Brindle

We've written many, many words on the ridiculousness of publicity rights, and how they're frequently abused to stifle perfectly reasonable activities. But this latest example really takes it up a notch. The owner of a horse in the UK is apparently demanding some of the prize a man won in a "selfie" contest, because the horse made a key "photobombing" appearance in the background, that likely contributed to the victory: That photo was taken by the 3 year old kid in the picture, Jacob Bellis, and that's his father, David, holding him. Nice photo! The horse in the background is named Betty, and is owned by Nicola Mitchell, who sounds like a person who perhaps needs to calm down a bit. From The Guardian:

Mitchell said: “I was really annoyed to hear he had won a £2,000 holiday and had used a picture of our horse without our permission. He should have asked for our consent. There should be some token gesture as it is our horse that has really won them the holiday,” she said.

Mitchell added: “I didn’t even know that this competition was on. If I had known about it we would have entered and could have won as Betty is always sticking out her tongue.”

There's plenty to comment on here. First, as you can see, the reward was a holiday trip, and not cash, though apparently there was some confusion over that. So it's not like it's easy to "split." Apparently Mitchell first demanded "half" of the prize. Second, (and importantly) you don't need permission to photograph someone's horse, especially when done from a public path. So the whole "without our permission" thing is complete nonsense. A token gesture might be a nice thing to do, but it's not clear the best way to seek a "token gesture" is to angrily demand half of the prize. Perhaps a friendlier "Hey, that's my horse, and that's awesome!" would have been a better approach that would have made everyone happy, leading the Bellises to think about maybe giving something nice in return. Like, a treat for the horse or something.

Finally, the whole "If I had known about it we would have entered and could have won" bullshit, the response is but you didn't. So stop whining. Perhaps next time such a contest is run you'll be paying attention and you can answer. The whole response smacks of serious sour grapes.

Thankfully, the Guardian quotes a lawyer who agrees that Mitchell has no legal basis to complain. Of course, not too long ago, we thought the same thing about a monkey in a selfie, and then... PETA stepped in. So far its attempt to extend copyright law to monkeys has flopped, but perhaps its next attempt will be extending publicity rights to horses. I imagine that will fare similarly poorly.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Isn't politics just great? Politicians aren't exactly known for their honesty on things, often saying things to voters just to get elected. But Hillary Clinton's views on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have received quite a lot of scrutiny. After all, while she was at the State Department, she was a strong supporter of the TPP, and so it was a bit of a surprise last October when she came out against it. Of course, the fact that the deal is fairly unpopular with the Democratic Party base probably contributed quite a lot to that decision -- and Clinton's weak attempt at revisionist history to pretend she never really supported it.

But, of course, when you do a pandering flip flop like that just to get votes, you have to remember that plenty of people will see right through it, and some of those people might reveal the strategy. Like, for instance, the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, the world's largest lobbying organization, who is leading the charge in support of the TPP. Its top lobbyist, Tom Donohue, flat out admitted recently that he knows that if she actually got elected, she'll revert back to supporting the TPP, because of course she will:

The Chamber president said he expected Hillary Clinton would ultimately support the TPP if she becomes the Democratic nominee for president and is elected. He argued that she has publicly opposed the deal chiefly because her main challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has also done so. "If she were to get nominated, if she were to be elected, I have a hunch that what runs in the family is you get a little practical if you ever get the job," he said.

The same report notes that Congress is now likely to wait until after the election, but before the new Congress starts (i.e., the "lame duck" session) to vote to ratify the TPP in order to keep it from impacting the Presidential election:

Donohue also said TPP will not be voted on prior to the election because Senate Republicans do not want to do anything that could jeopardize Republican Senators in close races. But he said he believed there was a 75 percent chance that TPP would get done in the lame-duck session after the election.

This very likely is the strategy that the Chamber has cooked up and which Congress thinks makes sense, but, really, doesn't it just highlight how bad the TPP really is? If Congress can't convince the public that it's worth voting for when everyone's actually watching, then doesn't that suggest a really serious issue with the agreement itself? In many ways, this seems like an extension of the former USTR's defense of the secrecy around the TPP, where he admitted that if the public actually knew what was going into the TPP it would stop it from ever getting approved. So his decision was to hide it. And now, it seems likely that plenty of politicians are basically doing the same -- hide the TPP until the public isn't looking or can't really do anything, and then shove it through.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Benson Leung, the Googler who went on a crusade against bad USB Type-C cables, now finds himself as a martyr: a bad cable finally fried one of his devices.

Back in November, Congresswoman Katherine Clark introduced an anti-swatting bill. As you probably already know, swatting is when someone calls in a fake report to police about an ongoing incident at someone's home -- usually something like an "active shooter" or hostage taking or something similar -- in the interest of having police departments overreact and send out a SWAT team to deal with the situation, such as by raiding the home. The bill looks to make it a felony to use the phone system to "transmit false information with the intent to cause an emergency law enforcement response." While I'm not aware of anyone (so far) getting killed by a swatting, it seems like it's only a matter of time.

Either way, given all this, it probably shouldn't come as a huge surprise that on Sunday night, Rep. Clark found herself swatted, leading the Melrose, Massachusetts police to show up at her home, though it sounds like they handled everything carefully and appropriately.

Melrose Police spokesman John Guilfoil said the department received a recorded telephone call with a computer-generated voice at 9:57 p.m. on the department’s business line. The call, Guilfoil said, referred to “shots fired and an active shooter” at Clark’s address.

He said Melrose police officers, but not a SWAT team, responded to the address, spoke with the homeowner, and determined the call was hoax and there was no danger.

Of course, in most cases, it's quite difficult for law enforcement to ever track down whoever called in the hoax report, and it's rare for the callers to ever be caught -- though it does sometimes happen. Of course, if swatters continue to target politicians looking to pass laws against them, expect the laws and the pressure to capture them and "set an example" to continue to ratchet up. I'm sure that whoever swatted Rep. Clark is assuming that it will be impossible to track down who did that, but the higher a target you aim at, the more likely that higher powered law enforcement gets involved -- meaning it gets increasingly likely that whoever did it will be tracked down.

In the meantime, it would also be nice if we started looking at the root causes of swatting, such as the militarization of police departments where that's not even remotely necessary.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Last week, we noted that the FCC has proposed new guidelines that would bring some much-needed competition to the cable TV set top box market. Data shows that 99% of consumers pay something on average to $230 a year in set top box rental fees, despite much of this dated hardware being worth little to nothing. Collectively, the cable industry pulls in around $20 billion annually in set top box rental fees, which are fairly consistently increased once or twice a year. Unsurprisingly, whenever the FCC has tried to do something about this proprietary, captive market, the industry becomes downright hysterical.

That was exemplified last week when the FCC simply proposed requiring cable operators deliver programming data to third-party hardware using any accepted standard they choose. Cable operators can still provide the traditional set top box (and consumers can still rent them), the industry would simply suddenly face competition for what's been captive income. But with $20 billion in annual revenues at risk, the industry quickly got to work trying to argue that the FCC's plan would demolish the very fabric or time/space and result in no limit of untold harm to consumers.

Despite the reality that most cable boxes (and many executives) are outdated relics of a dying era, the cable industry stuck to one central theme last week: the FCC's plan is "big tech's" attempt to thwart all of the amazing innovation occurring in the cable industry. A "diverse" group of cable companies and broadcasters calling itself the "Future of TV" coalition quickly launched to deride the FCC's "attack on innovation," with one press release circulated by the group going so far as to suggest that Google has been holding secret meetings at the FCC that undermine the cable industry's relentless thirst for...diversity:

"...Secrecy and subterfuge shouldn’t be tolerated and professional staffers who know the ropes and are unlikely to be swayed by a flashy demo and a Golden Ticket. The AllVid scheme being flogged by Google and the FCC is unfair and destructive to values held far too dearly on Capitol Hill – undermining free market competition and putting a government thumb on the scale for powerful incumbents like Google, and making it harder for those serving communities of color and providing diverse and independent programming to make the video ecosystem work.

There's no secret cabal in the fact that Google, Apple, Roku, TiVo and countless other companies have lobbied for years for an open cable set top box market. But the cable industry has lobbied ferociously to dismantle any attempt to bring this goal to fruition (including CableCARD). So to mock Google for "secretly" lobbying for broader competition is both strange and hilarious. The argument that more robust set top box competition will somehow hurt diversity is equally absurd (more choice and lower product cost is good for diversity), yet it seems to pop up all over the Internet in mysteriously placed editorials.

But credit the cable industry for one thing, it knows how to rally around a central message, even if that message is absolute bullshit. The central theme of this blog post by the industry's biggest lobbying organization (the NCTA) was cable's amazing knack for innovation:

"We see these innovations almost daily, which is why it’s so strange that government feels compelled to insert itself in the mix in order to do Big Tech’s bidding. By forcing new government mandates on network providers and content creators, the FCC may intend to reward Google handsomely, but in the process it will ignore contractual freedoms, weaken content diversity and security, undermine important consumer protections like privacy, and stall the creative and technical innovation that is driving positive changes in today’s TV marketplace.

Likewise, a blog post by Comcast largely involves the company patting itself on the back for being incredibly, awesomely innovative:

"Comcast is responding with our innovative X1 platform, and enabling access on a growing array of devices. Like other traditional TV distributors, online video distributors, networks, and sports leagues, Comcast is using apps to deliver its Xfinity service to popular customer-owned retail devices. These apps are wildly popular with consumers. Comcast customers alone have downloaded our apps more than 20 million times. This apps revolution is rapidly proliferating, and we are working with others in the industry and standards-setting bodies to expand apps to reach even more devices.

Given these exciting, pro-consumer marketplace developments, it is perplexing that the FCC is now considering a proposal that would impose new government technology mandates on satellite and cable TV providers with the purported goal of promoting device options for consumers.

Oooh, step back FCC, Comcast is developing apps! The problem is, and the insular cable industry forgets this constantly, that absolutely nobody likes or believes the cable industry outside of the cable industry. Cable providers continue to have the worst customer satisfaction and support ratings of any U.S. industry or government agency (no small feat). So when "big cable" breathlessly insists it's just trying to protect its monopoly over cable set top hardware to the benefit of minorities and puppies, it's unclear who the hell would be daft enough to actually take them seriously.

Here's the thing: if the cable industry's existing set top box systems are as "innovative" as the industry claims, surely competition will bear that out? When faced with a myriad of new hardware options, customers will clearly want to continue paying Comcast a significant amount of money for a traditional cable box, right? If the cable industry is half as adaptive as it claimed last week, surely this sudden influx of competition will be like a gnat at the ear of a god of innovation. Unless of course this prattling on about innovation is just the insecure braying of an industry absolutely terrified by the foreign specter of real competition?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I'm not certain why people think this will work, but there seems to be an idea floating around a few of our fellow citizens that they can simply force their favorite sports teams to do what they want by filing trademarks for things they never intend to use. You may recall the story about a jackass in North Dakota who wanted to prevent the University of North Dakota from changing its name from The Fighting Sioux to, well, anything else that had been suggested by filing for trademarks on all the other things that had been suggested. Such a strategy was doomed to fail from the beginning for any number of reasons, but mostly because you actually have to be using what you're trying to trademark in commerce in order to get it approved, and trolling isn't a commercial enterprise as far as I know.

Now we have another story, though it shifts from one of trolling to one of simple sadness, as a Raiders fan who doesn't want his team to move to San Antonio, as reportedly might soon happen, has decided to launch a preemptive strike by filing for a trademark for "San Antonio Raiders."

An Oakland Raiders season-ticket holder who wants the team to remain in the East Bay has filed a trademark application for the name “San Antonio Raiders.”

“I figured if I took over the name, San Antonio Raiders, I could force (the team) to stay in Oakland,” Lane Blue of Fresno, California, said in a phone interview.

I'm loathe to heap any real anger upon a Raiders fan, because it seems to me that life as a Raiders fan must be so horrible so as to warp the brain to some degree, but anyone with a bare minimum of knowledge of how trademarks work knows this isn't going to work. Again, you have to use the mark in commerce to get a trademark at all, and Lane Blue would have to show that he's using the mark in a way with which the Raiders would be competing. Also, if the team really is planning on a move to San Antonio, it would be criminal for the team's lawyers not to have already begun the trademark filing process. Regardless, you can expect the application to be reviewed and summarily denied.

But the larger point is that this is a symptom of what permission culture does: it makes the uninformed think that tools like trademark allow for a sort of monopolistic control where it actually doesn't. Why does it do this? Well, because too many times trademark, and other intellectual property laws, skirt or outright cross the line into that exact sort of heavy-handed protectionism, albeit in a less obvious way.

So sorry, Raiders fan. You can't use intellectual property to force your team to stay nearby. Now, maybe if your last name was Disney, on the other hand...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

It appears that efforts to censor the internet globally continues to spread, with the latest being a report out of Pakistan that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has told ISPs that they need to start blocking an astounding 429,343 websites at the domain level as quickly as possible, following a Supreme Court order to the PTA about the evils of porn online.

The move apparently follows a recent order by the Supreme Court wherein the telecom sector’s regulatory body had been asked to “take remedial steps to quantify the nefarious phenomenon of obscenity and pornography that has an imminent role to corrupt and vitiate the youth of Pakistan”.

PTA said it has decided to take pre-emptive measures to block such websites at the domain level to control dissemination of pornographic content through the internet as it provided ISPs with a list of 429,343 domains to be blocked on their respective networks.

The order apparently was issued just a few weeks ago, which raises the question of how the PTA put together a list of so many domains so quickly... and how carefully that list has been vetted. The answer, of course, is that it hasn't been vetted. And that means that tons of perfectly legitimate content is about to get blocked in Pakistan. Remember, this is the same country that once blocked all of YouTube, and did so in a way that basically knocked Pakistan off the internet, while also blocking YouTube throughout many countries across Asia. Let's hope mistakes of that nature aren't made again.

Even so, it's pretty obvious that mistakes will be made. First, that list is going to include tons of sites that aren't pornography. Is there a way to appeal? Who knows! Second, it's likely that in the process of blocking "at the domain level" some may choose to block IP addresses of certain sites, not realizing that many IP addresses are shared among multiple domains, meaning that lots of other sites may get sucked up as well. And then there's the issue of what good will this do anyway. People who really want to access porn on the internet won't have trouble finding it. I'm pretty sure there are more than 429,343 websites with porn on the internet, and even if there weren't, I'm guessing that VPNs and proxies work just as well in Pakistan as they do elsewhere.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Lucasfilm

The release of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" kicked off the start of six new "Star Wars" movies from now through 2019.

But Disney and Lucasfilm aren't stopping there. 

According to Disney CEO Bob Iger these six movies will be the start of even more "Star Wars" films.

"There will be more after that, I don't know how many, I don't know how often," Iger told BBC's entertainment vertical Newsbeat.

What does that mean?

It could mean several things. One idea is that Lucasfilm will plan to do more spin-off films or breakout some spin-offs into their own film series, similar to what Marvel is doing with its comic-book adaptations. Another thought is that we'll potentially see another trilogy after Episodes VII, VIII, and IX are over. We could also get some of both.

"Star Wars" fans shouldn't be too surprised. 

"The Force Awakens" broke box-office records after its December debut. It's currently the third highest-grossing movie of all time with $1.9 billion in ticket sales worldwide.

Creator George Lucas apparently had plans for up to a dozen "Star Wars" movies, according to a 1978 Time magazine article.

Bring on all the "Star Wars" movies. We're ready. 

NOW WATCH: Scientists say blowing up the Death Star would have had a catastrophic result

Edwin Guzman is currently facing charges of "annoying and accosting" a person of the opposite sex, as well as disseminating harmful material to a minor. That would be Officer Guzman -- and not just any officer -- but Sergeant Guzman, who was promoted around the same time he was sending naked pictures of himself to a 16-year-old girl. (Warning: AUTOPLAY)

“It started off we regularly chat and it's mostly about school and how life is,” the teenager who was 16 at the time told 5 Investigates’ Mike Beaudet.

But she says the conversations kept escalating from there.

“If I gave him like pleasure and let him do things to me, he'd be willing to buy me things,” she said. “He took a picture of his penis and he sent it to me.”

Please note that if a classmate had sent a photo of his penis to this 16-year-old girl, he might be facing child pornography charges and a lifetime on the sex offender registry, rather than "annoying and accosting," which would net Guzman a maximum $200 fine and 6 months in jail.

That an officer -- and a family friend -- would use both of these positions to attempt to coerce a minor into sexual activity is disturbing enough. But what's more disturbing is his lawyer's dismissiveness of the teen's response to the unwanted explicit pictures. (h/t Chris Soghoian)

Afterward, his lawyer, Kenneth Anderson, said there are discussions with prosecutors to resolve 
the case.

“I really can’t go into detail given the nature of things. They’re serious charges,” Anderson said.

But he disputed the charges that Guzman sent a 16-year-old girl harmful pictures and said even if the allegation were true, he doesn’t believe the material would have been that shocking.

“You can’t tell me someone her age has never seen a picture of a penis on the Internet,” Anderson said.

So, by this rationale, the teen shouldn't be upset if an older relative, politician, church leader, trusted community figure, random neighbor or anyone else that shouldn't be sending dick pics to minor sent her explicit photos. After all, spend enough time on the internet and you're bound to see a penis. Perhaps Anderson could help her get over her fear of penis pictures by sending a few of his own her way.

This argument never should have been stated out loud. Hopefully, he won't be raising this in court. There's a huge difference between being sent an unwanted explicit photo and just coming across one while surfing the web. Add to this the fact that the person sending them was not only a family friend, but also in a position of power, and the disparity between "random internet dick pic" and what actually happened here becomes even greater. Even if the unnamed minor went searching for penis photos on the web, it would have been a consensual act. But there's nothing consensual about being sent explicit photos by a person in a position of power and trust -- one obviously willing to abuse both -- and arguing that just because someone has seen a penis before means they have no right to be upset about being sent unwanted photos is the lowest (in all senses of the word) form of rhetoric.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

You really can't find a pair of cozier bosom buddies than AT&T and the NSA. Long before Snowden, whistleblowers like 22-year AT&T employee Mark Klein highlighted (pdf) how AT&T was duplicating fiber streams, effectively providing the NSA with its own mirror copy of every shred of data that touched the AT&T network. More recent documents have also highlighted AT&T's "extreme willingness" to help, whether that involves having its employees act as intelligence analysts themselves, or giving advice to the government on the best ways to skirt, dance around, or smash directly through privacy and surveillance law.

So it was a little bit amusing last week when AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson thought it would be a good idea to chime in on the encryption debate. In a back-rubbing, feel good interview with the Wall Street Journal, Stephenson had the stones to actually suggest the company's unprecedented, disturbing ties to the NSA were all but fantasy:

"The AT&T chief said his own company has been unfairly singled out in the debate over access to data. “It is silliness to say there’s some kind of conspiracy between the U.S. government and AT&T,” he said, adding that the company turns over information only when accompanied by a warrant or court order."

Omitted of course is that for much of the last fifteen years AT&T did nothing of the sort, working in tandem with the NSA, FBI, and every other government agency to hoover up U.S. citizen data with minimal oversight and virtually no regard for the law. When busted, AT&T had enough political power to get the government to give its telco partners retroactive immunity. To brush this documented and disturbing history aside like cracker crumbs in bed gives you a pretty good idea of Stephenson's hubris. It also shows you what the CEO has learned after fifteen years of unprecedented scandal.

Stephenson then apparently thought it would be a good idea to start giving lectures to companies that actually give a shit about the privacy of their customers. According to Stephenson, companies like Apple and Google shouldn't be embracing encryption, because that's something that should only be acted on by our stalwart representatives in Congress:

"I don’t think it is Silicon Valley’s decision to make about whether encryption is the right thing to do. I understand Tim Cook’s decision, but I don’t think it’s his decision to make,” Mr. Stephenson said...“I personally think that this is an issue that should be decided by the American people and Congress, not by companies,” Mr. Stephenson said.

Of course Stephenson's intentionally ignoring the fact that companies like Apple and Google are now rushing to embrace encryption because that's what consumers want. Much like AT&T did with net neutrality, it's also urging that the issue be left to Congress, because it knows Congress is either too cash-compromised or incompetent to do the right thing. For some time, it hasn't been entirely clear where AT&T as a company ends and the nation's intelligence services begin, so giving any advice on "the right thing to do" in regards to surveillance and privacy is utterly adorable.

AT&T certainly has ample credibility, just not on the encryption front. AT&T's the company you go to if you want advice on how to, say, defraud programs designed to help the hearing impaired or low income Americans. AT&T's the company you go to when you want advice on how to rip off consumers with fraudulent services. AT&T's also the foremost authority on effectively buying state legislatures and convincing them to write abysmal, protectionist laws to demolish competitive threats. But advice on the "right thing to do" when it comes to encryption? Thanks, we'll pass.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

As much as we love Find My Phone apps around here, it seems not everyone is quite as pleased with them. A bizarre issue is causing one Atlanta couple much grief: people looking for their lost or stolen phones keep "finding" them at their house.

Ever find yourself questioning how accurate those little signal strength dots are on your iPhone?

Luckily, there's a trick to reveal your iPhone's true signal strength, and it takes less than a minute to enable.

First, you'll need to access a hidden app on your phone called Field Test Mode. To do this, you'll need to open up your Phone app and dial the following number, *3001#12345#* , including the asterisks and hashtag, and tap "Call."

This opens up Field Test Mode, which is mostly filled with menus of cell signal jargon that you don't need to worry about. What you're interested in is the tiny number in the upper left-hand corner of your iPhone — likely hidden behind the text "Back to Phone" if you're using iOS 8 or iOS 9 — which is your iPhone's true signal strength.

Business Insider

Here, for example, my old iPhone 5 that's still running iOS 7 is showing my cell signal to be -59. To exit Field Test Mode, you can simply tap the home button and you'll be brought back to your iPhone's home screen, no harm done.

While that number can vary anywhere from -40 to -130, it will always be negative, and the closer that number is to zero, the better your cell signal, according to OSX Daily. The best signal you can get would be -40, and no signal at all would be -130.

If your iPhone is running iOS 8 or iOS 9 and you can't see the number because of Apple's new "Back-to-last-app" feature that creates a link to the last app you were using in the same corner of your screen, don't worry. There's still another way to display your true signal strength. This method allows you to always have easy access to that number without going through the hassle of dialing out to the Field Test App, enabling your iPhone to display both numbers so you just tap the signal dots in the future to check.

To enable this, return to your phone and dial *3001#12345#* and tap "Call," like before.

You'll be brought to the Field Test App again, but instead of using the home button to exit, hold down your iPhone's power/sleep button until it shows the "Slide to power off" screen and then hold the down your iPhone's home button, which will force quit Field Test App.

You'll be back to your iPhone's homescreen, but this time you should notice that your signal strength number has replaced your signal strength dots.

Business Insider

If you tap that number, you can switch between the two as you see fit.

To undo any changes you made, simply repeat the steps to get into Field Test Mode and tap the Home button to exit the app, and everything will revert back to normal.

 

Late last year, Senator Richard Burr, who is painfully wrong on encryption, announced that he and Senator Dianne Feinstein were working on new legislation that would mandate backdoors to encryption. Most people recognized that such a bill had little-to-no chance of actually passing Congress, as there are at least enough folks up on Capitol Hill who realize that such a law is incredibly stupid. Given that, it's little surprise that reporter Jenna McLaughlin from The Intercept is reporting that such legislation "has been delayed."

But, fear not, foes of strong encryption, because there's always a plan B. Late last year, we also noted that Rep. Michael McCaul, the head of the House Homeland Security Committee, was going to propose legislation that would create a "commission" bringing tech companies and law enforcement together to work on a way to undermine encryption. While, at the very least, he noted concerns about backdooring encryption (and later noted how backdoors could weaken everyone's security), it hasn't stopped him from moving forward with this commission, and making some fairly ridiculously ignorant statements about all of this.

McCaul, together with Senator Mark Warner (who should know better), has announced that they're moving forward with legislation to set up this commission, and still ridiculously claims that "going dark" is a real problem that needs to be "solved."

McCaul said the group would be given “a tight time frame” to develop “recommendations to the Congress as to what can be done to solve this urgent, and I think very challenging threat to our national security.”

But, as if to underline how little McCaul really seems to understand about the issue, during a press conference about this, he claimed that the "going dark debate" was started by Ed Snowden's use of encryption, leading to a rather sarcastic reply from Snowden himself:

Chairman McCaul on "going dark": "It’s ironic that Edward @Snowden really sort of created all this when he started using encryption."

— Kaveh Waddell (@kavehewaddell) January 19, 2016

Other things Chairman McCaul thinks I created: famine, climate change, bieber. https://t.co/eJ8JWyDy1K

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 19, 2016

It's troubling that the guy who thinks Snowden started the debate on going dark is now apparently going to lead this commission to deal with the "problem" of going dark. Nor is the whole "tight timeline" particularly encouraging. Because the whole thing is based on a false premise that if we just "get smart people in the room," they'll figure out "a solution."

But how many times does it need to be said before law enforcement and politicians understand the rather basic facts: you can undermine encryption, but it makes everyone significantly less safe. There is no way to build technology that says "only the pure of heart may use this technology, while ISIS may not." The second you try to do that, all you end up doing is opening up serious vulnerabilities that will put everyone at risk.

Meanwhile, another report on this planned commission claims that it will "be tasked with developing a solution that doesn’t require a 'backdoor' into encrypted communications." That's obviously better than being tasked with backdooring encryption... but what does that even mean? The whole setup of the discussion and the debate is falsely framed around the idea that strong encryption is a "problem" that needs to be "solved." Saying "but we don't mean backdoors," feels like a semantic game, such as James Comey's ridiculous attempt a few months back, where he insisted that the FBI wants "front doors" instead of backdoors.

If Rep. McCaul and Sen Warner were serious about "Homeland Security," they'd both get on the bandwagon supporting strong encryption because that, and that alone, is the best way to protect computer security for Americans.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Amazon is taking a big step in introducing drone delivery to the masses, but it doesn't come without its challenges. Company vice president of global public policy Paul Misener sat down with Yahoo to talk about some of those challenges, and he went into surprising detail about some of the issues they've faced.

Historically, the FCC has steered well clear of regulating broadband prices. Hell, for most of the last fifteen years the FCC hasn't even admitted that high prices due to limited competition are a problem, instead focusing on the politically sexier idea of ensuring uniform availability. The FCC certainly collects pricing data from broadband ISPs, but, at the industry's behest, never shares that data with the public. As a result, we get things like our $300 million national broadband map, which will happily show you (largely hallucinated) speed and competitive options in your neighborhood, but won't tell you how much they cost.

And while the FCC did move last year to expand its authority over broadband providers by reclassifying ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act, FCC boss Tom Wheeler has stated time and time again that the agency has no intention of regulating broadband rates, either in regards to last mile prices or peering and interconnection. But that doesn't mean the threat of broadband price regulations still can't be a useful bogeyman for opponents of net neutrality.

Still fuming from FCC "power grabs" like raising the broadband definition to 25 Mbps and passing relatively basic and loophole-filled net neutrality rules, the GOP is pushing yet another parade of legislation aimed at curtailing the FCC's authority over broadband providers. And while the legislation is being framed by House members (and ex-FCC members now lobbying for broadband providers) as a way to protect small ISPs from a power mad government intent on dictating sector prices, consumer advocate groups note that as worded, the proposals are largely about ensuring the FCC won't actually be able to do its job:

"The two broadband bills use incredibly broad language that endangers the ability of the FCC to protect consumers from fraudulent charges, threatens the ongoing effort to reform the Universal Service Fund to subsidize rural broadband, and potentially deprives millions of consumers of the right to know how their broadband providers make critical decisions about their broadband subscriptions," said Feld.

If you'd fallen asleep during the admittedly monotonous net neutrality debates after the rules were passed, all you really need to know is that net neutrality opponents in Congress have been trying desperately to punish the FCC for daring to stand up to industry incumbents like AT&T and Comcast. This has included an embarrassing parade of so-called fact finding hearings in which FCC boss Tom Wheeler was scolded repeatedly for challenging the broadband status quo. Burying neutrality and FCC authority killing measures in budget riders has also become a popular pastime.

It should be noted that the House's proposals are largely uncooked. Indeed the "No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Act" (tabled by Representative Adam Kinzinger) only states this:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Communications Commission may not regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet access service."

Why this sudden focus on the menace that is "broadband rate regulation?" Because companies like Comcast continue to not only impose utterly unnecessary broadband caps and overage fees, but Comcast is now trying to run rough shod over net neutrality by exempting its own services from the usage caps. As the pressure mounts on the FCC to wake up and actually enforce the net neutrality rules the public forced it to adopt, loyal allies in Congress are doing their very best to pull the rug out from underneath the FCC.

The irony of course is that the FCC, regardless of what party is in control, has shown time, and time, and time again that it doesn't give two shits about the high cost of broadband. It by and large has also indicated that it thinks usage caps and zero rating proposals are innovative and nifty. The idea that the FCC is going to aggressively start engaging in broadband rate regulations (when it can't even admit high-pricing is a problem) is another straw man put forth by a Congress whose full-time job is to protect the broadband industry duopoly from the remotest possibility of public accountability.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We had just discussed a couple of websites, Forbes amongst them, joining the ranks of sites that were attempting to hold their content hostage over people's use of adblockers. The general point of that post was that the reason people use adblockers generally is that sites like Forbes serve up annoying, irritating, horrible ads, such that the question of whether the site's content is worth the hassle of enduring those ads becomes a legitimate one. The moment that question becomes relevant, it should be obvious that the problem is the ad inventory and not the adblocking software.

But of course that isn't the only reason that people use adblockers. The other chief impetus for them is security. Here to show us why that is so is...well...Forbes again. One security researcher discusses his attempt to read a Forbes article, complete with the request to disable his adblocking software, and the resulting malware he encountered as a result. Ironically, the Forbes article in question was its notable "30 Under 30" list, and the researcher wanted to check out the inclusion of a rather well-known security researcher.

On arrival, like a growing number of websites, Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers in order to view the article. After doing so, visitors were immediately served with pop-under malware, primed to infect their computers, and likely silently steal passwords, personal data and banking information. Or, as is popular worldwide with these malware "exploit kits," lock up their hard drives in exchange for Bitcoin ransom.

One researcher commented on Twitter that the situation was "ironic" -- and while it's certainly another variant of hackenfreude, ironic isn't exactly the word I'd use to describe what happened.

Vindicating might be a better word, I think. Vindication for those who insist that adblockers are not only beneficial, but may well be necessary. Necessary because, as we stated before, too much online advertising is garbage, whether that means the ads just suck, or are downright security threats. Ad networks have been a known vector for this type of malware, which can attempt to infect machines with fake antivirus software or compromise personal information from the infected machines. It's important to understand that this is neither new nor is it some small thing.

Less than a month ago, a bogus banner ad was found serving malvertising to visitors of video site DailyMotion. After discovering it, security company Malwarebytes contacted the online ad platform the bad ad was coming through, Atomx. The company blamed a "rogue" advertiser on the WWPromoter network. It was estimated the adware broadcast through DailyMotion put 128 million people at risk. To be specific, it was from the notorious malware family called "Angler Exploit Kit." Remember this name, because I'm pretty sure we're going to be getting to know it a whole lot better in 2016.

Last August, Angler struck MSN.com with -- you guessed it -- another drive-by malvertising campaign. It was the same campaign that had infected Yahoo visitors back in July (an estimated 6.9 billion visits per month, it's considered the biggest malvertising attack so far). October saw Angler targeting Daily Mail visitors through poisoned ads as well (monthly ad impressions 64.4 million). Only last month, Angler's malicious ads hit visitors to Reader's Digest (210K readers; ad impressions 1.7M). That attack sat unattended after being in the press, and was fixed only after a week of public outcry.

Insisting that users turn off their adblockers in this ecosystem is akin to refusing to allow people to tour the wing of a hospital dedicated to combatting highly infectious disease if they want to wear a bio-hazard suit. It makes no sense. "We can't confirm that our ads are safe, but we insist you not block them." Who actually wants to suggest that this stance makes sense?

What should the websites do? The ad networks clearly don't have a handle on this at all, giving us one more reason to use ad blockers. They're practically the most popular malware delivery systems on Earth, and they're making the websites they do business with into the same poisonous monster. I don't even want to think about what it all means for the security practices of the ad companies handling our tracking data or the sites we visit hosting these pathogens.

What should websites do? Well, how about they start treating their ad inventory with at least a percentage of the care with which they treat their content? After all, advertising is content, as it is consumed by the reader/viewer, so why not at least bother to make sure it's palatable? Or maybe start putting in place stricter controls to weed out the malvertising and adware? That too could be helpful.

Guess what's not anywhere on the list of things websites should do, though. If you answered "Insist that customers open themselves up to these security threats by demanding they turn off adblockers," then you win.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Hook a "smart" TV up to a "dumb" pipe and this is the inevitable result.

In a comment on Reddit this week, user “moeburn” raised the possibility of new malware circulating for Smart TVs:

My sister got a virus on her TV. A VIRUS ON HER GODDAMN TV.
It was an LG Smart TV with a built in web browser, and she managed to get a DNS Hijacker that would say “Your computer is infected please send us money to fix it” any time she tried to do anything on the TV.

The Reddit post included this image:

If a TV can surf the web, it can be hijacked or pick up malware. It's a little tougher to make malware stick to smart TV browsers, but while the commenter's outrage might be warranted, shock isn't.

SecureList dug into this hijacker and has both good news and bad news. The good news is this particular version was only live for a few days and disappeared more than four months ago. The bad news is that there's nothing particularly unique about the attempted hijacking. Multiple domains served as hosts for the malware, including a handful at Amazon's cloud services.

It's not a new threat, but spotting it on a smart TV is rather novel. SecureList chased down other versions of the same scammy Javascript -- which prompts people to call a phone number to "protect" their TV from malware -- including this fantastic bit of non-native English that both impersonates a Chrome warning page and suggests your TV is now a portal to a vast selection of retail outlets.


Fortunately, it appears this hijacking can be easily dodged. Even though the code prevents browsers from closing the dialog box (it will just pop up again), the threat can be nullified in other ways.

We also ran the file on a Samsung Smart TV and got the same result. It was possible to close the browser, but it did not change any browser or DNS settings. Turning it off and on again solved the problem as well. It is possible that other malware was involved in the case reported on Reddit, that changed the browser or network settings.

As SecureList points out, it's not a smart TV-directed threat. It's just something that will attack any browser on any device. Other variants may change browser settings or attempt to dump a malware payload, but this one appears incapable of doing so. And while it's only a matter of time before this becomes more widespread, there are a number of factors limiting attacks on smart TVs.

• Smart TVs are not often used to surf the web and users seldom install any app from web pages other than the vendor’s App Store – as it is the case with mobile devices
• Vendors are using different operating systems: Android TV, Firefox OS, Tizen, WebOS.
• Hardware and OS may even change from series to series, causing malware to be incompatible.
• There are by far fewer users surfing the web or reading email on the TV compared to PCs or mobile devices.

But this is coupled with more bad news: if it has a browser, it can be attacked. Someone's going to end up with a "ransomed" TV at some point… or a fridge… or anything else a manufacturer has decided would be more attractive to consumers with added connectivity.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I kinda feel bad for the PR people at T-Mobile. This morning, CEO John Legere put out a completely bullshit statement pretending to respond to the accusations that its BingeOn program is throttling online video. It didn't address the actual issues, made statements that were clearly false, and then accused people questioning the program of being "jerks." That seemed weird, considering the widespread concerns about all of this combined with T-Mobile's attempt to brand itself as the only consumer friendly mobile service provider.

But, if you really wanted to undermine the idea that you're a "consumer-first" operation that "cares about the open internet" and had to pick one group that you shouldn't go off on an unhinged rant about, you'd probably pick EFF. The group, which has been around forever, is somewhat famous for its willingness to fight for the public's digital rights, and unwillingness to compromise its beliefs. It has regularly sued or challenged numerous big companies that have undermined privacy and the open internet, including AT&T and Google.

And yet... in responding to a question from EFF online about its BingeOn throttling, Legere decided to go on a weird, nonsensical anti-EFF rant:

.@EFF pic.twitter.com/pv6V4oOJwS

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) January 7, 2016

After giving a misleading response to the actual question, talking about "selecting the bitrate" (which is throttling not optimization), he then gives a little smile and says:

Part B of my answer is: Who the fuck are you anyway EFF? Why are you stirring up so much trouble and who pays you?

This has immediately resulted in widespread mocking across Twitter, with many people tweeting to Legere that they fund EFF and they care a lot more about EFF than T-Mobile:

@JohnLegere /I/ pay @EFF. And I pay T-Mobile. Take care: /one/ of those two things could change really quickly, and it isn't the EFF one.

— H. Poteat (@NSQE) January 7, 2016

.@johnlegere I (along with many other members) pay @eff.

— Asher Langton (@AsherLangton) January 7, 2016

Since @JohnLegere asked, #IPayTheEFF. @EFF

— matt blaze (@mattblaze) January 7, 2016

I may have to drop my T-Mobile service after this brash response to @eff by @johnlegere pic.twitter.com/z7nBuh7sMU

— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) January 7, 2016

.@JohnLegere Who pays for @EFF to keep watch on shady anti-net neutrality moves like this? People who know the net. pic.twitter.com/525NKCkRuO

— Kris Slevens (@cpqNetworks) January 7, 2016

@JohnLegere I'm a T-Mobile customer. I pay for @EFF #WeAreEFF

— Benjamin Eckel (@bhelx) January 7, 2016

.@JohnLegere @EFF I pay them. I also pay T-Mobile. If I have to choose between the two, I'll keep paying the EFF and switch from T-Mobile.

— Curious Gene XIII (@curiousgene) January 7, 2016

There are a lot more where those came from, and they keep pouring in.

I've emailed T-Mobile's PR people to find out if Legere really doesn't know what EFF is, or if he really thinks that EFF is somehow a front group for a company attacking T-Mobile. I doubt I'll hear much of a response. But if Legere wanted to totally undermine his pro-consumer position in a single sentence, I don't think he could have picked a much worse one than what he actually came out with.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Biometric scanners are hardly a novelty these days, but how the data they generate can be used is still controversial. Here's a good example from Venezuela of how function creep there has turned fingerprint readers into instruments of pervasive surveillance:

In Caracas or Maracaibo' supermarkets and drugstores, buying a kilogram of grain or a pack of cookies has become a complex procedure: it's required for you to deliver an ID, full name, phone number, address, date of birth and to slide both thumbs in a device: the emblematic "fingerprint scanner"; a device which usage by stores was originally voluntary, but which evolution, months afterwards, is one of omnipresent machinery, kind of a necessary toll for the acquisition of a simple pack of gum in any chain store.

As a post on the Digital Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean blog explains, the Food Safety Biometric System was supposed to be a boon for citizens, ending Venezuela's food and medicine shortage. Not only has it failed to do that, it has helped create one of the world's most complete and intrusive population profile databases:

Along with biometric and personal data requested to the customers at the moment of the purchase, stores are obliged to preserve a great deal of information regarding the transaction, demanded by the government's tax collector. The extend [sic] of the databases that the Venezuelan government possesses regarding their citizens would be heaven for any big data analyst. With enough computer skills, it wouldn't be difficult to establish a detailed profile of every Venezuelan citizen, starting from data such as address, the places where he shops, how much money he expends and the products he acquires. Nevertheless, no one outside of the government possesses the capability to know if ... systems are intertwined, or where this huge quantity of information is stored, much less what's the policy for its retention and storage.

That would be worrying anywhere; in Venezuela, it's doubly so, because of the country's experience with something called the Tascón List:

a list of millions of signatures of Venezuelans who petitioned in 2003 and 2004 for the recall of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, a petition which ultimately led to the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004, in which the recall was defeated. The list, published online by National Assembly member Luis Tascón, is used by the Venezuelan government to discriminate against those who have signed against Chávez. The government also claimed some private firms were using the list to discriminate in favour of petitioners.

According to the Digital Rights post, because of the Tascón list, some Venezuelans found themselves shut out from things like mortgage loans, scholarships and job opportunities. The fingerprint scanners of the Food Safety Biometric System are already being used to deny people access to even more essential items -- food and medicine:

those marked by the system shopping in quantities superior to those of their established quotas, go to a blacklist, and are blocked completely from the system. This makes them use the (illegal) black market in order to purchase food, medicines and basic products.

Venezuela is clearly the country to watch if you want to see how not to use biometrics.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

If there's an unreasonable, warrantless search happening, there's a good chance Deputy (literal) Dog is on the case. Cops love their K9 buddies, mainly because nearly any motion or noise a police dog makes can be construed as an "indication" or an "alert." It's a blank permission slip, signed with a paw print.

In reality, though, contraband sniffing dogs aren't preternaturally smart. They are still man's best friend and they love pleasing their handlers. The reward that comes after every "alert" further impresses on the animal the value of "alerting."

This is one of law enforcement's major blind spots. Because contraband-sniffing dogs locate contraband at least part of the time, they're presumed to be infallible/miraculous. No one seems to be more amazed by these animals' skills than law enforcement officers. (Well, them and far too many judges…) But it's not often that you see a law enforcement officer claim his canine partner can do something anyone else would consider impossible, including an expert on law enforcement dogs.

On the way to having the fruits of his search suppressed, CBP Agent Aaron Miranda stated out loud -- and on the record -- that his dog could "smell" the difference between CONCEALED and UNCONCEALED humans.

Agent Miranda testified that Boeli is trained to find things by their odor, including concealed humans, marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, and all derivatives of those drugs. Agent Miranda testified that when Boeli comes across an odor that he is trained to find “he changes posture, his demeanor. His breathing changes. He tenses up, starts breathing out his nose, closes his mouth. His whole body changes up.”

Now, it's one thing to sniff out concealed humans when no other visible humans are in the vehicle. That I can believe. But Miranda says Boeli can do this even when other, unconcealed people are in the car… or even when that car is in motion.

Agent Miranda testified that Boeli is trained to detect concealed people in different scenarios including inside a moving vehicle. Agent Miranda testified that Boeli can “distinguish cars with people in them from cars with concealed people in them.”

Do tell.

Agent Miranda testified that “I am not an instructor, so I don’t really know how they do the training or how he does it. It amazes me too, but it works.”

PLEASE HOLD YOUR LAUGHTER UNTIL THE END OF THE PRESENTATION.

Miranda doesn't know how this happens or how it works. IT JUST DOES. Here's his definition of "works."

Agent Miranda testified that on a typical day thousands of cars come through the checkpoint and that Boeli could alert “anywhere from two to six or seven” times. Id. at 46. Agent Miranda testified that Boeli has found “five to seven human beings and twelve narcotics busts” over their five-year career. Id. at 105.

Math time:

Five years at ~200 working days per year multiplied by… oh, let's just call it 1,000 cars per day. That's 1,000,000 vehicles he and Boeli have stared/sniffed at. And Boeli's superior sniffing skills have netted the team "5-7 humans" and "12 drug busts." Generously assuming each illicit human was discovered in a separate vehicle, that's a hit rate of .002%.

Now, most vehicles traveling this stretch of California highway will contain nothing illegal, so the hit rate can't really be determined with any accuracy. But five years with 19 busts in an area (Highway 86 outside of Westmorland, California) where one would expect a higher rate of drug/human trafficking than further inland, this still seems incredibly low. And yet, Agent Miranda can't say enough good things about Boeli's ability to sniff out concealed humans in moving vehicles driven by unconcealed humans -- even when an expert on contraband-sniffing dogs contradicts his claims.

At the evidentiary hearing, Defendant presented the testimony of an expert witness who operates a business training dogs for law enforcement and security organizations.

[...]

Defendant’s expert was asked, “In your opinion is it possible to train a dog to alert to concealed human smell but ignore or differentiate other human smell in the same vehicle?” The expert answered, “Not inside the same vehicle. If there is somebody inside the vehicle and somebody in the trunk, or you take the person out of the trunk, it doesn’t matter. It is all – it is the same to the dog.”

The court found Miranda's testimony similarly unconvincing. When the burden is on the government to prove that its search was reasonable and justified by a trained dog's "alert," it has to offer something better than ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In this case, Defendant has challenged the reliability of the training program and the circumstances surrounding the alert behavior. Defendant challenged Boeli’s ability to distinguish cars with people inside from cars with people concealed inside during the cross examination of Agent Miranda. Agent Miranda was not able to provide any evidence to support Boeli’s training to detect concealed people in moving vehicles. Agent Miranda testified “I don’t really know how they do the training or how [Boeli] does it. It amazes me too, but it works.” Agent Miranda stated, “I trained with my dog on these odors, but the actual training that goes into him knowing the difference is something that the... instructors do that and stuff. I don’t know how the dog would know the difference, but they just do. It is pretty amazing.”

Well, a trainer was asked and he stated that the "amazing" behavior witnessed by Agent Miranda simply does not exist. The most amazing act here was performed by the CBP and Agent Miranda, who managed to make all of the evidence they obtained with their warrantless search vanish into the ether.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

A Catholic priest in the Philippines has been suspended from the Diocese of San Pablo after members of the congregation complained that his hoverboarding around during Christmas Eve Mass was inappropriate, especially after they realized what all the money in the offering basket went to last week.

In its statement, the Diocese of San Pablo added, "The priest said that it was a wake up call for him; he acknowledged that his action was not right and promised that it will not happen again." "He will be out of the parish and will spend some time to reflect on this past event. He would like to apologize for what happened," the diocese said.

There's a short clip video of the action after the jump, which includes the priest doing a double spin at the 10-second mark and earning himself some sweet applause. What was going through this guy's head? I mean, besides what would Jesus NOT do? Sadly, the congregation will never get to see the quadruple spin and figure eights he was working on for Easter Mass. Keep going for the video. Thanks to Ace, who agrees real priests learn how to use devil-sticks.

Google is replacing the Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in Android with OpenJDK, the open source version of Oracle's Java Development Kit (JDK). The news first came by a "mysterious Android codebase commit" from last month submitted to Hacker News. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that Android N will rely solely on OpenJDK, rather Android’s own version of the Java APIs. "As an open-source platform, Android is built upon the collaboration of the open-source community," a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. "In our upcoming release of Android, we plan to move Android’s Java language libraries to an OpenJDK-based approach, creating a common code base for developers to build apps and services. Google has long worked with and contributed to the OpenJDK community, and we look forward to making even more contributions to the OpenJDK project in the future." If this is what it takes to get those Oracle slimebags off Android's back, so be it.

When Google discusses its latest self-driving car statistics (provided monthly at the company's website), the company is quick to highlight that with two million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined, the company's self-driving cars have only been involved in 17 minor accidents, none of them technically the fault of Google. Or, more specifically, these accidents almost always involve Google's cars being rear ended by human drivers. But what Google's updates usually don't discuss is the fact that quite often, self-driving cars are being rear ended because they're being too cautious and not human enough.

And that's proven to be one of the key obstacles in programming self-driving cars: getting them to drive more like flawed humans. That is, occasionally aggressive when necessary, and sometimes flexible when it comes to the rules. That's at least been the finding of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab, which says getting self-driving cars onto the highway can still be a challenge:

"Last year, Rajkumar offered test drives to members of Congress in his lab’s self-driving Cadillac SRX sport utility vehicle. The Caddy performed perfectly, except when it had to merge onto I-395 South and swing across three lanes of traffic in 150 yards (137 meters) to head toward the Pentagon. The car’s cameras and laser sensors detected traffic in a 360-degree view but didn’t know how to trust that drivers would make room in the ceaseless flow, so the human minder had to take control to complete the maneuver."

And while Google may crow that none of the accidents their cars get into are technically Google's fault, accident rates for self-driving cars are still twice that of traditional vehicles, thanks in part to humans not being used to a vehicle that fully adheres to the rules:

"Turns out, though, their accident rates are twice as high as for regular cars, according to a study by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Driverless vehicles have never been at fault, the study found: They’re usually hit from behind in slow-speed crashes by inattentive or aggressive humans unaccustomed to machine motorists that always follow the rules and proceed with caution."

But with a sometimes-technophpobic public quick to cry foul over the slightest self-driving car mishap, car programmers are proceeding cautiously when it comes to programming in an extra dose of rush-hour aggression. And regulators are being even more cautious still. California last week proposed new regulations that would require that all self-driving cars have full working human controls and a driver in the driver's seat at all times, ready to take control (which should ultimately do a wonderful job of -- pushing the self-driving car industry to other states like Texas).

The self-driving car future is coming up quickly whether car AI or self-driving auto philosophical dilemmas (should a car be programmed to kill the driver if it will save a dozen school children?) are settled or not. Google and Ford will announce a new joint venture at CES that may accelerate self-driving vehicle construction. And with 33,000 annual fatalities caused by highway-bound humans each year, it still seems likely that, overly-cautious rear enders aside, an automated auto industry will still likely save significant lives over the long haul.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

This is the gingerbread Iron Throne built by a group of friends for the holidays. I like all the little swords, I bet they double as toothpicks. You know the little plastic swords they put fruit on when you order a cocktail? I collect those, and once I have enough I'm going to glue them all to a piece of poster board in the shape of a pirate ship. I am an artiste. "You are a hoarder." DON'T TOUCH MY NEWSPAPERS. Keep going for a couple more shots. Thanks again to carey, who, for two tips in one day, gets to take the D.A.R.E. bear home for the night.

For much of the year Facebook has been under fire for trying to dress up its attempt to corner developing nation ad markets under the banner of selfless altruism. Facebook's plan is relatively simple: through a program dubbed Free Basics, Facebook plans to offer developing markets a Zuckerburg-curated, walled garden version of the Internet, for free. Under Facebook's vision of this program, Facebook becomes the axle around which online access (and therefore online advertising) spins for generations to come, with the tangential bonus of helping low-income communities get a taste of what online connectivity can offer.

But many critics have complained that such a model gives Facebook too much control. Partner companies quickly dropped out of the program, unhappy that Facebook got to decide which content was "zero rated" (exempted from wireless usage caps) and which wasn't. Companies like Mozilla similarly argued that if Facebook was so keen on helping the poor, it should finance access to the actual internet. Others worried that having one company as a powerful gatekeeper not only poses problems for competition, innovation and speech, but helps create a central repository for subscriber data that would prove an irresistible target for hackers, governments, and oppressive regimes.

Facebook's response to all of this criticism was to call these concerns extremist, and to imply that if you're questioning Facebook's motives, you're hurting the poor.

The problem (for Facebook) is that as India spent much of the year trying to craft net neutrality rules, government regulators agreed with this criticism, suggesting that what Facebook was attempting was glorified collusion. This week, in a desperate attempt to sway the government toward Facebook's AOL-esque vision, the company decided it would be a good idea to use Facebook users to automatically spam the Indian government. Users who logged in were greeted with a message that automatically sent a message to Indian regulators lamenting a "small group of vocal critics" trying to derail free Internet access:Of course that "small, vocal group of critics" is in reality quite large. And they're not looking to ban free Internet access from a billion people, they're just smart enough to realize that what developing nations need is real infrastructure connecting people to the actual Internet at lower prices, not a bastardized version of AOL. Facebook has consistently tried to argue that if you oppose its vision of a curated walled garden you're a villain preventing the poor from being connected. But that's nonsense, and it doesn't void the reality that Free Basics is a potentially harmful idea, dressed up to look like Mister Rogers.

Curiously, several Indian Facebook users who've received this message claim that by simply scrolling down the notice, Facebook sends your message to the government without your tacit approval:

Got conned into signing the #FreeBasics petition on FB. DON'T "SCROLL DOWN TO LEARN MORE"! Signs you up immediately! pic.twitter.com/XqpyQSdUlN

— Accidenteshwari (@accidenteshwari) December 18, 2015

Facebook also claims it "accidentally" spammed many users in the United States and the UK with the message, likely resulting in a few extra million "accidental" messages to Indian regulator Trai, which is busy fielding input from the public. You almost get the sense that Facebook's getting a bit desperate when it comes to pitching its plan for global ad market domination unprecedented international love and caring.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We see abuse in the way some companies and people use the DMCA takedown process all the time. Those stories typically range from anywhere between mildly frustrating to truly infuriating. But to really abuse the DMCA process in the most heartless, idiotic, disingenuous and fan-hating manner, we of course must bow before the masters over at Disney.

All of this started not that long ago, in a Walmart not particularly far away, when someone with a Facebook Star Wars fan group walked into a store and legally purchased a Star Wars figurine and then uploaded a photo of it to the Facebook group. Turns out the figurine contains a sort of spoiler within it or something. As such, plenty of other websites, such as Star Wars Unity, linked to it, embedded the photo of the figure, and discussed its implications. You know, like Star Wars fans do on all kinds of sites all the time. Well, that's when the DMCA notices began rolling in and the images started coming down.

This morning I woke up to numerous DMCA takedown notices on the @starwarsunity Twitter account, the Facebook account, the Google+ Page, and my personal Twitter for posting the image of an action figure that was legally purchased at Walmart. My webhost also received a takedown email from them with a threat of a lawsuit of the image wasn’t removed. I of course removed the image because I can’t afford to be sued by a toy company who likes to bully Star Wars fans.

The exact wording of the “infringement” is:

“Description of infringement: A screen shot of an unreleased figurine for Star Wars: Force Awakens”

Except, of course, the figurine wasn't "unreleased," it was very much released at a Walmart where it was legally purchased. If the Walmart made a mistake in putting it out on the shelves too early, that doesn't suddenly make it copyright infringement for someone who bought it in good faith to take a picture of it. And, taking a step back, even if the figurine had not been released by the Walmart, how is taking a picture of it copyright infringement? It isn't, by any sane reading of copyright law. Because it was a picture of a Star Wars toy made by Hasbro, most people logically assumed the takedowns were coming from the toy company.

This wasn’t a figure that was stolen off the back of a truck or stolen out from behind closed doors at Hasbro. It was legally purchased in a store by a fan and they posted a picture of their purchase on the internet. But because Hasbro is terrified of pissing off Disney and losing the Star Wars license early, they’re threatening and bullying fans online with legal action for sharing pictures of their purchases. Due to this I urge all Star Wars fans to avoid Hasbro product and not purchase any of their Star Wars releases. Until Hasbro grows a brain and stops bullying fans online, they do not deserve any of our money.

Except it doesn't appear that this was Hasbro at all. Turns out the DMCA notices are coming from Irdeto, an anti-piracy outfit we've discussed before, and are being sent on behalf of Lucasfilm, which is, of course, Disney. And those DMCA notices are going out not only to the original uploader of the picture, but even to those using the picture in a discussion or news capacity, and even those retweeting the picture.

So, let's recap. Hasbro made a toy that was released by a Walmart and bought legally by a fan, who uploaded a photo of the toy. Disney/Lucasfilm, which does not have a copyright on that photo, is having a third party, Irdeto, send out DMCA notices for the uploading of a picture, or a retweeting/reposting of the picture, which is not copyright infringement. And this gross abuse of the DMCA process is being done simply to stifle the speech of Star Wars fans and save them from a spoiler that apparently is coming from the depiction of this toy.

If that isn't the kind of DMCA abuse that results in some kind of punishment, nothing is.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

In news that sounds straight out of an Onion article, the North Carolina town of Woodland has rejected plans for a proposed solar power farm in the area, over concerns that the solar cells would suck up too much sun and leave nearby plants starved for light. Here are some quotes from the two all-stars of the public hearing, one of whom was a science teacher. SHE TAUGHT SCIENCE. Those poor students.

Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the plants that make the community beautiful. She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight. She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn't cause cancer. "I want to know what's going to happen," she said. "I want information. Enough is enough. I don't see the profit for the town. "People come with hidden agendas," she said. "Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn't sign any paper." Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms. "You're killing your town," he said. "All the young people are going to move out." He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.

Wow. I don't really know what to say. Jan Mann the retired science teacher has observed dead plants near solar panels AND nobody can tell her solar panels don't cause cancer. That sounds like rock-solid science to me. No word if the school district intends to sue her to get all her paychecks back. Thanks to TW, who's concerned wind energy farms might steal all the wind and then birds won't be able to fly.

The DOJ's counsel warned the DEA that its illegal wiretaps would get them into trouble.

"It was made very clear to the agents that if you're going to go the state route, then best wishes, good luck and all that, but that case isn't coming to federal court..."

"They'd want to bring these cases into the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the feds would tell them no (expletive) way," a former Justice Department official said.

But the DEA persisted, because it had a man [read: magistrate judge] on the inside. Judge Helios Hernandez, a state-level judge, approved five times as many wiretap warrants as any other judge in the country, acting as a rubber stamp for the DEA and the California law enforcement agencies it collaborated with. The DEA should have been running these warrant applications through a federal judge, but it seemed much happier with this arrangement.

The highly-questionable wiretap warrants have finally started to cause it problems. Brad Heath and Brett Kelman of USA Today -- the journalists who uncovered the massive, illegal wiretap program -- are now reporting that one of the faulty warrants has just cost the DEA a year's worth of surveillance efforts and, quite possibly, a significant amount of seized assets.

Federal drug agents spent months watching a tiny California jewelry store sandwiched between an auto parts shop and an apartment house with bars on its windows. They secretly recorded its owner’s phone calls and intercepted couriers carrying away boxes full of cash, sometimes stuffed with $100,000 or more. For more than a year, they gathered evidence that the store was laundering millions of dollars for drug traffickers.

[...]

Prosecutors determined that wiretaps the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration used as the core of its investigation were illegal and couldn’t be used in court. Four suspects went free, and they want the government to give back nearly $800,000 drug agents seized.

The problem with the warrants used in this case were numerous. First, many of the suspects were prosecuted in San Bernardino while the wiretap warrants themselves were issued by the friendly courts in Riverside. On top of that, the warrants -- which were supposed to be signed only by a top prosecutor -- were signed by lower-level lawyers. This practice ran afoul of a restriction enacted in response to the FBI's abuse of wiretaps to surveil civil rights leaders in the 1960s.

Because Riverside District Attorney Paul Zellerbach rarely felt the need to comply with this restriction, hundreds of granted warrants are equally suspect. More cases are likely to be tossed in the future. Defense lawyers as far away as Kentucky and Oregon (where Riverside-granted warrants were deployed) are taking a closer look at the government's paperwork.

The most ridiculous reaction has come from the head of the office that just saw all of its evidence tossed. According to San Bernardino's top prosecutor, illegal wiretap warrants are no big deal -- certainly not worthy of having a yearlong investigation nullified.

“These people were dealing in drugs, and they are guilty, and because of a procedural issue and a suppression motion, they got away with it,” said Mike Ramos, the district attorney in San Bernardino, Calif., whose office prosecuted the case.

Man, those "getting away with it" grapes look incredibly sour. For many years, it has been the DEA and local law enforcement "getting away with it." These "procedural errors" never seemed to concern the agencies that used illegally obtained evidence to put people in prison. It's not until one gets away that anyone expresses an opinion on hundreds of illegal wiretap warrants. And the statement that's delivered isn't one of regret or contrition, but one of resentment that "guilty" people can also benefit from "procedural errors."

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story