Brindle

A First and Fourth Amendment lawsuit filed against a TSA agent and a handful of Philadelphia police officers has reached the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Unfortunately, the court has decided the work TSA agents do, however incompetently, is too important to be in any way stifled by the threat of First Amendment lawsuits. [h/t Brad Heath]

Roger Vanderklok was attempting to fly from Philadelphia to Miami to participate in a half-marathon. He packed his heart monitor and watch inside something certain to be flagged by TSA agents 5-7% of the time: a PVC pipe with both ends taped shut.

In this case, a TSA employee did flag the "device" and had some questions about Vanderklok's PVC-and-wires package. Agent Charles Kieser engaged in a conversation with Vanderklok about the pipe, ultimately resulting in the TSA employee having Vanderklok arrested for threatening to smuggle a bomb onto a plane.

The details of this encounter diverge a bit, depending on who you ask. But they do not diverge nearly as much as Agent Kieser believes they do. The court notes in its decision [PDF] that Kieser's description of the incident does not align with that of a far more impartial observer.

Kieser testified on direct examination that Vanderklok was agitated and waved his arms in the air repeatedly during the secondary screening. On cross examination, he further elaborated on his assertion that Vanderklok was physically disruptive at the checkpoint. Surveillance video of almost the entire interaction was played during the cross examination of Officer Pinkney and Kieser’s testimony was shown to be largely inconsistent with the video.

Vanderklok's version of the story more closely aligns with the video. According to the traveler, he was cooperative throughout the incident and Kieser basically lied in order to have him arrested.

Vanderklok maintains that at all times he was patient and not agitated during the secondary screening but that Kieser was agitated and argumentative throughout. Kieser asserts essentially the opposite: that Vanderklok was belligerent during the secondary search. In Kieser’s telling, Vanderklok said, “I could bring a bomb through here any day I want and you’ll never find it.” (JA 8.) Vanderklok denies making that or any similar statement. He says that Kieser fabricated the statement after Vanderklok asked for a complaint form and stated his intention to report Kieser’s behavior. There were no other known witnesses to Vanderklok’s alleged statement.

After the screening was over, Vanderklok repacked his bag, thinking he was going to be boarding his flight. He requested a complaint form and headed for his plane where he was greeted by Philadelphia police officers. They arrested him for disorderly conduct and for threatening to place a bomb on a plane.

The lawsuit followed. In it, Vanderklok alleges a variety of First and Fourth Amendment violations. Most of those were dismissed at the lower level. Vanderklok only appealed his First Amendment retaliatory prosecution and Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claims. Unfortunately for him, neither has been upheld. Jurisdictional issues prevent the interlocutory appeal of the Fourth Amendment dismissal, leaving Vanderklok with only the First Amendment claim to litigate at this level.

After a long discussion of the underlying issues and precedent, the Appeals Court arrives at the conclusion Agent Kieser can't be sued for violating Vanderklok's First Amendment rights with a retaliatory arrest. More unfortunately, the court decides to take a stance of this issue, setting precedent for all other cases to arise in its jurisdiction.

[A]s the role of the TSA has become prevalent in the lives of the traveling populace, disputes involving airport screening personnel may come up with some frequency, and the existence of a Bivens action for First Amendment retaliation is no longer something that we should assume without deciding. Today we hold that Bivens does not afford a remedy against airport security screeners who allegedly retaliate against a traveler who exercises First Amendment rights.

This leaves Bivens exactly where it was when it was decided: limited to Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendment claims. The First Amendment isn't going to be allowed to join this small party. It also notes that its decision leaves people like Vanderklok somewhat screwed. The United States can substitute itself for certain federal employees facing lawsuits, rendering the litigation pointless by claiming sovereign immunity. Whether or not the government chooses to intercede in this case is irrelevant. The possibility that it might forces plaintiffs to plead these cases in state court.

So, although in such cases the United States would retain its sovereign immunity, state law tort claims against the individual could proceed. That would provide an alternative remedy for an airline passenger who suffers as a result of a TSA screener’s actionable conduct outside the scope of his employment. In instances where the TSA screener has acted within the scope of his employment, it is possible that no judicial remedy will exist if a Bivens action is not implied because the United States could substitute itself for the screener and claim sovereign immunity. But that is by design.

In Vanderklok's case, there's really nothing left for him now that the Appeals Court has shot him down.

Based on the District Court’s orders as they now stand, however, there are no alternative judicial remedies available to Vanderklok, because the District Court concluded that Kieser was not an investigative or law enforcement officer and there was no challenge as to whether Kieser acted within the scope of his employment.

Even though the court recognize it might be creating a situation where plaintiffs have zero legal options (beyond the useless TSA complaint form) when rights appear to be violated by TSA staffers, the court decides it's worth it because safety and security are more important than individual rights and remedies.

Here, Vanderklok asks us to imply a Bivens action for damages against a TSA agent. TSA employees like Kieser are tasked with assisting in a critical aspect of national security – securing our nation’s airports and air traffic. The threat of damages liability could indeed increase the probability that a TSA agent would hesitate in making split-second decisions about suspicious passengers. In light of Supreme Court precedent, past and very recent, that is surely a special factor that gives us pause.

[...]

Ultimately, the role of the TSA in securing public safety is so significant that we ought not create a damages remedy in this context.

And here's the final attempt to balance the decision, which does nothing more than "suggest" TSA agents not act like Agent Keiser did.

We, of course, do not suggest that TSA screeners should act with disdain for passenger rights or that they can escape all the consequences of their bad behavior. Discipline by the government should be swift and certain, when its employees’ actions warrant it.

The government does a terrible job disciplining itself, as any number of critical reports on TSA agents clearly illustrates. There's across-the-board incompetence coupled with routine abuse of passengers. Add to this a certain amount of theft, longheld beliefs in behavioral junk science, and a pizza box recruiting system, and you have a walking disaster that contributes little to travel or safety. The court here says adding a Bivens remedy would "create a cure worse than the disease." But have they taken a close look at the "disease" lately?

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You may recall that in 2014 we wrote about a strange occurrence having to do with Chase Bank refusing to provide its banking services to Teagan Presley, a rather well known adult film actress. When it became clear that Presley wasn't the only performer to whom this was happening, it initially looked as though banks were engaging in a form of slut-shaming of adult film actors. It turned out, however, that it was the federal government doing the slut-shaming, with the emergence of the Department of Justice's Operation Choke Point. This DOJ policy that was developed to combat financial fraud somehow bled over the stencil lines and became a sort of banking morality police, encouraging banks to cut off services to industries like adult film, fireworks retail stores, and sellers engaged in what the DOJ deemed to be "racist materials." It's worth highlighting that all of these industries and actions, whether you like them or not, are legal, yet the DOJ was essentially attempting to extra-judiciously scuttle them through secretive federal policy. That should have terrified everyone, but didn't, and so the program went on.

Until recently. The justice department recently announced that Operation Choke Point will be ended.

The move hands a big victory to Republican lawmakers who charged that the initiative — dubbed "Operation Choke Point" — was hurting legitimate businesses. In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd referred to the program as "a misguided initiative."

“We share your view that law abiding businesses should not be targeted simply for operating in an industry that a particular administration might disfavor,” says the letter, obtained by progressive activist group Allied Progress and later provided to POLITICO by Goodlatte's office. “Enforcement decisions should always be made based on facts and the applicable law. We reiterate that the Department will not discourage the provision of financial services to lawful industries, including businesses engaged in short-term lending and firearms-related activities,” it adds. A nearly identical letter was sent to Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).

We tend to stay away from partisan politics here at Techdirt, but I cannot write this post without pointing out the oddity that is an Obama-era policy preventing adult film stars from getting banking services and a GOP administration then restoring them. Obviously, per Boyd's letter, there are many more industries that were persecuted that are more in the realm of typical conservative fodder, but it seems that the DOJ is ending the operation in full and is doing so as a matter of principle. Good principle, it should be noted, because attempting to punish lawful businesses through banking back-deals is an especially scummy way to do government. Several applauding members of the government rightly point out that temporary presidential administrations ought not be able to choke out (their word, not mine) legal businesses at their whim and fancy.

Goodlatte and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), along with Reps. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) praised the department in a joint statement.

“We applaud the Trump Justice Department for decisively ending Operation Choke Point," they said. "The Obama Administration created this ill-advised program to suffocate legitimate businesses to which it was ideologically opposed by intimidating financial institutions into denying banking services to those businesses."

Now, some of these industries themselves are industries we may not want to applaud. Some of us have severe issues with payday loan companies, for instance, and some of us surely don't care for the adult film business. But if they're legal, and they are, this sort of thing is no way to deal with these industries.

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It looks like the UK found an easy way to avoid another lengthy extradition battle. Its intelligence agency, GCHQ, knew something security research Marcus Hutchins didn't -- and certainly didn't feel obliged to tell him. Not only that, but it let a criminal suspect fly out of the country with zero pre-flight vetting. (Caution: registration wall ahead.)

Officials at the intelligence agency knew that Marcus Hutchins, from Devon, who was hailed as a hero for helping the NHS, would be walking into a trap when he flew to the US in July for a cyber-conference.

Hutchins’s arrest by the FBI on August 2 while he was returning from Las Vegas freed the British government from the “headache of an extradition battle” with their closest ally, say sources familiar with the case.

Certainly no one expected GCHQ to give Hutchins a heads-up on the legal troubles awaiting him on the other side of the pond, but there's something a bit mean-spirited about allowing a UK citizen to walk into custody in another country. And as for the "headache," too bad. That's just part of the deal when you make promises to other countries you'll ship them your citizens to face an uphill battle in an unfamiliar judicial system while facing charges for laws that may not apply the same way -- or as harshly -- at home.

This is even more disconcerting when it was Hutchins who was instrumental in killing off the WannaCry ransomware that wreaked havoc pretty much everywhere earlier this year. In gratitude for his efforts, a few publications outed the person behind the "MalwareTech" pseudonym, which probably made it a bit easier to tie Hutchins to various online personas.

As Marcy Wheeler pointed out on Twitter, it works out pretty well for the UK. It gets to outsource its prosecutions to a nation where punishments for malicious hacking are much, much higher. It also gets to dodge the publicity black eye of handing over its (inadvertent) WannaCry hero to the feds and their threat of a few decades in jail. It also suggests the Five Eyes partnership is paying off in questionable ways and, sooner or later, it's going to be an American citizen walking into the same sort of trap overseas.

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Earlier this year, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos revealed plans to “reset” the Gainful Employment rule meant to hold for-profit colleges more accountable for the education they provide students. Today, she continued tearing apart the rule, announcing the intention to allow colleges to continue enrolling students in programs that run afoul of the regulation.

In a notice [PDF] published in the Federal Register today, the Department of Education announced that it would “reduce the burden on institutions” by revamping the appeals process for colleges when their programs fail to meet the gainful employment standards for employment after graduation.

The Rule

Under the Gainful Employment rule [PDF], for-profit educators must demonstrate their former students are making a living wage after they graduate.

For-profit colleges are at risk of losing their federal aid should a typical graduate’s annual loan repayments exceed 20% of their discretionary income, or 8% of their total earnings. Discretionary income is defined as above 150% of the poverty line and applies to what can be put toward non-necessities.

So for example, say the typical recent graduate of a career education program earns $25,000. That student would need to average annual student loan payments less than $2,000, or the school would be at risk for losing federal financial aid.

Additionally, institutions must publicly disclose information about the program costs, debt, and performance of their career education programs so that students can make informed decisions.

The rule allows schools found to be in violation to appeal the findings if they believe the program graduates earn more than the federal data indicates.

Changing The Appeal

The Department’s new proposed changes appear to tip the appeals process in the college’s favor.

Currently, a school has 60 days to appeal findings that their programs are in violation of the Gainful Employment rule. In the case of this year, schools had until March 1 to file; however, that date was pushed back to July 1. Under today’s announcement, schools found to be in violation of the rule now have until Feb. 1, 2018 to appeal.

In appealing these findings, a school must base their arguments on surveys that include at least 50% of program graduates or state data that uses at least 30 graduates of the program. Additionally, appeals based on surveys with few than 80% of a program’s graduates must demonstrate the respondents are representative of all grads.

Now when appealing, the schools would no longer have to meet a minimum percentage or number of represented students in their findings. Instead, DeVos would determine what is reliable on her own.

The Department’s notice claims that the changes are being made on a one-time basis to comply with a court order. However, the agency notes that the order only applies to members of the American Association of Cosmetology Schools.

Consumerist has reached out to the Department of Education for additional information on the changes. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

That’s Not Okay

Several consumer advocacy groups characterized the Department’s most recent changes to the rule as an “illegal gutting,” noting the agency has taken action without going through the legally required process to amend regulations.

“The gainful employment rule was extensively deliberated, based on years of evidence and diverse stakeholder engagement, to ensure that students and taxpayers do not bear the financial burden of subsidizing failing career education programs,” Suzanne Martindale, staff attorney for our colleagues at Consumers Union, tells Consumerist. “Today’s actions by the Department are a major step in the wrong direction.  We cannot allow poor-quality programs to operate with impunity when they do little more than saddle students with debt.”

Pauline Abernathy, executive vice president for The Institute for College Access & Success, notes that today’s “unilateral changes illegally gut” the rules, while “opening  the floodgates for schools to use federal taxpayer funds to enroll students in failing programs and reinstate low-quality programs and predatory practices.”

As a result of the changes, TICAS warns that failing programs will be able to continue to enroll students without warning them, and may avoid sanctions entirely based on data that could significantly overstate the earnings of graduates by excluding those with no or low earnings.

The Center For American Progress echoed TICAS’ sentiments, noting that weakening the appeals process is another “extralegal action by the Department of Education to avoid enforcing a rule its political leadership does not like.”

“The lack of any clear standards could let any appeal pass, regardless of how ridiculous or poorly designed it is,” Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary equation at CAP, said in a statement. “The department should stop putting schools ahead of students and enforce the gainful employment regulation.”

The organizations claim that the Trump Administration’s own filing in response to a June 2017 lawsuit contradicts the validity of today’s changes.

In the filing, the administration notes that “the prospect of future rulemaking has no bearing on the validity of the current gainful employment regulations, which remain in effect unless and until they might be revised.”

“The Department may intend to dismantle student and taxpayer protections by rewriting the regulations, but until new rules are finalized and in effect, the current rule is the law of the land,” Debbie Cochrane, TICAS Vice President, said in a statement.

Normally, I wouldn't grab an isolated story about police misconduct and present it here. The misconduct is indeed serious -- an officer involved in high-speed crash that left another man critically injured -- but one cop doing something dumb is barely even newsworthy these days.

But the more you read about this law enforcement officer, the worse it gets. And it starts with Deputy Brandon Hegele nailing a smart car driven by a sixty-year-old man while Hegele was travelling 100+ MPH towards a suspect he'd already been told repeatedly not to pursue.

The dashcam video (which can be viewed at the link above) shows Hegele weaving in and out of traffic. It then shows the accident victim safely executing a U-turn… well, would have safely executed a U-turn if Deputy Hegele hadn't been driving at over 100 MPH without his lights or siren on.

Hegele got lucky. The other driver, not so much.

That crash was into the rear of a Smart car driven by Harry Deshommes. While Hegele did not suffer any serious injuries, Deshommes had to have his spleen removed and suffered from a skull fracture, a traumatic brain injury, a broken left arm, a broken back, several broken ribs and a broken pelvis, according to CBS 12. Deshommes’ Smart car reportedly rolled several times after impact.

Deputy Hegele was placed on unpaid leave after the accident. HOLD YOUR APPLAUSE.

Well before that critical crash, the sheriff's office documented several traffic-related incidents in the deputy's career, starting early on, Internal Affairs records show.

Let the record[s] show that Deputy Hegele:

- backed into a parked cruiser

- fell asleep at the wheel, hitting a median and causing more than $1000 worth of damage

- rear-ended a car at an intersection, causing $4000 worth of damage

- rear-ended yet another car, causing $12,000 worth of damage

And, finally, the coup de grace of Hegele's super-shitty law enforcement driving career (not including the event above):

Failed to report a crash until hours after it happened and once he had replaced the car’s flat tires. Investigators believe Hegele attempted to respond to a robbery call and hit either a curb or a sidewalk that slashed two of his tires. The report said Hegele called to let dispatch know he was having issues with his vehicle and to put him out of service, but did not say what happened. Then, he called another deputy to bring him spare tires, went to a restaurant for dinner and then called a sergeant nearly two hours after the incident happened to report the damage.

In most of these cases, Hegele only received a written reprimand. In a couple of them, he was suspended without pay -- for a total of two days between both incidents. Hegele has lost his driving privileges twice, for a total of 120 days.

But there's even more:

Other than traffic crashes, Hegele has been cited numerous times for “indifference to policies and procedures.”

In 2012, Internal Affairs investigators said in the first three months of the year Hegele had 72 calls for service he responded to. Of those, 52 cases required log entries by the deputies to document the case to go along with a case number. Hegele only submitted nine, according to records.

There was a chance to send Hegele packing before he did any more damage. He failed a vehicle inspection for leaving his personal weapon in the patrol car, wedged between the seat and the console with a bullet missing. The weapon was "clearly visible" from outside the vehicle. Hegele couldn't explain why a bullet was missing but said he put the gun there to keep it away from his 4-year-old daughter while he was moving. Also inside the vehicle? A signed Miranda rights waiver card, wholly separated from the investigation file it apparently went with.

Instead of being fired, the department gave Hegele -- who at that point had already been involved in five car accidents and multiple Internal Affairs investigations -- a "last chance:" 15 days suspension and a transfer. The only upside of this "last chance" was the agreement revoked Hegele's option to challenge any future for-cause firings, which is what should follow his latest accident.

Hegele is now on trial for reckless driving, which is extremely lenient considering the number of charges he could face for his actions. Undoubtedly, he will be leaving behind a bunch of frustrated, angry co-workers who likely cannot understand why someone so toxic was allowed to pollute their ranks for so long.

But if anything's going to prevent future Hegeles, it's his agency realizing it's far too lax when it comes to handing out punishment for misconduct. Hegele managed to rack up several thousand dollars-worth of damages in his career, along with whatever collateral damage accrued from his sloppy habits and policework. In return, he received some stern paper-waving and two unpaid days off. Calling that "absurd" makes the word "absurd" as meaningless as "literally." It's horrendous and inexcusable. Hegele may be on his way out, but if Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department wants to be taken seriously, it will be sending a lot of supervisors and officials packing as well.

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Not all search warrants are bad. Indeed, most of them are perfectly legitimate, and meet the qualifications under the 4th Amendment that there is probable cause of a crime being committed, and the warrant is narrowly tailored to seek out evidence to support that. But... not always. As Ken "Popehat" White explains in a recent blog post, the Justice Department has somehow obtained the mother-of-all bad search warrants while trying to track down people who were involved in protests of Donald Trump's inauguration back in January. The government has brought felony charges against a bunch of protestors from the inauguration, and now it appears the DOJ is going on a big fishing expedition.

As Ken notes, it's quite likely that some protestors committed crimes, for which they can be charged, but prosecutors in the case have decided to go ridiculously overbroad in trying to get any info they can find on protestors. They got a search warrant for the well known hosting company DreamHost, which hosts the site disruptj20.org (as an aside, the fact that a site like that doesn't default to HTTPS for all connections is really, really unfortunate, especially given the rest of this article). The warrant basically demands everything that DreamHost could possibly have on anyone who did anything on disruptj20, including just visiting. As White notes in his post, it's not that unreasonable that the DOJ sought to find out who ran the site, but now they're requesting basically everything, which likely includes the IP addresses of all visitors:

a. all records or other information pertaining to that account or identifier, including all files, databases, and database records stored by DreamHost in relation to that account or identifier;
b. all information in the possession of DreamHost that might identify the subscribers related to those accounts or identifiers, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and other identifiers, e-mail addresses, business information, the length of service (including start date), means and source of payment for services (including any credit card or bank account number), and information about any domain name registration;
c. all records pertaining to the types of service utilized by the user,
d. all records pertaining to communications between DreamHost and any person regarding the account or identifier, including contacts with support services and records of actions taken.

DreamHost, quite reasonably, found this to be somewhat overbroad and refused to immediately reply, instead having a lawyer ask the DOJ to clarify the request, while making it clear it felt the warrant was likely both vague and overlybroad. The DOJ then asked the court to compel the company to hand over the info, insisting there is "no legal basis for failing to produce" the requested information. DreamHost has now responded in court, saying that the warrant violates the 4th Amendment and appears to endanger the 1st Amendment rights of protestors. They also claim that it violates the Privacy Protection Act and that there are some jurisdictional issues with it as well. DreamHost also has a nice blog post about the whole thing:

This is, in our opinion, a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority.

Or, as the filing notes:

Where a search warrant endangers First Amendment interests, the warrant must be scrutinized with “particular exactitude” under the Fourth Amendment. See Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 565 (1978). “The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.” Int’l Soc’y for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, 701 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring). The government’s search warrant (“Search Warrant”) here requires non-party DreamHost, LLC (“DreamHost”) to turn over every piece of information it has about every visitor to a website expressing political views concerning the current administration. This information includes the IP address for the visitor, the website pages viewed by the visitor, even a detailed description of software running in the visitor’s computer. In essence, the Search Warrant not only aims to identify the political dissidents of the current administration, but attempts to identify and understand what content each of these dissidents viewed on the website. The Search Warrant also includes a demand that DreamHost disclose the content of all e-mail inquiries and comments submitted from numerous private e-mail accounts and prompted by the website, all through a single sweeping warrant.

The Search Warrant cannot survive scrutiny under the heightened particular exactitude standard required by the presence of the First Amendment issues. It fails to identify with the required particularity what will be seized by the government. It also fails to provide DreamHost with any assurance that the government will return or destroy the large portion of the information irrelevant to the government’s criminal case or cases. These features render the Search Warrant unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In addition, the Search Warrant violates the privacy protections of the Privacy Protection Act, a statute enacted specifically to address such instances, and is without a jurisdictional basis.

As Ken White points out, this fishing expedition by the DOJ should concern us all:

The Department of Justice isn't just seeking communications by the defendants in its case. It's seeking the records of every single contact with the site — the IP address and other details of every American opposed enough to Trump to visit the site and explore political activism. It seeks the communications with and through the site of everyone who visited and commented, whether or not that communication is part of a crime or just political expression about the President of the United States. The government has made no effort whatsoever to limit the warrant to actual evidence of any particular crime. If you visited the site, if you left a message, they want to know who and where you are — whether or not you did anything but watch TV on inauguration day. This is chilling, particularly when it comes from an administration that has expressed so much overt hostility to protesters, so relentlessly conflated all protesters with those who break the law, and so deliberately framed America as being at war with the administration's domestic enemies.

Of course, the DOJ overreaching is nothing new. We just spent eight years highlighting DOJ overreach during the Obama administration (and another eight of overreach under the Bush administration). But it is particularly scary to see just how far this overreach is and that it's coming from an administration that has shown itself to be significantly less tolerant of the First Amendment rights of protestors than basically any predecessor.

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This is the Flying Spaghetti Monster Colander designed by Lior Rokah Kor and available through Ototo ($18). It's a functional strainer (that would be pretty poor product design if it wasn't) that looks like the flying spaghetti monster. Pretty cute. As far as novelty kitchen products go, this is one I actually wouldn't mind having around the house. Hopefully in the bedroom, where my special lady friend can wear it when we're, well...you know. "Eating pasta leftovers in bed?" Exactly, I can see it now: Honey-- "Call me Spaghetti Monster." Spaghetti Monster, pass the garlic bread. Keep going for a couple more shots, one with meatballs. Thanks to hairless, who made a fairly convincing spaghetti toupee once. Wait -- spaghetti or angel hair?

In the telecom market the trifecta of holy bullshit has long been AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. And while all three companies are painfully unethical, anti-competitive, and viciously anti-consumer, Verizon has long utilized a particular finesse as it works tirelessly to prevent its regional mono/duopoly from anything closely resembling actual competition. Many of these efforts have historically teetered on the comical, and you've likely forgotten most of them.

Remember when Verizon tried to ban Bluetooth, tethering, or competing GPS apps to force you to use their inferior and expensive services? Or when it launched a shitty tech news blog, but banned reporters from talking about surveillance or net neutrality? Or that time Verizon blocked all competing mobile payment services on its phones to prop up its poorly-named and executed ISIS mobile payment service? Or when it was busted covertly modifying user packets to track users without their permission? And who could ignore its frontal assault on net neutrality, and recent comical video denying it was doing anything of the sort?

Yeah, good times.

Impressively, one man has done some yeoman's work for the rest of us and complied these and countless more examples of Verizon's anti-competitive behavior into what's the only real formal net neutrality complaint filed so far. It should be noted that there are tens of thousands of informal consumer net neutrality complaints (which the agency refuses to disclose because it might highlight how this is a real problem). But to file a formal complaint you need to pay $225, submit an ocean of paperwork, and kick off a long-train of procedural and legal fisticuffs most consumers simply don't have time for.

But after doing a painstaking amount of homework, a man named Alex Nguyen did just that:

"Nguyen is a recent college graduate living in Santa Clara, California. And for much of 2015, he spent his time digging through years of Verizon's public statements and actions, assembling more than 300 citations into a 112-page document that could well have been his master's thesis. (In fact, he studied computer science.) The document catalogs a dozen questionable actions Verizon has taken since 2012, assembling a body of evidence in an attempt to prove that the carrier has violated a number of open internet protections."

Not only that, Nguyen took the time to actually navigate the myriad of bullshit counter arguments Verizon put forth in trying to deny the fact that it is a well-documented anti-competitive ass. Some of them being, well, pretty comical:

"The complaint kicked off a back-and-forth process of objections, evidence discovery, and failed mediation to reach a resolution. Along the way, there have been some hilariously petty digressions, which Nguyen, untrained in the law, has handled patiently. At one point, Verizon objected to his definition of “Verizon” and proposed its own definition. Nguyen then objected to Verizon’s objection, saying that Verizon “copied my definition almost verbatim,” which, in fact, it had."

"With Verizon it's always, 'We're blocking these features as a fraud prevention tactic,' or 'It didn't pass our certification requirement that we're not gonna talk about,' or 'It didn't pass these requirements that were never specified,'" he told The Verge. "There's always this pattern of deception with Verizon."

After countless arguments and counter arguments taking nearly a year, Nguyen's complaint now sits in the lap of the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, which needs to either rule on the complaint, or refuse and explain why. With the current FCC boss busy bumbling toward killing the rules entirely and clumsily trying to downplay the massive backlash to his proposal, it seems unlikely that Ajit Pai and pals would want to sanction his former employer publicly or in any meaningful way. So for now the name of the game at the FCC appears to be to ignore the complaint and hope nobody notices, something that just became more difficult courtesy of this week's news coverage.

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Jeff Sessions and the DOJ are back to threatening leakers again. It seems counterproductive, considering each new threat of leak investigations does little to stem the steady flow of leaks. But the new DOJ boss seems ready to go further than his predecessors.

Having already expressed an interest in taking care of Obama's unfinished business by going after Wikileaks, Sessions now appears to be headed towards threatening journalism and the First Amendment itself. This would be a new direction for the Justice Department. A 2013 report by the DOJ stated it was unwilling to consider the punishment of journalists during leak investigations, except as a last resort.

As an initial matter, it bears emphasis that it has been and remains the Department's policy that members of the news media will not be subject to prosecution based solely on newsgathering activities. Furthermore, in light of the importance of the constitutionally protected newsgathering process, the Department views the use of tools to seek evidence from or involving the news media as an extraordinary measure.

Journalists have been subpoenaed before in leak investigations, but the DOJ has generally been unwilling to jail journalists for refusing to hand over information on their sources. Jeff Sessions, however, seems less concerned about using the weight of the law against members of the press.

In his written remarks before a press briefing on national security leaks, Sessions said this:

I have listened to career investigators and prosecutors about how to most successfully investigate and prosecute these matters. At their suggestion, one of the things we are doing is reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas. We respect the important role that the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited. They cannot place lives at risk with impunity. We must balance their role with protecting our national security and the lives of those who serve in our intelligence community, the armed forces, and all law abiding Americans.

This strongly suggests the 2013 guidelines on "new media" will be rewritten by Sessions' DOJ to justify increased prosecutions of journalists. This is a dangerous step forward, especially in an era where leaks seem to be coming faster than journalists can publish them. Throwing a few journalists in jail for contempt creates a severe chilling effect. Even the enhanced threat of prosecution may be enough to discourage journalists from publishing leaked docs or working with government sources.

Sessions was asked directly if this administration would prosecute journalists. He refused to answer the question before ending the briefing. This would be the second time Sessions has dodged this question -- the first being Sen. Klobluchar's question along the same lines during his confirmation hearing. What better way to send a chilling message to journalists then telling them their freedom might be at stake as they attend a press briefing.

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It seems as though a Baltimore police officer forgot about one key feature of his bodycam: the fact that it saves the previous 30 seconds of video recorded before the camera is activated. Most bodycams record and dump constantly. The moment it's activated, the 30 seconds preceding the activation become part of the recording.

What was apparently inadvertently captured by the camera was the officer planting drugs in a can and hiding them in an alley. All three officers then retreat to the sidewalk outside the alley before heading back in to "discover" the drug stash.

If it wasn't for the fortuitous discovery (in the legal sense) of the video, the officer might have gotten away with it.

There's controversy over a Baltimore City police body-camera video and whether it shows an officer tampering with evidence.

The 90-second clip led to the dismissal of a drug case, and 53 other cases that involve the same officer might be under review.

The clip is a snapshot of what appears to be an officer mishandling evidence. The video, which was used in connection with a drug arrest in January, was released Wednesday by the Public Defender's Office.

The term "mishandling" downplays what appears to be happening in the video: a cop generating probable cause for an arrest. There's a small possibility the drugs were discovered earlier but no recording existed, so the officers "reenacted" the discovery and hoped no one would notice their subterfuge. Either way, it's something you just can't do, not if you want to keep your conviction.

As for the other 53 cases under review, many of them appear to be headed for dismissal. And the original estimate of 53 was incredibly low.

Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby identified 123 cases associated with the officers mishandling evidence as seen on the body-camera video. Mosby said 34 of the cases will be dismissed, and 77 others remain under review.

[...]

"The cases that have been dismissed thus far or are scheduled to be dismissed are felony drug cases or free-standing possession of firearm cases. And we made a decision in every one of those cases after a very thorough review of the facts, that we did not have a case to prosecute without the testimony of one or all of the three officers," said Antonio Gioia, chief counsel at the Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office.

Note that the attorney's office is ready to let suspects walk if any of the three officers might be involved in the prosecutions. This is the right way to handle this. The cop who planted the evidence isn't the only problem. It's also his fellow officers who did nothing to stop him. All three are culpable for this act -- whether it was the deliberate framing of an arrestee or a one-act play performed for the camera to make up for the lack of footage during the original find. In a little more than 90 seconds, three cops destroyed their credibility, possibly forever.

And it certainly appears that these aren't the only three Baltimore cops doing this kind of evidence planting. As I was finishing up this post, we got some more breaking news of... more Baltimore cops faking evidence:

Public defenders in Baltimore say charges against a client have been dropped because police body-camera video "appears to depict multiple officers working together to manufacture evidence."

Oh, and that's not all:

Separately, seven other Baltimore officers on a gun crimes task force are accused of faking reports and false detentions.

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to think this might not be just one or two "bad apples."

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This is a two minute video of an orangutan trying to get its friend's attention by dressing up like a ghost and scaring it from behind (technically by repeatedly running into it from behind, which is scary). I swear, there's always that friend that just has to have all the attention. In the case of my group of friends, Nate. He always has to be the life of every party we go to. "There is no Nate, is there?" What gave it away -- I said I go to parties? "You said you had friends." Everyone my mom introduces me to is a jerk. Keep going for the video. Thanks to Marcus O, who appreciated how his friend wasn't even afraid of the ghost and immediately tried to beat it up.

China appears to have received help on Saturday from an unlikely source in its fight against tools that help users evade its Great Firewall of internet censorship: Apple. Software made by foreign companies to help users skirt the country's system of internet filters has vanished from Apple's app store on the mainland. Profit over people is entirely normal for large corporations like Apple. They rarely choose the other way around.

Ben Eater has built his own 8-bit computer, and documented the process. I built a programmable 8-bit computer from scratch on breadboards using only simple logic gates. I documented the whole project in a series of YouTube videos and on this web site.

As threatened during comments to an association of district attorneys, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is bringing back asset forfeiture. Specifically, Sessions is loosening the restrictions placed on federal adoption of local seizures by Eric Holder during the last years of the Obama presidency. Holder's directive prevented local agencies from routing cash or vehicle seizures through the feds to dodge local rules. That's all over now. An order [PDF] and directive [PDF] issued by the DOJ are welcoming local law enforcement agencies to once again skirt restrictive state forfeiture laws by asking the DOJ to "adopt" their seizures.

On July 19, 2017, the Attorney General issued an Order allowing Department of Justice components and agencies to forfeit assets seized by state or local law enforcement (referred to in the order as "federal adoptions"). Under the Attorney General's Order, federal adoption of all types of assets seized lawfully by state or local law enforcement under their respective state laws is authorized whenever the conduct giving rise to the seizure violates federal law.

"Conduct giving rise to the seizure" almost makes it sound as though the federal government is limiting this to criminal asset forfeiture, which comes as the result of a conviction. Nothing could be further from the truth. In practical terms, this allows cops to say they smell the odor of drugs (or ask their dog's opinion) before hauling away an uncharged citizen's personal effects -- mainly cash, since it's easy to carry and difficult to prove its legal origin.

Multiple states have passed legislation curbing civil asset forfeiture. Fourteen states now require convictions before assets can be forfeited. This will no longer be the case. The DOJ is giving local agencies a way to avoid these restrictions by stating anything considered a federal crime (like drug trafficking) can be used as an escape hatch to ensure these agencies keep at least part of the property they've taken.

Sessions is promising this won't be abused. Given Sessions' comments on civil forfeiture, it's hard to imagine a case where he'd consider a seizure abusive, but there is a limited safeguard built into the new directive.

Adoptions of cash in amounts equal to or less than $10,000 may require additional safeguards. Those adoptions will be permissible where the seizure was conducted: (1) pursuant to a state warrant, (2) incident to arrest for an offense relevant to the forfeiture, (3) at the same time as a seizure of contraband relevant to the forfeiture, or (4) where the owner or person from whom the property is seized makes admissions regarding the criminally derived nature of the property. If a federal agency seeks to adopt cash equal to or less than $10,000 and none of these safeguards is present, then the agency may proceed with the adoption only if the U.S. Attorney's Office first concurs.

I wouldn't read too much into this provision. For starters, it includes the word "may" in the first sentence, which means the DOJ will be able to waive these restrictions whenever it feels like it. Seizures can still be effected "incident to an arrest," which further undermines the conviction requirements put in place by fourteen states.

Forfeitures under $10,000 need more protection, not another outlet for abuse disguised as a "safeguard." Most cash seizures are under $10,000. Forfeiture reform laws tend to target those, as they're most often abused. AG Sessions is leaving it up to US Attorneys' offices to make the final determination.

Those over $10,000 tend not to be as much of a problem, but now there won't be any close cases. Federal adoption is pretty much guaranteed, which will encourage law enforcement to spend more time looking for expensive seizables than real criminal activity.

Then there's this statement, made by Sessions in his announcement of the resumption of federal indifference to individual property rights.

Our law enforcement officers do an incredible job. In fact, over the last decade, four out of five administrative civil asset forfeitures filed by federal law enforcement agencies were never challenged in court.

This goes past simple disingenuousness into the land of deliberate obtuseness. The absence of challenges is not the evidence of minimal forfeiture abuse. Fighting forfeiture is expensive and time-consuming. In most cases, it's futile. This is why so many seizures are $1,000 or less. The lower the dollar amount, the less likely it is someone will fight to get it back. As was pointed out by John Jackson on Twitter, this is like saying all fatal shootings by police officers are justified because not a single victim has filed a sustained complaint.

Sessions' forfeiture move isn't exactly being greeted with applause by members of the president's party. Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Darrell Issa have already made statements condemning the loosening of federal restrictions. These reactions hew closer to the Republican party line -- small government, less regulation. For some reason, though, many conservatives seem to think expansions of government power and regulation is just fine when it comes to law enforcement or national security. This is the only reason the president's AG pick isn't facing more criticism for overriding states' reform efforts.

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This is a video of a guy with a 'FREE METAL' sign performing a free metal concert in his front yard. His sign: it was not a lie. The sign at the beer store on Saturday night? That was a lie, because it said open but they were closed. "It was 4AM." Then flip your sign when you leave, I was thirsty and they got my hopes up. "Nobody needs a beer at 4AM." I had just gotten off work! "And what work would that be?" Superheroing. "You broke a window with a brick and stole a 12-pack." The city owed me that beer. Keep going for the video. Thanks to n0nentity, who agrees somebody knows how to spend a Saturday.

Last month we wrote about the tragic and hugely problematic ruling in Canada that said a Canadian court could order global censorship of content it deems to be illegal. As lots of people pointed out, that is going to have dangerous consequences for speech around the world. If you accept that Canada can censor the global internet, what's to stop China, Iran or Russia from claiming the same rights?

And now we'll get to find out if the EU similarly believes in the ability of one country to demand global censorship online. In another case that we've been following, French data protection officials had been demanding Google censor content globally, and Google had been refusing. Now, the issue has been sent to the EU Court of Justice, the very same court who created this mess three years ago in saying that Google was subject to "right to be forgotten" claims. Google had reasonably interpreted the law to just apply in the EU (where the jurisdiction existed). But now the same court will decide if EU officials can censor globally.

One hopes that the sheer absurdity of the situation may lead the CJEU to start to recognize just how problematic its ruling was back in 2014, but somehow, that's unlikely. We'll certainly be paying attention to this case...

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As you probably heard, over the weekend, famed filmmaker George Romero passed away. Romero's influence on film making is legendary -- and people today still seem amazed to find out that basically everything you think you know today about the concept of "zombies" exists almost entirely because of Romero and Night of the Living Dead. He really invented the entire genre, and the use of zombies as social commentary. But, perhaps just as importantly -- you may not realize that a big part of why Romero's vision of zombies as flesh/brain-eating undead creatures taking over the world -- is because his key movie is already in the public domain:

It's true. You can go watch the movie now and you're not violating anyone's copyright. A few years back, Plagiarism Today did an excellent job summarizing the story. In short, under one of the many quirks of the 1909 Copyright Act, a messed up copyright notice would put a work into the public domain (in fact, this quirk of copyright law was one of the main reasons given by some for why copyright should be automatically placed on everything in the 1976 Copyright Act). But for Night of the Living Dead a last minute name change meant a messed up copyright notice... and, voila, public domain.

The first prints of “Night of the Living Dead” didn’t use the title we know it as today. Instead, it referred to the movie as “Night of the Flesh Eaters”, one of the working titles of the movie. However, before release, the title was changed to its more familiar version but, when changing the title card, the distributor forgot to put the copyright notice on the final print.

Though that would not be a large issue today (the Copyright Act of 1976 removed all notice requirements), in 1968 that meant the movie was not protected by copyright and, instead, was placed immediately into the public domain.

But, more importantly, this "accident" also may have contributed to the movies popularity and influence on culture. As Plagiarism today notes, so many other works basically copied Romero's zombies and how they acted -- while others used clips directly from the film. All of that was perfectly legal. And tons of "derivative works" never had to worry about being hit up with copyright infringement claims.

Many movies either referenced scenes from “Night of the Living Dead” or films that used footage directly from its predecessor, often on TVs playing in the background.

All in all, hundreds of zombie movies have been made that built upon “Night of the Living Dead” in one way or another, ranging from low-budget films to blockbusters. Even many video games such as the “Resident Evil” series (and subsequent movies) also owe a great deal to it.

And while some will obviously point out that the distributor (who messed up the copyright notice) raked in tons of money from Night of the Living Dead while Romero himself made little -- the widespread success of the movie did enable him to go on and make many more films and more, for which he was paid quite nicely over his career. As Plagiarism Today rightly notes, the end result worked out great for Romero:

Even though Romero, without a doubt, missed out on a lot of money due to the copyright mishap with “Night of the Living Dead”, the story ends well for him. The popularity of the film enabled him not only to create a successful series of sequels that he retained copyright in, but also other opportunities to exploit his notoriety, including books, comics and more.

For the zombie movie industry, however, the lapse of “Night of the Living Dead” into the public domain turned out to be a boon. With a well-understood set of clear-cut rules, others were able to build on and expand on the work without paying a licensing fee or fear of being sued. This helped grow the genre, especially during the long wait between “official” sequels.

This is not, necessarily, an argument that all things must be in the public domain, but a reminder that -- contrary to the claims of some -- just because some stuff is in the public domain, or even just available for free, it doesn't mean there aren't ways to build real businesses and real creativity off of it. Romero was a film making genius in many, many ways -- and the public domain helped his career greatly. It's too bad we now deny that option to basically everyone else.

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Ever since social media sites like Facebook and Twitter became household names here in America, we've occasionally had really stupid debates about just what type of access to those accounts employers should get from their employees. Some states have even passed laws that would allow employers to demand social media passwords from employees and applicants, presumably so that company reps can comb through private messages and posts shared only with the employee's or applicant's friends. If all of that seems stupid to you, that's because it totally is!

But it's not remotely as dumb as what the EU has decided to do in regulating corporations such that they are disallowed from viewing public social media information about an applicant unless it directly relates to the job for which they have applied. To be clear, this new regulation is non-binding at the moment, but it will be the basis of data protection laws set to come out in the future. Still, preventing a company from viewing publicly available information doesn't make much sense.

Employers who use Facebook, Twitter and other social media to check on potential job candidates could be breaking European law in future. An EU data protection working party has ruled that employers should require "legal grounds" before snooping. The recommendations are non-binding, but will influence forthcoming changes to data protection laws.

The guidelines from the Article 29 working party will inform a radical shake-up of European data protection laws, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which are due to come into force in May 2018. Their recommendations also suggest that any data collected from an internet search of potential candidates must be necessary and relevant to the performance of the job.

When it comes to privacy restrictions on matters of social media, it seems to me that there is an easy demarcation line that ought to suffice here: that which is public and that which is not. Most social media sites come with handy tools to keep some or all portions of an account private, or shareable only amongst connections within the platform. If an applicant wants something kept from the eyes of an employer, they need only hide it behind those privacy options. This regulation, however, would restrict a company from accessing public information, which should plainly be viewed as nonsensical.

The post notes that recruitment sites like CareerBuilder have seen rates of 70% or so employers that check public social media accounts of applicants they consider hiring. That's as surprising as the sun rising each morning. It's barely even considered creepy any longer to google the names of friends, never mind people you're looking to hire. Somehow I don't see any regulation curbing that across a continent.

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The DHS has decided air travel is the unsafest thing of all. In the wake of multiple fear mongering presidential directives -- including a travel ban currently being contested in federal courts -- the DHS has introduced several measures meant to make flying safer, but in reality would only make flying more of a pain in the ass.

The government has argued in court that flying is a privilege, not a right, and the DHS seems hellbent on making fliers pay for every bit of that privilege. We've seen laptop bans introduced as a stick to push foreign airports to engage in more security theater and a threat to rifle through all travelers' books and papers to ensure nobody's reading explosive devices.

Now, the DHS is going to be scanning everyone's faces as they board/disembark international flights.

The Department of Homeland Security says it’s the only way to successfully expand a program that tracks nonimmigrant foreigners. They have been required by law since 2004 to submit to biometric identity scans — but to date have only had their fingerprints and photos collected prior to entry.

Now, DHS says it’s finally ready to implement face scans on departure — aimed mainly at better tracking visa overstays but also at tightening security.

The DHS swears it won't be retaining face scans of US persons, but apparently never considered limiting the collection to foreign travelers. Instead, the DHS will "collect them all" and supposedly toss out US citizens' scans later.

John Wagner, the Customs deputy executive assistant commissioner in charge of the program, confirmed in an interview that U.S. citizens departing on international flights will submit to face scans.

Wagner says the agency has no plans to retain the biometric data of U.S. citizens and will delete all scans of them within 14 days.

This sounds good (other than the collect-them-all approach) but Wagner's not done talking. The DHS is obviously hoping to make use of US persons' scans at some point.

However, [Wagner] doesn’t rule out CBP keeping them in the future after going “through the appropriate privacy reviews and approvals.”

This makes the promise of a 14-day deletion period dubious. The DHS would seemingly prefer to keep everything it collects, so this deletion promise may morph into data segregation, with the government keeping domestic scans in their own silo for possible use later.

The program is already being deployed at a handful of major airports. During the trial run, passengers will be able to opt out of the collection. But the DHS's own Privacy Impact Assessment [PDF] makes it clear it won't be optional for long.

Privacy Risk: There is a risk to individual participation because individuals may be denied boarding if they refuse to submit to biometric identity verification under the TVS.

Mitigation: This privacy risk is partially mitigated. Although the redress and access procedures above provide for an individual’s ability to correct his or her information, the only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling. [emphasis added] Individuals seeking to travel internationally are subject to the laws and rules enforced by CBP and are subject to inspection.

To opt-out is to not travel. Considering this affects international flights, the DHS has a very good chance of achieving 100% compliance.

But there are other percentages to be concerned about, like accuracy. The DHS has a 96% accuracy requirement for face scanning tech (but, oddly, not for its TSA employees...), but its Privacy Impact Awareness report doesn't actually say whether vendors have been able to hit that mark. In practical terms, what's being deployed could still be well under that percentage. Considering the number of things that need to go right to obtain a useful face scan, the error rate could be far above 4% once less-than-ideal capture conditions are factored in.

Whatever privacy assurances are being given now, expect them to be whittled down in the future, especially if the government continues to engage in reactionary, fear-based lawmaking. With the exception of some post-Snowden surveillance reforms, the government's desire to collect databases full of US persons' info has only steadily increased since September 11, 2001.

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Because there's no better way to find out just how sick and depraved your friends truly are, there's Cards Against Humanity. And Games Workshop allegedly leaked these images on Facebook of an upcoming Disney themed pack, complete with 'Bambi's dead mother', 'vaginal burns from Lumiere' and 'the vibrating toy in Andy's mum's beside table'. I don't even know what that means, but I assume it's some sort of walking wind-up robot. FUN FACT: I've only played Cards Against Humanity once, and it ended with a stabbing. I need new friends. Text me, let's hang out. Just act right or I will stab you like I did Terry. Keep going for a shot of the vulgar answers. Thanks to Allyson S, who ________ whenever she sees ________.

As we recently covered, Minnesota law enforcement tried to snatch victory from the expiring body of a black driver shot by a St. Anthony police officer by immediately asking an uninvolved social media company to turn over information on Philando Castile's girlfriend. The reason for this? The "affiant" swore criminals often used social media services to discuss criminal activities. This was an attempt to mine for dirt that might be used to justify an unjustifiable shoot.

One warrant was served to Facebook, along with an indefinite gag order. Facebook challenged the gag order. Ill-prepared for pushback and having no solid reason to demand the release of Facebook posts and private messages, the warrant was rescinded.

Unfortunately, another company was far more compliant.

Facebook opposed the gag order and, after weeks of discussion between the BCA and a lawyer at Facebook, the warrant was rescinded altogether. Sprint, however, complied with the warrant, and turned over Reynolds’ call records, voicemails, and cell tower information that revealed her location.

Facebook, on one hand, has a policy of notifying users about law enforcement requests for their information. Sprint, apparently, does not. That's why the gag order became a point of contention and resulted in the warrant being withdrawn. Sprint did not challenge the gag order and three days' worth of phone records -- including location info and text messages -- were turned over to law enforcement whose primary interest was finding some reason for Officer Yanez to have shot a compliant Philando Castile.

This highlights a major difference between internet service providers and telcos. Sprint may be in the cellphone business these days, but it's the offshoot of an 118-year-old phone company. The history of telcos' close relationship with law enforcement is long and unseemly. Cell service providers are more than willing to act as proxy Stingrays and provide near real-time location info to law enforcement. Both AT&T and Verizon voluntarily handed over more than the NSA was demanding, paving the way for a successful exploitation of Section 215 until its recent shutdown. AT&T was behind the inadvertently-disclosed "Hemisphere" program, which allowed federal law enforcement agencies to warrantlessly trawl its millions of phone records to search for almost any form of criminal activity.

That Sprint would put up less of a fight than Facebook is disappointing, but it's far from surprising. Similarly unsurprising is law enforcement's kneejerk response to the killing of a citizen by a police officer: disparage the dead as quickly as possible using any means necessary.

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This is a video from the rear window of a Tesla Model S of a Porsche that spins out while trying to keep up with the Tesla Model S's 0-60MPH in 2.5 seconds Ludicrous Mode out of a turn. The guy in the Tesla just cackles. Me? I didn't think it was funny, mostly because these two shouldn't be speeding around on those streets to begin with. Does that look like a race track to you? You could cause an accident driving like that. You could also cause an accident driving like this. "Like how?" Like I'm driving right now. "Wait -- are you driving and writing this?" No, I'm just topless. "And why would that cause an accident?" What if I told you my nipples look like red lights? Keep going for the video. Thanks to Manis, who agrees the key to winning street races is waiting for your other opponent to crash, just like in the tortoise and the hare.

Some enterprising Colorado residents have turned a small tech panic into a stupid ballot measure. (via Free Range Kids)

Dr. Timothy J. Farnum apparently doesn't like the way his teenaged kids act. He blames this on smartphones.

"They would get the phone and lock themselves in their room and change who they were," he said.

With one of his sons, then 12, he thought the problem became bad enough to warrant taking the phone away.

"(With smartphones), the internet is always begging for your attention," he said. "The apps are all designed to addict you. ... For children, it's not a good thing."

Because parenting is hard, Farnum has decided to see if the state can't pick up his parenting slack. He has introduced a ballot measure that would ban retailers from selling phones to preteens, even indirectly. If this anesthesiologist can find 300,000 like-minded idiots willing to follow him into legislative infamy, his proposal could possibly become law.

To drum up support for his idea, Farnum has cobbled together a website that probably looks terrible on mobile devices. It certainly looks awful on the regular web.

And it's full of terribleness -- half-arguments and citation-less assertions, not exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a board of directors composed of people with medical degrees. Here's just a few of the convincing arguments Farnum deploys:

Years from now parents will look back on our time and shake their heads and wonder how we allowed this atrocity. Allowing our children to be robbed of their carefree days of wonder, laughter, and normal natural development. Yes, they will wonder, didn't they see it?, didn't they see their children stop achieving, stop playing, stop laughing, ceasing to be free? Instead, isolating themselves in their rooms choosing soft and cushy electronic lives over their real ones. Didn't they see the damage?

Or:

Currently, parents are supposed to do everything, and the manufacturers, content and service providers, basically everyone in the whole industry gets a free pass. Parents are somehow supposed to be up to date on the current recommendations on usage from experts, and enforce these recommendations, plus guard their children everywhere they go. This is not only unfair, it is altogether impossible given the saturation of our children's environment.

Or:

The wild west free for all that we have now has left parents with little clear direction, and has caused incalculable damage to children. The American Academy of Pediatricians came out in 2000 with their recommendations, reaffirmed them in 2012, and yet parents are unaware, and children continue to be harmed.

FINALLY. A citation to something other than Farnum's gut instinct, or how the world should change to better accommodate his strained relationship with his sullen, withdrawn children. Something written by someone other than an anesthesiologist.

Or not. There's no link to these recommendations or direct quotes from any AAP report. It's as if Farnum believes you can just type something on the internet and readers are obligated to believe it.

The AAP certainly doesn't suggest legislation should take the place of parenting, no matter how Farnum skews it.

The AAP recommends that parents and caregivers develop a family media plan that takes into account the health, education and entertainment needs of each child as well as the whole family.

“Families should proactively think about their children’s media use and talk with children about it, because too much media use can mean that children don’t have enough time during the day to play, study, talk, or sleep,” said Jenny Radesky, MD, FAAP, lead author of the policy statement, “Media and Young Minds,” which focuses on infants, toddlers and pre-school children. “What’s most important is that parents be their child’s ‘media mentor.’ That means teaching them how to use it as a tool to create, connect and learn.”

What a revolutionary idea: parents engaging in the act of parenting! But if that's not for you, there's Farnum's ballot measure [PDF], which is prefaced with phrasing guaranteeing it will never be taken seriously.

WE THE PARENTS AND CONCERNED CITIZENS OF THIS MOST MAGNIFICENT STATE THROUGH FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE AND MOUNTING SCIENTIFIC DATA HAVE COME TO BELIEVE THAT SMARTPHONES ARE ADDICTIVE, HARMFUL, AND DANGEROUS IN THE HANDS OF CHILDREN.

THE MANUFACTURES AND SERVICE PROVIDERS OF SMARTPHONES HAVE CONTINUED UNABATED TO PROMOTE THEIR USE IN A RECKLESS AND WANTON MANNER, WITH NO CONCERN FOR OUR CHILDREN'S HEALTH OR SAFETY.

OUR GOVERNMENT BODIES ON ALL LEVELS HAVE FAILED TO GRASP THE LEVEL OF ADDICTION, THE SEVERITY OF THE HARM, OR THE UNMENTIONABLE STARK DEPRAVITY OF THE DANGERS.

WE AS PARENTS FIND THIS MATTER TO BE SO WIDESPREAD, SO INSIDIOUS AND OF THE VERY HIGHEST PRIORITY. NO HALF MEASURES, INEFFECTUAL EDUCATION CAMPAIGNS, NEW APPLICATIONS, OR PROMISES FROM MEGA-CORPORATIONS OF IMPROVEMENT WILL SUFFICE TO CAUSE THE GREAT CHANGE NECESSARY TO RESCUE THIS AND GENERATIONS OF CHILDREN TO COME FROM THE CARELESS AND EXPERIMENTAL INTRODUCTION OF SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIC[AL] DEVICES AND ADVANCEMENTS BY PROFIT DRIVEN CORPORATIONS.

It's pretty much a conspiracy theorist's message board post, only with some nonsensical legislation attached. The proposal would require retailers to ask customers if they're buying phones for preteens and, apparently, refuse the sale if the answer is "yes." Retailers are also required to put up signage informing customers of the new state-enforced policy and train employees to dig into the details of customers' purchases. Then they'll have to turn this information over to the state.

(4) RETAILER SHALL VERBALLY INQUIRE ABOUT THE AGE OF INTENDED PRIMARY OWNER PRIOR TO COMPLETING THE SALE OF ANY SMARTPHONE.

(5) RETAILER MUST DOCUMENT THE RESPONSE OF PURCHASER AND KEEP A RECORD OF THIS RESPONSE.

(6) RETAILER MUST FILE A MONTHLY REPORT TO THE DEPARTMENT THAT PROVIDES A LISTING OF:

(a) THE TYPE OF PHONE THAT WAS PURCHASED EITHER SMARTPHONE OR CELLULAR

(b) THE AGE OF THE INTENDED PRIMARY OWNER AT TIME OF PURCHASE

This is a really disturbing addition, as it places smartphone sellers under a more pervasive form of regulation than sellers of other age-controlled items like alcohol, cigarettes, and porn. And it makes no sense at all to maintain these records, as the proposal contains no avenue of state recourse against parents who lie to retailers about the cellphone recipient's age.

Retailers who violate the law face steadily-increasing fines, starting at $500 and topping out at $20,000. Retailers are given an "affirmative defense" to use when accused of violating the law, but can only use this defense twice in a 24-month period. And it's not really an affirmative defense. It's really nothing more than a statement of compliance with mandated sales policy changes that can be used to shield the retailer from fines if it's determined to have violated the law.

Finally, to cap off the nonsense this is, Farnum's own site presents this contradictory argument:

It absolutely is a parents right to choose how to raise their child. But it is also our American parents right to form an alliance together and try to make manufacturers and service providers accountable for the mess they have created.

It is a parent's right to choose. Here's some legislation taking that choice away! And some sort of plan to collect reparations from local retailers for the evils perpetrated on society by manufacturers. Somehow this proposal managed to survive the scrutiny of state ballot officials, which doesn't say much for their judgment skills.

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Apparently hoping to generate some support for his unpopular plan to gut oversight of one of the least competitive business sectors in America, FCC boss Ajit Pai left DC last week to do a tour of some midwestern states. During that tour he stopped in Milwaukee to talk about net neutrality with Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson on WTMJ Radio (you can listen to the full interview here). During the interview, Pai proclaimed that the entire concept of net neutrality is little more than a "slogan," and that nobody should want government "dictating how the internet is run":

"It’s a great slogan," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, when asked by a radio host what net neutrality is. "But in reality what it involves is Internet regulation, and the basic question is, 'Do you want the government deciding how the Internet is run?'"

You'll note that this is a guy that has repeatedly tried to claim he's approaching all of this with an open mind, and would let the evidence and public feedback dictate the agency's course. Given comments like this, and the fact that net neutrality has overwhelming bipartisan majority support, it's pretty clear that won't be happening. The interview, which offered no counter-opinion from anybody supporting (or even understanding) net neutrality, proceeded with Senator Johnson parroting what Pai had suggested:

"As chairman Pai said, net neutrality is a slogan," Johnson said. "What you really want is an expansion of high-speed broadband, and in order to do that you have to create the incentives for those smaller ISPs to invest. They don’t really control their own fiber if the government tells them exactly how they’re going to use their investment."

Huh. So was it a "slogan" to dislike Verizon and AT&T's decision to block people from using competing mobile payment platforms to try and give their own effort a leg up? Was it a "slogan" to oppose AT&T's decision to block people from using Facetime just to drive them to more expensive data plans? And is it a "slogan" to oppose Comcast's use of unnecessary and arbitrary data caps and overage fees to not only jack up the price of broadband service in already-uncompetitive broadband markets -- but to give its own streaming services an unfair market advantage?

Suggesting it's a "slogan" to worry how limited broadband competition leads to this kind of anti-competitive behavior is about as reasonable as suggesting that not wanting to be punched in the jaw is a "jingle." It makes no coherent sense.

And that's the biggest problem with Pai's decision to ignore the broad support the rules have and dismantle them anyway. His arguments in favor for killing the rules either make no coherent sense (like that time he suggested net neutrality rules embolden North Korean and Iranian dictators), or they're long-debunked talking points that have been floating around the internet for the better part of the last decade. Like when Johnson continued the interview by proclaiming that we must kill net neutrality rules -- or people may die!:

"Johnson thinks ISPs should be able to sell "fast lanes" to websites and online services that are willing to pay for quicker access to customers. "Chairman Pai just mentioned medical diagnostics," Johnson said. "You might need a fast lane within that pipeline so those diagnoses can be transmitted instantaneously and not be held up by, I don't know, maybe a movie streaming."

So one, the current net neutrality rules carve out plenty of exceptions that let ISPs, companies and networks prioritize essential communications like medical technology. That's never, ever been a real issue, and anybody claiming otherwise is lying to you. Like Pai's former employer Verizon did in 2014, when it tried to claim that net neutrality rules should be killed because they'd stop deaf, blind and disabled people from getting access to essential services. In fact, this argument has been stumbling around in anti-net-neutrality circles for the better part of the last decade, and it doesn't magically become any less of a lie with age.

Given the rules didn't hurt investment, actually helped sort some anti-competitive behavior, and again have broad, bipartisan support, those looking to kill them have few viable arguments left to fall back on. As such, they're apparently reduced to a winning combination of incoherence and outright lying. One more time with feeling: net neutrality is a good thing for companies and consumers alike. If you haven't learned that yet, and the efforts to repeal the rules succeed, you may soon be getting a pretty nasty crash course as to precisely why.

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ProPublica recently obtained some internal documents related to Facebook's hate speech moderation. Hate speech -- as applied to Facebook -- isn't a statutory term. Much of what Facebook removes is still protected speech. But Facebook is a private company and is able to remove whatever it wants without acting as a censorial arm of the government.

That being said, there's a large number of government officials around the planet who feel Facebook should be doing more to remove hate speech -- all of it based on very subjective views as to what that term should encompass.

It's impossible to make everyone happy. So, Facebook has decided to apply a set of rules to its moderation that appear to lead to completely wrong conclusions about what posts should be removed. A single image included in the ProPublica article went viral. But the explanation behind it did not. The rules Facebook uses for moderation lead directly to increased protections for a historically well-protected group.

[If you can't read/see the image, the slide says "Which of the below subsets do we protect?" with the choices being "female drivers," "black children," and "white men." The answer -- to the great internet consternation of many -- is: "white men."]

Given Facebook's general inability to moderate other forms of "offensiveness" (mainly female breasts) without screwing it all up, the answer to this quiz question seems like more Facebook moderation ineptitude. But there's more to it than this one question. The rest of the quiz is published at ProPublica and it shows the "white men" answer is, at least, internally consistent with Facebook's self-imposed rules.

Facebook must define "hate speech" before it can attempt to moderate it, since there are no statutes (at least in the United States) that strictly apply to this content. Here's how Facebook defines it:

Protected category + attack = hate speech

These are the protected categories:

• Sex
• Race
• Religious affiliation
• Ethnicity
• National origin
• Sexual orientation
• Gender identity
• Serious disability/disease

Here's what's not considered "protected" by Facebook:

• Social class
• Occupation
• Continental origin
• Political ideology
• Appearance
• Religions
• Age
• Countries

"White men" have both race and sex going for them. Any "attack" on white men can be deleted by Facebook. "Black children" only have race. Age is not a protected category. An attack on black men would be deleted but black children are, apparently, fair game. The same goes for white children. In the category "female drivers," only the "female" part is considered protected.

The quiz goes on to explain other facets of hate speech moderation. Calling for acts of physical violence against protected categories is hate speech. If any component of the group targeted is "unprotected," the call for violence will be allowed to stay online. The rules also cover "degrading generalization," "dismissive" speech, cursing, and slurs. If any of these target a protected class (or quasi-protected class, i.e., migrants whose nationality may be in flux), moderators can take down the posts. The QPCs have only slightly more protection than entirely unprotected classes, so they can receive more posted abuse before hate speech protections kick in.

These rules lead to all sorts of things that seem unfair, if not completely wrong:

In the wake of a terrorist attack in London earlier this month, a U.S. congressman wrote a Facebook post in which he called for the slaughter of “radicalized” Muslims. “Hunt them, identify them, and kill them,” declared U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican. “Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”

Higgins’ plea for violent revenge went untouched by Facebook workers who scour the social network deleting offensive speech.

But a May posting on Facebook by Boston poet and Black Lives Matter activist Didi Delgado drew a different response.

“All white people are racist. Start from this reference point, or you’ve already failed,” Delgado wrote. The post was removed and her Facebook account was disabled for seven days.

Religions are unprotected. Races are. That's why this happens. At best, it would seem like both should be taken down, or the less violent of the two remain intact. But that's not the way the rules work. People who criticize Facebook's moderation efforts are asking for something worse than is already in place. To right the perceived wrongs of everything listed above, the rules would have to be replaced by subjectivity -- setting up every moderator, all over the world, with their own micro-fiefdom to run as they see fit. If people don't like it now, just wait until thousands of additional biases are injected into the mix.

That's the other issue: Facebook is a worldwide social platform. Protecting white men may seem pointless here in the US, but the United States isn't the only country with access to Facebook.

“The policies do not always lead to perfect outcomes,” said Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook. “That is the reality of having policies that apply to a global community where people around the world are going to have very different ideas about what is OK to share.”

This is the unfortunate byproduct of a job that's impossible to do to everyone's satisfaction. Blanket rules may seem dumb on a case-by-case basis, but the alternative would be even worse. If a company is going to proactively protect sexes and races, it's inevitably going to have to stand up for white men, even if the general feeling is white men are in no need of extra protection.

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The DHS and TSA are just going to keep making things worse. Despite there being almost no evidence of terrorists targeting planes, the DHS is looking to expand its laptop ban to cover even more incoming flights from foreign airports.

The Trump administration said Wednesday it will ban large electronics on flights to the United States altogether — on board, and in checked bags — unless airlines comply with new directives to ramp up passenger and baggage screening.

The mandate, announced by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, would affect 280 last-point-of-departure airports and as many as 2,000 daily international flights to the United States and potentially throw a huge wrench into business travelers' plans.

The original plan only targeted 10 airports -- mostly in the Middle East. This expansion would cause even more passengers to either leave their laptops/tablets behind, as this ban would prevent them from being placed in checked luggage.

What the DHS is looking for is transplanted security theater performances by foreign airline personnel. Not much was explicitly listed in DHS head John Kelly's speech on Wednesday, but a few DHS officials offered to fill the factual gaps in Kelly's rhetoric.

DHS officials said the agency is broadly pushing airlines and airports to "take the next step" in beefing up security — meaning using more canine teams, adopting more advanced screening technology and enrolling in a Customs and Border Protection pre-clearance inspection program.

And, as always, the burden will be borne by travelers. Airlines are being given some time to make these changes, but there doesn't appear to be a hard deadline for compliance. If foreign airlines don't live up to the DHS's expectations, passengers will presumably be informed about the fate of their electronic devices after they've already taken them to the airport. The DHS encourages foreign travelers to keep themselves apprised of these changes, but doesn't say how they're supposed to obtain this information when making travel plans. All that's being recommended is staying in "close contact" with their airline of choice, which sounds like the sort of pen pal relationship no one's in any hurry to engage in.

European officials are trying to stay on top of the DHS's constantly-shifting demands -- not out of fear of terrorist attacks, but because the laptop ban itself would make flying less safe.

European Commission officials have been especially vocal about their wish to avoid the ban and have repeatedly pointed out the fire risks associated with stacking laptops with flammable lithium batteries in planes' cargo holds…

I guess that's why Kelly wants a total ban. That solves the exploding battery problem, but does nothing for thousands of non-terrorists who need to bring their work with them when visiting the US.

There's no room for logic in security theater. What the US determines to be security best practices will be foisted on the rest of the world -- even though there's nothing in the history of the DHS and TSA suggesting faster, harder "security" will do anything more than irritate travelers.

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Qualcomm announced today that they will have under-display fingerprint scanner technology ready for the Summer of 2018. Their scanners will be capable of working under displays, metal, and glass.

As you are likely already aware, there is something of a debate about debates that occur on college campuses these days. Amidst a climate of ultra-polarized politics, there have been several high profile incidents on college campuses involving a revolt by student bodies -- and, allegedly, outside troublemakers -- over specific speakers invited onto campus and topics opened for debate. In reaction to these revolts that generally end with colleges uninviting speakers, some states have decided to try to legislate against this sort of thing in the name of free speech. It's one of those unhappy circumstances in which everyone on every side appears to be wrong. Student revolts and petitions to uninvite speakers are themselves a form of speech and worthy of protection, even if that sort of thing is antithetical to the university experience and ultimately works counter to the aims of the students doing the revolting. Meanwhile, the uninvited and their supporters are shouting about censorship in a way that suggests their views must be tolerated without reaction, which is a complete misunderstanding of how free speech works. As for the politicians, the haphazard decision to legislate on matters of speech in this matter betrays a lack of understanding of how sacred our free expression laws are in America and the care with which any lawmakers ought to take on the topic.

For an example of that, we need only look to Wisconsin, where a bill is being considered in reaction to all of this that would essentially force universities to take no position on any current topic that can be seen as controversial. School administrators are rightly concerned about the laughably vague language in the bill.

The trouble comes from this section of the bill: “That each institution shall strive to remain neutral, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day, and may not take action, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day in such a way as to require students or faculty to publicly express a given view of social policy.”

While the bills’ scope is focused on public events involving invited speakers, there are a couple key questions here. University officials want to know how far this requirement “to remain neutral” extends. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has spoken out against proposed bans on stem cell research on campus. Would the university run afoul of this law if it did so again?

It's a good and fair question, because once this legislative ball gets rolling, gravity is likely to tug it further down the path than supporters of the bill had originally intended. And it's worth reminding everyone considering supporting this bill that its words can cut both ways. Just because today we're talking about a topic a person on one end of the political spectrum cares about doesn't mean the other end can't use this law to force their views on campus in the same way. Whatever your political leanings, it's worth being concerned when government attempts to stifle the viewpoint of a school and its students.

And, of course, nobody is clear that this is limited even to speakers and public positions on campus, thanks to the overly broad language in the bill. When questioned, Jesse Kremer, who sponsored the bill, suggested that the legislation could also reach its spindly fingers into the classroom...

And although the bill is not focused on classrooms, Kremer suggested that such a student could potentially bring a complaint to a “Council on Free Expression” the bill would create—a body composed of leaders from each state school and two politicians.

...before going completely off the rails.

When one Democrat at a hearing asked Republican Representative and bill sponsor Jesse Kremer whether a geology professor would be allowed to tell a student who believed the Earth to be 6,000 years old that they are wrong, Kremer bristled. “The Earth is 6,000 years old. That’s a fact,” he said.

And here you see the problem. What one person claims to be fact is, in fact, plainly absurd. And a law that protects students or invited speakers from being told that it's absurd, either by the student body or the university, is a laughable law fit for the waste bin. If students and speakers are such innocent snowflakes that they cannot handle having their views ridiculed, then the university is no place for them. This too should cut both ways, of course, except that the students shouting down controversial speakers is itself a form of speech, whereas legislation neutering that same speech is censorious in the worst way.

Do students need to be more open minded on campuses today? Sure, I think that's fair. Should lawmakers with the barest grip on their own reality be legislatively forcing speakers onto campus as a consequence? Obviously not.

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There's been no unified push for encryption backdoors from world leaders, but the number of those suggesting it might be a good idea has increased in recent months. UK Prime Minister Theresa May recently said terrorists shouldn't be allowed to use Whatsapp to hide their conversations from law enforcement even as her own party members routinely use the app to engage in secure communications. Newly-elected French president Emmanuel Macron said basically the same thing while campaigning, stating a preference for compelled access to encrypted communications.

Shortly before he was shown the exit door, former FBI director James Comey floated the idea of an "international framework" for encryption backdoors. It appeared Comey realized he wasn't going to be able to sell this idea at home, so perhaps a little international peer pressure would push US legislators towards mandating lawful access.

Comey may get his wish, even if he won't be able to take advantage of it himself. Australian Attorney General George Brandis is stating he'll be pushing for backdoors at the next Five Eyes meetup.

The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, will meet in the Canadian city of Ottawa next week, where they will discuss tactics to combat terrorism and border protection, two senior Australian ministers said.

Australia has made it clear it wants tech companies to do much more to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications.

“I will raise the need to address ongoing challenges posed by terrorists and criminals using encryption,” Australian Attorney General Senator Brandis said in a joint statement.

“These discussions will focus on the need to cooperate with service providers to ensure reasonable assistance is provided to law enforcement and security agencies.”

Brandis has already rationalized away potential objections to backdooring encryption, reasoning that people's tendency to overshare on social media indicates they won't care if the government (or several governments, actually) has access to their private messages.

So far, there's very little real evidence criminals and terrorists are using encrypted services at a higher rate than non-criminals/terrorists. There have been several statements made to that effect and backed by public displays of devices law enforcement officials claim can't be unlocked, but most post-attack investigations show terrorists are still mostly using unencrypted communications platforms. Available evidence also shows investigations of normal criminal activity is rarely thwarted by device encryption. At this point, backdoors are a "solution" in need of a problem.

All that's happening here is a push to compromise personal security in the name of national security. A hole is hole, no matter how it's pitched in secret spy meetings.

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The TSA continues to expand the intrusiveness of its searches, supposedly justified by an increased threat to air travel that doesn't seem to have materialized. In fact, the TSA has admitted attacks on airplanes are the threat voted Least Likely To Occur. One only needs to look at the recent string of terrorist attacks to see there are far more efficient ways to attack the populace than purchasing a ticket and making your way past security.

Nevertheless, the charade continues, only with more of it as often as possible. Fliers are now being asked to stow explosive batteries in the cargo hold and liquid limits are still being enforced to ensure dangerous things like medication and breast milk aren't brought on board.

Now, the TSA wants to know what you're reading. As airlines have increased rates for checked bags, travellers are packing more and more into their carry-on luggage. This is causing problems for the TSA's X-ray machines, which are having more trouble discerning what's actually being carried in passengers' bags. The densest materials are the hardest to "see" through, so TSA agents will now be demanding access to reading materials travelers are carrying.

The TSA is testing new requirements that passengers remove books and other paper goods from their carry-on baggage when going through airline security. Given the sensitivity of our reading choices, this raises privacy concerns.

Tests of the policy are underway in some small airports around the country, and DHS Secretary John Kelly recently said that “we might, and likely will” apply the policy nationwide. “What we’re doing now is working out the tactics, techniques, and procedures, if you will, in a few airports, to find out exactly how to do that with the least amount of inconvenience to the traveler,” he told Fox News. The policy may also apply to food items.

There's no good reason for the government to know what you're reading. In fact, as the ACLU points out in this post, there are protections in place to prevent the government from obtaining that information.

[T]here is a long history of special legal protection for the privacy of one’s reading habits in the United States, not only through numerous Supreme Court and other court decisions, but also through state laws that criminalize the violation of public library reading privacy or require a warrant to obtain book sales, rental, or lending records.

But, as government lawyers have reminded citizens, travelling via air is a privilege, not a right, even in a country where someone's destination might be 3,000 miles away. (Travelling by car has its own set of Fourth Amendment problems. It's also far more dangerous. Deciding to drive not only takes longer, but subjects people to a whole new set of issues.) The decision to fly means allowing the government to do whatever it wants to make flying secure, even if nearly everything it does has zero effect on curbing terrorist activity.

There are plenty of reasons people might not want to share their reading habits with other fliers in eyesight of the examination are, much less a bunch of government employees with the power to detain people for almost any reason. It's not just about hiding trashy novels from TSA agents. It's about any number of reading materials that could subject to additional scrutiny by the government.

For example, in 2010 the ACLU sued on behalf of a man who was abusively interrogated, handcuffed, and detained for nearly five hours because he was carrying a set of Arabic-language flash cards and a book critical of U.S. foreign policy. We also know that the DHS database known as the “Automated Targeting System,” which tracks information on international travelers, has included notations in travelers’ permanent files about controversial books in their possession.

Since the searches aren't limited to books, but any set of papers flagged by scanners, lawyers carrying privileged legal documents might find themselves having to hand these over to TSA agents to page through. Reading anything about national security and/or terrorism is likely to result in enhanced screening efforts and (possibly) missed flights. The government has no right to know what you're reading, but it has the right to make you hand over everything you're hoping to carry onboard to do with it what it pleases. This includes adding travellers to secret lists that are almost impossible to be removed from or simply asking a bunch of irrelevant questions based on the incredibly faulty premise that terrorists would read certain materials when engaged in acts of terrorism.

The ACLU suggests two things the TSA can do to minimize privacy violations. One would be strict policies and new training procedures to better ensure travelers' privacy and to prevent the additional search from becoming a handy way to increase detentions and add travelers to secret lists.

The second thing would be more along the privacy lines voluntarily adopted by companies selling and shipping sensitive goods: the plain brown packaging program. Travellers should be allowed to use plain book covers to obscure titles and other sensitive information while still allowing agents to verify the books are just books and not, say, sheets of explosives or hollowed-out weapons containers. The TSA should only be interested in ensuring a book is a book. It should have zero interest in the title or content of travellers' reading materials.

X-ray machines are supposed to minimize intrusiveness by allowing travellers to keep their bags closed. The TSA is undoing this small privacy protection step-by-step, with books and other papers following electronic devices onto X-ray belts and into the hands of TSA agents. If the TSA is honest about its reasons for examining books separately, the lack of exterior identifying information shouldn't pose a problem. If it does, the TSA (or the agent performing the search) has ulterior motives and should be prevented from stripping away yet another layer of personal privacy at security checkpoints.

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