few within the government were being rational. The second incident was Homeland Security's sudden seizure of a bunch of domain names that were supposedly dedicated to piracy. We immediately noticed a bunch of problems with the seizures and put together a list of five important questions for Homeland Security and its ICE division. Then more problems began coming to light, like the fact that some of the seized sites were popular hip-hop blogs used by artists to promote their own music and that the entire incident pushed the law to its breaking point. While explaining/defending the seizures, ICE more or less admitted that it gets its orders directly from Hollywood. Both these incidents had something in common, too: they showed how private intermediaries get involved in government censorship. Ten Years Ago There was upheaval in the world of television this week in 2005. While Americans were showing their disapproval of government regulation of TV and the telcos were struggling to offer TV of fibre and Nielsen was finally admitting DVRs were a thing, the FCC made a surprise reversal and started supporting the idea of a-la-carte cable networks. Suddenly the lines were drawn: AT&T made a strategic play in support of the idea while cable televangelists emerged as an unexpected opponent, and Cablevision stepped out of line with a maverick a-la-carte endorsement of its own. Meanwhile, the Sony rootkit scandal continued to unfold when it turned out Sony knew about the problem before anyone noticed it. But now the list of people who had noticed it included New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Some stores still had the CDs on shelves, though it wasn't clear who was to blame, and it turned out Sony's other copy protection software was similarly evil. A look way back at the beginnings of the rootkit revealed it was begged, borrowed and stolen by desperate programmers. Fifteen Years Ago It was a slow week in 2000, but we did see some early glimmerings of big change, like nascent experiments with voice recognition for mobile web surfing. Some plans didn't pan out so well, like Hollywood's top secret internet distribution schemes. Reporters were discovering that their web platforms give them power as customers, and Japan was discovering that simulated dating can be a hit. This was also the week that Opera, the other other browser, announced that it would become free. Sixty-Seven Years Ago It's not particularly tech related, but how about a good unsolved mystery? It was on December 1st, 1948 that an unidentified man was found dead on a beach in Australia, with a bunch of bizarre details surrounding the death, like a scrap of the Rubaiyat in his pocket that was then linked to a book with strange ciphers written on it. Dubbed the Taman Shud Case or the Mystery of the Somerton Man, it remains a source of speculation and mystery to this day.

This one's for collectors and folks with a little cash to spare: Pixel Vision, a beautiful hand-made game emulator from Sweden. The Good Love Hultén is a designer who makes incredible video game cabinets both large and small, and the Pixel Vision is a Kickstarted attempt to make some of his very desirable work available to more people with his smallest device yet. It runs on a Raspberry Pi board inside a handmade walnut casing — in fact everything about the Pixel Vision is handmade by one person. It has controls much like a classic Nintendo, runs emulators for a bunch of classic game systems, all controlled through a special minimal front-end interface that lets you access emulator functions like Reset and Save/Load State via hotkey combinations. It comes with some pre-loaded ROMs and you can load more via USB. Given the completely hand-made nature of everything Hultén makes, all his products are ultra-limited edition, and this is no exception: there are only 500 Pixel Visions, and a few extra special versions with even finer materials. Nothing here is revolutionary, but all the elements are top quality and put together with style to create a product I suspect many gamers — and especially those with nostalgic memories of their Game Boys — would love to have in their collection. The Bad There was no way a lovingly hand-crafted, limited edition, solid wood handheld gaming device was going to be cheap, was there? Alas, the Pixel Vision costs around $470 (but is priced in Swedish Krona). Considering the nature of its construction and the fact that it's essentially an art piece, this isn't an unfair price — and indeed this is Hultén's less expensive offering, given that his other even-more-impressive designs cost considerably more — but it will certainly discourage most would-be buyers (that is, after all, more than a Playstation 4). Though, with only 500 on the market, that's not exactly a problem. The Details What really caught my eye about the Pixel Vision is just how much Hultén's attention to detail permeates every aspect of its design. This isn't just some electronics crammed in a nice hand-made wood box by a woodworker hoping to find a market — it's actually a complete design by someone who clearly cares about all the elements of the device, hardware and software included. The best example of this is the 3.5" LCD screen. Anyone could stick a small screen in a box, but this one is mounted in a bezel that is ever-so-slightly curved outwards to evoke old-school TVs — but it doesn't stop there. The curved bezel is a great vintage look, but the screen would still clearly be modern, so the Pixel Vision runs custom OpenGL software that applies barrel distortion and a soft shader to all the emulator's graphics, giving it the genuine bulged look of an old CRT television. That's the sort of detail that ties the whole thing together and makes it not just a gimmick but a cohesive piece of great design.

This one's for collectors and folks with a little cash to spare: Pixel Vision, a beautiful hand-made game emulator from Sweden. The Good Love Hultén is a designer who makes incredible video game cabinets both large and small, and the Pixel Vision is a Kickstarted attempt to make some of his very desirable work available to more people with his smallest device yet. It runs on a Raspberry Pi board inside a handmade walnut casing — in fact everything about the Pixel Vision is handmade by one person. It has controls much like a classic Nintendo, runs emulators for a bunch of classic game systems, all controlled through a special minimal front-end interface that lets you access emulator functions like Reset and Save/Load State via hotkey combinations. It comes with some pre-loaded ROMs and you can load more via USB. Given the completely hand-made nature of everything Hultén makes, all his products are ultra-limited edition, and this is no exception: there are only 500 Pixel Visions, and a few extra special versions with even finer materials. Nothing here is revolutionary, but all the elements are top quality and put together with style to create a product I suspect many gamers — and especially those with nostalgic memories of their Game Boys — would love to have in their collection. The Bad There was no way a lovingly hand-crafted, limited edition, solid wood handheld gaming device was going to be cheap, was there? Alas, the Pixel Vision costs around $470 (but is priced in Swedish Krona). Considering the nature of its construction and the fact that it's essentially an art piece, this isn't an unfair price — and indeed this is Hultén's less expensive offering, given that his other even-more-impressive designs cost considerably more — but it will certainly discourage most would-be buyers (that is, after all, more than a Playstation 4). Though, with only 500 on the market, that's not exactly a problem. The Details What really caught my eye about the Pixel Vision is just how much Hultén's attention to detail permeates every aspect of its design. This isn't just some electronics crammed in a nice hand-made wood box by a woodworker hoping to find a market — it's actually a complete design by someone who clearly cares about all the elements of the device, hardware and software included. The best example of this is the 3.5" LCD screen. Anyone could stick a small screen in a box, but this one is mounted in a bezel that is ever-so-slightly curved outwards to evoke old-school TVs — but it doesn't stop there. The curved bezel is a great vintage look, but the screen would still clearly be modern, so the Pixel Vision runs custom OpenGL software that applies barrel distortion and a soft shader to all the emulator's graphics, giving it the genuine bulged look of an old CRT television. That's the sort of detail that ties the whole thing together and makes it not just a gimmick but a cohesive piece of great design.

The monkey selfie story is the gift that keeps on giving. When we last left the monkey, who PETA insists goes by the name "Naruto," the website Blurb and the didn't-take-the-monkey-photos-photographer David Slater had both pointed out to the court the simple fact that monkeys can't sue for copyright infringement and the lawsuit that PETA filed on behalf of the monkey was completely ridiculous. If you don't recall, these monkey selfies are unquestionably in the public domain, even if Slater still argues that he holds the copyright on them. He didn't take the photos, as his own statements indicate, and thus the photos are in the public domain (longer explanation at that link). But the idea that the monkey might own the copyright is something that Slater and I completely agree on: it's not even in the realm of possibility. Until PETA sued it was only in the realm of satire.

The DOJ's Inspector General Michael Horowitz has a thankless job. His office must look into improper actions by a variety of government agencies that have no interest in being independently overseen, much less inspected generally. The DEA and FBI have both played an instrumental part in undermining his investigations -- so much so that Horowitz has taken his complaints to Congress and suggested legislators punch the unhelpful agencies right in the pocketbook.

Penicillin and its derivatives haven't actually been around for that long in the scheme of things, but antibiotics have enabled an incredible age of prosperity without people having to worry about common infections killing us off. Unfortunately, nature has a way of evolving and adapting to our not-so-clever use of antibiotics, and we've been breeding superbugs in our hospitals and in our industrialized food chain. Sketchy meats have been around for a long time, but hopefully, it won't take a public health nightmare to get folks to take a closer look at food safety.

Whenever we discuss patents here, it's always useful to restate that the purpose of patent law generally is to promote creativity and innovation such that the public has greater access to novel and useful inventions. That the application of the patent system has been perverted from this original purpose ought to be obvious to everyone, which is why the mantra of patent protectionism by industry, often large industry, has always had the air of religiosity to me. Without patents, no creation would be made. Without patents, small inventors would be pilfered by monied interests. Without patents, we'd be without life-saving medicine. So goes the mantra of those prostrating themselves before restrictionism, repeated over and over again lest their imagined livelihood be taken away by the heathens who point out every counter-example.

When we talk about the many, nearly universally positive impact that mods and modding communities have on software and gaming, including for the makers of the original products, we typically focus on those benefits that are achieved when the modding community is embraced. These benefits can include everything from extending the life of a game to extending the original game's universe into entirely new experiences and games, making the original more attractive to buyers. But a strong modding community can have positive effects even when the original producers are recalcitrant where they should be gung-ho in meeting customer demands.

It's not been a good year for Paul Hansmeier, the Prenda attorney-turned-"ADA Champion." He's been hit with counter-claims on his Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuits which claim thousands in damages from local companies despite no actual issues. This was followed in May by an appeal hearing on Judge Wright's infamous Star Trek order where after summing up the Prenda business model 9 circuit Appeals Judge Pregerson called it an "Ingenious crooked extortionate operation." Then in August, one of the three central figures in the Prenda saga, Paul Duffy, died, moving the focus more squarely onto Hansmeier and Steele. Finally, just over two weeks ago, the Minnesota Law Board started proceedings to disbar him, meaning his ability to continue as a lawyer at all would be in jeopardy. Amongst all that, in July Hansmeier filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy (RECAP docket), seeking to repay his debts (many of which are damages and costs from various Prenda cases nationwide) totaling $2.43 million via installments. Under US Bankruptcy law, a person owed money by someone in Chapter 13 proceedings cannot start or continue collection proceedings, so for Hansmeier, it would have been a neat way to push payment of these debts down the road, while paying them off at a fraction of their value. (His proposed plan would have paid off a maximum of $161,400 in monthly installments of $2,690 across 5 years legal maximum at which point all debts would be discharged and considered paid.) However, petitions by the creditors (those who are owed money) pointed out in motions leading up to a December 3rd hearing at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Minnesota that he had shown he was not trustworthy. "The argument that somehow there's going to be a payment in full, your honor, just doesn't ring true," Michael R Fadlovich, the attorney representing the Bankruptcy Trustee is reported to have said. Even Hansmeier's lawyer admitted "he's a bad actor," but claimed "he'd found Jesus," although given the number of Does filed against, it's entirely possible Jesus was found by their speculative invoice letters. She also claimed that the sale of Hansmeier's downtown Minneapolis condo for $1.2 million would have provided a rare chance to have his debts mostly paid off, despite figures submitted by the trustee that indicate less than $90,000 would be realized by the sale. Nevertheless, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kathleen H. Sanberg was not swayed, converting the proceedings from Chapter 13 to Chapter 7, and requiring a liquidation of assets to pay, while any money left from the sale of the condo goes towards the debt fund. However, the court is not yet finished with Hansmeier. Numerous lawyers (representing creditors) highlighted a number of suspicious money transfers, possibly to hide assets, as other judges have already discovered. At issue was his constant dishonesty with courts, in this proceeding and others, which the judge sided with. While further actions are coming, Hansmeier has to now be very careful, as bankruptcy fraud is an imprisonable offense, and investigated by the FBI who are presumably already well aware of Mr. Hansmeier courtesy of Judge Wright. It seems that Hansmeier's 'luck' has just about run out.

The FBI continues to handcraft its own terrorists, ensuring a steady stream of prosecutions, press releases and counterterrorism funding. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and (more recently) Explosives (ATF) is busy turning unsuspecting males into would-be Omar Littles.

Earlier this week, Hunter Moore -- the guy who basically invented the concept of revenge porn with his "Is Anyone Up" site -- was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail along with a $2,000 fine... and he has to pay $145.70 in "restitution" to a single victim. Moore was arrested for violating the CFAA, and as we noted at the time, it may be one of the few legitimate uses of the CFAA. He didn't just run a revenge porn site, he hired a guy, Charlie Evens, who got a similar sentence a week ago, to hack into the computers of unsuspecting women, and swipe naked photos of them to put on his site. The sickening bit: that "$145.70" in "restitution"? That's how much Moore paid Evens (also, Evens is jointly liable for that money, meaning that Moore might not even pay it). It's difficult to understand why the $145.70 makes any sense at all as the "harm" caused to the anonymous woman "L.B." whose computer got hacked into.

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The tragic shootings in San Bernadino earlier this week have created a political field day for the usual idiotic partisan arguments -- which tend to have little to nothing to do with whatever actually happened. You have people on one side using it to call for gun control and folks on the other side using it to spark fears of "domestic terrorism." And, of course, it didn't take long for someone to pop up with using it as an excuse to call for greater surveillance. That was the argument that former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer took on MSNBC yesterday when asked what should be done in response. MSNBC Kate Snow asked if this could lead to bipartisan support for gun control (ha ha!) and Fleischer turned it around to say the answer is more surveillance.

Earlier this year, Judge Alex Kozinski went much further than his one-off comments in judicial opinions to take the prosecutors to task for… well, pretty much everything. The "epidemic of Brady [exonerating evidence] violations" he noted in 2013's USA v. Olsen decision was just the leadoff. Kozinski teed off on faulty forensic evidence (comparing arson "specialists" to "witch doctors"), the way the "first impression" almost always favors prosecutors (who get to present their case first in criminal trials), and the general unreliability of eyewitness testimony, which is often portrayed as infallible when it's the goverment presenting the witnesses.

The oldest private college in the state of West Virginia has a shot at getting back hundreds of thousands of dollars seized by the DEA, thanks to a recent decision by a federal judge. In very few cases do plaintiffs in asset forfeiture cases even get to make an attemptto retrieve seized money. In no other case but this one does the story begin like this [h/t Eric Goldman]:

After Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of spying being carried out around the world by the NSA and its Five Eyes friends, there have been a number of attempts in other countries to find out what has been going on. One of the most thoroughgoing of these is in Germany, where there is a major parliamentary inquiry into NSA activities in that country. As Techdirt reported back in May, a surprising piece of information to emerge from this is that Germany's secret service has been carrying out spying on behalf of the NSA, which sent across various "selectors" -- search terms -- that it wanted investigated in the German spies' surveillance databases. One group of people particularly shocked to hear this were the German parliamentarians who make up the G10 Commission that must approve spying operations in Germany. A post on Intellectual Property Watch explains why:

Techdirt has written many times about the online cat-and-mouse game being played out in China, whereby people adopt various technical approaches to get around official censorship, the authorities find ways to block them, forcing Internet users to find new methods, and so on. According to a recent report in The New York Times, the Chinese government is adopting even more severe measures against those who try to circumvent the Great Firewall:

Nature has had a few billion years to evolve some pretty useful abilities, but people are always trying to improve upon what's already available. One of the big challenges is creating an interface between biological mechanisms and various electronic devices. Implanting electrodes into brains or having insects control robot bodies are ongoing experiments -- and there are a few other projects combining biology and machines that could be even more cutting edge.

Seizing on a terrorist attack halfway around the world, the governor of New York has vowed to make his state safer by adding more bodies to the NYPD's overstuffed counterterrorism units and, as is the style of the time, introduced an app that will allow any New York resident to report anyone with a camera near a public building, bridge, tunnel, parked car, or power line.

Now that it's been a few weeks and we're used to the idea that the IRS has a Stingray device, more information has arrived to put us slightly more ill at ease. Sen. Ron Wyden asked IRS head John Koskinen some pointed questions about the IRS's cell tower spoofer ("WTF?" wasn't one of them) and has received some answers.

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt. Earlier this week, we wrote about an important (and useful) First Amendment ruling by 7th Circuit appeals court judge Richard Posner. Posner is one of the most well known judges around today, in part because of his prolific writing on many different subjects -- not all of which are directly about the law (though many are). One of his books that I quite enjoy is the short book he published back in 2007 called The Little Book of Plagiarism. It's a quick read at only 128 pages, but a worthwhile look into the history of plagiarism, and whether or not it's that big of a deal.