Matthew

OH GOD IT'S ALMOST SDCC TIME. We're boothing with Overdue media at 2300 and I'll be there Fri and Sat!

We've covered patent troll Erich Spangenberg a few times over the years, starting with the time a court told him he needed to pay $3.8 million to DaimlerChrysler after he had signed a patent licensing agreement over some patents in one of his shell companies, transferred those patents to another shell company... and sued DaimlerChrysler once again. The NY Times now has a big profile on Spangenberg, in which he claims to be making $25 million per year, and he claims that the "mauling" that the judge gave him in that particular case (which he's still appealing) was actually good for business:

“It was a mauling,” Mr. Spangenberg said of Judge Crabb’s takedown, now under appeal. But weirdly enough, the ruling turned out to be terrific public relations.

Soon after Judge Crabb’s decision, IPNav’s phone was ringing with new business. RadioShack, Bridgestone and other companies wanted to strike a variety of deals to monetize their patents. The mauling had laid bare Mr. Spangenberg’s aggressive business techniques. IPNav soon grew from five employees to 80, most of whom are patent specialists; it currently manages about 10,000 patents

Okay, time to add RadioShack and Bridgestone to the list of companies never to do business with again. The article, by the way, approvingly mentions the "many unprintable names" that commenters right here at Techdirt have called Spangenberg.

Spangenberg tries to play the same card that all the big patent trolls now claim: that they're helping poor independent inventors get their due. The article highlights Steve Dodd from Parallel Iron, whose highly questionable patents and lawsuits we've covered a few times as well. Hearing Spangenberg and Dodd tell the story, they're just helping the little guy build a business:

“Erich saved our bacon,” said Steve Dodd, a patent holder with a client company called Parallel Iron. “We were more than $1 million in debt and I was getting ready to file for bankruptcy.”

Right. The reason he was $1 million in debt was because his business failed. Under a capitalist system, when that happens, you go out of business. You don't use highly questionable, almost certainly bogus, patents to shake down everyone for using a basic file system that they came up with entirely independently. But that's what Spangenberg and Dodd have done.

And this is the key point that is woefully lacking in so many stories about patents and patent trolls -- including in this particular profile: the fact that these cases almost never include stories of anyone actually copying someone else. Perhaps, in those rare instances, you can make an argument that a patent prevents flat-out copying that may feel unfair (whether or not it actually is is a whole different story). But, here, we're talking about Parallel Iron claiming that anyone who uses Hadoop infringes on the patent, despite the fact that Hadoop was created independently, and that when Parallel Iron tried to build an actual business, it failed. That's because what matters in business is rarely the idea, but almost always the execution. Parallel Iron couldn't execute. The idea that it gets to sue those who do is really quite ridiculous.

The rest of the profile of Spangenberg is interesting too, though I find it interesting that Spangenberg is apparently downsizing. He's apparently selling his 14,000 square foot home in Dallas (it could be yours for merely $19.5 million) and has moved into a 2,000 square foot apartment. He's also sold off all but one of the 16 cars he recently owned (including six Lamborghinis). He kept a Ferrari, however. He claims that the home and all the cars were "a combination of 'nouveau riche on steroids' and midlife crisis" that he's since decided he's outgrown. Of course, there's another possibility. With the White House coming out strongly against patent trolls, and the FTC and DOJ beginning to investigate the businesses of patent trolls, one wonders if he doesn't see the writing on the wall... Of course, perhaps he and his wife can focus on her side business of trademark trolling.

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I was at a copyright conference recently, where a Congressional representative, who couldn't attend in person, had sent a recorded video message, which was played over the event's screens via a computer using the popular open source media player VLC. One of the copyright lawyers in attendance pointed out -- only half-jokingly -- that since VLC actually gets around some forms of DRM, some could define it as an anti-circumvention device, and thus illegal under the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions. Of course, it seems crazy that anyone would actually make such a claim -- but we live in crazy times.

I doubt that's what HBO intended when, as Torrentfreak discovered, it sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google with a bunch of links for supposedly infringing content, including various HBO shows. However, mixed in with everything else was a link to a copy of VLC. The notice claims that VLC is actually a copy of Game of Thrones, suggesting that this is yet another case where an overeager copyright holder isn't being very careful with the power given to it via the DMCA's notice-and-takedown procedures. Given that this is the same HBO that recently sent a takedown notice over its own site, it seems pretty clear that HBO has hired incredibly sloppy "agents" to run its counterproductive DMCA takedown efforts. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of the game these days. Since there is no real or effective punishment for issuing bogus DMCA notices, copyright holders have no problem simply wiping out such things "by accident." If it happens to take down a legal copy of some media playing software they probably don't like very much in the first place, well, what's the big deal?

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We recently mentioned that the DOJ has put out its revamped guidelines in which the organization promises to be a little more careful before spying on journalists and their sources (and friends, colleagues and family...). However, as some are pointing out, the guidelines appear to be pretty careful about defining "the press" to only mean "people who work for big media organizations." Everyone else is fair game.

DIOG does include online news in its definition of media (PDF 157).

“News media” includes persons and organizations that gather, report or publish news, whether through traditional means (e.g., newspapers, radio, magazines, news service) or the on-line or wireless equivalent. A “member of the media” is a person who gathers, reports, or publishes news through the news media.

But then it goes on to exclude bloggers from those included in the term “news media.”

The definition does not, however, include a person or entity who posts information or opinion on the Internet in blogs, chat rooms or social networking sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, or MySpace, unless that person or entity falls within the definition of a member of the media or a news organization under the other provisions within this section (e.g., a national news reporter who posts on his/her personal blog).

Then it goes onto lay out what I will call the “WikiLeaks exception.”

As the term is used in the DIOG, “news media” is not intended to include persons and entities that simply make information available. Instead, it is intended to apply to a person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the general public, uses editorial skills to turn raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience, as a journalism professional.

This kind of issue keeps coming up with the discussions around a "media shield" law, in which politicians keep suggesting that we need an official designation for who is and who is not a journalist. Of course, as we've been saying for years, that's silly and antiquated. You could easily write such a shield law to be about protecting journalism rather than journalists. That's because, these days, almost anyone can do journalism, if the opportunity presents itself. If someone is trying to bring important information to the public, that's a journalism role, and those actions should be protected, no matter who the employer might be.

The government's continued insistence that it somehow needs to define who is and who is not a journalist seems like it's not just a mistake from a policy perspective, but also something that (perhaps on purpose) leaves open a giant loophole to spy on lots of people the government probably shouldn't be spying on.

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The White House's attacks on whistleblower Ed Snowden have already been pretty bad, but they took it up a notch in response to Ed Snowden's brief press conference with various human rights groups last week from the Moscow airport where he is stranded. There are all sorts of ways that the White House could have responded to this -- and it chose perhaps the worst. It sent out press secretary Jay Carney to scold Russia for allowing Ed Snowden to speak, claiming that it provided him a "propaganda platform."

The White House criticized Russia on Friday for allowing National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden to meet with human rights activists, calling it a “propaganda platform” for the man who seeks to avoid prosecution for leaking classified information about secret U.S. electronic surveillance programs.

Think about that for a second. This is the US government, directly trying to shut up a US citizen, who has blown the whistle on various illegal secret surveillance programs. Part of the very basis for the US is supposed to be our support for the First Amendment, and the belief in free speech. That includes speech we don't like, in the belief that speech can be countered by other speech. But the US government seems to think that the First Amendment does not apply to people who criticize them.

“Providing a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden runs counter to the Russian government’s previous declarations of Russia’s neutrality and that they have no control over his presence in the airport,” Carney said. “It’s also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr. Snowden to further damage U.S. interests.”

Frankly, the only one spewing propaganda here is Jay Carney and the administration, for claiming that merely allowing Snowden to speak is the equivalent of doing "further damage to U.S. interests." The problem, it seems, is that the White House seems to think that damage to their own reputation and future spying efforts is the equivalent of "damage to U.S. interests." But that's clearly ridiculous. Many in the American public feel that the real damage to U.S. interests was having this illegal and unconstitutional program in the first place.

And, it wasn't just a specific phraseology that Carney just happened to come up with on the spot. The State Department said nearly the same thing:

“We are disappointed that Russian officials and agencies facilitated this meeting today by allowing these activists and representatives into the Moscow airport’s transit zone to meet with Mr. Snowden despite the government’s declarations of Russia’s neutrality with respect to Mr. Snowden,” Psaki said. “Our concern here is that he’s been provided this opportunity to speak in a propaganda platform.”

When the US government is directly trying to silence the speech of an American citizen, and arguing that it's some sort of violation to let him give a pretty basic statement on how the US is persecuting him, is really sickening. What kind of country have we become when the federal government is directly trying to shut someone up like that?

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While living in Japan, I learned to eat almost every type of food with chopsticks. It didn't take long to realize I had been eating salad like a chump my whole life.

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Earlier this week, I wrote about a lawyer in Florida suing Apple for millions because he couldn’t be bothered to figure out how iTunes works. Little did I know that this wasn’t the craziest law suit brought by a lawyer against Apple.

A tipster pointed us to a 50-page complaint filed in federal court last month seeking damages and injunctive relief against Apple for making devices that can display porn, or as the rest of us call it, the Internet. The complaint gracefully skips from pop psychology, to comparing porn to handguns, to appeals to the divine rule of the Almighty.

This wasn’t the best week for Apple in the courtroom, but at least the in-house lawyers have this suit to look forward to defending…

The plaintiff, Chris Sevier, is an attorney in Nashville. A news report of his arrest last month on unrelated charges of stalking country music star John Rich (the guy whose obnoxious song mars my weekly viewing of College GameDay) states that Sevier’s 36, though his Model Mayhem bio says he’s 26. For someone mad about porn on the Internet, he’s already adopted its first cardinal rule: models always lie about their age.

Sevier’s complaint makes a simple request: Apple should sell all products with an installed filter blocking all Internet porn. If the buyer, over the age of 18, wishes to unlock the Internet, he or she is free to contact Apple, sign a form acknowledging the ills of pornography, and receive a code to remove the filter. Sevier argues that the burden must be shifted from parents to the manufacturer to sell a locked device. That sounds like a fair enough, even laudable goal. But Sevier also wants these filters installed lest the responsibility be up to *shudder* individuals exercising self-control.

The complaint describes some of the societal harm porn causes, such as “lead[ing] to American girls traveling abroad to be abducted and cast into sex trafficking.” Someone was watching Taken while drafting this complaint. But Sevier has also suffered personal harm:

The Plaintiff is a victim of Apple’s product that was sold to him without any warning of the damage the pornography causes. “But for” the Plaintiff’s use of the Apple product, the quality of the Plaintiff’s life would have been much better and injury would have been avoided. The Plaintiff sustained these unwarranted damages in the course of using Apple’s product as designed. Apple’s product was not adequately equipped with safety features that would have otherwise blocked unwarranted intrusions of pornographic content that systematically poisoned his life.

Sevier got his J.D. at Vanderbilt Law, and perhaps they should revisit the role Palsgraf plays in their 1L Torts lectures. Based on the tale outlined, there are a few intervening acts between Apple building a web-ready computer and Sevier joining Adult Friend Finder. This is not to deny that sex can have addictive qualities, but just as drug and alcohol rehab focus on individuals facing up to their personal role in facilitating their disease, Sevier might want to look in the mirror before blaming Apple.

But Sevier maintains the proximate cause is Apple’s browser and an honest spelling error:

In using safari, the Plaintiff accidentally misspelled “facebook.com” which lead him to “fuckbook.com” and a host of web sites that caused him to see pornographic images that appealed to his biological sensibilities as a male and lead to an unwanted addiction with adverse consequences.

I’m incredulous. But in fairness to Sevier, the complaint is so riddled with spelling and grammatical errors (including a few in that block quote) that maybe typing just isn’t his thing. I, however, posit that he made all these mistakes intentionally to bolster the credibility of this argument. Well played, sir.

Apple basically should have known better:

As human beings themselves, Apple employees know that a man is born full of harmonies and attacked to by women engaging in sexual acts with the intent to cause vicarious arousal.

I’m guessing he meant “hormones.” Unless he was making a very highbrow reference to the Temptations.

The complaint, brilliantly, alleges “Unfair Competition” — between hot, hot porn actresses and Sevier’s wife:

UNFAIR COMPETITION AND INTERFERENCE OF THE MARITAL CONTRACT: The Plaintiff became totally out of synch in his romantic relationship with his wife, which was a consequence of his use of his Apple product. The Plaintiff began desiring, younger more beautiful girls featured in porn videos than his wife, who was no longer 21. His failed marriage caused the Plaintiff to experience emotional distress to the point of hospitalization. The Plaintiff could no longer tell the difference between internet pornography and tangible intercourse due to the content he accessed through the Apple products, which failed to provide him with warnings of the dangers of online pornography whatsoever.

“Who was no longer 21.” No further comment, that was just an awesome sentence.

The best part of his suggested solution to America’s online porn addiction is that it will help out businesses. Porn businesses:

THE PLAINTIFF’S SUGGESTION HELPS THE PORN ECONOMY: For the proponents of the bricks and mortar pornography industry, the Plaintiffs reasonable request here supports their cause. Forcing Apple to install preset porn filtering software could have a positive financial impact on the traditional porn trade. The porn industry has the same regulatory and supply and demand problems that the music business and print media does, as a consequence of the free flow of information online. There is so much free porn on the internet that ultimately its going to be difficult for porn providers to rely on the income generated from their work to continue to make a living….

***

...unregulated internet porn is hurting brick and mortar or “mom and pop” porn shops. This is no different than how illegal downloading of musical content and movie content has caused the collapse of traditional record stores and video rental entities, such as block buster.

First of all, “mom and pop” porn shops is going in the pantheon of greatest phrases in a legal complaint. Second, there’s something admirable about Sevier’s commitment to professional porn. As Jackie Treehorn put it, “standards have fallen in adult entertainment.” Modern porn viewers constantly find themselves asking, “but why was she ordering a pizza?”

In the end, the complaint is not just about protecting kids and even protecting Sevier from his interest in the naked ladies, but a jeremiad against the modern age:

In the 1950s, before there was in the internet and the ACLU, we had prayer in school, males were not flaming out academically, there was no need for viagra commercials to clog up our televisions late at not, homosexuals were substantially fewer in number, sex trafficking was virtually nonexistent, prostitution was way down, and child porn was unheard of. Why are things different – easily accessible pornography accessible through high speed internet and devices like Apple products is one contributing factor in that complex answer.

Except the ACLU was alive and active in the 1950s, school prayer was never as widespread as its advocates suggest, men still got Fs, gay folks were still there (just closeted), America had just completed a war against Germany and Japan (both of whom engaged in large-scale sex trafficking, e.g., the Joy Division without Ian Curtis), prostitution was rampant (as Don Draper’s childhood flashbacks attest), and child pornography and pedophilia persisted as the Catholic Church scandals are bringing to light. There just was no golden age, certainly not in the 1950s that Sevier longs for, yet never personally saw, regardless of which age he admits to being.

There’s nothing really wrong with the suggestion that Apple should default to stronger parental controls. There’s a logic to the idea that it’s easier for parents to disengage a lock than to install one. However, implementing the procedural hurdles Sevier seeks for the sake of protecting him from himself crosses into a disciplinary nanny state.

But, maybe he’s into that.

The full 50-page complaint is reproduced below. If you can suffer through the typos, there are many more gems, including an explanation of Apple’s role in creating the proliferation of male enhancement drug commercials and how Sevier knows what women really want. Enjoy!

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We were happy to see that the WIPO treaty for the visually impaired was finally completed and signed following the negotiations in Marrakech, where the MPAA did everything it could to try to kill or water down the agreement, with the US negotiating delegation acting as the MPAA's happy lap dogs. So, I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise to see that while 51 countries signed the agreement in Marrakech, the United States was not among them.

Now, you can argue that the US should have time to look over the agreement, or maybe run it through Congress first -- but, of course, when it comes to agreements that simply expand copyright, such as ACTA, the US stepped right up to sign right away, without having any open discussion or asking Congress to approve it. Furthermore, merely signing the document is different from ratifying it, so the US could have signed the document, and decided whether to fully ratify it later if it was really concerned. But, instead, the US simply decided not to sign at all, even as other countries decided to do so.

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Earlier this month, we noted the contrast between Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former NSA contractor Ed Snowden. Clapper, as you may recall, flat out lied to Congress about US surveillance, then lied about the lying, changed his story three times, and finally admitted it. Snowden, on the other hand, told the public about those lies and provided the proof. The contrast between the two comes into stark contrast today with two different things.

First, we have Snowden holding a press conference from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where he has been effectively confined for weeks -- and will likely remain for some indefinite period. In his statement, he notes that he has been offered asylum, but he has become "stateless" and while he has accepted the offers of asylum, incredible and illegal efforts by the US government have made it so that he is unable to actually travel to the countries that have granted him asylum.

... the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president's plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Of course, around the same time Snowden was making that statement, the AP was reporting that Clapper has emerged from this whole thing "unscathed," with no one questioning whether he ought to be fired, or even charged with perjury or contempt of Congress, for both running the questionable intelligence program and then outright lying about the program (and then lying about those lies). The AP report goes even further, noting that Clapper has been flat out wrong in a number of things he's told Congress in recent years, which normally would raise questions about his credibility. But not with Congress, apparently.

Incredibly, his defenders in Congress say that they should give him the benefit of the doubt, because he's so honest:

"This administration views Snowden as the problem, not Gen. Clapper," House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said of Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general. "He is generally a very straight shooter. I think people are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't trying to mislead the Senate."

It's Clapper's bluntness — in closed hearings, away from the cameras — that will likely be his saving grace, according to former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican.

"I never found him to parse his words or answers," Hoekstra said. "You might not agree with him, and you could have a very spirited argument with him. He wouldn't try to hide it. And that's a good thing."

So, apparently, if you spy on people, lie about it, but talk "bluntly" to Congress about those lies and your spying, that's okay. But if you're an NSA contractor who reveals that Clapper is an out and out liar, potentially violating the Constitutional protections of millions of Americans, you need to be hounded around the globe, and blocked from actually leaving an airport in Moscow.

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by Christie Thompson

More than 12,400 inmates across California have been fasting since Monday, to protest solitary confinement and call for improved prison conditions. The strike, involving roughly two-thirds of the state’s prisons, is one of the largest in California history.

So far no prisoners have been force-fed, and the Corrections Department says they have no current plans to do so. “Hopefully no one will get to that point,” said a spokesperson for California’s corrections department. During a similar strike in 2011, the chief of the state’s prison system said he planned to seek court permission to force-feed inmates. (The strike ended before he did so.)

As lawmakers call for an end to the force-feeding of Guantanamo detainees, the California strike serves as a reminder: inmates on U.S. soil can ultimately be given the same treatment.

While there is no national data available on the prevalence of force-feeding in U.S. prisons, a number of cases have been documented in recent years, largely after appeals to stop the process were rejected by state courts.  The courts have typically ruled that prisons can force-feed an inmate without their consent if it’s needed to maintain the safety and security of the prison. 

Connecticut inmate William Coleman, who is hunger striking over what he says was a wrongful conviction, has been force-fed since 2008. The Connecticut Supreme Court has sided with prison officials, who said that Coleman’s strike could threaten the prison’s security and lead to copycat strikes.

More recently, New York inmate Leroy Dorsey was denied the right to refuse feeding in May, when the New York Court of Appeals ruled the prison could continue to restrain and feed him with nasogastric tubes.

Bioethicist Dr. Jacob Appel, who opposes the practice, says he believes that court rulings have resulted in more prisons turning to force-feeding in response to hunger strikes. “It’s a little bit of bad press if you force-feed inmates,” he said. “It’s a lot of bad press if you have a lot of protesting inmates and one of them dies.”

California is one of only three states whose courts have ruled against force-feeding. In 1993, the state Supreme Court ruled that one a paralyzed inmate had the right to “decline life-sustaining treatment, even if to do so will cause or hasten death.”

But the judges in that case noted that prisons could use force-feeding if a hunger strike was a threat to order in the prison and the safety of other inmates. “We do not preclude prison authorities from establishing the need to override an inmate's choice to decline medical intervention,” the judges wrote.

California prison policy says that inmates can refuse medical treatment as long as they’re conscious and able to do so. Prisoners can also sign statements that say they cannot be administered treatment, regardless of their condition. “Force-feeding inmates is not part of our medical protocol,” said Joyce Hayhoe, Director of Legislation for the California Correctional Health Care Services.

But in 2011, the former head of California prisons said he thought those prohibitions against force-feeding could be overruled with a court’s approval. To do so, the Corrections Department would have to prove that force-feeding was in the state’s interest to maintain a safe prison environment for other inmates.

The department never actually sought court permission, as officials agreed to meet with inmates and said they were reviewing the state’s solitary confinement policy. The two strikes in 2011 ended after three weeks.

The prison system did revise its solitary confinement policies in March, but inmates now striking say the changes do nothing to limit the length of solitary confinement sentences, which can continue indefinitely. Inmates are also calling for an end to “group punishment,” such as race-based lockdowns that restrict an entire race of inmates for one prisoner’s violation. The California Corrections Department is facing federal lawsuits over both practices.

“At this point, it is clear to us that the [Corrections Department] has no intention of implementing the substantive policy changes that were agreed to fifteen or sixteen months ago,” organizers said in a press release, announcing plans to renew the strike.  

Hunger strikers at Pelican Bay prison have released a list of five demands, which inmates in other prisons have expanded.

Corrections officials have announced that inmates will face consequences for participating in the strike, ranging from being denied family visits to being put in solitary confinement. “It is against state law to participate in disturbances such as mass hunger strikes,” said corrections spokesperson Jeffrey Callison. “Eventually participants will be issued rule violation reports.”

Dolores Canales’s son, an inmate at Pelican Bay prison, is striking for the third time in two years. She is worried prison officials may be less willing to work with inmates this time around. “They’re going to let them go God only knows how long without eating,” she said.

Canales has lead efforts to organize other family members in support of the strike. She, like many family members she knows, has avoided discussing force-feeding with her son. “I don’t want to know,” she said. “If it were up to me I would say do whatever it takes to have him live.”

Isaac Ontiveros, a spokesperson with the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Network, hopes the size of the strike will push corrections officials to consider inmates’ demands, and make it harder to crack down on the protest.

As far as force-feeding, “It doesn’t need to come to that,” Ontiveros said. Prison officials “can end this very, very simply.”

The surveillance dragnet in the US is undeniably large. As such, lots of money (your money) goes into financing the collection of "relevant" data (your data). We've already seen the generous $100 million surveillance "grant" handed out to telcos in exchange for their "voluntary" cooperation.

The AP has tracked down some of the fees charged by various services for providing the government with data and access. At this point, most of what's being requested probably falls under the heading of "unprecedented," hence the lack of any uniformity in the pricing structure. But even older methods of snooping are subject to some price fluctuations.

AT&T, for example, imposes a $325 "activation fee" for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that, according to industry disclosures made last year to Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

These fees are rather low when it comes to government expenditures, but this solely covers the less popular method of obtaining information -- old school, targeted wiretaps. Email records are also obtained very cheaply ($25 or less). Part of this surprisingly low cost is automation. In many cases, what the government is requesting is already automatically generated. Another factor is mitigation of the costs of compliance to the company itself.

Online companies in particular tend to undercharge because they don't have established accounting systems, and hiring staff to track costs is more expensive than not charging the government at all, he said.

Possibly the greatest factor in keeping the prices low is the oft-maligned court of public opinion. Most of the involved companies would rather not appear to be profiting from selling customer data to the government. That's probably a smart idea, but civil liberties defenders agree that these companies should be charging something, rather than handing out info for free.

"What we don't want is surveillance to become a profit center," said Christopher Soghoian, the ACLU's principal technologist. But "it's always better to charge $1. It creates friction, and it creates transparency" because it generates a paper trail that can be tracked.

The individual prices may seem nickel-and-dime, but the government generates enough business for this to turn into real money. AT&T claims to have 100 staffers working around the clock to satisfy government data requests. Verizon claims to have 70. $100 million has already been sent their way, and both companies are extremely unlikely to simply eat these expenses.

Even regular wiretaps can generate significant costs.

The average wiretap is estimated to cost $50,000, a figure that includes reimbursements as well as other operational costs. One narcotics case in New York in 2011 cost the government $2.9 million alone.

The costs associated with the FBI's and NSA's large scale surveillance efforts is likely to remain hidden. The FBI claims it's not possible to estimate its outlays as the payments run through a "variety of programs, field offices and case funds."

Anything about the size of NSA's payments to cooperating companies is genuinely impossible to nail down. (At least without a leak...) Its annual budget is classified. All that's known for certain is 15 intelligence agencies share a $75 billion annual budget and estimates place the NSA's share at $10-15 billion.

There's little chance the details of this budget will ever be publicized, which means the public is again asked to trust the "oversight" of those who have access. It's safe to say a large shadow industry has developed over the past 15 years, one that goes beyond simple transactions between intelligence agencies and involved services.

There's also a large number of private security firms being employed by these agencies, many of which have ensured future profitability by setting up shop as close to the Beltway as possible. That's the larger concern: a set of corporations almost totally funded with public money assisting in the capture, analysis and storage of the public's data.



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Defenders of the legality of the NSA's dragnet approach to surveillance often point to the concept of the third party doctrine, and specifically to the case Smith v. Maryland, in which the Supreme Court said that it was okay for law enforcement to get phone records without a warrant because the information was held by a "third party" and the original caller had no expectation of privacy in data given to that third party. We've questioned the legitimacy of the third party doctrine for years, and folks like Al Gore and Alan Grayson have discussed why it's a stretch to say that the ruling applies to the NSA hoovering up all phone call data.

Jim Harper, who has spent more time than anyone I know thinking about the third party doctrine over the years, has a good post explaining some of the history and why it's a huge stretch to say that Smith v. Maryland means the NSA can scoop up all data:

On the question of whether surveillance of every American's phone calling is constitutional, Lee notes how the government and its defenders will rely on a 1979 case called Smith v. Maryland. In that case, the government caused a telephone company to install a pen register at its central offices to record the numbers dialed from the home of a suspected robber. Applying doctrine that emerged from Katz v. United States (1967), the Court found that a person doesn't have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in phone calling information, so no search occurs when the government collects and examines this information.

It takes willfulness of a different kind to rely on Smith as validation the NSA's collection of highly revealing data about all of us. Smith dealt with one suspect, about whom there was already good evidence of criminality, if not a warrant. The NSA program collects call information about 300+ million innocent Americans under a court order.

More importantly, however, Harper points out that the Supreme Court's more recent decisions suggest that it is moving away from the third party doctrine as established in that Katz case that the court relied on for Smith v. Maryland:

And the Supreme Court is moving away from Katz doctrine, having avoided relying on it in recent major Fourth Amendment cases such as Jardines (2013), Jones (2012), and Kyllo in 2001.

In other words, the facts of the NSA dragnet are extremely different than the facts in Smith v. Maryland, and the Supreme Court itself appears to at least be less willing to immediately give the stamp of approval to any collection of "third party" data as somehow being immune from the 4th Amendment. Defenders of the NSA spying like to just say "Smith v. Maryland" and act like that settles everything. However, it's far from clear that it applies at all in this case.

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Did you hear the one about the world's most infamous music file-sharer being asked to publicly extol the virtues of the Recording Industry Association of America's anti-piracy platform? The RIAA is suggesting that Jammie Thomas-Rasset do just that. In exchange, ...

SDCC is just days away! I’m going to be there, hawking my wares at the Dumbrella booth, located in the heart of the webcomics pavillion at Table 1337. Won’t you stop by and say hello?

I’m going to have bunnies, stickers, magnets, buttons and lots and lots of books, including a small internationally-expressed bundle of brand-new Goats IV: Inhuman Resources books and the also-brand-new SFAM 2: Business Animals.

I’m freaking out. Are you freaking out? It’s so close now.

Just a reminder: new SFAM Wallpapers are still available! I’ve put up two new wallpapers on our pay-what-you-like wallpapers page. If you can, please chip in a dollar or two or five and download any or all of these wallpapers for use on your desktop computer. Your contributions help keep me and my family in business!

 

Microsoft has painted a picture that its relationship with the NSA and FBI isn't a cozy one, but one based on forced compliance. The company has recently been taking shots at Google with its "Scroogled" campaign, claiming it kept users' data more secure. Then news surfaced that Microsoft was providing intelligence agencies with zero-day exploits for deployment by the agencies before getting around to patching them, leading to questions as to its expressed concern for its customers.

The latest leak released by the Guardian paints the company as a willing "team player" working closely with the FBI and NSA to allow unfettered access to the data of its customers.

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The documents show that:

• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

• Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

• Skype, which was bought by Microsoft in October 2011, worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video of conversations as well as audio;

• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".

This damaging set of documents indicates that Microsoft talks a pretty good game when it comes to privacy, but the protection it actually offers is less than skin deep.

Microsoft's latest marketing campaign, launched in April, emphasizes its commitment to privacy with the slogan: "Your privacy is our priority."

Similarly, Skype's privacy policy states: "Skype is committed to respecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data, traffic data and communications content."

Microsoft's actions say otherwise. Skype alone gives the NSA and FBI access to over 600 million users worldwide despite Skype's earlier claims that these calls couldn't be tapped.

Microsoft has responded to this leak with a statement claiming its actions are above-board and completely legal. The NSA released a statement as well, claiming, as Microsoft does, that everything detailed is fully compliant with applicable laws. As usual, the NSA statement makes reference to "strict oversight" and "careful monitoring," empty phrases its deployed before that are ultimately meaningless without any corresponding transparency.

Again, speaking to the "legality" of these actions is nothing more than self-serving rhetoric. As has been expressed before, the real scandal isn't that large-scale surveillance is happening. It's that it's legal. Secret courts issuing secret interpretations that companies like Microsoft are compelled to comply with. Microsoft may say it "rejects" demands that it doesn't deem "valid," but does anyone not think these rejections aren't simply overridden?

There are ways to comply with government requests which don't take the form of working closely with intelligence agencies to undercut the same privacy you're telling the public you're so interested in protecting. (Maybe ask Twitter for some advice...) Giving intelligence carte blanche access to data pre-encryption doesn't sound like the actions of a company that regularly challenges government requests. It sounds more like the compliance of a company who'd rather not jeopardize OS sales and support to one of its biggest customers.



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A new team of 22 scientists have proposed the next step in the NASA Mars Exploration Program.  The team is suggesting a new rover, which you can see illustrated above, that would be placed on Mars in 2020 and would shift the focus of research on the planet from determining if it can support life to searching for signs of life. The team, headed by John B. McNamee, Matthew T. Wallace, Ken Farley, and science definition team chair Jack Mustard, has issued a statement saying that,

Past Martian life seems possible, and we should begin the difficult endeavor of seeking the signs of life.

The team has four main objectives for their 2020 rover, described in their charter as,

A. Explore an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars to decipher its geological processes and history, including the assessment of past habitability and potential preservation of possible biosignatures.

B. In situ science: Search for potential biosignatures within that geological environment and preserved record.

C. Demonstrate significant technical progress towards the future return of scientifically selected, well-documented samples to Earth.

D. Provide an opportunity for contributed HEOMD or Space Technology Program (STP)participation, compatible with the science payload and within the mission’s payload capacity.

Essentially, the group wants to not only explore Mars in a way that emphasizes the search for signs of life, but do so in a way that provides samples from the planet that may open up new possibilities with future technology and analysis. The first item shows that the team plans to continue to explore whether or not Mars could ever support life, while the second and third items focus on the rover’s analysis on the planet, and ability to take samples before it returns to earth. The plan for the new rover reflects the change in NASA perspective, from the past on Mars to the present and future. According to Mustard, the new rover would have,

similar capabilities to the curiosity rover that is now on Mars, and land in the same way and be about the same size.  And we are recommending that they equip that rover with instrumentation that allows it to explore the surface of Mars at one site, which will have relevance, both importance to understanding past habitability (the conditions necessary to sustain life) and to look for signatures or rocks that may hold signatures of biological significance.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton describes how the new, 2020 Rover would, unlike Curiosity, have to have a function to look at Mars on a microscopic level. Scientists would be looking for life at a microbial level, and would also like to add a function to the rover that would core and store rock samples to be brought back to earth for examination. Elkins-Tanton describes the need for sampling that can be brought back to earth, reasoning that the scientists can not operate with microscopic data alone,

because we can’t look with the kind of detailed understanding we’d have with laboratories here on earth.

The team even described how they would like to explore resources on Mars that could be used for human exploration of the planet, as fuel or other tools. Of course, that level of Mars exploration is looking forward quite a bit, but the proposal emphasizes exploration and sampling that would not only by applicable in 2020, but beyond.

Currently, the group plans to land the rover on Mars via the method tested with the fairly recent Curiosity Rover landing, with the same procedures.  The rover would likely have a range of 3 to 12 miles on the planet’s surface, and would have the ability to collect around 31 1 cm diameter core samples, picked to best effect with the microscopic optical instruments, with a system like the prototype you can see below.

Jim Green, the NASA Director of Planetary Science Division for NASA in Washington, shared his thoughts on the importance of the project, which may be chosen as part of the open competition for new instruments on the 2020 rover, explaining that,

The Mars 2020 mission will provide a unique capability to address the major questions of habitability and life in the solar system.

(via i09, NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Cal Tech)

Previously in Science

• 15 Year Old Invents Body Heat Powered Flashlight
• Three Habitable Planets Discovered In Nearby Star System
• Young Scientist Talks Award Winning Quick-Charging Phone Battery On Conan

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We've discussed before some of the problems with the ESRB rating convention. Even more aggravating is how those ratings are seen and used by the general public, often with a mighty disconnect between what parents say is important and how much effort they actually put into understanding what the ratings mean. But I'll forgive parents their contradictions because, hey, people are stupid, right? It's not like they're actually paid to understand every meticulous detail of everything in their lives. But you know who are? News organizations. They are supposed to both fact-check their stories and actually think through what they're putting on the air. A recent piece on Sacramento's ABC News10 station failed in spectacular fashion on both accounts. First, the title splashed across the screen reads "KIDS GAME CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT." No, it doesn't. Like...at all. Out of the box, Little Big Planet 2 earned every bit of that ESRB "E for everyone" rating by being as kid-friendly and innocuous as it gets. The "problem" discussed in the clip is content created by gamers online, not what's contained within the game created by developers.

Second, the reporter's follow up question asked Barry White, who is apparently News10's "Game Guy," if he thought this stuff was created by sexual predators trying to diddle kiddies. What!?!? It's as though the reporters have never experienced the internet. If every person out there who created something graphic online in any way was a child predator, we'd all be in a hell of a lot of knee-deep-in-predators trouble.

Finally, what about that ESRB rating? The reporter asks White if the E rating gives parents a false sense of security. As White notes, that's only the case if those parents are illiterate chimpanzees, given the fact that the rating quite prominently notes that online interactions in the game can't be rated. In other words, you can't blame a game or its creator for what the strange and unwashed masses do with it online. Or in other, other words, the exact freaking opposite of everything said by the news team.

The money shot in this sexy story of stupid is at the very end, after the reporter talks about how parents should monitor their children's gaming and use the parental controls built within the consoles. The anchor's response?

"Speaking as a parent, my kids would probably know better how to get to the parental controls and configure them than me."

Yeah, well, exactly who looks like the idiot in that comment? Maybe if you're going to be the parent of a gamer, you should at least take a modicum of interest in how to parent a gamer. Here's a hint: that doesn't include defaming a nice, kid-friendly game on the news just because you don't want to understand stuff.

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Greg Sandoval over at The Verge has an interesting post about "Pandora's PR problem" concerning its attempt to get out from under ridiculously draconian royalty rates that are clearly unsustainable. I agree that Pandora has failed on almost every aspect of the PR front, though the article seems seriously one-sided on a few points. First, it compares Pandora's situation to Spotify's, where Spotify has also been criticized for its royalty rates at times, and yet its reputation isn't quite as bad. Recently Spotify has signed some "big" name artists to publicly support its platform. Of course, the way it did so was to throw a ton of money at those artists. And there's a strong argument that Spotify's current royalty rates are even more unsustainable than Pandora's -- it's just that Spotify has a long runway and is choosing to put off the eventual day of reckoning it's going to have to face over royalty rates for internet music. Furthermore, the article seems to ignore the fact that much of the "controversy" and PR failures by Pandora are actually the result of a coordinated campaign, set up by a RIAA front group, focused on flat out lies and bogus attacks.

Of course, Pandora isn't blameless in all of this, but I put a lot of blame on Pandora's stupid decision back in 2009 to agree to the ridiculous rates it now realizes are impossible to sustain (something that many people pointed out at the time). But, the craziest part of the article is the claim that Pandora's attempt to lower rates somehow goes against free market capitalism. Sandoval mentions this argument twice. First, in noting that some "conservative" groups made this argument:

Citizens Against Government Waste, a conservative think tank, accused Pandora of trying to undermine the free market.

And then again in quoting an analyst who makes the same argument:

Michael Pachter, a research analyst with Wedbush Securities, believes Pandora will eventually thrive but that its attempt to legislate lower costs is misguided. "The bill is idiotic," Pachter said. "It's insulting to Congress to say you want regulation to lower your costs at the expense of artists. Did you see who was on stage with Obama helping him campaign? Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen. That's the Democrats, and how many Republicans are going to want to legislate against capitalism and the free market?"

But neither of those claims makes any sense at all. When it comes to royalty rates for web streaming there is no free market. In fact, the status quo is so far away from the free market or capitalism as to be laughable, and it seems like anyone claiming that it represents some sort of free market is either being purposely misleading or is totally uninformed.

The rates for web streaming sites like Pandora fall under what's called "non-interactive digital music streaming" -- and the rates for those are set by a three judge board, known as the Copyright Royalty Board. If someone can explain to me how a selection of three judges flat out setting prices is a "free market," that would be good to know, because last I checked, the government setting prices is kind of the opposite of a free market. Of course, the last time the CRB set those rates, they set them so high that it was impossible for anyone to pay those rates. That's how completely clueless the CRB tends to be. So, in response, Pandora and other webcasters did negotiate lower rates, but those rates were still impossibly high. Some might argue since Pandora's current rates are those "negotiated" rates, it is a free market, but that's clearly not true either. The "fallback" that the record labels had in those negotiations was "fuck you, here's what the CRB says the rates are, pay up or go out of business." When they have those CRB rates as the fallback, their negotiating position is obviously quite strong, and the results are obvious. The "negotiated" rates are impossibly high. Pandora's big mistake was agreeing to those rates (even though it felt it needed to if it wanted to actually live to fight another day).

No matter how you look at it, that's not free market capitalism. Coming up with a way to change those rates may not be free market capitalism either, but to argue that moving away from the existing rates goes against free market capitalism makes no sense. So, if either Citizens Against Government Waste or Michael Pachter can explain how three out of touch judges with no market experience setting the official rates is "free market capitalism," it seems like, perhaps, they shouldn't argue that Pandora is trying to "legislate against capitalism and the free market."

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The decision is in: Apple has been found guilty of conspiring to raise ebook prices and has been ordered to face a trial on damages. With every involved publisher having previously settled with the Justice Department, this was perhaps a foregone conclusion, especially considering the presiding judge had noted pre-trial that Apple's defense was likely to fail.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan is a victory for the U.S. Department of Justice and 33 U.S. states that brought the antitrust case.

Cote said the plaintiffs presented "compelling evidence" that Apple violated the federal Sherman antitrust law by playing a "central role" in a conspiracy with five major publishers to eliminate retail price competition and raise e-book prices.

"Apple chose to join forces with the publisher defendants to raise e-book prices and equipped them with the means to do so," the judge wrote in a 159-page decision. "Without Apple's orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did."

Judge Cote directly addressed the "well, what about Amazon?" question that has sprung from the lips of Apple's defenders (both in court and out), as well as by several of the publishers. (Nevermind the fact that publishers are still paid in full while Amazon sells ebooks at a loss, at least for now.)

Apple's argument that the debut of the iPad and its accompanying iBookstore would result in actual market competition was addressed thusly:

If Apple is alluding to the fact that Amazon's Kindle bookstore was the dominant e-retailer for books in 2009, and that the arrival of the iBookstore created another e-retailer, that is true. But, as this Opinion explains, Apple demanded, as a precondition of its entry into the market, that it would not have to compete with Amazon on price. Thus, from the consumer's perspective -- a not unimportant perspective in the field of antitrust -- the arrival of the iBookstore brought less price competition and higher prices.

As Cote states, competition in the marketplace isn't served by uncompetitive practices. While publishers may have welcomed a competitor that would assist them in raising retail prices, the end result for consumers (the true beneficiaries of anti-trust laws) would be higher, more static prices.

Continuing on from this point, Cote addresses the insinuation that Amazon is engaging in unfair market practices, or Apple's "two wrongs make a right" argument.

If Apple is suggesting that Amazon was engaging in illegal, monopolistic practices, and that Apple's combination with the Publisher Defendants to deprive a monopolist of some of its market power is pro-competitive and healthy for our economy, it is wrong. This trial has not been the occasion to decide whether Amazon's choice to sell NYT Bestsellers or other New Releases as loss leaders was an unfair trade practice or in any other way a violation of law. If it was, however, the remedy for illegal conduct is a complaint lodged with the proper law enforcement offices or a civil suit or both. Another company's alleged violation of antitrust laws is not an excuse for engaging in your own violations of law. Nor is suspicion that that may be occurring a defense to the claims litigated at this trial.

In other words, you don't fight a monopoly by fixing prices.

Of course, Apple is planning on appealing the decision.

Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr has said the company, unsurprisingly, plans to appeal. "Apple did not conspire to fix ebook pricing and we will continue to fight against these false accusations," he said in a statement to The Verge. "When we introduced the iBookstore in 2010, we gave customers more choice, injecting much needed innovation and competition into the market, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. We've done nothing wrong and we will appeal the judge's decision."

In the meantime, the settling publishers have already agreed to cease agency pricing for two years and are barred from setting up "most favored nation" agreements. This still allows for plenty of price flexibility and it has yet to show the downward trend the publishers declared "inevitable" as a result of the Justice Department's actions. If the appeal fails, Apple will be faced with 33 states seeking fines as well as any damages awarded.

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In life, there are often (at minimum) two sets of rules -- one that applies to average people, and one that applies to those on a more rarefied plane. Our legislators do it all the time, enacting laws that they have little intention of following or carving out exceptions in those that already exist.

The law enforcement community is one of the worst offenders of the double standard. Unwritten rules protect bad cops and a nearly universal "hands off" policy ensures everything from minor traffic violations to drunk driving will be neatly swept under the rug.

Mike Riggs at Reason points out a particularly egregious application of the double standard. In recent months, a pair of teens have been arrested and arraigned on terrorism charges stemming from some ill-advised postings. Cameron D'Ambrosio, whose charges were ultimately dropped, was held without bail for two months as prosecutors pursued "communicating terrorist threat" charges. Justin Carter, a teen who made some unfortunate remarks during the course of some perfectly normal video game smack-talking, was arrested on March 27th and is still in jail.

For this transgression, Carter was not just investigated, but arrested. He's been in jail for months now, held on $500,000 bail. His attorney says he's been beaten several times and placed on suicide watch; suicide watch, in case you didn't know, translates to "placed naked in solitary confinement."

D'Ambrosio's "threat" was non-specific and more centered on bragging about his impending rap fame. The inclusion of the Boston Bombing and the White House into his boasting caught the attention of local law enforcement. Carter's smack talking mentioned shooting up a kindergarten, ending with indications he was joking. In both cases, there was context surrounding the comments and neither "threat" was targeted at any specific person or group of people.

Contrast these two cases with one involving a District of Columbia police officer.

D.C. Police Officer Christopher Picciano, "a 17-year veteran who was a member of the elite presidential motorcade detail," will be suspended without pay for a little over a month after joking about killing the first lady, threatening to go on a shooting spree, and calling Pres. Obama a communist.

No jail time. No terrorism charges. No trip to solitary confinement. No being held without bail. Here's a cop, who lives and works in DC, including working in close proximity with the president, who stated specifically he'd "wanted to kill" Michelle Obama, and yet, he walks away almost unscathed.

The lack of overzealous prosecutors is also conspicuous in its absence.

According to the Washington Post, the U.S. attorney's office declined to press charges against Picciano because it "agree[d] with the Secret Service that Picciano was not serious with his comment about Michelle Obama." Picciano also "wrote on Facebook about taking a rifle to a tall building," after the D.C. Council voted to trim pension benefits for the MPD. That wasn't serious either, apparently.

The prosecutors "agreed with the Secret Service." That's rather cozy. Too bad no prosecutors went looking for anything other than having their biases confirmed when dealing with Carter and D'Ambrosio. In both teens' cases, their homes, belongings and computers were searched but investigators were unable to find anything more damning than the posts in questions. No weapons. No evidence of any intent to carry out these "threats." No background suggesting these threats should be taken seriously. And yet, both teens were incarcerated. Justin Carter is still in jail.

That's the process for everyday Americans, especially injudicious teens. Here's the flip side of the double standard.

Picciano joked about killing the first lady and going on a Charles Whitman-esque shooting spree, yet remains free and employed in a job that allows him to carry a gun; Carter, a 19-year-old who doesn't own a gun, joked about shooting up a school, and is being kept naked in solitary confinement as a result.

As Riggs points out, law enforcement members are given a benefit of doubt that's rarely extended to the general public. This low level cronyism further drives a wedge between citizens and so-called "public servants" who shield each other from the repercussions of their words and actions. Law enforcement members have defended themselves by stating they need to "take every threat seriously." Obviously, that's nothing more than self-serving bullshit used to justify the overzealous prosecution of a few mouthy teens.

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Today we’re introducing a new Google Maps app for Android smartphones and tablets, also coming soon to iPhone and iPad. It’s a new mapping experience that makes exploring the world and getting to the places that matter to you a lot faster and easier. The app is gradually rolling out globally in Google Play and will be available soon in the App Store.

The new Google Maps for mobile builds on the design we released for iPhone last December and improves on it with a few useful search and navigation features. And it's the first dedicated app for Android tablets and iPads. We’re also retiring Latitude and are making some changes to offline and My Maps which we’ll explain in more detail below.

First, here are a few highlights that make this release stand out:

Explore: Explore is a fast and easy way to visually browse and discover new places without even typing. Simply tap the search box and you’ll see cards showing great places to eat, drink, sleep and shop.
Enhanced navigation: In addition to current traffic conditions, we’ve added two new features to help you navigate around traffic. You can now see reports of problems on the road that you can tap to see incident details. While on the road, Google Maps will also alert you if a better route becomes available and reroute you to your destination faster. This feature is available only on Android and is coming soon to iOS.
Designed for tablets: A dedicated tablet design brings all the features of this new app to Android tablets and iPads, which makes exploring the world from the comfort of your living room much more fluid, smooth and fun.
Reviews, Zagat and Offers: There’s a new 5.0 star rating system that gives you a quick read on how your friends and others rate places like restaurants, bars and cafes. For an expert’s opinion, the Zagat badge of excellence and curated lists are integrated into search results so you can quickly spot the very best places. From “Best Restaurants to meet for a drink in NYC” to “Best Restaurants in the Mission” in San Francisco, Zagat’s there to help you uncover the local gems.
And finally, Google Maps for mobile is a great way to discover valuable Offers from national brands like Macy's, Michael's and Toys "R" Us, labeled right on the map. All these features can make it a lot easier to navigate the world, no matter what adventure comes your way.

One important change you should know about is that Latitude and check-ins will be retired. These features will no longer be a part of the new Google Maps app, and will stop functioning in older versions by August 9. We understand some of you still want to see your friends and family on a map, which is why we've added location sharing and check-ins to Google+ for Android (coming soon to iOS). More details about Latitude and check-in changes can be found in our help center.

The offline maps feature for Android is also no longer available. Instead we’ve created a new way for you to access maps offline by simply entering “OK Maps” into the search box when viewing the area you want for later. Finally, My Maps functionality is not supported in this release but will return to future versions of the app. People who want to create powerful custom maps can still do so with Maps Engine Lite on desktop.

Helping you find great places is what we love to do. And as more of us use mobile phones and tablets in our daily lives, information that’s useful to you isn't just about what you need, but also where you might find it. Today’s update is an exciting step forward for Google’s maps—one that we hope will make it faster and easier for you to explore and discover places you want to go.

Update July 16: The new Google Maps app for iPhone and iPad is now live. Visit the App Store today to download it.

Posted by Daniel Graf, Director, Google Maps

*The new Google Maps for mobile is compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean Android devices and iOS 6+ when available. Please note some of the features mentioned in this post aren’t available in all countries.

News of the TSA's new Instagram account has been pinballing around the net. It's a violent hipster's dream, filled with heavily-filtered photos of confiscated weapons. One might be tempted to buy into the TSA's unspoken narrative that all these confiscations are making flying safer, but Cory Doctorow points out where that thought process hits a logical dead end.

The TSA has launched an Instagram account, showing all the "dangerous items" they steal confiscate from air travellers. The message is clear: we are keeping you safe from in-flight danger.

But what they don't show is all the grand-jury indictments for conspiracy to commit air terrorism that they secured after catching people with these items -- even the people who were packing guns.

That's because no one -- not the TSA, not the DAs, not the DHS -- believe that anyone who tries to board a plane with a dangerous item is actually planning on doing anything bad with them. After all, as New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler said (quoting Tom Wolfe), "a grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted." So if there was any question about someone thinking of hurting a plane, you'd expect to see indictments.

This is undeniable. If attempting to carry a weapon onboard is evidence of a true threat, we'd expect to see more would-be fliers headed off to prison, or at least arraigned on terrorism charges. But that's simply not happening. Instead, the weapons are confiscated and they face, at most, a felony charge for attempting to board a plane with a weapon.

This sort of thinking falls right in line with the TSA's liquids policy. Prohibited liquids are tossed into nearby trash receptacles, giving lie to the reasoning that the questionable liquid could be some sort of explosive. Throwing away potential bomb components a few feet from a frequently-crowded TSA checkpoint right on the concourse seems incredibly irresponsible if you truly believe the fluid is dangerous. The fact that this happens several times a day in hundreds of airports across the US proves that not even the TSA agents believe the confiscated liquids pose a threat.

The TSA agent Doctorow spoke with about these seizures said he didn't believe the people who'd had their weapons confiscated posed a threat. But he did come up with a rather novel theory as to why these confiscations took place.

"But," he said, "maybe someone who did want to crash the plane might take the bad thing away from them and attack it."

Doctorow responded that this scenario seemed way too far-fetched to mesh with reality.

"That doesn't sound like a very reliable plan," I said. "If you were a terrorist and that was your plan, you'd have to spend a lot of time in the air waiting for someone to open his laptop bag and show you that he forgot to take his handgun out of it before he boarded."

Based on recent history with would be terrorists, it's more likely the smuggled weapon would be used by passengers against the terrorists, rather than the other way around. This new Instagram account is just the TSA soft-selling its brand of "safety," but the implied narrative doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

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This is not a good year to be a company whose high-profile Orson Scott Card-affiliated project is coming to fruition. And this past month was not particularly a good one for folks who’ve been on the board of the U.S.’s biggest national anti-marriage equality lobbying group since 2009. The ethics of enjoying content related to or produced by someone who shares political views you are opposed can be uncomfortable enough without the added conflict of active participation and monetary support at very senior and organized levels of a powerful organization working at cross purposes to your political views. Summit Entertainment has been rumored to already be nervous about the backlash against its summer blockbuster Ender’s Game, based on Card’s seminal YA science fiction novel of the same name, and it’s hard not to see some studio pressure behind Card’s response (it cannot be called an apology) to well worded calls for a boycott of the movie.

As usual for this issue, I except a number of the readers of this article will not be familiar with Card’s activism, so I’ll quote myself from an earlier post:

Card’s status as a board member of the National Organization for Marriage, one of the largest and most well funded anti-gay activist groups in America, which works to prevent not only marriage equality but also civil union legislation and to legally prevent LGBTQ couples from adopting, is for many, including this writer, a different beast than mere personally held conservative views that might enter the subtext of a story or be voiced, when asked, by a writer or artist. Card has publicly expressed his views on gay marriage as worth overthrowing the government for, linked homosexuality with pedophilia, argued that marriage equality will lead to a world where parents who encourage their kids to date members of the opposite sex will be accused of hate speech, and has stated that he would prefer laws that criminalize consensual homosexual sex to stand and be enforced as a “message.” His presence on the board of NOM gives him more power to actually effect his opinions on others than your average celebrity with socially conservative political leanings.

In that context, I offer you his response to Geeks Out’s proposed boycott of Ender’s Game:

Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.

With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot.  The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state.

Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.

I don’t normally do this kind of thing, but lets go through this point by point. Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and was clearly not written as a text that deconstructed the political issues of LGBTQ equality and visibility that were absolutely present in the public consciousness in 1984. Come on. The Stonewall Riots were fifteen years old that year, and AIDS had only just been renamed from the “Gay Related Immune Deficiency” syndrome two years prior.

With the Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot, because we all know that since the Supreme Court decided that women in the U.S. have the right to elective abortions forty years ago, no state has ever tried to limit or qualify access to them.

The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state. Okay, there’s a statement that I can actually agree with in its entirety. Naturally, it’s followed up by probably the most teeth grindingly awful part of Card’s statement: Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.

The unavoidable implication here is that Card considers that someone who chooses not to see his movie because they disagree with his politics to be intolerant, so lets be clear: no one is required to “tolerate” the attempts of other people to prevent them from doing a thing that harms no one. “Tolerate my intolerance” is not a valid request. If Card has perhaps apologized for his work to prevent LGBTQ families from gaining legal status under the law, this might be a different story, but what he’s actually asking is: “Hey, you just fought a long, protracted battle to get legal recognition of inalienable rights that were denied to you by, in many cases, an unfeeling majority, one that I tried to make as difficult as possible. I still think you deserve to be second class citizens, but I just lost that fight, so as a consolation prize could you go support my work anyway?”

I’m not here to argue whether anyone should spend money on the Ender’s Game movie or not. I firmly believe both that it is okay to enjoy media with problematic aspects so long as you acknowledge, explore, and do not attempt to justify those problematic aspects, and that the amount of enjoyment one can derive from something that was made by somebody with views they disagree with is different for every person. But I can say this: if you do disagree with Card’s activism and plan to purposefully see Ender’s Game, I suggest you do it according to any or all of the precepts laid out in Alyssa Rosenberg‘s great Ethical Guide to Consuming Content. If you plan to purposefully not see Ender’s Game because of Card’s activism, I suggest you do so in an organized, vocal fashion: talk to your friends about it, talk about it on social media, maybe even coordinate with the Geeks Out campaign.

They must put something in the water in Florida. The latest is that the state has effectively banned all computers, tablets and smartphones. Yes, all of them. Apparently there was a hastily passed law, CS/HB 155: Prohibition of Electronic Gambling Devices, which as you might guess, is supposed to be about banning electronic gambling devices. Apparently, the bill was written quickly in response to a political controversy:

In April Florida Governor Rick Scott approved a ban on slot machines and Internet cafes after a charity tied to Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll was shut down on suspicion of being an Internet gambling front -- forcing Carroll, who had consulted with the charity, to resign.

But, here's the problem. The bill's definitions section is a complete mess. You can see the full text (pdf) which contains cross outs and additions, but what comes out in the end is the following:

As used in this chapter, the term "slot machine or device" means any machine or device or system or network of devices... that is adapted for use in such a way that, upon activation... such device or system is directly or indirectly caused to operate or may be operated and if the user, whether by application of skill or by reason of any element of chance or any other outcome unpredictable by the user him or her, may....

(a) Receive or become entitled to receive any piece of money, credit, allowance, or thing of value, or any check, slug, token, or memorandum, whether of value or otherwise, which may be exchanged for any money, credit, allowance, or thing of value or which may be given in trade; or

(b) Secure additional chances or rights to use such machine, apparatus, or device, even though the device or system may be available for free play or, in addition to any element of chance or unpredictable outcome of such operation, may also sell, deliver, or present some merchandise, indication of weight, entertainment, or other thing of value. The term “slot machine or device” includes, but is not limited to, devices regulated as slot machines pursuant to chapter 551.

Note that I took out chunks of that definition to try to make it more readable and it's still a mess. The short version is that a slot machine or device is any machine or device by which someone can play a game of chance. That's any device with a web browser connected to the internet. Any one.

Almost immediately, around 1,000 internet cafes shut down, and now one of them, called Incredible Investments, is suing, seeking declaratory relief on a number of issues related to the law, which shut down their cafe. They go through one by one the problems with the law (and they are many), including the definition of the slot machine:

The definition of “slot machine or device” now contained in Fla. Stat. § 849.16, as amended, fails to adequately describe the prohibited machine or device such that a person of common understanding cannot know what is forbidden.

[....] As amended, Section 849.16, Florida Statutes includes a presumption that any device, system, or network like the Plaintiff’s computers that displays images of games of chance is an illegal slot machine.

The newly-enacted section 849.16(3), Florida Statutes, creates an evidentiary presumption that relieves the State of Florida of its burden of persuasion beyond a reasonable doubt of every essential element of a crime

There's a lot more in the actual lawsuit (embedded below). Can we just have lawmakers recognize, once and for all, that they're really bad at legislating technology?

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Now that it's common knowledge the NSA is collecting metadata on pretty much any American with a working phone and/or internet connection, some Americans are trying to find out what's been collected. Multiple FOIA requests have been sent to the NSA, but each one is receiving the same form letter -- one that states that any information, including affirmation or denial, would result in "exceptionally grave damage" to national security.

The DailyKOS has a writeup on another citizen's attempt to get some info on their info, only to be stonewalled by the NSA's rejection form letter. David Gershon Harris, the author of the DailyKOS piece, says that "dozens of others" have received similar letters.

It's not as if there aren't protections in place that allow redactions of certain information. The problem with the letter this person (IT specialist Clayton Seymour) received is that it points to a specific executive order.

[T]he central problem is this: Seymour's letter from the NSA points to Executive Order 13526, signed by President Obama in 2009, as justification for the NSA's FOIA exemption.

This order signed by Obama established a uniform system for classifying national security information, and stipulates that "information shall not be considered for classification unless its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security."

This qualification appears in section 1.4 of the executive order, after which follow many categories of information which may be marked as classified. The category the NSA points to in justifying the classification of all its data is this:

"(c) intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology"

By securing the metadata on millions of Americans through covert action, the NSA has given itself an "out." It will never have to reveal this information via a response to a FOIA request because all data collected is, by this definition, instantly classified. The use (or abuse) of this executive order implies something very unseemly about the NSA's thought processes.

The NSA, it seems, has classified every single piece of data on American citizens that it has seized and saved, even benign data culled from people like Seymour, who are no threat to U.S. national security.

What does this mean? In the eyes of the NSA, every person in the US who has had data collected covertly (in order to skirt Fourth Amendment protections), is a "threat to national security." The gathered data, even if incidentally gathered in the pursuit of terrorists, is instantly classified and stashed away securely. FOIA requests won't pry it loose.

There's no way the NSA truly believes every American is a threat, but that hasn't stopped it from gathering up everything it can and locking it up. The data that is supposed to be flushed from the system or otherwise protected from abuse by its holders? You can't have access to that either. Even the data it doesn't need has been given the same protection as that which could cause "identifiable or describable damage to national security."

This is the NSA's America. Everyone's a security threat. It just a matter of connecting the dots.

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One of the key themes that has come out from the revelations concerning NSA surveillance is a bunch of defenders of the program claiming "it's just metadata." This is wrong on multiple levels. First of all, only some of the revealed programs involve "just metadata." The so-called "business records" data is metadata, but other programs, such as PRISM, can also include actual content. But, even if we were just talking about "just metadata," the idea that it somehow is no big deal, and people have nothing to worry about when it comes to metadata is ridiculous to anyone who knows even the slightest thing about metadata. In fact, anyone who claims that "it's just metadata" in an attempt to minimize what's happening is basically revealing that they haven't the slightest clue about what metadata is. Here are a few examples of why.

Just a few months ago, Nature published a study all about how much a little metadata can reveal, entitled Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility by Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Cesar A. Hidalgo, Michel Verleysen, and Vincent D. Blondel. The basic conclusion: metadata reveals a ton, and even "coarse datasets" provide almost no anonymity:

A simply anonymized dataset does not contain name, home address, phone number or other obvious identifier. Yet, if individual's patterns are unique enough, outside information can be used to link the data back to an individual. For instance, in one study, a medical database was successfully combined with a voters list to extract the health record of the governor of Massachusetts27. In another, mobile phone data have been re-identified using users' top locations28. Finally, part of the Netflix challenge dataset was re-identified using outside information from The Internet Movie Database29.

All together, the ubiquity of mobility datasets, the uniqueness of human traces, and the information that can be inferred from them highlight the importance of understanding the privacy bounds of human mobility. We show that the uniqueness of human mobility traces is high and that mobility datasets are likely to be re-identifiable using information only on a few outside locations. Finally, we show that one formula determines the uniqueness of mobility traces providing mathematical bounds to the privacy of mobility data. The uniqueness of traces is found to decrease according to a power function with an exponent that scales linearly with the number of known spatio-temporal points. This implies that even coarse datasets provide little anonymity.

Some of the figures they presented show how easy it is to track individuals and their locations, which can paint a pretty significant and revealing portrait of who they are and what they've done. In an interview, one of the authors of the paper basically said that your metadata effectively creates a "fingerprint" that is unique to you and easy to match to your identity:

"We use the analogy of the fingerprint," said de Montjoye in a phone interview today. "In the 1930s, Edmond Locard, one of the first forensic science pioneers, showed that each fingerprint is unique, and you need 12 points to identify it. So here what we did is we took a large-scale database of mobility traces and basically computed the number of points so that 95 percent of people would be unique in the dataset."

Others are discovering the same thing. Ethan Zuckerman, who recently co-taught a class with one of the authors of the paper above, Cesar Hidalgo, wrote about how two students in the class created a project called Immersion, with Hidalgo, which takes your Gmail metadata ("just metadata") and maps out your social network. As Zuckerman notes, his own use of Immersion reveals some things that could be questionable or dangerous. He discusses some bits of metadata that are "obvious," which would make him easily identifiable, but which probably aren't that "questionable." However, he also notes some potentially problematic things as well:

Anyone who knows me reasonably well could have guessed at the existence of these ties. But there’s other information in the graph that’s more complicated and potentially more sensitive. My primary Media Lab collaborators are my students and staff – Cesar is the only Media Lab node who’s not affiliated with Civic who shows up on my network, which suggests that I’m collaborating less with my Media Lab colleagues than I might hope to be. One might read into my relationships with the students I advise based on the email volume I exchange with them – I’d suggest that the patterns have something to do with our preferred channels of communication, but it certainly shows who’s demanding and receiving attention via email. In other words, absence from a social network map is at least as revealing as presence on it.

Separately, more than two years ago, we wrote about how a German politician named Malte Spitz got access to all of the metadata that Deutsche Telekom had on him over a period of six months, and then worked with the German newspaper Die Zeit to put together an amazing visualization that lets you track six months of his life entirely via his metadata, combined with public information, such as his Twitter feed. While this all came out over two years ago, just recently, Spitz wrote a NYT op-ed piece about how this "just metadata" situation means that it's tough to trust the US government.

In Germany, whenever the government begins to infringe on individual freedom, society stands up. Given our history, we Germans are not willing to trade in our liberty for potentially better security. Germans have experienced firsthand what happens when the government knows too much about someone. In the past 80 years, Germans have felt the betrayal of neighbors who informed for the Gestapo and the fear that best friends might be potential informants for the Stasi. Homes were tapped. Millions were monitored.

Although these two dictatorships, Nazi and Communist, are gone and we now live in a unified and stable democracy, we have not forgotten what happens when secret police or intelligence agencies disregard privacy. It is an integral part of our history and gives young and old alike a critical perspective on state surveillance systems.

"Just metadata" isn't "just" anything, other than a massive violation of basic privacy rights.

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