Brindle

While the FBI and NSA continue their campaign to fight against allowing encryption for devices, it's clear that not everyone in the government agrees. It does appear that there's a bit of a fight going on within the administration over where to come down (as President Obama himself admitted), and in a recent blog post, it seems pretty clear where the FTC comes down in this debate. The FTC's CTO, Ashkan Soltani, who has long been a strong user-privacy advocate (and before joining the FTC helped in some of the reporting on the Snowden documents), wrote the blog post celebrating the virtues of full disk encryption and other "end user device controls." It starts out by noting that when he recently lost his own laptop, he wasn't that worried, thanks to the fact that it was encrypted.

Strong end-user privacy and security controls, such as device encryption and firmware passwords, not only protect personal information from unwanted access – they can also make it easier to recover lost or stolen devices as well.

Last month, I had the misfortune of having a personal laptop stolen.

Fortunately for me, while I was a bit bummed about losing my two-year-old laptop, I backup regularly and always enable disk encryption which is an important step to protect the information stored on the hard-disk from unwanted access by criminals, employers, or other actors (with the exception of very sophisticated adversaries).

He notes that this actually allowed him to help track down the device, because whoever ended up with the "useless" laptop tried to bring it to an Apple Genius Bar, which resulted in Soltani receiving an email.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, when I received an email to my personal account notifying me of an upcoming Apple Genius Bar visit. I was initially confused by the email but soon realized that it's probably the thief (or the undiscerning buyer) of my laptop trying to take it into Apple for repair – likely because they’re unable to use it without knowing the firmware password I set.

I immediately began calling local law enforcement and the nearby Apple stores notifying them of the theft and this development. After a few phone calls and the help of a fantastic Sergeant in the Local Crimes Unit of the Sacramento Police department, I was able to coordinate an agreement whereby Apple would notify law enforcement if the new user brought the machine in for repair. After an initial disappointment on account of the suspect skipping his Genius Bar reservation, a representative from Apple Customer Relations notified me that the device was brought into another store and they were coordinating with Sacramento Police Department to return it to me. I’m unclear as to whether they were able to track down the original thief.

And thus, the FTC's CTO makes it clear that full disk encryption has benefits beyond even just keeping your own data safe:

In the end, strong end-user controls like device encryption and firmware passwords not only protect sensitive info stored on the device, they also prevent criminals from utilizing stolen property. The more devices feature strong end-user controls, the less likely thieves can profit from their theft on the open market.

Given that the FBI is supposed to be interested in preventing crime, you'd think James Comey would support that kind of thing...

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PROTIP: Keep the volume low. This is a video of 2,000 rounds of ammunition being destroyed in an ammo burner. It was very gratifying to watch, especially after things start to pick up. By the one minute mark that shit is PANDEMONIUM. Feel free to skip around. I tried to do the same thing in a brown paper grocery bag and I am dead now. Physically anyways, I've been dead inside for years. Hit the jump for the excitement. Thanks to Brighton, who simply walks into Mordor to dispose of ammo in Mount Doom. We've got a badass over here!

North Dakota state representative Rick Becker had a good idea with his House Bill 1328, which would forbid the use of drones by law enforcement in the state without a warrant. A few other states have been looking at similar proposals, after there have been growing concerns about police using drones for surveillance activities. Virginia, for example, recently passed a law that requires a warrant for police drone use. So, good idea, Rep. Becker.

Except... in stepped Bruce Burkett, a lobbyist from the North Dakota Peace Officer's Association, who "was allowed by the state house committee to amend HB 1328" to now make it about legalizing weaponized drones for police. Yes, a "peace officer" representative just made it possible to weaponize drones. The trick? He amended the bill to make it only about "lethal weapons," which now opens the door to what police like to refer to as "less than lethal" weapons like "rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers" -- some of which have a history of leading to deaths, despite their "less than lethal" claims.

Even “less than lethal” weapons can kill though. At least 39 people have been killed by police Tasers in 2015 so far, according to The Guardian. Bean bags, rubber bullets, and flying tear gas canisters have also maimed, if not killed, in the U.S. and abroad.

Meanwhile, local police are still freaking out about the need to require a warrant. Check out this bit of police state nonsense:

Grand Forks County Sheriff Bob Rost said his department’s drones are only equipped with cameras and he doesn’t think he should need a warrant to go snooping.

“It was a bad bill to start with,” Rost told The Daily Beast. “We just thought the whole thing was ridiculous.”

Rost said he needs to use drones for surveillance in order to obtain a warrant in the first place.

Yes, we need to spy on your first, to then see if we should get a warrant to spy on you some more. That's not how this works.

And, now, while there will be warrant requirements for some uses -- though with broad exceptions including within 25 miles of the US/Canada border and for "exigent circumstances" -- the bill will (thanks to a lobbyist) allow the police to also experiment with weaponizing drones. If you thought the militarization of police wasn't screwed up enough, now you might need to worry about stun guns and rubber bullets hailing down from the sky...

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While Google remains committed to industry-wide adoption of HTTPS, there isn't always full compliance on third party ad networks and custom creative code served via our systems. To ensure ads continue to serve on iOS9 devices for developers transitioning to HTTPS, the recommended short term fix is to add an exception that allows HTTP requests to succeed and non-secure content to load successfully. Confirmed: Google wants me to switch to iOS. Disgusting.

Because automatic license plate readers just aren't efficient enough -- what with their ability to capture hundreds, if not thousands, of plate scans per hour -- San Jose's city government is looking to deputize other businesses and their vehicles in its quest to achieve 100% coverage of the city.

Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmen Johnny Khamis and Raul Peralez proposed that the city consider strapping license plate readers to the front of garbage trucks, allowing them to record the plates of every car along their routes. The data would be fed directly to the Police Department from the privately operated trash trucks, prompting an officer to respond to stolen vehicles or cars involved with serious crime.

"We can cover every street at least once a week and possibly deter thieves from coming into our city," Khamis said. A committee chaired by Liccardo that sets the council's agenda voted Wednesday to continue exploring the idea.

San Jose won't be the first city to use non-police vehicles to do its plate scanning. As was covered here earlier this year, Hampton, Virginia has mounted an ALPR to a "city van" and uses the data collected to chase down the city's tax evaders -- a term that includes anyone who owes $5 or more to the city. Another town doesn't even use a city vehicle. Isle of Wight completely outsources its plate scanning efforts, putting it solely in the hands of a private company with its own plate scanners.

While it's true that a vehicle parked on a public street (or one that can be viewed from a public street) has no expectation of privacy, the amount of data gathered still raises privacy-related concerns. It's one thing to view a vehicle on a public street with a set of human eyes. It's quite another when this set of "eyes" compiles thousands of plate-location records and stores them for weeks or months. Once that happens, it's no longer just random cars on random streets. It's long-term tracking.

At this point, the plan is still in its proposal stage. City officials say at least one sanitation company is already on board with the proposed program.

Khamis said Wednesday's action is only the first step in a long process. The proposal calls for city officials to explore the "feasibility, legality and civil liberties implications" of garbage-truck mounted license plate readers. Questions the council members asked the city to consider include the process of transferring license data from the private garbage trucks to the police, whether they would be subjected to the same or different policies governing police car license readers and whether other cities have taken similar measures and how they worked.

Beyond the civil liberties implications, the city needs to examine the reality of what it's doing: using public funds to purchase law enforcement equipment to place on private vehicles. And it needs to ask itself whether the people providing these funds -- taxpayers -- are on board with the use of private companies as an extension of law enforcement. It also needs to examine its motives thoroughly. Just because there's no expectation of privacy doesn't necessarily mean government bodies should strive for 100% exploitation of these areas.

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This is a video created by Youtuber J. Matthew Turner trying to prove that Daniel LaRusso (the Karate Kid) is a violent sociopath and the real bully of the film, and that his arch nemesis Johnny is actually the flawed hero. It was surprisingly convincing. Of course, I'm pretty easy to convince about anything. Shoes untied? I fall for that all the time and I should know better because I only wear flip flops. Plus one time as a joke my doctor convinced me my penis was going to fall before my next birthday if I didn't start walking backwards, which I'm fairly certain is in direct violation of the Hippocratic Oath. Hit the jump and see the light.

The story of this morning's live "on air" shooting of a local TV news reporter in Virginia is horrifying on many, many levels. Like with many senseless killings, there are all sorts of "big questions" being raised, most of which aren't really appropriate Techdirt fodder, though I'm sure those of you interested in those things can find other outlets for them. However, one tangential story fits right into Techdirt's core areas of focus: apparently two BBC reporters who were covering the police pursuit of the apparent shooter (who then shot himself) were forced by police to delete their own camera footage. This is illegal. I don't know how many times it needs to be repeated. Even the DOJ has somewhat forcefully reminded police that they have no right to stop anyone from photographing or videotaping things, so long as they're not interfering with an investigation. And yet...

Two BBC reporters covering the police pursuit of Vester Lee Flanagan said that cops threatened to seize their car and camera if they didn't delete footage of site where the Flanagan shot himself. "Was too far away to get any good footage. One officer threatened to tow my car and take my camera," reporter Franz Strasser tweeted. "Watched me delete my one file, and let me go. Other officer apologized and said we have to understand." His colleague, Tara McKelvey, filmed the encounter.

It appears that the cops used the same bullshit excuse we've seen them use in the past: that it's "evidence."

Officer Clark says: "that could be evidence and seized." He was telling us about our camera. The suspect is reported dead.

— Tara McKelvey (@Tara_Mckelvey) August 26, 2015

But, as Strasser notes, if that's true, then why did the cops make them delete it?

But why they are then okay with deleting 'evidence' makes one question their reasoning.

— Franz Strasser (@franzstrasser) August 26, 2015

As has been noted before, this is a clear violation of Constitutional rights, and the BBC and the reporters in question could file a civil suit against the police department, potentially winning a fair amount of taxpayer money because the police in Virginia are apparently unfamiliar with the First Amendment of the Constitution.

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Remember the 4th Amendment? We hear it's making a comeback. Back in May, we had a story about another court explaining to the government that, contrary to popular belief within Homeland Security, the 4th Amendment does still apply at the border, and thus Border Patrol can't just take someone's laptop without a warrant.

The case involved a guy named Jae Shik Kim, who the government suspected was shipping items to China that were then being forwarded to Iran. Because of that, DHS grabbed his laptop as he was leaving the US (on a flight to Korea). The DOJ argued that the laptop was a "container" subject to search at the border. The court disabused the DOJ of this notion:

After considering all of the facts and authorities set forth above, then, the Court finds, under the totality of the unique circumstances of this case, that the imaging and search of the entire contents of Kim’s laptop, aided by specialized forensic software, for a period of unlimited duration and an examination of unlimited scope, for the purpose of gathering evidence in a pre-existing investigation, was supported by so little suspicion of ongoing or imminent criminal activity, and was so invasive of Kim’s privacy and so disconnected from not only the considerations underlying the breadth of the government’s authority to search at the border, but also the border itself, that it was unreasonable.

Given an opportunity to respond, the DOJ has dropped the entire case.

The United States, by and through its attorney, the Acting United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, respectfully moves this Court to dismiss the Indictment against the defendants. As grounds for this motion, the government states the following: in a Memorandum Opinion and Order, filed on May 8, 2015, the Court granted the defendants’ motion to suppress evidence, and the government has decided not to pursue an appeal of that decision. Accordingly, the government is unable to continue prosecuting this matter, and we therefore move the Court to dismiss the Indictment pending against the defendants.

Yup. Next time, maybe don't violate the 4th Amendment.

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Over the last few years, we've published a ton of stories about the growing police reliance on Stingray cell site simulator devices (also known as IMSI catchers), that mimic a real cell phone tower and help provide the location of a certain mobile phone. As we've written, these devices have been super popular with police departments, who often receive them from the federal government with strict non-disclosure agreements, which means law enforcement has been known to lie to courts or simply drop cases where the usage is at risk of coming out in court.

It seems that this story is getting more and more national attention. Brad Heath, over at USA Today, has a fairly deep dive into the fact that police are using these devices to solve petty crimes all the time, without a warrant, and then refusing to tell defendants how they were caught (which is a bit of a constitutional no-no). Heath specifically was able to get a police surveillance log in Baltimore, which detailed how the devices were used there.

The records show that the city's police used stingrays to catch everyone from killers to petty thieves, that the authorities regularly hid or obscured that surveillance once suspects got to court and that many of those they arrested were never prosecuted.

Defense attorneys assigned to many of those cases said they did not know a stingray had been used until USA TODAY contacted them, even though state law requires that they be told about electronic surveillance.

“I am astounded at the extent to which police have been so aggressively using this technology, how long they’ve been using it and the extent to which they have gone to create ruses to shield that use,” Stephen Mercer, the chief of forensics for Maryland’s public defenders, said.

Some of the cases are absolutely ridiculous -- such as the one where an angry husband grabbed his wife's phone and left the house. Police declared it a theft and used an IMSI catcher to track it down... but by that point, the husband had already given it back to his wife, so the police just showed up at her home where she already had the phone. Also, because it's so easy to use these devices to just go and locate anyone, Baltimore police sometimes used it just to find the location of witnesses (i.e., people who haven't committed any crimes). That's going way over the line of what's appropriate.

These things are being used so often in so many cases with so little transparency, one hopes that the growing press attention will finally lead to much more accountability on how these devices are used and a requirement for a warrant.

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The government seems to have lost interest in finding anyone to hang for Snowden's all-access tour of the NSA's internal servers -- access that greatly aided in his absconding with a number of documents revealing the surprising extent of the agency's surveillance programs. It certainly still wants to hang Snowden -- literally, if some legislators get their way.

It has, however, decided to nail one handy scapegoat to the wall. This would be the contractor who allowed Snowden to get in the door in the first place. The Register's Shaun Nichols reports that the DOJ is fining US Investigative Services (USIS) $30 million for generally being completely terrible at the one thing it's supposed to be doing: vetting applicants for sensitive government jobs.

The DoJ announced on Wednesday that US Investigations Services (USIS) will give up a $30m (£19.14m) payment in exchange for settling charges that it violated the US False Claims Act by failing to properly screen applicants for government security clearances.

According to the DoJ, USIS failed to properly screen federal security clearance applicants and, in some cases, submitted incomplete background check reports to the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

The USIS wasn't simply mediocre. It was awful. Shortly after Snowden revealed himself as the source of the leaks, USIS was revealed to have riddled the government with security holes over most of the past decade. One contractor was caught interviewing dead people during background checks. Another singlehandedly submitted 1,600 falsified reports.

Then in January of last year, the revelations got even worse. The DOJ accused USIS of faking background checks on 665,000 federal employees -- something the DOJ understatedly called "taking shortcuts."

The USIS won't actually be paying this fine, however. It will instead work its debt off doing the DOJ's dishes doing the same thing it couldn't be trusted to do in the first place when it was still collecting a paycheck. Why this hasn't resulted in a permanent pink slip for the contractor is beyond me, but it does show the government's endless willingness to forgive… well, certain contractors.

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We recently covered the complete absurdity that is the Santa Ana police union's legal battle to clear cops caught misbehaving (to put it lightly…) during a raid on a pot dispensary. The cops in question tore cameras out of the wall, disabled the surveillance system and then, when they thought they were "safe," made disparaging comments about a disabled woman, ate presumably pot-laced edibles, played a few rounds of darts and generally behaved like any group of miscreants would if they felt they were unobserved.

Among the numerous laughable claims made in the union's effort to block recordings of these actions from being used against the cops performing these actions is that the recording itself is "illegal" as the officers had an "expectation of privacy" while performing their law enforcement duties in a public areas of a publicly-accessible business.

The suit also claims the video shouldn't be used as evidence because, among other things, the police didn't know they were on camera.

"All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks," says the suit.

First off, any expectation of privacy only arose because the officers thought they had disabled all of the cameras. In any other reasonable situation, the presence of cameras would alert both police and members of the public that any expectations of privacy were severely misguided. Surveillance cameras in businesses are the rule, not the exception. Just because these cops missed a camera doesn't make the recording "illegal," nor does it somehow grant them an expectation of privacy that logically doesn't exist.

The legal action seems doomed to failure, even more so now that the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court -- whose jurisdiction includes Santa Ana, California -- has just issued an opinion, backed by Supreme Court decisions, stating that public areas of public businesses carry no expectation of privacy.

This ruling sides with law enforcement over a citizen's objections -- the same thing the misbehaving cops are seeking, but completely in reverse.

In this case, a motel owner (Mahesh Patel) claimed Fourth Amendment violations were committed when officers entered his business and cited him for code violations in plain view. He claimed his private business (as in private ownership) granted him an expectation of privacy that was violated by the officers' entry.

Not so, says the court:

As in Barlow's, the police officers entering the public areas of the Galleria Motel are entitled to observe (without a warrant) anything observable by the public. Camara and See [Supreme Court cases cited by the plaintiff] only allow a commercial property owner to manifest a reasonable expectation of privacy in his property by closing off portions of his business to the public.

[...]

The areas of the Galleria Motel open to the public are not within the enumerated items in the Fourth Amendment; therefore, no search occurs when police officers enter those areas. Because the complaint alleged only that police officers entered the public areas of the Galleria Motel, Patel has failed to demonstrate a reasonable expectation of privacy pursuant to Katz, rendering Camara and See inapplicable to this case.

This affirms the lower court's judgment.

The only allegation in the complaint (relevant to this appeal) was Patel's claim that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The district court granted the motion, holding that neither Patel nor HFS had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the areas of the Galleria Motel that were open to the public.

So, for consistency's sake, if nothing else, cops can't claim to have an expectation of privacy in areas of businesses open to the public, not if the courts are going to deny the same privilege to citizens. But that's exactly what the police union's filing on behalf of the dispensary-raiding cops is trying to achieve.

And, indeed, the judge presiding over the case in Orange County Superior Court has already denied the officers' request for an injunction, stating very briefly that the cops had no expectation of privacy because they were on duty at the time -- never mind everything else about cameras, California's wiretap law (which was invoked by the union) or the public areas of private businesses.

The union is still free to pursue its lawsuit against the police department, but it won't be able to prevent the recordings from being used to investigate the participants of the raid. It will almost certainly appeal this decision, but there's nowhere to go with this particular argument. Even if it makes its way up the chain to the federal appeals court, the Ninth has already expressed its opinion on the privacy expectations of public places... and it used Supreme Court decisions to back its assertions up.

But police unions and badly-behaving police officers are both known to explore every argument available, no matter how incredibly stupid, simply because to do otherwise is to admit wrongdoing. And there's always a chance a system designed to cut cops as much slack as possible will still somehow come through for them.

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This is a very worthwhile video of a group of people who set up an elaborate first person shooter game scenario, then let strangers on Chatroulette tell the player what to do. You just need to watch it, it's pretty amazing. Still, it's weird to think all those people who played had originally joined hoping to see someone's penis or boobs. Hit the jump for the worthwhile video, as well as a behind-the-scenes one.

Back in April of this year, Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser sided with the city's law enforcement against transparency and accountability. The mayor promised to outfit officers with body cams in the wake of several, high-profile police-involved shootings. But two weeks after this promise in her State of the District speech, Bowser tucked a provision into a budget bill that would exempt the footage from public records requests.

Supposedly, this was done in the interests of "privacy," but the blanket exception just meant local law enforcement would never feel compelled to hand over less-than-flattering footage. Bad news, to be sure, but only a few months later and Mayor Bowser has completely reversed course.

Police in the nation’s capital would release more footage from body cameras than in any other major U.S. city under a plan from Mayor Muriel E. Bowser that reverses her previous opposition to making such videos public.

Bowser’s proposal, which has the potential to shed light on thousands of recorded interactions between police and the public, would allow private citizens to obtain copies of video recorded on street corners, during traffic stops and elsewhere outdoors.

There will still be some exemptions. Anything recorded in a private residence would be limited to court proceedings and footage of traffic stops resulting in no arrests or citations will be heavily redacted to prevent the inadvertent release of personal information.

The reason for Bowser's change of heart? Police officers just kept right on killing people.

In a statement to The Post, Bowser cited continued police shootings over the past year as a reason for the change, saying the tide has tilted in favor of greater disclosure even as governments must strike a balance between privacy and transparency.

The balance has been tipped back in favor of the public, thanks to the actions of law enforcement. In addition to making most camera footage responsive to public records requests, DC citizens will also be allowed to view footage of incidents they're involved in by heading to their local police station within 90 days of the event. Access to all footage will be granted to researchers studying the effects of body-worn cameras.

DC cops who thought their videotaped misconduct would be stashed away from the prying eyes of the public aren't going to be thrilled with this reversal. And they have no one to blame but their colleagues.

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Everyone likes buying stuff with a bunch of built-in restrictions, right? The things we "own" often remain the property of the manufacturers, at least in part. That's the trade-off we never asked for -- one pushed on us by everyone from movie studios to makers of high-end cat litter boxes and coffee brewers. DRM prevents backup copies. Proprietary packets brick functions until manufacturer-approved refills are in place.

Here's another bit of ridiculousness, via Techdirt reader techflaws. German news outlet c't Magazin is reporting that Xerox printers are going further than the normal restrictions we've become accustomed to. For years, printer companies have made sure users' printers won't run without every single slot being filled with approved cartridges. This includes such stupidity as disabling every function (including non-ink-related functions like scanning) in all-in-one printers until the printer is fed.

Xerox is going further. Not only do you need to refill the ink, but you have to fill it with local ink. techflaws paraphrases the paywalled, German-language article.

Xerox uses region coding on their toner catridges AND locks the printer to the first type used. So if you use an NA (North America) catridge you can't use the cheaper DMO (Eastern Europe) anymore. The printer's display does NOT show this, nor does the hotline know about it. When c't reached out to Xerox, the marketing drone claimed, this was done to serve the customer better, I kid you not.

Ah, the old "serve the customer better by limiting his/her options," as seen everywhere DRM/DRM-esque restrictions are applied.

But while c't Magazin has only recently stumbled across this issue of region-locked ink cartridges, it's by no means a new issue. Techflaws also points to a 2011 forum post by a user who ran into this problem with his Xerox printer.

I have seen hundreds of posts regarding the rejection of ink based on the location of purchase. I asume that Xerox does this to prevent the purchase of ink not manufactured by them. However - forcing a client to pay for a service for a snippet that needs to be installed in order to use the printer is ABSURD.

I changed from HP to Xerox because I thought it was a trusted name. I have instead learned that in the process of trying to protect against counterfeit - it is the paying customer that will get a non-functioning printer - with no help unless you are willing to pay for the printer to work as it should have to begin with.

So, it appears that if you attempt to forcefeed a Xerox printer not-from-around-here ink, it will potentially brick the device. At that point, you're forced to ask for a Xerox rep to drop by and unlock your purchased printer for you. Here's another confirmation of Xerox's "locals only" ink limitations.

As I live in the UK my ink blocks are for the European market. If I purchase from ebay, ink blocks for the USA or Asian market and insert them into my printer, the printer will stop with a contact your engineer code on the LCD. The printer is now unusable.

The rate charged to the person in the forum post quoted above was $596/hour. There's no missing decimal point there. Sure, it's only 10 minutes of work, but it's $60 being shelled out by a paying customer just so his printer will go back to printing. The only thing actually "broken" is Xerox's business model.

This person notes they switched from HP to Xerox because the latter was supposedly more trustworthy. Apparently not. Printers aren't a business. They're a racket. HP is no better than Xerox. It too will lock your printer to a certain region to ensure you receive only the best customer service purchase only most profitable ink cartridges.

If dates are anything to go by, HP likely pioneered the bullshit that is region-locked ink. This is from a 2005 Slashdot post. (The internal link to the Wall Street Journal is dead, so it has been omitted.)

Looks like the printer cartridge manufacturers will be borrowing techniques from Hollywood. HP introduced region coding for some of the newest printers sold in Europe. HP's US location and US dollar sliding lead to the situation, where cartridge prices in Europe are significantly higher than those in the States. In the Wall Street Journal article HP representative in Europe claims the company doesn't make any money off regional coding for cartridges, and that consumers will win once the US dollar rises over Euro.

Unbelievably, the rep says customers will "win" if an aspect HP can't control (currency exchange rates) happens to shift in the customers' favor. Why not just say consumers will be better off if those scratch tickets are winners? Or if the housing market rebounds and brings the residence housing the HP printer back into the black?

How much have consumers "won" since 2005?

In January of 2005 (when the post appeared at Slashdot), the exchange rate was 1.312 ($$ to Euros). A decade later, the exchange rate is 1.162. The dollar has gotten stronger, but this change is unlikely to have any appreciable effect on the price of "European" ink (wtf even is that, HP, Xerox, et al -- ink is ink). Thanks for the investment tip, HP PR.

Nearly every major printer manufacturer is in on the scam. HP saw an opportunity to increase incremental sales and staked out this territory in 2004. This brave new world of customer-screwing was followed by Lexmark, Canon, Epson and Xerox -- none of which saw anything wrong with illogically restricting ink cartridges to certain regions.

Region coding for DVDs and videogames makes a certain amount of sense, provided you're willing to make a small logic buy-in on windowed releases. But ink? It's not like Australians need to wait six weeks for HP to cut loose ink cartridges so as not to sabotage the US release. The only reason to do this is to tie paying customers into the most expensive ink and toner. This lock-in is cemented by many printers' refusal to recognize third-party replacement cartridges and/or allow refills of existing manufacturer cartridges.

The excuses made for this mercenary behavior would be hilarious if they weren't so transparently dismissive of customers. Every flowery ode to customers' best interests by PR flacks boils down to nothing more than, "Fuck 'em. It's not like they have a choice."

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The presumed illegality of filming police is a law enforcement mental disorder. Far too many officers believe they have the right to perform their public service unobserved. Officers continue to take cameras from bystanders who happen to catch them behaving badly. Abby Phillip at the Washington Post details another apparent act of police misconduct that resulted in more misconduct as officers attempted to shut the recording down.

Just after 4 p.m. Thursday, a woman stood a few feet away from several Miami Police Department patrol cars with her cellphone camera recording. After a few seconds, an officer entered the frame, escorting a handcuffed young black man to the back of a police car.

Suddenly, the officer put his head inside the car door and appeared to punch the suspect.

“Oh!” a woman exclaimed on the recording, reacting to what was unfolding before her. The woman, who the Associated Press identified as Shenitria Blocker, moved closer, and the officer climbed into the back seat of the car. Moments later, the camera shook and the video ended.

Here's the video:


The camera shake was due to an officer's attempt to take Blocker's phone away from her. Blocker says they then ordered her to delete the footage or face being arrested. While the video does show Blocker moving in very close to the police car to get a better view of the action, any arrestable offense would have been limited to "interference," and that would only be legit if she refused to move away from the vehicle when ordered to. No such order was given. Instead, the cop went for the camera and threatened her with arrest.

Even if the cops can't find a sufficiently malleable "violation" to charge photographers with, the law enforcement community (including police departments and, especially, their unions) finds ways to ensure no damning recording goes unpunished.

To its credit, the Miami Police Department has suspended the officer caught punching the handcuffed arrestee and is investigating the incident. On the other hand, it hasn't said anything about the unidentified officer who attempted to take Blocker's phone, nor has it issued a statement affirming the public's right to film police officers.

The Miami Fraternal Order of Police, on the other hand, is going out of its way to deliver its own brand of "justice" for Blocker having the temerity to catch one of its officers behaving badly.

In a statement, the police union said “social media has placed a very negative tone on law enforcement nationwide” and that the officer in question was “protecting our community.”

Ah. So that's what happened. A now-suspended officer didn't punch an arrested man who was already in the back of a patrol car. Social media did. In fact, social media should be made to answer for the hundreds of incidents of police misconduct every year. At the very least, people should stop running to social media with their clips of police abuse because being a cop is hard work.

But the union has gone farther than simply making the ridiculous assertion that all of these police officers captured on film doing the things they were actually doing is nothing more than negative spin by Social Media Co. LLC. It's also attempting to disparage Blocker herself -- ironically, by using the same social media that's apparently destroying the reputation of its suspect-punching police officer.

The union has delivered screenshots of Blocker's since-removed Facebook page, claiming these show Blocker is a bad person and therefore, all video captured by her phone should be disregarded… or something.

The remainder of the union’s statement focused on criticizing Smith, the woman who at the time they believed recorded the video. It highlighted screenshots of Smith’s Facebook page and accused her of posting photos of herself with men who have handguns.

According to the farcical police officers' group, the real problem is men with guns on Facebook pages, not an officer punching a handcuffed suspect. If only the "community" had done more to raise Ms. Blocker right, Unidentified-and-Suspended Officer X wouldn't have had to punch a handcuffed man in the back of his patrol car.

“Our community has accepted behavior that motivates violence in our younger generation. It’s time for the community to take a stand against this reckless behavior and stop the violence,” he continued. “As the saying goes: It takes a village to raise a child. Guns don’t belong in the hands of children.”

So, remember: the next time you see a police officer beating a handcuffed person, remember that somewhere out there, there's a male with a gun and someone's daughter might be friends with him. Ask yourself: what's more important here? The reputation of the misbehaving officer? Or the reputation of the misbehaving officer? And then put the camera away. Because as the union sees it, the only people above reproach are the officers whose abusive actions prompt poorly-thought out and thoroughly ridiculous statements from their unions.

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We’ve told you about Robinhood before – the free-to-invest stock trading platform – and last week we announced that the Android app was finally available for download. Co-founder Vlad Tenev appeared on CNBC to discuss the Android launch and shared some very interesting details about the company’s success and future plans:

• Surpassed $1+ billion in transactions
• Saved consumers $22+ Million in commissions
• 50,000+ Android downloads in first day

This is from a company that just launched in March and has until now only been available on iOS. Considering the stereotypical tendency for Android users to be advanced in technical proficiency but frugal disciplinarians monetarily, Robinhood stands to double their performance very quickly.

This is an app and a company on the rise, and lest we not forget, they’re supported by Google Ventures.

Give it a try: download Robinhood for Android.

In news that shouldn't surprise anybody who understands how to make money hand over fist, Disney has just announced it will be adding 14-acre Star Wars Lands to both Disneyland and Disneyworld. They will be the largest single expansions ever made to the parks. Now -- on the count of three, ready? One....two.... "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY."

The Star Wars expansions will feature attractions, shops, and restaurants, all operated by Star Wars aliens and characters who will act in-character. "Every restaurant, building, everything will be inhabited by the aliens and droids you'd expect to find there. You'd expect to find a Cantina - and there will be one. You'll have the chance to run into all the droids and fantastic beasts that Star Wars is known for," Iger continued. "You'll meet characters from The Force Awakens and more from the Star Wars saga. The land will have two fantastic signature attractions, including the ability to take the controls of the Millennium Falcon on a customized secret mission." Finally, Iger said: ""We are creating a jaw-dropping new world that represents our largest single themed land expansion ever. These new lands at Disneyland and Walt Disney World will transport guests to a whole new Star Wars planet, including an epic Star Wars adventure that puts you in the middle of a climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance."

There's going to be a cantina! And I am going to go there! And I am going to try to hide somewhere and stay till after they close so I can have the whole place to myself. I want to sit in the Greedo booth and pretend to talk to Han Solo. So, Han....God, you're just so dreamy. I know I look like a fly but can I have a kiss? What do you say we put the blasters down and I give you a back rub? Keep going for a couple more artist's concepts (although I'm pretty sure there won't be actual spaceships flying around but I've been wrong before I'm usually wrong actually so now that I think about it I'm almost certain there will spaceships flying around). Thanks to everybody who sent this, who should take me opening day and buy me that front-of-the-line pass because I do throw temper-tantrums in long lines.

Two words, delivered in jest, are now the focus of a civil rights lawsuit filed by a suspended student against his former school and, incredibly, the local police chief. There were a million ways this debacle could have been avoided, but the school district has decided doubling-down on its stupidity was the only way out of the mess it chose to create. After all, it won't lose much more than a bit of its reputation. If the plaintiff wins, it's taxpayers who will be footing the bill for the school's self-destructive, massively stupid overreaction.

Here's where it all began:

In February 2014, [Reid] Sagehorn was an honor student at Rogers High School, a member of the National Honor Society, and a four-time recipient of the Scholastic Achievement Award. He was a varsity letterman in football, basketball, and baseball, as well as the named captain of the basketball team in 2012 and both the football and basketball teams in 2013. Prior to February 2014, Sagehorn had never been subject to any disciplinary actions by Rogers High School, aside from a single parking ticket. On October 11, 2013, he was admitted to North Dakota State University (“NDSU”), pending completion of all work for any remaining courses taken prior to his enrollment.

Stellar student, but he went two words too far.

On January 26, 2014, someone anonymously posted on a website titled “Roger confessions” the following: “did @R_Sagehorn3 actually make out with [name of female teacher at Rogers High School]?” Sagehorn did not create or maintain the “Roger confessions” website. In response, Sagehorn posted “actually yes,” which he intended to be taken in jest. The post was made the same day, outside of school hours and not on school grounds. Sagehorn was not at a school-sponsored event at the time he made his post, nor did he use any school property to make the post.

A non-event. Teens will be teens. Not school-related in any way but the use of a teacher's name. No one's business but the jokesters amusing themselves with a little off-color banter. But, if any rational behavior had followed this non-incident, we wouldn't be quoting parts of a legal filing.

Roughly a week later, some "helpful" parent started the stupid ball rolling by contacting the school. It wasn't until February 3 that Sagehorn was summoned to the principal's office. It quickly became clear anything resembling a proportionate response wasn't in the works.

The principal (Roman Pierskalla) called Sagehorn to the office and brought with him a fully-uniformed school police officer (Stephen Sarazin). Pierskalla told Sagehorn he was suspending him for five days for "damaging a teacher's reputation." To support his decision, he pulled a page out of the school policy manual that referred to "threatening, intimidating or assaulting a teacher, administrator or staff member." Clearly, Sagehorn's two-word tweet had performed none of these infractions.

A week later, Pierskalla talked to Sagehorn and his parents and told them he was extending the suspension another five days, giving them no reason for doing so. He further defended his unilateral extension by "getting angry" at Sagehorn's parents for "questioning his authority."

Sagehorn's parents went over Pierskalla's head and requested an open-ended hearing with the school board to determine whether the principal's actions were justified. They received two responses, both equally asinine, but one carrying potential consequences far more damaging than a blighted academic record.

About an hour later, [Officer] Sarazin called Lori Sagehorn and left her a voicemail telling her that he had forwarded police reports from the postings to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office for their review and decision as to whether to charge Sagehorn with any crimes.

[...]

[Superintendent Mark] Bezek and [Asst. Superintendent Jana] Hennen-Burr represented to the Sagehorns that they could have a hearing in front of a hearing officer to contest the expulsion. Sagehorn alleges that Bezek and Hennen-Burr also informed the Sagehorns, however, that a hearing would be meaningless and the outcome was pre-ordained. In addition, Bezek and Hennen-Burr warned the Sagehorns that the school would consider increasing the expulsion punishment through the remainder of the school year if they requested a hearing. Bezek and Hennen-Burr told the Sagehorns that an expulsion of any duration would likely cause NDSU to withdraw its early acceptance of Reid Sagehorn and therefore the only real option was to withdraw Sagehorn from school. They then presented the Sagehorns with a pre-drafted withdrawal agreement.

Everything about this chain of events indicates the district employs too many people who cannot abide with having their decisions challenged. There's nothing in this that doesn't stink of retaliation. In addition to the school's actions, Sagehorn also had to deal with public statements made by Rogers' Chief of Police Jeffrey Beahen, who publicly called Sagehorn a felon.

Here's one of Beahen's statement's:

We sent the case down for review by the county attorney,” Beahen said. “The case would be potentially criminal defamation. The student said something about a teacher that could have cost her career.”

He said a teacher having a relationship with a student is a felony, so implying such was not taken lightly.

“The teacher is a victim, she’s being harassed,” he said.

Here's another, but with additional stupid.

“That’s a crime. It just wasn’t a tweet that went from Jimmy to John. It got up on this anonymous website where people weren’t supposed to use names.” Beahen said, also adding:

“It’s like screaming ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater or ‘I have a bomb’ on an airplane,” Beahen said, “If you say something on a very public forum, there are consequences. This young, innocent teacher is the victim here.”

All of the parties named in Sagehorn's suit have asked for a dismissal or, failing that, immunity. The only one walking away from the suit alleging First and Fourteenth Amendment violations is Officer Sarazin, who the judge has determined was little more than a passive bystander through most of this.

The school attempted to claim Sagehorn's two-word reply wasn't protected by the First Amendment because it was "obscene." It brought a variety of dictionaries with it to allege that "making out" actually could be taken to mean "had sexual intercourse with," thus making his two-word affirmation akin to say he had performed a sexual act with a teacher. The court doesn't find this argument persuasive and brings something actually obscene to buttress its rebuttal.

Even if the Court were to find that Sagehorn’s post unambiguously referred to sexual intercourse, the content actually attributable to Sagehorn – a response of “actually yes” – is not nearly as graphic as the content courts have found obscene as a matter of law. [...]

The stark contrast between Sagehorn’s speech and speech that would now be considered obscene is particularly evident when this case is compared to other recent obscenity cases. Sagehorn’s post, for example, markedly differs from a student tweet deemed obscene in Rosario v. Clark County School District, 2013, cited by the School Defendants. In Rosario, the court concluded that a tweet, which was sent off-campus after a basketball game, was obscene when it expressed a hope that the basketball coach “gets fucked in tha ass by 10 black dicks.” [...]

“[G]ets fucked” is an unambiguous appeal to prurient interest. Unlike “make out,” there is no ambiguity as to whether the Rosario tweet referred to sexual intercourse.

The school also tried the "lewd and vulgar" argument -- in the context of a school environment -- as being sufficient to shield it against First Amendment claims. Again, the court uses the school's citations against it.

While Fraser offers school officials significant discretion to define “vulgar” speech delivered on school grounds, Fraser is clearly limited to on-campus speech. The Supreme Court stated that such discipline is restricted to “[t]he determination of what manner of speech in the classroom or in school assembly is appropriate.”

The school similarly had no luck with its plea for qualified immunity.

The law is sufficiently clear that on facts such as the complaint alleges in this case – a student using personal property to make non-threatening speech off-campus, that in no way impacts or disrupts the school environment – a student would have a clearly established right to free speech. The Court further concludes that a reasonable officer or school official would understand that punishing such speech would violate the student’s clearly-established right. Therefore, the Court finds that the School Defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity on Sagehorn’s First Amendment claim. The Court will accordingly deny the School Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings as to Sagehorn’s First Amendment claim.

While Police Chief Beahen won't be facing civil rights claims, he's won't be able to walk away from Sagehorn's defamation allegations.

The Court concludes that Sagehorn’s complaint adequately pleads a defamation claim against Beahen. Sagehorn’s complaint identifies specific quotations by Beahen – for example, that Sagehorn’s post was like “crying or yelling ‘Fire!’ in a movie theater or saying ‘I got a bomb!’ on a plane” – and at least one specific media outlet to which allegedly defamatory statements were made – the Star Tribune. Sagehorn’s complaint does not include lengthy quotations or full context for the statements, but they are much more specific than, for example, in Magee, where the plaintiff alleged that the defamatory statements were “those found in the Hearing Committee determination,” with no further specificity.

[...]

Further, although Beahen asserts that the complaint is too vague to enable him to identify the news reports Sagehorn quotes, during oral argument on Beahen’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, Beahen’s counsel offered to play for the Court the exact Fox 9 news video containing the alleged defamatory statements identified in the complaint. Therefore, the Court finds that the complaint gave Beahen sufficient information to identify the relevant statements and news reports.

Sagehorn's lawsuit is allowed to proceed and both the school and Police Chief Beahen will potentially be ordered to hand over damages for their participation in a debacle that combined a complete lack of better judgment with retaliatory behavior. And all over two small words that would have gone largely unnoticed if the school's principal hadn't been so intent on overstepping the boundaries of his authority.

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Jason Leopold -- terrorizer of FOIA staffers throughout the US government -- has again obtained documents many would have expected to remain out of reach for years to come. Certainly, the CIA thought one of the documents would remain its little secret for the rest of whatever.

On July 28, 2014, the CIA director wrote a letter to senators Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss — the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) and the panel's ranking Republican, respectively. In it, he admitted that the CIA's penetration of the computer network used by committee staffers reviewing the agency's torture program — a breach for which Feinstein and Chambliss had long demanded accountability — was improper and violated agreements the Intelligence Committee had made with the CIA.

The letter was never sent. Instead of an apology, the Senate received accusations of impropriety after the CIA threw out its Inspector General's report on the breach and performed an in-house "investigation" clearing the CIA of wrongdoing.

The letter was never signed by Brennan or sent. It was filed away somewhere in the CIA's archives, hopefully never to be seen again. But it was mistakenly handed over to Jason Leopold much to the CIA's chagrin. Additional chagrinment ensued.

After VICE News received the documents, the CIA contacted us and said Brennan's draft letter had been released by mistake. The agency asked that we refrain from posting it.

We declined the CIA's request.

So, the CIA has yet to officially admit any wrongdoing (as in a document -- such as the one it didn't want released -- entered into the public record), and yet, there's an admission of guilt in the public's hands. Makes it a bit harder to defend actions Senator Feinstein claimed violated pretty much everything that could be violated in a single act.

Feinstein wrote to Brennan on January 23, 2014 and told him she consulted with the Senate's legal counsel, who informed her that the CIA's search of the Senate's computer network "may have been inconsistent with the separation of powers principles embodied in the Constitution and essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities."

"Second," her letter continued, "the search may have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution, various statutes (including federal criminal statutes, such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Executive Order 12333," which says it's unlawful for the CIA to conduct domestic spying.

In short, it appears that while some in the CIA knew what it did was clearly wrong (and potentially illegal), top management so insisted on denying it, that it wouldn't even send an apology letter -- and that would have stayed completely secret if someone hadn't slipped up and handed over the unsigned letter accidentally in a FOIA response dump.

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We already wrote about Jason Leopold "accidentally" receiving a letter the CIA never actually sent that was an apology for spying on Senate staffers, but there was a lot more that Leopold received in that FOIA dump as well. Beyond the document Leopold wasn't supposed to receive, the 300 pages handed over by the CIA (not by its voluntary desire to respect FOIA stipulations, but rather because a judge told it to) provide additional details about the alleged Senate breach and its "investigative" spying -- and the ensuing fight that set off something of a Constitutional crisis in the separation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative branch.

Leopold's article goes into great depth on the subject and is well-worth reading in its entirety. One of the many, many details worth noting is that the CIA's "firewall" between it and Senate staffers wasn't really anything of the sort. A Google-powered custom search function allowed staffers to search CIA documents, but only the documents the CIA wanted them to see. The problem was that the search didn't work correctly. Keyword searches were returning documents the CIA hadn't approved for Senate perusal. This was how the hidden Panetta Report was discovered.

The CIA claimed Senate staffers had abused their privileges by accessing and downloading documents the agency hadn't meant to make available. But the blame was misplaced. The search "appliance" configuration itself was faulty, and had been for years. And, from there, the CIA decided it was okay to spy on the Senate staffers' work, raising questions about the separation of powers.

"In November 2012, the RDI team learned of a vulnerability with the Google appliance, related to configuration settings that had been in place since the initial installation in November 2009," the OIG's report says. "[The Office of Inspector General] reviewed an April 2013 email between members of the RDINet IT staff detailing the existing settings, which indicated an access control deficiency for search results. The RDI IT team updated the Google appliance in April 2013 to reflect this change. Prior to this update, the settings provided to the [Office of Inspector General] showed that the Google appliance was not configured to enforce access rights or search permissions within RDINet and its holdings."

Weaver explained that the Cyber Blue Team concluded the Google appliance "wasn't enforcing permissions properly, and revealing accessible locations for the [CIA] files."

A problem the CIA was aware of but had never bothered to fix was now being portrayed as a breach of trust (at best) by the Senate staffers compiling the Torture Report. Brennan knew about the misconfigured search tool but still went after Feinstein and Senate staffers, accusing them of "hacking" the CIA's system and making off with a purloined copy of the Panetta Review.

Considering the Panetta Review was the former CIA director's own investigation into the CIA's torture programs, one would assume these documents would be highly relevant to the task at hand -- the compilation of the torture report. But the findings contained in it were so toxic the CIA immediately began burying the documents using every opaque agency's favorite hiding place: the oft-abused "deliberative documents" exemption.

US officials told VICE News that the Panetta Review was shut down for one reason: the CIA team conducting it discovered damning inconsistencies in reports agency officials made to Congress about the efficacy of the program, and horrific details about the way detainees were treated. These revelations by the CIA's own employees contradicted agency officials who had continued to publicly defend the program's value. The internal reports the Panetta Review team wrote, US officials told VICE News, were so troubling that a decision was made by agency lawyers to mark them as "deliberative" draft documents, thereby protecting them from disclosure via FOIA.

Leopold's article is a fascinating study of CIA deception, duplicity and retaliatory abuse. The only way the CIA could have made the aftermath of the Torture Report's release worse was to do all the things it actually did. It made false accusations against a Senate oversight committee. It made blatantly false claims about Senate staff and their "hacking." It stabbed its own Inspector General in the back, publicly impugning him and his findings. It performed an "internal investigation" that managed to "uncover" only the wrongdoing of others. The only act of contrition in this whole debacle went unperformed when CIA head John Brennan chose to toss his apology to the Senate in the nearest file cabinet. The CIA may have had a chance to salvage a small part of its reputation, but instead attempted to bluster its way back to respectability. And, in doing so, lost any respect it had remaining.

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Let's say you're a leader in an association for NYPD sergeants. Now let's say you're, like, super aware of some of the changes and backlash against the NYPD that has occurred recently, chiefly concerning policies for policing the public, charges of racist and violent practices, and the insistance that the city government find ways to keep officers accountable for their actions. You know the city is looking into NYPD officials deleting information on illegal summons quotas. You know of the concern over the fact that the NYPD has pissed off so many black men that black men kind of don't want to join their ranks. And you're especially aware of the trend of greater protections for the public filming police doing their jobs and the crackdown on the crackdown of the photographers. What do you do?

Psshh, start a Flickr account solely for the purpose of poor-shaming the homeless to try and embarrass the Mayor, right?

The Sergeants Benevolent Association is spearheading the effort, emailing a letter to members Monday urging them and their families and friends to take pictures to document the decline of the city.

“As you travel about the city of New York, please utilize your smartphones to photograph the homeless lying in our streets, aggressive panhandlers, people urinating in public or engaging in open-air drug activity, and quality-of-life offenses of every type,” says the letter from SBA President Ed Mullins, a major critic of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Yes, Mullins (and the ironically named Sergeants Benevolent Association) then takes those photographs and uploads them to its Flickr account, because apparently the best way to make a political point to a political opponent is to publicly shame the least able to defend themselves. Should you not wish to view this material, something for which I wouldn't blame you, the pictures almost uniformly show homeless and vagrant folk in their own misery, often captioned with such wonderfully sympathetic thoughts as "Quality Of Life For The Mayor" and "Peek A Boo" and "Homeless Takeover NYC." The idea of shaming the homeless, who might be homeless for any number of reasons, is deplorable. As are Mullins' excuses for doing so.

Noting that more cops are being recorded on the job, Mullins wrote, “Shouldn’t accountability go both ways? We, the ‘Good Guys,’ are sworn to protect our citizens. Shouldn’t our public officials be held to the same standard?” he said.

Except the two things aren't remotely equivalent. The public photographing the police performing their duties while serving that very same public isn't the same as snapshotting a 3rd party whose lives are already miserable to take political shots against the Mayor. Frankly, these are the kinds of things said by those with head injuries, not those leading a police association. More specifically, Mullins claims this is being done in response to pending city legislation that would require police to obtain permission to search a suspect if they don't have probable cause for an arrest. You know, that thing that's already in the goddamn Constitution? Yeah, that's why he's encouraging police to publicly shame the homeless.

Get a grip, guys...

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UCSD computer scientist Stefan Savage and colleagues will present their work at Usenix Security: they were able to disable the brakes on a 2013 Corvette by breaking into a Mobile Devices/Metromile Pulse dongle, used by insurance companies to monitor driving in exchange for discounts on coverage. Read the rest

In a few years, after the dust has settled, we're all going to look back at today's web's excesses and abuses as an almost unbelievable embarrassment. Hopefully, the worst is behind us. And it's time to stop demonizing people who use tools to bring that sanity to their web browsers today. Yes.

Most of the cable and broadcast industry's cord cutting denial is aimed at investors, who -- if you've yet to realize -- may not always have the firmest understanding of the technology they're investing in. While many investors have been buying the cable industry's argument that cord cutting either doesn't exist or is only something done by losers and nobodies, the recent sharp decline in ESPN viewership appears to have finally woken the investment community from its adorable slumber.

As we recently noted, ESPN has lost 7.2 million viewers in the last four years, and a little more than three million in the last year. Since ESPN is annoyingly force-bundled with most basic cable subscriptions a lot of these users are cord cutters. Many more are being lured away by the new realm of "skinny" cable options that may not include ESPN -- options ESPN has been suing to stop to "protect innovation." ESPN is stuck in legacy industry purgatory: offer a standalone streaming service and accelerate cord cutting -- or refuse to offer a standalone streaming service -- and accelerate cord cutting. Either way, the train has left the station.

When Disney earnings last week indicated ESPN's fortunes are getting worse, investors in all of the major cable and broadcast companies suddenly became notably nervous as they collectively realized ESPN is no longer the untouchable television juggernaut it wanted everyone to believe it is:

"In the old days — basically, up until a month ago — most people in the video world assumed ESPN was untouchable. It commanded the biggest subscriber fees from traditional pay TV providers, and even if you imagined that one day people would start buying TV over the Internet from people like Apple, it seemed as though it would do just fine in that scenario, too."

And ESPN's been one of the more solid performers. Children's programming has been absolutely demolished by services like Netflix. Investors and cable executives have tried to argue that they can make up for cord cutters and ratings drops by endlessly raising subscriber TV rates, though they'd quietly been warned for years that this wasn't a winning long-term strategy. The ugly truth is that cable and broadcast is going to have to compete on price if it wants to adapt to the internet video revolution, and that's a message that's hard to hear when your head is planted squarely in the sand.

Just wait until Wall Street realizes (perhaps in 2018?) that there are tens of millions of young Americans who've never signed up for a cable subscription and have no intention of ever doing so.

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For years, there have been efforts by various competitors and governments to try to break up Google. But now the company appears to have done it itself. Sort of. Taking basically everyone by surprise, Google announced that it has formed a new "holding company" called Alphabet, and made Google a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet, while at the same time carving out other businesses from Google and making them separate from Google, but still under the purview of Alphabet. The whole thing is... weird. There's lots of speculation going on as to why, and no one seems to agree. Larry Page's letter suggests it's to allow the overall company to be more innovative -- which actually is a legitimate possibility. Just this morning we noted that Google's failure with Google+ shows how the company can sometimes lumber around things while startups are much more nimble. Splitting the company into totally separate entities (even if owned by the same holding company) at the very least has the possibility of forcing the separate units to focus on executing on their own businesses, without worrying about stepping on the toes of other businesses. But... it also loses the ability to cross-subsidize parts of the business.

Others have speculated that this was also a way to "reward" top execs like Sundar Pichai, who is now Google's CEO -- while Larry Page becomes CEO of Alphabet (and Sergey Brin is President of Google). Even if he's still reporting to Larry, having "Google CEO" on the business card has to be seen as a promotion.

The only other thing that came to my mind was that this was some sort of reaction to all those lawsuits and investigations into possible anti-trust. Not that reorganizing the company is going to "fool" any regulator, but at the very least, it perhaps sets things up in a manner that if regulators try to break up Google, there are preset "fissures" that allow Google to "direct" the cuts more strategically.

Frankly, the whole thing seems to be leaving a lot of people scratching their heads (myself included). It may turn out to be nothing beyond just a different take on a corporate restructuring -- or it may be a prelude to the company doing something much bigger that would fit much more readily into this holding company structure.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the company (for now at least) has taken the URL abc.xyz and it includes a weird little Easter egg, giving tribute to the fictional Google-like company in HBO's Silicon Valley, Hooli.

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Earlier this year, we covered the story of Louise Milan, a 68-year-old grandmother whose house was raided by a SWAT team (accompanied by a news crew) searching for someone who had made alleged threats against police officers over the internet. Part of the probable cause submitted for the warrant was Milan's IP address. But the police made no attempt to verify whether any resident of Milan's house made the threats and ignored the fact that the IP address was linked to an open WiFi connection.

While the presiding judge did take issue with the tactics deployed by the SWAT team (which included turning a regular warrant into a no-knock warrant by only giving Milan a few seconds to respond to their knock before battering down the door and hurling flashbang grenades into the house), he didn't have much to say about the department's bogus "an IP address is a person" justification for the raid. This was concerning because the police verified the IP address by wardriving. By doing so, they also could have confirmed the WiFi connection was open and that the threats could have been made by anyone accessing that connection.

The judge, however, refused to grant the defendants summary judgment on the excessive force claims or immunity. This decision was appealed by the police department, which still insists it should be granted qualified immunity. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has a lot to say about the police officers' actions during this raid and the events leading up to it, none of it good.

First, it points out that the police officers could have performed their due diligence on the IP address before deciding to carry out a raid, but chose not to.

The defendants say they didn’t know that Mrs. Milan’s network was unsecured and therefore accessible by someone outside the house who could use the unsecured network to send the threatening messages. Although the police had discovered that there was an unsecured network near the house, they hadn’t bothered to find out whose network it was, as they could easily have done, precisely because it was unsecured and therefore accessible. Had they done that they would have known that it was Mrs. Milan’s network and, since it was unsecured, that it might have been used (without her knowledge) by someone outside her home to send the threatening messages. The failure to discover that the network was Mrs. Milan’s was a failure of responsible police practice.

The court notes that the officers' irresponsibility didn't end there. They also ignored the fact that a man who had made threats against officers in the past (Derrick Murray) was spotted sitting on a porch two houses away from Milan's by officers prior to the raid. (And, indeed, Murray watched the raid unfold from this same porch.) They also ignored the fact that none of the three other people they suspected of making the threats (former residents of the house/distant relations of Milan) had been observed entering or exiting the house. Instead, they took the IP address and the info obtained from the service provider and went after Milan. And, despite having no evidence someone dangerous might be in Milan's house, deployed a SWAT team.

So: a house occupied by an elderly woman and her two daughters; no evidence that any criminals would be present during the search although the possibility could not be excluded entirely; no effort to neutralize suspect Murray during the search, as by posting police to watch his house and make sure he didn’t rush over to Mrs. Milan’s house when the search began. But despite their insouciance about Murray and the perfunctory character of their investigation before the search, the police decided to search the Milan house—and in a violent manner.

The "violent manner" is described in greater detail in the opinion. The court grants itself a short tangent during its recounting of the incident to criticize the lingo cops deploy to downplay the violence of their methods and weaponry.

A search warrant was applied for and obtained, and the search was conducted by an eleven-man SWAT team accompanied by a news team. The members of the SWAT team rushed to the front door of the house, knocked, and without allowing a reasonable time—more than a few seconds—for a response (though they hadn’t gotten a “no knock” warrant) broke open the front door and a nearby window, and through these openings hurled two “flash bang” grenades. These are explosive devices, similar to but a good deal less lethal than military hand grenades, that are intended to stun and disorient persons, thus rendering them harmless, by emitting blinding flashes of light and deafening sounds. They can kill if they land on a person, especially a child. The police call them “distraction devices,” an absurd euphemism; we called them “bombs” in Estate of Escobedo v. Bender, 600 F.3d 770, 784–85 (7th Cir. 2010), and United States v. Jones, 214 F.3d 836, 837–38 (7th Cir. 2000).

Then the court gets to the most absurd part of the raid -- considering the danger the police were attempting to neutralize by assaulting both Milan and her house.

That no men were found in the house during the raid confirmed the police in their belief that Murray was responsible for the threats. It took them only a day to discover that it was indeed he who was responsible—he had used Mrs. Milan’s open network to threaten the police. But rather than give him the SWAT-team treatment, the police politely requested that he come to police headquarters, which he did, where he was arrested without incident. The police department’s kid-gloves treatment of Murray is in startling contrast to their flashbang assault on Mrs. Milan’s home.

On top of that, even when it was evident there was no danger and none of the suspects were present, the SWAT team refused to dial back its aggressive tactics.

The handcuffing of the daughter, looking indeed much younger than her 18 years, is shown on the helmet video along with the rest of the search, and she is so small, frail, utterly harmless looking, and completely unresisting that the sight of her being led away in handcuffs is disturbing. All that the SWAT officer had to do was take her by the hand and lead her out of the house, which was rapidly filling with smoke from the flash bangs; there was no conceivable reason to handcuff her.

Everything about the raid bothers the Seventh Circuit Court. The lack of actual investigative work. The over-the-top tactics. The fact that a unit deploying flashbang grenades couldn't even be bothered to ensure any more damage than "necessary" wasn't done.

Precipitate use of flash bangs to launch a search has troubled us before, leading us to declare that “the use of a flash bang grenade is reasonable only when there is a dangerous suspect and a dangerous entry point for the police, when the police have checked to see if innocent individuals are around before deploying the device, when the police have visually inspected the area where the device will be used and when the police carry a fire extinguisher.” Estate of Escobedo v. Bender, supra, 600 F.3d at 784–85. The police in this case flunked the test just quoted. True, they’d brought a fire extinguisher with them—but, as if in tribute to Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops, they left it in their armored SWAT vehicle.

The court notes that reasonable mistakes made by officers do not nullify qualified immunity, even when the mistakes seem less reasonable by the application of hindsight. But there was nothing reasonable about this entire debacle.

We cannot understand the failure of the police, before flash banging the house, to conduct a more extensive investigation of the actual suspects: Murray, living two doors away from the Milan home and thus with ready access to Mrs. Milan’s open network, and the male Milans. The police neglect of Murray is almost incomprehensible. His past made him a prime suspect. A day of investigating him would have nailed him, as we know because a day of investigating—the day after the violent search of the home—did nail him.

More to the point, the lack of even minimal investigative efforts precludes the department from claiming these "mistakes" were "reasonable."

[T]o repeat for emphasis, the police acted unreasonably and precipitately in flash banging the house without a minimally responsible investigation of the threats. The open network expanded the number of possible threateners and just one extra day of surveillance, coupled with a brief investigation of Murray and the three male Milans, should have been sufficient to reassure the police that there were no dangerous men lurking in the house.

In other words, had the police officers actually performed any sort of police work, Milan's house would have been left unmolested/un-flashbanged and she wouldn't be suing the department for civil rights violations. This lawsuit could have been avoided entirely and the police were obviously capable of taking down a much more dangerous target without extra drama and explosives. But it had a news crew in tow -- one it was apparently "repaying" for the tips about the social media threats. And once it had eyes on it, it couldn't help but deploy its ridiculous "shock and awe" tactics... to take down a 68-year-old grandmother and her "small, frail" daughter.

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Say what you will about T-Mobile, but there’s little denying they’re almost single-handedly responsible for some of the bigger changes we’ve seen in the wireless industry. After T-Mobile’s Uncarrier plans first went live over 2 years ago, Verizon is now finally ready to kill off contracts, and phone subsidies along with it. Kicking things off are Verizon’s now much more straightforward service plans.

Customers choose how much data they’d like — 1GB for $30, 3GB for $45, 6GB for $60, or 12GB for $80 — adding however many devices to this shared bucket of data for $20 per device ($10 for hotspots and $5 for smartwatches). Oh, and although it wasn’t in their press release, Re/code reports that customers who go over their data limit will have to pay $15 per 1GB. The new plans aren’t that much cheaper, but Verizon hopes it’s a lot more clearer. The problem? It means you’ll either need to bring your own Verizon compatible device, pay full price for one of theirs, or slowly pay off a phone using Verizon’s installment payments (they’re also officially killing off the “Edge” moniker).

Since the majority of the people in the US have never even thought about paying full price for a new smartphone, most of them will be adding their installment payments on top of those plans + connectivity fees. The new plans go into effect on August 13th and existing customers will be able to hang onto their current plans or move to the new ones with “some restrictions.”

With the biggest wireless carrier in the US killing off contracts, we imagine it wont be too much longer before AT&T and Sprint finally cave. What do you guys think of Verizon’s move?

[Verizon]

 

A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse led the way with perhaps the most ridiculous statement of any Senator (and there were a lot of crazy statements) in the debate over encryption and the FBI's exaggerated fear of "going dark." He argued that if the police couldn't find a missing girl (using a hypothetical that not only didn't make any sense, but which also was entirely unlikely to ever happen), then perhaps Apple could face some civil liability for not allowing the government to spy on your data. Here's what he said:

It strikes me that one of the balances that we have in these circumstances, where a company may wish to privatize value -- by saying "gosh, we're secure now, we got a really good product, you're gonna love it" -- that's to their benefit. But for the family of the girl that disappeared in the van, that's a pretty big cost. And, when we see corporations privatizing value and socializing costs, so that other people have to bear the cost, one of the ways that we get back to that and try to put some balance into it, is through the civil courts. Through the liability system. If you're a polluter and you're dumping poisonous waste into the water rather than treating it properly somebody downstream can bring an action and can get damages for the harm they sustained, can get an order telling you to knock it off.

You can read our longer analysis of how wrong this is, but in short: encryption is not pollution. Pollution is a negative externality. Encryption is the opposite of that. It's a tool that better protects the public in the vast majority of cases. That's why Apple is making it so standard.

The suggestion was so ridiculous and so wrong that we were surprised that famed NSA apologist Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institute found Whitehouse's nonsensical rant "interesting" and worthy of consideration. While we disagree with Wittes on nearly everything, we thought at the very least common sense would have to eventually reach him, leading him to recognize that absolutely nothing Whitehouse said made any sense (then again, this is the same Wittes who seems to have joined the magic unicorn/golden key brigade -- so I'm beginning to doubt my initial assessment that Wittes is well-informed but just comes to bad conclusions).

However, even with Wittes finding Whitehouse's insane suggestion "interesting," it's still rather surprising to see him find it worthy of a multi-part detailed legal analysis for which he brought in a Harvard Law student, Zoe Bedell, to help. In the first analysis, they take a modified form of Whitehouse's hypothetical (after even they admit that his version doesn't actually make any sense), but still come to the conclusion that the company "could" face civil liability. Though, at least they admit plaintiffs would "not have an easy case."

The first challenge for plaintiffs will be to establish that Apple even had a duty, or an obligation, to take steps to prevent their products from being used in an attack in the first place. Plaintiffs might first argue that Apple actually already has a statutory duty to provide communications to government under a variety of laws. While Apple has no express statutory obligation to maintain the ability to provide decrypted information to the FBI, plaintiffs could argue that legal obligations it clearly does have would be meaningless if the communications remained encrypted.

To make this possible, Bedell and Wittes try to read into various wiretapping and surveillance laws a non-existent duty to decrypt information from your mobile phone. But that's clearly not true. If that actually existed, then we wouldn't be having this debate right now in the first place, and FBI Director James Comey wouldn't be talking to Congress about changing the law to require such things. But, still, they hope that maybe, just maybe, a court would create such a duty out of thin air based on things like "the foreseeability of the harm." Except, that's going to fall flat on its face, because the likelihood of harm here goes the other way. Not encrypting your information leads to a much, much, much greater probability of harm than encrypting your data and not allowing law enforcement to see it.

Going to even more ridiculous levels than the "pollution" argument, this article compares Apple encrypting your data to the potential liability of the guy who taught the Columbine shooters how to use their guns:

For example, after the Columbine shooting, the parents of a victim sued the retailer who sold the shooters one of their shotguns and even taught the shooters how to saw down the gun’s barrel. In refusing to dismiss the case, the court stated that “[t]he intervening or superseding act of a third party, . . . including a third-party's intentionally tortious or criminal conduct[,] does not absolve a defendant from responsibility if the third-party's conduct is reasonably and generally foreseeable.” The facts were different here in some respects—the Columbine shooters were under-age, and notably, they bought their supplies in person, rather than online. But that does not explain how two federal district courts in Colorado ended up selecting and applying two different standards for evaluating the defendant's duty.

But it's even more different than that. Even with this standard -- which many disagree with -- there still needs to be "conduct" that is "reasonably and generally foreseeable." And that's not the case here that it is "reasonably and generally foreseeable" that because data is encrypted that people will be at more risk. In all these years, the FBI still can't come up with a single example where such encryption was a real problem. It would be basically impossible to argue that this is a foreseeable "problem," especially when weighed against the very real and very present problem of people trying to hack into your device and get your data.

In the second in the series, Bedell and Wittes go even further in looking at whether or not Apple could be found to have provided material support to terrorists thanks to encryption. If this sounds vaguely familiar, remember a similarly ridiculous claim not to long ago from a music industry lawyer and a DOJ official that YouTube and Twitter could be charged with material support for terrorism because ISIS used both platforms.

Bedell and Wittes concoct a scenario in which a court might argue that providing a phone that can encrypt a terrorist's data, opens the company up to liability:

In our scenario, a plaintiff might argue that the material support was either the provision of the cell phone itself, or the provision of the encrypted messaging services that are native on it. Thus, if a jury could find that providing terrorists with encrypted communications services is just asking for trouble, then plaintiffs would have satisfied the first element of the definition of international terrorism in § 2331, a necessary step for making a case for liability under § 2333.

Of course, this is wiped out pretty quickly because that law requires intent. The authors note that this would "pose a challenge" to any plaintiff "as it would appear to be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that Apple intended to intimidate civilians or threaten governments by selling someone an iPhone..."

You think?

But, our intrepid NSA apologists still dig deeper to see if they can come up with a legal theory that will actually work:

But again, courts have handled this question in ways that make it feasible for a plaintiff to succeed on this point against Apple. For example, when the judge presiding over the Arab Bank case considered and denied the bank’s motion to dismiss, he shifted the analysis of intimidation and coercion (as well as the question of the violent act and the broken criminal law) from the defendant in the case to the group receiving the assistance. The question for the jury was thus whether the bank was secondarily, rather than primarily, liable for the injuries. The issue was not whether Arab Bank was trying to intimidate civilians or threaten governments. It was whether Hamas was trying to do this, and whether Arab Bank was knowingly helping Hamas.

Judge Posner’s opinion in Boim takes a different route to the same result. Instead of requiring a demonstration of actual intent to coerce or intimidate civilians or a government, Judge Posner essentially permits the inference that when terrorist attacks are a “foreseeable consequence” of providing support, an organization or individual knowingly providing that support can be understood to have intended those consequences. Because Judge Posner concludes that Congress created an intentional tort, § 2333 in his reading requires the plaintiff to prove that the defendant knew it was supporting a terrorist or terrorist organization, or at least that it was deliberately indifferent to that fact. In other words, the terrorist attack must be a foreseeable consequence of the specific act of support, rather than just a general risk of providing a good or service.

But even under those standards, it's hard to see how Apple could possibly be liable for material support. It's just selling an iPhone and doing so in a way that -- for the vast majority of its customers -- is better protecting their privacy and data. It would take an extremely twisted mind and argument to turn that into somehow "knowingly" helping terrorists or creating a "foreseeable consequence." At least the authors admit that much.

But why stop there? They then say that Apple could still be liable after the government asks them to decrypt messages. If Apple doesn't magically stop the user in particular from encrypting messages, then, they claim, Apple could be shown to be "knowingly" supporting terrorism.

The trouble for Apple is that our story does not end with the sale of the phone to the person who turns out later to be an ISIS recruit. There is an intermediate step in the story, a step at which Apple’s knowledge dramatically increases, and its conduct arguably comes to look much more like that of someone who—as Posner explains—is recklessly indifferent to the consequences of his actions and thus carries liability for the foreseeable consequences of the aid he gives a bad guy.

That is the point at which the government serves Apple with a warrant—either a Title III warrant or a FISA warrant. In either case, the warrant is issued by a judge and puts Apple on notice that there is probable cause to believe the individual under investigation is engaged in criminal activity or activity of interest for national security reasons and is using Apple’s services and products to help further his aims. Apple, quite reasonably given its technical architecture, informs the FBI at this point that it cannot comply in any useful way with the warrant as to communications content. It can only provide the metadata associated with the communications. But it continues to provide service to the individual in question.

But all of this, once again, assumes an impossibility: that once out of its hands, Apple can somehow stop the end user from using the encryption on their phone.

This is the mother of all stretches in terms of legal theories. And, throughout it all, neither Bedell nor Wittes even seems to recognize that stronger encryption protects the end user. It's like it doesn't even enter their minds that there's a reason why Apple is providing encryption that isn't "to help people hide from the government." It's not about government snooping. It's about anyone snooping. The other cases they cite are not like that at all. These arguments, even as thin as they are, only make sense if Apple's move to encryption doesn't really have widespread value for basically the entire population. You don't sue Toyota for "material support for terrorism" just because a terrorist uses a Toyota to make a car bomb. Yet, Wittes and Bedell are somehow trying to make the argument that Apple is liable for better protecting you, just because in some instances it might also help "bad" people. That's a ridiculous legal theory that barely deserves to be laughed at, let alone a multi-part analysis of how it "might work."

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The cops who were caught on camera insulting an amputee, disabling security cameras, playing darts and sampling THC-laced edibles during a raid on a pot dispensary are suing to prevent Santa Ana Police Department investigators from using the recording against them. (via Reason)

Here's one of the two videos the officers are seeking to suppress.

There is an almost incomprehensible amount of audacity and stupidity in the officers' lawsuit.

First off, through their lawyer (provided by co-plaintiff Santa Ana Police Officers Association), the officers claim the recording they previously weren't aware of was "heavily edited" by the owners of the raided dispensary and "misrepresents" what actually happened that day.

[Attorney Corey W.] Glave said Pappas has altered the video in a way to make the police look bad.

“The attorney representing the drug dispensary intentionally has misrepresented what happened,” Glave said.

This is just the beginning of the stupidity. Of course the edited video only shows the raiding officers' misbehavior. No one has any interest in regular, orderly police work. But the tape does not make the officers "look bad." The OFFICERS make the officers look bad. They're the ones that ate pot-laced edibles and offered to kick an amputee "right in the fucking nub."

To put it in another context, the officers' claim of misrepresentation by videotape is roughly equivalent to telling your boss when he's firing you for showing up for work drunk that he's "misrepresenting" the situation by "editing" down your work history to the day you showed up drunk for work. What about all the days you showed up sober?

This argument is asinine. This claim that anyone other than the officers themselves made the officers look bad is the sort of blame-shifting usually seen only in small children and lousy employees.

It gets worse. So much worse.

The suit also claims the video shouldn’t be used as evidence because, among other things, the police didn’t know they were on camera.

“All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks,” says the suit.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Police officers have no reasonable expectation of privacy -- at least not while performing their public duties in a business open to the public. The only "expectation of privacy" here is an illusion created by the officers themselves, who thought they had completely disabled the store's security cameras. There's nothing "reasonable" about this "expectation of privacy." Sure, the officers "reasonably" thought they were capable of disabling a surveillance system. But an expectation of privacy doesn't spring into existence simply because the officers failed to do so.

The lawsuit follows this stupidity up with more stupidity.

The dispensary also did not obtain consent of any officer to record them, the suit says.

The dispensary doesn't "obtain consent" from its customers, but it has every right to utilize security cameras. No business anywhere has to obtain the permission of the public before recording them in publicly-accessible areas. This includes cops, even though these cops seem to believe otherwise.

The officers are trying to bend part of California's recording law to fit their situation. But they can't do that because it doesn't apply to them.

All parties to any confidential communication must give permission to be recorded, according to California’s eavesdropping law. Cal. Penal Code § 632. The statute, however, specifically excludes from its application any conversations made in public places, government proceedings, or in circumstances where the participants of the conversation could reasonably expect to be overheard or recorded.

Again, just because the officers believed they had disabled all of the store's cameras doesn't give a publicly-accessible business filled with public servants a reasonable expectation of privacy. The officers were aware their activities would be recorded. That's why they disabled the cameras. So, any expectation of privacy they mistakenly thought they might have had when the raid began would have dissipated the moment they saw the cameras.

And finally, here's the most ridiculous assertion in this sea of stupidity, even though it is (in one way) entirely correct.

“Without the illegal recordings, there would have been no internal investigation of any officer,” the suit says.

True. If there had been no recording, the officers very likely WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT.

If these officers are unhappy with the recording's "portrayal" of their actions and displeased they're now being investigated by the department, all they had to do to avoid this was behave like professionals and not do the things they did during the raid. It's as simple as that. Everything else is the horrendously misguided whining of a bunch of entitled brats masquerading as officers of the law.

I cannot wait for a judge to get his or her hands on this filing. I am looking forward to the swift benchslap that is sure to follow. I sincerely hope the judge throws this case out before the defendants even have to file a response. Failing that, a motion to dismiss stating nothing more than "this is bullshit" should be all that's needed to end this debacle.

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