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  34. <title>UK Prosecutors Apologize For Pursuing BS Charges Against A Photographer</title>
  35. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/uk-prosecutors-apologize-for-pursuing-bs-charges-against-a-photographer/</link>
  36. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/uk-prosecutors-apologize-for-pursuing-bs-charges-against-a-photographer/#comments</comments>
  38. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Tim Cushing]]></dc:creator>
  39. <pubDate>Fri, 19 Apr 2024 03:45:47 +0000</pubDate>
  40. <category><![CDATA[1]]></category>
  41. <category><![CDATA[crown prosecution service]]></category>
  42. <category><![CDATA[dimitris legakis]]></category>
  43. <category><![CDATA[journalism]]></category>
  44. <category><![CDATA[photojournalist]]></category>
  45. <category><![CDATA[uk]]></category>
  46. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436262&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=436262</guid>
  47.  
  48. <description><![CDATA[Cops hate being watched, no matter where they&#8217;re located. In the United States, we&#8217;ve seen several arrests and prosecutions of journalists and citizens for daring to record public officials performing their public duties. The case law isn&#8217;t completely settled in the United States, but in most parts of the country, it&#8217;s understood the First Amendment [&#8230;]]]></description>
  49. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Cops <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2013/08/15/mayor-bloomberg-loves-cameras-watching-everyone-except-his-cops/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2013/08/15/mayor-bloomberg-loves-cameras-watching-everyone-except-his-cops/">hate being watched</a>, no matter where they&#8217;re located.</p>
  50. <p>In the United States, we&#8217;ve seen <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2011/09/30/guy-arrested-threatened-with-15-years-recording-traffic-stop-illinois/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2011/09/30/guy-arrested-threatened-with-15-years-recording-traffic-stop-illinois/">several arrests</a> and <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2014/12/19/nothing-changes-cops-still-threatening-citizens-breaking-laws-to-shut-down-recordings/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2014/12/19/nothing-changes-cops-still-threatening-citizens-breaking-laws-to-shut-down-recordings/">prosecutions</a> of journalists and citizens for <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2014/08/12/nypd-officer-chokes-man-to-death-cops-blame-cellphone-recordings-people-feeling-they-have-more-rights/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2014/08/12/nypd-officer-chokes-man-to-death-cops-blame-cellphone-recordings-people-feeling-they-have-more-rights/">daring to record</a> public officials performing their public duties. The case law <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/23/supreme-court-asked-again-to-rule-that-recording-cops-is-protected-by-the-1st-amendment/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/23/supreme-court-asked-again-to-rule-that-recording-cops-is-protected-by-the-1st-amendment/">isn&#8217;t completely settled</a> in the United States, but in most parts of the country, it&#8217;s understood the First Amendment covers these activities.</p>
  51. <p>That fact hasn&#8217;t stopped cops and prosecutors from pursuing everything from <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2011/06/23/woman-charged-with-obstructing-governmental-administration-filming-police-her-front-yard/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2011/06/23/woman-charged-with-obstructing-governmental-administration-filming-police-her-front-yard/">obstruction charges</a> to alleged violations of <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/13/federal-court-says-massachusetts-wiretap-law-cant-be-used-to-arrest-people-recording-public-officials/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/13/federal-court-says-massachusetts-wiretap-law-cant-be-used-to-arrest-people-recording-public-officials/">state wiretapping laws</a> against people who hold cops accountable simply by documenting the things they do.</p>
  52. <p>There&#8217;s no First Amendment in the UK. But that doesn&#8217;t mean UK law enforcement officers are free to arrest people who do nothing more than document their actions. Given this lack of built-in protection, it&#8217;s extremely surprising to see UK prosecutors admit they&#8217;re in the wrong when it comes to shielding cops from accountability efforts that don&#8217;t involve government employees. </p>
  53. <p>A journalist who did nothing more than try to document a criminal investigation taking place in full view of the public has received an apology of sorts from the UK government,<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/09/cps-wrong-case-press-photographer-dimitris-legakis" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/09/cps-wrong-case-press-photographer-dimitris-legakis"> as Steven Morris reports for The Guardian</a>.</p>
  54. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  55. <p><em>The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/crown-prosecution-service">Crown Prosecution Service</a>&nbsp;has admitted it was wrong to press on with a case against a news photographer arrested as he tried to lawfully take pictures at a crime scene.</em></p>
  56. <p><em>Judge Walters at Swansea crown court&nbsp;<a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/disturbing-prosecution-press-photographer-dropped-28952028">described the case against Dimitris Legakis</a>, which was dropped on the eve of his trial, as “disturbing” and said it seemed “the high point” of the prosecution was that a police officer “took offence” against someone whose job was to take photographs.</em></p>
  57. </blockquote>
  58. <p>The journalist did nothing more than show up at the scene of a car fire last year. He attempted to document the police response, only to get arrested by UK police officers, apparently because he was the only one in the crowd operating a camera. That this later turned out to be a murder investigation (allegedly a man beat his wife to death with a hammer before setting fire to the car with her in it) doesn&#8217;t really matter. At that point, it was just a normal police response to a potentially dangerous situation.</p>
  59. <p>At some point during the police response, an &#8220;altercation&#8221; between some members of the crowd began. For whatever reason, officers decided to single out the journalist as the problem. He was arrested &#8220;with considerable force&#8221; and detained for 15 hours, supposedly for assaulting a first responder and &#8220;obstructing&#8221; a police officer, despite the fact no obstruction or assault was captured by any cameras operated by responding officers. The lack of evidence <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/disturbing-prosecution-press-photographer-dropped-28952028" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/disturbing-prosecution-press-photographer-dropped-28952028">was admitted by the prosecution prior to its dropping of the charges</a>. </p>
  60. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  61. <p><em>The trial was due to start on Tuesday but at a hearing on Monday prosecution barrister Alycia Carpanini said no evidence would be offered in the case. The barrister said it had also been decided that it was not in the public interest to pursue the obstructing a constable matter, a summary-only offence.</em></p>
  62. <p><em>Asked by Judge Geraint Walters why the decision to offer no evidence had been taken on the eve of the trial, the barrister said the original statement taken from the police officer &#8220;does not coincide&#8221; with what he later said in his victim personal statement, and she said the alleged assault itself was not captured on bodycam. <strong>The judge said having read the papers in the case it seemed to him &#8220;the high point of the prosecution case&#8221; was that somebody employed as a photographer was taking pictures and a police officer &#8220;took offence&#8221; to it.</strong></em></p>
  63. </blockquote>
  64. <p>When faced with taking this case to trial, the CPS finally admitted it had no evidence. But it took a court calling this out as a bullshit &#8220;contempt of cop&#8221; prosecution for that to happen. </p>
  65. <p>And while there&#8217;s a very rare apology here, it comes couched in exculpatory language that suggests the CPS was completely in the right until it was forced to admit it was completely in the wrong. </p>
  66. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  67. <p><em>A spokeswoman said: &#8220;We take assaults on emergency workers incredibly seriously. In all cases, including those resulting from police charge, we have a duty to continually review the evidence. In a review prior to the recent hearing, we decided that there was no longer sufficient evidence to continue with the prosecution and it should be stopped. We acknowledge this should have been done sooner.&#8221;</em></p>
  68. </blockquote>
  69. <p>Maybe the CPS should divert some of its resources to investigating police officers who cook up bogus charges for the sole purpose of deterring public accountability. And, very definitely, the agency employing the officers who arrested the journalist and concocted a host of criminal charges should act quickly to punish the offices involved in this potential miscarriage of justice. It shouldn&#8217;t take 15 hours of detention and the run-up to a criminal case to finally have the truth come out. Because if that&#8217;s what it takes for the government to finally admit it&#8217;s in the wrong, the harm has already been done and the chilling effect on public accountability remains intact. </p>
  70. <p>That being said, it&#8217;s still a step ahead of the status quo here in the United States. Even when governments pay out settlements to people whose rights have been violated, the payments are almost always attached to legal verbiage in which the government refuses to admit any wrongdoing. At least in the case above, the government acknowledged it was at fault. And that&#8217;s something, even if the lack of consequences means CPS and the cops that provide it with cases to prosecute are free to make the same &#8220;mistakes&#8221; over and over again.</p>
  71. ]]></content:encoded>
  73. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/uk-prosecutors-apologize-for-pursuing-bs-charges-against-a-photographer/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  74. <slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
  77. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436262</post-id> </item>
  78. <item>
  79. <title>Palworld Creator Loves That Others Are Trying To Clone The Game</title>
  80. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/palworld-creator-loves-that-others-are-trying-to-clone-the-game/</link>
  81. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/palworld-creator-loves-that-others-are-trying-to-clone-the-game/#comments</comments>
  83. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dark Helmet]]></dc:creator>
  84. <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 22:32:37 +0000</pubDate>
  85. <category><![CDATA[1]]></category>
  86. <category><![CDATA[nintendo]]></category>
  87. <category><![CDATA[pocketpair]]></category>
  88. <category><![CDATA[pokemon]]></category>
  89. <category><![CDATA[tencent]]></category>
  90. <category><![CDATA[copying]]></category>
  91. <category><![CDATA[innovation]]></category>
  92. <category><![CDATA[inspiration]]></category>
  93. <category><![CDATA[palworld]]></category>
  94. <category><![CDATA[takuro mizobe]]></category>
  95. <category><![CDATA[video games]]></category>
  96. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436493&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=436493</guid>
  97.  
  98. <description><![CDATA[We&#8217;ve had several posts on the video game sensation that is Palworld in the past. Given that the game has been described by others as &#8220;Pokémon, but with guns&#8221;, we kicked things off both wondering if Nintendo was going to try to take some kind of misguided legal action on the game, while also pointing [&#8230;]]]></description>
  99. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>We&#8217;ve had several posts on the video game sensation that is <em><a href="https://www.techdirt.com/tag/palworld/">Palworld</a></em> in the past. Given that the game has been described by others as &#8220;Pokémon, but with guns&#8221;, we kicked things off both wondering if Nintendo was going to try to take some kind of misguided legal action on the game, while also pointing out that the game is an excellent case study in copyright&#8217;s <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/25/palworld-is-a-great-example-of-the-idea-expression-dichotomy/">idea/expression dichotomy</a>. After all, the game does not do any direct copying of any Pokémon IP, but does draw obvious inspiration from some of the base ideas behind that IP. In fact, highlighting the dichotomy further was a mod that <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/29/nintendo-dmcas-palworld-mod-that-puts-actual-pokemon-into-the-game/">injected</a> actual Pokémon IP into <em>Palworld</em>, which Nintendo then managed to get <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/01/palworld-modder-changes-pokemon-mod-to-include-generic-characters-instead/">taken down</a>.</p>
  100. <p>One of the things writers of this sort of content like me tend to fret about, however, is how often rank hypocrisy suddenly shows up among subjects such as the creators behind <em>Palworld</em>. It&#8217;s not uncommon to see a content creator attempt to go after folks doing to them exactly what the creator did in drawing inspiration from others. If you were worried the people behind <em>Palworld</em> would fall into this category, however, it appears very much that <a href="https://kotaku.com/palworld-tencent-pokemon-nintendo-clone-mobile-1851415602">you were worried for nothing</a>.</p>
  101. <p>With the success of the game, it was only a matter of time before someone, or many someones, tried to cash in on its success by making similar games, or &#8220;clones.&#8221; PocketPair CEO Takuro Mizobe noticed this was happening with <em>Palworld</em> and reacted thusly.</p>
  102. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  103. <p><em>“Tencent is already making a Palworld clone game!” PocketPair CEO Takuro Mizobe recently tweeted,” according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://automaton-media.com/en/news/tencents-palworld-clone-prompts-reaction-from-pocketpair-ceo-these-are-incredible-times/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">translation by&nbsp;Automaton</a>. He seemed happy about it. “These are incredible times,” he wrote. Some initially interpreted Mizobe as being critical of these moves.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/after-palworld-was-accused-of-ripping-off-pokmon-its-ceo-has-accused-other-companies-of-making-palworld-clones" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">An&nbsp;IGN&nbsp;story</a>&nbsp;described him as accusing other companies of ripping off&nbsp;Palworld, a framing the CEO rejected.</em></p>
  104. <p><em>“To ‘accuse’ someone of something, means to say they are doing something wrong,” Mizobe&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/urokuta_ja/status/1780399532771344477?t=cY56P4EvnaKGF4FyDmxr1g&amp;s=19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote in a follow-up tweet</a>&nbsp;responding to the&nbsp;IGN&nbsp;story. “I don’t think what Tencent is doing is wrong. I’m proud that other companies want to make games like&nbsp;Palworld. The industry historically innovates when we borrow ideas from games we love. I’m surprised that many high-quality mobile games are already in development.”</em></p>
  105. </blockquote>
  106. <p>No going legal. No threats. Not even a hint of a complaint. Instead, Mizobe acknowledged what we all already know to be true: video games, like other forms of culture, are and have always been built on what came before it. If the success of <em>Palworld</em> spawns similar games after the fact, that&#8217;s not only not a problem, it&#8217;s <em>a good thing</em> for gaming culture. Hell, Mizobe even went so far as to praise some of these games&#8217; quality.</p>
  107. <p>Imagine Nintendo doing anything like this. You simply can&#8217;t. In fact, when <em>Palworld</em> was released, Nintendo made some vague comments about looking into the game to see if it wanted to pursue any legal action. You know, the exact opposite of the route Mizobe took.</p>
  108. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  109. <p><em>Who knows if these new&nbsp;Palworld&nbsp;clones that Tencent and others are apparently developing will ever see the light of day. We won’t know if they’re actually rip-offs until they’re out, but Mizobe doesn’t seem to mind either way.</em></p>
  110. </blockquote>
  111. <p>And why should he? I imagine he&#8217;s far too busy counting all the money his company is making by focusing on making a successful game rather than wringing his hands over some clones that may or may not ever gain any traction.</p>
  112. ]]></content:encoded>
  114. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/palworld-creator-loves-that-others-are-trying-to-clone-the-game/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  115. <slash:comments>10</slash:comments>
  118. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436493</post-id> </item>
  119. <item>
  120. <title>Sextortion Is A Real &#038; Serious Criminal Issue; Blaming Section 230 For It Is Not</title>
  121. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/sextortion-is-a-real-serious-criminal-issue-blaming-section-230-for-it-is-not/</link>
  122. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/sextortion-is-a-real-serious-criminal-issue-blaming-section-230-for-it-is-not/#comments</comments>
  124. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mike Masnick]]></dc:creator>
  125. <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 20:02:15 +0000</pubDate>
  126. <category><![CDATA[meta]]></category>
  127. <category><![CDATA[blame]]></category>
  128. <category><![CDATA[criminals]]></category>
  129. <category><![CDATA[fbi]]></category>
  130. <category><![CDATA[guns]]></category>
  131. <category><![CDATA[jordan demay]]></category>
  132. <category><![CDATA[law enforcement]]></category>
  133. <category><![CDATA[liability]]></category>
  134. <category><![CDATA[section 230]]></category>
  135. <category><![CDATA[sextortion]]></category>
  136. <category><![CDATA[yahoo boys]]></category>
  137. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436513</guid>
  138.  
  139. <description><![CDATA[Let’s say I told you a harrowing story about a crime. Criminals from halfway around the world used fraudulent means and social engineering to scam a teenager, causing them to effectively destroy their lives (at least in the mind of the teen). The person whose life was destroyed then took an easily accessible gun from [&#8230;]]]></description>
  140. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Let’s say I told you a harrowing story about a crime. Criminals from halfway around the world used fraudulent means and social engineering to scam a teenager, causing them to effectively destroy their lives (at least in the mind of the teen). The person whose life was destroyed then took an easily accessible gun from their parent and shot and killed themselves. Law enforcement investigated the crime, tracked down the people responsible, extradited them to the US and tried them. Eventually, they were sentenced to many years in prison.</p>
  141. <p>Who would you blame for such a thing?</p>
  142. <p>Apparently, for some people, the answer is Section 230. And it makes no sense at all.</p>
  143. <p>That, at least, is the takeaway from an otherwise harrowing, distressing, and fascinating article in Bloomberg Businessweek about <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-sextortion-teen-suicides/?ref=platformer.news&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall">the very real and very serious problem of sextortion</a>.</p>
  144. <p>The article is well worth reading, as it not only details the real (and growing) problem of sextortion, but shows how a momentary youthful indiscretion — coaxed by a skillful social engineer — can destroy someone’s life.</p>
  145. <p>The numbers on sextortion are eye-opening:</p>
  146. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  147. <p><em>It was early 2022 when analysts at the National Center for Missing &amp; Exploited Children (NCMEC) noticed a frightening pattern. The US nonprofit has fielded online-exploitation cybertips since 1998, but it had never seen anything like this.</em></p>
  148. <p><em>Hundreds of tips began flooding in from across the country, bucking the trend of typical exploitation cases. Usually, older male predators spend months grooming young girls into sending nude photos for their own sexual gratification. But in these new reports, teen boys were being catfished by individuals pretending to be teen girls—and they were sending the nude photos first. The extortion was rapid-fire, sometimes occurring within hours. And it wasn’t sexually motivated; the predators wanted money. The tips were coming from dozens of states, yet the blackmailers were all saying the same thing:</em></p>
  149. <p><em>“I’m going to ruin your life.”</em></p>
  150. <p><em>“I’m going to make it go viral.”</em></p>
  151. <p><em>“Answer me quickly. Time is ticking.”</em></p>
  152. <p><em>“I have what I need to destroy your life.”</em></p>
  153. </blockquote>
  154. <p>As the article details, there is something of a pattern in many of these sextortion cases. There are even “training” videos floating around that teach scammers how to effectively social engineer the result: get control over an Instagram or Snapchat account of a young girl and start friending/flirting with teen boys.</p>
  155. <p>After getting flirty enough, send a fake nude and ask for one in return. Then, the scammer goes straight into extortion mode the second the teen boy does the teen boy thing and sends a compromising photo, focused on promising to ruin the boy’s life:</p>
  156. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  157. <p><em>Around midnight, Dani got flirtatious. She told Jordan she liked “playing sexy games.” Then she sent him a naked photo and asked for one in return, a “sexy pic” with his face in it. Jordan walked down the hallway to the bathroom, pulled down his pants and took a selfie in the mirror. He hit send.</em></p>
  158. <p><em>In an instant, the flirty teenage girl disappeared.</em></p>
  159. <p><em>“I have screenshot all your followers and tags and can send this nudes to everyone and also send your nudes to your family and friends until it goes viral,” Dani wrote. “All you have to do is cooperate with me and I won’t expose you.”</em></p>
  160. <p><em>Minutes later: “I got all I need rn to make your life miserable dude.”</em></p>
  161. </blockquote>
  162. <p>As the article notes, this is part of the “playbook” that is used to teach the scammers:</p>
  163. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  164. <p><em>The Yahoo Boys videos provided guidance on how to sound like an American girl (“I’m from Massachusetts. I just saw you on my friend’s suggestion and decided to follow you. I love reading, chilling with my friends and tennis”). They offered suggestions for how to keep the conversation flowing, how to turn it flirtatious and how to coerce the victim into sending a nude photo (“Pic exchange but with conditions”). Those conditions often included instructions that boys hold their genitals while “making a cute face” or take a photo in a mirror, face included.</em></p>
  165. <p><em>Once that first nude image is sent, the script says, the game begins. “NOW BLACKMAIL <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f600.png" alt="😀" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />!!” it tells the scammer, advising they start with “hey, I have ur nudes and everything needed to ruin your life” or “hey this is the end of your life I am sending nudes to the world now.” Some of the blackmail scripts Raffile found had been viewed more than half a million times. One, called “Blackmailing format,” was uploaded to YouTube in September 2022 and got thousands of views. It included the same script that was sent to Jordan DeMay—down to the typos.</em></p>
  166. </blockquote>
  167. <p>The article mostly focuses on the tragic case of one teen, DeMay, who shot himself very soon after getting hit with this scam. The article notes, just in passing, that DeMay had access to his father’s gun. Yet, somehow, guns and easy access to them are never mentioned as anything to be concerned about, even as the only two suicides mentioned in the article both involve teen boys who seemed to have unsupervised access to guns with which to shoot themselves.</p>
  168. <p>Apparently, this is all the fault of Section 230 instead.</p>
  169. <p>Hell, even as the article describes how this was a criminal case, and (somewhat amazingly!) the FBI tracked down the actual scammers in Nigeria, had them extradited to Michigan, and even <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmi/pr/2024_0410_Ogoshi_Plea">got them to plead guilty</a> to the crime (along with a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison). Apparently, this is still… an internet problem?</p>
  170. <p>The reality is that this is a criminal problem, and it’s appropriate to treat it as such, where law enforcement has to deal with it (as they did in this case).</p>
  171. <p>It seems like there are many things to blame here: the criminals themselves (who are going to prison for many years), the easy access to guns, even the failure to teach kids to be careful with who they’re talking to or what to do if they got into trouble online. But, no, the article seems to think this is all Section 230’s fault.</p>
  172. <p>DeMay’s family appears to have been suckered by a lawyer into suing Meta (the messages to him came via Instagram):</p>
  173. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  174. <p><em>In January, Jordan’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in a California state court accusing Meta of enabling and facilitating the crime. That month, John DeMay flew to Washington to attend the congressional hearing with social media executives. He sat in the gallery holding a picture of Jordan smiling in his red football jersey.</em></p>
  175. <p><em>The DeMay case has been combined with more than 100 others in a group lawsuit in Los Angeles that alleges social media companies have harmed children by designing addictive products. The cases involve content sent to vulnerable teens about eating disorders, suicide and dangerous challenges leading to accidental deaths, as well as sextortion.</em></p>
  176. <p><em>“The way these products are designed is what gives rise to these opportunistic murderers,” says Matthew Bergman, founder of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center, who’s representing Jordan’s parents. “They are able to exploit adolescent psychology, and they leverage Meta’s technology to do so.”</em></p>
  177. </blockquote>
  178. <p>Except all of that is nonsense. Yes, sextortion is problematic, but what the fuck in the “design” of Instagram aids it? It’s a communication tool, like any other. In the past, people used phones and the mail service for extortion, and no one sued AT&amp;T or the postal service because of it. It’s utter nonsense.</p>
  179. <p>But Bloomberg runs with it and implies that Section 230 is somehow getting in the way here:</p>
  180. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  181. <p><em>The lawsuits face a significant hurdle: overcoming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This liability shield has long protected social media platforms from being held accountable for content posted on their sites by third parties. If Bergman’s product liability argument fails, Instagram won’t be held responsible for what the Ogoshi brothers said to Jordan DeMay.</em></p>
  182. <p><em>Regardless of the legal outcome, Jordan’s parents want Meta to face the court of public opinion. “This isn’t my story, it’s his,” John DeMay says. “But unfortunately, we are the chosen ones to tell it. And I am going to keep telling it. When Mark Zuckerberg lays on his pillow at night, I guarantee he knows Jordan DeMay’s name. And if he doesn’t yet, he’s gonna.”</em></p>
  183. </blockquote>
  184. <p>So here’s a kind of important question: how would this story have played out <em>any differently</em> in the absence of Section 230? What different thing would Mark Zuckerberg do? I mean, it’s possible that Facebook/Instagram wouldn’t really exist at all without such protections, but assuming they do, what legal liability would be on the platforms for this kind of thing happening?</p>
  185. <p>The answer is <em>nothing</em>. For there to be any liability under the First Amendment, there would have to be evidence that Meta employees knew of the specific sextortion attempt against DeMay and did nothing to stop it. But that’s ridiculous.</p>
  186. <p>Instagram has 2 billion users. What are the people bringing the lawsuit expecting Meta to do? To hire people to read every direct message going back and forth among users, spotting the ones that are sextortion, and magically stepping in to stop them? That’s not just silly, it’s impossible and ridiculously intrusive. Do you want Meta employees reading all your DMs?</p>
  187. <p>Even more to the point, Section 230 is what <em>allows</em> Meta to experiment with better solutions to this kind of thing. For example, Meta has <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2024/04/new-tools-to-help-protect-against-sextortion-and-intimate-image-abuse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recently announced new tools to help fight sextortion</a> by using nudity detectors to try to prevent kids from sending naked photos of themselves.</p>
  188. <p>Developing such a tool and providing such help would be riskier without Section 230, as it would be an “admission” that people use their tools to send nudes. But here, the company can experiment with providing better tools because of 230. The focus on blaming Section 230 is so incredibly misplaced that it’s embarrassing.</p>
  189. <p>The criminals are actually responsible for the sextortion scam and the end results, and possibly whoever made it so damn easy for the kid to get his father’s gun in the middle of the night to shoot himself. The “problem” here is not Section 230, and removing Section 230 wouldn’t change a damn thing. This lawsuit is nonsense, and sure, maybe it makes the family feel better to sue Meta, but just because a crime happened on Instagram, doesn’t magically make it Instagram’s fault.</p>
  190. <p>And, for good reason. As noted above, this was always a law enforcement situation. We shouldn’t ever want to turn private companies into law enforcement. Because that would be an extremely dangerous result. Let Meta provide its communications tools. Let law enforcement investigate crimes and bring people to justice (as happened here). Maybe we should focus on better educating our kids to be aware of threats like sextortion and how to respond to it if they happen to make a mistake and get caught up in it.</p>
  191. <p>There’s lots of blame to go around here, but none of it belongs on Section 230.</p>
  192. ]]></content:encoded>
  194. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/sextortion-is-a-real-serious-criminal-issue-blaming-section-230-for-it-is-not/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  195. <slash:comments>20</slash:comments>
  198. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436513</post-id> </item>
  199. <item>
  200. <title>Cops Claim Body Cam Footage Of Wrong Address Raid Would Be &#8216;Dangerous&#8217; To Release To General Public</title>
  201. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/cops-claim-body-cam-footage-of-wrong-address-raid-would-be-dangerous-to-release-to-general-public/</link>
  202. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/cops-claim-body-cam-footage-of-wrong-address-raid-would-be-dangerous-to-release-to-general-public/#comments</comments>
  204. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Tim Cushing]]></dc:creator>
  205. <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:02:44 +0000</pubDate>
  206. <category><![CDATA[1]]></category>
  207. <category><![CDATA[body cameras]]></category>
  208. <category><![CDATA[footage]]></category>
  209. <category><![CDATA[north carolina]]></category>
  210. <category><![CDATA[raleigh]]></category>
  211. <category><![CDATA[raleigh pd]]></category>
  212. <category><![CDATA[search warrant]]></category>
  213. <category><![CDATA[transparency]]></category>
  214. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436312&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=436312</guid>
  215.  
  216. <description><![CDATA[Cops continue to wonder why people don&#8217;t trust them. Go figure. At the center of this latest &#8220;we&#8217;re better than you&#8221; posturing by law enforcement is the raid of the wrong house by self-proclaimed &#8220;trained and experienced&#8221; officers, who mistook one Arab male for another before rushing into a house and pointing guns at everyone. [&#8230;]]]></description>
  217. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Cops <a href="https://i.chzbgr.com/full/9526323712/h3A091A66/top-confused-oinking" data-type="link" data-id="https://i.chzbgr.com/full/9526323712/h3A091A66/top-confused-oinking">continue to wonder</a> why people don&#8217;t trust them. Go figure. </p>
  218. <p>At the center of this latest &#8220;we&#8217;re better than you&#8221; posturing by law enforcement is the raid of the wrong house by self-proclaimed &#8220;<a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/22/law-enforcement-training-expertise-parade/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/22/law-enforcement-training-expertise-parade/">trained and experienced</a>&#8221; officers, who mistook <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2020/08/27/time-to-start-dismantling-one-nations-oldest-racist-institutions-law-enforcement/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2020/08/27/time-to-start-dismantling-one-nations-oldest-racist-institutions-law-enforcement/">one Arab male for another</a> before rushing into a house and pointing guns at everyone. </p>
  219. <p>Now that there&#8217;s an official complaint in place <a href="https://www.theassemblync.com/newsletter/body-camera-footage-lawsuit/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.theassemblync.com/newsletter/body-camera-footage-lawsuit/">and a civil rights lawsuit underway</a>, the Raleigh police department has decided the public would be better served by keeping its recordings of the raid under wraps. Here&#8217;s <a href="https://indyweek.com/news/wake/raleigh-cops-tell-judge-that-allowing-the-public-to-see-footage-of-a-botched-raid-would-be-dangerous/" data-type="link" data-id="https://indyweek.com/news/wake/raleigh-cops-tell-judge-that-allowing-the-public-to-see-footage-of-a-botched-raid-would-be-dangerous/">Charlotte Kramon and Jeffrey Billman reporting for Indy Week</a>:</p>
  220. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  221. <p><em>On Tuesday, the Raleigh Police Department asked a judge to block the release of body-camera footage from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theassemblync.com/newsletter/body-camera-footage-lawsuit/">the botched raid</a>&nbsp;of Amir and Mirian Ibrahim Abboud’s home in April 2021.&nbsp;On Thursday, the judge obliged.</em></p>
  222. <p><em>According to court records, an RPD SWAT team “suddenly and without warning, broke and busted open the Abbouds’ front door with a battering ram, pointing their long, AR-styled firearms at Mr. Abboud, Mrs. Abboud, and their 11-month-old son.” Though the search warrant was ultimately based on mistaken identity—State Bureau of Investigation agents confused Abboud with a neighbor who is also of Arab descent—the police refused to pay for the damage, court records show.&nbsp;</em></p>
  223. </blockquote>
  224. <p>Sounds like a lot of stuff cops do all the time: <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/10/texas-swat-team-destroys-home-while-searching-for-the-wrong-person-at-the-wrong-address/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/10/texas-swat-team-destroys-home-while-searching-for-the-wrong-person-at-the-wrong-address/">raid houses, break stuff, screw up, and refuse to apologize</a>. Victims of these assaults are expected to just suck it up because law enforcement often needs to move fast and <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200411/09500444280/ninth-circuit-says-man-cant-sue-officers-who-destroyed-his-home-to-capture-unarmed-homeless-man.shtml" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200411/09500444280/ninth-circuit-says-man-cant-sue-officers-who-destroyed-his-home-to-capture-unarmed-homeless-man.shtml">(literally) break things</a>. </p>
  225. <p>In this case, the Raleigh PD actually went to court to argue against the release of body cam footage of this botched raid. It didn&#8217;t have to do this but it did. Worse, it got a court to agree with its arguments &#8212; arguments that were patently ridiculous.</p>
  226. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  227. <p><em>The RPD pointed out that an attorney for the Abbouds had released home security footage of the raid online, which the police said made releasing the body camera footage redundant. At the same time, the RPD claimed that releasing the body camera footage might expose confidential information about search warrant execution or damage officers’ reputations.&nbsp;</em></p>
  228. </blockquote>
  229. <p>It&#8217;s only in cases like these that government entities seem to feel redundancy is a bad thing. And if no harm was done to officers by the release of the home security footage, it seems no harm would occur if the PD released its <em>own</em> footage.</p>
  230. <p>But after arguing the public had all the footage it deserved, the RPD went on to argue that the supposedly &#8220;redundant&#8221; footage would somehow &#8220;expose confidential information&#8221; or &#8220;damage officers&#8217; reputations&#8221; if it released its own footage. Not only that, but the PD&#8217;s lawyer claimed releasing footage of a wrong house raid captured on home security cameras would somehow endanger the RPD itself.</p>
  231. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  232. <p><em>At Tuesday’s hearing, RPD attorney Sherita Walton told Houston—who was&nbsp;<a href="https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/general-assembly-appoints-seven-new-special-superior-court-judges/">appointed</a>&nbsp;by Senate leader Phil Berger last year—that the Abboud raid was “valid on its face” and insisted that none of the officers did anything wrong. Walton said releasing the footage would be “dangerous.” (The SBI also asked Judge Houston to withhold the footage.)&nbsp;</em></p>
  233. </blockquote>
  234. <p>All of these arguments are equally stupid. Footage can be edited to remove &#8220;confidential information&#8221; and protect the identities of the officers involved in the wrong house raid. As for &#8220;damaging reputations,&#8221; what even is the point of this argument? The involved officers did what they did and any reputational damage is due to their own actions. It has nothing to do with the residents of a house that was only raided because the cops screwed up. And there&#8217;s no &#8220;because it might make us look bad&#8221; public records exception. And if the officers &#8220;did nothing wrong,&#8221; it&#8217;s hard to believe releasing footage of such outstanding police work would be &#8220;dangerous.&#8221;</p>
  235. <p>Unfortunately, as Indy Week points out, body cam footage is not considered a public record under North Carolina state law. That doesn&#8217;t mean it can <em>never</em> be released. It&#8217;s that the presumption of opacity prevails unless the state AG or a presiding judge determines otherwise.</p>
  236. <p>Then there&#8217;s the particulars of the raid itself. It wasn&#8217;t a no-knock raid. But it was as close to a no-knock warrant as warrants get, <a href="https://www.theassemblync.com/newsletter/body-camera-footage-lawsuit/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.theassemblync.com/newsletter/body-camera-footage-lawsuit/">with so little difference between the two it may as well have been no-knock</a>. </p>
  237. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  238. <p><em>According to a complaint filed on December 7 in Wake County, Raleigh police officers “wrongfully executed a ‘Quick Knock’ warrant on the Abbouds’ home”—meaning the cops knocked and kicked in the door before the Abbouds had time to answer—though they weren’t suspected of criminal activity. The police “invaded the privacy of their house with long guns drawn, terrorizing them and their child,” the complaint allege</em>.</p>
  239. </blockquote>
  240. <p>Knock-and-announce is already a misnomer, as it suggests officers will announce their presence and give occupants enough time to answer the door and (possibly) grant officers&#8217; access to the house. &#8220;Quick knock&#8221; is some imagined liminal space between knock-and-announce and no-knock, where officers knock once while shouting &#8220;Police!&#8221; and immediately attempt a forcible entry. </p>
  241. <p>I&#8217;m sure it works out well for North Carolina law enforcement. It means they don&#8217;t have to meet whatever standards are in place for a no-knock warrant but still get all the advantages of a no-knock, with the only separation being the fractions of a second needed to yell the word &#8220;police&#8221; once to satisfy the (lol) constraints of a &#8220;quick-knock&#8221; warrant. </p>
  242. <p><a href="https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/no-knocking-in-north-carolina" data-type="link" data-id="https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/no-knocking-in-north-carolina">As Radley Balko reported last year</a>, the constraints on warrants like these are pretty much non-existent in North Carolina. Here&#8217;s the money quote from University of <a href="https://www.sog.unc.edu/sites/default/files/reports/2023-01-05%2020220213%20AOJB%20No%20Knock.pdf" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.sog.unc.edu/sites/default/files/reports/2023-01-05%2020220213%20AOJB%20No%20Knock.pdf">North Carolina&#8217;s Jeffrey Welty&#8217;s report</a> on warrant requirements in the state:</p>
  243. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  244. <p><em>Among the conclusions are: (1) there is no explicit authority for North Carolina judicial officials to issue no-knock warrants; (2) judicial officials sometimes issue such warrants anyway; (3) no-knock warrants seem to be very rare; (4) when an application for a no-knock warrant is granted, the resulting warrant does not always include an express judicial determination regarding the need for a no-knock entry or an express judicial authorization of such an entry; and (5) quick-knock entries, where officers knock and announce their presence and then immediately force entry, may be widespread.</em></p>
  245. </blockquote>
  246. <p>Unsurprisingly, data on no-knock and quick-knock warrants is hard to come by. Pretty much the only option  is tracking every criminal case that involves a warrant and that&#8217;s something that&#8217;s difficult to scale, not just in terms of expense (state and local courts tend to charge even more exorbitant per-page fees than even the rightfully-reviled PACER system) but in terms of practicality. </p>
  247. <p>But what can be surmised from the limited data is that &#8220;quick knock&#8221; warrants are a handy replacement for no-knock warrants, giving officers the same leeway to immediately engage in a forcible entry without asking them to satisfy the minimal requirements of a no-knock warrant. They&#8217;re basically the same thing. The only difference is the &#8220;announcement&#8221; that accompanies the sound of a door being bashed in. </p>
  248. <p>It&#8217;s all amazingly shitty and stupid. And now there&#8217;s this added to it: cops arguing (successfully!) that their reputations might be harmed if the public is allowed to observe their actions after the fact. And, for now, that&#8217;s how it remains. The challenges to this burial of apparently embarrassing footage will continue, but for now, cops have the upper hand. The mistakes they made will remain under the cover of judicially-granted opacity.</p>
  249. ]]></content:encoded>
  251. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/cops-claim-body-cam-footage-of-wrong-address-raid-would-be-dangerous-to-release-to-general-public/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  252. <slash:comments>34</slash:comments>
  255. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436312</post-id> </item>
  256. <item>
  257. <title>Daily Deal: The Complete Cisco Training Bundle</title>
  258. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/daily-deal-the-complete-cisco-training-bundle-3/</link>
  259. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/daily-deal-the-complete-cisco-training-bundle-3/#respond</comments>
  261. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Gretchen Heckmann]]></dc:creator>
  262. <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 17:57:44 +0000</pubDate>
  263. <category><![CDATA[1]]></category>
  264. <category><![CDATA[daily deal]]></category>
  265. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436542&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=436542</guid>
  266.  
  267. <description><![CDATA[The Complete Cisco Training Bundle has 6 courses to help you get ready to become certified. Courses cover al you need to know as a CCNA, CCEA, and more. It&#8217;s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support [&#8230;]]]></description>
  268. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The <a href="https://deals.techdirt.com/sales/the-complete-2022-certified-cisco-training-bundle?utm_campaign=affiliaterundown">Complete Cisco Training Bundle</a> has 6 courses to help you get ready to become certified. Courses cover al you need to know as a CCNA, CCEA, and more. It&#8217;s on sale for $40.</p>
  269. <div class="wp-block-image is-style-default">
  270. <figure class="aligncenter size-large"><a href="https://deals.techdirt.com/sales/the-complete-2022-certified-cisco-training-bundle?utm_campaign=affiliaterundown"><img decoding="async" src="https://i0.wp.com/cdnp1.stackassets.com/9710c268ad15aa68679110d64b57f095578b1022/store/726d88743cc6257ac8681a801bd843c87b293eb4f3e1e10faa686ba3aa65/product_325384_product_shots1.jpg?ssl=1" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></a></figure>
  271. </div>
  272. <p><em>Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.</em></p>
  273. ]]></content:encoded>
  275. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/daily-deal-the-complete-cisco-training-bundle-3/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  276. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  279. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436542</post-id> </item>
  280. <item>
  281. <title>No, TikTok Is Not ‘Programmable Fentanyl.&#8217; Stop It</title>
  282. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/no-tiktok-is-not-programmable-fentanyl-stop-it/</link>
  283. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/no-tiktok-is-not-programmable-fentanyl-stop-it/#comments</comments>
  285. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mike Masnick]]></dc:creator>
  286. <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 16:24:00 +0000</pubDate>
  287. <category><![CDATA[bytedance]]></category>
  288. <category><![CDATA[tiktok]]></category>
  289. <category><![CDATA[brainwashing]]></category>
  290. <category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
  291. <category><![CDATA[fentanyl]]></category>
  292. <category><![CDATA[free speech]]></category>
  293. <category><![CDATA[mind control]]></category>
  294. <category><![CDATA[social media]]></category>
  295. <category><![CDATA[tiktok ban]]></category>
  296. <category><![CDATA[vinod khosla]]></category>
  297. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436451</guid>
  298.  
  299. <description><![CDATA[What do Fentanyl and TikTok have in common? Well, the real answer is absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. But, if you want to push a nonsense moral panic, apparently, you compare the two. While it’s unclear exactly where Congress currently stands on the push to ban TikTok in the US (or, at the very least, [&#8230;]]]></description>
  300. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>What do Fentanyl and TikTok have in common? Well, the real answer is absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. But, if you want to push a nonsense moral panic, apparently, you compare the two.</p>
  301. <p>While it’s unclear exactly where Congress currently stands on the push to <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/14/once-more-with-feeling-banning-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-wont-do-shit-to-deal-with-any-actual-threats/">ban TikTok</a> in the US (or, at the very least, force ByteDance to divest its ownership stake in the company), it appears that some are still pushing for it. Strongly opinionated Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla took to the pages of the Financial Times (while insisting he has no financial dog in this fight), to claim that <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ft.com/content/69caf324-2ac0-4b53-a0b4-1f2ecae6e29e">the US must ban TikTok because it’s “programmable fentanyl.”</a></p>
  302. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  303. <p><em>Few appreciate that TikTok is not available in China. Instead, Chinese consumers use Douyin, the sister app that features educational and patriotic videos, and is limited to 40 minutes per day of total usage. Spinach for Chinese kids, fentanyl — another chief export of China’s — for ours. Worse still, TikTok is a programmable fentanyl whose effects are under the control of the CCP.</em></p>
  304. </blockquote>
  305. <p>First of all, it’s only true that “few appreciate” that point if you haven’t been paying any attention at all. The point that inside China people use Douyin rather than TikTok is mentioned in basically every discussion of the app. There are tons of articles in the media about it. It’s been mentioned in congressional hearings. So, if people don’t know about it, that means they haven’t been paying attention and their opinion is already not well informed.</p>
  306. <p>But, more importantly, it’s a meaningless point. There are lots of apps that aren’t available in China because <em>China is an authoritarian country that deliberately censors much of the internet</em> <em>that its citizens can access</em>. While there are all sorts of accusations (including above) that the Chinese Communist Party puts its fingers on the moderation scales of TikTok, one indication that TikTok is a lot more free and open than Douyin is the very fact that China doesn’t allow TikTok inside the country.</p>
  307. <p>I’d already pointed out if China is using TikTok to influence American opinions, it’s doing a terrible job of it, as American opinions towards China <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/americans-feel-more-threat-china-now-past-three-decades">are at record lows</a>.</p>
  308. <p>And, just as an experiment, I just went on TikTok and searched for “uyghur.” I found tons of videos about China’s attempted genocide of the Uyghur people, many with hundreds of thousands of views. Even the autocomplete search suggestion shows “uyghur genocide” as the second option after I type Uyghur. I can also find lots of videos about Tiananmen Square. If China is really trying to suppress speech on TikTok, it’s not doing a great job.</p>
  309. <p>But, even more to the point, this whole idea is based on the false belief that people are simply sheep that are easily brainwashed by an algorithm and the content they see. And… that’s not true. <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/06/human-beings-are-not-puppets-and-we-should-probably-stop-acting-like-they-are/">Human beings are not puppets</a>. Yes, content can have some level of influence on the margins, but there’s <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2021/10/18/new-research-shows-social-media-doesnt-turn-people-into-assholes-they-already-were-everyones-wrong-about-echo-chambers/">little to no evidence </a>supporting the idea that the internet, as a whole, is a vast brainwashing machine.</p>
  310. <p>Of course, the internet and tech industries have a strong incentive to <em>tell you</em> that the internet is uniquely powerful in brainwashing you, because that makes it seem like it’s super worthwhile to buy ads or use those tools yourself to brainwash others. But, <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2021/08/30/most-information-about-disinformation-is-misinformation/">most of that is nonsense</a>.</p>
  311. <p>In addition, the claim of “programmable fentanyl” is even dumber. It’s yet another attempt to pretend that <em>speech</em> is somehow the equivalent of something you actually put into your body. As <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/28/no-social-media-is-not-the-same-thing-as-lead-paint/">we’ve discussed before</a>, speech online is not lead paint or cigarettes or chocolate or fentanyl.</p>
  312. <p>It’s speech.</p>
  313. <p>And sometimes there’s speech we disagree with. And sometimes that speech we disagree with is persuasive. But in a free society, we deal with that. We respond to it. We explain why it’s wrong and we seek to persuade in the other direction.</p>
  314. <p>We do not take the Chinese approach and shut down the speech. But that is exactly what people pushing a TikTok ban are doing. They’re so convinced (or they so want to convince us) of the power of online speech that they are giving way more power to speech than it actually has.</p>
  315. <p>They&#8217;re treating it as if it&#8217;s some sort of mind-altering drug, rather than recognizing that it&#8217;s just another form of communication. And, in doing so, they&#8217;re actually giving more power to the Chinese government by suggesting that its speech is so powerful that it must be banned.</p>
  316. <p>A free society has dealt with bad and misleading speech in the past. It is possible. Speech is not all powerful. It is not “brainwashing,” it is not like a drug. Sometimes it’s persuasive when we’d prefer it not be, but that doesn’t mean we need to ban it. Just counter it.</p>
  317. ]]></content:encoded>
  319. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/no-tiktok-is-not-programmable-fentanyl-stop-it/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  320. <slash:comments>52</slash:comments>
  323. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436451</post-id> </item>
  324. <item>
  325. <title>Biden&#8217;s New Net Neutrality Rules Don&#8217;t Prevent Anti-Competitive &#8220;Fast Lanes&#8221;</title>
  326. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/bidens-new-net-neutrality-rules-dont-prevent-anti-competitive-fast-lanes/</link>
  327. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/bidens-new-net-neutrality-rules-dont-prevent-anti-competitive-fast-lanes/#comments</comments>
  329. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Karl Bode]]></dc:creator>
  330. <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 12:25:00 +0000</pubDate>
  331. <category><![CDATA[1]]></category>
  332. <category><![CDATA[5g]]></category>
  333. <category><![CDATA[broadband]]></category>
  334. <category><![CDATA[fast lanes]]></category>
  335. <category><![CDATA[fcc]]></category>
  336. <category><![CDATA[high speed internet]]></category>
  337. <category><![CDATA[net neutrality]]></category>
  338. <category><![CDATA[open internet]]></category>
  339. <category><![CDATA[throttling]]></category>
  340. <category><![CDATA[wireless]]></category>
  341. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436417&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=436417</guid>
  342.  
  343. <description><![CDATA[One of the key reasons the net neutrality fight even became a thing was widespread concern that big ISPs would abuse their power to behave anti-competitively, picking winners and losers across the internet ecosystem, and nickel-and-diming consumers in a variety of obnoxiously creative ways. Verizon, for example, charges you extra if you want 4K video [&#8230;]]]></description>
  344. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>One of the key reasons the net neutrality fight even <em>became a thing</em> was widespread concern that big ISPs would abuse their power to behave anti-competitively, picking winners and losers across the internet ecosystem, <strong>and</strong> nickel-and-diming consumers in a variety of obnoxiously creative ways. </p>
  345. <p>Verizon, for example, <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2017/08/22/verizon-begins-throttling-wireless-users-effectively-bans-4k-streaming/">charges you extra if you want 4K video to work properly</a>. T-Mobile spent years letting <strong>some </strong>key partners and services (namely large companies) <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2016/06/22/study-finds-that-t-mobiles-binge-is-exploitable-unreliable-still-violates-net-neutrality/">bypass usage caps and network throttling restrictions</a>. It&#8217;s not complicated: these kinds of gatekeeper decisions give historically unpopular telecoms power they shouldn&#8217;t have under the principle of an open, competitive internet. </p>
  346. <p>We&#8217;ve noted how the Biden FCC <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/04/fcc-prepares-to-restore-net-neutrality-but-the-new-rules-might-be-weaker-than-the-ones-discarded-by-trump/">will vote on April 25 to restore popular net neutrality rules</a> stripped away during the Trump administration. Though we&#8217;ve also indicated there are some concerns among experts that the rules <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/04/fcc-prepares-to-restore-net-neutrality-but-the-new-rules-might-be-weaker-than-the-ones-discarded-by-trump/">may wind up being weaker than the original 2015 edition</a>. </p>
  347. <p>Stanford law professor and net neutrality expert <a href="https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/people/barbara-van-schewick">Barbara van Schewick</a> has <a href="https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them">written a blog post</a> noting that while the Rosenworcel FCC has shored up some concerns on this front (the FCC&#8217;s rules won&#8217;t &#8220;pre-empt&#8221; tougher California rules, for example), there&#8217;s still room for concern. Most notably surrounding the new rules&#8217; treatment of so-called &#8220;fast lanes&#8221;:</p>
  348. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  349. <p><em>&#8220;There’s a huge problem: the proposed rules make it possible for mobile ISPs to start picking applications and putting them in a fast lane &#8211; where they’ll perform better generally and much better if the network gets congested.&#8221;</em></p>
  350. </blockquote>
  351. <p>Wireless carriers have made it clear that they plan to use &#8220;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_network_slicing">network slicing</a>&#8221; to create 5G fast lanes for certain apps such as video conferencing, games, and video. The FCC&#8217;s new net neutrality rules allows such behavior, <strong>providing the service or app isn&#8217;t charged for them</strong>. So they can&#8217;t, say, extort a company into paying more if it wants its service or app to see baseline performance, which is good. </p>
  352. <p>But the rules still allow ISPs to <strong>charge consumers</strong> all manner of fees if they want the most popular apps and services to work their best. <a href="https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them">And van Schewick notes</a>, the rules still allow big ISPs to determine which companies and services get priority. That inherently creates a system whereby less popular and successful apps and services (as well as academia-related services and nonprofits) are relegated to second-class network status, putting them at competitive and performance disadvantage:</p>
  353. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  354. <p><em>&#8220;And <a href="https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2022/05/facebook-google-big-telecoms-want-keep-violating-net-neutrality-europe-regulators">as we’ve seen in the past</a>, programs like this favor the most popular apps, even when the program is supposedly open to all apps in a category and no apps are paying the ISP. So the biggest apps will end up in all the fast lanes, while most others would be left out. The ones left out would likely include messaging apps like Signal, local news sites, decentralized Fediverse apps like Mastodon and PeerTube, niche video sites like Dropout, indie music sites like Bandcamp, and the millions of other sites and apps in the long tail.&#8221;</em></p>
  355. </blockquote>
  356. <p>van Schewick provides some potential illustrative examples, several of which already exist in various forms:</p>
  357. <div class="wp-block-image">
  358. <figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="1426" height="642" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1.jpg?resize=1426%2C642&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-436419" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1.jpg?resize=1024%2C461&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1.jpg?resize=300%2C135&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1.jpg?resize=768%2C346&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1.jpg?resize=600%2C270&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1.jpg?w=1426&amp;ssl=1 1426w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></figure>
  359. </div>
  360. <div class="wp-block-image">
  361. <figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="730" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2.png?resize=1024%2C730&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-436420" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2.png?resize=1024%2C730&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2.png?resize=300%2C214&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2.png?resize=768%2C547&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2.png?resize=1536%2C1094&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2.png?resize=600%2C428&amp;ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2.png?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></figure>
  362. </div>
  363. <p>So again, the problem is that big and influential services or games like Disney or ESPN will see network priority during periods of 5G wireless network congestion. While smaller competitors, nonprofits, and others get relegated into a sea of &#8220;best effort&#8221; network scenarios.</p>
  364. <p>van Schewick notes the original Obama-era 2014 proposal <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/net-neutrality">restricted this stuff</a>. As did, in her legal opinion, <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/104020490613577/2">the 2015 final rules</a>. Even the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1101/text?s=1&amp;r=98">half-assed proposals</a> floated by Republicans at various points prohibited ISPs from speeding up different apps and services arbitrarily. But she notes these new 2024 rules include an obvious silence on this front that seems clearly lobbied for by industry:</p>
  365. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  366. <p><em>&#8220;The no-throttling rule that the FCC proposed in October explicitly prohibited ISPs from slowing down apps and classes of apps; it was silent on whether the rule also applies to speeding up. &#8220;</em></p>
  367. </blockquote>
  368. <p>The original Rosenworcel FCC proposal unveiled last October didn&#8217;t include those restrictions, so <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10328020156846/1">public</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10401332717347/1">interest</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10330745507976/1">groups</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/1215041660232/1">startups</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_fcc_title_ii_4224.pdf">members of Congress</a>&nbsp;all reached out asking why. April came, and the FCC&#8217;s <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf">draft net neutrality order</a> still didn&#8217;t restrict the <strong>speeding up</strong> of specific apps and services, outside to say it would address so-called &#8220;fast lane&#8221; issues on a &#8220;case by case basis.&#8221; </p>
  369. <p>Opponents of net neutrality like to pretend that the rules are a &#8220;solution in search of a problem,&#8221; but industry has made it extremely clear that this kind of fractured internet, which consumers face ever-escalating nickel-and-diming, and the most popular apps and services get network priority over everybody else, is precisely the sort of future they have in mind.</p>
  370. <p>Like any publicly-traded company, telecoms are obligated to shareholders to boost quarterly revenues at any cost. In telecom this routinely comes in the form of direct price hikes, cuts to service quality and broadband deployment, or substandard customer service. But it also increasingly comes in the forms of obnoxious monetization efforts that <span style="text-decoration: underline">create entirely new obstacles you&#8217;re then charged extra to overcome</span>; efforts you can&#8217;t avoid because you either have no competing broadband alternatives to flee too (market failure) or all of the competitors on offer are engaging in the same bad behavior (regulatory capture). </p>
  371. <p>FCC bureaucrats have generally prioritized &#8220;not stifling innovation&#8221; (as if telecom giants have meaningfully innovated any time in the last quarter century) over protecting markets and consumers, and there&#8217;s evidence that kind of thinking is once again at play. I&#8217;d suspect, quite intentionally, none of this will be addressed by the time the final net neutrality rules are voted on at the FCC&#8217;s April 25th meeting.</p>
  372. ]]></content:encoded>
  374. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/18/bidens-new-net-neutrality-rules-dont-prevent-anti-competitive-fast-lanes/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  375. <slash:comments>39</slash:comments>
  378. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436417</post-id> </item>
  379. <item>
  380. <title>Senate Now Considering Section 702 Re-Up With A Dangerous Amendment Attached To It</title>
  381. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/senate-now-considering-section-702-re-up-with-a-dangerous-amendment-attached-to-it/</link>
  382. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/senate-now-considering-section-702-re-up-with-a-dangerous-amendment-attached-to-it/#comments</comments>
  384. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Tim Cushing]]></dc:creator>
  385. <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 03:04:25 +0000</pubDate>
  386. <category><![CDATA[1]]></category>
  387. <category><![CDATA[4th amendment]]></category>
  388. <category><![CDATA[fbi]]></category>
  389. <category><![CDATA[fisa]]></category>
  390. <category><![CDATA[jim himes]]></category>
  391. <category><![CDATA[mike turner]]></category>
  392. <category><![CDATA[ron wyden]]></category>
  393. <category><![CDATA[section 702]]></category>
  394. <category><![CDATA[spying]]></category>
  395. <category><![CDATA[surveillance]]></category>
  396. <category><![CDATA[warrant]]></category>
  397. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436507&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=436507</guid>
  398.  
  399. <description><![CDATA[For a little while, it looked as though Section 702 surveillance might finally be curtailed, if not substantially reformed. Lots of House Republicans were irritated that some of Trump&#8217;s inner circle had been (inappropriately) targeted by FBI investigators taking advantage of the agency&#8217;s backdoor access to US persons&#8217; communications collected by a foreign-facing collection program. [&#8230;]]]></description>
  400. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/political-grandstanding-fbis-long-history-of-surveillance-abuse-may-finally-get-it-booted-off-the-section-702-block/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/political-grandstanding-fbis-long-history-of-surveillance-abuse-may-finally-get-it-booted-off-the-section-702-block/">For a little while</a>, it looked as though Section 702 surveillance might finally be curtailed, if not substantially reformed. Lots of House Republicans were irritated that some of Trump&#8217;s inner circle had been (inappropriately) targeted by FBI investigators taking advantage of the <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/17/for-the-first-time-in-probably-ever-the-fbi-section-702-abuses-are-trending-downward/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/17/for-the-first-time-in-probably-ever-the-fbi-section-702-abuses-are-trending-downward/">agency&#8217;s backdoor access</a> to US persons&#8217; communications collected by a foreign-facing collection program.</p>
  401. <p>This was on top of the years of abuse the FBI has committed and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/house-fisa-government-surveillance-senate#:~:text=the%20fbi%20abused%20its%20authority%20under%20the%20law%20no%20fewer%20than%20300%2C000%20times%20in%202020%20and%202021%2C%20according%20to%20a%20ruling%20from%20a%20fisa%20court%20judge.%20" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/house-fisa-government-surveillance-senate#:~:text=the%20fbi%20abused%20its%20authority%20under%20the%20law%20no%20fewer%20than%20300%2C000%20times%20in%202020%20and%202021%2C%20according%20to%20a%20ruling%20from%20a%20fisa%20court%20judge.%20">continues to commit</a> in terms of its warrantless access to communications collected by the NSA. Despite the FBI&#8217;s continuous promises to do better (and its continual failure to achieve that goal), far too many House members <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/16/congress-decides-to-give-fbi-another-free-pass-on-section-702-abuses/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/16/congress-decides-to-give-fbi-another-free-pass-on-section-702-abuses/">were willing to vote</a> for a clean reauthorization of Section 702. And far too many &#8212; especially on the <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/15/partisan-bullshit-tanks-house-section-702-reform-efforts/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/15/partisan-bullshit-tanks-house-section-702-reform-efforts/">Democratic side</a> of the aisle &#8212; were willing to vote down a proposed warrant requirements, something privacy advocates like <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/wyden.senate.gov/post/3kqbkgfv73m2j" data-type="link" data-id="https://bsky.app/profile/wyden.senate.gov/post/3kqbkgfv73m2j">Senator Ron Wyden</a> have been trying to get written into law for years.</p>
  402. <p>Not only did the warrant requirement fail, but the reauthorization effort <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/house-fisa-government-surveillance-senate" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/house-fisa-government-surveillance-senate">moved from the House to Senate with something much, much worse attached</a>. </p>
  403. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  404. <p><em>The Turner-Himes amendment – so named for its champions Representatives Mike Turner and Jim Himes – would permit federal law enforcement to also force “<a href="https://amendments-rules.house.gov/amendments/ECSP_xml240408185822057.pdf">any other service provider</a>” with access to communications equipment to hand over data. That means anyone with access to a wifi router, server or even phone – anyone from a landlord to a laundromat – could be required to help the government spy.</em></p>
  405. </blockquote>
  406. <p>This vastly expands the government&#8217;s collection authority under Section 702, moving on from the normal definition of &#8220;service providers&#8221; to cover places where communications are at rest, rather than being transmitted or received. <a href="https://www.zwillgen.com/law-enforcement/fisa-702-reauthorization-amendments-second-time-not-charm/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.zwillgen.com/law-enforcement/fisa-702-reauthorization-amendments-second-time-not-charm/">Here&#8217;s how Marc Zwillinger, Steve Lane, and Jacob Sommer</a> break down the wording of the Turner-Himes amendment:</p>
  407. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  408. <p><em>[It] (1) drops the qualifier “communication” from the class of covered “service providers;” (2) makes access to communications-carrying equipment enough to establish eligibility; and (3) adds “custodian” to the list of individuals who can be forced to provide assistance.&nbsp;But unlike the FRRA, it then enumerates a list of business types that cannot be considered ECSPs, including public accommodations, dwellings, restaurants, and community facilities.&nbsp;</em></p>
  409. </blockquote>
  410. <p>This amendment was written in response to a <a href="https://www.zwillgen.com/privacy/fisc-and-fisc-r-decisions-section-702-orders/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.zwillgen.com/privacy/fisc-and-fisc-r-decisions-section-702-orders/">FISA court ruling that told the government&#8217;s surveillance apparatus</a> that the law &#8212; as it currently stood &#8212; did not cover the target of the proposed surveillance. It fell outside the statutory definition of &#8220;electronic communication service provider.&#8221; The FISA court suggested that if the ODNI (Office of the Direction of National Intelligence) and DOJ didn&#8217;t like the wording, they were welcome to take it up with Congress. </p>
  411. <p>That&#8217;s exactly what they did. And now, two House reps have managed to attach an amendment that broadly expands the definition of &#8220;electronic communication service provider&#8221; to cover just about anything that might be a source where electronic communications can be collected. </p>
  412. <p>Here&#8217;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu9HY6Wf094" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu9HY6Wf094">how Senator Wyden described</a> the amendment&#8217;s intended effects in his <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24554466/wyden-transcript.pdf" data-type="link" data-id="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24554466/wyden-transcript.pdf">statement</a> [PDF] during Senate discussion of the pending reauthorization: </p>
  413. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  414. <p><em>Now, if you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a wifi router, a phone, or a computer. Think about the millions of Americans who work in buildings and offices in which communications are stored or pass through.</em></p>
  415. <p><em>After all, every office building in America has data cables running through it. These people are not just the engineers who install, maintain and repair our communications infrastructure; there are countless others who could be forced to help the government spy, including those who clean offices and guard buildings. If this provision is enacted, the government could deputize any one of these people against their will, and force them to become an agent for Big Brother.</em></p>
  416. <p><em>For example, by forcing an employee to insert a USB thumb drive into a server at an office they clean or guard at night.</em></p>
  417. <p><em>This could all happen without any oversight. The FISA Court won’t know about it. Congress won’t know about it. The Americans who are handed these directives will be forbidden from talking about it. And unless they can afford high priced lawyers with security clearances who know their way around the FISA Court, they will have no recourse at all.</em></p>
  418. </blockquote>
  419. <p>Of course, those pushing the amendment claim nothing bad will happen if they give the NSA (and, by extension, the FBI) more collection power and more sources to collect from. Rep. Himes has responded to concerns by treating all criticism of the amendment as overblown. </p>
  420. <p>Wyden&#8217;s statement points out the flaw of this argument: mainly that it assumes, with zero facts in evidence, that this will be the <em>one</em> expanded surveillance power that <em>won&#8217;t </em>be abused.</p>
  421. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  422. <p><em>Supporters also claim that the provision has a narrow purpose and that the government does not intend to start tapping into every American’s phone line or wifi. But that’s not how this provision is written. And I would say respectfully that anyone who votes to give the government vast powers under the premise that intelligence agencies won’t actually use it is being shockingly naive.</em></p>
  423. </blockquote>
  424. <p>It&#8217;s not just naïve. It&#8217;s asinine. <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/07/doj-inspector-general-finds-fbi-is-playing-by-its-own-fisa-rules/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/07/doj-inspector-general-finds-fbi-is-playing-by-its-own-fisa-rules/">Years of abuse</a> by the FBI clearly demonstrates the FBI will abuse access to these new &#8220;service providers.&#8221; Years of <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2017/07/28/released-documents-show-more-section-702-violations-nsa/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2017/07/28/released-documents-show-more-section-702-violations-nsa/">surveillance power abuse</a> by the NSA &#8212; an agency headed by officials with &#8220;collect it all&#8221; attitudes and willingness to continuously test the outer limits of the Constitution &#8212; makes the same statement: if you give the IC this power, it will be abused.</p>
  425. <p>And the reps behind the amendment know it. As Wyden pointed out, the fact that carve-outs for coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, and community facilities were written into the amendment following the first signs of opposition make it clear even the amendment&#8217;s authors knew the proposed changes would be a vehicle for abuse, hence the quick move to exempt certain entities from the broad definitions they&#8217;re seeking to have written into law. </p>
  426. <p>Considering this surveillance authority <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/house-fisa-government-surveillance-senate#:~:text=the%20fact%20that%20section%20702%20has%20been%20used%20so%20often%20against%20the%20exercise%20of%20first%20amendment%20rights%20%E2%80%93%20including%20those%20of%20journalists%20%E2%80%93%20makes%20it%20both%20shocking%20and%20inexplicable%20that%20so%20many%20news%20outlets%20continue%20to%20support%20it." data-type="link" data-id="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/house-fisa-government-surveillance-senate#:~:text=the%20fact%20that%20section%20702%20has%20been%20used%20so%20often%20against%20the%20exercise%20of%20first%20amendment%20rights%20%E2%80%93%20including%20those%20of%20journalists%20%E2%80%93%20makes%20it%20both%20shocking%20and%20inexplicable%20that%20so%20many%20news%20outlets%20continue%20to%20support%20it.">has already been abused by the government</a> to <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/22/fbi-used-section-702-surveillance-powers-to-spy-on-protesters-crime-victims-and-political-party-donors/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/22/fbi-used-section-702-surveillance-powers-to-spy-on-protesters-crime-victims-and-political-party-donors/">target anti-police violence protesters, political campaign donors, and journalists</a>, expanding the number of sources where communications can be collected only ensures exponential growth in the number of abuses. </p>
  427. <p>What started as an effort that may have actually limited the FBI&#8217;s abuses by forcing it to obtain warrants has devolved into a proposed rewriting of the authority to vastly expand the government&#8217;s surveillance opportunities. If we can&#8217;t get a warrant requirement approved, the very least the Senate can do is ensure this amendment does not become law. </p>
  428. ]]></content:encoded>
  430. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/senate-now-considering-section-702-re-up-with-a-dangerous-amendment-attached-to-it/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  431. <slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
  434. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436507</post-id> </item>
  435. <item>
  436. <title>Kansas Reflector Mostly Admits That Meta’s Blocking Of Their Site Wasn’t Deliberate</title>
  437. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/kansas-reflector-mostly-admits-that-metas-blocking-of-their-site-wasnt-deliberate/</link>
  438. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/kansas-reflector-mostly-admits-that-metas-blocking-of-their-site-wasnt-deliberate/#comments</comments>
  440. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mike Masnick]]></dc:creator>
  441. <pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2024 22:02:05 +0000</pubDate>
  442. <category><![CDATA[kansas reflector]]></category>
  443. <category><![CDATA[meta]]></category>
  444. <category><![CDATA[ai]]></category>
  445. <category><![CDATA[automation]]></category>
  446. <category><![CDATA[classifier]]></category>
  447. <category><![CDATA[content moderation]]></category>
  448. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436459</guid>
  449.  
  450. <description><![CDATA[Not every bad mistake is evil. Not every poor decision is deliberate. Especially in these more automated times. Sometimes, machines just make mistakes, and it’s about time we came to terms with that simple fact. Last week, we wrote about how, while Meta may be a horrible awful company that you should not trust, there [&#8230;]]]></description>
  451. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Not every bad mistake is evil. Not every poor decision is deliberate. Especially in these more automated times. Sometimes, machines just make mistakes, and it’s about time we came to terms with that simple fact.</p>
  452. <p>Last week, we wrote about how, while Meta may be a horrible awful company that you should not trust, there was no evidence suggesting that its blocking of the local news site, the Kansas Reflector, soon after it published a mildly negative article about Meta, <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/08/both-things-can-be-true-meta-can-be-evil-and-its-unlikely-that-the-company-deliberately-blocked-a-mildly-negative-article-about-it/">was in any way deliberate</a>.</p>
  453. <p>As we pointed out, false positives happen all the time with automated blocking tools, where classifiers mistakenly decide a site or a page (or an email) is problematic. And that’s just how this works. If you want fewer false positives, then you end up with fewer false negatives. And that would mean more <em>actually dangerous or problematic</em> content (phishing sites, malware, etc.) get through. At some point, you simply have to decide what types of errors are more important to stop and tweak the systems accordingly.</p>
  454. <p>In general, it’s <em>probably</em> better to get more false positives than false negatives. It’s ridiculously annoying and problematic for those who are the victims of such mistakes. But, in general, you’d rather have fewer actual scams and malware getting through. And, that absolutely sucks for sites caught in the crossfire. Hell, last year, Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/27/techdirt-has-been-deleted-from-bing-and-duckduckgo/">banned all Techdirt links</a> for a <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/16/techdirt-has-again-been-removed-from-bing-and-mostly-duckduckgo/">good five months</a> or so. There was nothing I could do about it. At least I knew that it was likely just yet another false positive, because such false positives happen all the time.</p>
  455. <p>I also knew that it was likely that there would never be a good explanation for what happened (Microsoft and DuckDuckGo refused to comment). Because, I also understand that the companies running these systems don’t have full visibility into what happened either. Some people think this is a condemnation of the system, but I don’t think it is. Classifier systems take a very large number of signals, and then decide whether that large combination of signals suggest a problem site or an acceptable one. And the thresholds and signals can (and do) change all the time.</p>
  456. <p>Still, people who got mad at what I said last week kept insisting that (1) it must be deliberate, and (2) that Meta <em>had to</em> give a full and clear explanation of how this happened. I found both such propositions dubious. The first one for all the reasons above, and the second one because I know that it’s often just not possible to tell. Hell, on a much smaller scale, this is how our own spam filter works in the comments here at Techdirt. It takes in a bunch of signals and decides whether or not something is spam. And sometimes it makes mistakes. Sometimes it flags content that isn’t spam. Sometimes it lets through content that is. In most cases, I have no idea why. It’s just that when all the signals are weighted, that’s what’s spit out.</p>
  457. <p>And so, it’s of little surprise that the Kansas Reflector is now more or less admitting what I suggested was likely last week. They are admitting that it was just Meta’s automated detector (though they make it sound scarier by calling it “AI”) <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://kansasreflector.com/2024/04/11/facebooks-ai-failure-wiped-out-kansas-reflector-links-even-facebook-may-not-know-what-went-wrong/">that made a bad call</a>, and that even Meta probably couldn’t explain why it happened:</p>
  458. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  459. <p><em>Facebook’s unrefined artificial intelligence misclassified a Kansas Reflector article about climate change as a security risk, and in a cascade of failures </em><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://kansasreflector.com/2024/04/05/facebook-apologizes-for-blocking-kansas-reflector-then-expands-crackdown-to-other-news-sites/"><em>blocked the domains of news sites</em></a><em> that published the article, according to technology experts interviewed for this story and Facebook’s public statements.</em></p>
  460. <p><em>The assessment is consistent with an internal review by States Newsroom, the parent organization of Kansas Reflector, which faults Facebook for the shortcomings of its AI and the lack of accountability for its mistake.</em></p>
  461. <p><em>It isn’t clear why Facebook’s AI determined the structure or content of the article to be a threat, and experts said Facebook may not actually know what attributes caused the misfire.</em></p>
  462. </blockquote>
  463. <p>Basically, exactly what I suggested was likely what happened (and which got a bunch of people mad at me). The Kansas Reflector story about it is a bit misleading because it keeps referring to the automated systems as “AI” (which is a stretch) and also suggests that all this shows that Meta is somehow not sophisticated here, quoting the ACLU’s Daniel Kahn Gillmor:</p>
  464. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  465. <p><em>“That’s just not their core competency,” Gillmor said. “At some level, you can see Facebook as somebody who’s gotten out ahead of their skis. Facebook originally was a hookup app for college students back in the day, and all of a sudden we’re now asking it to help us sort fact from fiction.”</em></p>
  466. </blockquote>
  467. <p>But, I think that’s basically wrong. Meta may not be particularly good at many things, and the company may have very screwed up incentives, but fundamentally, its basic trust &amp; safety operation is absolutely one of the company’s core competencies. It’s bad, because <em>every company</em> is bad at this, but Meta’s content moderation tools are much more sophisticated than most others.</p>
  468. <p>Part of the issue is simply that the scale of content it reviews is so large that even if it has a very, very small error rate, many, many sites will get falsely flagged (either as a false negative or a false positive). You can argue that the answer to this is less scale, but that raises other questions, especially in a world where it appears that people all over the world <em>want</em> to be able to connect with other people all over the world.</p>
  469. <p>But, at the very least, it’s nice that the Kansas Reflector has published this article explaining that it’s unlikely that, even if it wanted to, Meta could explain what happened here.</p>
  470. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  471. <p><em>Sagar Samtani, </em><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/profile.html?id=SSAMTANI"><em>director of the Kelley School of Business’ Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at Indiana University</em></a><em>, said it is common for this kind of technology to produce false positives and false negatives.</em></p>
  472. <p><em>He said Facebook is going through a “learning process,” trying to evaluate how people across the globe might view different types of content and shield the platform from bad actors.</em></p>
  473. <p><em>“Facebook is just trying to learn what would be appropriate, suitable content,” Samtani said. “So in that process, there is always going to be a ‘whoops,’ like, ‘We shouldn’t have done that.’ ”</em></p>
  474. <p><em>And, he said, Facebook may not be able to say why its technology misclassified Kansas Reflector as a threat.</em></p>
  475. <p><em>“Sometimes it’s actually very difficult for them to say something like that because sometimes the models aren’t going to necessarily output exactly what the features are that may have tripped the alarm,” Samtani said. “That may be something that’s not within their technical capability to do so.”</em></p>
  476. </blockquote>
  477. <p>It’s not even that it’s “not within the technical capability” to do it, because that implies that if they just programmed it differently, it could tell you. Rather, there are so many different signals that it’s weighing, that there’s no real way to explain what triggered things. It could be a combination of the number of links, with the time it was posted, with how it was shared, to a possible vulnerability on the site, each weighted differently. But when combined, they all worked to trip the wire saying “this site might be problematic.”</p>
  478. <p>Any one of those things by themselves might not matter and might not trip things, but somehow the combination might. And that’s not at all easy to explain, especially when the signals, and the weights, and the thresholds are likely in constant flux.</p>
  479. <p>Yes, this sucks for the Kansas Reflector. However, it seems like it got a lot more attention because of all of this. But it’s the nature of content moderation these days that is unlikely to change. Every site has to use some form of automation, and that’s always going to lead to mistakes of some sort or another. It’s fine to call out these mistakes and even to make fun of Meta, but it helps to be realistic about what the cause is. This way, people won&#8217;t overreact and suggest that this fairly typical automated mistake was actually a deliberate attempt to suppress speech critical of the company.</p>
  480. ]]></content:encoded>
  482. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/kansas-reflector-mostly-admits-that-metas-blocking-of-their-site-wasnt-deliberate/comments/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  483. <slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
  486. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">436459</post-id> </item>
  487. <item>
  488. <title>The Motion Picture Association Doesn’t Get To Decide Who The First Amendment Protects</title>
  489. <link>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/the-motion-picture-association-doesnt-get-to-decide-who-the-first-amendment-protects/</link>
  490. <comments>https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/17/the-motion-picture-association-doesnt-get-to-decide-who-the-first-amendment-protects/#comments</comments>
  492. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mike Masnick]]></dc:creator>
  493. <pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2024 19:08:51 +0000</pubDate>
  494. <category><![CDATA[mpa]]></category>
  495. <category><![CDATA[mpaa]]></category>
  496. <category><![CDATA[1st amendment]]></category>
  497. <category><![CDATA[copyright]]></category>
  498. <category><![CDATA[pipa]]></category>
  499. <category><![CDATA[site blocking]]></category>
  500. <category><![CDATA[sopa]]></category>
  501. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.techdirt.com/?p=436367</guid>
  502.  
  503. <description><![CDATA[Twelve years ago, internet users&#160;spoke up&#160;with one voice to reject a law that would build censorship into the internet at a fundamental level. This week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), a group that represents six giant movie and TV studios, announced that it hoped we’d all forgotten how dangerous this idea was. The MPA is [&#8230;]]]></description>
  504. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Twelve years ago, internet users&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill">spoke up</a>&nbsp;with one voice to reject a law that would build censorship into the internet at a fundamental level. This week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), a group that represents six giant movie and TV studios, announced that it hoped we’d all forgotten how dangerous this idea was. The MPA is wrong. We remember, and the internet remembers.</p>
  505. <p>What the MPA wants is the power to block entire websites, everywhere in the U.S., using the same tools as repressive regimes like China and Russia. To it, instances of possible copyright infringement should be played like a trump card to shut off our access to entire websites, regardless of the other legal speech hosted there. It is not simply calling for the ability to take down instances of infringement—a power they already have, without even having to ask a judge—but for the keys to the internet. Building new architectures of censorship would hurt everyone, and doesn’t help artists.</p>
  506. <p>The bills known as SOPA/PIPA would have created a new, rapid path for copyright holders like the major studios to use court orders against sites they accuse of infringing copyright. Internet service providers (ISPs) receiving one of those orders would have to block all of their customers from accessing the identified websites. The orders would also apply to domain name registries and registrars, and potentially other companies and organizations that make up the internet’s basic infrastructure. To comply, all of those would have to build new infrastructure dedicated to site-blocking, inviting over-blocking and all kinds of abuse that would censor lawful and important speech.</p>
  507. <p>In other words, the right to choose what websites you visit would be taken away from you and given to giant media companies and ISPs. And the very shape of the internet would have to be changed to allow it.</p>
  508. <p>In 2012, it seemed like SOPA/PIPA, backed by major corporations used to getting what they want from Congress, was on the fast track to becoming law. But a grassroots movement of diverse Internet communities came together to fight it. Digital rights groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, and many more joined with editor communities from sites like Reddit and Wikipedia to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copyright-bill">speak up</a>. Newly formed grassroots groups like Demand Progress and Fight for the Future added their voices to those calling out the dangers of this new form of censorship. In the final days of the campaign, giant tech companies like Google and Facebook (now Meta) joined in opposition as well.</p>
  509. <p>What resulted was one of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/nternet-spoke-and-finally-congress-listened">biggest protests</a>&nbsp;ever seen against a piece of legislation. Congress was flooded with calls and emails from ordinary people concerned about this steamroller of censorship. Members of Congress raced one another to withdraw their support for the bills. The bills died, and so did site blocking legislation in the US. It was, all told, a success story for the public interest.</p>
  510. <p>Even the MPA, one of the biggest forces behind SOPA/PIPA, claimed to have moved on. But we never believed it, and they proved us right time and time again. The MPA backed site-blocking laws in other countries. Rightsholders continued to ask US courts for site-blocking orders, often winning them without a new law. Even the lobbying of Congress for a new law never really went away. It’s just that today, with MPA president Charles Rivkin openly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.motionpictures.org/remarks/charles-rivkin-state-of-the-industry-address-at-cinemacon-2024/">calling on Congress</a>&nbsp;“to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States,” the MPA is taking&nbsp;its mask off.</p>
  511. <p>Things have changed since 2012. Tech platforms that were once seen as innovators have become behemoths, part of the establishment rather than underdogs. The Silicon Valley-based video streamer Netflix illustrated this when it joined MPA in 2019. And the entertainment companies have also tried to pivot into&nbsp;<a href="https://defector.com/the-writers-are-striking-for-the-future-of-entertainment">being tech companies</a>. Somehow, they are adopting each other’s worst aspects.</p>
  512. <p>But it’s important not to let those changes hide the fact that those hurt by this proposal are not Big Tech but regular internet users. Internet platforms big and small are still where ordinary users and creators find their voice, connect with audiences, and participate in politics and culture, mostly in legal—and legally protected—ways. Filmmakers who can’t get a distribution deal from a giant movie house still reach audiences on YouTube. Culture critics still reach audiences through zines and newsletters. The typical users of these platforms don’t have the giant megaphones of major studios, record labels, or publishers. Site-blocking legislation, whether called SOPA/PIPA, “no fault injunctions,” or by any other name, still threatens the free expression of all of these citizens and creators.</p>
  513. <p>No matter what the MPA wants to claim, this does not help artists. Artists want their work seen, not locked away for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/03/batgirl-directors-respond-to-surprise-axing-of-film-we-still-cant-believe-it">a tax write-off</a>. They wanted a fair deal, not nearly&nbsp;<a href="https://defector.com/the-hollywood-writers-strike-proved-that-collective-action-works">five months of strikes</a>. They want studios to make&nbsp;<a href="https://lamag.com/awards-watch/cord-jefferson-oscars-win-mid-budget-films">more small and midsize films and to take a chance on new voices.</a>&nbsp;They have been incredibly clear about what they want, and this is not it.</p>
  514. <p>Even if Rivkin’s claim of an “unflinching commitment to the First Amendment” was credible from a group that seems to think it has a monopoly on free expression—and which&nbsp;<em>just&nbsp;</em>tried to consign the future of its own artists to the gig economy—a site-blocking law would not be used only by Hollywood studios. Anyone with a copyright and the means to hire a lawyer could wield the hammer of site-blocking. And here’s the thing: we&nbsp;<em>already know&nbsp;</em>that copyright claims are used as tools of censorship.</p>
  515. <p>The notice-and-takedown system created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for example, is abused&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/takedowns">time and again</a>&nbsp;by people who claim to be enforcing their copyrights, and also by folks who simply want to make speech they don’t like disappear from the Internet. Even without a site-blocking law, major record labels and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/unsealed-court-records-confirm-riaa-delays-were-behind-year-long-seizure-hip-hop">shut down a popular hip hop music blog</a>&nbsp;and kept it off the internet for over a year without ever showing that it infringed copyright. And unscrupulous characters use accusations of infringement to extort money from website owners, or even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.404media.co/a-law-firm-of-ai-generated-lawyers-is-sending-fake-threats-as-an-seo-scam/">force them into carrying spam links</a>.</p>
  516. <p>This censorious abuse, whether intentional or accidental, is far more damaging when it targets the internet’s infrastructure. Blocking entire websites or groups of websites is imprecise, inevitably bringing down lawful speech along with whatever was targeted. For example, suits by Microsoft intended to shut down malicious botnets caused thousands of legitimate users to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/microsoft-and-noip-what-were-they-thinking">lose access to the domain names</a>&nbsp;they depended on. There is, in short, no effective safeguard on a new censorship power that would be the internet’s version of police seizing printing presses.</p>
  517. <p>Even if this didn’t endanger free expression on its own, once new tools exist, they can be used for more than copyright. Just as malfunctioning copyright filters were adapted into the malfunctioning filters used for “adult content” on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eff.org/tossedout/tumblr-ban-adult-content">tumblr</a>, so can means of site blocking. The major companies of a single industry should not get to dictate the future of free speech online.</p>
  518. <p>Why the MPA is announcing this now is anyone’s guess. They might think no one cares anymore. They’re wrong. Internet users rejected site blocking in 2012 and they reject it today.</p>
  519. <p><em>Republished from the <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/mpa-doesnt-get-decide-who-first-amendment-protects">EFF Deep Links blog</a>.</em></p>
  520. ]]></content:encoded>
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  523. <slash:comments>24</slash:comments>
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